“Oh, it’s you, Griscome, is it? Be’n expecting some of you fellows this ten days. Come to camp and have a bite with us?”
“No, thanks,” said the other, a tall man in a blue shirt, stout boots, and a slouch hat, “my outfit’s back here. Pretty good clean-up for a little work.”
“That’s so,” replied Blenship. “And that ain’t all. The whole creek’s like that from top to bottom, and it’s staked from bottom to top, and recorded. I’m the recorder. We’d ’a’ staked the benches, only the powers of attorney give out. Better stake ’em, they’re likely good.”
“Much obliged,” said the other. “Guess I will. So long.”
He went out of sight over the hill in long, swift strides.
“What are the benches?” asked Joe. “Will he stake them? Who is he?”
“One at a time, young feller,” said Blenship. “He is one of Pap Lane’s men. The benches are the hillside claims. He may stake ’em, but I doubt it. He won’t wait. He’ll light out across tundra as fast as his horse can carry him, and tell his boss about this. Meanwhile we can wait, and we might as well get what’s coming to us. If one of you boys will try and handle that water, I’ll show you how to shovel.”
Joe thought himself a good deal of a man, but he could not keep up with the other in shoveling. He hung sturdily to his task, however, and for three hours more shoveled wet sand and clayey gravel into the sluice while Harry regulated the water according to occasional directions from Blenship. The latter instructed Joe in the best methods of scraping bed rock, and showed him how the best of the gold was liable to lie in the little hollows of the clay, and be missed by an inexperienced hand. At the end of three hours Blenship ordered a cessation of work once more, much to Joe’s relief, for five hours of labor with the shovel had thoroughly exhausted him. He lay back on the tundra while Harry and Blenship cleaned up. The result showed Blenship’s superior skill in mining, and the longer run. It was nearly double the other.
“Guess we’ll call it a day’s work,” said he. “Pretty near two thousand dollars. Have I earned my hundred?”