They dug the sparkling micaceous sand from the banks of the little creek, and Harry panned it, as the miners say. He filled the pan with it, added water, and by whirling and shaking the pan and flipping the water over the sides of it, he washed out all the lighter particles. As he reached the bottom, he proceeded more carefully, and both boys watched the result with eagerness. To “pan gold” well is not easy and requires much practice, but almost any one can with a trial or two pan it roughly. As the last of the sand was washed away by the whirling water, Harry set up a shout.
“Black sand!” he said. “We’ve got black sand!”
“Humph!” said Joe, much disappointed. “What of it? It isn’t black sand we want, it’s gold.”
“Yes,” replied Harry excitedly, “but that’s a sign. The black sand always comes with the gold in placer mines. Wait till I wash this sand away.”
He whirled the pan with great care, and the heavy sand gradually disappeared. Then the boys looked at each other and shook hands. In the bottom of the pan lay several yellow flecks. Gold without a doubt, but not much of it. As a matter of fact, their discovery amounted to very little. Scarcely a stream in the Rocky Mountains, from Central America to Cape Lisburne, but in it you may find these occasional flecks of gold. To find it in paying quantities is altogether another matter, as many a gray-bearded prospector has learned after years of toil and rough life. But the boys were too young and inexperienced to realize this. They thought that fortune was verily within their grasp. They prospected up and down the stream, and never realized that they had not eaten dinner and were very hungry.
Yet wherever they went they found nothing but these faint prospects, and after long hours, fatigue and hunger finally asserted themselves and they started back for camp. As they tramped, weary and disappointed, they came round a bend in the creek and Joe’s eyes lighted up. There on the water’s edge, strolling along a clay bottom thinly strewn with micaceous sand, were three ptarmigans, picking up bits of gravel for the good of their crops, as such birds do. They looked large and plump in the eyes of two hungry boys.
“Lie low,” whispered Joe, “and we’ll have one of those birds.”
They watched them eagerly from behind a sheltering mound on the bank. The birds pecked leisurely for a while, then went toward the bank and settled contentedly beneath some dwarf willows in the sun. Paddle in hand, Joe slipped noiselessly forward, got behind the clump of willows, crept round it, and with a sudden blow of the paddle laid out a ptarmigan. The others flew.
“There!” said Joe. “Here’s a good bite for dinner. Let’s hurry back.”
With renewed energy they hustled back to the camp, three quarters of a mile away, and soon had the ptarmigan broiling over a good fire. They made some rude flapjacks with the remnants of their spoiled flour, and ate the bird pretty nearly bones and all.