The Golden Dream: Adventures in the Far West, R. M. Ballantyne [to read list .txt] 📗

twinkled down upon the camp at Little Creek, our gold-hunters, wet and tired, but hearty and hopeful, assembled round the fire in front of their little tent among the oak-trees.

The entire party was assembled there, and they were gazing earnestly, as might be expected of hungry men, into the frying-pan. But they did not gaze at supper. No, that night the first thing they fried was a mixture of black sand and gold. In fact, they were drying and blowing the result of their first day’s work at the diggings, and their friend the Scotch miner was there to instruct them in the various processes of their new profession, and to weigh the gold for them, in his little pair of scales, when it should be finally cleared of all grosser substances.

As each panful was dried and blown, the gold was weighed, and put into a large white breakfast cup, the bottom of which was soon heaped up with shining particles, varying in size from the smallest visible speck, to little lumps like grains of corn.

“Bravo!” exclaimed McLeod, as he weighed the last pan, and added the gold to that already in the cup. “I congratulate you, gentlemen, on your success. The day’s work is equal to one hundred and eighty dollars—about thirty dollars per man. Few men are so lucky their first day, I assure you, unless, as has been the case once or twice they should hit upon a nugget or two.”

“That being the case, we shall have supper,” cried Ned Sinton; “and while we are about it, do you go, Larry, to mine host of the hotel, and pay for the dinner for which he gave us credit. I don’t wish to remain an hour in debt, if I can avoid it.”

“Mister McLeod,” slowly said Bill Jones—who, during the whole operation of drying and weighing the gold, had remained seated on a log, looking on with an expression of imbecile astonishment, and without uttering a word—“Mister McLeod, if I may make bold to ax, how much is one hundred and eighty dollars?”

Bill’s calculating powers were of the weakest possible character.

“About thirty-six pounds sterling,” replied McLeod. Bill’s eyes were wide open before, but the extent to which he opened them on hearing this was quite alarming, and suggested the idea that they would never close again. The same incapacity to calculate figures rendered him unable to grasp correlative facts. He knew that thirty-six pounds in one day was a more enormous and sudden accumulation of wealth than had ever entered into his nautical mind to conceive of. But to connect this with the fact that a voyage and journey of many months had brought him there; that a similar journey and voyage would be required to reconduct him home; and that in the meantime he would have to pay perhaps five pounds sterling for a flannel shirt, and probably four pounds or more for a pair of boots, and everything else in proportion, was to his limited intellectual capacity a simple impossibility. He contented himself with remarking, in reference to these things, that “w’en things in gin’ral wos more nor ord’nar’ly oncommon, an’ w’en incomprehensibles was blowin’ a reg’lar hurricane astarn, so that a man couldn’t hold on to the belayin’-pins he’d bin used to, without their breakin’ short off an’ lettin’ him go spin into the lee-scuppers,—why wot then? a wise man’s course wos to take in all sail, an’ scud before it under bare poles.”

Next day all the miners in the colony were up and at work by dawn. Ned and his friends, you may be sure, were not last to leave their beds and commence digging in their separate claims, which they resolved to work out by means of pan-washing, until they made a little ready cash, after which they purposed constructing two rockers, and washing out the gold more systematically and profitably.

They commenced by removing the surface-soil to the depth of about three feet, a work of no small labour, until the subsoil, or “pay-dirt,” was reached. Of this they dug out a small quantity, and washed it; put the produce of black sand and gold into leathern bags, and then, digging out another panful, washed it as before. Thus they laboured till noon, when they rested for an hour and dined. Then they worked on again until night and exhaustion compelled them to desist; when they returned to camp, dried and blew away the sand, weighed the gold, which was put carefully into a general purse—named by Larry the “R’yal Bank o’ Calyforny”—after which they supped, and retired to rest.

The gold was found at various depths, the “dirt” on the bed-rock being the richest, as gold naturally, in consequence of its weight, sinks through all other substances, until arrested in its downward career by the solid rock.

Of course, the labour was severe to men unaccustomed to the peculiar and constant stooping posture they were compelled to adopt, and on the second morning more than one of the party felt as if he had been seized with lumbago, but this wore off in the course of a day or two.

The result of the second day was about equal to that of the first; the result of the third a good deal better, and Bill, who was fortunate enough to discover a small nugget, returned to camp with a self-satisfied swagger that indicated elation, though his visage expressed nothing but stolidity, slightly tinged with surprise. On the fourth day the cradles were made, and a very large portion of their gains thereby swept away in consequence of the unconscionable prices charged for every article used in their construction. However, this mattered little, Maxton said, as the increased profits of their labour would soon repay the outlay. And he was right. On the fifth day their returns were more than trebled, and that evening the directors of the “R’yal Bank o’ Calyforny” found themselves in possession of capital amounting to one thousand one hundred and fifty dollars, or, as Tom Collins carefully explained to Bill, about 230 pounds.

On the sixth day, however, which was Saturday, Larry O’Neil, who was permitted to work with the pan in the meantime, instead of assisting with the cradles, came up to dinner with a less hearty aspect than usual, and at suppertime he returned with a terribly lugubrious visage and a totally empty bag. In fact his claim had become suddenly unproductive.

“Look at that,” he cried, swaggering recklessly into camp, and throwing down his bag; “I haven’t got a rap; faix the bag’s as empty as my intarior.”

“What! have you worked out your claim already!” inquired Maxton.

“Troth have I, and almost worked out me own body too.”

“Well, Larry, don’t lose heart,” said Ned, as he dried the last panful of sand over the fire, “there are plenty more claims beside your present one. We, too, have not been as successful as before. I find the result is only fifty dollars amongst us all.”

“That’s a sudden falling off,” remarked Tom Collins; “I fear the ‘pay-dirt’ is not deep near us, nevertheless it pays well enough to keep us going for some time to come. I shall mark off a new space on Monday.”

“By the way, Maxton,” asked Ned, handing over the frying-pan to Collins, who soon filled it with a less valuable, but at that time not less needful commodity than gold-dust—namely, pork and beef—“how do the miners spend the Sabbath here? I suppose not much better than in the cities.”

“Here comes McLeod, who will be better able to answer than I am,” replied Maxton.

The Scot strode into the camp as he spoke, and, saluting the party, seated himself beside the fire.

“I’ve come to tell you a piece of news, and to ask advice,” he said; “but before doing so, I may tell you, in answer to your question, that the Sabbath here is devoted to drinking, gambling, and loafing about.”

“I am not surprised to hear it,” said Captain Bunting; “but pray what’s i’ the wind? Any new diggin’s discovered?”

“A new digging certainly has been discovered,” replied McLeod, with a peculiar smile, “but not precisely such a digging as one is wont to search for. The fact is, that in prospecting along the edge of the woods about a mile from this to-day, I came upon the body of a murdered man. It was covered with stones and branches of trees, which I removed, and I immediately recognised it to be that of a poor man who used to work not far from my own claim. I had missed him for more than a week past, but supposed that he had either gone to other diggings, or was away prospecting.”

“Poor fellow!” said Ned; “but how, in such a matter, can we help you with advice?”

“Well, you see I’m in difficult circumstances,” rejoined the Scot, “for I feel certain that I could point out the murderer, yet I cannot prove him to be such, and I want your advice as to what I should do.”

“Let it be known at once that you have discovered the murdered man at any rate,” said Maxton.

“That I have done already.”

“Who do you think was the murderer?” inquired Ned.

“A man who used to live in the same tent with him at one time, but who quarrelled with him frequently, and at last went off in a rage. I know not what was the cause, but I heard him vow that he would be revenged. He was a great coarse fellow, more like a brute than a man, with a black beard, and the most forbidding aspect I think I ever saw.”

“Wot wos his name?” inquired Bill Jones, while the party looked at each other as if they knew of such a character.

“Smith was the name he went by oftenest, but the diggers called him Black Jim sometimes.”

“Ha! Smith—black beard—forbidding aspect! It strikes me that I too have seen the man,” said Ned Sinton, who related to McLeod the visit paid to them in their camp by the surly stranger. While he was speaking, Larry O’Neil sat pondering something in his mind.

“Mister McLeod,” said he, when Ned concluded, “will ye shew me the body o’ this man? faix, I’m of opinion I can prove the murder; but, first of all, how is the black villain to be diskivered?”

“No difficulty about that. He is even now in the colony. I saw him in a gambling-house half-an-hour since. My fear is that, now the murder’s out, he’ll bolt before we can secure him.”

“It’s little trouble we’d have in preventin’ that,” suggested Larry.

“The consequences might be more serious, however, than you imagine. Suppose you were to seize and accuse him, and fail to prove the murder, the jury would acquit him, and the first thing he would do, on being set free, would be to shoot you, for which act the morality of the miners would rather applaud him than otherwise. It is only on cold-blooded, unprovoked murder and theft that Judge Lynch is severe. It is a recognised rule here, that if a man, in a row, should merely make a motion with his hand towards his pistol, his opponent is entitled to shoot him first if he can. The consequence is, that bloody quarrels are very rare.”

“Niver a taste do I care,” cried Larry; “they may hang me tshoo times over, but I’ll prove the murder, an’ nab the murderin’ blackguard too.”

“Have a care,” said Ned; “you’ll get yourself into a scrape.”

“Make sure you are right before you act,” added Maxton. Larry O’Neil paid no attention to these warnings. “Are ye ready to go, Mister McLeod?” said he, impatiently.

“Quite,” replied the other.

“Then come along.” And the two left the camp together, armed with their rifles, knives, revolvers, and a shovel.

It was a dark night. Heavy clouds obscured the face of the sky, through which only one or two stars struggled faintly, and rendered darkness visible. The two men passed rapidly along the little footpath that led from the colony