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One day, as I was in the very act of turning my shovelful of dirt into the cradle, my eye caught a dull gleam. I instantly deflected the motion to dump the dirt on the stones alongside, fished about, and dug out a nugget that weighed three and three-quarter ounces.
Waring brought in a shovelful of embers from the dying fire outside, under whose ashes a goose, swathed in sea-weed, was preparing for supper, and Peter followed him with some small chunks of wood. The stove "drew" beautifully, and but one drawback could be discovered it made the atmosphere within too warm for comfort, at the then temperature.
Twenty cents, thirty cents, fifty cents, sixty cents, were the values of the gold found in the pans, and at nightfall he washed his banner pan, which gave him a dollar's worth of gold-dust from a shovelful of dirt. "I'll just bet it's my luck to have some inquisitive cuss come buttin' in here on my pasture," he mumbled sleepily that night as he pulled the blankets up to his chin.
The room was repulsive in its disorder. The one lighted burner of the gaselier, turned too high, hissed up into a long tongue of flame. The fire smoked feebly under a newly administered shovelful of 'slack', and a heap of ashes and cinders littered the grate. A pair of walking boots, caked in dry mud, lay on the hearth-rug just where they had been thrown off.
In California the land for fifteen miles on each side of the way laid out was given to the railroad company, and two years was allowed them to build the first hundred miles of track. Ground was broken for the Central Pacific the next year in Sacramento, and Governor Stanford dug up the first shovelful of earth. Then the work went steadily on, but it was hard to raise money.
This, in fact, they did very effectively with his assistance, for, when the shovelful of mud had been deposited on the sieve, the four men leaned over it and so nearly hid it from view that it was only by craning over, first on one side and then on the other, that I was able to catch an occasional glimpse of it and to observe it gradually melting away as the sieve, immersed in the water, was shaken to and fro.
We procured a long Tom, and spent some days prospecting with variable success i.e., we found gold nearly everywhere, each shovelful of earth contained gold, but in quantities so generally infinitesimal as to be not worth the time spent in working for it. The land was impregnated with gold, but the difficulty was to find it in sufficient quantity to pay.
"Guess I'll hand her over to Ma Sampson," he said, without turning. "Maybe she has folks. Maybe ther's the law." Seth turned now. "She's mine now," he cried over his shoulder. Then he viciously aimed a shovelful of coal at the open furnace door. All his years of frontier life had failed to change a naturally tender heart in Seth.
Then the grey dawn brightened into the sweet fresh morning, with the heavy dew glistening in the sunshine as it dripped from the great tropic leaves otherwise all was still; and convinced at length that those who had hitherto dogged our steps had for this time been eluded, I made a sign to Tom; and going in about fifty yards, we seized our spades and began to throw the light soil and sand into the bed of the little stream, shovelful after shovelful, so as to form a dam, which was at first washed down nearly as fast as we piled it up; but at last our efforts were successful, and the dammed-up water began to flow aside, cutting for itself a new channel through the sand, and making its exit a few feet nearer the rocky barrier, but taking up its former course on the other side.
Donsterswivel at length proceeded to a corner of the building where lay a flat stone upon the ground. With great trepidation he removed the stone, threw out a shovelful or two of earth, and produced a small case or casket. This was at once opened by the baronet, and appeared to be filled with coin.
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