Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 22, 2025
A meaner spirit would have been galled at the part those "Louisville Instructions" had been playing, but cheap cynicism was not in the Colonel's line. He knew the awful pinch of life up here, and he thought no less of his comrades for asking that last service of getting them home. But it was the day of the final "clean-up" for the Colonel; he must not leave misapprehension behind.
Polktown's been a sleepy place, but it's never been wicked before." Her cousin looked at her admiringly. "Hi jinks, Janice! I bet you got it in your mind to stir things up again. I can see it in your eyes. You give Polktown its first clean-up day, and you've shook up the dry bones in general all over the shop.
Bill had finished panning the concentrates from our last clean-up, and now the silver ball of amalgam sizzled and fried on the shovel over the little chip-fire, while we smoked in the sun before the cabin. Removed from the salivating fumes of the quicksilver, we watched the yellow tint grow and brighten in the heat.
In one of them Old Man Curry was bringing the judgment of Solomon down to date and fitting it to turf conditions; in the other Henry M. Pitkin was preparing code telegrams to certain business associates in Seattle, Portland, Butte, and San Francisco, for this was in the unregenerate days when pool rooms operated more or less openly in the West. Mr. Pitkin was getting ready for the annual clean-up.
More than once I have shaved in a periscope mirror pegged into the side of a trench, with the bullets snapping overhead, and rubbed my face with wet tea leaves afterward to freshen up. Back in billets the very first thing that comes off is the big clean-up. Uniforms are brushed up, and equipment put in order. Then comes the bath, the most thorough possible under the conditions.
Wanting only to be free, I still had to let him go all the way with me to the door of my room. But the moment he was gone I hurried out again and descended to the lobby. The night clerk knew me; or if he didn't, he knew the Little Clean-Up; and he was quite willing to talk. Miss Geddis was only temporarily a guest of the house, he told me.
Since I could not thrust my head into the sand, I wheeled quickly to stare at a framed photograph of Bull Mountain and the buildings of the Little Clean-Up hanging on the laboratory wall. "He was one of the fools, too, was he?" I said, without taking my eyes from the photograph. "He turned out badly, I am sorry to say, and I have often wondered if the young woman was not in some way responsible.
Faro, monte, roulette, rouge et noir, vingt-un, chuck-a-luck and poker: each found its disciples; now and then a man went quietly out and another took his place; there was nothing to indicate that he had lost perhaps thousands of dollars, the "clean-up" of a summer of hardships at the mines. A bushy bearded miner boasted that he had won $40,000 and lost it again in an hour and a half.
By the light of an oil lamp Black Jack was putting the final touches to the clean-up. Two gold pans, heaped high with the mingled black sand and gold dust, as it came out of the sluices, were drying on the Yukon stove, and the superintendent was engaged in separating the precious yellow particles from the worthless material which gravity had deposited with it.
"And what," asked Mary, "is his share of the clean-up to be?" "Oh, a half," said Paula; "we'd be equal partners. That's fair enough, I suppose. I sat there all through lunch while he was talking, hating him; hating his big blue chin, and his necktie and his great shiny finger-nails and the way he ate, and feeling, of course, perfectly frightfully unhappy.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking