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Updated: June 5, 2025
In a moment all were crowded around him, eagerly examining the nugget. "It certainly is gold!" declared Marshall, as he hefted the nugget on the palm of his hand. "Hurra, that's a durned good sign that that thar hole is chuck full of it!" cried Ham, excitedly swinging the gold-pan he held in his hand around his head. "Come on!
He rubbed the dirt away from fragment after fragment, tossing them into the gold-pan. It was a treasure-hole. So much had the quartz rotted away that there was less of it than there was of gold. Now and again he found a piece to which no rock clung a piece that was all gold.
Ham was now digging down to this bed-rock; and, when he reached it, he would throw a few shovels of the dirt directly on its top into a gold-pan, and then a few minutes' washing of the dirt in the pan would show whether or not they had struck gold.
Then he said: "It's my mother wouldn't know me from a can of cold meat if I hadn't stopped at this station; but wurrawurra, what a car it was to come in!" He examined his tattered clothes and bare elbows; then he unbuckled the gold-pan, and no easy task was it with his ragged fingers. "'Twas not for deep minin' I brought ye," he said to the pan, "nor for scrapin' the clothes from me back."
Gold-pan, coffee-pot, and cooking-pail were soon thawing the heaped frost-crystals into water. Smoke extracted a stick of beans from the sled. Already cooked, with a generous admixture of cubes of fat pork and bacon, the beans had been frozen into this portable immediacy. He chopped off chunks with an ax, as if it were so much firewood, and put them into the frying-pan to thaw.
"'Mon Dieu! mon Dieu!" said Pretty Pierre, piteously. The face of the Honourable was set and tense. Jo Gordineer's hand clutched his throat as if he choked. Still Shon sped. It was a matter of seconds only. The tragedy crowded to the awful end. But, no. There was a tilt in the glacier, and the gold-pan, suddenly swirling, again swung to the outer edge, and shot over.
"Great buffaloes!" and Tim Perkins turned anxiously to Thure, by whose side he was riding, "dew you reckon all them folks are bound for the diggin's?" "Yes," answered Thure. "Can't you see that everyone is armed with a pick and shovel and gold-pan? Why, even the men on foot are lugging picks and shovels and gold-pans on their backs!"
The side-hill attracted his attention. Still lying on his stomach, he studied the hill formation long and carefully. It was a practised eye that travelled up the slope to the crumbling canyon-wall and back and down again to the edge of the pool. He scrambled to his feet and favored the side-hill with a second survey. "Looks good to me," he concluded, picking up his pick and shovel and gold-pan.
"Dad's staked for me down near Discovery, I know. I'll give you my claim." He shook his head. "Shorty," she pleaded. Shorty shook his head and began to laugh. It was a colossal laugh. Chuckles and muffled explosions yielded to hearty roars. "It ain't hysterics," he explained. "I sure get powerful amused at times, an' this is one of them." His gaze chanced to fall on the gold-pan.
The work of the day shift had ceased; the men were at dinner; and Shaw and one of the shift bosses were carefully sweeping the result of a day's "run" into a gold-pan.
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