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Updated: May 12, 2025
"Hush, child," said the old man softly, as he again dipped his thumb and finger in his vest pocket as if about to take snuff. But he did not take snuff. Again his hand was reached down to the rippling water at the head of the sluice-box. And this time curious but obedient Little Stumps was silent.
Just before midnight they drank to a profane and senseless toast, "Before this day twelve months may we all die in a tail-race and be covered by tailings." "Tailings" are the waste products of the sluice-box, the sand and gravel carried away by the stream of water which flows over the "ripples."
Quite a different picture is presented by an industrious old Mexican, whom I happen to see away down in the bottom of a deep ravine, along which swiftly hurries a tiny stream. He is diligently shovelling dirt into a rude sluice-box which he has constructed in the bed of the stream at a point where the water rushes swiftly down a declivity.
A complete inventory of the belongings of this strange being would have included a pick, a shovel, a pan, and an old sluice-box, none of which he ever used, also a blanket, a big knife, a billy, and a Greek Testament. The cave, although draughty, was comfortable and fairly dry. Now and then I shared it with Fabayne; generally on those occasions when I sold my tent.
It would not do to leave the smooth boards, for the water would sweep all the gold away, and the boards themselves would soon be worn through. The most common false bottom is the longitudinal riffle-bar, which is from two to four inches thick, from three to seven inches wide, and six feet long. Two sets of these riffle-bars go into each sluice-box, the box being twice as long as the bar.
Every new chum had to undergo the purgatorial experience of having his palms blistered and re-blistered until continued contact with the handles of pick and shovel made them horny. However, I soon matriculated at the sluice-box, and was able to do a fair day's work. Then, as my friends could not afford to pay wages they were, for the time, off the "lead," I sought another employer.
While Bruce, by running back and forth between the donkey-engine and the top sluice-box where the scraper dumped, managed to do the work of two men ten hours a day. His nerves were at a tension, for along with the strain of his responsibilities was the constant fear of a serious break-down.
True, he did not let his father know about the pipe. He hid it under his pillow at night. He meant to have his first smoke at the sluice-box, as a miner should. Monday morning he was up with the sun and ready for his work. His father, who worked down the Gulch, had already gone before the children had finished their breakfast.
A few birds were bathing in the ditch with a pleasant suggestion of its being a new and special provision of nature, and a hare ran into an inverted sluice-box, as he approached, as if it were put there for that purpose. He had not yet dared to look in a certain direction. But the sun was now high enough to paint the little eminence on which the cabin stood.
I hated him from the beginning, feeling that he was a rogue. We harrowed the stuff down to old Lochhead's race, where we hired a water right. Our wash-up for the first week was a couple of ounces of gold. I worked in the claim while my partner attended to the sluice-box. He became more and more offensive. Soon a friend of his came along and offered me 15 for my share. I accepted the offer.
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