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This business of turning a tree into boards without the aid of a saw-mill is a thing many placer-miners have to learn; for, even if they are disposed to sleep on the floor, and to do without shelves, they can't do sluicing without sluice-boxes, and they can't make those long, narrow boxes without boards. So every party that is well fitted out has a whip-saw.
Morning brought the sweet refreshed feeling only known to the tired mountaineer, and after our breakfast of venison, coffee, fried potatoes and bacon, we were off for the sluice-boxes laden with the precious metal.
Near the crusher building is a large, stoutly-constructed windlass, worked by mule power, and every few moments there comes up to the surface from the depths of a shaft, a bucketful of rock and sand, which is dumped into a push-car, and from thence transferred to the line of sluice-boxes in the stream, where more half-clothed Utes are busily engaged in sifting golden particles from the rich sand.
I didn't take an awful sight of notice about Joe until I came in, one night, and the boys told me that Joe was arrested as an accomplice in the robbery of the Black Prince mine, in Constitution gulch. This Black Prince was a gold placer owned by two middle-aged Englishmen. They had a small stamp-mill, run by mule power; and a large number of sluice-boxes.
He found a considerable quantity in the sluice-boxes of the Cherokee Valley Mining Company; but just then he found also that fruit-gardening was the thing, and dropped the subject. He then came to me and said that if he could raise $4000 he could go into some kind of orchard arrangement out there, and would give me half the profits.
Smaltz warded him off without striking, trying to get his hand over his mouth; but in vain, and the Chinaman kept up his shrill accusing cry, "I savvy you, Smaltz! I savvy you!" There was little chance, however, of his being heard above the rush of the water through the sluice-boxes and the bumping and grinding together of the rocks and boulders that it carried down. Then Smaltz struck him.
The wreckage of the spring washing appeared everywhere piles of sluice-boxes, sections of elevated flumes, huge water-wheels, all the debris of an army of gold-mad men. "It-all's plain gophering," Daylight muttered aloud. He looked at the naked hills and realized the enormous wastage of wood that had taken place.
It was now a booming river as large as the Tuolumne at ordinary stages, its current brown with mining-mud washed down from many a "claim," and mottled with sluice-boxes, fence-rails, and logs that had long lain above its reach. A slim foot-bridge stretched across it, now scarcely above the swollen current.
"I dare say it's the fault of my bringing-up, but I don't think there's any such thing. I'm an outdoor person. I'm one of the rough-necks who salts your sluice-boxes. I think I'd better stick to the hills. It's mighty nice of you, though, and I'm much obliged." "Are you going to take that other offer?" Laure inquired. When Pierce hesitated she laid hold of his other arm.
He spent some time far up the creek, and ate the lunch he had brought with him in a quiet place near the stream which flowed down the valley, and provided the necessary water for the sluice-boxes where the precious gold was washed out. He enjoyed the seclusion, as it gave him an opportunity to think over what the editor had written, and also about Glen.
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