Jasper County Democrat, Volume 19, Number 53, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 September 1916 — GOLD [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

GOLD

By STEWART EDWARD WHITE

SYNOPSIS Talbot Ward’s challenge to Frank Munroe to a personal encounter to determine whether Munroe Is fit to make a trip to California In search of gold is accepted. Munroe gets a hammerlock on Ward and wins the bout Arriving at Chagres, Talbot Ward’s knowledge of Spanish and his firm treatment of the native boatmen help wonderfully. The party enters a tropical forest They reach Gatun, and, after passing through several villages where Ward always diplomatically handles the natives, they arrive in Panama. Ward forces steamship agent to refund passage money because ship isn’t available. Yank has provided accommodations for all on board a sailing ship. They arrive In San Francisco. Ward puts it up to each man to get $220 in one day. Munroe makes $25 as a laborer. Johnny gambles and gets $220. Ward astounds the party by telling how, by shrewd business deals in one day In the Golden City, he accumulated several thousand dollars. Ward decides that he will not go with the party to the mines, but will stay iu San Francisco, where he thinks more gold is to be found.

CHAPTER XIII. The First Gold. WE arose before daylight, picketed our horses, left our dishes unwashed and hurried down to the diggings just ac sunup, carrying our gold pans, or “washbowls,” and our extra tools. The bar was as yet deserted. We set to work with a will, taking turns with the pickax and the two shovels. I must confess that our speed slowed down considerably after the first wild burst, but we kept at It steadily. It was hard work, and there is no denying it, just the sort of plain hard work the day laborer does when he digs sewer trenches in the city streets, only worse, perhaps, owing to the nature of the soil. It had struck me since that those few years of hard labor in the .diggings, from ’49 to ’53 or ’54, saw more actual manual toil accomplished than was ever before performed in the same time by the same number of men. The discouragement of those returning we now understood. They had expected to take the gold without toil and were dismayed at the labor it had required. At any rate, we thought we were doing our share that morning, especially after the sun came up. We wielded our Implements manfully, piled our debris to one side and gradually achieved a sort of erumbling uncertain excavation reluctant to stay emptied. About an hour after our arrival the other miners began so appear. Smoking their pipes. They stretched themselves lazily, spat upon their hands and set to. Our friend of the day before nodded at us cheerfully and hopped down into his hole. We removed what seemed to us tons of rock. About noon, just as we were thinking rather dispiritedly of knocking off work for a lunch, which in our early morning eagerness we had forgotten to bring, Johnny turned up a shovelful w’hose lower third consisted of the pulverized bluish clay. We promptly forgot both lunch and our own weariness. “Hey!" shouted our friend, scrambling from his own claim. “Easy with rhe rocks! What are you conducting here, a volcano?” He peered down at ns. “Pay dirt, hey? Weill, takeilt easy. It won’t run away.” Take it easy! As well ask us to quit entirely! We tore at the rubble, which aggravatlngly and obstinately cascaded down upon us from the sides. We scraped eagerly for more of that blue clay. At last we had filled our three pans with a rather mixed lot of the dirt and raced to the river. Johnny (fell over a bowlder and scattered his panful far and wide. His manner of scuttling back to the hole after more reminded me Irresistibly of the way a contestant in a candle race hurries back to the starting point to get bls candle relighted. We panned that dirt clumsily and hastily enough and undoubtedly lost much valuable sand overside, but we ended each with a string of color. We crowded together, comparing our pans. Then we went crazy. I suppose we had about a quarter of a dollar’s worth of gold between us, but that was not the point. The long journey with all its hardships and adventures, the toil, the uncertainty, the hopes, the disappointments and reactions bad at last their visible tangible conclusion. The tiny flecks of gold we/e a symbol. We yapped aloud, we kicked up our heels, we shook hands, we finally joined hands and danced around and around. We worked with entire absorption, quite oblivious to all that was going on about us. It was only by accident that Tank looked up at last, so I do not know how long Don Gaspar had been there. “Will you look at that?” cried Yank. Don Gaspar, still In his embroidered boots, his crimson velvet breeches, his white linen and his sombrero, but without the blue and silver jacket, was busily wielding a pickax a hundred feet or so away. His companion, or

servant, was doing the heavier shovel work. “Why, oh, ighy,” breathed Johnny at last, “do you suppose, if he-must mine, he doesn’t buy himself a suit of dungarees or a flannel shirt?” “I’ll bet it’s the first hard work he ever did in his life,” surmised Yank. “And I’ll bet he won’t do that very long,” I guessed. , But Don Gaspar seemed to have more sticking power than we gave him credit for. We did not pay hl.m much further attention, for we were busy with our own affairs, but every time we glanced in his direction he appeared to be still at it. Our sack of sand was growing heavier, as, Indeed, were our limbs. As a matter of fact we had been at harder work than any of us had been accustomed to for very

long hours, beneath a scorching sun, without food and under strong excitement. We did not know when to quit, but the sun at last decided it for us by dipping below the mountains to the west. The following days were replicas of the first. We ate hurriedly at odd times; we worked feverishly; we sank Into our tumbled blankets at night too tired to wiggle. But the buckskin sack of gold was swelling and rounding out most satisfactorily. By the end of the week it contained over, a pound! But the long hours, the excitement and the inadequate food told on our nerves. We snapped at each other impatiently at times and once or twice came near to open quarreling. Johnny and I were constantly pecking at each other over the most trivial concerns. One morning we .were halfway to the bar when we remembered.that we had neglected to picket out the horses. It was necessary for one of us to go back, and we were all reluctant to do so. “I’ll be if I’m going to lug ’way up that hill,” I growled to myself. “I tied them up yesterday, anyway.” Johnny caught this. “Well, it wasn’t your turn yesterday,” he pointed out, “and it is today. I’ve got nothing to do with what you chose to do yesterday.” “Or any other day,” I muttered. “What’s that?” cried Johnny truculently. “I couldn’t hear. Speak up!” We were flushed and eying each other malevolently. “That’ll do!” said Yank, with an unexpected tone of authority. “Nobody will go back and nobody will go ahead. We’ll just sit down on this log yere while we smoke one pipe apiece. I’ve got something to say.” Johnny and I turned on him with a certain belligerency mingled with surprise. Yank had so habitually acted the part of taciturnity that his decided air of authority confused us. His slouch had straightened; his head was up; his mild eye sparkled. Suddenly I felt like a bad small boy, and I believe Johnny was the same. After a moment’s hesitation we sat down on the log. “Now,” said Yank firmly, “it’s about time we took stock. We been here now five days. We ain’t had a decent meal of vittles in that time. We ain’t fixed up our camp a mite. We ain’t been to town to see the sights. Wa don’t even know the looks of the man that’s camped down below us. We’ve been too danged busy to be decent. Now we're goin’ to call a halt. I should jedge we have a pound of gold or tharabouts. How much is that worth, Johnny? You can Agger in yore head.” “Along about $250,” said Johnny after a moment “Well, keep on flggerin”. How much does that come to apiece?” “About SBO, of course.” “And dividin’ eighty by five?” persisted Yank. “Sixteen.” “Well,” drawled Yank, his steely blue eye softening to a twinkle, “sl6 a day is fair wages, to be sure, but nothin’ to get wildly excited over.” He surveyed the two of us with some humor. “Hadn’t thought of It that way, had you?” he asked. “Nuther had I until last night. I was so dog tired I couldn’t sleep, and I got to flggerln’ a little on my own hook.” “Why, I can do better than that in San Francisco, with half the work!” I cried. “Maybe for awhile,” said Yank, “but here we got a chance to make a big strike most any time and in the meantime to make good wages. But we ain’t goin’ to do it any quicker by killin’ ourselves. Now, today is Sunday. I ain’t no religious man, but Sunday is a good day to quit I propose we go back to camp peaceable, make a decent place to stay, cook ourselves up a squar* meal wash out our clothes,

visit the next camp, take a look at town and enjoy ourselves.” Thus vanished the first and most wonderful romance of the gold. Reduced to wages it was somehow no longer so marvelous. The element of uncertainty was alwayb there, to be sure, and an inexplicable fascination, but no longer had we any desire to dig up the whole place Immediately. I suppose we moved nearly as much earth, but the fibers of our minds were relaxed, and we did it more easily and with less nervous wear and tear. Also, as Yank suggested, we took pains to search out our fellow brings. The camper below us proved to be Don Gaspar, velvet breeches and all. He received us hospitably and proffered perfumed cigarettes, which we did not like, but which we smoked out of politeness. Our common ground of meeting was at first the natural one of the gold diggings. Don Gaspar and his man, whom he called Vasquez, had produced somewhat less flake gold than ourselves, but exhibited a half ounce nugget and several smaller lumps. We could not make him out. Neither his appearance nor his personal equipment suggested necessity, and yet he labored as hard as the rest of us. His gaudy costume was splashed and grimy with the red mud, although evidently he had made some attempt to brush it The linen was, of course, hopeless. He showed us the blisters on his small aristocratic looking hands. “It is the hard work,” he stated simply, “but one gets the gold.” From that subject we passed on to horses. He confessed that he was uneasy as to the safety of his own magnificent animals and succeeded in alarming us as to our own. “Thos’ Indian,” he told us, “are always out to essteal, and the paisanos. It has been tole me that Andreas Amijo and his robbers are near. Some day we lose our horse!” Our anxiety at this time was given an edge by the fact that the horses, having fed well and becoming tired of the same place, were inclined to stray. It was Impossible to keep them always on picket lines—the nature of the meadow would not permit It—and they soon learned to be very clever with their hobbles. Several mornings. we

pot In an hour or so hunting them up and bringing them in before we could start work for the day. This wasted both time and temper. The result was that we drifted into partnership with Don Gaspar and Vasquez. Ido not remember who proposed the arrangement Indeed, I am inclined to think it just came about naturally from our many discussions of the subject. Under the terms of It we appointed Vasquez to cook all the meals, take full care of the horses, chop the wood, draw the water and keep camp generally. The rest of us worked In couples at the bar. We divided the gold into five equal parts. (To be continued.)

“Well, it wasn’t your turn yesterday,” he pointed out.