ty.
Anyway, I wish you'd take us over to the mill-race and show these two
partners of mine just where you discovered the gold. We aren't going
to stay, but we'd like to see that much."

"Yes, I can do that," assented Mr. Marshall. "Leave your animal here,
if you want to. There aren't many white people about" (and he spoke
bitterly, again) "to steal it."

Charley tied the burro to the cabin. Mr. Marshall led the way over to
the mill, which was abandoned and idle, and paused on the brink of a
wide ravine that extended back to the mill wheel.

The ravine was ragged and torn, its bottom bare to the rocks and its
sides gashed by countless holes. A number of Chinamen and Indians were
working in it, scraping about and filling pans and wicker baskets with
loose dirt, which they washed in the stream trickling through. But
there were no white men.

"That was the tail-race," explained Mr. Marshall, "which led off the
water after it had passed under the wheel. After we got the mill to
going, about the middle of January, last year, we found the tail-race
wasn't big enough to carry off the water fast and make a current that
would turn the wheel. So I threw the wheel out of gear, one night, and
lifted the head-gate of the race full open, to flow a hard stream
through and wash the tail-race deeper. Next morning early, which was
January 24, I went down with Weimer (you know Weimer, Mr. Grigsby; he
served in the Fremont battalion during the conquest), who was helping
me, to see what the water had done. We shut it off first, of course,
above. Well, the tail-race certainly had been scoured a good bit, and
we were looking in, as we walked, congratulating ourselves on the job,
when I saw a sparkle of yellow on a flat bed-rock. I went down in and
picked it up, and I was sure it was gold. I sent an Indian back to the
men's cabin for a tin plate. I didn't want to say much about the find
till I'd made certain that it wasn't copper, but during the day Weimer
and I searched about and found a little more. We tried it out with
potash in Mrs. Weimer's soap kettle, and it didn't tarnish. The other
men got excited, and the next day started to poking about on their own
account, in the rain. I took what I had down to the fort, and the
captain and I locked ourselves in and tested it with nitric acid,
weighed it, pounded it, did everything we could think of, and made dead
certain that gold it was. Next day the captain himself came up