sockets, an' then
keep revolvin' the mixture with a circular twist that wrenches the
muscles somethin' cruel. I've seen big men, tough uns, too, fair
cryin' from the pain, at first.

"Not only that, but you got to work the sodden lumps o' dirt soft wi'
your fingers, so's the grit gets right into the skin. Your hands are
wet nigh all the time. The grit an' the constant washin' o' the water,
in all weathers, cracks the skin all over, so's it's bleedin' most o'
the time. You got to have hands like a bit o' rawhide to stand it.

"The cradle does the work quicker'n' easier, but it takes three men to
work it right. It looks like a child's cradle from the outside, though
most o' them I've seen was made pretty rough. About six inches from
the top there's a drawer, or sometimes jest a tray, with a bottom o'
iron, punched wi' holes o' different sizes, accordin' to the kind o'
dirt you're workin' in. If your pannin' out don't show no big grains
o' gold-dust, why, you keep the holes o' the cradle small, otherwise,
you got to have 'em bigger. Below that drawer is another one, slopin'
like. It hasn't got no holes. It has cross-bars or cleats, what we
call 'riffles,' to keep the gold from washin' away.

"One man digs up the pay dirt an' chucks it in at the top o' the
cradle. Another dips up bucket after bucket o' water, continuous, an'
sloshes it in; it's his job, too, to break up the soft lumps an' keep
stirrin' the pasty mess, an' to keep the cradle full o' water. The
third man goes rock, rockin', without stoppin', hours at a time.
Mostly, the pardners spell each other off."

"But I should think a good deal of gold would be washed away by that
system," objected Clem, "surely the rocking must dash some of it over
the riffles."

"Some does go," Jim agreed, "but a gang can handle so much more pay
dirt in a day that it more'n makes up. Three men with a cradle can
handle twice as much dirt as the three men workin' separately would,
each with a pan. Team work pays, in minin'--if you can trust your
pardners.

"Just about the time I was born, Father made pardners with five other
prospectors, all pannin' on the Carson. Their claims were all in a
string, one after the other, so they figures on makin' a sluice.
That's jest a long trough. In richer an' more settled camps they're
made of iron, length after length, all ready to be fixed together like
a stove-pipe, but on the Carson, they was jest hollowed-out logs.

"Sluices was always a