Page:To Alaska for Gold.djvu/194

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174
TO ALASKA FOR GOLD.

When they got back to camp they found the doctor and the captain already there. The two had tried half a dozen spots, but only one had yielded sufficient gold dust to warrant their continuing to work it. They listened with keen interest to the account of the find made by Randy, and were quite willing to take a hand at prospecting that locality the next day.

Eight o'clock found all hard at work. While the captain and Earl washed, the others went into the opening of the cliff and brought out all that remained of the dirt and loose stones. There was not a great deal, and shortly after noon every shovelful was heaped up close to the artificial pool of water Dr. Barwaithe had constructed. While the washing continued, Foster Portney examined the sides and the bottom of the opening, and then moved forward through a tangled mass of brushwood and tundra until he came to the bed of a second gulch a hundred feet distance from the first.

"There is nothing more in the pocket," he declared. "And if there is any more gold, it is either in that gulch or this, and I am half inclined to think it is over there, although we may as well prospect this gulch thoroughly first."

By the morrow the washings from the pocket came to an end, with four more ounces of gold to the credit of the prospectors, making in all a find of about five hundred dollars. Previous to going into camp it had