One day it would go up-stream,
and the next day it would come back. And the houses stood drawn
up in a row alongside the track to watch for these passings.
Miners came in with burros or with horses, packed flour and
bacon and tea and coffee across their middles, got drunk, perhaps
as a parting ceremony, and went away into the hills. Cash watched
them for a day or so; saw the size of their grubstakes, asked few
questions and listened to a good deal of small-town gossip, and
nodded his head contentedly. There was gold in these hills. Not
enough, perhaps, to start a stampede with--but enough to keep
wise old hermits burrowing after it.
So one day Bud sold the two horses and one of the saddles, and
Cash bought flour and bacon and beans and coffee, and added other
things quite as desirable but not so necessary. Then they too
went away into the hills.
Fifteen miles from Alpine, as a cannon would shoot; high up in
the hills, where a creek flowed down through a saucerlike basin
under beetling ledges fringed all around with forest, they came,
after much wandering, upon an old log cabin whose dirt roof still
held in spite of the snows that heaped upon it through many a
winter. The ledge showed the scars of old prospect holes, and in
the sand of the creek they found "colors" strong enough to make
it seem worth while to stop here--for awhile, at least.
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