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Now that my claim was back in my own possession, I had to make some quick decisions. I needed to get my claim's registration back in the proper name, and that could be a tall order, if Nason was indeed the man that had cheated me in the first place. I also had to dig into the pocket of high grade and see how rich it might be. Perhaps I should dig out enough to see me through a lengthy court proceeding if Nason persisted in his phony scam. Could I take out enough to turn my back on this holding and buy the land that I wanted to start a future on? Probably, but it went against my grain. Even if I had enough gold to retire on I would not stand back and be so blatantly cheated.
I decided that the best option was to dig into the pocket and try to make enough for possible legal fees.
First I scanned that turn in the stream looking for an easy entrance. There wasn't any. That meant I would just have to cut a trail to the pocket if I was to do any meaningful work. I didn't like it, for it would loom like an arrow to anybody passing by.
You might think it was too remote a spot to have any passers-by, but I swear a man could be crawling through Death Valley dying of thirst and if his hand should happen to fall on a gold nugget, a dozen people would immediately show up and try to cheat him out of it.
There was no way around it, so I started clearing brush and rolling rocks out of the way to offer a direct route to the pocket. It was slow work, for all I had for cutting was a Bowie knife that I carried in my saddlebag for odd jobs. For everyday use I had a jackknife folded up in my pocket.
I kept my forty-five loose in its holster, for I expected to meet up with a rattler at any time. It looked like a prime habitat for such creatures. To my surprise I never did see one on that trail. "Maybe they left when they got a look at Dick and his buddy," I thought wryly.
It took two days before I was satisfied with my trail, but it was one that was safe to walk in the dark without fear of twisting an ankle. Alone in this big country, that could present quite a problem.
Luckily I had purchased a short pick on my stop in Vernal. The rest of the gear had all been placer equipment—a couple of shovels and nails and a hammer to build a sluice box. Along with these I had bought a rough blanket to line the sluice with rather than plane out boards and build riffles.
The quartz broke up quite readily into five and ten pound chunks, and I wished that I had a wheelbarrow to wheel them back to camp. Well, I didn't, so I searched out a large flat topped rock about halfway down my new trail and started piling my rock on the side of this. When the pile got so big that there was room for no more, I broke out my single jack and started pounding the chunks into smaller pieces. Most of the gold was in seams with mica and basalt, and I was able to beat it out once I broke the parent rock in half. This ore was left on the flat rock as mixed sand that I could pan out at my leisure. A test pan showed it to be consistently three times richer that the sand in the stream because it had not been dispersed.
I finally settled on a routine of one day breaking chunks out of the pocket and the next one refining the ore as best I could. I knew I was losing a lot of the fine gold, but without the use of mercury I could not gather the rest.
By the end of the first week I figured I had accumulated about twenty five hundred dollars worth, which was a lot of money at that time. I figured that if I could keep up the same schedule for one more week, I would have enough ahead to go down to town and try to get my affairs in order. Thinking of Anne I thought, "In more ways that one."
As soon as you have a definite plan you can expect things to go wrong. My case was certainly no exception. First of all when I dug too low into the pocket, water started filling the hole, so I was forced to continue in and up. I was already in over twenty feet, and I didn't like working under all that unsupported rock. I'm not claustrophobic, but my mother didn't raise a daredevil idiot, either.
I had heard of the square four timber supports, but I wasn't familiar enough with the formation to feel safe in making such. Plus I didn't even have a saw for cutting and squaring the timbers. So I decided to go upwards, another one of my great choices.
A rich sub-pocket extended upwards from about ten feet in, and I actually did take some small nuggets out of this. But after a couple of feet the quartz ran out and the silt of eons past started seeping down into my tunnel. There was no
imminent danger of collapse, but that was definitely the end of the quartz layer in that direction. I carefully collected these small pieces of rich rock by themselves to be later worked over very carefully.
Around the entrance to the pocket was a lot of the average quartz rock, so I worked in the sun widening the hole and hopefully weighing down my bankroll. The bright sun reflecting off the face was partially blinding me, and the tedium of the work was lulling me into a false security. This was brought to light in a hurry.
My pick slipped from my sweaty grasp, and when I bent over to pick it up, the sound of an angry hornet whipped over my head. Over the sound of the stream I heard nothing else. When I stood back up I saw the lead smear on the rock and leaped backwards into the stream. As I did so another bullet hit the rock, and I heard the faint report of the rifle, only because I was listening for it this time.
Whoever was shooting was a long ways away, and it looked like he was an excellent shot. If I hadn't chanced to move when I did I would have been lying there on the bank dead as a doornail. Keeping my head under the level of the back I began inching upstream, the opposite direction of what my assailant would probably be expecting. Or at least that is what I hoped.
That water was cold, let me tell you. If it had been a warmer water of a more Southern clime, I might have spent the night in the stream, but I knew I had to move up and out while my fingers could still function.
I only had a general idea where the shots had come from. Because of the sound of the report, I knew he was very far away. If he was really good, he might be as far as a thousand yards. That sounds like a long ways, and it is, but the national matches are shot at that yardage with 45-70's. The bullets drop about twenty eight feet, but since that is a known factor the sights are set accordingly and hits are made. Billy Dixon is said to have shot an Indian at one mile while defending Adobe Wells. Because of the people that were present with him, I believe it.
It was a temptation to leave the stream on the far side to move away from danger. The trouble was, I figured that was what the unknown marksman expected, so I crawled up a disused beaver slide and into the woods. Once there I felt much more at home. I moved to the Northern fringe of this copse, and once the sun hit me my clothes quickly began drying.
I could only guess where the man had come from, so I started a large circle that crossed the connecting trails. On the run that met up with the area where I had heard the two men shooting at deer, I found his incoming track. I couldn't be sure yet that it was his, but what were the odds of two different riders coming through here on this particular day? The tracks seemed to be those of a good heavy Northern pony. The off rear shoe showed a gouge where it must have glanced off a hard sharp rock.
I followed the track long enough to be sure of the direction of travel, then walked through the mixed growth above it, trying to look down into likely spots of ambush.
A half a dozen spots looked likely but turned up empty, and then I hit pay dirt. In a tiny quarter acre of rich high meadow grass I found the pony. He had been left with the reins thrown over his head onto the ground in front of him. That way he couldn't travel too far because he would be stepping on the reins. It showed that my assailant was thinking, for if things were sour he didn't have anything to untie. He could just scoop up the reins and be on his way.
Hmmm... If things went sour. Somehow I liked the sound of that. So I loosed up the girth by two notches. Not enough to notice when in a hurry, but enough that he should slide down the side of the horse, possibly with his head touching the ground. Yes, indeed. Sometimes I like to amuse myself.
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