Part 50 (1/2)

”This is worth about sixty dollars.”

”More like forty,” said Dillon.

They were of every conceivable shape and shapelessness, most of them flattened; some of them, the greenhorn would swear, were fas.h.i.+oned by man into roughly embossed hearts, or sh.e.l.ls, or polished discs like rude, defaced coins. One was a perfect staple, another the letter ”L,”

another like an axe-head, and one like a peasant's sabot. Some were almost black with iron stains, and some were set with ”jewels” of quartz, but for the most part they were formless fragments of a rich and bra.s.sy yellow.

”Lots of the little fellas are like melon-seeds”; and the Boy pointed a shaking finger, longing and still not daring to touch the treasure.

Each man had a dim feeling in the back of his head that, after all, the hillock of gold was an illusion, and his own hand upon the dazzling pile would clutch the empty air.

”Where's your dust?” asked the Boy.

Dillon stared.

”Why, here.”

”This is all nuggets and grains.”

”Well, what more do you want?”

”Oh, it'd do well enough for me, but it ain't dust.”

”It's what we call dust.”

”As coa.r.s.e as this?”

The Sour-dough nodded, and Lighter laughed.

”There's a fox's mask,” said the Colonel at the bottom of the table, pointing a triangular bit out.

”Let me look at it a minute,” begged the Boy.

”Hand it round,” whispered Schiff.

It was real. It was gold. Their fingers tingled under the first contact. This was the beginning.

The rude bit of metal bred a glorious confidence. Under the magic of its touch Robert Bruce's expensive education became a simple certainty.

In Potts's hand the nugget gave birth to a mighty progeny. He saw himself pouring out sackfuls before his enraptured girl.

The Boy lifted his flaring torch with a victorious sense of having just bought back the Orange Grove; and Salmon P. pa.s.sed the nugget to his partner with a blissful sigh.

”Well, I'm glad we didn't get cold feet,” says he.

”Yes,” whispered Schiff; ”it looks like we goin' to the right place.”

The sheen of the heap of yellow treasure was trying even to the nerves of the Colonel.

”Put it away,” he said quite solemnly, laying the nugget on the paper--”put it all away before the firelight dies down.”