Indian chieftain. [volume] (Vinita, Indian Territory [Okla.]) 1882-1902, 1898-01-20
REWARDS OF THE GOLD-SEEKER
LabOred Five Years to Amass $4,000,
and Yet 1t wns Useless.

and Yet Ii Was Useless.
Sometimes a man finds gold," said
an old miner who had been talking
Klondike, but more often he finds
rheumatism and backache and semi
starvation and misery. There is fas-
cination about the pursuit, however,
and many men stick to it purely from a
love of the gambling there is in it, and
not that they care anything about the
pleasures that money will buy.
81 remember an old fellow who lived
In Loafer's Hollow in California away
back in the COS. There was quite a
camp near him, but he did not mix with
anybody. He washed dirt all day,
cooked his own meals and never stirred
from his cabin after dark. This cabin
was built on the summit of hill, and
about 300 yards away was a small
spring, from which he used to pack his
water. He was asked often why he did
not live nearer TO the water, but said
that he liked the exercise of climbing.
He never drank or gambled or wore
good clothing or ran after women, and
as he was always at work the boys fig
ured that he must have had consider
able money in his hut. One night a
couple of rustlers tried to scare him out
He killed both of them, and after that
bad men and good men alike let him
alone.
after awhile the recluse died and
about a dozen of the boys came up the
hill from Loafer's Hollow and buried
him. Then they began to look for the
gold that they knew he must have hid
den. In all the years he had never been
to the county town, so they knew that
he could not have put his dust In the
bank. Among the searchers was George
Hearst, afterward a senator from Cali
fornia, and the father of the present
owner of the New York Journal, then a
very poor man. Hearst was a big fell
low and an expert miner. He was more
industrious than any of the rest. For
a space of three acres the ground
around the old fellows cabin was torn
up, and even the walls were taken down
and the logs riven apart, but not cents
worth of metal was found. The treas
ure seekers finally gave it up, the yield
played out in Loafer's Hollow, the men
went elsewhere, and in a little while
there was not sound in the once busy
camp save the harsh call of the jay bird
or the owls hoot at night.
Three years afterward boy who
was out hunting squirrels stopped at
the spring to rest. He bent his lips to
the cool water and cut his hand slightly
upon some sharp, hard substance buried
at the edge of the spring. Digging the
sand away, with boys curiosity, he
found that it was piece of tin, and go
ing deeper he found that the tin be-
longed to three-gallon kerosene can
sunk into the ground under the edge of
the spring. Burrowing deeper, he fin
ally loosened it and with much effort
pulled it out. It contained the miser's
dust, neatly tied into half-pound sacks
made of rawhide. They were all rotten,
but held together. There were 40 of
these sacks, worth in round numbers
SIPS apiece, or $4,000 in all. As the old
miner had no relatives that anyone
had ever heard of, the boy got it all.
at had taken the old man something
like i've years of the hardest kind of
work and the hardest kind of living to
amass that sum, so you see that the re-
wards of washing gold are not always
excessive. Chicago Times-Herald.