The San Francisco call., 1904-02-28

hales beneath the arbors of the sun,
was yielding the two miners good
supply Of gold. Their pits had honey
combed the streams banks far UP and
down. Now, in September, the water
had dwindled to a silver thread, and
they had damned it near the rocker in
10 a miniature lake, into which Fletch-
er-Moreau's partner-plunged his dip
per with untiring regularity, at the
same time moving the rocker which
filled the hot silence of the canyon with
it's lazy monotonous rattle.
They had been working with little
cessation since early June. The rich
ness of their claim and the prospect
that the first SHOWS would put an end to
labors and profits had spurred them to
unremitting exertion. In a box under
Moreau's bunk there were six small
buckskin sacks of dust, joint profits of
the summers toll.
Moreau, a muscular, fair haired giant
of man, was that familiar figure of
the early days-the gentleman miner.
He was a New Englander of birth and
education, who had come to California
in the first rush, with a little fortune
wherewith to make a great one. Luck
had not been with him. This was his
first taste of success. Five months be-
fore he had picked up "pard' In Sac
ramento, and after the careless fashion
of the time, when no one sought to in
quire too closely into another's ante
cedents, Joined forces with him and
spent wandering spring, prospecting
from bar to bar and camp to camp.
The casual words of an Indian had di-
rected them to the canyon where now
the creak of their rocker filed the hot.
drowsy days.
OF Harney Fletcher, Moreau knew
nothing. He had met him in a lodging
house in Sacramento, and the partner
ship proved TO be successful one
What the New Englander furnished in
money, the other made up in practical
experience and general hardness 1t
was Fletcher who had constructed the
rocker on an improved model of his
own. His had been the directing brain
as well as the assisting hand which had
built the cabin Of logs that surveyed
the stream-bed from a knoll above
The last remnants of Moreau's fortune
had stocked it well, and there We're two
good horses in the brush shed behind it,
1t was now September, and the leaves
of the aspens that grew along the
stream bed were yelowing. But the air
was warm and golden with sunshine
Above, in the high places of the Sierra
where the emigrant trail crept along
the edges of ravines and crawled up the
mighty flank of the wall that shuts the
garden of California from the desert
beyond the snow was already deep
Fletcher! who had gone into Hangtown
the week before for provisions. had
come back full of stories of the swarms
of emigrants pouring down the main
road and its branching trails. higgledy-
piggledy, peil-mel. hungry, gaunt, half
clad, in their wild rush to enter the land
Of promise.
There was no suggestion of winter
here. The hot air was STEPPED in the
aromatic scents that the sun draws
from the mighty pines which clothe the
foothills. At midday the little gulley
where the men worked was heavy with
them. All about them was strangely
silent. The pines rising rank on rank
stirred TO no passing breezes. There
was no bird note, and the stream had
shrunk so that its spring-time song
had become a whisper. Heat and ST.
Ience held the long days. when the red
dust lay motionless on the trail above,
and the noise made by the rocker
sounded strangely intrusive and loud
in the enchanted stiffness that held the
landscape.
On an afternoon like this the men
were working in the stream bed-Mo-
reau in the pit, Fletcher at his place by
the rocker. There was no conversation
between them. The picture-like dumb
ness of their surroundings seemed to
have communicated itself to them. Far
above, glittering against the bule, the
white peaks of the Sierra looked down
on them from remote, aerial heights.
The tiny thread of water cleaned in its
wide, unoccupied bed. Save the men,
the only moving thing in sight was a
hawk that hung poised in the sky
above. its winged shadow floating for
ward and pausing on the slopes of the
gulch.
Into this spellbound silence a sound
suddenly broke-a sound unexpected
and unwished for-that OF a human
voice. 1t was a mans, harsh and loud,
evidently addressing cattle. With it
came the creak of wheels The two
partners listened amazed and irreso-
lutte. The trail that passed their cabin
was an almost unknown offshoot from
the main highway. Then, the sounds
growing clearer. they scrambled UP the
bank. Coming down the road they saw
the curved top of a prairie shcooner
that formed a background for. the
forms of two skeleton horses, beside
which walked man who urged them
on with shouts and blows. Wagon and
horses were enveloped in a cloud of red
dust.
At the moment that the miners saw
this unwelcome sight, one of the
wretched beasts stumbled ard pitching
forward, fell with what sounded like a
human groan The man with an atF,