A thousand dollars.
Jim, who’d grown up dirt-poor in South Texas, could scarce imagine so much. What would he do with that kind of money?
Buy cattle and start a ranch somewhere. He would have loved to stay in Donovan’s Valley—the place was incredibly beautiful—but their discovery made that impossible. Rich as the stream was, miners would come in shoulder-to-shoulder. The grazing meadow would be pitched full of tents and eventually a town would pop up. Then, once they found the deposit, they’d fell the timber for supports and sink shafts to chase the golden veins deep into the mountain’s heart.
Jim hated it.
Even as the discovery would irrevocably change his life for the better, he hated the thought of so many people ruining the valley his friend had found. Progress carried a steep price.
“I just can’t figure it,” David said. Jim had explained to him about the feeder streams and none holding any sign of gold. “The only thing I know to do is to check them again. Maybe I’ll have better luck.”
“I’ll go with you. I need a break from standing ankle-deep in freezing water.”
“Tomorrow, then. We’ll both go. Maybe shoot a deer while we’re out.”
They set out in the dark, starting over again at the edge of the small lake, working their way east and ever higher up. Each took a pan at the mouth of every joining stream, and then, just to be sure, they pulled another pair from farther upstream.
None showed gold.
Jim counted seven small streams, all merging into the larger, and not one showed even a speck of color.
“I just can’t figure it,” David said. They were at the valley’s upper end, and he took his hat off to stare up at the surrounding mountains.
Even the main channel showed no gold at the merging of the first two narrow streams. Ahead, to the east, lay an impressive wall of slate-gray granite. Southward, the land lifted through a rockslide, scattered Ponderosa pine, rock outcroppings, and finally the valley’s highest peak.
North was a meadow, maybe a quarter-mile wide, and beyond more pines clawed their way up the steep mountainside.
“Somewhere between here and that last stream, the gold just vanishes,” David said.
“But there wasn’t any gold in the feeder at all,” Jim said.
“I can’t explain it. It’s nothing like what I heard from those old miners.”
Jim studied the setting sun. They had little gold to show for the day’s efforts, and again they’d failed to find the gold’s proper source. Maybe there wasn’t one? Maybe what lay in the stream was simply all there was.
He wasn’t a greedy man. He didn’t need riches to be happy, much less content.
Then he thought about Ellen and Walt and Alma. What about them? Dirt-poor in Texas, he hadn’t worried about anyone but himself. It took little for one man to survive. But a family?
A family deserved better.
Then there were David and Abigail to consider. When he married Ellen, he’d taken on her family as well. They deserved a place of their own. That would cost money. A good amount of money. How long would it take to pan out so much?
That wasn’t the problem, though. Given what Ellen made, they could pan for the entire summer and put aside a great deal, more than enough for a ranch large enough to support all of them.
But how long would the secret hold?
Long enough to get what we need.
“Let’s head back,” Jim said. “We’ve still got time to run a few pans.”
David stared at the granite for a long moment, then shook his head. “I guess you’re right. Maybe the stream is all there is.” He replaced his hat and looked around. “I really shouldn’t complain. We found gold in our front yard. Something I never expected. Only I thought…I thought there’d be more.”
Jim gazed into the distance. Seven miles of stream between where they stood and the lake’s mouth. Seven miles of gold-strewn gravel. With just the two of them working, they had over a thousand dollars already. When Colton returned, they’d explain the situation, and he’d pitch in. Three of them would pile up the gold quickly and they’d all three file claims and lock up the best parts of the stream.
It wouldn’t be easy. It wouldn’t be the big windfall David was hoping for, and it would certainly be hard work. Jim smiled at the thought. He knew very little about mining, but he was well-acquainted with hard work.
No one ever said striking gold was easy.
“It will be enough,” Jim said. “If we’re smart, it’ll be plenty.”
David grinned at him. “We’ll get what we can and praise God for every flake.”
Chapter 7
Cord Bannen cared little for the cool mountain air. He’d grown up along the docks and wharfs of Belfast, scrounging for food, stealing what he could from the shopkeepers along fisherman’s row, taking from other boys when he wasn’t quick enough.
Down along the water the air was heavy and thick—often cool from the sea breezes—and always ripe with the smell of salt and fish and rotting wood.
The mountain air stank of pines and little else. Worse, it was thin enough that a man had to work at just breathing. But the mountains had one thing Belfast didn’t. Gold.
He and his men were on a high cliff edge, looking down at the trail between Bidwell’s Bar and Sacramento. A lone wagon, covered in canvas, snaked its way along the trail, surrounded by three armed outriders.
“How much do you think they’re carrying?” Jacob said.
He was a gaunt man, with a sallow face and bags beneath a pair of dull eyes. Cord didn’t discount Jacob, though. He and his partner, a powerful man called the Swede, were just as ruthless as any of his old gang. Jacob was the brains behind the team and the Swede the backbreaker.
John recruited the pair. He’d known them down in New Orleans, after the war. Iron-hearted killers, he called them, and so far they’d lived up to the billing.
