“You’re here now and you’re safe,” Ellen interrupted. “That’s all that matters.”
“How many of them were there?” Walt said.
“Eight or more. I couldn’t be sure.”
“So many,” Ellen said.
“A thousand is what I lost,” Jim said. “I’m sorry for it.” He drew out the bank note and handed it to David. “This is good for sixty-three hundred at a bank in San Francisco.”
“Sixty-three hundred,” David said. “It’s still more money than I’ve ever seen and we’ve more gold yet. I pulled another half a sack the last few days. Next time I’m riding with you and eight of them or no, they won’t stop us.”
“I don’t care about the money,” Ellen said. She hugged him again. “I’m just glad you’re home.”
Jim was already thinking about David’s words. The older man would only slow him down. He wouldn’t have survived the last few days. Moreover, he would be needed here to protect the women and the creek. They needed a better way to get the gold to market. That was plain enough. Or they needed to find a different market entirely.
Ellen still held him, and he looked down into her eyes. He could tell she knew what he was thinking.
“Tomorrow,” he whispered, and she nodded. Tomorrow, they would both think on it. Ellen was sharp enough to see things he might not.
Tonight, he only wanted a hot meal and rest.
He kissed her forehead, leaned down and again said, “Tomorrow.”
Chapter 15
The long journey home had taken more out of Jim than he expected. He spent the next few days around the cabin, making a few repairs and improvements, working on proper chairs, and caulking the outer walls.
David, too, kept busy. Jim didn’t know anything about maintaining a log cabin—his South Texas home had been sawn wood—but David did. Conversely, once they went out into the broader valley, Jim taught his father-in-law much about caring for cattle.
Their afternoons were spent in the stream. Neither had given up on finding the gold’s source, but rather than spending their time searching, they settled for what they had.
The gold continued to produce. They filled one sack, then another.
“How long do you figure until we’re found out?” David asked one day.
“No idea,” Jim said with a shrug. He straightened to stretch the kinks from his back. “Sooner or later, someone will ride in and catch us out here or just ride through and decide to run a pan. Then it will all be over.”
“We should file claims.”
They had discussed this often. But just by filing the claims, they would announce their discovery. All those men in Bidwell’s would pour in here like water from an upturned bucket.
“I’m starting to agree,” Jim said. “Between you, me, and Colton, we can tie up a long stretch of the creek. We’ve enough here to make us all wealthy.”
“And the gold’s source?” David said.
Though they hadn’t gone looking for it again, the gold’s origin point remained on both their minds.
“No need to be greedy,” Jim answered. “Like you said, we’ve got enough here to make ourselves wealthy.”
Jim bent down to scoop up another shovelful. He fed it slowly into their homemade riffle box. Water bubbled down the box, churning the gravel and mud over and over, then fell out the end.
Though Jim was content with what they’d discovered, he knew David was not. The older man viewed this as his last shot at getting rich. One last chance to set himself up for life. More than anything, he did not want to fail.
Jim could respect that. He, too, did not want to fail his wife and children.
When they weren’t chasing gold, Ellen stayed at his side. Walt and Alma were often with them. Together they built a chicken coop with wire and some lumber leftover from the making of the riffle box.
Jim saddled up the horses and took them all on a picnic near the edge of the lake. He taught Walt how to fish. Alma wrinkled her face whenever they used the worms.
“Yucky,” she said, and decided that fishing was not for her.
Walt caught a fish on his second cast, a large one, almost a foot long, fat, with pink, silver, and mossy green along his sides and back.
“What is it?” he asked.
“Rainbow trout, they call it.” Jim had heard of them from Donovan. The mountain man claimed they were good eating.
Walt bent down to admire the fish. “It doesn’t like being caught.”
“Most things don’t,” Jim said. “Wild creatures and people, too.”
“Can we put it back?”
“Are you hungry?”
Walt shook his head. “No.”
“You caught him. It’s up to you,” Jim said.
