"Added the preacher's claim," blurted Terry, and 'fessed up. "It was a big pan, too," he concluded. "I've found only a little color since."
"Color helps," encouraged Harry. "That will be a claim for George. Good! We can work both with the same water."
The preacher brought the bill of sale of the "True Blue" claim, as he had named it; and that evening they had him in to join them in making merry over the can of oysters. Harry thoroughly washed out the emptied can and set it aside to dry, for the "bank."
The "improvements" on the True Blue claim consisted of merely a few holes and a lean-to of pine boughs covered with a piece of ragged canvas. The preacher jovially carried away his personal belongings on his back; he was, as he expressed it, "traveling light."
Left in possession of both claims, the two partners decided to fill their oyster-can from the Golden Prize first, and they jumped into the work of setting up the sluice.
This proved to be a bigger job than it had appeared before being tackled. The sluice was heavy and had to be moved about by sections; and to place it conveniently and yet give it the proper slant, the ground had to be leveled or mounded or lowered; and a little dam had to be made, with a race or ditch to supply the water to the upper end of the sluice: and what with disconnecting, and shifting hither-thither, and re-connecting, and all that, two days were consumed.
There had been no time for panning, but now, at last, they might start in washing by wholesale, so to speak.
They lugged the dirt on gunny sacking to the sluice, dumped the dirt into the running water, and while Harry stirred it Terry followed down along the sluice to throw out the rocks and clear the riffles or cross cleats. A back-breaking and also muddy job this sluicing was, for the sackings of dirt were heavy and the sluice of course leaked at the seams and joints, so that the ground underneath was speedily soaked and made slippery by the constant trudging.
By noon the riffles were filled with gravelly mud, and Harry decided that they should be cleaned. So the water was turned off.
"I see yellow! I see yellow!" asserted Terry, running from cleat to cleat, and eyeing the deposits against each; and indeed it did seem to him that the little dikes glistened roguishly.