The few that
possessed sufficient faith to remain were busy building log
cabins against the coming of winter. Carmack and his Indian
relatives were occupied in building a sluice box and getting a
head of water. The work was slow, for they had to saw their
lumber by hand from the standing forest. But farther down
Bonanza were four men who had drifted in from up river, Dan
McGilvary, Dave McKay, Dave Edwards, and Harry Waugh. They were
a quiet party, neither asking nor giving confidences, and they
herded by themselves. But Daylight, who had panned the spotted
rim of Carmack's claim and shaken coarse gold from the
grass-roots, and who had panned the rim at a hundred other places
up and down the length of the creek and found nothing, was
curious to know what lay on bed-rock. He had noted the four
quiet men sinking a shaft close by the stream, and he had heard
their whip-saw going as they made lumber for the sluice boxes.
He did not wait for an invitation, but he was present the first
day they sluiced. And at the end of five hours' shovelling for
one man, he saw them take out thirteen ounces and a half of gold.
It was coarse gold, running from pinheads to a twelve-dollar
nugget, and it had come from off bed-rock.
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