Chapter 11

Day 36 - Saturday, June 5, 1847

We spent all of the next day making a trip to Newry and back. We ate lunch there and this time we were treated to home made bread. Sam stayed with Mrs. Jenkins for a while after Cassie and I left for the general store.

The storekeeper was surprised to see us again. "We still haven't seen hide nor hair of that brother of mine," I said. "We'll hang around another month and if he hasn't shown up by then we'll go on to Bangor."

"I sure hope nothing's happened to him," the storekeeper said, genuinely concerned.

"He's too mean to have anything bad happen," I said. "What worries me is that he might just have forgotten about us, or decided he wanted to do something else."

"Oh, one of those, huh? I have a brother that's a lot like that. Has the wanderlust."

"Yep. My brother's always been like that."

Since we didn't know how long it would be before we could stock up again, we laid in a plentiful supply of food and got a second gold pan and an axe. I asked the storekeeper if he'd accept gold and you'd have thought I'd given him a Christmas present. "Where'd you get the gold?" he asked as he looked at it.

"We've staked a claim over in Vermont," I said. "This came from there. That's why we're trying to get my brothers together. I'm going to need them to work the claim."

"You've got the claim filed and everything?"

"Yep, everything's taken care of all legal like. I'd appreciate it if you didn't mention it to anyone though. If too many people hear about it the Connecticut river around Putney is gonna look like it's in the middle of Boston."

"Oh, I wouldn't mention it," the storekeeper assured us, but I didn't believe him. He just liked to talk too much to keep it quiet. Our bill came to twenty-eight dollars and the man weighed out enough gold dust to cover it. Cassie and I said our goodbyes and went looking for Sam.

We were loading our haul on the mule when we saw Sam coming toward us. "I need to run back into the store," she said.

"Why?"

"There are a few things Mrs. Jenkins said I'm going to need to make biscuits like hers. It shouldn't cost over two or three dollars, according to her."

I gave her a gold eagle and she hurried back into the store. Cassie and I just grinned at each other. If Sam's biscuits were even half as good as Mrs. Jenkins' they'd be worth whatever we had to spend.

Sam came back out a few minutes later with her arms loaded down. We packed all of this onto the mule as well, then started out of town.

For dinner, we had leftover beans (beans are always better the second day) and Sam's first attempt at biscuits. They weren't bad. They weren't as good as Mrs. Jenkins' biscuits, but they weren't bad at all. Sam read over her notes afterwards and said she thought she knew what had gone wrong. I told her if anything was wrong, I hoped it always would be wrong.

Day 37 thru day 39 - Tuesday, June 8, 1847

Today was Sunday, but when I jokingly told the girls I thought we should take a day of rest, I thought they were going to hang me. Both of them were anxious to get back to the panning.

We worked the same bar for another two days and took out another couple of ounces. The returns were beginning to diminish, so we moved on up stream to the next likely spot. We found traces there, but nothing really worth working.

The next place we tried had something that tickled something in my brain. I don't know if it was something I'd read or what, but I just knew there was some connection between black sand and gold.

This sandbar was in a curve of the creek and had to be at least fifty feet long and six to eight feet wide. We started working close to the water and we knew immediately we'd hit pay dirt. My first pan didn't have any nuggets, but I'll bet there was half an ounce of dust in it when I had it washed clean. Cassie was working the other pan and she had as much dust as I did, and a nice nugget.

We just kind of sat there with our mouths open. Finally, Sam said, "If this whole bar is like this, we may already have our stake for an Oregon trip."

"Don't count your chickens before they're hatched, love. This may be all there is, right in our pans." It wasn't all there was though. We worked until it was almost too late to see. We took out more gold in a few hours than we had in the last three days.

Day 40 - Wednesday, June 9, 1847

I looked at the gold we had already taken out as we were eating breakfast. I was guessing we had around six ounces, which would be worth $120 in this time. In 2005 it would be worth around $2400. Not bad for less than a week's work.

We had a quick breakfast and went back to our new sandbar. By noon, we had panned at least two more ounces and by the time we quit for dinner we had another three. All three of us were so tired we didn't even want to eat. I forced all of us to eat something though as I knew we'd need our strength for tomorrow.

Day 44 - Sunday, June 13, 1847

We worked that bar for a total of five days before we moved on. It gave us approximately twelve more ounces before it started to dry up. We had at least six nuggets now that were at least the size of a marble.

The next bar we tried had nothing, zero, nada. It was only a hundred feet or so up stream from the bar that had yielded so much. We looked around for another stream entering but didn't find anything. Then, I saw a place where the hillside had slipped opening up a bare surface of quartz. I took a shovel over to the base of it and looked around some.

Cassie and Sam followed me over and Cassie asked if I thought the gold might be coming from here. "It might, sweety," I said. "Most gold is found in quartz. Usually it takes a big operation to extract it though."

We looked around some more and I dug up a shovel full of dirt from near the base of the quartz ledge. Sam took it over and panned the dirt to see if there was any gold in it. There was some, but not much.

I moved over toward one edge of the ledge and I could see where water had been washing the dirt away from the face. I took another shovel full there and again Sam panned it. There was a lot more gold in this sample.

I asked Cassie if we had the pick with us and she got it for me. There was one fissure in the quartz, close to the edge that was exposed. It was about four feet high, starting out at around five inches wide at the top and tapering off to nothing at the bottom.

I used the pick to start prying bits of quartz and dirt from the fissure and before long I saw a flash of bright yellow. I had Sam bring the pan over and I filled it with scrapings from the fissure. She went back to the creek, filled the pan with water, and started her now practiced motion.

"My God, guys," she said after just a couple of minutes. "This looks to be about half gold."

Cassie and I went over to watch. She was right. I'd never seen so much gold in one place in all of my life. There was one nugget that was almost as big as a hen's egg. The rest was made up of smaller nuggets and dust. I picked up the pan and it had to weigh over a pound.

"I think we've found a pocket," I said. "If we have, we probably at least have enough to outfit ourselves for Oregon and we might find enough to make us rich."

"You'll have to explain to me what a pocket is when we get back to camp. Right now, I need to know how we're going to transport this," Sam said.

"You emptied a flour sack yesterday, didn't you?"

"Yes."

"Okay, let's put it in the flour sack and then put the flour sack inside one of the canvas bags we have. That should be strong enough to transport any amount we could reasonably expect to find."

"I'll go back to camp and get it. Cassie can use the other pan while I'm gone. She's as good as I am now."

Cassie was beaming as she picked up the other pan and moved over to the rock face. I repeated the process, filling Cassie's pan, then I took a closer look at the fissure. It was about a foot and a half from the edge of the quartz outcrop. There was a little dirt covering the outside face, but not more than a few inches.

I tried swinging the pick downward into the bottom of the fissure and couldn't see anything happen. I tried it again and thought I might have felt a little give when I hit bottom. The pick didn't come free easily, so I had to rock it back and forth to get it out.

"Well, in for a penny," I thought. If I got the pick stuck and we couldn't get it out, we were screwed. However, the gain might justify at least one more try.

I swung again, with all my might, and I saw as well as felt the section move. I pulled the pick out and swung again. The last foot and a half of the rock face fell away. Cassie came back over as the dust cleared and we looked at one of nature's wonders.

The pocket wasn't much more than a one foot cube it wasn't even half full, but what was in the pocket was ninety percent gold. Sam had gotten back just as the rock started to fall. She made her way around the debris and stood beside Cassie and me.

None of us said anything for quite some time. Then, Sam asked, "Do you think this bag is going to hold it?"

Cassie and I cracked up, joined shortly by Sam. We laughed our asses off. When we finally started to calm down, I said, "There must be fifty or sixty pounds of gold here. Even at today's prices, that's a fortune."

"How much would that be worth at today's prices?" Cassie asked.

"About fourteen or fifteen thousand. Maybe more. At 2005 prices that'd be worth around three hundred thousand."

"Wow!"

"Amen to the wow," I said.

Let's get this back to camp and get it hidden," Sam said.

Cassie and I agreed. We all three pitched in loading the gold into the sack, knocking out any pieces of quartz as we went. The quartz in and surrounding the gold was rotten and broke away easily. When we had about two thirds of it in, I picked the sack up and it was all I wanted to carry. "I'm going to take this back to camp and get it into one of the canvass sacks," I said.

Sam said she wanted to stay and guard what was left. Cassie decided to stay with Sam. I managed to get everything to camp in two trips. When we got there with the second load, we packed about twenty pounds of gold into each of our three backpacks, and we probably had another twenty pounds in the flour sack.

"We need to get out of here as soon as we can," I said. "I paid for what we bought in Newry with gold and I'm not sure if the storekeeper will keep his mouth shut or not. If anyone gets curious and decides to see how much gold we have, we could be in deep trouble."

"Okay," Sam said. "Cassie, why don't you fix us some lunch. Ed and I will start getting ready to leave. Any idea where we should be heading, Ed?"

"Yeah, Lewiston is about forty miles Southeast of here. It's big enough it should have a bank. We can sell a pound or so of gold there and buy another mule and maybe a revolver to help protect us."

"Why don't you catch the mule, Ed. Cassie and I will start packing everything else while lunch is cooking."

"Okay, leave everything we don't need. Leave the axe, the pick, shovel, gold pans and anything else you think we won't need in the next few days. We can pick up new stuff after we get another mule."