Argosy All-Story Weekly, February 7, 1925 — page 76: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

: uty le hit ‘ r13),) 'y hy PAM id PNT a 5. ; (or * f DEY ha tod ant fl Rha y yf ‘ f;* a “7 eres i ‘ ae) ; ayy ; ¥ b HAULS } Hanes Pe VA ASS ; ene RA ih . “at eee. ake 2 A le a eee teeny tel Pe Ki Wat hat an > | i ty ; 5 : Vy ‘ = knew: ‘there was gold beneath You knew it because every yellow grain: 846 | | -ARGOSY-AL ST = time, ‘sat apart and studied him: a ‘cumber-_ ‘somely garbed thing in” cutter blackness" __ gnawing at the earth with one steel tooth; _ grubbing away within a ‘piece. of p ‘pipe that held back the loose submarine earth, twenty = feet beneath the creek bottom, eighty more ~ below. the surface; stopping now and then — to scoop the ose crumbs his gnawing — __ had yielded inte a can, to be drawn to the surface and_ washed ior the gold that was — Deve there. ; His mind saw aothing individual in ‘the ae of human endeavor. this—in one form or -another—was your Jot; it was inescapable. ae Sas Was a time when you did not suspect — it, when you dreamed extravagantly. You this basin. that -had- been found farther -dewn= stream had passed through it, washed — dewn from the mother — lode, to be. caught by sandbars where the creek -wid-— ened, and held for the bearded gold hunt-— ers ak the last mid-century. - from the creek. That much had passed = suit. 3 twenty. thousand dollars to get started with — them. A diving suit sounds kind of flighty. Know anybody that ever tried it?” You did not, and his refusal to take part | in the venture, tentative until then, ac-— You went to other men Tou talked ee men in «Sacraments. jn San ii SS gunred ual eyes, and he ‘thought a through this basin; how much had been trapped in the basin’s maw? A cone-shaped volcanic hole in the water’s path, taking toll of the stream’s golden cargo year aie Z year, its deep. pocket. slowly filling with the heavy pee gold here. You went to a Sen aS was a mining man, and who had a little money, and you told. ian about it. He listened with bright he shook his head. “IT guess there’s gold there, but I don’t think a man could get it out with a diving A pump or a dredge—but it 'd take = started. None = ‘his Gees it was a representative - display = If you were a man, They had — taken thousands upon thousands of dollars — You knew there | was _ long while before = - You lost three more days while the men Sa Maybe you're” eb John,’ 2 he =e ORY WEEKLY. ite, some e laughed, some e heard you = You had a very few ‘dollars; you =acded to them by personal - loans, ten dollars here, twenty there; yeu stretched your credit to- the utmost, and: you got an outfit of a sort. A much repaired diving suit with an old, long-spouted helmet, a- ‘rickety, deep-sea pump, a bare minimum of food, pack ani- a odds and ends. of necessities, never a thing without which a could possibly skimp along. Your last cent “gone, you faced the task OE getting labor. You needed five men, and four of then should have been good handle the | pump. You got three men, none of whom was a good man. You had to take those three because ey were all you could get: the tight sort of men went where ‘salaries. were & certainty, not 4 contingency ae = 1e success: of 3 an 1 untried enter tere prise. = “cause ‘no one lie Wanted oa they were men as little able to pick. their jobs a as vn were to pick your employees. : You brought your shabby outfit, your in- weqiate supplies, and your three: precious assistants up here among the Sierra foot- hills. On the second trip one of them, — Hogan, let a horse go off the flume pridec at South Fork, and two weeks’ food was lost. Three days were “spent rigging the raft, the flume, and the water wheel, which, Tees dangerous to the man below, “was essential to the performance of any ‘work at all. It handled one side of the deep-sea - pump, while Hogan, Evans, and Quong toiled in five-minute shifts at the other. acquired sufficient skill at the ‘pump to aS 3 mit. a descent. ‘Then you went Soni after the gold. You - feast the gold would lie upon bedrock -a-few feet ine the sand and gravel of the creek bed. You lowered a four-— — foot length of. iron easing until it sat on~ -end in the gravel. You climbed inside, and with your steel gad scraped the creek bot- tom from beneath the casing’s edge, now — and then ‘pounding: the casing deeper into the ground. As the soil - you gouged out cisco, and in Los Angeles. Some were po-_ piled up around ‘your feet you scooped it = Ss ‘comicboo com