Deadwood Dick, the Prince of the Road; or, The Black Rider of the Black HillsWheeler, Edward L. (Edward Lytton)
General
Deadwood Dick, the Prince of the Road; or, The Black Rider of the Black Hills
Wheeler, Edward L. (Edward Lytton)
Dime novels; Fiction; Western stories
A busy scene greets our gaze all around. Men are hurrying here and
there through the valley--men not of the pale-face race, but of the
red race; men, clad only to the waist, with remarkable muscular
developments, and fleetness of foot.
Over the little creek which dashes far adown from pine-dressed
mountain peaks, and trails its shining waters through the flowering
land, is built another structure--of logs, strongly and carefully
erected, and thatched by a master hand with bark and grass. From the
roof projects a small smoke-stack, from which emanates a steady cloud
of smoke, curling lazily upward toward heaven's blue vault, and inside
is heard the grinding, crushing rumble of ponderous machinery, and we
rightly conjecture that it is a crusher in full operation. Across from
the northern side of the gulch comes a steady string of mules in line,
each pulling behind him a jack-sled (or, what is better known to the
general reader as a stone-boat) heavily laden with huge quartz rocks.
These are dumped in front of one of the large doorways of the crusher,
and the "empties" return mechanically and disappear within a gaping
fissure in the very mountain side--a sort of tunnel, which the hand of
man, aided by that great and stronger arm--powder--has burrowed and
blasted out.
All this is under the Immediate management of the swarthy-skinned
red-men, whose faces declare them to be a remnant of the once great
Ute tribe--now utilized to a better occupation than in the dark and
bloody days of the past.
Near the crusher building is a large, stoutly-constructed windlass,
worked by mule power, and every few moments there comes up to the
surface from the depths of a shaft, a bucketful of rock and sand,
which is dumped into a push-car, and from thence transferred to the
line of sluice-boxes in the stream, where more half-clothed Utes are
busily engaged in sifting golden particles from the rich sand.
What a transformation is all this since we left the Flower Pocket a
little over a month ago! Now, everywhere within those majestic
mountain-locked walls is bustle and excitement; then, the valley was
sleeping away the calm, perfume-laden autumnal days, unconscious of
the mines of wealth lying nestling in its bosom, and content and happy
in its quietude and the adornments of nature's beauties.
Now, shouts, ringing halloos, angry curses at the obstinate mules, the
rumbling of ponderous machinery, the clink of picks and reports of
frequent blasts, the deadened sound of escaping steam, the barking of
dogs, the whining of horses--all these sounds are now to be heard.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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