“We did fine at that,” he told her, “and in the fall of 'Fifty cleaned up eighteen thousand apiece. Then we had an argument: we were in the Yuba country, where it was kind of bad; two of us, and I was one of them, said to divide the dust, and get out best we could; but the others wanted to send all the gold to San Francisco in charge of one of them and a man who was going down with more dust. We finally agreed to this and lost every ounce we'd mined. The escort said they were shot by some of the disbanded California army, but I'm not sure. It seemed to me like our two had met somewhere, killed the other, and got the gold to rights.” “O Jason!” Olive exclaimed. “That was nothing,” he said complacently; “but only a joker to start with. I did a lot of things then to get a new outfit--sold peanuts on the Plaza in 'Frisco, or hollered the New York _Tribune_ at a dollar and a half a copy; I washed glasses in a saloon and drove mules. After that I took a steamer for Stocton and the Calaveras. You ought to have seen Stocton, Olive--board shanties and blanket houses and tents, with two thieves left hanging on a gallows. We went from there, a party of us, for the north bank of the Calaveras, tramping in dust so hot that it scorched your face. Sluicing had just started and long Toms--a long Tom is a short placer--so we didn't know much about it. Looking back I can see the gold was there; but after working right up to the end of the season we had no more than a couple of thousand apiece. There were too many of us to start with. “Well, I drifted back to San Francisco.” He paused, and the expression which had most disturbed her deepened on his countenance, a stillness like the marble of a gravestone guarding implacable secrets. “San Francisco is different from Cottarsport, Olive,” he said after a little. “Here you wouldn't believe there was such a place; and there Cottarsport seemed too safe to be true... Well, I went after it again, this time as far north as Shasta. I prospected from the Shasta country south, and got a good lump together again. By then placer mining was better understood; we had sluice boxes two or three hundred feet long, connected with the streams, with strips nailed across the bottom where the gold and sand settled as the water ran through. Yes, I did well; and then fluming began.