"Let us go away," whispered Sam. "I can't stand this any longer!"
And he rushed off with the tears standing in his eyes. The others
were also affected, and glad enough to leave the place, once and
forever. Wumble and Slim Jim threw Roebuck's body into a hollow
and placed some dirt over it, and then built up a little mound of
stones to mark the spot.
It was not until the next day that the party returned to the creek and
began to look up the Eclipse Mine once more. The landslide had cut
across this, and it was not long before both Wumble and Slim Jim
declared the ground to be full of good paying "dirt," to use their own
term. The claim was staked out to the boys' satisfaction, and then
Wumble staked out a claim just above Discovery, as it is called in
mining laws, while Slim Jim staked out one for himself just below
Discovery. All three claims ran to both sides of the creek, so that
no one would suffer for water when mining operations should begin.
"And those claims will yield us thousands of dollars!" said Jack
Wumble. "Boys, we will all be rich."
"Hurrah!" shouted Tom. "I'm glad I came West, after all."
"And so am I," said Sam. "Dick, what do you say?"
"I say hurrah for the Eclipse Mine, and all the gold it will bring
us," answered Dick. "Won't father be pleased when he learns the
news?"
Here let us bring to a close the story of the Rover boys' trip out
West. They had faced many grave perils, but one after another
these perils had been surmounted, and now, when success had finally
crowned their efforts, all the hardships were forgotten.
In due course of time the title to the Eclipse Mine was
established in law, and later on Anderson Rover sent out a body of
skilled miners to work the claim for all it was worth. It proved
to be as valuable as anticipated, and the Rovers were, of course,
correspondingly happy.
The claims staked out by Jack Wumble and by Slim Jim proved also to
be good payers from the start.
When the boys got home they found that the story of the Baxters'
fate had preceded them. Many folks were inclined to think that the
wrongdoers deserved the catastrophe which had overtaken them. As
nothing was heard of either father or son for a long while, it was
presumed that both were dead beyond a doubt.
But they were not dead, although terribly bruised and unable to do
much for themselves for a long while. The landslide threw both
into the creek, and when they came to their senses they were fully
a mile from the scene of the disaster. Here they fell in with a
body of miners from Canada, and these men took them to a settlement
still further West, where Arnold Baxter hovered between life and
death for many weeks. Dan recovered more quickly.
"It's the Rovers' fault," growled Dan Baxter, when he was able to
sit up. "I'll fix them yet."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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