“No, no,” cried Harry, too much in earnest to appreciate a joke. “It’s the clay bottom. The birds picked up the nuggets there. Gold sinks through sand in the stream just as it does in the pan. We should have gone down to ‘bed rock,’ as the miners say. There’s where it is. Come on back!” The sun had swung low to set behind the northern cliffs, and it lacked but two hours of midnight. But there would be no darkness in that latitude in late June, and forgetting fatigue, they hurried back to the spot which they now called Ptarmigan Bend. Here a bed of stiff clay seemed to underlie the bed of the stream, leading down to a mica-schist ledge over which the waters rippled as if from an artificial pond. From the edge of this little lagoon they scraped sand and pebbles, getting well down into the clay with the now frayed and worn paddle. The clay flowed from the pan in a muddy stream, the sand easily followed, and they scraped out the larger gravel with care, panning the sand beneath it again. Then they set down the pan and shook hands with each other once more. In the bottom of the pan were a dozen of the flat nuggets such as had been in the ptarmigan’s crop, and one large one, the size of a large bean! They were on bed rock surely, and the gold that had tantalized them for a time seemed about to yield itself up in quantity. CHAPTER XIV STAKING OUT A FORTUNE The red sun sank behind the northern cliffs, hid there three hours, and slanted eastward and upward again, and still the boys toiled on, oblivious. Panful after panful of the sand they scraped from the clay bottom, now in the edge of the stream, now back toward the tundra, and always they found gold. At length their rude paddle-shovel was worn to a frazzled stick and they themselves were in not much better condition, but in Harry’s worn bandana handkerchief was a store of coarse and fine gold and nuggets that was quite heavy. Fatigue will finally, however, get the better even of the gold fever, and along in mid-morning, pale and hollow-eyed, quite exhausted with toil and excitement, but triumphant, they stumbled down to camp and turned in, too tired to eat,—indeed, there was little but damaged flour that they could eat. They slept ten hours without stirring, and the sun was low in the northwest when they awoke. Joe rubbed his eyes open and sat up. He found Harry, the bandana in his lap, poring over the store of gold. “Gold,” said Harry, “is worth about sixteen dollars to the ounce, as the miners reckon it. I should say we had about three ounces here. Forty-eight dollars,—not bad for a first day’s work!” “Um-m, no,” said Joe; “but I wish you’d take part of it and go down to the store and buy some provisions. I’m hungry.” Harry looked at him. Was Joe daft? But no, Joe was the saner of the two.