“Hey! Hey you guys over here, I see
something,” Henry called as we were walking along the |
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he could do was jump up and down, pointing. I followed his finger
and glimpsed what was making him speechless. As if what I saw had a spell on
it, I
began to jump up and down, pointing in sync with Henry. “Okay, what is going on? If this is
a joke, it’s not funny so stop,” Francis said, getting a little freaked out by
our jumping and pointing. Francis was always freaked out, it was the way his
parents raised him. “Look,” I managed to get out before going back into a
speechless state of shock. It took them a while to get what I meant, but when
they finally realized why we were in a giddy stupor they happily joined in. We
must have looked like idiots, all jumping up and down like we were. Yet we were
too happy to care. When we were able to snap out of our
daze, we fell into another. For hours we silently stood there, in too much awe
to do anything else. It was the cold that brought us back to alertness. “I
can’t believe we found gold,” Larry whispered as if we spoke to loudly the gold
would go away. “I can’t believe it either, but its true. We found gold, the
mother-load of gold!” George screamed, forgetting to talk in hushed tones.
“Ssssshhhhh! Do you want other people to come and take the gold away from us?
If they hear us they’ll take it all,” I whispered covering his mouth. We spent the night sitting on the
riverbed making sure no one came by to take the gold. As soon as the first rays
of light shone through the night sky Henry and Francis ran back to our camp to
get the supplies. The five of us were working before the rest of the gold
seekers had even stirred. Dunk, scoop, search, dunk, scoop, search. All day we
worked in rhythm harvesting the gold ever so slowly. By lunchtime we had half a
flour sack filled with the specks. It was very hard to remain
inconspicuous. Usually people spent one day at a site before moving on, but the
next day we remained in the same spot. By the third day people began to come
down and ask questions. “Have you found anything here, boys? I noticed you’ve
been here for three days now,” the latest specter asked. “No, sir. We just feel
lucky about this spot and don’t want to give up quite yet. I’ve heard some
people have struck gold just upstream if you’re interested,” I replied for about
the thirtieth time today. For a week we dodged questions and sent people running in various directions. Finally, about three hours into the eighth day the area was picked dry. There was not even the faintest shimmer left. “Well I guess it is time to make a trip don’t you think, Freddy?” George asked. “Yep, it is defiantly time. It may even be time to retire too,” I joked. The five of us then picked the two flour sacks full of gold and began the journey to town. None of us had ever been so tired and content as they were now. |
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