Luck's Wild. G. Russell Peterman

      “Look, Pa,” Collin almost shouted and pointed at a group strange looking riders off on the horizon to the north. “I see ‘em,” Hansel replied. After a long moment he added, “Indians.”

      “Should we fort-up?”

      “Too many for us,” and Hansel kicked Cain in the ribs. Cain trotted forward toward a wagon train two miles ahead and Collin on Able followed. “Get in close behind those wagons. If attacked we can help them and they us.”

      “Good Pa.”

      In an hour of walking Cain and Able a hundred yard behind the last wagon the group of Indians disappeared off the skyline. With a wave of his hat Hansel kicked Cain in the ribs to begin trotting past. Three more times the Dymonds spotted groups of Indians riding off at a distance and moved in closer to the next or last passed wagon train for protection, but no attacks came.

      In addition to scaring off thieves, the shotgun was handy for adding a Jackrabbit or Sage Hen to their jerky diet, especially on those days the mules rested. These long quiet days Collin liked best, hunting along the Platte and Sweetwater while Hansel rested the mules for two full days of grazing and checking mule shoes. On these days Hansel and Collin did not touch a piece of jerky. Collin slept late, napped after a big noon meal, hunted sage hens and jackrabbits, or tried his hand at spearing fish.

      Three months and six days after Marthie’s death, Thursday July 16^th, the Dymonds walk Cain and Able into Downieville, California, on the Yuba River. Each mule carries only one limp poke sack hanging from a saddle horn and no burlap sacks. Yesterday, all of their remaining jerky squeezed into both of Hansel’s saddlebag pouches. Unimpressed with the town both Dymonds look right and left at a wide dry and dusty street. Downieville was a collect of only nine ramshackle buildings, two dozen patched tents, and just north out of town a rickety-looking bridge over the shallow Yuba River.

      Hansel pulls to a stop and Collin slides down to hold Cain and Abel's reins. Satisfied his father slid to the ground and walks over to talk to a dusty ragged miner sitting on a bench drinking whiskey.

      The husky bearded miner set his bottle on the bench beside him, stares at their mules, looks Hansel and Collin over, and smiles a missing front tooth smile. "Newcomers?" the miner asks between sips even though he already knows that from looking.

      "Dymond's from Missouri," Hansel replies.

      "Digger Saylor,” he replies and takes a sip before adding, “formerly of Zealand Notch, New Hamphsire.”

      "We need information, Mister Saylor," Hansel politely asks.

      "Mister Saylor was my father. I'm just Digger."

      "Digger I'm Hansel."

      "Hansel, this place is called The Bar or Downieville, take your pick. The river over yonder is the Yuba. Most gold-seekers have moved on to the Feather River and beyond. Mostly this river has old abandoned claims and two or three big serious mining companies. Pay dirt is down in the cracks in the riverbed rocks mostly. Big companies divert the river with dams, teams pulling scoops drag away most of the top dirt and rocks, pay day wages to miners like me to dig down to bedrock, scrap the cracks, and haul the scrapings up to a Trommel. That’s a big wheel-shaped wire cage. Water wheel power turns the cage and the fine stuff falls into the flume, a wooden plank trough with water in it. Flowing water carries away the soil and leaves behind the gold in the riffles."

      "Is there any gold still around? Surely they did not get it all, and we did not come all this way to work for wages."

      "You two might make eating money, if you dig out rock cracks up the Yuba in old abandoned claims. You might get lucky and find a pocket."

      "What's a riffle?"

      "A sluice or flume has a series of little boards across it called a riffle. The gold is heavy, falls to the bottom, and lies behind the riffles."

      "What are the prices around here, Digger?"

      "You’ll need to make at least sixteen to twenty dollars a day—each. Prices are high. A full pinch of dust is a dollar, a teaspoon is sixteen dollars, and a wine glass is a hundred dollars. A morning and evening bowl of stew costs a teaspoon full. This bottle of Tarantula juice cost a teaspoon full. A bottle of Forty Rod would be a half a pinch cheaper if you can stand the smell?"

      "Thanks Digger," Hansel replies and puts out his hand to shake.

      Digger shakes the offered hand saying, "Luck."

      Hansel mounts Cain, touches his hat brim, and kicks his mule's ribs. Digger watches the Dymonds ride down the street toward the bridge. Outside of town just before crossing the bridge, a worried Collin pulls up along side his father. "We wouldn't last the rest of the day in town at those prices, sixteen dollars for a morning and evening bowl of stew.”

      “What little we got will have to stretch." Hansel tells his son and Collin nods his understanding.

      Across the Yuba Bridge Hansel reins east, upstream along the bank and takes the North Fork of the Yuba, guides Cain along the twisting and turning riverbank, and Downieville is soon out-of-sight. As the Dymonds ride along the Yuba, they see old diggings, abandoned broken tools, broken equipment, cradles, and sluices. They stop and collect two bent pans for panning, two shovels with broken handles, and an old small black pot for cooking jerky stew with the handle-hook broken off one side. A sharp blow with a rock breaks the other side and Collin carries it as he rides. They ride through old sites of settlements, camps as the signs call them. Each one is named strangely: Poverty Bar, Peasoup Bar, and Browns Camp to name a few. Most are empty now, but one or two has a few miners still trying to strike it rich or scraping by freighting supplies up the trails to other mining camps. Hansel and Collin stop in more than a dozen places each day, try panning, and find little. In likely looking places they try their hands at digging down in dry places to bedrock, scraping out the cracks, and putting the scrapings in pans or abandoned cradles or sluices. Along riffles they find a little color, but after a week the total is not more than three-quarters of a teaspoonful. Generously Hansel guesses it at ten dollars. After a second week of trying a dozen more places they have collected almost a second teaspoon full. In two weeks with both Dymonds working without a day off they have a decent single miner’s daily amount. After another two weeks, now a month of trying, they still have only found less than two days worth of gold for a single miner. With a cache of barely four teaspoons full of dust, August heat hits.

      Passed Little Rich Bar no more than an hour's ride, the thirty-first day fills with a dozen unsuccessful stops and they start on the next to last bundle of jerky. At a small abandon claim at the end of a small northwest loop in the Yuba, both shovel down once again to the riverbed to scrap bedrock cracks. After dumping scrapping in a pile, they decide to work on each side of a long three-piece sluice up on the riverbank. Hansel carries two wooden buckets of scrapping up one side and Collin carries water from a three-foot deep pool up the other. Hansel works with a shoulder yoke he finds and Collin finds two wooden buckets to balance him. It goes faster after Collin hooks his two buckets to a yoke he makes. Each trip Collin walks up and around an old half rotten stump before dumping his buckets of water into the sluice. They have better luck here. In only three hot tiring days working from can-see to can’t-see they find almost another teaspoon full of gold flakes.

      On the fourth day they rest. The Dymonds have been working for more than a month straight without a break. Hansel orders, “Today we wash clothes and toss them over bushes to dry.” After all their extra clothing is draped over bushes they rest late in the afternoon wearing wet faded red long johns.

      Collin sits on a rock drying in the sun and staring at the old stump that he has walked around-and-around carrying water for three days. "If we pulled out that stump it would only be about half the distance to carry water."

      Hansel walks over and studied the stump for a while. Finally, he nods his agreement. "It’s rotten. Can’t be many roots still holding it. Wasn’t there old pieces of rope somewhere around here?"

      "I know where," Collin replies with excitement in his voice. He rises to walk uphill into a nest of boulders and comes back carrying two small coils, a seven-foot length of rope,