n the din and daze and dirt we tarried awhile; then, after eating
heartily, we struck up Eldorado.

Here was the same feverish activity of gold-getting. Every claim was
valued at millions, and men who had rarely owned enough to buy a decent
coat were crying in the saloons because life was not long enough to
allow them to spend their sudden wealth. Nevertheless, they were making
a good stab at it. At the Forks I enquired regarding Ribwood and
Hoofman: "Goin' to work for them, are you? Well, they've got a blamed
hard name. If you get a job elsewhere, don't turn it down."

Jim left me; he would work on no claim of Locasto's, he said. He had a
friend, a layman, who was a good man, belonged to the Army. He would try
him. So we parted.

Ribwood was a tall, gaunt Cornishman, with a narrow, jutting face and a
gloomy air; Hoofman, a burly, beet-coloured Australian with a bulging
stomach.

"Yes, we'll put you to work," said Hoofman, reading the letter. "Get
your coat off and shovel in."

So, right away, I found myself in the dump-pile, jamming a shovel into
the pay-dirt and swinging it into a sluice-box five feet higher than my
head. Keeping at this hour after hour was no fun, and if ever a man
desisted for a moment the hard eyes of Hoofman were upon him, and the
gloomy Ribwood had snatched up a shovel and was throwing in the muck
furiously.

"Come on, boys," he would shout; "make the dirt fly. 'Taint every part
of the world you fellers can make your ten bucks a day."

And it can be said that never labourer proved himself more worthy of his
hire than the pick-and-shovel man of those early days. Few could stand
it long without resting. They were lean as wolves those men of the dump
and drift, and their faces were gouged and grooved with relentless toil.

Well, for three days I made the dirt fly; but towards quitting time, I
must say, its flight was a very uncertain one. Again I suffered all the
tortures of becoming toil-broken, the old aches and pains of the tunnel
and the gravel-pit. Towards evening every shovelful of dirt seemed to
weigh as much as if it was solid gold; indeed, the stuff seemed to get
richer and richer as the day advanced, and during the last half-hour I
judged it must be nearly all nuggets. The constant hoisting into the
overhead sluice-box somehow worked muscles that had never gone into
action before, and I ached elaborately.

In the morning the pains were fiercest. How I groaned until the muscles
b