ought to close quarters, but we did pretty well on the trip.

"Well, gentlemen, there's the Golden Queen!" says Aggy when we turned
the bend in the creek. "Seems funny that such an uninteresting-looking
heap of rocks and stuff as that should be a gold mine, don't it?"

He sees by their faces that they was a little disappointed and that
he'd better get in his crack first. Then the question come up of how
we was to get them fellers to dig where we wanted 'em to without
letting 'em see we wanted 'em to. But, Ag, he was able for it.

"Gentlemen," says he, "just stick your pick in anywhere's--one place is
just as good as another. [That was the gospel truth.] But if you don't
know just where to start suppose we try an old miner's trick, that Mr.
Johnson there, I make no doubt, has done a hundred times."

Johnson, he smiled hearty. "Yes, yes! That old game!" says he. "I'd
nearly forgot all about it--let's see--how is it you do it?"

"First you throw up a rock," says Ag.

"Oh, now I remember! Sure!" says Johnson. "You throw up a rock----"
He stopped, smiling feeble and uncertain, waiting to hear the rest of
it.

"Suppose we let Mr. Daggett [that was the tinhorn] do the throwing?"
says Aggy. "He's a new chum, and we fellers always feel they have the
luck. You may think this is all foolish superstition," says he,
turning to the gambler, "but I tell you, honest, there's a good deal in
it," and that was the second true thing Ag said that day.

Daggett, he threw up the rock.

"Now, go and stand over it," says Ag. Daggett's goes over according,
but he ain't pointed in the right direction.

"Now, you turn around three times."

But after he done it we weren't no better oft than before, for the
chump landed just as he had started.

Ag surveyed the ground.

"Now, you walk backward three steps, then four to the left, then back
five more--ain't that it?" turning to Johnson.

"That's it!" says Johnson, slapping his leg. "That's her! The same
old game! Lord! how it all comes back to a feller!"

"And just where you land, you dig," finishes Ag, handing Daggett's pick.

Daggett sinks the pick to the eye the first crack.

"Gosh!" says he. "Seems kind of soft here!"

"Is that so?" cried Aggy, highly excited. "Then you've struck gold for
sure!" Having put it there himself he felt reasonably certain about it.

Well, they scraped up the bedrock, and Aggy offered to let Johnson pan
it, but Johnson said he'd had