hen we can go back and
bring up the women and a cargo of vegetables."

"Well, in four days we will meet you here. I will take all the horses
and load them up. We were going to bring up flour for the storekeeper,
but now we will get stores for ourselves. We will bring as much as we
can get along with. We can sell what we don't want, for there is sure to
be a rush in a short time. Frank shall go back and tell the storekeeper
we ain't a-coming with the flour."

This was arranged, and four days later Abe and his party arrived at the
spot agreed on, and an hour or two later the cavalcade, with the three
men, two women, and two boys of fifteen or sixteen years old, came up,
and the united party started together. It was some fifty miles to the
spot where the gold had been discovered. Sometimes they wound along in
deep valleys, passing several camps in full operation. At the last camp,
which was a small one, a few questions were asked them as to their
destination.

"We are just going a-prospecting for the mountain of gold," Abe replied,
"and as we have got six months' stores aboard we mean to find it. We
will send you down a few nuggets when we get up there."

"We shall have some of them after us in a day or two," John Little said;
"every one suspects every one else; and they will make a pretty story of
it, I guess, thinking as we shouldn't have brought the women up all this
distance without having some place in our minds."

At last they arrived at their destination, the mouth of a little gorge
running off the deep valley of the north Yuba. The gorge widened out
into a narrow valley, and the party made its way among the pebbles and
boulders at its bottom for a quarter of a mile, and then three men came
out from among the trees and greeted them heartily.

"No one has been up here?" John Little asked.

"Two chaps came up and prospected about a bit, but they did not seem to
hit on the right place; at any rate they went away again."

"All the better," John said. "Now let us stake out our claims at once,
then we are all right, whoever comes."

The spot selected was at the head of the little valley; it ended here
abruptly, and the stream came down forty feet precipitously into a
hollow.

[Illustration: GOLD-WASHING--A GOOD DAY'S WORK.]

"This looks a likely spot, indeed," Abe said; "there must have been a
thundering great waterfall here in the old days. I expect it wore a hole
for itself in the rock, and if it is as rich