a madness was brewing in the camps
all around as the day for the reservation opening rapidly approached!
How they would swarm across its hills and valleys--those gold-seeking
men! What a scramble it would be, and all for--what?

There were tales in plenty of men who had secretly prospected here on
this forbidden land, and marked down wonderful treasures. Van looked
at his salted possessions. What a chance for an orgie of salting the
reservation claims would afford!

With his pony finally secured to a tree near at hand, the horseman
walked slowly about. A gold pan lay rusting, half filled with rock and
dirt, by a bench before the cabin. It was well worth cleaning and
taking away, together with some of the picks, drills, and hammers.

He carried it over to the brook. There he knelt and washed it out,
only to find it far more rusted than it had at first appeared. He
scooped it full of the nearest gravel and scoured it roughly with his
hands. Three times he repeated this process, washing it out in the
creek.

Ready to rise with it, cleaned at last, he caught up a shallow film of
water, flirted it about with a rotary motion, to sluice out the last
bit of stubborn dross, then paused to stare in unbelief at a few bright
particles down at the edge, washed free of all the gravel.

Incredulous and not in the least excited, he drew a small glass from
has pocket and held it on the specks. There could be no doubt of their
nature. They were gold.

Interested, but doubting the importance of his find, Van pawed up half
a pan full of gravel and dipped the receptacle full of water. Then
stirring the sand and stuff with his hand, he panned it carefully.

The result at the end was such a string of colors as he had never
washed in all his wide experience. To make a superficial prospect of
the claim he proceeded to pan from a dozen different places in the
cove, and in every instance got an exceptional showing of coarse,
yellow gold, with which the gravel abounded.

He knelt motionless at last, beside the stream, singularly unperturbed,
despite the importance of his find. Briggs had slipped up, absolutely,
on the biggest thing in many miles around, by salting and selling a
quartz claim here to a man with a modest sum of money.

The cove was a placer claim, rich as mud in gold, and with everything
needed at hand.

Then and there the name of the property was changed from the "See Saw"
to the "Laughing Water" claim.