e saw some wind, in my time, but only one that was really
a leetle mite too obstreperous. Yep, that was a pretty good blow--the
only wind I ever seen which blew an iron loggin' chain off the fence,
link by link."

Napoleon paid Dave a compliment. He said:

"You old son of a gun!"

Van thought the storms had raged sufficiently.

"Is work unpopular, or did the wind blow the water from the creek?"

"I like to work," admitted Gettysburg, "but it's fun to watch you
epicures eatin'."

Beth felt embarrassed.

"Epicures?" echoed Napoleon. "You don't know what an epicure is?
That's a vulgar remark when you don't know no meaning of a word."

"Epicure? Me not know what an epicure is?" replied old Gettysburg
aggressively. "You bet I do. An epicure's a feller which chaws his
fodder before he swallers it."

Napoleon subsided. Then he arose and sauntered out to work, Dave and
Gettysburg following. Van hastily drank his cup of coffee, which, as
he had predicted, was not particularly good, and started for the
others. He halted in the door.

"Make yourself comfortable, if you can here, Kent," he said. "You had
an exhausting experience yesterday. Perhaps you had better lie down."

Beth merely said: "Thank you." But her smile was more radiant than
sunshine.

CHAPTER XXVIII

WORK AND SONG

Having presently finished her breakfast, Beth joined the group outside,
curious to behold the workings of a placer mine in actual operation.

There was not much to see, but it was picturesque. In their lack of
funds the partners had constructed the simplest known device for
collecting the gold from the sand. They had built a line of sluices,
or troughs of considerable length, propped on stilts, or supports about
knee high, along the old bed of the canyon. The sluices were mere
square flumes, set with a fairly rapid grade.

Across the bottom of all this flume, at every yard or less of its
length, small wooden cleats had been nailed, to form the "riffles."
Into the hoses the water from the creek was turned, at the top. The
men then shoveled the sand in the running stream and away it went,
sluicing along the water-chute, its particles rattling down the wooden
stairway noisily. The gold was expected to settled behind the riffles,
owing to its weight.

All the flume-way dripped from leakages. The sun beat down upon the
place unshaded. Water escaped into all the pits the men were digging
as they worked, so that th