he opening between the two arms of the elbow and back into its own
channel below the elbow, which, of course, would leave the elbow dry and
give us a chance to clean out the hole and get all the gold there is in
it."

"Oh, I see now!" exclaimed Thure, his eyes beginning to shine with
excitement. "And you call it a wing dam, because you have to make a sort
of a wing to the main dam, extending for quite a ways out on the dry
land, in order to give the water a sufficient turn to keep it from
flowing back into the old channel until you are ready to have it."

"Exactly," and Mr. Conroyal smiled. "And, if the good Lord will only
keep it from raining until we get the dam finished, all of us might make
our fortunes right here; and, again, we might not find a cent's worth of
gold. It's all a speculation," and he shrugged his big shoulders.

"But--but what difference could a little rain make? You are not afraid
of getting wet, are you?" and Thure smiled at the thought of these hardy
men standing in dread of a little rain.

"No, son, we are not afraid of getting wet," and Mr. Conroyal smiled
grimly. "But a big rain up there in the mountains where this stream
comes from, would mean that in less than no time a flood of water would
come a-tearing down this narrow gulch that would sweep our dam off its
feet quicker than you could wink an eye--and us along with it, if we
didn't get out of here about as lively as the Lord would let us.
Howsomever we are not counting much on a rain, seeing that the dry
season has got a fairly good start; but it might come," and his eyes
turned a little anxiously toward the snow-covered mountains to the
northeast, whence came the little stream of water running through Holt's
Gulch. "But, come, we must get busy. Now, the first thing for us to do
is to figure out about how much longer it will take us to finish the
dam. I calculate that we have the dam about two-thirds done; and, since
we have now been at work twelve days, I think we can count on finishing
it in another six days."

"That's 'bout my idee, Con," agreed Ham. "Another six days otter see th'
finish of th' job; an' then--maybe it will be gold an' maybe it will be
jest a lot of durned hard work for nothin'; but it shore looks good; an'
I'm in favor of seein' this dam through afore tacklin' th' Cave of Gold
propersition."

For an hour or more our friends measured and figured and considered; and
then, all coming to the conclusion that Mr. Conro