d heard about gold being found on the Carson River, in Nevada, in
1850, by Prouse Kelly and John Orr, an' he knew that they'd gone back
an' done well. Several other small placers had been found, noways
rich, but still enough to keep a busy man goin'. He'd learned from his
Kern River experience that a man did better, stickin' to a small
claim'n tryin' for the big prizes, an' he made for the small placers
o' the Carson River. A store-keeper grub-staked him, to start with,
an' in a month or two, he was clear.

"Next year, that was '56, his pard struck what looked like a silver
vein, an' started off to the city wi' some samples. Father, he stuck
by the gold. That's where he lost out. He prospected in Six Mile Canyon
an' found little color--his bad luck again, for, in '57, two
prospectors made a rich strike less'n a quarter of a mile away from
where he'd been pannin'. They found signs o' silver, too, but chucked
the stuff aside. Father plugged along, an' at last struck a little
pocket in a creek off the Carson. A month's work gave him near a
thousand dollars' worth o' dust, an' he reckoned he'd go back to Salt
Lake City. He'd been away eight years.

"Grand-pap was still alive an' told Father to stay home an' go
farmin'. But it didn't go. The prospectin' bug had hit Father too
hard. In the spring o' '59 he started back for the Carson River
again, an' Mother come along. She reckoned she might never see him
again, if she didn't.

"That summer, there was three folks on the claim. Another pard had
come, a little one, what had for his first toy a nugget o' gold tied
on a bit o' string. I was born on a minin' claim, for that little pard
was--me!"

CHAPTER VIII

THE GREAT BONANZA

"You certainly started young enough in the prospecting game," said
Owens, when Jim told of his birth in a mining camp, "and have you been
at it all your life?"

"Ever since I was big enough to twirl a pan or rock a cradle!"

"How do you mean rock a cradle?" queried Clem. "I thought you were in
the cradle!"

"Not that kind, boy," Jim answered, "what I'm meanin' is a miner's
cradle, or a rocker, as some calls it. I gradooated from one to
t'other."

"What's a miner's cradle, then?"

"It's a scheme to make pannin' easier. Pannin' is durn hard work,
Clem. You're squattin' on your hams beside a river all the day long,
you got to hold a pan full o' earth an' water at arm's length an' down
at an angle what nigh tears your arms out o' their