Page:Life Amongst the Modocs.djvu/175



CHAPTER XIII.

A STORM IN THE SIERRAS.

IRGIN gold, like truth, lies at the bottom. It is a great task in the placer mines, as a rule, particularly in the streams, to get on the bed-rock to open a claim and strike the lead. When this is done the rest is simple enough. You have only to keep your claim open, to see that the drain is not clogged, the tail race kept open, and that the water does not break in and fill up your excavation by which you have reached the bed rock. All this the Prince and I had accomplished. The summer was sufficiently cool to be tolerable in toil ; the season was unusually healthy, and all was well.

At night, when the flush of the sun would be blown from the tree tops to the clouds, we two would sit at the cabin door in the gloaming, and look across and up, far up, into the steep and sable skirting forest of firs, and listen to the calls of the cat-bird, or the coyote lifting his voice in a plaintive murmur for his mate on the other side.