Page:To Alaska for Gold.djvu/238

216 during their absence. From time to time, as the canned eatables were disposed of, they had saved the tins, and now he had cleaned them out and filled some with such berries as still remained on the bushes about the gulch. To seal the cans up he had brought from Dawson City a stick of lead, and for an iron had used the end of a broken pick.

"That will give us some fresh berries," he said. "And along with canned salmon, and salted and smoked whitefish, burbot, and wild goose, I reckon we'll get along fairly well, unless the winter proves an extra long one."

As much as they felt the necessity of preparing for winter, Randy and Earl hated to lose the time when there was the chance to make so much money at the sluice boxes. So as soon as they were able, they got down to the gulch again, and never did two lads work harder. They were accompanied by Fred, and a day later their uncle also joined them.

The dirt from the pocket had been cleaned up, and it had yielded over twenty ounces of gold. They were now working on the regular sand and gravel scraped from the bedrock of the gulch, and though this did not pay so well, yet it brought in enough to make them all satisfied. There was a good deal of excitement, too, when it came to cleaning out the sluice boxes, for almost every day one or another found a nugget, sometimes small, and then again as large as a walnut.