When after breakfast they started out, "for (as said) the latest wrinkles in getting rich quick," the was already astir and at work. And a busy, inspiring sight it was, alive from side to side and from end to end with cabins, completed or begun, some plank-roofed, some roofed with pine ; with dug-outs, tents, , oxen, , and with men digging, , at spade and pick, over gold-pans, or manipulating the boxes set on rockers, while the few women were attending to dishes or hanging out the family washing.  
"Washing $3 a dozen," announced a sign in front of one tent.
 
The gulch was long and broken, and of course not half the sights were to be seen from any one point.
 
"Let's walk up a piece, first," suggested Harry.
 
So they did, in confident manner. Only day before yesterday they had come in as tenderfeet—not knowing a thing and not owning a foot of ground. Now they were regular residents, actual miners, with a paying claim and a cabin, and might hold up their heads. The very dirt on their clothes proclaimed their rank. Terry felt like a wealthy citizen.
 
The man who evidently owned the claim next above theirs paused to greet them. He was another young man, with a blond beard, and a smile that disclosed white even teeth, and although he was roughly dressed in red shirt, belted trousers and heavy cow-hide boots, his chest, showing under his shirt, which was open at the throat, was very white, and now as he rested his foot upon his spade and shoved back his slouch hat, his forehead also was very white.
 
"How are you, neighbors?" he . "Made your pile yet?"
 
"No, sir," responded Harry. "But it's right there waiting for us. All we've done is a little panning, and with proper development work we've got a ."
 
"We sure have," supported Terry. "We panned out five dollars in color, first thing. But that's too slow."
 
The man smiled good-humoredly.
 
"You're in luck, then." He wiped his brow. "I haven't seen my color yet, but I suppose it's around in here somewhere. Anyway, I'm getting plenty of exercise. We're all crazy together. I expect I'm as crazy as the rest. You know what Virgil says—facilis decensus Averni, eh?" and he eyed Harry inquiringly. "Did you find that so?"
 
"'Easy is the descent to Avernus,' eh?" translated Harry. "Hum! Well, we did come down in here at a good gait. How we'll get out again is a question. But you must be a college man."
 
"Yes, and also a preacher. 'Whom the gods destroy they first make mad' is another favorite reflection of mine, among these diggin's. Are you a college man, too?"
 
"Yes; University of Virginia."
 
"I'm Yale. Glad to meet you. Well, it's a great place—all kinds of us and digging and sweating, talking gold and eating gold and dreaming gold, when most of us could accomplish more and make more where we came from."
 
"I reckon the thing we don't know how to do always looks easier than the thing we do know how to do," reasoned Harry.
 
"Exactly. But where are you bound for?"
 
"We're going to put in improvements," Terry. "Do you know where we can get a ?"
 
"Make it, if you can buy the . But you'll have to stand in line and grab the boards as fast as they fall from the saw. By the way, you don't object to my using that water, do you? I'm not certain whether it's on your land or mine; it's pretty nearly between, as I figure."
 
"We thought it was on our side, but use all you want, certainly," replied Harry.
 
They left the preacher to his digging and proceeded.
 
The farther they went up the gulch, the more intense seemed the fever for work, and the thicker the camps and people. Yes, and there was gold, too! Three men were operating a "rocker." This was one of those wooden boxes on rockers like a cradle; one man in dirt, another poured in water, a third rocked the box from side to side, and the water and dirt flowed out through a slot at the lower end.
 
The Golden Prize halted to watch. When the water and dirt had escaped, in the bottom of the box were to be seen several cleats nailed across, and caught against these cleats was gold! The men figured that there was eight dollars' worth right there!
 
Up here were a few , too: the long troughs, also with cleats nailed across the bottom inside, to catch the gold as the water and dirt flowed over. Into some of the sluices water had to be poured by hand, but others led from streams and the water flowed through without having been dipped. The shorter sluices were called "Long Toms."
 
"That's what we want," Harry. "A regular sluice, running right across our claim."
 
"There's the wheel-barrow man!" exclaimed Terry.
 
And so it was, in front of a tent which bore the sign, "W. N. Byers. The Rocky Mountain News," and nearby was a stake and a sign: "Central City."
 
They shook hands with the wheel-barrow man.
 
"What's this?" demanded Harry. "A town?"
 
"Yes, sir! Mr. Byers has named it. It's the best location. Right in the middle of the Gulch."
 
"Is he going to stay here?"
 
"Nope; but he's pushing things along. What's happened to you boys? You look as if you'd been ."
 
"We have," laughed Harry. "Haven't you?"
 
"Yes, a little." And he suddenly called: "Hello, John. What's the matter down there?"
 
"They've got wind of another strike," answered the man, striding on. He was a black-bearded man, and seemed very busy.
 
"That's John Gregory himself," explained the wheel-barrow man. "The original boomer of this gulch. But watch the people pile out, will you!"
 
"Yes; there's a big strike south of here, I understand," from the of his tent spoke Mr. Byers himself: a stocky, pleasant-faced man, with a close-trimmed brown beard. The diggin's had as great a variety of beards and whiskers as it had of people.
 
So he was the pioneer newspaper man, was he—the man who had brought a printing-press, and a stock of paper already printed on one side at Omaha, clear from the Missouri River to Cherry . But Terry was given opportunity to stare. Harry clutched him by the sleeve:
 
"Come on, quick! I've got an idea."
 
Away they hastened, back down the gulch. Before, at the lower end, the confusion was increasing. were hurrying away—drivers swinging their , men footing fast; camps were breaking, and on their claims miners and were shouldering pick and spade and pack and hastening after the procession now crossing the creek.
 
The movement spread up the gulch, communicated from camp to camp and claim to claim.
 
"What'll we do? Get more land?" Terry.
 
"No, no."
 
But the lower end of the gulch was not by any means , as they arrived. It was mainly the frothy that had bubbled out, and when the had settled there appeared to be almost as many people as before. Even the claims which had been abandoned were being quickly re-occupied. However, Harry dashed to one man who had packed up and on his cabin was a sign: "Keep Off!" while his partner waited.
 
"Going to leave?"
 
"Mebbe so. Want to buy this claim? She's a humdinger."
 
"No. But I'll buy your sluice. How'll you sell it?"
 
"That sluice? Seventy-five dollars."
 
"Whew!"
 
"It's forty feet long, of three boards; that means 120 feet, and lumber's $300 a thousand feet and you have to put in your order a week ahead. With the and the cleats and the nails there's over $40 of material in that sluice, and I reckon the of hauling and building is wuth the balance."
 
"I'll give you $50," snapped Harry.
 
"Sold. But hurry up. We can't wait long here to sell a sluice. There's too much doing 'round the corner."
 
Harry fished out three gold pieces—two twenties and a ten—and passed them over.
 
"Better take it off this property quick or somebody else will," advised the man; and away he and his partner strode, for the strike in Bobtail Gulch just across a little divide south.
 
"Lucky again!" jubilated Harry—who, Terry saw, had been smart. "Cost a lot of money, but we couldn't have made it much cheaper ourselves and we'd have been held up waiting for boards. You sit on it while I go for Jenny. We haul the whole thing at once."
 
"Maybe we could have got it for nothing, after they'd left," proposed Terry, with an eye to the general grab-all as various persons over the abandoned claims.
 
"It wasn't ours, was it?" retorted Harry. "But it is now." And he left at a fast limp.
 
He returned with Jenny, harnessed, and they dragged away the sluice, carrying also the scissors props on which it had rested. Its indeed threatened to part, but by picking their path they arrived with it intact at the Golden Prize.
 
Their preacher neighbor greeted them with a wave of hand and came over to inspect.
 
"Looks as though you were going right into business," he asserted. "I thought maybe you'd join the rush for Bobtail."
 
"No, sir; we stick," assured Harry. "A bird in the hand's worth two in the bush.&............