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Golden Chimney: A Boy's Mine

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[Pg 93] <h2>CHAPTER VII BUILDING THE ARASTRA</h2> “We’ve got to find a place to keep the mule. It’s too cold to leave him outside,” said Ben. “That’s easy,” Mundon replied. “One of the sheds’ll do first-rate. He’ll have a box-stall,—same as a racer.” “I’ll fix it up for him right now. He looks sort of forlorn, tied out there in the fog,” said Ben. “There’s two other animals we ought to find quarters for, too.” “Two others? O, you mean ourselves.” “Yes. With all this room goin’ to waste, why shouldn’t we get our room rent free?” “That’s a good idea, Mundon. We’ll have to do it, or hire a [Pg 94]watchman, as soon as we begin to work the stuff. We might as well get used to it first as last.” “I’ll build the room for us. Over there against that east wall will be a good place for it.” “Perhaps there won’t be anything to need watching,” Ben said, with a grim smile; “but we’ll soon know now.” “There’s got to be somethin’. It ain’t in reason that there ain’t no gold left over in all this mess,” emphatically replied the other. “Well, we’ll hope so, till we know to the contrary. We’ll have to have some furniture, I suppose.” “Furniture?” “Why, a couple of beds, anyway.” “O, I’ll knock up a couple of bunks that’ll do for the time we’ll be here. I can make first-rate arm-chairs, too,—reg’lar sleepy hollers,—out of those barrels.” “That’ll be fine! I suppose we’d[Pg 95] better use the boards out of that first shed?” “No; I’d put the mule in that one. Then he’d be farther away from our quarters. I’d knock down the second shed, the one where the roof is half gone. Found a name yet fur your mule?” “I’ve named him ‘Alchemist.’” “‘Alchymist’? Don’t that mean turnin’ no ’count things inter gold?” “Yes.” “Well, that’s ’propriate; ’cause he’ll work the ’rastra. Then, we kin call him ‘Alchy’ till we know the result; and if we don’t get anythin’ worth mentionin’ out of it we kin call him ‘Missed.’ That’ll be ’propriate, too.” “‘Alchy’ goes, then. And here’s to be his home. I think I’ll leave one window for his professorship. We’ll separate his apartments from ours.” He struck the dilapidated shed a blow as he spoke. [Pg 96] “’Twill be more ’ristocratic,” observed Mundon. “S’pose I start the ’rastra while you’re doin’ that?” “Wish you would. Everything seems unimportant—where we sleep or where the mule sleeps—compared to the real business.” “A man’s got to be comfortable, or he can’t do good work. This here’s the best place for the ’rastra.” He took several long steps across a spot in the center of the floor. “I’ll level this off a little, so to have the floor of it even.” “You’re going to use those bricks?” Ben pointed to some bricks which marked the location of the furnaces. “I was calculatin’ to. But first we’ve got to remember that we’ve got to have a furnace, too.” “We have? What for?” “Why, we’ve got to melt our gold—after we git it.” “O! Well, why not leave that[Pg 97] part of the old furnace that’s standing there?” “I was a-thinkin’ of doin’ that. We’ll build a rough chimney on the outside.” “Then we’ll have to have a crucible.” “Yes; that’s another thing I was goin’ to mention. Ever seen it done—gold melted in one?” “Yes; I’ve been watching them do it in Smith’s assay office.” “O, you have, have you?” “Yes. And the other day I went to the Mint and saw a lot. Mr. Hale, the gentleman I met at the Custom House, gave me a card. It’s funny, Mundon, how different everything there looked to me from the last time I was there. Every schoolboy in this town goes, and of course I went; but it didn’t seem to me that I could be the same boy who’d been there. Everything interested me so much more this time.” [Pg 98] Mundon had been marking a circle in the center of the floor. “Now, Ben,” he said, “we’re ready for the corner-stone, and you’re the proper person to lay it. You just git one of those bricks and put it here.” He struck the center of the circle a blow with his spade. “I didn’t know you could corner a circle,” said Ben, as he placed a brick upon the spot indicated. “You kin corner anythin’, if you only find out how to do it. There,” he added, with satisfaction, “the first brick’s laid. Now, she’ll go a-hummin’!” “Let me help you,” said Ben. “It’s more interesting than building the mule-shed. I can fix that by-and-by.” “All right.” Mundon watched Ben lay the bricks. “How clumsy I am!” the latter exclaimed when the bricks refused to lie evenly. “I’ve often watched [Pg 99]bricklayers at work. It looks as easy as breathing; but it isn’t,—not by a long sight!” “It’s a trade,” Mundon laconically remarked. “Then you must be Jack of them all,” said Ben, “for there’s nothing you can’t do.” “I’ve ben in most of ’em. It’s mean to try to do things when you don’t know how. Sometimes, a job I wasn’t used to would take a powerful long time; though in the first stages, I thought I was workin’ mighty fast—a reg’lar lightnin’-striker.” “Of course, anything that isn’t regular work takes longer.” “Exactly. The more you work at a thing, the more skillful you git. Sometimes, when I’d git through with a new worrisome job, I’d wonder what I’d better tackle next. And ’t would always remind me of a story my mother used to tell ’bout a tailor who was a[Pg 100] powerful slow worker, but thought he was lightnin’. He took a whole week to make a vest, and then said, ‘What’ll I fly at next?’” During the following two weeks the partners were very busy. The arastra was finished and the furnace in readiness for the precious metals. Lastly, a pile of soot, brickdust, and mortar, representing a part of the lining of the chimney, and a retort and some quicksilver awaited the trial. A fairly good sleeping-room, with a tiny galley adjoining, made the place comfortable. Mundon proved to be a good cook, and Ben was fond of watching him at his culinary labors. The kitchen was constructed like the galley of a ship, and, when the cook was seated, everything was within his reach. “I’ve been camping out in vacations,” Ben remarked; “but this beats that all to pieces.” [Pg 101] “It’s ’cause this combines business with pleasure,” Mundon replied, as he neatly cut long fingers of potato, preparatory to frying them. “There’s twice as much fun to be had in doin’ the work you really like to do than there is in anythin’ that’s called ‘fun.’” “So I’ve found out.” “Fun’s like society. When it hunts you,—comes of its own accord, natural like,—it’s fine. But when you hunt it, it don’t amount to shucks.” “I guess you’re about right. I know I’ve never enjoyed anything in my life as I have this.” “’Cause why? ’Cause it’s work you like. That’s the reason. But it takes some folks a lifetime to find that out; and even then they don’t see it.” Ben was looking at the pile of rubble as if fascinated. “How much longer before we know?” “It won’t be long now, I reckon.” [Pg 102] “O, Mundon, how can I ever wait!” On the following morning Mundon went down-town to make some necessary purchases. “I heard something to-day,” he said, when he returned, “that I wish I’d known in the beginnin’.” “What’s that?” inquired Ben. “Why, you see, when I was inquirin’ ’bout the price of quicksilver I run up against a man as knew all about this sort of thing—or said he did. ’Course, I didn’t tell him our plan; but what he says is needed fur it is a jigger.” “A what?” “A jigger machine. I got him to describe it, and I think I’ve got enough idee as to how it’s made to make one myself. He’d used one, up in Nevada, he said.” Mundon extracted a piece of chalk from his pocket, and on the board wall he drew a plan of the machine. “Your jigger is a box made of[Pg 103] wood,” he said. “Well, really, it’s a tank—six foot long by four high. You fill it with water. At one end you have a tray filled with dirt and hung from a pole which is balanced by a weight at the end. T’ other end of the pole works up and down, like the handle of a bellus. The tray is dipped into the tank and all the loose dirt is washed out and the gold sinks to the bottom. That’s the coarse gold; you’ve got to ketch the fine gold on a table in the tank, under the tray. The waste dirt works inter the fur part of the tank. This man says—and he seems ter know what he’s talkin’ about—that you can’t git the val’able particles nohow, without a jigger.” “What luck you were in to meet him!” “Wasn’t I, though! I believe I’ll git the lumber,—it oughter be made out of new lumber,—and knock the thing together this afternoon,” [Pg 104]Mundon replied, as he walked to the rear wall of the building. “Say, Ben,” he remarked, picking up a little of the earth from the floor and letting it sift through his fingers, “I think we oughter locate our find a little before we begin operations.” “What do you mean?” “Why, this here place is like a ruin deserted by the folks who used to live here. For instance,” he pointed to some grass-covered excavations, “these were the furnaces.” “Well,” said Ben thoughtfully, “then, if they followed the process used in all smelting-works, the bullion was melted in crucibles and cast into bars.” “Exactly. Then, jest use your natural sense and think out how they got the bars ter the bullion-room? Why, they piled ’em on hand-cars and run ’em on a track.” He suddenly knelt down and ran his hand along the ground in front of the excavations. “Here’s[Pg 105] the groove where the track was laid,—sure’s you’re born!” Ben dropped beside him. “There is a groove!” he cried. “We’re regular detectives, Mundon!” “It couldn’t run anywhere else,” the other said, as if to himself. “Than to the bullion-room? Of course, it couldn’t, and it didn’t. It ran over there, didn’t it?” Ben pointed to the opposite wall. “Yes,” said Mundon, “it must. My! They were careless in those days, if this was like any smeltin’-works ever I see, and I s’pose it was. They jest slung the stuff ’round like it was mud. They always counted on losin’ lots of it in splashin’.” “I should think so. With no flooring in the furnace-rooms and all this dust being trampled into the earth floor year after year, I should think they’d have lost a fortune!” “Mebbe they did.” [Pg 106] “We hope so; for they made enough as it was.” “You see, sometimes a furnace would get ter leakin’. Well, mebbe ’twould be quite a while before anybody found it out. Then, p’raps they’d run tons of base bullion inter a trench, thinkin’ they’d go over the ground when they got time. Um— Well, sometimes they never got the time, they was so busy makin’ money. We must look ’round, some time, fur traces of a trench of that sort.” “I’ve got an idea,” said Ben, “that it would be a good plan to wash the soil here and there with an ordinary gold-pan. We could tell something, I should think, about where the richest dirt lay then.” “’Twouldn’t do no harm. But the richest dirt is bound ter be near the furnaces and in the bullion-room. We’ll finish with the chimney first, ’cause if there are any nuggets they’ll be there.” [Pg 107] “Wouldn’t any tin pan do?” “O, you better have the real thing. I see one a-hangin’ up outside of a junk-shop on Stockton Street that I’ll git when I go to git the lumber. Mebbe it might be a relic of ’49, and give you some of the spirit of those days. Not that you ain’t got the true minin’ spirit already,” he added, with a glance at Ben’s eager face. On the following day the pan was purchased, and Ben was initiated, and became for the first time a real miner. He scooped some dirt from what was thought to be a favorable spot, put it in the pan, and poured some water upon it. Mundon showed him how to shake the pan from side to side, allowing a little water to flow constantly from the top, until a small amount of very ordinary-looking dirt remained in the bottom. It was exhilarating to think of what it might contain. [Pg 108] “It looks exactly like the mud pies my mother’s boy used to make,” said Ben with an anxious air. “There’s a little color there, or I’m mistaken,” Mundon wisely remarked, as he scanned the sediment. “Yellow’s the color I’m looking for.” “Well, there’s some yellow in that. Hold it up to the light. Now, it does shine! I’ll be hanged if it don’t!” “Goodness knows, I want to see it as much as any one!” said Ben; “but I’m afraid this is too much like imagination. It reminds me of the time people thought they saw flying-machines in the sky.” Mundon shook his head. “I ain’t that kind,” he remarked, as he returned to his work of constructing the “jigger.” “After all,” he continued, “you can’t tell much about it till you make the ’speriment in the proper way. This machine’ll settle it one way or the other.” [Pg 109] He worked rapidly and skillfully, and by the following night the “jigger” was completed. “My!” he exclaimed as he drove the last nails. “It was luck, blind luck, my meetin’ that feller and his tellin’ me jest exactly what I wanted to know!” “One thing will be very funny,” said Ben. “I was just thinking that we’ll have to ship our bullion—when we get it—up to the Searby Smelting Works at Vallejo to be resmelted and cast into bars. They were the original owners of it.” “Funny enough for us,” Mundon replied. “But I don’t count on shippin’ ’em any.” “How’ll we get it into bars?” “I’ll git it into bars, myself. You didn’t know that I was an assayer, too, did you?” “No,” Ben thoughtfully replied. “I think I’ve found my trade at last. Mundon, if I’ve got brains enough I’ll be an assayer.” [Pg 110] “Why not a mining engineer? Might as well aim fur the highest while you’re about it.” “That’s so. But that takes more money. If I get enough out of this, I’ll try for it.” <hr /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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