Chapter 5
That was a stop that proved to be very worthwhile indeed. Sam traveled about four miles out of town and this time went off road to the West; where he could look for gold he didn’t have to pay for!That was a good trip for him. Just like Billy had told him. There were streams back in the timbers leading up to the mountains. Metal detecting the little gullies around those streams turned up three quarters of an ounce of gold. The biggest piece was 8 pennyweight and the next was 5 pennyweight. Then there were a few bits and pieces that totaled just a tad over 15 pennyweight. He was elated!
On the way back through town he stopped at the General Store. As he walked through the front door Billy looked up from his newspaper,
"Sam, don’t you ever turn that CB radio of yours on?"
"Billy my boy I was too busy finding us some gold!"
"You’re kidding, you actually found a few specks?"
"Oh yeah, I found a few specks OK. Hold your hand out, here’s a speck for you." Sam let the 5 penny weighter plop into Billy’s hand..
Billy looked at it, and looked up at Sam in disbelief.
"No way! You panned this chunk?"
"Nope! index to the 20th century Billy. I found that little baby with a metal detector."
"No Way! Ellen come and look at what Sam found. OK Sam, now how much do I owe you?"
"Well Billy, nuggets sell for around $13 to $15 a gram, I don’t know how many Yen that will be for your Asian friends, but so you can make a profit how about I sell the nuggets to you for $9 a gram."
"Hey that sounds fair to me so how many grams is this one?"
"Well that one is roughly 8 grams, a quarter of an ounce."
"So that would be $72 right?"
"Not that one Billy! That one’s a gift from me. After all you’re the one that pointed me in the right direction. Want a little hint on how to make the most of that little beauty? Take that one to a jewelry store, have a bale soldered on it and give it to Ellen for a pendant."
Billy’s eyes lit up, "Hey that’s a great idea Sam, a guy can always use a few extra points where the wife is concerned. Sam have you got a little time to look at those maps?"
"You bet."
Well that was the beginning of a long mutually beneficial relationship between Sam and Billy. During that first year Sam never failed to find gold each trip he made up to Good Hope. He’d always stop and see Billy on the way out of town and sell Billy a few nuggets for his display case.
About nine months into his adventure was when he had found the old miners cabin. What a day that was!
His hunting had taken him about a mile further North, but he was still working the West side; didn’t want to have to pay for all that gold he was finding! Since he had learned the lay of the land he had been averaging over an ounce a trip.
He had become a regular customer at the jewelry store in Desert Rose. He had a pendant made, earrings, a ring, a bracelet, a stick pin, a broach. Why he didn’t dare take Mary around water, if she fell in wearing all that gold she’d sink like a lead weight.
June 4th, that was the date, he still remembered it. He had been metal detecting the little gullies that ran into a creek. He started finding little nuggets around a gram and as he worked further up stream the pieces started getting bigger. He was quite a ways from his truck when he came to a place where the South side of the bank of the stream narrowed to a path of about a foot or so because a steep wall of the mountainside jutted out. After negotiating the narrow pathway, and rounding the bend, there it was. He stood in amazement feeling as if he had been transported back in time.
Hunkered in a little canyon in a draw in the mountain was an old log cabin. It was like something out of the movies. He approached with caution yelling, "Anybody home?" But he was pretty sure the only thing that old cabin was home to was probably a few spiders and forest critters. That humble abode probably hadn’t had a human soul inside it for over a hundred years.
He put his metal detector and pick down on the ground and gently pushed the old wood door open. It just fell off the hinges and struck the floor with a thud throwing up a puff of dust. Sam jumped back about three feet and wondered if he’d brought enough clean underwear, because after that little incident he felt as if he might be ready for a change. The sun's rays struggled through the two dirty windows that amazingly were still intact. Sam entered the cabin with all the reverence of a person entering church on Easter Sunday. "Oh my!" Sam declared out loud, "If these walls could only talk, what stories would they tell?" There was an old pot belly stove, and the remnants of a wooden frame that looked to be a bed once upon a time. Sitting beside the bed was a small empty wood nail keg that had probably been used as a small table. There was still an old oil burning lantern hanging on a peg by the door. Other than that, the place looked pretty bare.
That was the day Sam decided he should try to file a claim on that area. If the claim went through he could invest a few dollars in that old cabin and fix it up. It would beat sleeping in his truck, and besides it would be fun.
Well in the months to follow, Sam got his claim filed and accepted. He now had 400 plus acres of prime natural gold bearing beautiful earth. He was sure that his claim would go through because his son-in-law, Frank, had helped him with it; only time he knew of an attorney to be good for something.
During that time he spent his trips to Good Hope not prospecting, but fixing up that old cabin. Basically it was a sound little structure. It just needed cleaning up, and some patching up, and some roof repairs. He even talked Mary and Sally into coming up there with he and Frank to give it the woman’s touch. Under Mary’s protestations, she gathered her cleaning gear and loaded it in the pickup truck. She complained the whole way, while secretly she appreciated being included in Sam’s project. The good natured ribbing stopped about the time she saw the beauty of the mountain retreat where Sam had been spending a weekend a month for almost a year.
"Well I guess it is sort of pretty up here."
"Not as beautiful as you are my dear wife!" Sam replied.
"Oh go one with ya’! You don’t have to butter me up, you already got me going up to this hell hole of yours to clean it up."
Sally and Frank were in the back seat giggling like 12 year old school girls over Sam and Mary’s carrying on.
After that weekend of fixin’ and cleaning, and patching, the place had really started to take shape. Mary had even brought a tape measure and took the size of the windows so she could make some curtains when she got back to civilization.