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With a quick glance around to make sure there were no Apaches in sight, he tipped the pan slightly, to an angle of about 30 degrees so the lighter sands, already buoyed up by the water, could slip out over the side.
He struck the pan several good blows to help settle the gold, if any, and then dipped for more water and continued the process. He worked steadily at the pan, with occasional glances around until all the refuse had washed over the side but the heavier particles. Then with a little clean water, he washed the black sand and gold into another pan which he took from the brush where it had been concealed the day before.
For some time he worked steadily, then as the light was getting bad, he gathered up his tools, and concealing the empty pan, carried the other with him back up the wash to his hideout.
He took his Sharps and crept out of the hideout and up the wall of the canyon. The desert was still and empty on every side.
“Too empty, durn it!” he grumbled. “Them Injuns’ll be back. Yuh can’t fool an Apache!”
Rolling out of his blankets at sunup, he prepared a quick breakfast and then went over his takings of the day with a magnet. This black sand was mostly particles of magnetite, ilmenite, and black magnetic iron oxide. What he couldn’t draw off, he next eliminated by using a blow box.
“Too slow, with them Apaches around,” he grumbled. “A man workin’ down there could mebbe do sixty, seventy pans a day, in that sort of gravel, but watchin’ for Injuns ain’t goin’ t’ help much!”
Yet he worked steadily, and by nightfall, despite interruptions, had handled more than fifty pans. When the second day was over, he gri
He had cached his tools along with the empty pan in the brush at the edge of the wash. When morning came, he rolled out and was just coming out of the hideout when he saw the Apache. He was squatted in the sand staring at something, and despite his efforts to keep his trail covered, Dunbar had a good idea what that something would be. He drew back into the hideout.
Lying on his middle, he watched the Indian get to his feet and start working downstream. When he got down there a little further, he was going to see those prospect holes. There would be nothing Dunbar could do then. Nor was there anything he could do now. So far as he could see, only one Apache had found him. If he fired, to kill the Indian, the others would be aware of the situation and come ru
Old Billy squinted his eyes and pondered the question. He had a hunch that Indian wasn’t going to go for help. He was going to try to get Dunbar by himself, so he could take his weapons and whatever else he had of value.
The Indian went downstream further, and slipped out of sight. Billy instantly ducked out into the open and scooted down the canyon into the mesquite. He dropped flat there, and inched along in the direction the Indian had gone.
He was creeping along, getting nearer and nearer to his prospect holes, when suddenly, instinct or the subconscious hearing of a sound warned him. Like a flash, he rolled over, just in time to see the Indian leap at him, knife in hand!
Billy Dunbar was no longer a youngster, but he had lived a life in the desert, and he was hard and tough as whalebone. As the Apache leaped, he caught the knife wrist in his left hand, and stabbed at the Indian’s ribs with his own knife. The Apache twisted away, and Billy gave a heave. The Indian lost balance. They rolled over, then fell over the eight-foot bank into the wash!
Luck was with Billy. The Indian hit first, and Billy’s knife arm was around him, with the point gouging at the Indian’s back. When they landed, the knife went in to the hilt.
Billy rolled off, gasping for breath. Hurriedly, he glanced around. There was no one in sight. Swiftly, he clawed at the bank, causing the loosened gravel to cave down and in a few minutes of hot, sweating work the Indian was buried.
Turning, Billy lit out for his hideaway and when he made it, he lay there gasping for breath, his Sharps ready. There would be no work this day. He was going to lie low and watch. The other Indians would come looking, he knew.
After dark he slipped out and covered the Indian better, and then used a mesquite bush to wipe out, as well as possible, the signs of their fighting. Then he catfooted it back to the hollow and tied a rawhide string across the entrance with a can of loose pebbles at the end to warn him if Indians found him. Then he went to sleep.
At dawn he was up. He checked the Sharps and then cleaned his .44 again. He loaded his pockets with cartridges just in case, and settled down for a day of it.
Luckily, he had shade. It was hot out there, plenty hot. You could fry an egg on those rocks by ten in the morning—not that he had any eggs. He hadn’t even seen an egg since the last time he was in Fremont, and that had been four months ago.
He bit off a chew of tobacco and rolled it in his jaws. Then he studied the banks of the draw. An Apache could move like a ghost and look like part of the landscape. He had known them to come within fifteen feet of a man in grassy country without being seen, and no tall grass at that.
It wouldn’t be so bad if his time hadn’t been so short. When he left Fremont, Sally had six months to go to pay off the loan on her ranch, or out she would go. Sally’s husband had been killed by a bronc down on the Sandy. She was alone with the kids and that loan about to take their home away.
When the situation became serious, Old Billy thought of this wash. Once, several years before, he had washed out some color here, and it looked rich. He had left the country about two jumps ahead of the Apaches and swore he’d never come back. Nobody else was coming out of here with gold, either, so he knew it was still like he remembered. Several optimistic prospectors had tried it, and were never heard of again. However, Old Billy had decided to take a chance. After all, Sally was all he had, and those-two grandchildren of his deserved a better chance than they’d get if she lost the place.
The day moved along, a story told by the shadows on the sides of the wash. You could almost tell the time by those shadows. It wasn’t long before Dunbar knew every bush, every clump of greasewood or mesquite along its length, and every rock.
He wiped the sweat from his brow and waited. Sally was a good girl. Pretty, too, too pretty to be a widow at twenty two. It was almost midafternoon when his questing eye halted suddenly on the bank of the wash. He lay perfectly still, eyes studying the bank intently. Yet his eyes had moved past the spot before they detected something amiss. He scowled, trying to remember. Then it came to him.
There had been a torn place there, as though somebody had started to pull up a clump of greasewood, then abandoned it. The earth had been exposed, and a handful of roots. Now it was blotted out. Straining his eyes he could see nothing, distinguish no contours that seemed human, only that the spot was no longer visible. The spot was mottled by shadows and sunlight through the leaves of the bush.
Then there was a movement, so slight that his eye scarcely detected it, and suddenly the earth and torn roots were visible again. They had come back. Their stealth told him they knew he was somewhere nearby, and the logical place for him would be right where he was.
Now he was in for it. Luckily, he had food, water, and ammunition. There should be just eight of them unless more had come. Probably they had found his prospect holes and trailed him back this way.
There was no way they could see into his hollow, no way they could shoot into it except through the narrow entrance which was rock and brush. There was no concealed approach to it. He dug into the bank a little to get more earth in front of himself.