“‘Gold!’ says I.  ’What you talking about?  What have those black hunks to do with gold?’

“The only answer he made was to lay the one I had thrown to him on top of a rock and hit her a crack with a pick.  Then he handed it to me.  Sure enough!  There under the black was the yeller.  Of course, it I’d known more about the business I could have told it by the weight, but I’d never seen a piece of gold fresh off the farm before in my life.  I hadn’t the slightest idea what it looked like, and I learned afterward it all looks different.  Some of it shines up yaller in the start; some of it’s red, and some is like ours, coated black with iron-crust.

“So I looked at Ag, and Ag looked at me, neither one of us believing anything at all for awhile.  I simply couldn’t get hold of the thing—­I ain’t yet, for that matter.  I expect to wake up and find it a pipe dream, and in some ways I wouldn’t mind if it was.  I never was so completely two men as I was on that occasion.  One of ’em was hopping around and hollering with Ag, yelling ‘hooray!’ and the other didn’t take much interest in the proceedings at all.  And it wasn’t until I thought, ’Now I can pay that cussed cayote of a stage driver what I owe him!’ that I got any good out of it.  That brought it home to me.  When I spoke to Ag about paying the driver, he says, ‘That’s so,’ then he takes a quick look around.  ‘We can pay him in full, too, old horse!’ he hollers, and there was a most joyful smile on his face.

“‘Red,’ say he, ’do you know this is the only ford on the river for—­I don’t know how many miles—­perhaps the whole length of her?’

“‘Well?’ says I.

“‘Our little placer claim,’ says Aggy slowly, rubbing his hands together, ’covers that ford; and by a judicious taking up of claims for various uncles and brothers and friends of ours along the creek on the lowlands, we can fix it so they can’t even bridge it.’

“‘Do you mean they can’t cross our claim if we say they can’t?’

“‘Sure thing!’ says Aggy.  ’There’s you and me and the law to say “no” to that—­I wish I had a gun.’

“‘You don’t need any gun for that skunk of a driver.’

“’Of course not, but there’ll be passengers, and there’s no telling how excited them passengers will be when they find they’ve got to go over the hills ford-hunting.’

“’Are you going to send ’em all around, Ag?’

“’The whole bunch.  Anybody coming back from the diggings has gold in his clothes, so it won’t hurt ’em none, and I propose to give that stage line an advertising that won’t do it a bit of good.  Come along, Red; let’s see that lad that has the shack up the river.  We need something to eat, and maybe he’s got a gun.  If he’s a decent feller, we’ll let him in on a claim.  Never mind about the hole!—­it won’t run away, and there’s nobody to touch anything—­come on.’

“So we went up the river.  The man’s name was White, and he was a white man by nature, too.  He fed us well, and was just as hot as us when we told him about the stage driver’s trick.  Then we told him about the find and let him in.