
Nov. 16, 1907.] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
169 

| Mitchell took to prospecting, and McCormick to 
| raising and selling garden truck. 
“One day, about a year after this, Mitchell 
came into the Wellington mine office with a 
parcel wrapped up in an old newspaper, Now, 
he and the manager hated one another. 
“‘T’ve brought along a few rocks I want to 
| sell you,’ says Mitchell. 
“*Stolen from one of my dumps, I suppose,’ 
| says the manager. 
““Look at them, and judge for yourself,’ says 
Mitchell. He opened the parcel, and there was 
| about a quart of gold and quartz; more gold 
than there was quartz, you might say. Some 
of the specimens had live moss and lichen stick- 
ing to them, and it stuck there as nature made 
| it grow. It wasn’t put on with cement. 
| “There, says Mitchell. ‘How does that com- 
pare with the Wellington and Dewar leads? Can 
you show me better gold specimens from Cali- 
| fornia or Australia? What’ll you give me to 
take you to the place those rocks’ came from?’ 
“Old man Snow looked over them with his 
big iron-rimmed spectacles for a while. ‘I’ll not 
give you a red cent to show me where these 
rocks came from,’ says he, ‘but I’ll give you 
ten thousand dollars in cold cash to show me 
the lead they came off, and if the lead holds 
good for fifty feet I’ll make it twenty thousand. 
It seems to me that they have traveled; the 
edges are worn quite a bit.’ 
| ““Tf T knew where the lead was I wouldn’t 
be asking you for money,’ says Mitchell. ‘I’m 
{a poor man. I have no money to prospect in 
deep soil with. I know that I stand no chance 
' if I take you in on shares; you'll freeze me out. 
T’ll sell the whole thing, or keep the whole thing. 
If you want to buy the prospect, or care to 
speculate in the specimens, just you say so. 
You’re right about the drift having traveled. I 
found some specimens off this same lead, about 
five hundred feet to the north of the place I 
found these rocks in. Now, you give me two 
thousand dollars and I’ll take you to the spot I 
found them in,’ 
“Old man Snow wouldn’t listen to him. He 
bought the specimens for a hundred and odd dol- 
lars, and I guess he made his own out of them. 
Mitchell was hardly clear of the office when 
Snow says to my father, who was bookkeeper 
and general assistant to him, ‘Angus, you get 
4 your coat on and go up to the second dam on 
the Northwest Arm Brook. Take the trail from 
‘there to McCormick’s shanty and tell him—or 
his wife, if he’s away—that I want to see one 
or other of them right now. Bring them back 
4 the way you go. You'll find me among the big 
hemlocks at the foot of the Moose Pond.’ 
“Dad started at once. He found Mary at 
home; McCormick was away looking his traps. 
Mary said she guessed she could do anything 
that .was wanted as well as the old man, and 
}she came along down to the Moose Pond, She 
and Snow were good friends. He always bought 
his winter potatoes from McCormick, and_ his 
wife gave Mary all her old clothes. 
4 “‘Tlve got a job for you and your husband 
which may last you all the summer,’ says Snow 
#when they met. ‘McCormick will be taking up 
Jhis traps in a week or two, and the ground 
won't be fit to work for some time yet. I want 
you to keep watch on old man Mitchell. You 
two know the woods as well as any Indians, and 
Hjust as soon as McCormick comes back-I want 
him to get on Mitchell’s trail. I want you to 

te ___ $4 -__ Ss >_< _ —+ — ——— 
a 
——<$<—_-—_£s— 



watch his house, and if he goes away from home 
I want him followed. I don’t want him to know 
that anyone is on his tracks, either. I’m going 
to give you blankets and a little tent so you 
won't have to chop wood and make a noise. 
You'll be able to sleep without a fire if you have 
them. I want you to notice all the fresh broken 
quartz, and to keep your ears open for the noise 
of a pick or hammer breaking rocks. If you 
find Mitchell breaking rocks or digging holes, 
watch him for all you’re worth, but don’t let him 
see you. Then come in and tell me about it. 
Here’s a good pair of glasses and a week’s pay 
in advance. Keep away from the mines and my 
office especially: I shall be at this same place 
a week from to-day, and one of you can come 
and tell me if you see anything.’ 
“Mary’s eyes just sparkled when she saw the 
two five dollar gold pieces—the same pay an 
extra good miner got in those days—but she 
seemed afraid to take it. ‘If it was any other 
man than Mitchell, we’d be glad to do this for 
you, says she. ‘I’m not afraid of him, but Mc- 
Cormick would sooner quarrel with Matteou, the 
Indian, when he’s drunk, than have words with 
Mitchell when he’s sober.’ 
“*You see, McCormick believes in all 
of things which you and I don’t believe in at 
all. If Mitchell found that he was following 
him, and threatened to put a spell on him, he’d 
be scared to death. When my baby was born, 
and Mitchell told Demingues that we’d have a 
christening and a funeral in our house inside 
a month, we took no stock in his words. Not 
a week after that Father McGrath and his 
brother from New Glasgow were fishing in these 
parts. McCormick ran across him and asked 
him to come and baptize the child. He did so, 
and less than a fortnight after she died of con- 
vulsions. I could tell you lots of other things 
he’s foretold, which have come true to the letter.’ 
“Finally Snow talked her over and she took 
the money. From that time out Mitchell never 
left his place without one of the McCormicks 
was on his track. To people like them the ten 
dollars a week Snow paid them was a fortune. 
Father says they earned every cent they , got. 
Night after night Mary slept out wrapped in 
a blanket—she was as tough as a she bear. Every 
week one or other of them would report to Snow 
or my father. Once or twice Mitchell met one 
or other of them in the woods. He was used 
to meeting them, and thought nothing of it. 
McCormick used to gather gum, and Mary 
picked wild herbs and sold them to the apothe- 
caries in Antigonish. Now, you know as well 
as I do that the right months to prospect in 
these woods are the last half-of April, all the 
month of May, and the first half of June. Be- 
fore that time the ground is frozen as hard as 
Pharaoh’s heart, and after the middle of June 
the flies will drive a man out of the woods. 
Then again, all the bushes are green, and the 
brakes are four feet high. You no chance 
to see a bit of quartz; the only way you can 
hope to find anything in the summer is to follow 
a fire and look for drift where the barrens have 
been burnt bare. 
“McCormick and Mary let their garden go. 
They were earning twice the money watching 
Mitchell that they could make out of garden 
truck. Once or twice during the summer Snow 
went cruising the woods with McCormick. They 
found mighty little. Now and again they’d hap- 
pen on some broken quartz, or run on to some 
sorts 
get 


old trenchful of water and all caved in, but they 
found no sign of any new work. 
“Along in October Snow thought he’d take 
a day or two off calling. He was a good caller 
and an extra good shot. He took McCormick 
with him to carry his tent and dunnage. The 
second morning they were out they called until 
9:30 or I0 and got no answer. They allowed that 
they’d move on toward a hardwood ridge, camp 
there and call on Salome’s bog next morning. 
They skirted along the bog, quiet as mice, for 
moose sign was thick and fresh. Then they 
turned into an old wood road where Joe Demin- 
gues had some snares set. The snares were 
empty, however. Just before they got out of 
the tall timber on to the next barren they heard 
something going click, click, click. ‘Hold on,’ 
says Snow. ‘That sounds like a fellow break- 
ing quartz. 
“They followed the sound to the edge of the 
woods and saw old man Mitchell smashing up 
a white quartz boulder. They lay there and 
watched him for quite a while. He gathered up 
the pieces in a basket and started for a little 
belt of bushes. ‘There’s a brook down there,’ 
says McCormick. ‘He’s got a mortar alongside 
it, and he’ll mortar the gold out of his sights. 
As soon as he commences to pound we'll creep 
in on him,’ 
“They lay there for ten or fifteen minutes, 
waiting for the mortar to start up. Snow took 
the glass, to see if he could find Mitchell any- 
where in the bushes, and while he was peering 
through them he felt a man’s hand grip him by 
the neck, McCormick felt the same thing too, 
and they saw Mitchell standing over them. 
“Both men were on their feet in a minute. 
Mitchel made no offer to strike them; he just 
stood and looked at them. ‘It'll be a long time 
before you catch me mortaring out specimens 
near the place I find them in,’ says he at last. 
‘ye been watching McCormick and his wife 
half this past summer, when they thought they 
were watching me. I was within twenty feet 
of your tent last night, and I heard every word 
you said. I’ve been sitting just behind you for a 
good five minutes, and you never heard me creep 
up to you. Now listen to me, McCormick. 
When you followed me down the trail from 
Yankee Lake to Ladle Lake you didn’t see the 
king spider's web across the road. You broke 
it, the spider bit you and you were sick in bed 
I thought that might learn you 
You and 
for a fortnight. 
a lesson. It seems it wasn’t enough. 
your wife have crossed Mitchell’s Lake fifty 
times this summer to spy on me. You'll both 
of you try to cross ig once too often in the 
winter, One of you will be buried on the bar- 
rens like a dog; the other one will have to thank 
a stranger and a Protestant for a decent grave.’ 
“Mitchell was working himself up into a white 
fury as he spoke. ‘The gold you tried to steal 
from me will be the ruin of both of you. As 
for you,’ turning to Snow—— 
“Stop right now,’ says Snow. ‘One threat 
from you, and you go to Guysboro jail as quick 
as the law will land you there. You may scare 
McCormick, can neither write, 
but you can’t scare me. I have good evidence 
against you for telling fortunes for money, and 
in five of them you took your pay in nuggets 
stolen from my pits. There are one or two other 
little matters I can bring up when I feel good 
Now you go your way, and we'll 
who read nor 
and ready. 
go ours.’ 


















































