24 CHRONICLES OF THE CARIBOO

gold pan. Racing over they met and surrounded him, most of them
shaking in their excitement.

“There she is boys. Luk at her! Shot gold that, I'll say! No flat,
flaky Fraser River gold bout that, cause it ain’t travelled so far.
’Course it ain’t right coarse yit bein’ right on top; but wait till we git
down to whatever it is goes for bedrock under here an’ we’ll find her
coarse enough. We’ll find Tomaah’s beans all right.”

Staring, they all saw the first Cariboo gold prospect!

Then there were grunts and blasts of breath, gasping sighs from
heaving chests, showing that every man of them had been holding
his breath in overpowering suspense during this momentous epoch-
making moment! There in that pan lay the evidence of the golden
goal they had been seeking!

Among the many glittering yellow specks showing through the
washing black sand, and spoonful or two of water at the lower angle
of the pan, there rolled some larger yellow, roughly round pieces up
to the size of turnip or clover seeds.

That they didn’t slip or slide but rolled was the all-important fact.
The fact that that told these miners they were in coarse gold country.
Shot gold, as it is called is always considered a coarse gold prospect,
indicating still coarser gold lower down in the vicinity.

Thus had Ira Crow, of the Dunlevey party, panned the first coarse
gold »rospect among the mountains of the Cariboo or the Horsefly
River.

Then didn’t they celebrate! Happy miners, these.

{il but the Indian. He wasn’t impressed. He was disappointed. He
had never found any gold himself, probably because he had never look-
ed for any. He had hunted on the Horsefly River—or, “The Wild Wat-
er,” as the Shuswaps called it—with the uncle who had been killed,
but he had never been to this very spot before. Tomaah had told him
how to lead these miners to this spot where sizable nuggets of gold
had been found by his people on the beach of the river at low water.
With the consumate woodcraft which few but the old time Indians.
possessed he had led them straight to the spot. But the river was high,
now. Tsere was no beach. He couldn’t fulfill the charge laid upon him
by his friend and he didn’t like it.

Not being a miner he couldn’t understand the joyful attitude of
these gold-crazy whitemen, who were so sure they would find the
nuggets because they had found the tiny rocklets that rolled. So he
didn’t celebrate. When Sellers offered him the rum bottle he refused
bluntly. Baptiste was never a drinking Indian anyway. That settled
it. These whitemen were crazy and that was all there was to it. And
it made him sorry for them.

“No,” he said. “Me, I go hunt.”

And seizing his bow and quiver, his light axe and heavy hunting
knife and pack, away he strode at his tireless swinging gait to his be-
loved native woods and kindred of the wild, where he knew he would
not feel so alien and alone as he did now with these crazy whitemen.