** Lost Gold At The Dead Man's Mine ** A Miners Journal **

[GhostMiner]

   The thugs who roam this area just won't leave Jed's crew alone. I will be posting another entry in a bit. Going to get bumpy again so buckle up.

[PeterInSa]

Re (We had mined over 800 ounces of gold in less than three months)

My estimate was 750 ozs in 6 months so if Jed and friends  find more I'm out of the running.

[GhostMiner]

   JULY 11   1936

   This morning Jacob, Will and me went up to the new dig site while John guarded camp. We set about opening a new trench at the base of the fault line. Will hauled the first 20 buckets of pay gravels down to John and came back up to resume the digging. We were about four feet down and the digging was fairly fast. What we lacked in quality I hoped to partially make up for in quantity. When I went over to the tub to pan a small sample I noticed someone duck behind a tree just to the north a hundred feet or so. I walked over to Jacob and Will and told them to grab their rifles, there was someone sneaking around on the claim. We started walking in that direction and spotted a man looking at us from behind a tree. I hollered to stop right there and come out with his hands in the air. I told him we all had guns and would use them if needed. He was also armed with a rifle and I told him to drop it. He did and came forward with his hands up.

   He said the miners co operative had sent him up to our claim to talk with us. I said if that was true why was he sneaking around, He wouldn’t talk but said he was alone and meant no harm. We decided to take him down to camp and figure out what to do with him.

   When John saw him and was informed on the goings on he was madder than hell. I told him we had declined the co operative invitation to join up and told him we don’t like trespassers on our claim. John said he thought he was snooping around to see if we were getting any gold. I asked him about that but he just said he’s been sent up there to talk with us and if we didn’t join up we might have some problems. I asked him what that was supposed to mean. He just said we’d find out and there were a lot of bad people roaming the mountain. He said he was instructed to sign us up and we needed to pay a co operative fee every month. John said that’s blackmail. He said we should pay the fee and we would have no worries. We would also need to give up a percentage of our claim ownership to them. He said they had already signed up nearly half the miners in the county. I told him they weren’t signing us up and they were wasting their time. 

   He said that the word was out that we had been getting a lot of gold and we needed their protection. He said he was just doing his job. I had enough of him and told him to get the hell off our claim and tell his boss not to send anyone from the co operative up here again making threats. He kind of smiled at me. He said we were making a big mistake. John hauled off and punched him in the face. The man staggered backwards and looked shocked. He said he’d regret that. I didn’t say a word as i was sick and tired of all the hooligans and their threats and robbery attempts. John stepped forward and hit him again. The man took a swing at John but it missed and John punched him in the face a third time. This time he went down. We kept his gun and told him to git. He got up and headed back down the mountain saying we’d all be sorry. 

   When things cooled down we all went back to work. We ended up digging 205 buckets in total. I saw some color in the test pans but i’m not sure how good the pay will be. It’s the top layer and maybe we can hit some good gold as we go deeper. Time will tell. All I know is it’s getting more  dangerous around here.

   TO BE CONTINUED ....................

   

[GhostMiner]

1 hour ago, PeterInSa said:

Re (We had mined over 800 ounces of gold in less than three months)

My estimate was 750 ozs in 6 months so if Jed and friends  find more I'm out of the running.

It's adding up.

[rvpopeye]

They shoulda run him thru and hung 'im inna cage ta let the sun bleach 'is bones like a pirate that he is .

He'd solve who the mine title came from and make a AWESOME No Trespassing sign at the same time ! 😏 . arrrrrrrrr

 

[GhostMiner]

15 hours ago, PeterInSa said:

Re (We had mined over 800 ounces of gold in less than three months)

My estimate was 750 ozs in 6 months so if Jed and friends  find more I'm out of the running.

Up to & including July 12  1936 they have mined 811 ounces. 

[GhostMiner]

  JULY 12   1936

   There was some hope for us at the weigh and we got 1 and one half ounce. This was better than I expected. The day was not quite as hot as the previous days and we actually got a few unexpected sprinkles of rain. It felt good as we dug away but it didn’t last for long. We were now  cutting in a new trench as we looked for bedrock. The rock was still small and we moved it quite easily. I took a few pans throughout the day and was seeing some promise. We were getting down about 5 feet and made ramps at either end of the dig to walk the buckets out. It all seemed like familiar work to us and we hoped for good results. 

   We called it a day about an hour before dark and hauled the last load of 198 buckets down to John. We helped him finish up the wash. John said we should stay on high alert as we now had to worry about the co operative gangsters. I told him that all we can do is take our turns on watch at night and have our guns at the ready. They might just be all bluster and trying out scare tactics on us to get us to sign up. I opened a bottle of whiskey and took first watch just after dark. Everything was quiet.  

    TO BE CONTINUED .......................

[beatup]

looks like trouble is a brewing 

 

[GhostMiner]

Just now, beatup said:

looks like trouble is a brewing 

 

Yep.

[rvpopeye]

 

Dear Jed:

Get the biggest rifle you can find and set it and the best shot in the camp up on the highest point that the gun still has enough wallop to blow a hole in the first attacker you could throw a cat through ,, and the rest of your crew start digging and GIT 'ER DONE !

One look at something like that would produce a scattering effect seldom ever and probably never seen in those gold fields.  

 

 

 

No , I didn't learn that on the touring circuit , though it might have come in handy a time or two . 

I know a very poilte "retired" Canuck special forces guy , he always said "terribly sorry" .

Great campfire stories , I have heard,,, if you think THIS one has you on the edge of your seat !   Personally , I would have of course preferred the already mentioned pirate method . Yo oh ! 

811 ozt ! Pfeeeeeeeeeeeewww  (kinda makes it hard to breath !) Good thing the hooligans  don't know that , it would certainly narrow that scatter effect.