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

[GhostMiner]

11 hours ago, DOOGY-MD said:

Glad to hear everything went well GM! Maybe, couple of days eye rest could be in order?

Thank you.

[Hardtimehermit]

Hey Ghostminer, hope your eye is feeling better, i was wondering if you know the size of the buckets they were filling up? Maybe 5 gallons ? 

[GhostMiner]

3 hours ago, Hardtimehermit said:

Hey Ghostminer, hope your eye is feeling better, i was wondering if you know the size of the buckets they were filling up? Maybe 5 gallons ? 

   Thanks Hardtimehermit. Feelin pretty good now. As far as bucket size, they don't say. I found one small homemade bucket up there but it wouldn't have been strong enough to hold gravels or big enough either. I'm thinking probably 5 gallon. They weren't carrying them very far as they loaded them on the back of Jed's Ford truck which you could get within 50 to 100 ft of where they dug. I assume they filled them up but once again they don't say. 

   When I did some testing up there I had to carry buckets about 100 yards to a recirculating sluice. I started out with full buckets in the morning but by afternoon they were 2/3 buckets LOL. There are hot spots all along the 2000 ft of faultline. That's what he was doing, finding hot spots. However, the glory holes are another animal altogether. 

[maxxkatt]

Take your time and get well. This is a real cliff hanger, we are not going anywhere.

 

[GhostMiner]

5 minutes ago, maxxkatt said:

Take your time and get well. This is a real cliff hanger, we are not going anywhere.

 

   No worries. I feel fine. Using 3 kinds of eye drops 4 times a day. Another entry coming soon.

[GhostMiner]

JULY 17   1936

   About 11:00 PM last night I sat on watch while Jacob got some well earned sleep. Unfortunately he didn’t get much. I heard three rifle shots and hollered for Will to get up and ready for trouble. We took opposite sides of the camp. It was a bright night as the moon was nearly full. We kept the camp dark with no lanterns lit and no campfire. We didn’t see or hear anything near us.  John and Will were about a quarter mile down the mountain and suddenly we heard some hollering. Then we heard more gun fire. I wasn’t sure whether to head down there or stick at camp in case they were circling John. The gunfire continued. I told Jacob I was going down there and to stay put and fire three shots  if he was in trouble or anybody came up there.

   I high tailed it down the mountain and when I got close I stopped and took a good look at the situation. I could see John and Will down below me. They were behind some big trees and firing up near the road where there were two trucks parked. I hollered over to John letting him know I was behind him. He said they had caught the co operative boys by surprise when they started walking up the mountain. That’s when they ran behind their trucks and opened fire. He said there looked to be five or six of them. I told John and Will I was going to circle around to the east of them and get them in a crossfire as they didn’t know I was down there. 

   John and Will kept firing at them. I heard John hollering at them and calling them cowards. He said he would kill them all. I was able to get down to the road just east of their trucks. I crept in staying close to the brush and got about 50 yards from them. I could see five men behind the trucks and they were cursing and swearing at each other. I heard one say he didn’t want to be in a gun fight and thought they were just going to scare the miners into signing up. The other one told him to shut his mouth and keep shooting. I hollered out I had them flanked and to drop their guns. They spun around  and some of them started shooting in my direction. I dove behind a tree and fired a round in their direction. I heard one of them holler he was hit. They didn’t know exactly where the shot came from and panicked. Two of the men threw the injured guy on the truck bed and they jumped in the truck. They started the motor and started pulling out onto the road. The other two were hunkered down and firing in my general direction. I heard a bullet whistle past my head and hit a tree behind me. I fired another shot but I couldn’t tell if I hit anyone. They jumped in their truck and pulled out.  By now the first truck was starting down the road. I fired off a couple rounds at it and turned towards the other truck that was pulling out. I could hear Will and John firing away and bullets were hitting the truck. John was hollering for them to come back and fight us like men. 

   They drove away with engines roaring heading east in the direction of their camp. John and Will came running down to the road. I told John I think I had shot one of them. John told me nice shooting and said he doubted that those cowards would ever come back. I told him how it sounded like there wasn’t much fight in them and I thought he might be right. Will was all wound up and said they better not come back or they would face our guns.

   When we got back up to camp I told Jacob about the battle. I said I figured it was the same guys as before and didn’t think there was anymore fight in them. All four of us talked about the gun battle and none of us got much sleep. I poured everyone some whiskey and before we knew it the sun was coming up. We had breakfast and weighed up the gold which came to 2 ounces.

   We were all bushed but I wanted to finish up the trench as we were nearly out of gravels to dig so we went up there and dug and scraped. The bucket count was only 51 and the trench was mined out. We will see what we end up with and make a new plan. Needless to say we are all on high alert. 

   TO BE CONTINUED .................

[flakmagnet]

3 hours ago, GhostMiner said:

Needless to say we are all on high alert. 

We all are...

This is as good as gold yarns get.

[GhostMiner]

   Another side note - the tavern Jed talks about in town burned down about 50 yrs ago. It was known in the area as a rough & tumble bar filled with all kinds of what Jed refers to as hooligans. There was no attempt to rebuild it. I was talking with an old timer who told me he remembered people in the bar back in the 1960's talk about a miner up on that mountain who made a big strike back in the 1930's depression. He told me a lot more also but I can't put it on here. 

[GhostMiner]

4 minutes ago, flakmagnet said:

We all are...

This is as good as gold yarns get.

Thanks flak but the journal hasn't even got to the best part yet.