Chapter 11

Up The Creek With Lots Of Paddles

Wednesday afternoon the convoy entered Coeur d'Alene and exited I-90 and turned onto US-95 north. Cassie used her cell phone to reach out and touch Tiny. "Tiny, how about grabbing an early supper; there don't appear to be many places north of here to select from?"

"Great minds and all that Cassie, even here there are few places that all of us can get into."

He clicked off the phone. A minute later the CB announced.

"Start looking guys, we are going to grab a bite here before continuing north on US95."

"The 'Rockin Robin' is still serving Tiny."

"Then someone get in there to keep it open. The rest of you find us some parking."

Cassie and Ted walked into the restaurant. Wesley and his partner were already inside and standing near a group of waitresses arranging tables.

The food stop did not take all that long as they were basically the last customers before the restaurant closed for the day.

"Ted, excuse us, but I need to talk to Tiny in private."

"No problem Cassie." He got up and moved over to an open table.

"Okay, Tiny how do we stand? I noticed you on the phone."

"Yeah, too bad we don't live in the good old days when all we had to do was find the 'gold', stake a claim and fight off the claim jumpers. Now we have to have lawyers in Washington, Boise, and the county in which the 'gold' is found. Then you have to prove that you can take on the big boys."

"I mean it's one thing to actually take on one of the big mining companies but they want you to prove you can before you have to. That is crazy, and then of course there are the politicians with their hands out. I talked to your Dad and he's putting out the word that we are not a fly by night outfit."

"Anyway, we have, or are about to have, all the permits we are going to need. All we have to do now is find the gold, build our claim monument and stake the claim. I don't doubt your ability to find gold, but we can't really count our chickens until we have seen the eggs, so to speak. We are set up to make a lode claim, a tunnel claim, a mill claim, in fact two of them, and about 38 placer claims. Those Placer Claims will be in the crewmen's names and organized into five associations. We have set up an employee trust and put five percent of our stock in it. That, along with those placer claims, is going to make our men pretty well off."

"Your Dad has looked over our business plans. He wants in for ten percent. He is willing to put up two million dollars to help get us started. Oh, we placed ten percent in a non-profit trust for reclamation of the land. The legal fees are going to be tremendous."

"No, Tiny, tell Dad he can have five percent for that two million dollars and only that much because we might need it for immediate legal fees."

"Your Dad said that a couple of the big boys got word of what we were doing and, after investigating, they are laughing their heads off. They know we have not done any exploration or prospecting anywhere near where we are headed."

"Well Tiny what do we do next?"

"We go up there and place our monuments, stake claims, and then give our position to our lawyers in the county seat, Boise, and Washington. Then we do the prospect holes and work the placer claims. As soon as we have some proof of profitable minerals we start building a mill."

"The hard rock permits should be finalized within seven days of our claim being filed. From what you said, we can rip that high grade out in about four days. The mill will not be ready yet so we will do the milling by hand. That's simple, just crush the quartz up and sort the gold out of the waste. At the percentage you have mentioned, within 20 days of arriving we should have over 60 million dollars worth at which point we are going to have to have a lot of security."

"Tiny, how do you mill by hand?"

"The easiest and simplest way is get an anvil and a big hammer. You lay the ore on the anvil and beat the crap out of it. You are shattering the quartz and other rocks that surround the gold. Then you pick out all the easily recognized gold, gather up any sizeable pieces of ore that are left and repeat. By hand you can guarantee there is still a lot of gold in the dust and small pieces of ore."

"A mill is just a building with lots of big hammers crushing the ore that then go through a sorting process and rerun the ore until it is as fine as the hammers can make. You can then do chemical wash to remove other impurities. One of the causes of toxic waste is the acids used for the wash."

"From the mills, the gold goes to a smelter where it's melted down. That increases the purity of the gold."

"What we are going to do is basic milling then sell our milled ore to a refinery and let them worry about the rest."

A few hours later the convoy pulled off US-95 into a rest area. Tiny rotated the crew for security with four awake at all times. Early the next morning the convoy pulled into Bonners Ferry, County Seat of Boundary County.

There they stocked up on supplies for a month or so. Tiny and Cassie went to meet their local lawyer, a man named Arthur G. Washburn.

Cassie sat in the office and kept her mouth shut as the lawyer and Tiny discussed the process of filing the claims. The lawyer showed Tiny the forms he had already made out, with blank areas to be filled in as soon as Tiny could call them in.

"Excuse me." Cassie interrupted their conversation.

"Cassie?" Tiny asked. The lawyer gave her a look that said, little girls should keep their mouth shut.

"Why don't we take those forms with us and then we fill them out when we find the site we want. I've got fax machines and satellite communication. That way we can send copies immediately to this office, Washington, Boise and to my Dad in Austin. That way everybody involved will be notified at the same time and know that the others have been also."

"That's a good idea Cassie, let's do it."

From the frown she detected on the lawyer's face, she knew she had cut into something he was planning.

"Yeah, that will give dad a chance to get his Federal Judges looking over everything. I really hope they keep their Marshals away from me."

Tiny gave her a strange look then his eye moved over to the lawyer. "Yeah, don't want you killing anybody else. I know, 'misadventure' but you did not fool those Texas Rangers. They just felt it was justified."

By this time the lawyer was staring, wide eyed, at Cassie. Then at her cane, "Excuse me but are you blind?"

"Yes I am, for more than three years."

"Won't it be a little hard on you out in the wilderness?"

Tiny, started guffawing and soon was roaring with laughter.

"Mister, this is Cassandra Howly Howard. Between her and a grizzly bear I put my money on Cassie here. She is like a wolverine; you know they never give up they move so quickly and so viciously that nothing else can fight them."

They stood up to leave and Tiny reached for the door to open it. Cassie turned to the lawyer and, in a quiet voice, said "Our family motto is 'Give fair warning, worry not where your enemies die.' I am now giving you fair warning, do nothing that you will regret."

She then followed Tiny out of the office. As they were returning to where they had left the convoy Tiny spotted an equipment rental place and pulled in.

"You got a cat D6 with dozer blade? I would need a carrier for it also." Tiny said to the person that came out of the office to greet them.

"Yes in fact we have two cats with carriers; When will you need them, and how long?"

"It should be about four to six days before we'll need them, but I have no idea how long it will take us to finish with them."

"Oh a long term rental I take it?"

"Should not be longer than a month, we will be clearing a trail into the mountains, and then a building site."

"Will you be using your own operators? We would need to see their certificates."

"Tell you what, I'll be back tomorrow with my men and their certificates and you can get copies. Fix up the rental agreement now. Then, when we need the equipment, I will send one of them back in to town with the signed agreement to pick up the carrier."

"How will you make payment?"

Cassie spoke up at that time. "Check, American Express or visa? Which would you prefer?"

"American Express is perfectly okay."

"Okay then we're ready."

Two days later the convoy was spread out down a County Road slowly moving north. Cassie was riding shotgun in Tiny's truck.

"The road starts turning west about a quarter of a mile ahead. It is also the closest the road and stream get to each other. I wonder why there's no sign of any placer mining along this stream. The creek is about a mile further north of the turnoff of the County Road. That creek does not go due west but north west."

"The stream is mainly on state land until right after the creek flows in to it. Then half a mile north west of the stream it all becomes federal land. That's what I am seeing on the USGS map."

"I can just see up that creek, it is a twisted little thing. That's why there are so many placer deposits." Cassie said.

"If I am remembering correctly, the rivulet is about five miles up that creek. There should be a lot of placer deposits on that creek. And no matter how relaxed and focused I am, I can still not reach far enough up that rivulet to see the quartz deposit."

"The easiest route is close to the water banks even though it's shorter to just go north from the County Road. But if we follow the water courses than we will have easier access to the placer claims.

Tiny pulled over where the County Road turned west. They stood on the shoulder of the road and contemplated the surrounding country. Cassie began to climb down off the roadway and into the shrubs toward the stream. "Ted, bring me a short shovel and a wash pan."

Cassie continued toward the stream. Ted and Tiny both caught up with her as she walked up the stream a short distance until she reached where there was a sand bar in the stream which diverted the water flow into a bend in the stream.

"What are doing Cassie?" Tiny asked.

"I am proving to myself, that my dreams are real."

She took the shovel and pan from Teddy and eased into the water. A shovel full from the downstream side of the bend went into the pan and she slowly let the water flow into it. A swish of the pan let some of the water wash out of it and the loose dirt went with it. She added more water and repeated her previous action until no more dirt floated on the water. She stood upright and began to sort the gravel still in her pan. There were three nuggets and a fine layer of flake gold in the bottom of the pan.

She stepped out of the water and held out the pan to Tiny, "God damn, that's at least an ounce. Those nuggets are for sure, with maybe a quarter ounce of flake.

Teddy just looked at the pan then at Tiny, "Is that worth much?"

"Oh, two to four thousand dollars."

Teddy eyes bugged out. "Two to four thousand dollars?"

"Yeah, that's why we are here."

Cassie spoke then, "There are little pockets of gold all along this stream and the creek further north. Most of it will be claimed in the names of the crew, as a person can only claim 20 acres. They can work them in what little spare time they will have and we can buy it from them. We've got a lot of plans for this area of Idaho."

"Okay Teddy, do you think you can drive Bertha down here?"

He turned and looked back through the scrub bushes and saplings between us and the County Road "Yeah, just got to keep her straight on to it."

Soon, Big Bertha was being driven back and forth crushing anything less than a big tree to the ground. The crew and other heavy trucks were working pushing the downed saplings and bushes to the side. It wasn't too long until there was 1,500 square feet of fairly cleared land between the County Road and the stream. The area was covered with the trucks. A camp had been set up with portable kitchen equipment and food was cooking. A couple of men were returning from the stream carrying some fish they had caught.

"Guys, hope the game warden doesn't come by, none of you guys got any fishing licenses." Tiny said.

They settled in for a night's sleep. The next morning Tiny sent a truck with three men back to Bonners Ferry to pick up the Cats D6s with the dozer blades. It was over 9 hours before they returned.

The carriers pulled into their makeshift parking lot and began to unload the cats.

Cassie spent the day instructing the crew in how to set up a placer claim and mark it. They planned to stretch out the claims to cover the banks centered on the water edge for 60 ft wide and stretching all the way up the creeks to the waterfall and then up the rivulet to near the main lode. Cassie suggested that the best and fairest way to handle the placer claims was to collect all the gold into one cache and split it evenly between all the men. That way the claims could be worked while some men were working for the company.

She had written up an agreement and had all the men sign it. She and Tiny also signed. Every signator got one share of the total and the company got one equal share. She had kept track of that days fumbling and estimated that they had taken nearly $30,000 dollars in gold out of the deposits on the stream.

Over the next week they extended the clearing into a strip half way up the creek. The hardest part was going to be getting to the top of the water fall as the ground was steep all around that area.

These men knew about working and engineering. They build a diversion around the falls and then drained the area above the falls. In a 24 hour period of time they took out more than $300,000 dollars worth of nuggets and flakes. Along the banks they had built sluice boxes and were harvesting gold like wheat.

"Tiny, we are moving pretty well, but at the rate those guys are going they will soon all be too rich to keep working. They know they have been getting a lot of gold, but to most of them it is just a game. I've got nearly $600,000 dollars worth of gold now stored in Big Bertha. From my 'seeing' I can detect almost four times more than that just in what they are working now. Tiny, this may be one of the richest gold strikes in history. And we have not even filed our claims yet!"