Each clear-up they obtained on an average eight or nine pounds of gold.
The fourth day Tom had come down from above at twelve o'clock, and found that the men had only just finished the clear-up, and had sat down to have some food.
Having nothing to do, he strolled away to the spot where the Mexicans had been massacred, a short distance away, on some ground at the side of the valley.

Some three or four feet above the ground level of the bottom he saw a charred stump of a pole sticking up; he went across to it.
"I suppose this is where the leader of the party had a tent or rough hut," he said.
He was confirmed in the belief by a number of bits of charred wood lying round the pole.
"It was sort of arbor, I suppose," he said to himself.
There were several relics lying about: two boots shriveled by fire, a tin cup flattened by some weight that had fallen on it, a pistol with its stock blackened by fire.

He called the men to the spot.
"Yes, like enough it is as you say, Dick, but it is scarcely worth getting up to look at." "No, there is not much to look at, Dave, but you have been wondering ever since you came that you had not come upon any of the gold they must have gathered, and you said you didn't believe the Indians had taken it away.

Now if this was the hut of the leader of the party, it struck me that it would most likely be kept here, and that it may be buried somewhere under this circle of ashes." "Tom is right, mates," Dave said, "that is just where the gold would be kept, and there aint much doubt that they would bury it as they got it, so as to prevent anyone from taking any of it till it was divided up.
Let us fetch our picks, Boston, and we will soon see if it is here.

Let us try round the post first," he went on, when the three men fetched their picks; "it will be either close to the middle of the hut, or else on one side under where he made his bed." The ground was sand, which had been washed up by an, eddy in one of the floods, and they had struck but three or four blows with the pick, when Dave exclaimed: "Here is something, boys!" They had brought a shovel with them, and throwing aside the sand, they saw a piece of leather.
"It is a bag," Joe said; "this is their hoard, sure enough." Going down on their hands and knees, they pulled up bag after bag, each about fifty pounds in weight, until they had a pile on the surface of eight bags.
"Eureka!" Dave exclaimed, as he lifted the last bag out of the hole.
"They had made something like a pile; no doubt they were a strong party, but even with that they must have been here a couple of months to have got this lot together.