Chapter 8: Goldstrike

Yorvig tried not to think about the conversation with his brother. More and more he regretted coming to the claim. He may have been better off to go it alone as a prospector. . . But no. That was beyond dangerous. Only someone truly desperate would go off prospecting alone. He focused on his work on the lift, connecting a smaller spur wheel fitted onto the end of a winch. By that afternoon, a lever allowed the two spur wheels to be disengaged at need, and a stop catch held the winch still when the spur wheels were disengaged. From the winch, a rope ran to a re-configured block and tackle hanging from new anchors over the shaft down to the drifts, connected to the crude wooden platform below.

He called Shineboot up to witness the first test use. The two dwarves lifted the sluice gate together, letting the stream flow into the wheel race, and the waterwheel groaned into movement. The wooden shaft began to turn. They entered the adit, and Yorvig pushed the lever forward. The gears caught. He’d carved the teeth to be angled rather than squared to lessen the abrasion of frequent separations and meetings. Still, they’d wear, but until they could build from something more durable than wood, it must suffice. Cedar was a good wood for the purpose, strong and not prone to rotting. The winch began to turn, winding the rope. By connecting a larger wheel to a smaller, they gained a bit of speed in the gear mechanism, but still, the platform had to rise fifty feet up the shaft. It took a few minutes, and that was empty.

“It needs grease,” Shineboot said.

“Ay, yes, and we might have some if we’d been hunting. You’ll be out of oil for the lamps tomorrow, too.”

Shineboot fell silent for a few moments.

“How many tons do you think it will lift?” he asked at last.

Yorvig had wondered that himself.

“I’d start with a half, and go up from there,” he said.

“Aren’t you going to help?”

“I’m going to make you barrows.”

Shineboot sighed, then nodded. The platform arrived and Yorvig pulled back the lever and pressed the lock forward at the same time to keep the winch from rapidly unwinding, even though the platform was empty. He leaned on a simple friction brake on the far side of the winch and let go the lock. The platform slowly descended.

Shineboot turned to head back to the shaft and started down the ladder.

“Shineboot,” Yorvig said. The dwarf looked up at him, only head and shoulders left in sight. “Load for both of them, please.”

“It’s hard enough to keep up with Hobblefoot,” Shineboot answered, his brow furrowed.

“I’m making this for all of us. We can’t survive any other way.”

Shineboot glanced down.

“I’ll do what I can,” he said.

It had taken Yorvig more than twenty hours of work to get the lift system functioning. He allowed himself four or five hours of sleep before waking in the dark and heading back into the woods with his axe to fell trees.

It took Yorvig half that day to fashion two strong wheelbarrows. He split wide enough planks to allow him to fashion wheels out of four or five pieces pinned together with fitted joints. It took more time to sharpen his tools to the fine hone he needed than to do the actual work of shaving them until they had smooth curves.

"The trick is to let the tool do the work," his father had said. It was common wisdom, but it made a difference to him that his father had repeated it so often.

The barrows were certainly not the labor of a master woodworker, but he hoped they would function, at least for a while. Maybe things would improve. With the tools, Shineboot’s rate of moving ore should increase. All of this should have been done already. The more he thought about it, the more it irritated Yorvig that it wasn’t. He wished that old rinlen Cobblegear was there. He’d been the rinlen of the salt mine where Yorvig had apprenticed. That white-beard brooked no nonsense and ran a mine with strict efficiency. No one had loved him over-much, and yet the mine moved. They mined with deep songs rather than angry silence.

By the time he’d finished the second barrow, Yorvig’s annoyance had peaked. He thought of going to help Shineboot for the rest of the day, but he didn’t want to be anywhere near Hobblefoot or Sledgefist. It was late afternoon, and the sun had already dipped below the ridge, bathing the dell in shadow even though dark would not truly fall for hours yet. Yorvig was sick of working wood. It may be lighter and easier stuff than stone, but he did not love it the same.

He replaced his tools in his mining harness and followed his feet out of the adit and into the dell, around the tailings pond, and up the slope. Mostly, it was solitude that he sought in his own adit high in the cliff face. He climbed the broken pile of rock, up the half-buried tree trunk, and grasped his rope, hauling himself upward. It was no problem for most dwarves, especially those who worked in the mines, to pull themselves up with their arms alone, but Yorvig walked up the rock with his feet, using the niches he’d carved for the purpose.

Once he reached the adit opening, he sat and dangled his legs over the edge, staring away into the tops of the pine trees and breathing in the mountain air. There was a hint of chill in it. Already a waxing crescent moon floated in the sky above, the ninth moon of the year.

Yorvig unplugged his waterskin and took a long drink. He turned and looked at the back wall of rock where he’d stopped digging. There was a large protrusion of quartz he’d been working to break away when Sledgefist had interrupted him. His hand was on his hammer before he even stood up. He prepared a chisel, fingering the edge to test the sharpness. This chunk should fracture without too much more work.

He was right, he’d only given a dozen blows, repositioned his chisel, and struck a half dozen times more when the quartz popped and a slab of rock the breadth of his chest fractured away, clattering onto the floor of the short tunnel.

Yorvig’s whole world focused in on one spot, one vein, one color. It was gold. There was a vein of bright gold ore the width of his little finger, but the quartz all around was flecked with hardrock gold flakes the size of a fingernail. He’d exposed a narrow section, but it continued into the rock. This could be the edge of a lode that could make them all rich, that could send this claim from being profitable to being one in a hundred, or a thousand. It depended on how big the lode truly was. All this hit him in one overwhelming moment of color and quartz.

Yorvig went to take a step back and nearly fell. The edge of the fallen chunk of quartz had landed on the side of his boot, pinching it. It had missed his foot, but it pinned the edge of his boot when he went to move. He hadn’t even noticed the pressure.

This wealth eclipsed the amethyst. Sledgefist and Hobblefoot could not deny they should mine it. This would solve their fight; they’d have to abandon their opposing drifts and move the labor here. With so much to be gained, the argument about shares could hardly be maintained. . .

Yorvig's stomach sank, and he felt momentarily dizzy as another realization came. With so much more at stake, the argument could become worse than ever. This strike could put such a strain on their tenuous companionship that separating would be unavoidable. But who would abandon the claim?

Who could? This was a chance at real wealth, the kind that could make the fathers of dwarf-maids court them instead of the other way around, seeking husbands for their daughters. And why else were they out here in the wilds, except to establish their lines for the next generation?

If they already had an agreement, if oaths were sworn to a rinlen, they could all abide if a new strike was made, even a strike of surpassing worth.

But there was no agreement.

Telling them could send everything over a precipice.

Yorvig got to work. First, he had to hollow out above and below the vein itself, just enough to make an inset for the rock. It took him two hours, but he managed to fit a slab of the quartz over the vein. It looked like the rock wall was cracked, but unless someone came and began to work the drift, they’d never know that Yorvig had put rock back in place there. And what were the odds anyone was going to come here besides himself?

He untied the rope he used to climb, and replaced it with the longer section of rope he still kept. He let both ends dangle to the slope below and descended holding both sections of the rope together. Once at the bottom, he pulled one end of the rope until the other end slipped through the anchor loop of rock and fell down to the ground. He coiled it up.

There. Anyone who wanted to reach the adit would have to work for it, now.

Sledgefist and Hobblefoot would have to hammer out their disagreement soon. They couldn’t go on like this. When they did, shares would have to be settled. Then, he could reveal the strike—pretend as if it was a new discovery. Until then, he couldn't risk it.