He looked curiously at his reflection in one of the broad
pools of overflow, and fancied he looked older. He watched the rush and
outset of the turbid current hurrying to meet the South Fork, and to
eventually lose itself in the yellow Sacramento. Even in his
preoccupation he was impressed with a likeness to himself and his
companions in this flood that had burst its peaceful boundaries. In the
drifting fragments of one of their forgotten flumes washed from the
bank, he fancied he saw an omen of the disintegration and decay of the
Lone Star claim.
The strange hush in the air that he had noticed before--a calm so
inconsistent with that hour and the season as to seem
portentous--became more marked in contrast to the feverish rush of the
turbulent watercourse. A few clouds lazily huddled in the west
apparently had gone to rest with the sun on beds of somnolent poppies.
There was a gleam as of golden water everywhere along the horizon,
washing out the cold snow-peaks, and drowning even the rising moon. The
creek caught it here and there, until, in grim irony, it seemed to bear
their broken sluice-boxes and useless engines on the very Pactolian
stream they had been hopefully created to direct and carry.
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