For the next hour the pair was feted with beer while passing vehicles were hailed in to witness the find.  A jeep loaded with assorted lengths of plastic pipe stopped and its driver began searching for a fitting in the assortment of hardware located in an old barn near the store.  The barn, owned by an absentee landlord, was known locally as the pic-n-steal.  Its door only apparently secured, was held in place by a heavy unlocked chain wound around a rusty hasp.

Brian Bundy, the driver of the jeep, lurched across the street to accept a beer, his twentieth in a day that had begun at four A.M.  "God damn," he observed in his mildest oath, weighing a bottle of gold in each hand.  "This is enough to make me give up eating meat, become a Seventh Day Adventist and get the old lady into mining."  He looked as if he might drop from exhaustion at any moment.  Every few minutes a lady bug larva fell from the giant walnut tree shading the bar onto an exposed arm or neck bestowing a sudden unannounced bite like a red-hot needle.  This punctuation never failed to bring a screech and curse from the startled recipient. Bundy stood weaving in place, only his feet planted firmly.  He deftly plucked a red-spotted larva from the neck of an unsuspecting drinker and held the struggling insect out for inspection.  "Did you guys know these little suckers bite worse when there's gold around," he extemporized.  His arm seemed to jerk in response to the bug's minute, invisible contortions.  "And they get strong too," he added fervently.  "Man, if you'd found another half-pound of gold these bugs would be pulling our arms off."  With an elaborate heave he rid himself of the larva.  "Them lady-bug babies are ugly enough to give you cancer," he observed with a disgusted grimace. 

The table was roaring with laughter as Bundy left, pitching short-waisted and broad shouldered into the jeep, which, as develops between some individuals and their pets or spouses, he closely resembled in gait, form and mileage.  The collection of drinkers watched the jeep leave in a cloud of dust and blue smoke, somehow satisfied with the picturesque departure.  An old miner sitting at the table recalled with a laugh, "When that Bundy first showed up in this country twenty years ago and looked like he was staying awake three or four days in a row working, or drunk or something, I says, 'Now that's a man who'll never make it on the River.'"  The speaker shakes his head and laughs softly at his misjudgment.

As the day began cooling more people arrived at the Forks.  Two Forest Service trucks stopped by after work.  Coming from the store, ice cream in hand, a young Ranger spotted a miner he recognized and called out in a hopeful effort at presenting a human face, "How's that mining coming, Ernie?"  He was correctly convinced that Ernie never mined and recalled previous discomforts when Ernie had responded with a teasing, careless line to inquiries or suggestions concerning his mining efforts. 

This time too, Ernie roared with laughter and called back across the road in a strong voice clearly meant to be heard by all, "Now Hank, you know I never mine."

"That inbred lowlife,” the ranger appeared to mutter to himself.  "Humiliating me like that in front of everybody.  He'll find out soon enough who controls this country."
 

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