My Gold Rush Career Begins in 1984

Chapter 83 Gold Emerges from the Shady Slope
Over the next two days, Zhou Jingming, Peng Yuanchao, and Wu Yang, carrying some canned meat and tomato-sauce fish, visited the camps and mines of Zhang and Wu, who were located upstream, and Li and Zhao, who were located downstream.

Like Peng Yuanchao's team, they were all teams of ten. The other three camps only had one hunting rifle each, while Zhang's team had two, one of which was a 12-gauge double-barreled hunting rifle with a slide.

The teams were all from the same village and came together. They all said they were farmers from a remote mountain village. The only one that caught Zhou Jingming's interest was an old man surnamed Liu with a goatee on his chin in Zhang's team. He was the owner of the size 12 hunting rifle.

It's not that Old Liu is a dangerous person, but rather that he's an old hunter from the foot of Mount Taibai in the Qinling Mountains.

Zhou Jingming traveled between Sichuan and Wucheng by train, passing through the Qinling Mountains more than once or twice.

Moreover, in my previous life, I also drove to the Qinling Mountains with my friends to hunt.

The Qinling Mountains are covered with dense primeval forests, which are home to many rare birds and animals, as well as ferocious beasts such as black bears, leopards, and wild boars.

An experienced hunter from that kind of place would definitely have impeccable skills.

The roe deer meat that Zhang, the foreman, brought this time was from the ones he shot; he hit two with two shots.

That marksmanship is impressive.

Zhou Jingming, being a man of insight, made a bet with him: he would hit a tree branch that had been washed ashore by the river and was resting on a river rock, about 70 or 80 meters away. If he hit it, he would treat Zhou to drinks.

Old Liu liked wine and always carried a reddish-brown gourd with him. During the meal, he drank two ounces of wine, but still felt it wasn't enough, so he asked Zhang, the foreman, for more. Zhang looked disgusted and ignored him.

There was no wine in that gourd long ago.

People come to pan for gold, and carrying supplies into the mountains is very strenuous. They bring some alcohol, but it's difficult to have a long-term supply every meal. It's mostly just to cope with the bitter cold of early spring and as an occasional treat.

When Zhou Jingming saw him resting, he sat outside the dugout, lifted the copper lid of the gourd, tilted his head back, and poured the gourd into his mouth. After a while, not a drop fell. Finally, he hugged the gourd and brought it to his nose to smell the aroma.

His words at this moment were clearly aimed at getting Old Man Liu to agree.

Old Liu immediately asked, "Does it count?"

After receiving Zhou Jingming's approval, he crawled into the dugout, took out his hunting rifle, and without even measuring it, he swiftly raised the gun and fired.

As the gunshot rang out, the tree branch was visibly shattered and sent flying.

This amazing performance astonished both Zhou Jingming and Wu Yang.

Both men knew how to use guns and were good marksmen. They knew that Old Liu was shooting entirely by feel, something only a very experienced person could do.

To sum it up in one sentence: man and gun became one.

Zhou Jingming kept his word and took him back to the dugout to fill a gourd with wine, which must have been about three catties.

He had a brief chat with Zhang, the foreman, and learned that Old Liu was from the next village and had come begging to them. They had initially thought he was too old and not good at work, but they still brought him along because they valued his marksmanship. They thought that having someone like him in the valley would mean they could have more wild game, and he would also be useful if they needed to use a gun.

But actually, Old Liu isn't that old; he's just approaching sixty.

Perhaps due to his long-term drinking habit, his eyes always looked blurry and his pupils appeared cloudy.

Zhou Jingming was simply interested in hunting and wanted to learn from him, so he intended to make friends with him.

Most of the team members were injured and would probably need to recover for another seven or eight days. The gold mining operation could not proceed for the time being. Zhou Jingming felt a bit restless after being idle for the past two or three days.

After dinner, he thought for a while and decided that he couldn't delay any longer. Gold mining was the priority. In addition, he also felt that he should take advantage of this free time to go out and see what was going on.

He made up his mind, immediately crawled out of the tent, looked around, and saw Peng Yuanchao, who was indulging in lust after being well-fed and warm, huddled together with Sun Chenggui and others watching Jinlian. He called out to him, "Brother Peng, come here for a second, I have something to tell you!"

Peng Yuanchao looked up at Zhou Jingming, handed the comic book to Xu Youliang, and walked towards Zhou Jingming. He didn't forget to turn back to Xu Youliang and tell him, "Keep this safe for me. I'll need to read it again when I get back."

He followed Zhou Jingming into the tent before asking, "What's the matter?"

"I'm planning to go out and walk along the main river channel. It'll probably take me a few days to get back!"

What are you going to do in the main river channel?

"By this time, most of the gold-mining teams should have gone into the mountains. I'll go and find out the general situation. Anyway, I'm just idling around, so there's no harm in going out for a walk."

By the way, I also want to take this opportunity to see if I can find some people to come over.

"With just a few of us, we can't even keep up with the demand for materials being washed in the chute. We need to get more people involved."

Peng Yuanchao thought for a moment, then asked with some concern, "You're not going to leave and never come back, are you?"

"Hey hey hey... Don't look at me like that, making me look like a wronged woman who's been abandoned."

"Don't worry, I won't leave even if you try to kick me out. This little peninsula is a small gold mine, and now with the pumps and other equipment, the speed of gold panning is unmatched by ordinary gold mining teams. Do you think I would miss such a money-making opportunity?"

Zhou Jingming looked at Peng Yuanchao seriously: "I plan to ask Wu Yang to come with me. We will take two hunting rifles with us. I'm just worried that after we leave, will you be able to hold the small peninsula?"

"We still have three guns on hand. This ditch is remote, there aren't many people here, and the situation isn't as complicated as outside. We should be able to hold it!"

"It's good that we can hold on... Everyone stay alert!"

"it is good!"

While they were talking, Wu Yang listened from the side. After Peng Yuanchao returned, he shook his neck and stood up: "I've been wanting to go out and see the world for a long time. It's so boring staying here all day... Let's go, it's time to go to training."

After returning from training, Zhou Jingming and Wu Yang went to bed early and got up early the next morning. Wu Yang was busy tending the fire, while Zhou Jingming went to fetch water. He scooped a lot of flour from the flour sack, mixed it with water, kneaded it into a large dough, then pinched off small dough balls and flattened them into thin pancakes. He found a few cans of Merlin, took out the luncheon meat, cut it into small pieces, wrapped it in the pancakes, and then flattened them.

For days, they had been cooking over a fire in the same place. Underneath the burning firewood, there was already a lot of ash. Wu Yang used a stick to dig out an ash pit, put the flatbreads in the pit, and covered them with more ash.

Baked flatbread was the best kind of dry rations, and since the two were going to be traveling for several days, they made a lot extra. While waiting for the flatbread to bake, they busied themselves packing the bedding they had taken with them.

After packing their bags, the two returned to the fire to warm themselves. They used sticks to dig through the ashes, revealing golden dough that had hardened into steamed buns, emitting a wheat aroma.

Zhou Jingming never thought that wood ash was dirty, and he wasn't particular about it. He would just dust off the ash, blow on it a few times, and start eating.

After eating three steamed buns in a row, and then drinking some boiled and cooled warm water, I could feel the buns expanding in my stomach, and I immediately felt full.

He fed all the remaining offal from yesterday to the dogs, packed all the steamed buns into his bag, took out his hunting rifle, filled it with bullets, and went to find the short-handled pickaxe and shovel he had brought with him when he scouted the area. He also took out a gold bucket and two sets of brand-new waders.

Seeing Zhou Jingming carrying gold panning tools, Wu Yang asked with some confusion, "Aren't we going to the main river? Why are we bringing gold panning tools?"

Zhou Jingming smiled at him: "You don't understand, do you? Besides choosing a good mining site and setting up camp to mine, there is another way to pan for gold, which is to fight guerrilla warfare."

There are no fixed mining sites. Instead, you can pan for gold in small areas along the river where there may be deposits. This is something that one or two people can do, and it saves time and effort.

Many experienced gold prospectors prefer to do this, as it saves them the trouble of digging and transporting large amounts of sand.

Don't underestimate the guerrilla approach. If you actually do it, the gold you pan for can be just as much as, or even more than, what a group of people would earn panning for gold at a fixed mine.

We're going out for a trip, but that doesn't stop us from panning for gold and making money along the way!

Upon hearing this, Wu Yang immediately understood and urged with great interest, "Then let's go quickly!"

The two then led Jin Wang downstream along the river.

Zhou Jingming didn't linger much in this side valley, only occasionally glancing at the gold panning teams as he passed some camps.

They were all busy working on the riverbank, and almost everyone was there, so it was easy to see them all. He didn't look closely, but just noticed how many people there were and how much of a threat they posed.

The two spent almost the entire morning traveling. When they reached the main river, they finally found a place to rest on the riverbank, ate two steamed buns, and smoked a cigarette.

Looking out over the main river, both upstream and downstream, numerous camps of varying sizes dotted the riverbanks. A quick glance revealed more than a dozen such camps, making the area several times more bustling than the side valley where Zhou Jingming and his group were located. Everywhere, busy figures could be seen, and occasionally, people could be seen carrying bedding and luggage into the valley.

After observing for a while, Wu Yang asked with some curiosity, "Brother Zhou, why are most of these gold mining camps located on the south side of the valley? There are almost none on the north side?"

Zhou Jingming glanced at it: "In the gold panning business, there's a saying: Gold comes from shady slopes."

The Altai Mountains are a cold, frozen zone. According to local experience, these alluvial gold deposits, especially terrace deposits, are mostly located on the shady side of river valleys where gold sand is concentrated.

In other words, in an east-west oriented river valley, there are many placer gold deposits on the terraces of the valley slope on the south side, but very few on the north side.

In the north-south trending river valley, placer gold deposits are mostly distributed on the western slope terraces, while mineralization is rare on the eastern side.

Wu Yang was confused: "Why is that?"

"Most of the folk experience is summarized through practice, but in fact, it makes a lot of sense geographically."

Sunny slope and shady slope, I don't need to explain, you already know, they mean facing the sun and away from the shade.

Geographically, sunny and shady slopes play an important role in land cover, vegetation distribution, and soil erosion. In particular, in areas with incomplete terrain slope structures, the distribution of various land cover materials varies considerably, with sunny and shady slopes serving as boundaries.

The reason why gold grows on shady slopes is that shady slopes are prone to soil subsidence and water accumulation, which is conducive to the regrowth and fixation of vegetation.

In other words, gold in rivers tends to accumulate, settle, and become fixed on the shady slopes. This particular river valley runs east-west, so most gold panning teams chose the southern bank.

Wu Yang nodded as if he understood, then asked, "What is a terrace?"

Zhou Jingming patiently explained: "The topography and landforms in the valley are not static. Over millions of years, as the earth's crust has risen and rivers have eroded, the riverbeds have deepened, causing the early floodplain sandbeds to rise above the riverbed. This creates terraces on both sides of the valley, resembling steps."

Take a look at the topography of the riverbed to the south. Does it look like a series of terraces? Look at the large area, not concentrated in a small patch.

Wu Yang stood up and looked across the river. Just as Zhou Jingming had said, he could see the outline of a terraced field. He nodded and said, "That's right... If we're going to do guerrilla gold panning, we'll have to go to the south shady slope. The river is dozens of meters wide, so we'll have to find a place to cross."

Zhou Jingming shook his head: "Let's not go to the other side, we'll stay here!"

Wu Yang was a little confused: "Why? Didn't they say gold comes from shady slopes?"

"The places in the south where gold is found are mostly occupied by various gold panning teams. They are all there to pan for gold, so they will not miss out on places that may be rich in gold."
Because of the effects of siltation and sedimentation, the gold sand is dense and mostly buried deep. We've only been out for a few days, so we don't have much time to dig out the surface silt.

Besides, if we go there and enter someone else's territory, we'll be breaking taboos. Not only will we not find good gold deposits, but we might also get into trouble if we're not careful.

I was just saying that there is more gold on shady slopes, not that there is no gold on sunny slopes.

On the sunny slope, there are still some small areas where gold deposits accumulate, which are suitable for small-scale guerrilla operations. Once you find a suitable spot, fill your gold pan with mud and sand, and you can pan directly!

"We're here to check on the situation of the people in the valley. It's easier to observe them from the other side!"

Wu Yang nodded: "That's true!"

"We've rested enough, let's go!"

Zhou Jingming slung his bag over his shoulder, slung the Eagle Rabbit brand hunting rifle loaded with deer bullets over his shoulder, and led the way upstream.

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(End of this chapter)