"I was afraid that the cooking of two months or more had destroyed the
canvas bags; then again the heavy deposit of scale might have cemented
the bags to the flues. In either case, rough handling would send the
dust to the bottom of the boiler, making it difficult if not impossible
to recover; and worse yet, manifest itself sometime and give me dead
away.
"I concluded to go at the matter right, and after two hours of hard
work, managed to get the upright throttle-pipe out of the dome. I drew
her water down below the flue-line, and though it was tolerably warm, I
got in.
"Both of my surmises were partially correct; the canvas was rotted, in a
measure, and the bags were fastened to the flues. The dust had been put
up in buckskin bags, first, and these had been put into shot-sacks; the
buckskin was shrunken but intact. I took a good look around, before I
dared take the treasure into the sunlight; but the coast was clear, and
inside of an hour they were locked in my clothes-box, and the cover was
on the kettle again and I was pumping her up by hand.
"I was afraid something would happen to me or the engine, so I buried
the packages in a bunch of willows near the track.
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