Bob and Wendy walked up to Jerry. He was a stout, muscular man, with very tanned skin and gnarled, dirty hands. His eyes glinted through the shade of an I.S.M Mining cap. "Jerry." Bob said as he shook his hand.
"Good to see you, Bob. You and your team look ready to mine." Jerry said in a coarse voice.
"You wouldn't believe what we went through to get here. I wanted to talk details on the claim." Bob replied.
"Alright. Here's a little something I've gotten off of it." Jerry said as he pulled out a jar about a third full of gold.
"That's 45 ounces from a 150 yard run." he explained. Bob was impressed.
"Okay, I'll take the claim." Bob said.
" Sounds good. 5 Percent royalty and I expect a down payment of 25 ounces in two weeks." Jerry said. Bob suddenly realized that 25 ounces was a lot of gold.
"You're not going to be disappointed." Bob said. Jerry then hopped onto his truck, Splatter and lead his team up to another mine of his, leaving Bob and his crew to themselves on the claim. Once they had unloaded, Bob addressed his machines "Okay, team, Scoop, Muck, Axel, Spade, and Brick, you're going to open a cut. Jerry marked the claim boundaries with red tape. Everyone else, we're going to set up camp. Can we build it?" said Bob.
"Yes we can!" The crew replied, and they immediately set to work. Brick ripped up the ground with his ripper and shoved the dirt off to the side. Scoop loaded overburden into Muck, and Spade loaded Axel. The two dumped the overburden out of the way. Bob and the others were busy building a cabin, a shelter for the machines, and a shop nearby for their tools. Benny and Clark dug a foundation, while Dizzy mixed up concrete to pour. Roley flattened the concrete out, then Bob and Wendy cut down trees to make the cabin and shack with as well as firewood. Benny, Lofty, and Clark hauled the logs to the cabin, where Lofty hoisted them into place and Bob drilled holes into them. He then inserted bolts in the holes and screwed them together with his screw gun. Meanwhile, Wendy was at work on a shack to store their supplies in. Benny dug a U shape in the ground dug out a spot of land and brought in unused logs for Wendy to cut into halves, then he held them in place while Dizzy poured concrete into the trench. Once that was accomplished, Bob had finished framing up the cabin and came to help Wendy with the shack. They nailed boards to the wall of logs, three of them, three feet apart, then Bob cut out a hole with his chainsaw for a door and two windows, one on each side. There were only three walls in the shack to make it easier to get to their tools. Later, Bob and Clark moved in the gold table.
"What does this thing do, Bob?" Clark asked.
"This is the gold table, Clark. Once we hit dirt with gold in it, Axel will carry it to Sifter. You'll load it into Sifter, and what he'll do is with his shaker deck, he'll shake the fine materials off of the gold and the sluices will catch it because gold is heavier than water, 18 times more so, in fact."

"Wow." Clark said with amazement. Meanwhile, in the cut, there was trouble. The diggers were almost halfway into the cut when Spade was digging with his bucket and he heard a crunch. He looked down and saw that the ground was frozen. Scoop, Muck and Brick hit frozen dirt, too. He radioed Bob for help.

"Bob, there's a problem in the cut. The ground is frozen." Scoop said. Three hundred yards uphill, Bob replied,

"Okay, Scoop, I'm on my way." He turned to Clark and said, "I have to go, Clark, there's trouble in the cut!" Scrambler pulled up and Bob hopped on. The small quadbike zipped and zoomed down the hill to the cut. There Scoop and the diggers were in dismay. The ground was too hard to dig. "This is quite the dilemma, Scoop." Bob said. He tried to think of a way to help his crew. If they could not get down to pay dirt, then they would have no chance of meeting claim owner Jerry's deadline and would have to leave.

"Just try and get as much dirt as you can out of it. We need to get to pay dirt, quickly!" Bob said.

"No prob, Bob!" Muck said enthusiastically. The diggers worked as hard as they could to dig out the frozen dirt, but then, storm clouds gathered. Lighting flashed as the machines were excavating. Thunder rumbled and Bob radioed them,

"Get back up to camp, team! The weather looks bad!"

"We're on the way!" Scoop said as he and the diggers retreated out of the cut and up to camp. The machines gathered under their makeshift shelter while Bob and Wendy get into a tent they had pitched while their cabin was being built. The storm continued into the night. The next morning, the team got back to work. Once again, there was trouble in the cut. After the rain, the cut was a mucky, muddy mess. Brick shoved the overburden out of the way, but most of it went right around his blade because it was very wet. He was backing up when he suddenly began to slide.
"Whoa!" he exclaimed, then with a loud crash he slid into a mud hole. He tried to drive out, but he was stuck.
"Spade! Spade! I need some help!" he shouted across the cut. Spade finished dumping a bucket of overburden into Axel when he saw his friend stranded in the mud. Spade rushed over to help as he extended his bucket out and quickly helped Brick out of the mud. Spade felt of the material with his bucket as he chuckled.
"First it was too hard, now it's too soft!" Suddenly, he heard a crunch. He pulled his bucket out of the hole, expecting more frozen overburden, but he was shocked to see chunky bedrock. Scoop came over to see what was the matter and he saw Spade's bucket full of bedrock. He immediately radioed Bob.
"Bob! We've hit bedrock!" Up the hill, Bob was at work when he replied,
"I'm on the way. Wendy, hand me a gold pan!" he said. Wendy gave him a pan and Bob hopped onto Scrambler, who spirited him into the cut. Once there, Bob gathered a handful of dirt and panned it. In mere seconds, lines of fine gold appeared in the pan.
"Wow!" Scrambler said with excitement. Bob said to Scoop,
"Okay, Scoop, start stockpiling this pay dirt!"
"We're on it!" Scoop said. He took a bucket full of dirt and loaded it into Muck, then Spade shoveled pay into Axel's dumper bed. He blew his horn with excitement,
"First load of pay dirt from Diamond Creek!" and chugged up the hill. Up the hill, Wendy marked off the spot to dump pay dirt at, and Axel raised his dumper bed. Muck followed with another load of pay dirt, and the stockpile began to grow with each passing hour.