________________________________________________
_ Ten days later, Harper and Joe Ladue arrived at Sixty Mile, and
Daylight, still a trifle weak, but strong enough to obey the
hunch that had come to him, traded a third interest in his
Stewart town site for a third interest in theirs on the Klondike.
They had faith in the Upper Country, and Harper left down-stream,
with a raft-load of supplies, to start a small post at the mouth
of the Klondike.
"Why don't you tackle Indian River, Daylight?" Harper advised, at
parting. "There's whole slathers of creeks and draws draining in
up there, and somewhere gold just crying to be found. That's my
hunch. There's a big strike coming, and Indian River ain't going
to be a million miles away."
"And the place is swarming with moose," Joe Ladue added. "Bob
Henderson's up there somewhere, been there three years now,
swearing something big is going to happen, living off'n straight
moose and prospecting around like a crazy man."
Daylight decided to go Indian River a flutter, as he expressed
it; but Elijah could not be persuaded into accompanying him.
Elijah's soul had been seared by famine, and he was obsessed by
fear of repeating the experience.
"I jest can't bear to separate from grub," he explained. "I know
it's downright foolishness, but I jest can't help it. It's all I
can do to tear myself away from the table when I know I'm full to
bustin' and ain't got storage for another bite. I'm going back
to Circle to camp by a cache until I get cured."
Daylight lingered a few days longer, gathering strength and
arranging his meagre outfit. He planned to go in light, carrying
a pack of seventy-five pounds and making his five dogs pack as
well, Indian fashion, loading them with thirty pounds each.
Depending on the report of Ladue, he intended to follow Bob
Henderson's example and live practically on straight meat. When
Jack Kearns' scow, laden with the sawmill from Lake Linderman,
tied up at Sixty Mile, Daylight bundled his outfit and dogs on
board, turned his town-site application over to Elijah to be
filed, and the same day was landed at the mouth of Indian River.
Forty miles up the river, at what had been described to him as
Quartz Creek, he came upon signs of Bob Henderson's work, and
also at Australia Creek, thirty miles farther on. The weeks came
and went, but Daylight never encountered the other man. However,
he found moose plentiful, and he and his dogs prospered on the
meat diet. He found "pay" that was no more than "wages" on a
dozen surface bars, and from the generous spread of flour gold in
the muck and gravel of a score of creeks, he was more confident
than ever that coarse gold in quantity was waiting to be
unearthed. Often he turned his eyes to the northward ridge of
hills, and pondered if the gold came from them. In the end, he
ascended Dominion Creek to its head, crossed the divide, and came
down on the tributary to the Klondike that was later to be called
Hunker Creek. While on the divide, had he kept the big dome on
his right, he would have come down on the Gold Bottom, so named
by Bob Henderson, whom he would have found at work on it, taking
out the first pay-gold ever panned on the Klondike. Instead,
Daylight continued down Hunker to the Klondike, and on to the
summer fishing camp of the Indians on the Yukon.
Here for a day he camped with Carmack, a squaw-man, and his
Indian brother-in-law, Skookum Jim, bought a boat, and, with his
dogs on board, drifted down the Yukon to Forty Mile. August was
drawing to a close, the days were growing shorter, and winter was
coming on. Still with unbounded faith in his hunch that a strike
was coming in the Upper Country, his plan was to get together a
party of four or five, and, if that was impossible, at least a
partner, and to pole back up the river before the freeze-up to do
winter prospecting. But the men of Forty Mile were without
faith. The diggings to the westward were good enough for them.
Then it was that Carmack, his brother-in-law, Skookum Jim, and
Cultus Charlie, another Indian, arrived in a canoe at Forty Mile,
went straight to the gold commissioner, and recorded three claims
and a discovery claim on Bonanza Creek. After that, in the
Sourdough Saloon, that night, they exhibited coarse gold to the
sceptical crowd. Men grinned and shook their heads. They had
seen the motions of a gold strike gone through before. This was
too patently a scheme of Harper's and Joe Ladue's, trying to
entice prospecting in the vicinity of their town site and trading
post. And who was Carmack? A squaw-man. And who ever heard of
a squaw-man striking anything? And what was Bonanza Creek?
Merely a moose pasture, entering the Klondike just above its
mouth, and known to old-timers as Rabbit Creek. Now if Daylight
or Bob Henderson had recorded claims and shown coarse gold,
they'd known there was something in it. But Carmack, the
squaw-man! And Skookum Jim! And Cultus Charlie! No, no; that
was
asking too much.
Daylight, too, was sceptical, and this despite his faith in the
Upper Country. Had he not, only a few days before, seen Carmack
loafing with his Indians and with never a thought of prospecting?
But at eleven that night, sitting on the edge of his bunk and
unlacing his moccasins, a thought came to him. He put on his
coat and hat and went back to the Sourdough. Carmack was still
there, flashing his coarse gold in the eyes of an unbelieving
generation. Daylight ranged alongside of him and emptied
Carmack's sack into a blower. This he studied for a long time.
Then, from his own sack, into another blower, he emptied several
ounces of Circle City and Forty Mile gold. Again, for a long
time, he studied and compared. Finally, he pocketed his own
gold, returned Carmack's, and held up his hand for silence.
"Boys, I want to tell you-all something," he said. "She's sure
come--the up-river strike. And I tell you-all, clear and
forcible, this is it. There ain't never been gold like that in a
blower in this country before. It's new gold. It's got more
silver in it. You-all can see it by the color. Carmack's sure
made a strike. Who-all's got faith to come along with me?"
There were no volunteers. Instead, laughter and jeers went up.
"Mebbe you got a town site up there," some one suggested.
"I sure have," was the retort, "and a third interest in Harper
and Ladue's. And I can see my corner lots selling out for more
than your hen-scratching ever turned up on Birch Creek."
"That's all right, Daylight," one Curly Parson interposed
soothingly. "You've got a reputation, and we know you're dead
sure on the square. But you're as likely as any to be mistook on
a flimflam game, such as these loafers is putting up. I ask you
straight: When did Carmack do this here prospecting? You said
yourself he was lying in camp, fishing salmon along with his
Siwash relations, and that was only the other day."
"And Daylight told the truth," Carmack interrupted excitedly.
"And I'm telling the truth, the gospel truth. I wasn't
prospecting. Hadn't no idea of it. But when Daylight pulls out,
the very same day, who drifts in, down river, on a raft-load of
supplies, but Bob Henderson. He'd come out to Sixty Mile,
planning to go back up Indian River and portage the grub across
the divide between Quartz Creek and Gold Bottom-"
"Where in hell's Gold Bottom?" Curly Parsons demanded.
"Over beyond Bonanza that was Rabbit Creek," the squaw-man went
on. "It's a draw of a big creek that runs into the Klondike.
That's the way I went up, but I come back by crossing the divide,
keeping along the crest several miles, and dropping down into
Bonanza. 'Come along with me, Carmack, and get staked,' says Bob
Henderson to me. 'I've hit it this time, on Gold Bottom. I've
took out forty-five ounces already.' And I went along, Skookum
Jim and Cultus Charlie, too. And we all staked on Gold Bottom.
I come back by Bonanza on the chance of finding a moose. Along
down Bonanza we stopped and cooked grub. I went to sleep, and
what does Skookum Jim do but try his hand at prospecting. He'd
been watching Henderson, you see. He goes right slap up to the
foot of a birch tree, first pan, fills it with dirt, and washes
out more'n a dollar coarse gold. Then he wakes me up, and I goes
at it. I got two and a half the first lick. Then I named the
creek 'Bonanza,' staked Discovery, and we come here and
recorded."
He looked about him anxiously for signs of belief, but found
himself in a circle of incredulous faces--all save Daylight, who
had studied his countenance while he told his story.
"How much is Harper and Ladue givin' you for manufacturing a
stampede?" some one asked.
"They don't know nothing about it," Carmack answered. "I tell
you it's the God Almighty's truth. I washed out three ounces in
an hour."
"And there's the gold," Daylight said. "I tell you-all boys they
ain't never been gold like that in the blower before. Look at
the color of it."
"A trifle darker," Curly Parson said. "Most likely Carmack's
been carrying a couple of silver dollars along in the same sack.
And what's more, if there's anything in it, why ain't Bob
Henderson smoking along to record?"
"He's up on Gold Bottom," Carmack explained. "We made the strike
coming back."
A burst of laughter was his reward.
"Who-all'll go pardners with me and pull out in a poling-boat
to-morrow for this here Bonanza?" Daylight asked.
No one volunteered.
"Then who-all'll take a job from me, cash wages in advance, to
pole up a thousand pounds of grub?"
Curly Parsons and another, Pat Monahan, accepted, and, with his
customary speed, Daylight paid them their wages in advance and
arranged the purchase of the supplies, though he emptied his sack
in doing so. He was leaving the Sourdough, when he suddenly
turned back to the bar from the door.
"Got another hunch?" was the query.
"I sure have," he answered. "Flour's sure going to be worth what
a man will pay for it this winter up on the Klondike. Who'll
lend me some money?"
On the instant a score of the men who had declined to accompany
him on the wild-goose chase were crowding about him with
proffered gold-sacks.
"How much flour do you want?" asked the Alaska Commercial
Company's storekeeper.
"About two ton."
The proffered gold-sacks were not withdrawn, though their owners
were guilty of an outrageous burst of merriment.
"What are you going to do with two tons?" the store-keeper
demanded.
"Son," Daylight made reply, "you-all ain't been in this country
long enough to know all its curves. I'm going to start a
sauerkraut factory and combined dandruff remedy."
He borrowed money right and left, engaging and paying six other
men to bring up the flour in half as many more poling-boats.
Again his sack was empty, and he was heavily in debt.
Curly Parsons bowed his head on the bar with a gesture of
despair.
"What gets me," he moaned, "is what you're going to do with it
all."
"I'll tell you-all in simple A, B, C and one, two, three."
Daylight held up one finger and began checking off. "Hunch
number one: a big strike coming in Upper Country. Hunch number
two: Carmack's made it. Hunch number three: ain't no hunch at
all. It's a cinch. If one and two is right, then flour just has
to go sky-high. If I'm riding hunches one and two, I just got to
ride this cinch, which is number three. If I'm right, flour'll
balance gold on the scales this winter. I tell you-all boys,
when you-all got a hunch, play it for all it's worth. What's
luck good for, if you-all ain't to ride it? And when you-all
ride it, ride like hell. I've been years in this country, just
waiting for the right hunch to come along. And here she is.
Well, I'm going to play her, that's all. Good night, you-all;
good night." _
Read next: PART I: CHAPTER X
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