You listen, Daylight, an’ mark my words, the time’s comin’ when
winter diggin’s’ll be all the go. There’ll be men in them days
that’ll laugh at our summer stratchin’ an’ ground-wallerin’.”
At that time, winter mining was undreamed of on the Yukon. From
Burning Daylight
45
the moss and grass the land was frozen to bed-rock, and frozen
gravel, hard as granite, defied pick and shovel. In the summer
the men stripped the earth down as fast as the sun thawed it.
Then was the time they did their mining. During the winter they
freighted their provisions, went moose-hunting, got all ready for
the summer’s work, and then loafed the bleak, dark months through
in the big central camps such as Circle City and Forty Mile.
“Winter diggin’s sure comin’,” Daylight agreed. “Wait till that
big strike is made up river. Then you-all’ll see a new kind of
mining. What’s to prevent wood-burning and sinking shafts and
drifting along bed-rock? Won’t need to timber. That frozen muck
and gravel’ll stand till hell is froze and its mill-tails is
turned to ice-cream. Why, they’ll be working pay-streaks a
hundred feet deep in them days that’s comin’. I’m sure going
along with you-all, Elijah.”
Elijah laughed, gathered his two partners up, and was making a
second attempt to reach the door
“Hold on,” Daylight called. “I sure mean it.”
The three men turned back suddenly upon him, in their faces
surprise, delight, and incredulity.
“G’wan, you’re foolin’,” said Finn, the other lumberjack, a
quiet, steady, Wisconsin man.
“There’s my dawgs and sled,” Daylight answered. “That’ll make
two
teams and halve the loads–though we-all’ll have to travel easy
for
a spell, for them dawgs is sure tired.”
The three men were overjoyed, but still a trifle incredulous.
“Now look here,” Joe Hines blurted out, “none of your foolin,
Daylight. We mean business. Will you come?”
Daylight extended his hand and shook.
“Then you’d best be gettin’ to bed,” Elijah advised. “We’re
mushin’
out at six, and four hours’ sleep is none so long.”
“Mebbe we ought to lay over a day and let him rest up,” Finn
suggested.
Daylight’s pride was touched.
“No you don’t,” he cried. “We all start at six. What time do
you-all want to be called? Five? All right, I’ll rouse you-all
out.”
Burning Daylight
46
“You oughter have some sleep,” Elijah counselled gravely. “You
can’t go on forever.”
Daylight was tired, profoundly tired. Even his iron body
acknowledged weariness. Every muscle was clamoring for bed and
rest, was appalled at continuance of exertion and at thought of
the trail again. All this physical protest welled up into his
brain in a wave of revolt. But deeper down, scornful and
defiant, was Life itself, the essential fire of it, whispering
that all Daylight’s fellows were looking on, that now was the
time to pile deed upon deed, to flaunt his strength in the face
of strength. It was merely Life, whispering its ancient lies.
And in league with it was whiskey, with all its consummate
effrontery and vain-glory.
“Mebbe you-all think I ain’t weaned yet?” Daylight demanded.
“Why, I ain’t had a drink, or a dance, or seen a soul in two
months. You-all get to bed. I’ll call you-all at five.”
And for the rest of the night he danced on in his stocking feet,
and at five in the morning, rapping thunderously on the door of
his new partners’ cabin, he could be heard singing the song that
had given him his name:–
“Burning daylight, you-all Stewart River hunchers! Burning
daylight! Burning daylight! Burning daylight!”
CHAPTER VII
This time the trail was easier. It was better packed, and they
were not carrying mail against time. The day’s run was shorter,
and likewise the hours on trail. On his mail run Daylight had
played out three Indians; but his present partners knew that they
must not be played out when they arrived at the Stewart bars, so
they set the slower pace. And under this milder toil, where his
companions nevertheless grew weary, Daylight recuperated and
rested up. At Forty Mile they laid over two days for the sake of
the dogs, and at Sixty Mile Daylight’s team was left with the
trader. Unlike Daylight, after the terrible run from Selkirk to
Circle City, they had been unable to recuperate on the back
trail. So the four men pulled on from Sixty Mile with a fresh
team of dogs on Daylight’s sled.
The following night they camped in the cluster of islands at the
mouth of the Stewart. Daylight talked town sites, and, though
the others laughed at him, he staked the whole maze of high,
wooded islands.
“Just supposing the big strike does come on the Stewart,” he
argued. “Mebbe you-all’ll be in on it, and then again mebbe
you-all won’t. But I sure will. You-all’d better reconsider
and go in with me on it.”
Burning Daylight
47
But they were stubborn.
“You’re as bad as Harper and Joe Ladue,” said Joe Hines.
“They’re always at that game. You know that big flat jest below
the Klondike and under Moosehide Mountain? Well, the recorder at
Forty Mile was tellin’ me they staked that not a month ago–The
Harper & Ladue Town Site. Ha! Ha! Ha!”
Elijah and Finn joined him in his laughter; but Daylight was
gravely in earnest.
“There she is!” he cried. “The hunch is working! It’s in the
air, I tell you-all! What’d they-all stake the big flat for if
they-all didn’t get the hunch? Wish I’d staked it.”
The regret in his voice was provocative of a second burst of
laughter.
“Laugh, you-all, laugh! That’s what’s the trouble with you-all.
You-all think gold-hunting is the only way to make a stake. But
let me tell you-all that when the big strike sure does come,
you-all’ll do a little surface-scratchin’ and muck-raking, but
danged little you-all’ll have to show for it. You-all laugh at
quicksilver in the riffles and think flour gold was manufactured
by God Almighty for the express purpose of fooling suckers and
chechaquos. Nothing but coarse gold for you-all, that’s your
way, not getting half of it out of the ground and losing into the
tailings half of what you-all do get.
“But the men that land big will be them that stake the town
sites, organize the tradin’ companies, start the banks–”
Here the explosion of mirth drowned him out. Banks in Alaska!
The idea of it was excruciating.
“Yep, and start the stock exchanges-”
Again they were convulsed. Joe Hines rolled over on his
sleeping-robe, holding his sides.
“And after them will come the big mining sharks that buy whole
creeks where you-all have been scratching like a lot of picayune
hens, and they-all will go to hydraulicking in summer and
steam-thawing in winter–”
Steam-thawing! That was the limit. Daylight was certainly
exceeding himself in his consummate fun-making.
Steam-thawing–when even wood-burning was an untried experiment,
a dream in the air!
“Laugh, dang you, laugh! Why your eyes ain’t open yet. You-all
are a bunch of little mewing kittens. I tell you-all if that
Burning Daylight
48
strike comes on Klondike, Harper and Ladue will be millionaires.
And if it comes on Stewart, you-all watch the Elam Harnish town
site boom. In them days, when you-all come around makin’ poor
mouths…” He heaved a sigh of resignation. “Well, I
suppose I’ll have to give you-all a grub-stake or soup, or
something or other.”
Daylight had vision. His scope had been rigidly limited, yet
whatever he saw, he saw big. His mind was orderly, his
imagination practical, and he never dreamed idly. When he
superimposed a feverish metropolis on a waste of timbered,
snow-covered flat, he predicated first the gold-strike that made
the city possible, and next he had an eye for steamboat landings,
sawmill and warehouse locations, and all the needs of a
far-northern mining city. But this, in turn, was the mere
setting for something bigger, namely, the play of temperament.
Opportunities swarmed in the streets and buildings and human and
economic relations of the city of his dream. It was a larger
table for gambling. The limit was the sky, with the Southland on
one side and the aurora borealis on the other. The play would be
big, bigger than any Yukoner had ever imagined, and he, Burning
Daylight, would see that he got in on that play.
In the meantime there was naught to show for it but the hunch.
But it was coming. As he would stake his last ounce on a good
poker hand, so he staked his life and effort on the hunch that
the future held in store a big strike on the Upper River. So he
and his three companions, with dogs, and sleds, and snowshoes,
toiled up the frozen breast of the Stewart, toiled on and on
through the white wilderness where the unending stillness was
never broken by the voices of men, the stroke of an ax, or the
distant crack of a rifle. They alone moved through the vast and