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The proffered gold-sacks were not withdrawn, though their owners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
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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.”
CHAPTER X
Still men were without faith in the strike. When Daylight,
with his heavy outfit of flour, arrived at the mouth of the
Klondike, he found the big flat as desolate and tenantless as
ever. Down close by the river, Chief Isaac and his Indians were
camped beside the frames on which they were drying salmon.
Several old-timers were also in camp there. Having finished
their summer work on Ten Mile Creek, they had come down the
Yukon, bound for Circle City. But at Sixty Mile they had learned
of the strike, and stopped off to look over the ground. They had
just returned to their boat when Daylight landed his flour, and
their report was pessimistic.
“Damned moose-pasture,” quoth one, Long Jim Harney, pausing to
blow into his tin mug of tea. “Don’t you have nothin’ to do with
it, Daylight. It’s a blamed rotten sell. They’re just going
through the motions of a strike. Harper and Ladue’s behind it,
and Carmack’s the stool-pigeon. Whoever heard of mining a
moose-pasture half a mile between rim-rock and God alone knows
how far to bed-rock!”
Daylight nodded sympathetically, and considered for a space.
“Did you-all pan any?” he asked finally.
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“Pan hell!” was the indignant answer. “Think I was born
yesterday! Only a chechaquo’d fool around that pasture long
enough to fill a pan of dirt. You don’t catch me at any such
foolishness. One look was enough for me. We’re pulling on in
the morning for Circle City. I ain’t never had faith in this
Upper Country. Head-reaches of the Tanana is good enough for me
from now on, and mark my words, when the big strike comes, she’ll
come down river. Johnny, here, staked a couple of miles below
Discovery, but he don’t know no better.” Johnny looked
shamefaced.
“I just did it for fun,” he explained. “I’d give my chance in
the creek for a pound of Star plug.”
“I’ll go you,” Daylight said promptly. “But don’t you-all come
squealing if I take twenty or thirty thousand out of it.”
Johnny grinned cheerfully.
“Gimme the tobacco,” he said.
“Wish I’d staked alongside,” Long Jim murmured plaintively.
“It ain’t too late,” Daylight replied.
“But it’s a twenty-mile walk there and back.”
“I’ll stake it for you to-morrow when I go up,” Daylight offered.
“Then you do the same as Johnny. Get the fees from Tim Logan.
He’s tending bar in the Sourdough, and he’ll lend it to me. Then
fill in your own name, transfer to me, and turn the papers over
to Tim.”
“Me, too,” chimed in the third old-timer.
And for three pounds of Star plug chewing tobacco, Daylight
bought outright three five-hundred-foot claims on Bonanza. He
could still stake another claim in his own name, the others being
merely transfers.
“Must say you’re almighty brash with your chewin’ tobacco,” Long
Jim grinned. “Got a factory somewheres?”
“Nope, but I got a hunch,” was the retort, “and I tell you-all
it’s cheaper than dirt to ride her at the rate of three plugs for
three claims.”
But an hour later, at his own camp, Joe Ladue strode in, fresh
from Bonanza Creek. At first, non-committal over Carmack’s
strike, then, later, dubious, he finally offered Daylight a
hundred dollars for his share in the town site.
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“Cash?” Daylight queried.
“Sure. There she is.”
So saying, Ladue pulled out his gold-sack. Daylight hefted it
absent-mindedly, and, still absent-mindedly, untied the strings
and ran some of the gold-dust out on his palm. It showed darker
than any dust he had ever seen, with the exception of Carmack’s.
He ran the gold back tied the mouth of the sack, and returned it
to Ladue.
“I guess you-all need it more’n I do,” was Daylight’s comment.
“Nope; got plenty more,” the other assured him.
“Where that come from?”
Daylight was all innocence as he asked the question, and Ladue
received the question as stolidly as an Indian. Yet for a swift
instant they looked into each other’s eyes, and in that instant
an intangible something seemed to flash out from all the body and
spirit of Joe Ladue. And it seemed to Daylight that he had
caught this flash, sensed a secret something in the knowledge and
plans behind the other’s eyes.
“You-all know the creek better’n me,” Daylight went on. “And if
my share in the town site’s worth a hundred to you-all with what
you-all know, it’s worth a hundred to me whether I know it or
not.”
“I’ll give you three hundred,” Ladue offered desperately.
“Still the same reasoning. No matter what I don’t know, it’s
worth to me whatever you-all are willing to pay for it.”
Then it was that Joe Ladue shamelessly gave over. He led
Daylight away from the camp and men and told him things in
confidence.
“She’s sure there,” he said in conclusion. “I didn’t sluice it,
or cradle it. I panned it, all in that sack, yesterday, on the
rim-rock. I tell you, you can shake it out of the grassroots.
And what’s on bed-rock down in the bottom of the creek they ain’t
no way of tellin’. But she’s big, I tell you, big. Keep it
quiet, and locate all you can. It’s in spots, but I wouldn’t be
none surprised if some of them claims yielded as high as fifty
thousand. The only trouble is that it’s spotted.”
* * *
A month passed by, and Bonanza Creek remained quiet. A
sprinkling of men had staked; but most of them, after staking,
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had gone on down to Forty Mile and Circle City. The few that
possessed sufficient faith to remain were busy building log
cabins against the coming of winter. Carmack and his Indian
relatives were occupied in building a sluice box and getting a
head of water. The work was slow, for they had to saw their
lumber by hand from the standing forest. But farther down
Bonanza were four men who had drifted in from up river, Dan
McGilvary, Dave McKay, Dave Edwards, and Harry Waugh. They were
a quiet party, neither asking nor giving confidences, and they
herded by themselves. But Daylight, who had panned the spotted
rim of Carmack’s claim and shaken coarse gold from the
grass-roots, and who had panned the rim at a hundred other places
up and down the length of the creek and found nothing, was
curious to know what lay on bed-rock. He had noted the four
quiet men sinking a shaft close by the stream, and he had heard