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 maze4 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."
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 hunch6 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 provocative7 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 Almighty8 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 creeks10 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 consummate12 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 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 rigidly14 limited, yet whatever he saw, he saw big. His mind was orderly, his imagination practical, and he never dreamed idly. When he superimposed a feverish15 metropolis16 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 warehouse17 locations, and all the needs of a far-northern mining city. But this, in turn, was the mere18 setting for something bigger, namely, the play of temperament19. Opportunities swarmed20 in the streets and buildings and human and economic relations of the city of his dream. It was a larger table for gambling21. The limit was the sky, with the Southland on one side and the aurora22 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 naught23 to show for it but the hunch. But it was coming. As he would stake his last ounce on a good poker24 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, toiled25 up the frozen breast of the Stewart, toiled on and on through the white wilderness26 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 frozen quiet, little mites27 of earth-men, crawling their score of miles a day, melting the ice that they might have water to drink, camping in the snow at night, their wolf-dogs curled in frost-rimed, hairy bunches, their eight snowshoes stuck on end in the snow beside the sleds.
No signs of other men did they see, though once they passed a rude poling-boat, cached on a platform by the river bank. Whoever had cached it had never come back for it; and they wondered and mushed on. Another time they chanced upon the site of an Indian village, but the Indians had disappeared; undoubtedly28 they were on the higher reaches of the Stewart in pursuit of the moose-herds. Two hundred miles up from the Yukon, they came upon what Elijah decided29 were the bars mentioned by Al Mayo. A permanent camp was made, their outfit30 of food cached on a high platform to keep it from the dogs, and they started work on the bars, cutting their way down to gravel5 through the rim13 of ice.
It was a hard and simple life. Breakfast over, and they were at work by the first gray light; and when night descended31, they did their cooking and camp-chores, smoked and yarned32 for a while, then rolled up in their sleeping-robes, and slept while the aurora borealis flamed overhead and the stars leaped and danced in the great cold. Their fare was monotonous33: sour-dough bread, bacon, beans, and an occasional dish of rice cooked along with a handful of prunes34. Fresh meat they failed to obtain. There was an unwonted absence of animal life. At rare intervals35 they chanced upon the trail of a snowshoe rabbit or an ermine; but in the main it seemed that all life had fled the land. It was a condition not unknown to them, for in all their experience, at one time or another, they had travelled one year through a region teeming36 with game, where, a year or two or three years later, no game at all would be found.
Gold they found on the bars, but not in paying quantities. Elijah, while on a hunt for moose fifty miles away, had panned the surface gravel of a large creek9 and found good colors. They harnessed their dogs, and with light outfits37 sledded to the place. Here, and possibly for the first time in the history of the Yukon, wood-burning, in sinking a shaft38, was tried. It was Daylight's initiative. After clearing away the moss39 and grass, a fire of dry spruce was built. Six hours of burning thawed40 eight inches of muck. Their picks drove full depth into it, and, when they had shoveled41 out, another fire was started. They worked early and late, excited over the success of the experiment. Six feet of frozen muck brought them to gravel, likewise frozen. Here progress was slower. But they learned to handle their fires better, and were soon able to thaw11 five and six inches at a burning. Flour gold was in this gravel, and after two feet it gave away again to muck. At seventeen feet they struck a thin streak42 of gravel, and in it coarse gold, testpans running as high as six and eight dollars. Unfortunately, this streak of gravel was not more than an inch thick. Beneath it was more muck, tangled43 with the trunks of ancient trees and containing fossil bones of forgotten monsters. But gold they had found—coarse gold; and what more likely than that the big deposit would be found on bed-rock? Down to bed-rock they would go, if it were forty feet away. They divided into two shifts, working day and night, on two shafts44, and the smoke of their burning rose continually.
It was at this time that they ran short of beans and that Elijah was despatched to the main camp to bring up more grub. Elijah was one of the hard-bitten old-time travelers himself. The round trip was a hundred miles, but he promised to be back on the third day, one day going light, two days returning heavy. Instead, he arrived on the night of the second day. They had just gone to bed when they heard him coming.
"What in hell's the matter now?" Henry Finn demanded, as the empty sled came into the circle of firelight and as he noted45 that Elijah's long, serious face was longer and even more serious.
Joe Hines threw wood on the fire, and the three men, wrapped in their robes, huddled46 up close to the warmth. Elijah's whiskered face was matted with ice, as were his eyebrows47, so that, what of his fur garb48, he looked like a New England caricature of Father Christmas.
"You recollect49 that big spruce that held up the corner of the cache next to the river?" Elijah began.
The disaster was quickly told. The big tree, with all the seeming of hardihood, promising50 to stand for centuries to come, had suffered from a hidden decay. In some way its rooted grip on the earth had weakened. The added burden of the cache and the winter snow had been too much for it; the balance it had so long maintained with the forces of its environment had been overthrown51; it had toppled and crashed to the ground, wrecking52 the cache and, in turn, overthrowing53 the balance with environment that the four men and eleven dogs had been maintaining. Their supply of grub was gone. The wolverines had got into the wrecked54 cache, and what they had not eaten they had destroyed.
"They plumb55 e't all the bacon and prunes and sugar and dog-food," Elijah reported, "and gosh darn my buttons, if they didn't gnaw56 open the sacks and scatter57 the flour and beans and rice from Dan to Beersheba. I found empty sacks where they'd dragged them a quarter of a mile away."
Nobody spoke58 for a long minute. It was nothing less than a catastrophe59, in the dead of an Arctic winter and in a game-abandoned land, to lose their grub. They were not panic-stricken, but they were busy looking the situation squarely in the face and considering. Joe Hines was the first to speak.
"We can pan the snow for the beans and rice... though there wa'n't more'n eight or ten pounds of rice left."
"And somebody will have to take a team and pull for Sixty Mile," Daylight said next.
"I'll go," said Finn.
They considered a while longer.
"But how are we going to feed the other team and three men till he gets back?" Hines demanded.
"Only one thing to it," was Elijah's contribution. "You'll have to take the other team, Joe, and pull up the Stewart till you find them Indians. Then you come back with a load of meat. You'll get here long before Henry can make it from Sixty Mile, and while you're gone there'll only be Daylight and me to feed, and we'll feed good and small."
"And in the morning we-all'll pull for the cache and pan snow to find what grub we've got." Daylight lay back, as he spoke, and rolled in his robe to sleep, then added: "Better turn in for an early start. Two of you can take the dogs down. Elijah and me'll skin out on both sides and see if we-all can scare up a moose on the way down."
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1
toil
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| vi.辛劳工作，艰难地行动；n.苦工，难事 | |
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recuperated
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| v.恢复（健康、体力等），复原( recuperate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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recuperate
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| v.恢复 | |
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maze
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| n.迷宫，八阵图，混乱，迷惑 | |
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gravel
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| n.砂跞；砂砾层；结石 | |
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hunch
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| n.预感，直觉 | |
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provocative
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| adj.挑衅的，煽动的，刺激的，挑逗的 | |
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almighty
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| adj.全能的，万能的；很大的，很强的 | |
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creek
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| n.小溪，小河，小湾 | |
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creeks
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| n.小湾( creek的名词复数 )；小港；小河；小溪 | |
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11
thaw
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| v.（使）融化，（使）变得友善；n.融化，缓和 | |
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consummate
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| adj.完美的；v.成婚；使完美 [反]baffle | |
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13
rim
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| n.(圆物的)边，轮缘；边界 | |
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rigidly
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| adv.刻板地，僵化地 | |
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feverish
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| adj.发烧的，狂热的，兴奋的 | |
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16
metropolis
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| n.首府；大城市 | |
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warehouse
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| n.仓库；vt.存入仓库 | |
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mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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temperament
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| n.气质，性格，性情 | |
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swarmed
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| 密集( swarm的过去式和过去分词 )； 云集； 成群地移动； 蜜蜂或其他飞行昆虫成群地飞来飞去 | |
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gambling
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| n.赌博；投机 | |
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aurora
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| n.极光 | |
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naught
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| n.无，零 [=nought] | |
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poker
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| n.扑克；vt.烙制 | |
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25
toiled
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| 长时间或辛苦地工作( toil的过去式和过去分词 )； 艰难缓慢地移动，跋涉 | |
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wilderness
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| n.杳无人烟的一片陆地、水等，荒漠 | |
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mites
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| n.（尤指令人怜悯的）小孩( mite的名词复数 )；一点点；一文钱；螨 | |
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undoubtedly
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| adv.确实地，无疑地 | |
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decided
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| adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的 | |
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outfit
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| n.（为特殊用途的）全套装备，全套服装 | |
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31
descended
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| a.为...后裔的，出身于...的 | |
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32
yarned
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| vi.讲故事（yarn的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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33
monotonous
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| adj.单调的，一成不变的，使人厌倦的 | |
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34
prunes
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| n.西梅脯，西梅干( prune的名词复数 )v.修剪（树木等）( prune的第三人称单数 )；精简某事物，除去某事物多余的部分 | |
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35
intervals
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| n.[军事]间隔( interval的名词复数 )；间隔时间；[数学]区间；（戏剧、电影或音乐会的）幕间休息 | |
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36
teeming
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| adj.丰富的v.充满( teem的现在分词 )；到处都是；（指水、雨等）暴降；倾注 | |
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37
outfits
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| n.全套装备( outfit的名词复数 )；一套服装；集体；组织v.装备，配置设备，供给服装( outfit的第三人称单数 ) | |
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38
shaft
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| n.(工具的)柄，杆状物 | |
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moss
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| n.苔，藓，地衣 | |
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40
thawed
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| 解冻 | |
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41
shoveled
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| vt.铲，铲出（shovel的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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42
streak
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| n.条理，斑纹，倾向，少许，痕迹；v.加条纹，变成条纹，奔驰，快速移动 | |
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43
tangled
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| adj. 纠缠的，紊乱的 动词tangle的过去式和过去分词 | |
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44
shafts
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| n.轴( shaft的名词复数 )；（箭、高尔夫球棒等的）杆；通风井；一阵（疼痛、害怕等） | |
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45
noted
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| adj.著名的，知名的 | |
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46
huddled
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| 挤在一起（huddle的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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47
eyebrows
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| 眉毛( eyebrow的名词复数 ) | |
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48
garb
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| n.服装，装束 | |
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49
recollect
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| v.回忆，想起，记起，忆起，记得 | |
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50
promising
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| adj.有希望的，有前途的 | |
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51
overthrown
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| adj. 打翻的，推倒的，倾覆的 动词overthrow的过去分词 | |
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52
wrecking
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| 破坏 | |
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53
overthrowing
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| v.打倒，推翻( overthrow的现在分词 )；使终止 | |
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54
wrecked
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| adj.失事的，遇难的 | |
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55
plumb
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| adv.精确地，完全地；v.了解意义，测水深 | |
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56
gnaw
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| v.不断地啃、咬；使苦恼，折磨 | |
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57
scatter
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| vt.撒，驱散，散开；散布/播；vi.分散，消散 | |
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58
spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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59
catastrophe
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| n.大灾难，大祸 | |
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