"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 rim6-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.
"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 promptly7. "But don't you-all come squealing8 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 plaintively9.
"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 outright10 three five-hundred-foot claims on Bonanza11. He could still stake another claim in his own name, the others being merely transfers.
"Must say you're almighty12 brash with your chewin' tobacco," Long Jim grinned. "Got a factory somewheres?"
"Nope, but I got a hunch13," 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, dubious14, he finally offered Daylight a hundred dollars for his share in the town site.
"Sure. There she is."
So saying, Ladue pulled out his gold-sack. Daylight hefted it absent-mindedly, and, still absent-mindedly, untied16 the strings17 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 innocence18 as he asked the question, and Ladue received the question as stolidly19 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 desperately20.
"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 sluice21 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 spotted22."
A month passed by, and Bonanza Creek remained quiet. A sprinkling of men had staked; but most of them, after staking, had gone on down to Forty Mile and Circle City. The few that possessed23 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 lumber24 by hand from the standing25 forest. But farther down Bonanza were four men who had drifted in from up river, Dan McGilvary, Dave McKay, Dave Edwards, and Harry26 Waugh. They were a quiet party, neither asking nor giving confidences, and they herded27 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 noted28 the four quiet men sinking a shaft29 close by the stream, and he had heard their whip-saw going as they made lumber for the sluice boxes. He did not wait for an invitation, but he was present the first day they sluiced30. And at the end of five hours' shovelling31 for one man, he saw them take out thirteen ounces and a half of gold.
It was coarse gold, running from pinheads to a twelve-dollar nugget, and it had come from off bed-rock. The first fall snow was flying that day, and the Arctic winter was closing down; but Daylight had no eyes for the bleak-gray sadness of the dying, short-lived summer. He saw his vision coming true, and on the big flat was upreared anew his golden city of the snows. Gold had been found on bed-rock. That was the big thing. Carmack's strike was assured. Daylight staked a claim in his own name adjoining the three he had purchased with his plug tobacco. This gave him a block of property two thousand feet long and extending in width from rim-rock to rim-rock.
Returning that night to his camp at the mouth of Klondike, he found in it Kama, the Indian he had left at Dyea. Kama was travelling by canoe, bringing in the last mail of the year. In his possession was some two hundred dollars in gold-dust, which Daylight immediately borrowed. In return, he arranged to stake a claim for him, which he was to record when he passed through Forty Mile. When Kama departed next morning, he carried a number of letters for Daylight, addressed to all the old-timers down river, in which they were urged to come up immediately and stake.
Also Kama carried letters of similar import, given him by the other men on Bonanza.
"It will sure be the gosh-dangdest stampede that ever was," Daylight chuckled33, as he tried to vision the excited populations of Forty Mile and Circle City tumbling into poling-boats and racing34 the hundreds of miles up the Yukon; for he knew that his word would be unquestioningly accepted.
With the arrival of the first stampeders, Bonanza Creek woke up, and thereupon began a long-distance race between unveracity and truth, wherein, lie no matter how fast, men were continually overtaken and passed by truth. When men who doubted Carmack's report of two and a half to the pan, themselves panned two and a half, they lied and said that they were getting an ounce. And long ere the lie was fairly on its way, they were getting not one ounce but five ounces. This they claimed was ten ounces; but when they filled a pan of dirt to prove the lie, they washed out twelve ounces. And so it went. They continued valiantly35 to lie, but the truth continued to outrun them.
One day in December Daylight filled a pan from bed rock on his own claim and carried it into his cabin. Here a fire burned and enabled him to keep water unfrozen in a canvas tank. He squatted36 over the tank and began to wash. Earth and gravel37 seemed to fill the pan. As he imparted to it a circular movement, the lighter38, coarser particles washed out over the edge. At times he combed the surface with his fingers, raking out handfuls of gravel. The contents of the pan diminished. As it drew near to the bottom, for the purpose of fleeting39 and tentative examination, he gave the pan a sudden sloshing movement, emptying it of water. And the whole bottom showed as if covered with butter. Thus the yellow gold flashed up as the muddy water was flirted40 away. It was gold—gold-dust, coarse gold, nuggets, large nuggets. He was all alone. He set the pan down for a moment and thought long thoughts. Then he finished the washing, and weighed the result in his scales. At the rate of sixteen dollars to the ounce, the pan had contained seven hundred and odd dollars. It was beyond anything that even he had dreamed. His fondest anticipation's had gone no farther than twenty or thirty thousand dollars to a claim; but here were claims worth half a million each at the least, even if they were spotted.
He did not go back to work in the shaft that day, nor the next, nor the next. Instead, capped and mittened41, a light stampeding outfit, including his rabbit skin robe, strapped42 on his back, he was out and away on a many-days' tramp over creeks43 and divides, inspecting the whole neighboring territory. On each creek he was entitled to locate one claim, but he was chary44 in thus surrendering up his chances. On Hunker Creek only did he stake a claim. Bonanza Creek he found staked from mouth to source, while every little draw and pup and gulch45 that drained into it was like-wise staked. Little faith was had in these side-streams. They had been staked by the hundreds of men who had failed to get in on Bonanza. The most popular of these creeks was Adams. The one least fancied was Eldorado, which flowed into Bonanza, just above Karmack's Discovery claim. Even Daylight disliked the looks of Eldorado; but, still riding his hunch, he bought a half share in one claim on it for half a sack of flour. A month later he paid eight hundred dollars for the adjoining claim. Three months later, enlarging this block of property, he paid forty thousand for a third claim; and, though it was concealed46 in the future, he was destined47, not long after, to pay one hundred and fifty thousand for a fourth claim on the creek that had been the least liked of all the creeks.
In the meantime, and from the day he washed seven hundred dollars from a single pan and squatted over it and thought a long thought, he never again touched hand to pick and shovel32. As he said to Joe Ladue the night of that wonderful washing:—
"Joe, I ain't never going to work hard again. Here's where I begin to use my brains. I'm going to farm gold. Gold will grow gold if you-all have the savvee and can get hold of some for seed. When I seen them seven hundred dollars in the bottom of the pan, I knew I had the seed at last."
"Where are you going to plant it?" Joe Ladue had asked.
And Daylight, with a wave of his hand, definitely indicated the whole landscape and the creeks that lay beyond the divides.
"There she is," he said, "and you-all just watch my smoke. There's millions here for the man who can see them. And I seen all them millions this afternoon when them seven hundred dollars peeped up at me from the bottom of the pan and chirruped, 'Well, if here ain't Burning Daylight come at last.'"
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1
outfit
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| n.（为特殊用途的）全套装备，全套服装 | |
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desolate
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| adj.荒凉的，荒芜的；孤独的，凄凉的；v.使荒芜，使孤寂 | |
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tenantless
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| adj.无人租赁的，无人居住的 | |
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salmon
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| n.鲑，大马哈鱼，橙红色的 | |
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creek
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| n.小溪，小河，小湾 | |
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rim
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| n.(圆物的)边，轮缘；边界 | |
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7
promptly
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| adv.及时地，敏捷地 | |
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8
squealing
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| v.长声尖叫，用长而尖锐的声音说( squeal的现在分词 ) | |
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plaintively
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| adv.悲哀地，哀怨地 | |
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outright
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| adv.坦率地；彻底地；立即；adj.无疑的；彻底的 | |
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bonanza
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| n.富矿带，幸运，带来好运的事 | |
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12
almighty
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| adj.全能的，万能的；很大的，很强的 | |
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13
hunch
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| n.预感，直觉 | |
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14
dubious
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| adj.怀疑的，无把握的；有问题的，靠不住的 | |
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15
queried
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| v.质疑，对…表示疑问( query的过去式和过去分词 )；询问 | |
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16
untied
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| 松开，解开( untie的过去式和过去分词 )； 解除，使自由； 解决 | |
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17
strings
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| n.弦 | |
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18
innocence
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| n.无罪；天真；无害 | |
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stolidly
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| adv.迟钝地，神经麻木地 | |
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desperately
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| adv.极度渴望地，绝望地，孤注一掷地 | |
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21
sluice
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| n.水闸 | |
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22
spotted
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| adj.有斑点的，斑纹的，弄污了的 | |
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23
possessed
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| adj.疯狂的；拥有的，占有的 | |
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24
lumber
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| n.木材，木料；v.以破旧东西堆满；伐木；笨重移动 | |
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25
standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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harry
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| vt.掠夺，蹂躏，使苦恼 | |
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herded
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| 群集，纠结( herd的过去式和过去分词 )； 放牧； （使）向…移动 | |
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noted
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| adj.著名的，知名的 | |
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shaft
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| n.(工具的)柄，杆状物 | |
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30
sluiced
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| v.冲洗( sluice的过去式和过去分词 )；（指水）喷涌而出；漂净；给…安装水闸 | |
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31
shovelling
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| v.铲子( shovel的现在分词 )；锹；推土机、挖土机等的)铲；铲形部份 | |
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32
shovel
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| n.铁锨，铲子，一铲之量；v.铲，铲出 | |
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33
chuckled
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| 轻声地笑( chuckle的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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34
racing
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| n.竞赛，赛马；adj.竞赛用的，赛马用的 | |
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valiantly
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| adv.勇敢地，英勇地；雄赳赳 | |
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36
squatted
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| v.像动物一样蹲下( squat的过去式和过去分词 )；非法擅自占用（土地或房屋）；为获得其所有权；而占用某片公共用地。 | |
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37
gravel
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| n.砂跞；砂砾层；结石 | |
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38
lighter
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| n.打火机，点火器；驳船；v.用驳船运送；light的比较级 | |
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39
fleeting
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| adj.短暂的，飞逝的 | |
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40
flirted
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| v.调情，打情骂俏( flirt的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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41
mittened
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| v.（使）变得潮湿，变得湿润( moisten的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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42
strapped
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| adj.用皮带捆住的，用皮带装饰的；身无分文的；缺钱；手头紧v.用皮带捆扎(strap的过去式和过去分词)；用皮带抽打；包扎；给…打绷带 | |
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43
creeks
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| n.小湾( creek的名词复数 )；小港；小河；小溪 | |
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44
chary
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| adj.谨慎的，细心的 | |
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45
gulch
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| n.深谷，峡谷 | |
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46
concealed
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| a.隐藏的，隐蔽的 | |
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47
destined
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| adj.命中注定的；(for)以…为目的地的 | |
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