On the other hand, his holdings were reckoned as worth millions, and there were men so sanguine5 that they held the man a fool who coppered[6] any bet Daylight laid. Behind his magnificent free-handedness and careless disregard for money were hard, practical judgment6, imagination and vision, and the daring of the big gambler. He foresaw what with his own eyes he had never seen, and he played to win much or lose all.
"There's too much gold here in Bonanza7 to be just a pocket," he argued. "It's sure come from a mother-lode somewhere, and other creeks9 will show up. You-all keep your eyes on Indian River. The creeks that drain that side the Klondike watershed10 are just as likely to have gold as the creeks that drain this side."
And he backed this opinion to the extent of grub-staking half a dozen parties of prospectors11 across the big divide into the Indian River region. Other men, themselves failing to stake on lucky creeks, he put to work on his Bonanza claims. And he paid them well—sixteen dollars a day for an eight-hour shift, and he ran three shifts. He had grub to start them on, and when, on the last water, the Bella arrived loaded with provisions, he traded a warehouse12 site to Jack13 Kearns for a supply of grub that lasted all his men through the winter of 1896. And that winter, when famine pinched, and flour sold for two dollars a pound, he kept three shifts of men at work on all four of the Bonanza claims. Other mine-owners paid fifteen dollars a day to their men; but he had been the first to put men to work, and from the first he paid them a full ounce a day. One result was that his were picked men, and they more than earned their higher pay.
One of his wildest plays took place in the early winter after the freeze-up. Hundreds of stampeders, after staking on other creeks than Bonanza, had gone on disgruntled down river to Forty Mile and Circle City. Daylight mortgaged one of his Bonanza dumps with the Alaska Commercial Company, and tucked a letter of credit into his pouch14. Then he harnessed his dogs and went down on the ice at a pace that only he could travel. One Indian down, another Indian back, and four teams of dogs was his record. And at Forty Mile and Circle City he bought claims by the score. Many of these were to prove utterly15 worthless, but some few of them were to show up more astoundingly than any on Bonanza. He bought right and left, paying as low as fifty dollars and as high as five thousand. This highest one he bought in the Tivoli Saloon. It was an upper claim on Eldorado, and when he agreed to the price, Jacob Wilkins, an old-timer just returned from a look at the moose-pasture, got up and left the room, saying:—
"Daylight, I've known you seven year, and you've always seemed sensible till now. And now you're just letting them rob you right and left. That's what it is—robbery. Five thousand for a claim on that damned moose-pasture is bunco. I just can't stay in the room and see you buncoed that way."
"I tell you-all," Daylight answered, "Wilkins, Carmack's strike's so big that we-all can't see it all. It's a lottery16. Every claim I buy is a ticket. And there's sure going to be some capital prizes."
"Now supposing, Wilkins," Daylight went on, "supposing you-all knew it was going to rain soup. What'd you-all do? Buy spoons, of course. Well, I'm sure buying spoons. She's going to rain soup up there on the Klondike, and them that has forks won't be catching19 none of it."
But Wilkins here slammed the door behind him, and Daylight broke off to finish the purchase of the claim.
Back in Dawson, though he remained true to his word and never touched hand to pick and shovel20, he worked as hard as ever in his life. He had a thousand irons in the fire, and they kept him busy. Representation work was expensive, and he was compelled to travel often over the various creeks in order to decide which claims should lapse21 and which should be retained. A quartz22 miner himself in his early youth, before coming to Alaska, he dreamed of finding the mother-lode. A placer camp he knew was ephemeral, while a quartz camp abided, and he kept a score of men in the quest for months. The mother-lode was never found, and, years afterward23, he estimated that the search for it had cost him fifty thousand dollars.
But he was playing big. Heavy as were his expenses, he won more heavily. He took lays, bought half shares, shared with the men he grub-staked, and made personal locations. Day and night his dogs were ready, and he owned the fastest teams; so that when a stampede to a new discovery was on, it was Burning Daylight to the fore1 through the longest, coldest nights till he blazed his stakes next to Discovery. In one way or another (to say nothing of the many worthless creeks) he came into possession of properties on the good creeks, such as Sulphur, Dominion24, Excelsis, Siwash, Cristo, Alhambra, and Doolittle. The thousands he poured out flowed back in tens of thousands. Forty Mile men told the story of his two tons of flour, and made calculations of what it had returned him that ranged from half a million to a million. One thing was known beyond all doubt, namely, that the half share in the first Eldorado claim, bought by him for a half sack of flour, was worth five hundred thousand. On the other hand, it was told that when Freda, the dancer, arrived from over the passes in a Peterborough canoe in the midst of a drive of mush-ice on the Yukon, and when she offered a thousand dollars for ten sacks and could find no sellers, he sent the flour to her as a present without ever seeing her. In the same way ten sacks were sent to the lone25 Catholic priest who was starting the first hospital.
His generosity26 was lavish27. Others called it insane. At a time when, riding his hunch, he was getting half a million for half a sack of flour, it was nothing less than insanity28 to give twenty whole sacks to a dancing-girl and a priest. But it was his way. Money was only a marker. It was the game that counted with him. The possession of millions made little change in him, except that he played the game more passionately29. Temperate30 as he had always been, save on rare occasions, now that he had the wherewithal for unlimited31 drinks and had daily access to them, he drank even less. The most radical32 change lay in that, except when on trail, he no longer did his own cooking. A broken-down miner lived in his log cabin with him and now cooked for him. But it was the same food: bacon, beans, flour, prunes33, dried fruits, and rice. He still dressed as formerly34: overalls35, German socks, moccasins, flannel36 shirt, fur cap, and blanket coat. He did not take up with cigars, which cost, the cheapest, from half a dollar to a dollar each. The same Bull Durham and brown-paper cigarette, hand-rolled, contented37 him. It was true that he kept more dogs, and paid enormous prices for them. They were not a luxury, but a matter of business. He needed speed in his travelling and stampeding. And by the same token, he hired a cook. He was too busy to cook for himself, that was all. It was poor business, playing for millions, to spend time building fires and boiling water.
Dawson grew rapidly that winter of 1896. Money poured in on Daylight from the sale of town lots. He promptly38 invested it where it would gather more. In fact, he played the dangerous game of pyramiding, and no more perilous39 pyramiding than in a placer camp could be imagined. But he played with his eyes wide open.
"You-all just wait till the news of this strike reaches the Outside," he told his old-timer cronies in the Moosehorn Saloon. "The news won't get out till next spring. Then there's going to be three rushes. A summer rush of men coming in light; a fall rush of men with outfits40; and a spring rush, the next year after that, of fifty thousand. You-all won't be able to see the landscape for chechaquos. Well, there's the summer and fall rush of 1897 to commence with. What are you-all going to do about it?"
"What are you going to do about it?" a friend demanded.
"Nothing," he answered. "I've sure already done it. I've got a dozen gangs strung out up the Yukon getting out logs. You-all'll see their rafts coming down after the river breaks. Cabins! They sure will be worth what a man can pay for them next fall. Lumber41! It will sure go to top-notch. I've got two sawmills freighting in over the passes. They'll come down as soon as the lakes open up. And if you-all are thinking of needing lumber, I'll make you-all contracts right now—three hundred dollars a thousand, undressed."
Corner lots in desirable locations sold that winter for from ten to thirty thousand dollars. Daylight sent word out over the trails and passes for the newcomers to bring down log-rafts, and, as a result, the summer of 1897 saw his sawmills working day and night, on three shifts, and still he had logs left over with which to build cabins. These cabins, land included, sold at from one to several thousand dollars. Two-story log buildings, in the business part of town, brought him from forty to fifty thousand dollars apiece. These fresh accretions42 of capital were immediately invested in other ventures. He turned gold over and over, until everything that he touched seemed to turn to gold.
But that first wild winter of Carmack's strike taught Daylight many things. Despite the prodigality43 of his nature, he had poise44. He watched the lavish waste of the mushroom millionaires, and failed quite to understand it. According to his nature and outlook, it was all very well to toss an ante away in a night's frolic. That was what he had done the night of the poker45-game in Circle City when he lost fifty thousand—all that he possessed46. But he had looked on that fifty thousand as a mere47 ante. When it came to millions, it was different. Such a fortune was a stake, and was not to be sown on bar-room floors, literally48 sown, flung broadcast out of the moosehide sacks by drunken millionaires who had lost all sense of proportion. There was McMann, who ran up a single bar-room bill of thirty-eight thousand dollars; and Jimmie the Rough, who spent one hundred thousand a month for four months in riotous49 living, and then fell down drunk in the snow one March night and was frozen to death; and Swiftwater Bill, who, after spending three valuable claims in an extravagance of debauchery, borrowed three thousand dollars with which to leave the country, and who, out of this sum, because the lady-love that had jilted him liked eggs, cornered the one hundred and ten dozen eggs on the Dawson market, paying twenty-four dollars a dozen for them and promptly feeding them to the wolf-dogs.
Champagne50 sold at from forty to fifty dollars a quart, and canned oyster51 stew52 at fifteen dollars. Daylight indulged in no such luxuries. He did not mind treating a bar-room of men to whiskey at fifty cents a drink, but there was somewhere in his own extravagant53 nature a sense of fitness and arithmetic that revolted against paying fifteen dollars for the contents of an oyster can. On the other hand, he possibly spent more money in relieving hard-luck cases than did the wildest of the new millionaires on insane debauchery. Father Judge, of the hospital, could have told of far more important donations than that first ten sacks of flour. And old-timers who came to Daylight invariably went away relieved according to their need. But fifty dollars for a quart of fizzy champagne! That was appalling54.
And yet he still, on occasion, made one of his old-time hell-roaring nights. But he did so for different reasons. First, it was expected of him because it had been his way in the old days. And second, he could afford it. But he no longer cared quite so much for that form of diversion. He had developed, in a new way, the taste for power. It had become a lust55 with him. By far the wealthiest miner in Alaska, he wanted to be still wealthier. It was a big game he was playing in, and he liked it better than any other game. In a way, the part he played was creative. He was doing something. And at no time, striking another chord of his nature, could he take the joy in a million-dollar Eldorado dump that was at all equivalent to the joy he took in watching his two sawmills working and the big down river log-rafts swinging into the bank in the big eddy56 just above Moosehide Mountain. Gold, even on the scales, was, after all, an abstraction. It represented things and the power to do. But the sawmills were the things themselves, concrete and tangible57, and they were things that were a means to the doing of more things. They were dreams come true, hard and indubitable realizations58 of fairy gossamers.
With the summer rush from the Outside came special correspondents for the big newspapers and magazines, and one and all, using unlimited space, they wrote Daylight up; so that, so far as the world was concerned, Daylight loomed59 the largest figure in Alaska. Of course, after several months, the world became interested in the Spanish War, and forgot all about him; but in the Klondike itself Daylight still remained the most prominent figure. Passing along the streets of Dawson, all heads turned to follow him, and in the saloons chechaquos watched him awesomely60, scarcely taking their eyes from him as long as he remained in their range of vision. Not alone was he the richest man in the country, but he was Burning Daylight, the pioneer, the man who, almost in the midst of antiquity61 of that young land, had crossed the Chilcoot and drifted down the Yukon to meet those elder giants, Al Mayo and Jack McQuestion. He was the Burning Daylight of scores of wild adventures, the man who carried word to the ice-bound whaling fleet across the tundra62 wilderness63 to the Arctic Sea, who raced the mail from Circle to Salt Water and back again in sixty days, who saved the whole Tanana tribe from perishing in the winter of '91—in short, the man who smote64 the chechaquos' imaginations more violently than any other dozen men rolled into one.
He had the fatal facility for self-advertisement. Things he did, no matter how adventitious65 or spontaneous, struck the popular imagination as remarkable66. And the latest thing he had done was always on men's lips, whether it was being first in the heartbreaking stampede to Danish Creek8, in killing67 the record baldface grizzly68 over on Sulphur Creek, or in winning the single-paddle canoe race on the Queen's Birthday, after being forced to participate at the last moment by the failure of the sourdough representative to appear. Thus, one night in the Moosehorn, he locked horns with Jack Kearns in the long-promised return game of poker. The sky and eight o'clock in the morning were made the limits, and at the close of the game Daylight's winnings were two hundred and thirty thousand dollars. To Jack Kearns, already a several-times millionaire, this loss was not vital. But the whole community was thrilled by the size of the stakes, and each one of the dozen correspondents in the field sent out a sensational69 article.
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1
fore
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| adv.在前面；adj.先前的；在前部的；n.前部 | |
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hunch
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| n.预感，直觉 | |
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diminution
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| n.减少；变小 | |
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prophesied
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| v.预告，预言( prophesy的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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sanguine
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| adj.充满希望的，乐观的，血红色的 | |
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judgment
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| n.审判；判断力，识别力，看法，意见 | |
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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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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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watershed
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| n.转折点，分水岭，分界线 | |
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prospectors
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| n.勘探者，探矿者( prospector的名词复数 ) | |
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warehouse
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| n.仓库；vt.存入仓库 | |
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jack
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| n.插座，千斤顶，男人；v.抬起，提醒，扛举；n.（Jake）杰克 | |
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pouch
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| n.小袋，小包，囊状袋；vt.装...入袋中，用袋运输；vi.用袋送信件 | |
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15
utterly
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| adv.完全地，绝对地 | |
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lottery
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| n.抽彩；碰运气的事，难于算计的事 | |
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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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sniffed
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| v.以鼻吸气，嗅，闻( sniff的过去式和过去分词 )；抽鼻子（尤指哭泣、患感冒等时出声地用鼻子吸气）；抱怨，不以为然地说 | |
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catching
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| adj.易传染的，有魅力的，迷人的，接住 | |
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shovel
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| n.铁锨，铲子，一铲之量；v.铲，铲出 | |
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lapse
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| n.过失，流逝，失效，抛弃信仰，间隔；vi.堕落，停止，失效，流逝；vt.使失效 | |
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quartz
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| n.石英 | |
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afterward
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| adv.后来；以后 | |
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dominion
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| n.统治，管辖，支配权；领土，版图 | |
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lone
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| adj.孤寂的，单独的；唯一的 | |
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generosity
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| n.大度，慷慨，慷慨的行为 | |
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lavish
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| adj.无节制的；浪费的；vt.慷慨地给予，挥霍 | |
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insanity
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| n.疯狂，精神错乱；极端的愚蠢，荒唐 | |
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passionately
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| ad.热烈地，激烈地 | |
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temperate
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| adj.温和的，温带的，自我克制的，不过分的 | |
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unlimited
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| adj.无限的，不受控制的，无条件的 | |
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radical
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| n.激进份子，原子团，根号；adj.根本的，激进的，彻底的 | |
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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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formerly
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| adv.从前，以前 | |
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overalls
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| n.（复）工装裤；长罩衣 | |
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flannel
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| n.法兰绒；法兰绒衣服 | |
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contented
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| adj.满意的，安心的，知足的 | |
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promptly
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| adv.及时地，敏捷地 | |
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perilous
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| adj.危险的，冒险的 | |
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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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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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accretions
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| n.堆积( accretion的名词复数 )；连生；添加生长；吸积 | |
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43
prodigality
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| n.浪费，挥霍 | |
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44
poise
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| vt./vi. 平衡，保持平衡；n.泰然自若，自信 | |
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45
poker
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| n.扑克；vt.烙制 | |
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46
possessed
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| adj.疯狂的；拥有的，占有的 | |
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47
mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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48
literally
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| adv.照字面意义，逐字地；确实 | |
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49
riotous
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| adj.骚乱的；狂欢的 | |
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50
champagne
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| n.香槟酒；微黄色 | |
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51
oyster
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| n.牡蛎；沉默寡言的人 | |
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52
stew
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| n.炖汤，焖，烦恼；v.炖汤，焖，忧虑 | |
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53
extravagant
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| adj.奢侈的；过分的；(言行等)放肆的 | |
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54
appalling
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| adj.骇人听闻的，令人震惊的，可怕的 | |
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55
lust
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| n.性(淫)欲；渴(欲)望；vi.对…有强烈的欲望 | |
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56
eddy
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| n.漩涡，涡流 | |
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57
tangible
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| adj.有形的，可触摸的，确凿的，实际的 | |
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58
realizations
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| 认识，领会( realization的名词复数 )； 实现 | |
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59
loomed
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| v.隐约出现，阴森地逼近( loom的过去式和过去分词 )；隐约出现，阴森地逼近 | |
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60
awesomely
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| 赫然 | |
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61
antiquity
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| n.古老；高龄；古物，古迹 | |
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62
tundra
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| n.苔原，冻土地带 | |
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63
wilderness
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| n.杳无人烟的一片陆地、水等，荒漠 | |
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64
smote
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| v.猛打，重击，打击( smite的过去式 ) | |
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65
adventitious
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| adj.偶然的 | |
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66
remarkable
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| adj.显著的，异常的，非凡的，值得注意的 | |
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67
killing
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| n.巨额利润；突然赚大钱，发大财 | |
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68
grizzly
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| adj.略为灰色的，呈灰色的；n.灰色大熊 | |
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69
sensational
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| adj.使人感动的，非常好的，轰动的，耸人听闻的 | |
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