<SPAN name="chap0109"></SPAN>
<h3> CHAPTER IX </h3>
<p>Ten days later, Harper and Joe Ladue arrived at Sixty Mile, and
Daylight, still a trifle weak, but strong enough to obey the hunch that
had come to him, traded a third interest in his Stewart town site for a
third interest in theirs on the Klondike.</p>
<p>They had faith in the Upper Country, and Harper left down-stream, with
a raft-load of supplies, to start a small post at the mouth of the
Klondike.</p>
<p>"Why don't you tackle Indian River, Daylight?" Harper advised, at
parting. "There's whole slathers of creeks and draws draining in up
there, and somewhere gold just crying to be found. That's my hunch.
There's a big strike coming, and Indian River ain't going to be a
million miles away."</p>
<p>"And the place is swarming with moose," Joe Ladue added. "Bob
Henderson's up there somewhere, been there three years now, swearing
something big is going to happen, living off'n straight moose and
prospecting around like a crazy man."</p>
<p>Daylight decided to go Indian River a flutter, as he expressed it; but
Elijah could not be persuaded into accompanying him. Elijah's soul had
been seared by famine, and he was obsessed by fear of repeating the
experience.</p>
<p>"I jest can't bear to separate from grub," he explained. "I know it's
downright foolishness, but I jest can't help it. It's all I can do to
tear myself away from the table when I know I'm full to bustin' and
ain't got storage for another bite. I'm going back to Circle to camp
by a cache until I get cured."</p>
<p>Daylight lingered a few days longer, gathering strength and arranging
his meagre outfit. He planned to go in light, carrying a pack of
seventy-five pounds and making his five dogs pack as well, Indian
fashion, loading them with thirty pounds each. Depending on the report
of Ladue, he intended to follow Bob Henderson's example and live
practically on straight meat. When Jack Kearns' scow, laden with the
sawmill from Lake Linderman, tied up at Sixty Mile, Daylight bundled
his outfit and dogs on board, turned his town-site application over to
Elijah to be filed, and the same day was landed at the mouth of Indian
River.</p>
<p>Forty miles up the river, at what had been described to him as Quartz
Creek, he came upon signs of Bob Henderson's work, and also at
Australia Creek, thirty miles farther on. The weeks came and went, but
Daylight never encountered the other man. However, he found moose
plentiful, and he and his dogs prospered on the meat diet. He found
"pay" that was no more than "wages" on a dozen surface bars, and from
the generous spread of flour gold in the muck and gravel of a score of
creeks, he was more confident than ever that coarse gold in quantity
was waiting to be unearthed. Often he turned his eyes to the northward
ridge of hills, and pondered if the gold came from them. In the end,
he ascended Dominion Creek to its head, crossed the divide, and came
down on the tributary to the Klondike that was later to be called
Hunker Creek. While on the divide, had he kept the big dome on his
right, he would have come down on the Gold Bottom, so named by Bob
Henderson, whom he would have found at work on it, taking out the first
pay-gold ever panned on the Klondike. Instead, Daylight continued down
Hunker to the Klondike, and on to the summer fishing camp of the
Indians on the Yukon.</p>
<p>Here for a day he camped with Carmack, a squaw-man, and his Indian
brother-in-law, Skookum Jim, bought a boat, and, with his dogs on
board, drifted down the Yukon to Forty Mile. August was drawing to a
close, the days were growing shorter, and winter was coming on. Still
with unbounded faith in his hunch that a strike was coming in the Upper
Country, his plan was to get together a party of four or five, and, if
that was impossible, at least a partner, and to pole back up the river
before the freeze-up to do winter prospecting. But the men of Forty
Mile were without faith. The diggings to the westward were good enough
for them.</p>
<p>Then it was that Carmack, his brother-in-law, Skookum Jim, and Cultus
Charlie, another Indian, arrived in a canoe at Forty Mile, went
straight to the gold commissioner, and recorded three claims and a
discovery claim on Bonanza Creek. After that, in the Sourdough Saloon,
that night, they exhibited coarse gold to the sceptical crowd. Men
grinned and shook their heads. They had seen the motions of a gold
strike gone through before. This was too patently a scheme of Harper's
and Joe Ladue's, trying to entice prospecting in the vicinity of their
town site and trading post. And who was Carmack? A squaw-man. And
who ever heard of a squaw-man striking anything? And what was Bonanza
Creek? Merely a moose pasture, entering the Klondike just above its
mouth, and known to old-timers as Rabbit Creek. Now if Daylight or Bob
Henderson had recorded claims and shown coarse gold, they'd known there
was something in it. But Carmack, the squaw-man! And Skookum Jim! And
Cultus Charlie! No, no; that was asking too much.</p>
<p>Daylight, too, was sceptical, and this despite his faith in the Upper
Country. Had he not, only a few days before, seen Carmack loafing with
his Indians and with never a thought of prospecting?</p>
<p>But at eleven that night, sitting on the edge of his bunk and unlacing
his moccasins, a thought came to him. He put on his coat and hat and
went back to the Sourdough. Carmack was still there, flashing his
coarse gold in the eyes of an unbelieving generation. Daylight ranged
alongside of him and emptied Carmack's sack into a blower. This he
studied for a long time. Then, from his own sack, into another blower,
he emptied several ounces of Circle City and Forty Mile gold. Again,
for a long time, he studied and compared. Finally, he pocketed his own
gold, returned Carmack's, and held up his hand for silence.</p>
<p>"Boys, I want to tell you-all something," he said. "She's sure
come—the up-river strike. And I tell you-all, clear and forcible,
this is it. There ain't never been gold like that in a blower in this
country before. It's new gold. It's got more silver in it. You-all
can see it by the color. Carmack's sure made a strike. Who-all's got
faith to come along with me?"</p>
<p>There were no volunteers. Instead, laughter and jeers went up.</p>
<p>"Mebbe you got a town site up there," some one suggested.</p>
<p>"I sure have," was the retort, "and a third interest in Harper and
Ladue's. And I can see my corner lots selling out for more than your
hen-scratching ever turned up on Birch Creek."</p>
<p>"That's all right, Daylight," one Curly Parson interposed soothingly.
"You've got a reputation, and we know you're dead sure on the square.
But you're as likely as any to be mistook on a flimflam game, such as
these loafers is putting up. I ask you straight: When did Carmack do
this here prospecting? You said yourself he was lying in camp, fishing
salmon along with his Siwash relations, and that was only the other
day."</p>
<p>"And Daylight told the truth," Carmack interrupted excitedly. "And I'm
telling the truth, the gospel truth. I wasn't prospecting. Hadn't no
idea of it. But when Daylight pulls out, the very same day, who drifts
in, down river, on a raft-load of supplies, but Bob Henderson. He'd
come out to Sixty Mile, planning to go back up Indian River and portage
the grub across the divide between Quartz Creek and Gold Bottom—"</p>
<p>"Where in hell's Gold Bottom?" Curly Parsons demanded.</p>
<p>"Over beyond Bonanza that was Rabbit Creek," the squaw-man went on.
"It's a draw of a big creek that runs into the Klondike. That's the way
I went up, but I come back by crossing the divide, keeping along the
crest several miles, and dropping down into Bonanza. 'Come along with
me, Carmack, and get staked,' says Bob Henderson to me. 'I've hit it
this time, on Gold Bottom. I've took out forty-five ounces already.'
And I went along, Skookum Jim and Cultus Charlie, too. And we all
staked on Gold Bottom. I come back by Bonanza on the chance of finding
a moose. Along down Bonanza we stopped and cooked grub. I went to
sleep, and what does Skookum Jim do but try his hand at prospecting.
He'd been watching Henderson, you see. He goes right slap up to the
foot of a birch tree, first pan, fills it with dirt, and washes out
more'n a dollar coarse gold. Then he wakes me up, and I goes at it. I
got two and a half the first lick. Then I named the creek 'Bonanza,'
staked Discovery, and we come here and recorded."</p>
<p>He looked about him anxiously for signs of belief, but found himself in
a circle of incredulous faces—all save Daylight, who had studied his
countenance while he told his story.</p>
<p>"How much is Harper and Ladue givin' you for manufacturing a stampede?"
some one asked.</p>
<p>"They don't know nothing about it," Carmack answered. "I tell you it's
the God Almighty's truth. I washed out three ounces in an hour."</p>
<p>"And there's the gold," Daylight said. "I tell you-all boys they ain't
never been gold like that in the blower before. Look at the color of
it."</p>
<p>"A trifle darker," Curly Parson said. "Most likely Carmack's been
carrying a couple of silver dollars along in the same sack. And what's
more, if there's anything in it, why ain't Bob Henderson smoking along
to record?"</p>
<p>"He's up on Gold Bottom," Carmack explained. "We made the strike
coming back."</p>
<p>A burst of laughter was his reward.</p>
<p>"Who-all'll go pardners with me and pull out in a poling-boat to-morrow
for this here Bonanza?" Daylight asked.</p>
<p>No one volunteered.</p>
<p>"Then who-all'll take a job from me, cash wages in advance, to pole up
a thousand pounds of grub?"</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>"Got another hunch?" was the query.</p>
<p>"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?"</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>"How much flour do you want?" asked the Alaska Commercial Company's
storekeeper.</p>
<p>"About two ton."</p>
<p>The proffered gold-sacks were not withdrawn, though their owners were
guilty of an outrageous burst of merriment.</p>
<p>"What are you going to do with two tons?" the store-keeper demanded.</p>
<p>"Son," Daylight made reply, "you-all ain't been in this country long
enough to know all its curves. I'm going to start a sauerkraut factory
and combined dandruff remedy."</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>Curly Parsons bowed his head on the bar with a gesture of despair.</p>
<p>"What gets me," he moaned, "is what you're going to do with it all."</p>
<p>"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."</p>
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