The Magnetic North Part 105

"What special brand of fool am I to be here?"

Down below, Nig, with hot tongue hanging out of the side of his mouth, now followed, now led, his master, coming briskly up the slope.

"That was the Weare we heard whistlin'," said the Boy, breathless. "And who d'you think's aboard?"

"Who?"

"Nicholas a' Pymeut, pilot. An' he's got Princess Muckluck along."

"No," laughed the Colonel, following the Boy to the tent. "What's the Princess come for?"

"How should I know?"

"Didn't she say?"

"Didn't stop to hear."

"Reckon she was right glad to see you," chaffed the Colonel. "Hey?

Wasn't she?"

"I--don't think she noticed I was there."

"What! you bolted?" No reply. "See here, what you doin'?"

"Packin' up."

"Where you goin'?"

"Been thinkin' for some time I ain't wealthy enough to live in this metropolis. There may be a place for a poor man, but Dawson isn't It."

"Well, I didn't think you were that much of a coward--turnin' tail like this just because a poor little Esquimaux--Besides, she may have got over it. Even the higher races do." And he went on poking his fun till suddenly the Boy said:

"You're in such high spirits, I suppose you must have heard Maudie's up from Minook.

"You're jokin'!"

"It ain't my idea of a joke. She's comin' up here soon's she's landed her stuff."

"She's not comin' up here!"

"Why not? Anybody can come up on the Moosehide, and everybody's doin'

it. I'm goin' to make way for some of 'em."

"Did she see you?"

"Well, she's seen Potts, anyhow."

"You're right about Dawson," said the Colonel suddenly; "it's too rich for my blood."

They pinned a piece of paper on the tent-flap to say they were "Gone prospecting: future movements uncertain."

Each with a small pack, and sticking out above it the Klond.y.k.e shovel that had come all the way from San Francisco, Nig behind with provisions in his little saddle-bags, and tongue farther out than ever, they turned their backs on Dawson, crossed the lower corner of Lot 6, behind the Government Reserve, stared with fresh surprise at the young market-garden flouris.h.i.+ng there, down to the many-islanded Klond.y.k.e, across in the scow-ferry, over the Corduroy, that cheers and deceives the new-comer for that first mile of the Bonanza Trail, on through pool and mora.s.s to the thicket of white birches, where the Colonel thought it well to rest awhile.

"Yes, he felt the heat," he said, as he pa.s.sed the time of day with other men going by with packs, pack-horses, or draught-dogs, cursing at the trail and at the Government that taxed the miners so cruelly and then did nothing for them, not even making a decent highway to the Dominion's source of revenue. But out of the direct rays of the sun the traveller found refreshment, and the mosquitoes were blown away by the keen breeze that seemed to come from off some glacier. And the birds sang loud, and the wild-flowers starred the birch-grove, and the briar-roses wove a tangle on either side the swampy trail.

On again, dipping to a little valley--Bonanza Creek! They stood and looked.

"Well, here we are."

"Yes, this is what we came for."

And it was because of "this" that so vast a machinery of s.h.i.+ps, engines, and complicated human lives had been set in motion. What was it? A dip in the hills where a little stream was caught up into sluices. On either side of every line of boxes, heaps and windrows of gravel. Above, high on log-cabin staging, windla.s.ses. Stretching away on either side, gentle slopes, mossed and flower starred. Here and there upon this ancient moose pasture, tents and cabins set at random.

In the bed of the creek, up and down in every direction, squads of men sweating in the sun--here, where for untold centuries herds of leisurely and majestic moose had come to quench their thirst. In the older cabins their horns still lorded it. Their bones were bleaching in the fire-weed.

On from claim to claim the new-comers to these rich pastures went, till they came to the junction of the El Dorado, where huddles the haphazard settlement of the Grand Forks, only twelve miles from Dawson. And now they were at the heart of "the richest Placer Mining District the world has seen." But they knew well enough that every inch was owned, and that the best they could look for was work as unskilled labourers, day s.h.i.+ft or night, on the claims of luckier men.

They had brought a letter from Ryan, of the North-West Mounted Police, to the Superintendent of No. 10, Above Discovery, a claim a little this side of the Forks. Ryan had warned them to keep out of the way of the part-owner, Scoville Austin, a surly person naturally, so exasperated at the tax, and so enraged at the rumour of Government spies masquerading as workmen, checking his reports, that he was "a first-rate man to avoid." But Seymour, the Superintendent, was, in the words of the soothing motto of the whole American people, "All right."

They left their packs just inside the door of the log-cabin, indicated as "Bunk House for the men on No. 6, Above"--a fearsome place, where, on shelf above shelf, among long unwashed bedclothes, the unwashed workmen of a prosperous company lay in the stupor of sore fatigue and semi-asphyxiation. Someone stirred as the door opened, and out of the fetid dusk of the unventilated, closely-shuttered cabin came a voice:

"Night s.h.i.+ft on?"

"No."

"Then, d.a.m.n you! shut the door."

As the never-resting sun "forced" the Dawson market-garden and the wild-roses of the trail, so here on the creek men must follow the strenuous example. No pause in the growing or the toiling of this Northern world. The day-gang on No. 0 was hard at it down there where lengthwise in the channel was propped a line of sluice-boxes, steadied by regularly s.p.a.ced poles laid from box to bank on gravel ridge.

Looking down from above, the whole was like a huge fish-bone lying along the bed of the creek. A little group of men with picks, shovels, and wheelbarrows were reducing the "dump" of winter pay, piled beside a windla.s.s, conveying it to the sluices. Other men in line, four or five feet below the level of the boxes, were "stripping," picking, and shovelling the gravel off the bed-rock--no easy business, for even this summer temperature thawed but a few inches a day, and below, the frost of ten thousand years cemented the rubble into iron.

"Where is the Superintendent?"

"That's Seymour in the straw hat."

It was felt that even the broken and dilapidated article mentioned was a distinction and a luxury.

Yes, it was too hot up here in the Klond.y.k.e.

They made their way to the man in authority, a dark, quiet-mannered person, with big, gentle eyes, not the sort of Superintendent they had expected to find representing such a man as the owner of No. 0.

Having read Ryan's letter and slowly scanned the applicants: "What do you know about it?" He nodded at the sluice.

"All of nothing," said the Boy.

"Does it call for any particular knowing?" asked the Colonel.

"Calls for muscle and plenty of keep-at-it." His voice was soft, but as the Colonel looked at him he realized why a hard fellow like Scoville Austin had made this Southerner Superintendent.

"Better just try us."