The Magnetic North Part 88

"A kind of a husband?"

"Yes--the kind you'd give away with a pound o' tea."

The little face, full of humourous contempt and shrewd scorn, sobered; she flung a black look round the saloon, and her eyes came back to the Colonel's face.

"I've got a girl," she said, and a sudden light flashed across her frowning as swiftly as a meteor cuts down along a darkened sky. "Four years old in June. _She_ ain't goin' into no chorus, bet your life!

_She's_ going to have money, and scads o' things I ain't never had."

That night the Colonel and the Boy agreed that, although they had wasted some valuable time and five hundred and twenty-five dollars on McGinty, they still had a chance of making their fortunes before the spring rush.

The next day they went eight miles out in slush and in alternate rain and suns.h.i.+ne, to Little Minook Creek, where the biggest paying claims were universally agreed to be. They found a place even more ragged and desolate than McGinty's, where smoke was rising sullenly from underground fires and the smell of burning wood filled the air, the ground turned up and dotted at intervals with piles of frozen gravel that had been hoisted from the shafts by windla.s.s, forlorn little cabins and tents scattered indiscriminately, a vast number of empty bottles and cans sown broadcast, and, early as it was, a line of sluices upon Salaman's claim.

They had heard a great deal about the dark, keen-looking young Oregon lawyer, for Salaman was the most envied man in Minook. "Come over to my dump and get some nuggets," says Mr. Salaman, as in other parts of the world a man will say, "Come into the smoking-room and have a cigar."

The snow was melted from the top of Salaman's dump, and his guests had no difficulty in picking several rough little bits of gold out of the thawing gravel. It was an exhilarating occupation.

"Come down my shaft and see my cross-cuts"; and they followed him.

He pointed out how the frozen gravel made solid wall, or pillar, and no curbing was necessary. With the aid of a candle and their host's urging, they picked out several dollars' worth of coa.r.s.e gold from the gravel "in place" at the edge of the bed-rock. When he had got his guests thoroughly warmed up:

"Yes, I took out several thousand last fall, and I'll have twenty thousand more out of my first summer clean-up."

"And after that?"

"After that I'm going home. I wouldn't stay here and work this way and live this way another winter, not for twenty millions."

"I'm surprised to hear _you_ talking like that, sah."

"Well, you won't be once you have tried it yourself. Mining up here's an awful gamble. Colours pretty well everywhere, and a few flakes of flour gold, just enough to send the average cheechalko crazy, but no real 'pay' outside of this little gulch. And even here, every inch has been scrambled for--and staked, too--and lots of it fought over. Men died here in the fall defending their ground from the jumpers--ground that hadn't a dollar in it."

"Well, your ground was worth looking after, and John Dillon's. Which is his claim?"

Salaman led the way over the heaps of gravel and round a windla.s.s to No. 6, admitting:

"Oh, yes, Dillon and I, and a few others, have come out of it all right, but Lord! it's a gamble."

Dillon's pardner, Kennedy, did the honours, showing the Big Chimney men the very shaft out of which their Christmas heap of gold had been hoisted. It was true after all. For the favoured there _was_ "plenty o'

gold--plenty o' gold."

"But," said Salaman, "there are few things more mysterious than its whereabouts or why it should be where it is. Don't talk to me about mining experts--we've had 'em here. But who can explain the mystery of Minook? There are six claims in all this country that pay to work. The pay begins in No. 5; before that, nothing. Just up yonder, above No.

10, the pay-streak pinches out. No mortal knows why. A whole winter's toiling and moiling, and thousands of dollars put into the ground, haven't produced an ounce of gold above that claim or below No. 5. I tell you it's an awful gamble. Hunter Creek, Hoosier, Bear, Big Minook, I You, Quail, Alder, Mike Hess, Little Nell--the whole blessed country, rivers, creeks, pups, and all, staked for a radius of forty miles just because there's gold here, where we're standing."

"You don't mean there's _nothing_ left!"

"Nothing within forty miles that somebody hasn't either staked or made money by abandoning."

"Made money?"

Salaman laughed.

"It's money in your pocket pretty nearly every time you don't take up a claim. Why, on Hunter alone they've spent twenty thousand dollars this winter."

"And how much have they taken out?"

With index-finger and thumb Salaman made an "O," and looked shrewdly through it.

"It's an awful gamble," he repeated solemnly.

"It doesn't seem possible there's _nothing_ left," reiterated the Boy, incredulous of such evil luck.

"Oh, I'm not saying you may not make something by getting on some other fellow's property, if you've a mind to pay for it. But you'd better not take anything on trust. I wouldn't trust my own mother in Alaska.

Something in the air here that breeds lies. You can't believe anybody, yourself included." He laughed, stooped, and picked a little nugget out of the dump. "You'll have the same man tell you an entirely different story about the same matter within an hour. Exaggeration is in the air.

The best man becomes infected. You lie, he lies, they all lie. Lots of people go crazy in Alaska every year--various causes, but it's chiefly from believing their own lies."

They returned to Rampart.

It was decidedly inconvenient, considering the state of their finances, to have thrown away that five hundred dollars on McGinty. They messed with Keith, and paid their two-thirds of the household expenses; but Dawson prices reigned, and it was plain there were no Dawson prizes.

"Well," said the Colonel in the morning, "we've got to live somehow till the ice goes out." The Boy sat thinking. The Colonel went on: "And we can't go to Dawson cleaned out. No tellin' whether there are any proper banks there or whether my Louisville instructions got through.

Of course, we've got the dogs yet."

"Don't care how soon we sell Red and Spot."

After breakfast the Boy tied Nig up securely behind Keith's shack, and followed the Colonel about with a hara.s.sed and watchful air.

"No market for dogs now," seemed to be the general opinion, and one person bore up well under the news.

But the next day a man, very splashed and muddy, and obviously just in from the gulches, stopped, in going by Keith's, and looked at Nig.

"Dog market's down," quoted the Boy internally to hearten himself.

"That mahlemeut's for sale," observed the Colonel to the stranger.

"These are." The Boy hastily dragged Red and Spot upon the scene.

"How much?"

"Seventy-five dollars apiece."

The man laughed. "Ain't you heard the dog season's over?"

"Well, don't you count on livin' to the next?"

The man pushed his slouch over his eyes and scratched the back of his head.

"Unless I can git 'em reasonable, dogs ain't worth feedin' till next winter."

"I suppose not," said the Boy sympathetically; "and you can't get fish here."