"What kind of a reputation do these men bear?" asked Sir Bryson.
"Bad," said Jack.
Sir Bryson frowned, and squeezed his pointed beard. "How, bad?" he
wanted to know.
"Confidence men. They were square enough up here. They had to be.
They saved their game to work outside."
"How do you know all this?" demanded Sir Bryson.
"It's no secret," said Jack. "Beckford bragged about what he'd do."
"And did no one take any steps to stop them?"
"It was none of our business," said Jack. "And if it had been we
couldn't very well follow them all over, and warn people off, could we?"
Sir Bryson snorted. "Where have they staked out claims?" he demanded.
"Oh, all over," said Jack. "Anything good they keep dark, of course."
"Did you ever hear of Dexter's Creek?"
Jack bit his lip. "Oh, yes," he said with an innocent stare. "Those
were what they called their sucker claims."
Sir Bryson swelled like a turkey-cock, and turned an alarming colour,
but he said nothing. What could he say?
Your Northern humourist is merciless. Jack was not nearly through with
him. He went on full of solicitude: "I hope you didn't fall for
anything on Dexter Creek, Sir Bryson. If you'd only mentioned it
before, I could have warned you, and saved all this trip!"
"I have nothing to do with Dexter's Creek," said Sir Bryson quickly.
"I have other objects. I merely promised the attorney-general of the
province to do a little detective work for him."
Jack could appreciate quick wits in a victim. "Well turned," he
thought, and waited for Sir Bryson's next lead.
"Well, well," said the little man testily. "Explain what you mean
by--by this vulgar expression."
"Sucker claims?" said Jack wickedly. It really pained him that there
was no one by to benefit by this.
"You needn't repeat the word," snapped Sir Bryson. "It is offensive to
me."
"It's this way," said Jack: "Most of the prospectors in the country are
staked by bankers and business men outside. And when they at last make
a strike, after years of failure, maybe, their backers generally step
in and grab the lion's share. Consequently the men up here are sore on
the city fellows; they have none of the hardships or the work they say;
they just sit back comfortably and wait for the profits.
"Beckford said that he and his partner had been done a couple of times
in this way, and they were out to get square with the bankers. When
they found anything good they kept it dark, and went outside and sold
some fake claims to raise the coin to work the good ones. Beckford
said it was just as easy to sell fake claims as good ones, if you went
about it right.
"I said," Jack went on, "they'll set the police after you. Beckford
said: 'They can't. We don't make any misrepresentations. We're too
smart. We make a mystery of it, and the sucker gets excited, and
swallows it whole. We do the innocent game,' he said; 'we're the
simple, horny-handed sons of soil from the North that ain't on to city
ways. We make 'em think they're putting it all over us, and we sell
out cheap. Two of us can work it fine!"
"I said," Jack continued, "'I don't see how you can get anybody to
shell out real money unless you offer to come back and show them the
place.' 'We always do offer to come back,' Beckford said, 'and we get
all ready to come. But at the last moment one of us is took real sick,
and the other refuses to leave his dyin' pardner. By that time the
come-on is so worked up he comes across anyway!'"
During this recital Sir Bryson's face was a study. A kind of shamed
chagrin restrained him from a violent explosion. Jack "had" him, as
Jack would have said. The little beard was in danger of being plucked
out bodily.
"You can go now," he said in an apoplectic voice.
"There was one thing more," Jack said at the door. "Beckford said that
if you picked your man right there was no danger of a prosecution.
'Choose one of these guys that sets an awful store on his
respectability,' he said, 'and he'll never blow on himself.'"
A deeper tinge of purple crept into Sir Bryson's puffing cheeks.
Jack lingered for a parting shot. "Any man who did get let in for such
a game," he said with a great air of innocence, "hardly deserves any
sympathy, does he, Sir Bryson?"
Sir Bryson was now beyond speech. He got to his feet; he pulled at his
collar for more air, and he pointed mutely to the door.
Jack embraced Humpy Jull by the fire, and moaned incoherently. No
amount of laughter could ease his breast of the weight of mirth that
oppressed it. Never was such a joke known in the North.
During the rest of the evening Jack was in momentary expectation of an
order to break camp and turn back, but none came. On the contrary,
Humpy reported, from the scraps of conversation he had overheard at the
dinner-table, that Sir Bryson, being convinced there was gold somewhere
in the pass, was determined, with Baldwin Ferrie's assistance to do a
little hunting on his own account. Jack smiled indulgently at the
news. It was not long, however, before he had to change his superior
attitude.
Early on the following morning he was fishing in the backwater below
camp, while Baldwin Ferrie sat on a projecting point of the bank above,
patiently searching the mountainsides with his glasses.
"I say," Ferrie suddenly called out, "how far is that peak over there,
the pointed one?'
"About nine miles in a line from here," said Jack. "Fifteen, up the
river and in."
"What's it called?"
"Tetrahedron," said Jack. "A surveyor named it."
"Do you know it at all?" asked Ferrie.
"Pretty well," said Jack, off-hand.
"The slope on this side," asked the geologist, "I suppose there is a
stream that drains it? Could you take us to it?"
Jack looked at him hard, and reeled in his line before he answered.
"There is a little stream," he said, approaching Ferrie. "It has no
name. It empties into Seven-Mile Creek above here. Anybody could find
it. Why do you ask?"
Ferrie was an amiable soul, and not at all secretive, like his master.
He went into a detailed explanation of the geological formation of
Tetrahedron peak. "You see, it's different from the others," he said,
offering Jack the glasses. "There's a good chance of finding free gold
in the bed of the creek that drains the slope on this side."
Jack whistled in his mind, as one might say, and looked with a new
respect at Baldwin Ferrie and his field glasses. For it was on that
very little stream he had washed his gold, and there his claims were
situated. It had taken him months of strenuous labour to find what the
geologist had stumbled on in half an hour sitting still.
Baldwin Ferrie toddled off to report to his master, and Jack sat down
to do some quick thinking. This discovery came of the nature of a
thunderclap. The possibility of their finding his claims had occurred
to him, but he had counted at least on having time to prepare against
it, and here it was only the third day. Jack had made sure of the
choicest claim on Tetrahedron Creek for himself, and that, of course,
they could not touch. But the two adjoining claims, practically as
rich, were still vacant, and Jack meant to have at least the bestowal
of those himself.
Sir Bryson presently ordered Jean Paul to get the dugout ready for
another all-day trip. In excluding Jack from any share in the
preparations he saved that young man from an embarrassing position, for
had he been officially informed of the destination of the river party,
Jack would have had to make explanations on the spot.
As it was, even before Sir Bryson was ready, he became busy on his own
account. Finding Davy, he said: "Catch two horses, and saddle them for
you and Mary. You've got to do something for me, and for her to-day.
There's not a minute to lose. While you're saddling up, I'll explain
everything to Mary."
Davy, who would have gone through Hell's Opening itself at Jack's
command, raced away to find the horses.
Mary was at the door of her tent sewing. At the sound of Jack's step
she lifted her quiet eyes. There was something in the uplift of Mary's
eyes that stirred Jack queerly, seeing that he was as good as engaged
to another girl, but he put that aside for the present.