STAKING OUT A FORTUNE
The red sun sank behind the northern cliffs, hid there three hours,
and slanted eastward and upward again, and still the boys toiled on,
oblivious. Panful after panful of the sand they scraped from the clay
bottom, now in the edge of the stream, now back toward the tundra, and
always they found gold. At length their rude paddle-shovel was worn to a
frazzled stick and they themselves were in not much better condition, but
in Harry’s worn bandana handkerchief was a store of coarse and fine gold
and nuggets that was quite heavy.
Fatigue will finally, however, get the better even of the gold fever, and
along in mid-morning, pale and hollow-eyed, quite exhausted with toil and
excitement, but triumphant, they stumbled down to camp and turned in, too
tired to eat,—indeed, there was little but damaged flour that they could
eat. They slept ten hours without stirring, and the sun was low in the
northwest when they awoke.
Joe rubbed his eyes open and sat up. He found Harry, the bandana in his
lap, poring over the store of gold.
“Gold,” said Harry, “is worth about sixteen dollars to the ounce, as
the miners reckon it. I should say we had about three ounces here.
Forty-eight dollars,—not bad for a first day’s work!”
“Um-m, no,” said Joe; “but I wish you’d take part of it and go down to
the store and buy some provisions. I’m hungry.”
Harry looked at him. Was Joe daft? But no, Joe was the saner of the two.
“We’ve got gold,” Joe continued, “and we’ve got grit,—at least some of
mine’s left, though not much, but what we haven’t got is grub. Seems to
me the next thing to look out for is something to eat. The gold will wait
a day for us, but there is something inside me that says the other won’t.
We’d better go prospecting for food this time.”
Harry put his hand on his stomach. “Joe,” he said, “I declare you are
right. You generally are. Fact is, I was so crazy over this yellow stuff
in the handkerchief that I had forgotten everything else. We’ll hunt
to-day.”
They made a sorry breakfast of some heavy cakes made from the last of
the spoiled flour, then took their rifles and went down toward the sea.
The cakes were heavy within them, but their hearts were light. They
ranged through a little gully seaward and to the east, seeking for
ptarmigans but finding none. They might have hunted for the other two
up at Ptarmigan Bend, but each felt that it would not do. The moment
they sighted the diggings it was probable that they would fall to mining
again, and they knew this and kept away. Through the gully they reached
the shore, a narrow strip of pebbly beach at the foot of rough cliffs,
and here in long rows, sitting on their eggs on the narrow ledges, they
found scores of puffins. They are stupid little fellows, sitting bolt
upright on greenish, blotched eggs that are not unlike those of the
crow, but larger. The flesh of the puffin is not bad eating when one
is hungry, and the boys found these so tame that they hardly flew at a
rifle-shot. In half an hour they had a dozen, and tramped back to camp,
well satisfied that they need not starve. By the time two birds were
cooked and eaten the sun was behind the cliffs, and the gray of the
Arctic midnight was over all. They sprang to their feet refreshed and
about to plan to resume digging, when Joe held up his hand with a look
of consternation on his face. A long unheard but familiar sound came to
the ears of both boys, and Harry’s face reflected the dismay that was in
Joe’s.
The sound was the rhythmic click of oars in rowlocks, and it came up the
placid waters of the inlet from the sea.
A few days before, how gladly they would have heard that sound. Oars in
rowlocks meant white men. Eskimos and Indians paddle. Each stepped to his
rifle and saw that it was loaded, and then they stood ready to defend
their claim against all comers. So quickly does a white man distrust
another when there is gold at stake.
A moment, and a boat came round the bend, a rude boat, built of rough
boards and well loaded, but with only one occupant. This seemed to be an
oldish man, a white man, roughly dressed. He rowed steadily but wearily,
without looking up. By and by the bow of the boat struck the beach not
far away, and the man turned his head over his shoulder toward the bow
and seemed to speak to the air. Then he nodded his head, stepped out,
drew his boat up a little, and came toward them.
“Morning, gents!” he said. “How you finding it?”
The boys put down their rifles and greeted him cordially. They had
nothing to fear from this little unarmed man who limped as he walked.
After all it was good to see a white man, and his coming presaged much
for their safe return to civilization.
“You’re not miners,” he said, after looking them over keenly.
“No,” replied Joe, “not exactly. We’re whalemen. We were wrecked up on
the Arctic coast about two years ago, and we’re working our way back to
civilization.”
“Want to know!” exclaimed the other. “Well, you’re most to it now.
Civilization is working right this way pretty fast, that is, if you’ve a
mind to call it that.”
“What do you mean by that?” asked Joe in wonder.
“Mean?” replied the little man. “I mean that there’s sixty thousand
people up in this country at this minute, only none of ’em have got quite
up to here except me. They’re piling into Nome as fast as the steamers
can bring them, and they’re spreading over the country as fast as horse
and foot will take them. It’s the biggest rush the Alaska diggings ever
saw.”
“Nome!” queried Joe. “Where’s that?”
The little man looked at him a moment. “Oh, I forgot,” he said. “You’ve
been away two or three years, and it all happened since then. Nome is
about two hundred miles south of this by sea. I’ve just rowed in from
there. They found beach diggings there a year ago that were mighty rich,
and the whole earth piled up there this spring. You can’t get a foot of
ground anywhere down there for fifty miles. It’s all staked. I came in
there late last fall and couldn’t get anything then. Got a notion in my
head that there was good ground north here and started across tundra in
the winter. Froze my feet and had to crawl back on my hands and knees.
Started out again this spring with this boat. Paid a hundred dollars
for it. Rowed alongshore as far as Cape Prince of Wales. Father-in-law
got aboard the boat there, and he’s been sitting in the bow ever since
telling me where to row. He directed me here. Father-in-law has been dead
these ten years.”
Joe and Harry looked at each other, and the little man noted it and
smiled sadly.
“I know,” he said, “it sounds queer. Well, it _is_ queer. Course ’tain’t
so, but it seems so. Ain’t nobody there, it’s jest my notion. A man gets
queer up in this country if he’s too much alone. I reckon it’s a sign,
though, and I’m going to find something good. Now, I’m hungry. Will you
eat with me? My name’s Blenship, what’s yourn?”
The boys helped Blenship get his outfit ashore, assured that they had
found a friend. He had a pick, two shovels, two regular gold pans, a
queer machine something like a baby’s wooden cradle which he called a
rocker, and a good quantity of civilized provisions and utensils, besides
a camp outfit. The boat was heavily loaded, and it was a wonder to them
how he had made the long trip in it in safety. This he could not tell
much about. He had simply “followed directions.” He had “sour dough”
bread of his own cooking, and it did not take him long to broil some ham
in a little spider. Then he invited the boys to fall to with him, and
they were not shy about doing it. What if they had just eaten puffin?
Real bread and ham! It made them ravenous.
After the meal they told Blenship of their discovery. His eyes glistened
at sight of the nuggets, but he did not seem much surprised.
“Just as I expected,” he said. “I’ve come at the right time for you,
though. You want to stake that ground right away, and then I’ll stake
what’s left. We can’t be too quick about it, either. You may see forty
men coming over the hill at any minute. If you got all this with a wooden
stick and a bread pan, there’s stuff enough there for all of us. Wait a
minute, though, let’s see what father-in-law says.”
He stepped down to his boat for a moment, then came back.
“Father-in-law is gone,” he said. “Couldn’t raise him anywhere. Guess
this is the place he meant for me to come to. No need of his staying
round, long as the job’s done. Now let’s stake that ground, then we’ll
be safe. You are entitled to five claims. One of you is the discoverer.
He can stake discovery claim and number one above and number one below;
then the other can have one above him and one below him. That’s all you
are good for. Then I come in with one above and one below, and I’ve got
powers of attorney enough in my pocket to stake all the rest of the
creek. Got about forty men to give me powers of attorney when I left on
this trip. They get half of each claim I stake for them. I get the other
half, which ain’t so bad in this case. Come on.”
They worked steadily for several days, cutting and shaping stakes from
driftwood, measuring distances carefully with Blenship’s fifty-foot
tape, posting location notices, and now and then stopping to prospect
a locality. Blenship always went down to “bed rock” for his prospects.
He handled a pan with the marvelous skill of an old timer, and his eyes
always glistened at the result.
“Boys,” he declared one day enthusiastically, “this is the richest creek
the world ever saw, I believe. I want you to elect me recorder of this
district. We’ll call it the Arctic District, and I have a notion that I’d
like to call this ‘Candle Creek,’ ’cause its prospects are so bright.
Then I’ll record the claims duly, and we’ll be all registered and can
hold everything according to law. What do you say?”
The boys were only too glad to thus find a mentor and friend, and
cheerfully agreed to everything. An Alaska mining claim, according to
United States law, consists of twenty acres, generally laid out in a
parallelogram, 330 feet each side of the creek, making a width of 660 in
all. Their five claims meant a hundred acres, and, if even moderately
rich, were a fortune. In the end they had the entire creek staked from
source to mouth, the number of powers of attorney which Blenship
produced being prodigious.
In spite of the hard work, perhaps because they were living well on
civilized food, they never seemed to tire, and were as frisky as
young colts. Ten days had passed, and never a sign of the invasion
of prospectors which Blenship had so confidently predicted. Since
the father-in-law episode the little man had given no signs of his
“queerness,” unless this story of thousands to the south were one. On the
other hand, he seemed very sane and shrewd, and kindly in all ways. He
shared his provisions in return for help in staking his numerous claims,
and the boys could see that his advice was friendly and worth following.
The day the last stake was driven he insisted that they celebrate, and
got up a bountiful meal with his own hand, making a bread pudding with
real raisins from his stores, which filled the boys with unalloyed
delight.
“There!” he said, as he lighted his pipe after the meal was finished,
“now we’re fixed. If old Tom Lane comes up here and wants the earth,
he can have it, but he’ll have to pay good for it. You and I could
work those claims and take out a few hundred dollars’ worth of gold a
day until the ground freezes up, and then we wouldn’t more’n pay our
expenses up here and back and the cost of living. That isn’t the way
money is made in the mining business. You just stake the claims and hold
on to them until the man comes along who has the millions to work ’em in
a big way. There’s several of those men up in Nome already, but the king
of them all is old Tom Lane. He’s got his men out spying round all over
the country, and it won’t be long before one of them drops on to this
place. Then we’ll drive a bargain that’ll make the old man’s eyes stick
out. Meantime I’ll just show you boys how to build and work a rocker, and
we’ll get out a few hundred a day and wait developments.”
Blenship showed them how to handle the rocker that very day, and left
them at Ptarmigan Bend gleefully running sand through it while he
prospected his various claims more thoroughly.
[Illustration: PROSPECTOR AND HIS OUTFIT]
A miner’s rocker is ingenious in its simplicity. It is generally a wooden
box, having a rough sieve-like hopper at the top, and an inclined plane
of canvas within. You shovel the sand into the hopper, then pour in water
and rock gently. The water washes the sand down along the inclined plane,
where riffles catch the heavy gold, while the sand washes over and out
at the bottom. It is a simple matter to work this, though, like the gold
pan, its perfect manipulation requires much skill and judgment. At the
end of an hour the boys made their first clean-up, and were delighted
at the amount of gold that lay yellow in the riffles. They worked thus
with great glee till Blenship returned, long past the supper hour. He
inspected the results, and even he was roused to enthusiasm at the
quantity of gold that they had.
“I declare,” said he, “it’s about ten ounces, and most all small nuggets.
Probably as much more fine gold went right through. You’ve been rocking
too hard. A rocker is like a woman; you’ve got to humor her or she won’t
work well. Let me try the tailings.”
He panned the heap of sand that had gone through the rocker, and showed
them the fine gold still left in it.
“You only got about half on’t,” he said. “Geewhillikins! but that little
pond is a pocket for you. There’s a young million right in a few rods, or
I miss my guess. I’ve got some rich spots upstream myself, but they ain’t
in it with this one. I’d like to try some sluicing on that. It would be
dead easy. You could dam the creek at that little gap up above and get
at all this clay bottom, and have plenty of water for the sluice. How
would it do for me to go into partnership with you boys for a time, and
we try this thing? Reckon we could fix up some kind of a trade, couldn’t
we?”
“What do you think?” said Joe to Harry.
“I think,” answered Harry, “that Mr. Blenship is more than kind to us. I
for one will heartily accede to any agreement that he wants to make.”
“And so will I,” Joe assented warmly.
“Listen to that, now,” said Blenship in mock despair. “Here I was
planning to drive a hard bargain with them, and they put me on my honor.
Anything I want to do! Humph! Well, this is what I propose. Suppose we
get to work and sluice here at Partridge Bend. You give me a hundred
dollars a day every day of actual sluicing, as general manager; you take
the rest. If you ain’t suited at the end of the first three days, we’ll
call the bargain off.”
“Agreed!” said Harry. “Agreed!” said Joe, and they set to work.
They blocked the stream with stones, and stuffed tundra moss into the
crevices, then piled turf over the whole. With the pick they hewed a
gully in the mica-schist ledge that dammed the little pond and let the
water out. Then they knocked Blenship’s boat to pieces and made a rude
sluice with the boards. This they braced upon driftwood logs set on the
right slant for sluicing. Blenship, skillful as a woodsman with his axe,
hewed more sluice timber out of driftwood logs, and finally the structure
was complete. There were still no signs of other prospectors, and the
boys began to think Blenship’s story of the thousands in the country just
south of them must be another delusion of his.
Finally, everything was complete. Blenship showed them how to shovel into
the sluice so that enough but not too much dirt should be present in it,
and then turned on the water. For two hours the boys swung the shovels
lustily, and found it very fatiguing work indeed. Blenship managed the
flow of the water so that it should work to the best advantage during
this time. Then when the boys were thoroughly weary he shut it off and
called a halt. Joe and Harry rested on their shovels, puffing.
“Time to clean up,” he said. “Now we’ll see whether I’m worth a hundred
dollars a day or not.”
With water in his gold pan he washed the remaining sand from riffle to
riffle, and finally collected the gold in a yellow heap in the pan at the
bottom of the sluice. It was quite a little heap, and Blenship weighed
it, pan and all, in his hand, thoughtfully.
“Reckon there’s about three pounds of it,” he said coolly. “Say seven
hundred dollars.”
Joe and Harry looked over his shoulder with bulging eyes. Seven hundred
dollars! Two hours’ sluicing! Neither before had realized the full import
of their good fortune. If they could do that in two hours,—in a day, a
week, a month! Their heads whirled. And then all three started.
A shadow had fallen across the pan.
Blenship whirled sullenly and savagely, reaching toward his hip with an
instinctive movement, though no weapon hung there. Then he laughed.
“Oh, it’s you, Griscome, is it? Be’n expecting some of you fellows this
ten days. Come to camp and have a bite with us?”
“No, thanks,” said the other, a tall man in a blue shirt, stout boots,
and a slouch hat, “my outfit’s back here. Pretty good clean-up for a
little work.”
“That’s so,” replied Blenship. “And that ain’t all. The whole creek’s
like that from top to bottom, and it’s staked from bottom to top, and
recorded. I’m the recorder. We’d ’a’ staked the benches, only the powers
of attorney give out. Better stake ’em, they’re likely good.”
“Much obliged,” said the other. “Guess I will. So long.”
He went out of sight over the hill in long, swift strides.
“What are the benches?” asked Joe. “Will he stake them? Who is he?”
“One at a time, young feller,” said Blenship. “He is one of Pap Lane’s
men. The benches are the hillside claims. He may stake ’em, but I doubt
it. He won’t wait. He’ll light out across tundra as fast as his horse can
carry him, and tell his boss about this. Meanwhile we can wait, and we
might as well get what’s coming to us. If one of you boys will try and
handle that water, I’ll show you how to shovel.”
Joe thought himself a good deal of a man, but he could not keep up with
the other in shoveling. He hung sturdily to his task, however, and for
three hours more shoveled wet sand and clayey gravel into the sluice
while Harry regulated the water according to occasional directions from
Blenship. The latter instructed Joe in the best methods of scraping bed
rock, and showed him how the best of the gold was liable to lie in the
little hollows of the clay, and be missed by an inexperienced hand.
At the end of three hours Blenship ordered a cessation of work once
more, much to Joe’s relief, for five hours of labor with the shovel had
thoroughly exhausted him. He lay back on the tundra while Harry and
Blenship cleaned up. The result showed Blenship’s superior skill in
mining, and the longer run. It was nearly double the other.
“Guess we’ll call it a day’s work,” said he. “Pretty near two thousand
dollars. Have I earned my hundred?”
The boys thought he had indeed, and pressed him to take more for his
share, but he resolutely refused. In the tent he took from his outfit a
pair of miner’s scales and weighed out his wages carefully, putting them
in a little chamois bag in his bosom. The balance he turned over to the
boys, and they stowed it in the bandana with what they already had.
“You see,” said Blenship, “the better showing your little pocket makes in
the next ten days, the better price the whole creek will bring when Pap
Lane or the Alaska Commercial Company or some of those fellows come up
here to buy it.”
“But why should we sell?” asked Joe.
“Young feller,” said Blenship, “don’t you make no mistake. If you can
sell out your share of this creek at a good price, you do it. You’ve got
a little spot that’s mighty rich. The rest of your claim may not pay for
the labor of working it. Two months from now it will be frozen up, and
will stay so for nine months more. A man with a million behind him can
take this creek and work it to advantage. You and I might peck at it for
ten years and then not get a living out of it. If you get a good chance,
sell.”
As if in proof of what Blenship said, the next day it rained, the
swelling waters carried out their rude dam, and it was three days more
before they got it repaired and began sluicing again. Yet when they did,
they took out three thousand in a single day. The next day it was only a
thousand, because they had used up part of their ground and had to move
their sluices, which took time. But on the third they found a hollow in
the clay bottom that was a veritable treasure house, and yielded up over
five thousand dollars in fine gold and nuggets.
That morning three men came over the hills with packs on their backs.
They camped near by and examined the notices with much disgust. It did
not please them that the whole creek was staked.
Blenship greeted them jovially, showed them his records in proof of
the validity of the claims, and advised them to stake the benches,
which they did. They prospected these and found a certain amount of
gold there. Others came, on foot and with pack-horses,—evidently the
story had spread. The place began to assume quite a mining-camp air.
Meanwhile Blenship and his lieutenants worked on industriously. They were
questioned much, but not otherwise disturbed. The newcomers were as yet
too busy prospecting and staking ground for themselves.
One day Harry dropped his shovel with a start. The long roar of a steam
whistle sounded from the sea. A steamer! How it brought back memories of
the Bowhead, now scattered in ruin along the Arctic shore, and through
her the home thought again. Suppose Captain Nickerson should be aboard.
Perhaps he was bound north once more in search of them. The bustle of the
new camp and the glamour of the greed of gold slipped from him like a
garment, and his soul soared from it, free, back to the home fireside and
his father and mother. The voice of Blenship recalled him.
“Come on, boy,” he said kindly; “let’s keep her a-going. I reckon that’s
old Pap Lane come up in his steamer to see about this new strike. We want
to have a good clean-up just going on when he strikes camp.”
An hour later Blenship stood by his tent door talking with a
square-shouldered, resolute-looking man of perhaps sixty. His hair was
gray, but there was no stoop in his figure and he seemed in the prime of
forceful life.
“Pshaw! Blenship,” he was saying, “you have no business to stake all this
creek. Even discovery would only entitle you to three claims, and you
must have twenty. You’ll have to pull up and let my boys go in.”
“Nearer forty claims than twenty,” Blenship declared coolly, “and every
one of them staked on a good power of attorney from good hard-headed men
in Nome. If you try to cut them out, they’ll fight you, every one of
them, and you know what that means in the Alaska courts. No, sir, those
claims are legally staked, on the square, and I propose to hold ’em.”
“But you can’t stake except on an actual discovery of gold,” continued
the big man. “Do you mean to say you have found prospects on every one of
them?”
“Colonel,” said Blenship, “you come with me and see.”
The two were gone two hours and came back, still arguing the matter.
“All the same,” said the big man, “it’s only prospects, and the ground
is more than likely to be spotted. What I want to see is actual outcome
of gold from it before I consider any such preposterous price for a
controlling interest in it.”
“You do, do you, colonel?” queried Blenship calmly. “Well, just step this
way.”
Blenship stepped down toward the sluices where Harry and Joe stood, as
had been quietly planned by the wily little man.
“Colonel,” said he, “these are Mr. Nickerson and Mr. Desmond, discoverers
of Candle Creek diggings, the richest in the known world. Boys, this is
Colonel Lane, of California, now of Nome. He’s also about the richest in
the known world, but, like Julius Cæsar or whoever it was, he’s looking
for more mining-fields to conquer. Gentlemen, show Mr. Lane what’s in the
riffles.”
The boys stepped aside and Colonel Lane stepped up to the sluice boxes.
He looked from riffle to riffle without a word. It was the result of a
full half day’s shoveling, and fate had been kind to them.
The big man looked long in silence, then he whistled. But in a second he
chuckled.
“Blenship,” he said, “I wouldn’t have thought it of you. You salted the
sluice boxes. You’ve put in all the gold you had in camp when you heard
me coming.”
“Oh-h-h!” exclaimed Blenship, with scorn, “all the gold we have in camp!
You must think we are pretty slow miners. Boys, come down to the tent and
open the poke for him.”
With trembling hands Harry drew out the bag of dust and nuggets from its
hiding-place and opened it. The colonel looked long into this bag, lifted
it, and then whistled softly for the second time.
“Why, confound it!” said he. “There’s a good twelve thousand dollars
there. Do you mean to say you got it out of that little mud-hole you are
working out there?”
“All on’t, colonel, all on’t. That’s the richest bank—mud-bank—I’ve seen
yet, and I’ve been in placer mining all my life. Now, colonel, come out
here and talk with me. There’s no man in this world can handle this creek
the way you can. It’s the biggest thing the country ever saw. Come out
back while I argue with you.”
The two walked back on the tundra together, and Harry tied up the poke
and put it in its hiding-place again. Joe, weary with his morning’s work,
sat down in the tent, but Harry wandered outside. His thoughts were still
of home and the people there. He had heard the steamer whistle again, why
he did not know. Home was not so very far away now, he felt that, but
the thought made him only the more homesick. He noted some men coming up
the creek, seemingly strangers, but strangers were plentiful there now.
Probably these were more people from the ship coming up to join those who
were with Colonel Lane. There was a big man a little ahead of the group,
and Harry did not notice that as he approached he looked earnestly at him
and almost broke into a run. The great man rushed up to him, took him by
the shoulders, and turned him round, looking him square in the face,
then let out a roar that echoed from the surrounding hills.
[Illustration: SLUICING AT CANDLE CREEK]
“It’s him!” he bellowed. “It’s him! Great jumping Jehoshaphat, it’s him!
I knew he’d turn up. You couldn’t lose him. Didn’t I see him go overboard
in the straits in a livin’ gale of wind and come back bringing a Yukon
goose with him? It’s the seven-time winner, cap. But where’s Joe?”
Joe answered for himself, rushing out of the tent and flying by the great
boatswain of the Bowhead,—for who else would it be?—into his father’s
arms. A moment later Harry was gripping Captain Nickerson’s hand with
one of his, the big boatswain’s with the other, and laughing and crying
and talking all at once, while Mr. Jones, the taciturn first mate stood
by, erect and solemn, and seeming to look as if all this waste of words
was a very wrong thing. When the two boys were released from the hands
of Captain Nickerson and the boatswain, the first mate extended his, and
though his face twitched with emotion all he said was, “How d’ do. Glad.”
Evidently Mr. Jones’s characteristics had lost nothing in two years.
Captain Nickerson was grayer, and there were lines of care about his eyes
that had not been there before. But these seemed to slip away as the
boys told their story and he realized that he had them both back again,
sound and hearty. Mr. Adams had fitted out another ship for him the
following spring and he had made a trip north, but the ice had been very
bad and he got no certain news of the boys, yet somehow neither he nor
the folks at home had been willing to give them up for lost. Therefore he
had come up again this summer, whaling, but determined to lose no chance
to get news of them. By chance he had found at Point Hope the native
from whom they had bought the umiak. He had told him how two white men
who might be the missing ones had been at the Hotham Inlet trading fair
and gone south across the bay. He had followed on the slender clue, had
sighted Lane’s steamer, and landed. And so they talked on, oblivious of
all except that they were reunited again after so long a time. Harry and
Joe forgot their gold, and the captain, full of news from home for them,
asked nothing about their present condition.
Meanwhile Blenship and the colonel, arguing earnestly back on the tundra,
had noticed the commotion.
“Who are those people?” asked the big man.
Blenship did not know, but he was not going to let a little matter of
ignorance spoil a good bargain. “Those,” said he, “must be the wealthy
friends of my partners from the States. They’ve been expecting some
people up on their own steamer, exploring. I reckon they’ll be glad to
see how well the boys have done.”
“Look here, Blenship,” said the colonel hastily, “I reckon I’ll have
to take your figures on this trade. You are empowered to act for your
partners, aren’t you?”
“Certainly, colonel, certainly,” replied Blenship, with a twinkle in his
eye.
“Well, it’s a bargain, then,” declared the colonel. “Shake hands on it.”
The two shook hands solemnly and hastened back to the tent. Mutual
introductions followed, then Blenship spoke. “I’ve sold the creek,
boys,” he said, “and the colonel has driven a hard bargain with me, but
I reckon we’ll all have to stand by it. In the first place he gets my
rights in all the claims I’ve staked, and that’s most of the creek, for
fifty thousand dollars. Ain’t that right, colonel?” The big man nodded.
“Next he buys a controlling interest in discovery claim and the two above
and below, belonging to you two boys, fifty-one per cent. of the five
claims, for just a hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars, cash and
notes, you to retain forty-nine per cent. interest in them all and to
receive that proportion of the net earnings, the proper share of expenses
being taken out. Reckon he’ll stick you bad on them expenses.”
“Look here,” said Captain Nickerson. “What’s all this?”
“Oh,” said Blenship, “I thought you knew.” The colonel was shaking his
fist at Blenship, but he pretended not to notice it. “Show him the poke,
man!” he said to Harry.
Harry drew the gold from its hiding-place and untied the neck of the sack
once more. The big boatswain waited just long enough to see this gold,
then he bolted from the tent. Outside they could hear him slapping his
great leg with a noise like the report of a pistol and gurgling something
about seven-time winners, but within they were too much interested in the
story of the placer discoveries to heed.