THE KLONDYKE
"Poverty is an odious calling."--Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy.
On Monday morning, the 6th of June, they crossed the British line; but
it was not till Wednesday, the 8th, at four in the afternoon, just ten
months after leaving San Francisco, that the Oklahoma's passengers saw
between the volcanic hills on the right bank of the Yukon a stretch of
boggy tundra, whereon hundreds of tents gleamed, pink and saffron. Just
beyond the bold wooded height, wearing the deep scar of a landslide on
its breast, just round that bend, the Klondyke river joins the
Yukon--for this is Dawson, headquarters of the richest Placer Diggings
the world has seen, yet wearing more the air of a great army
encampment.
For two miles the river-bank shines with sunlit canvas--tents, tents
everywhere, as far as eye can see, a mushroom growth masking the older
cabins. The water-front swarms with craft, scows and canoes, birch,
canvas, peterboro; the great bateaux of the northern lumberman, neat
little skiffs, clumsy rafts; heavy "double-enders," whip-sawed from
green timber, with capacity of two to five tons; lighters and barges
carrying as much as forty tons--all having come through the perils of
the upper lakes and shot the canon rapids.
As the Oklahoma steams nearer, the town blossoms into flags; a great
murmur increases to a clamour; people come swarming down to the
water-front, waving Union Jacks and Stars and Stripes as well----What
does it all mean? A cannon booms, guns are fired, and as the Oklahoma
swings into the bank a band begins to play; a cheer goes up from
fifteen thousand throats: "Hurrah for the first steamer!"
The Oklahoma has opened the Klondyke season of 1898!
They got their effects off the boat, and pitched the old tent up on the
Moosehide; then followed days full to overflowing, breathless, fevered,
yet without result beyond a general stringing up of nerves. The special
spell of Dawson was upon them all--the surface aliveness, the inner
deadness, the sense of being cut off from all the rest of the world, as
isolated as a man is in a dream, with no past, no future, only a
fantastic, intensely vivid Now. This was the summer climate of the
Klondyke. The Colonel, the Boy, and Captain Rainey maintained the
illusion of prosecuting their affairs by frequenting the offices,
stores, and particularly saloons, where buyers and sellers most did
congregate. Frequent mention was made of a certain valuable piece of
property.
Where was it?
"Down yonder at Minóok;" and then nobody cared a straw.
It was true there was widespread dissatisfaction with the Klondyke.
Everyone agreed it had been overdone. It would support one-quarter of
the people already here, and tens of thousands on their way! "Say
Klondyke, and instantly your soberest man goes mad; say anything else,
and he goes deaf."
Minóok was a good camp, but it had the disadvantage of lying outside
the magic district. The madness would, of course, not last, but
meanwhile the time went by, and the people poured in day and night. Six
great steamers full came up from the Lower River, and still the small
craft kept on flocking like coveys of sea-fowl through the Upper Lakes,
each party saying, "The crowd is behind."
On the 14th of June a toy whistle sounded shrill above the town, and in
puffed a Liliputian "steel-hull" steamer that had actually come "on her
own" through the canon and shot the White Horse Rapids. A steamer from
the Upper River! after that, others. Two were wrecked, but who minded?
And still the people pouring in, and still that cry, "The crowd's
behind!" and still the clamour for quicker, ampler means of transport
to the North, no matter what it cost. The one consideration "to get
there," and to get there "quickly," brought most of the horde by the
Canadian route; yet, as against the two ocean steamers--all-sufficient
the year before to meet the five river boats at St. Michael's--now, by
the All-American route alone, twenty ocean steamers and forty-seven
river boats, double-deckers, some two hundred and twenty-five feet
long, and every one crowded to the guards with people coming to the
Klondyke.
Meanwhile, many of those already there were wondering why they came and
how they could get home. In the tons of "mail matter" for Dawson,
stranded at Skaguay, must be those "instructions" from the Colonel's
bank, at home, to the Canadian Bank of Commerce, Dawson City. He agreed
with the Boy that if--very soon now--they had not disposed of the
Minóok property, they would go to the mines.
"What's the good?" rasped Mac. "Every foot staked for seventy miles."
"For my part," admitted the Boy, "I'm less grand than I was. I meant to
make some poor devil dig out my Minóok gold for me. It'll be the other
way about: I'll dig gold for any man on Bonanza that'll pay me wages."
They sat slapping at the mosquitoes till a whistle screamed on the
Lower River. The Boy called to Nig, and went down to the town to hear
the news. By-and-by Mac came out with a pack, and said he'd be back in
a day or two. After he had disappeared among the tents--a conquering
army that had forced its way far up the hill by now--the Colonel got up
and went to the spring for a drink. He stood there a long time looking
out wistfully, not towards the common magnet across the Klondyke, but
quite in the other direction towards the nearer gate of exit--towards
home.
"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 Minóok.
"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 Klondyke 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 flourishing there, down to the many-islanded Klondyke,
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 morass to the thicket of white birches, where the Colonel thought
it well to rest awhile.
"Yes, he felt the heat," he said, as he passed 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 ships,
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, windlasses. 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
shift 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 shift on?"
"No."
"Then, damn 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 spaced 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
windlass, 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 Klondyke.
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."
"I can use one more man on the night shift, a dollar and a half an
hour."
"All right," said the Boy.
The Colonel looked at him. "Is this job yours or mine?"
The Superintendent had gone up towards the dam.
"Whichever you say."
The Boy did not like to suggest that the Colonel seemed little fit for
this kind of exercise. They had been in the Klondyke long enough to
know that to be in work was to be in luck.
"I'll tell you," the younger man said quickly, answering something
unspoken, but plain in the Colonel's face; "I'll go up the gulch and
see what else there is."
It crossed his mind that there might be something less arduous than
this shovelling in the wet thaw or picking at frozen gravel in the hot
sun. If so, the Colonel might be induced to exchange. It was obvious
that, like so many Southerners, he stood the sun very ill. While they
were agreeing upon a rendezvous the Superintendent came back.
"Our bunk-house is yonder," he said, pointing. A kind of sickness came
over the Kentuckian as he recalled the place. He turned to his pardner.
"Wish we'd got a pack-mule and brought our tent out from Dawson." Then,
apologetically, to the Superintendent: "You see, sah, there are men who
take to bunk-houses just as there are women who want to live in hotels;
and there are others who want a place to call home, even if it's a
tent."
The Superintendent smiled. "That's the way we feel about it in
Alabama." He reflected an instant. "There's that big new tent up there
on the hill, next to the Buckeyes' cabin. Good tent; belongs to a
couple o' rich Englishmen, third owners in No. 0. Gone to Atlin. Told
me to do what I liked with that tent. You might bunk there while
they're away."
"Now, that's mighty good of you, sah. Next whose cabin did you say?"
"Oh, I don't know their names. They have a lay on seventeen. Ohio men.
They're called Buck One and Buck Two. Anybody'll show you to the
Buckeyes';" and he turned away to shout "Gate!" for the head of water
was too strong, and he strode off towards the lock.
As the Boy tramped about looking for work he met a great many on the
same quest. It seemed as if the Colonel had secured the sole job on the
creek. Still, vacancies might occur any hour.
In the big new tent the Colonel lay asleep on a little camp-bed,
(mercifully left there by the rich Englishmen), "gettin' ready for the
night-shift." As he stood looking down upon him, a sudden wave of pity
came over the Boy. He knew the Colonel didn't "really and truly have to
do this kind of thing; he just didn't like givin' in." But behind all
that there was a sense in the younger mind that here was a life unlike
his own, which dimly he foresaw was to find its legitimate expression
in battle and in striving. Here, in the person of the Colonel, no
soldier fore-ordained, but a serene and equable soul wrenched out of
its proper sphere by a chance hurt to a woman, forsooth! an imagination
so stirred that, if it slept at all, it dreamed and moaned in its
sleep, as now; a conscience wounded and refusing to heal. Had he not
said himself that he had come up here to forget? It was best to let him
have the job that was too heavy for him--yes, it was best, after all.
And so they lived for a few days, the Boy chafing and wanting to move
on, the Colonel very earnest to have him stay.
"Something sure to turn up, and, anyhow, letters--my instruction----"
And he encouraged the acquaintance the Boy had struck up with the
Buckeyes, hoping against hope that to go over and smoke a pipe, and
exchange experiences with such mighty good fellows would lighten the
tedium of the long day spent looking for a job.
"I call it a very pleasant cabin," the Colonel would say as he lit up
and looked about. Anything dismaller it would be hard to find. Not
clean and shipshape as the Boy kept the tent. But with double army
blankets nailed over the single window it was blessedly dark, if
stuffy, and in crying need of cleaning. Still, they were mighty good
fellows, and they had a right to be cheerful. Up there, on the rude
shelf above the stove, was a row of old tomato-cans brimful of Bonanza
gold. There they stood, not even covered. Dim as the light was, you
could see the little top nuggets peering out at you over the ragged
tin-rims, in a never locked shanty, never molested, never bothered
about. Nearly every cabin on the creek had similar chimney ornaments,
but not everyone boasted an old coat, kept under the bunk, full of the
bigger sort of nuggets.
The Colonel was always ready with pretended admiration of such
bric-à-brac, but the truth was he cared very little about this gold he
had come so far to find. His own wages, paid in dust, were kept in a
jam-pot the Boy had found "lyin' round."
The growing store shone cheerfully through the glass, but its value in
the Colonel's eyes seemed to be simply as an argument to prove that
they had enough, and "needn't worry." When the Boy said there was no
doubt this was the district in all the world the most overdone, the
Colonel looked at him with sun-tired, reproachful eyes.
"You want to dissolve the pardnership--I see."
"I don't."
But the Colonel, after any such interchange, would go off and smoke by
himself, not even caring for Buckeyes'. The work was plainly overtaxing
him. He slept badly, was growing moody and quick to take offence. One
day when he had been distinctly uncivil he apologized for himself by
saying that, standing with feet always in the wet, head always in the
scorching sun, he had taken a hell of a cold. Certain it was that,
without sullenness, he would give in to long fits of silence; and his
wide, honest eyes were heavy again, as if the snow-blindness of the
winter had its analogue in a summer torment from the sun. And his
sometimes unusual gentleness to his companion was sharply alternated
with unusual choler, excited by a mere nothing. Enough if the Boy were
not in the tent when the Colonel came and went. Of course, the Boy did
the cooking. The Colonel ate almost nothing, but he made a great point
of his pardner's service in doing the cooking. He would starve, he
said, if he had to cook for himself as well as swing a shovel; and the
Boy, acting on pure instinct, pretended that he believed this was so.
Then came the evening when the Boy was so late the Colonel got his own
breakfast; and when the recreant did get home, it was to announce that
a man over at the Buckeyes' had just offered him a job out on Indian
River. The Colonel set down his tea-cup and stared. His face took on
an odd, rigid look. But almost indifferently he said:
"So you're goin'?"
"Of course, you know I must. I started with an outfit and fifteen
hundred dollars, now I haven't a cent."
The Kentuckian raised his heavy eyes to the jam-jar. "Oh, help
yourself."
The Boy laughed, and shook his head.
"I wish you wouldn't go," the other said very low.
"You see, I've got to. Why, Nig and I owe you for a week's grub
already."
Then the Colonel stood up and swore--swore till he was scarlet and
shaking with excitement.
"If the life up here has brought us to 'Scowl' Austin's point of view,
we are poorly off." And he spoke of the way men lived in his part of
Kentucky, where the old fashion of keeping open house survived. And
didn't he know it was the same thing in Florida? "Wouldn't you do as
much for me?"
"Yes, only I can't--and--I'm restless. The summer's half gone. Up here
that means the whole year's half gone."
The Colonel had stumbled back into his seat, and now across the deal
table he put out his hand.
"Don't go, Boy. I don't know how I'd get on without----" He stopped,
and his big hand was raised as if to brush away some cloud between him
and his pardner. "If you go, you won't come back."
"Oh, yes, I will. You'll see."
"I know the kind," the other went on, as if there had been no
interruption. "They never come back. I don't know as I ever cared quite
as much for my brother--little fella that died, you know." Then, seeing
that his companion did not instantly iterate his determination to go,
"That's right," he said, getting up suddenly, and leaving his breakfast
barely touched. "We've been through such a lot together, let's see it
out."
Without waiting for an answer, he went off to his favourite seat under
the little birch-tree. But the incident had left him nervous. He would
come up from his work almost on the run, and if he failed to find his
pardner in the tent there was the devil to pay. The Boy would laugh to
himself to think what a lot he seemed able to stand from the Colonel;
and then he would grow grave, remembering what he had to make up for.
Still, his sense of obligation did not extend to giving up this
splendid chance down on Indian River. On Wednesday, when the fellow
over at the Buckeyes' was for going back, the Boy would go along.
On Sunday morning he ran a crooked, rusty nail into his foot. Clumsily
extracted, it left an ugly wound. Walking became a torture, and the
pain a banisher of sleep. It was during the next few days that he found
out how much the Colonel lay awake. Who could sleep in this blazing
sun? Black tents were not invented then, so they lay awake and talked
of many things.
The man from Indian River went back alone. The Boy would limp after the
Colonel down to the sluice, and sit on a dump heap with Nig. Few people
not there strictly on business were tolerated on No. 0, but Nig and his
master had been on good terms with Seymour from the first. Now they
struck up acquaintance with several of the night-gang, especially with
the men who worked on either side of the Colonel. An Irish gentleman,
who did the shovelling just below, said he had graduated from Dublin
University. He certainly had been educated somewhere, and if the
discussion were theologic, would take out of his linen-coat pocket a
little testament in the Vulgate to verify a bit of Gospel. He could
even pelt the man next but one in his native tongue, calling the
Silesian "Uebermensch." There existed some doubt whether this were the
gentleman's real name, but none at all as to his talking philosophy
with greater fervour than he bestowed on the puddling box.
The others were men more accustomed to work with their hands, but, in
spite of the conscious superiority of your experienced miner, a very
good feeling prevailed in the gang--a general friendliness that
presently centred about the Colonel, for even in his present mood he
was far from disagreeable, except now and then, to the man he cared the
most for.
Seymour admitted that he had placed the Southerner where he thought
he'd feel most at home. "Anyhow, the company is less mixed," he said,
"than it was all winter up at twenty-three, where they had a
Presbyterian missionary down the shaft, a Salvation Army captain
turnin' the windlass, a nigger thief dumpin' the becket, and a
dignitary of the Church of England doin' the cookin', with the help of
a Chinese chore-boy. They're all there now (except one) washin' out
gold for the couple of San Francisco card-sharpers that own the claim."
"Vich von is gone?" asked the Silesian, who heard the end of the
conversation.
"Oh, the Chinese chore-boy is the one who's bettered himself," said the
Superintendent--"makin' more than all the others put together ever made
in their lives; runnin' a laundry up at Dawson."
The Boy, since this trouble with his foot, had fallen into the way of
turning night into day. The Colonel liked to have him down there at the
sluice, and when he thought about it, the Boy marvelled at the hours he
spent looking on while others worked.
At first he said he came down only to make Scowl Austin mad. And it did
make him mad at first, but the odd thing was he got over it, and used
to stop and say something now and then. This attention on the part of
the owner was distinctly perilous to the Boy's good standing with the
gang. Not because Austin was the owner; there was the millionaire
Swede, Ole Olsen--any man might talk to him. He was on the square,
treated his workmen mighty fair, and when the other owners tried to
reduce wages, and did, Ole wouldn't join them--went right along paying
the highest rate on the creek.
Various stories were afloat about Austin. Oh, yes, Scowl Austin was a
hard man--the only owner on the creek who wouldn't even pay the little
subscription every poor miner contributed to keep the Dawson Catholic
Hospital going.
The women, too, had grievances against Austin, not only "the usual lot"
up at the Gold Belt, who sneered at his close fist, but some of the
other sort--those few hard-working wives or "women on their own," or
those who washed and cooked for this claim or that. They had stories
about Austin that shed a lurid light. And so by degrees the gathered
experience, good and ill, of "the greatest of all placer diggin's"
flowed by the idler on the bank.
"You seem to have a lot to do," Seymour would now and then say with a
laugh.
"So I have."
"What do you call it?"
"Takin' stock."
"Of us?"
"Of things in general."
"What did you mean by that?" demanded the Colonel suspiciously when the
Superintendent had passed up the line.
The shovelling in was done for the time being. The water was to be
regulated, and then the clean-up as soon as the owner came down.
"Better not let Austin hear you say you're takin' stock. He'll run you
out o' the creek."
The Boy only smiled, and went on fillipping little stones at Nig.
"What did you mean?" the Colonel persisted, with a look as suspicious
as Scowl Austin's own.
"Oh, nothin'. I'm only thinkin' out things."
"Your future, I suppose?" he said testily.
"Mine and other men's. The Klondyke's a great place to get things clear
in your head."
"Don't find it so." The Colonel put up his hand with that now familiar
action as if to clear away a cloud. "It's days since I had anything
clear in my head, except the lesson we learned on the trail."
The Boy stopped throwing stones, and fixed his eyes on his friend, as
the Colonel went on:
"We had that hammered into us, didn't we?"
"What?"
"Oh, that--you know--that--I don't know quite how to put it so it'll
sound as orthodox as it might be, bein' true; but it looks pretty clear
even to me"--again the big hand brushing at the unmoted sunshine--"that
the only reason men got over bein' beasts was because they began to be
brothers."
"Don't," said the Boy.
"Don't what?"
"I've always known I should have to tell you some time. I won't be able
to put it off if I stay ... and I hate tellin' you now. See here: I
b'lieve I'll get a pack-mule and go over to Indian River."
The Colonel looked round angrily. Standing high against the sky,
Seymour, with the gateman up at the lock, was moderating the strong
head of water. It began to flow sluggishly over the gravel-clogged
riffles, and Scowl Austin was coming down the hill.
"I don't know what you're drivin' at, about somethin' to tell. I know
one thing, though, and I learned it up here in the North: men were
meant to stick to one another."
"Don't, I say."
"Here's Austin," whispered the Colonel.
The Silesian philosopher stood in his "gum-boots" in the puddling-box
as on a rostrum; but silent now, as ever, when Scowl Austin was in
sight. With the great sluice-fork, the philosopher took up, washed, and
threw out the few remaining big stones that they might not clog the
narrow boxes below.
Seymour had so regulated the stream that, in place of the gush and foam
of a few minutes before, there was now only a scant and gently falling
veil of water playing over the bright gravel caught in the riffle-lined
bottoms of the boxes.
As the Boy got up and reached for his stick, Austin stood there saying,
to nobody in particular, that he'd just been over to No. 29, where they
were trying a new-fangled riffle.
"Don't your riffles do the trick all right?" asked the Boy.
"If you're in any doubt, come and see," he said.
They stood together, leaning over the sluice, looking in at one of the
things human industry has failed to disfigure, nearly as beautiful
to-day as long ago on Pactolus' banks when Lydian shepherds, with great
stones, fastened fleeces in the river that they might catch and gather
for King Croesus the golden sands of Tmolus. Improving, not in beauty,
but economy, quite in the modern spirit, the Greeks themselves
discovered that they lost less gold if they led the stream through
fleece-lined water-troughs--and beyond this device of those early
placer-miners we have not progressed so far but that, in every long,
narrow sluice-box in the world to-day, you may see a Lydian
water-trough with a riffle in the bottom for a golden fleece.
The rich Klondyker and the poor one stood together looking in at the
water, still low, still slipping softly over polished pebbles, catching
at the sunlight, winking, dimpling, glorifying flint and jasper, agate
and obsidian, dazzling the uncommercial eye to blind forgetfulness of
the magic substance underneath.
Austin gathered up, one by one, a handful of the shining stones, and
tossed them out. Then, bending down, "See?"
There, under where the stones had been, neatly caught in the lattice of
the riffle, lying thick and packed by the water action, a heavy ridge
of black and yellow--magnetic sand and gold.
"Riffles out!" called Seymour, and the men, who had been extracting the
rusty nails that held them firm, lifted out from the bottom of each box
a wooden lattice, soused it gently in the water, and laid it on the
bank.
The Boy had turned away again, but stood an instant noticing how the
sun caught at the countless particles of gold still clinging to the
wood; for this was one of the old riffles, frayed by the action of much
water and the fret of many stones. Soon it would have to be burned, and
out of its ashes the careful Austin would gather up with mercury all
those million points of light.
Meanwhile, Seymour had called to the gateman for more water, and
himself joining the gang, armed now with flat metal scoops, they all
began to turn over and throw back against the stream the debris in the
bottom of the boxes, giving the water another chance to wash out the
lighter stuff and clean the gold from all impurity. Away went the last
of the sand, and away went the pebbles, dark or bright, away went much
of the heavy magnetic iron. Scowl Austin, at the end of the line, had a
corn-whisk with which he swept the floor of the box, always upstream,
gathering the contents in a heap, now on this side, now on that,
letting the water play and sort and carry away, condensing, hastening
the process that for ages had been concentrating gold in the Arctic
placers.
"Say, look here!" shouted Austin to the Boy, already limping up the
hill.
When he had reached the sluice again he found that all Scowl Austin
wanted, apparently, was to show him how, when he held the water back
with the whisk, it eddied softly at each side of the broad little
broom, leaving exposed the swept-up pile.
"See?"
"What's all that?"
"What do you think?"
"Looks like a heap o' sawdust."
Austin actually laughed.
"See if it feels like sawdust. Take it up like this," he ordered.
His visitor obeyed, lifting a double handful out of the water and
holding it over the box, dripping, gleaming, the most beautiful thing
that comes out of the earth, save only life, and the assertion may
stand, even if the distinction is without difference, if the crystal is
born, grows old, and dies as undeniably as the rose.
The Boy held the double handful of well-washed gold up to the sunshine,
feeling to the full the immemorial spell cast by the King of Metals.
Nothing that men had ever made out of gold was so entirely beautiful as
this.
Scowl Austin's grim gratification was openly heightened with the rich
man's sense of superiority, but his visitor seemed to have forgotten
him.
"Colonel! here a minute. We thought it looked wonderful enough on the
Big Chimney table--but Lord! to see it like this, out o' doors, mixed
with sunshine and water!"
Still he stood there fascinated, leaning heavily against the
sluice-box, still with his dripping hands full, when, after a hurried
glance, the Colonel returned to his own box. None of the gang ever
talked in the presence of the owner.
"Guess that looks good to you." Austin slightly stressed the pronoun.
He had taken a reasonless liking for the young man, who from the first
had smiled into his frowning face, and treated him as he treated
others. Or perhaps Austin liked him because, although the Boy did a
good deal of "gassin' with the gang," he had never hung about at
clean-ups. At all events, he should stay to-night, partly because when
the blue devils were down on Scowl Austin nothing cheered him like
showing his "luck" off to someone. And it was so seldom safe in these
days. People talked. The authorities conceived unjust suspicions of a
man's returns. And then, far back in his head, that vague need men
feel, when a good thing has lost its early zest, to see its dimmed
value shine again in an envious eye. Here was a young fellow, who,
before he went lame, had been all up and down the creek for days
looking for a job--probably hadn't a penny--livin' off his friend, who
himself would starve but for the privilege Austin gave him of washing
out Austin's gold. Let the young man stop and see the richest clean-up
at the Forks.
And so it was with the acrid pleasure he had promised himself that he
said to the visitor, bending over the double handful of gold, "Guess it
looks good to you."
"Yes, it looks good!" But he had lifted his eyes, and seemed to be
studying the man more than the metal.
A couple of newcomers, going by, halted.
"Christ!" said the younger, "look at that!"
The Boy remembered them; they had been to Seymour only a couple of
hours before asking for work. One was old for that country--nearly
sixty--and looked, as one of the gang had said, "as if, instid o'
findin' the pot o' gold, he had got the end of the rainbow slam in his
face--kind o' blinded."
At sound of the strange voice Austin had wheeled about with a fierce
look, and heavily the strangers plodded by. The owner turned again to
the gold. "Yes," he said curtly, "there's something about that that
looks good to most men."
"What I was thinkin'," replied the Boy slowly, "was that it was the
only clean gold I'd ever seen--but it isn't so clean as it was."
"What do you mean?" Austin bent and looked sharply into the full hands.
"I was thinkin' it was good to look at because it hadn't got into dirty
pockets yet." Austin stared at him an instant. "Never been passed
round--never bought anybody. No one had ever envied it, or refused it
to help someone out of a hole. That was why I thought it looked
good--because it was clean gold ... a little while ago." And he plunged
his hands in the water and washed the clinging particles off his
fingers.
Austin had stared, and then turned his back with a blacker look than
even "Scowl" had ever worn before.
"Gosh! guess there's goin' to be trouble," said one of the gang.