"Yes, it will; Laurier will do anything our boss says these days: you fix it!"
"That"s right," the Cap put in. "Hardie"s right again!"
"You"d be a long time in Nova Scotia before you"d earn two hundred and fifty dollars a month! Eh, Cap?" sneered the girl.
"Earn! How much do you earn here? You graft same as the rest of us."
"Quit fighting," Poo-Bah broke in, and their querulous voices ceased. "Cap, I think I see how you can make a dollar or two: and you"ll be near our friend, Hardie, here; besides being in a position to pick up information for the benefit of yours truly. I"ll see the Gold Commissioner, and get you put on as special door-keeper instead of a policeman. Guess your dignity will stand up under this! You will have the right to let fellows into the office on special appointment--see?--which will cost a ten or a twenty!"
"Not so bad!" slowly muttered the Cap, while the girl gurgled her appreciation. "The thing looks to have possibilities, and I guess my dignity will stand it."
Just then Hugh, with Frank at his heels, came in.
"Wait till I have just one dance," cried Frank, and was off to the room where music was to be heard. John motioned to Hugh to be still. They listened eagerly.
"Now, I"ve got some news--blamed noise those people make!--came in the mail to-day," went on Poo-Bah. "Orders have come from Ottawa throwing open the hillside claims of Dominion. I won"t mind you fellows getting a claim or two; but I want to get a bunch."
"You"ll get hold of yours before the news is made public," suggested the Cap.
"No, that won"t hardly do," drawled Poo-Bah; "you see there"ll be h.e.l.l enough raised when it is found I get a bunch of claims; and while Ottawa is ready enough to take our explanation of things, there is such a thing as being too coa.r.s.e, even here--besides, it ain"t necessary. No, in a few days the news will be made public: till then keep your heads shut, see?"
"We"ll trust you to work the graft," said the girl.
"You can certainly rely on me! Now, people, I"ve got to pull my freight."
Hugh gripped John"s arm, but he released it as he saw the party were leaving the box. The friends shrank back further into the shadows. When they were gone he whispered,
"Did you hear that? Dominion hillsides to be thrown open! Some of the richest ground in the country."
"I heard them talking about grafts, and I heard complaints about Smoothbore--who ever that may be."
"The Colonel at the Barracks."
"They appear to find him in the way." John hurriedly gave some account of what they had overheard. Hugh"s eyes glistened.
"Sure thing! Smoothbore is in the way. He"s straight; but this last about Dominion is the news. We"ll get in on the hillsides of Dominion, and do our best to hold them."
It was late enough for rest, especially for weary workers such as they: so they pa.s.sed through the streets directly for the home-camp. Dawson was now the home of twenty thousand people, ninety-nine per cent. adult males. Its streets were a wide range of strange sights and wild scenes.
Its outskirts were of tents, and yet more tents.
They went to bed with the waking dreams of wealth very close to them.
John Berwick, who had some qualms at taking advantage of what he had overheard, felt it was an unsatisfactory condition of things in which such a malefactor as Poo-Bah could swagger and flourish.
CHAPTER XX
A LOTTERY
On the second day after leaving Dawson, John Berwick and his partners camped on Dominion Creek, worn out and weary. Their commissariat was equal to a three weeks" stay, and their tools and their bedding were added to the load. Hugh remained their leader. While John and George had been prospecting their quartz find, he had visited Dominion Creek, and found many miners looking with avidity towards the claims on the left limit of the creek, several miles below the confluence of Caribou. It was to this locality that he directed the party.
The laws governing the taking up of placer-claims in the Yukon demanded that the applicant should swear to the finding of gold. No quant.i.ty was mentioned. John and George had met this difficulty when they applied for the placer-claims on the Bonanza hillsides; but this technicality had been smilingly dispensed with by the record clerk on the consideration that n.o.body wanted the ground for placer. In the case of the Dominion Creek hillsides, however, they determined to make discoveries, if possible.
They pitched their tent upon the hillside, which rose in a gentle incline from the creek. If any former channel ran underneath the ground they had chosen it could not be very far to bed-rock.
They picked their four claims, and numbered them 1, 2, 3, 4. They drew lots for them. John had 1, Hugh 2, Frank 3, and George the 4th.
As their tent was small they determined that two of them should work at night-time and two by day. This also meant that a continuous watch could be kept. Miners from the creek claims visited them, curious to learn their motive. When they were told that the party expected the claims to be some day thrown open, they smiled in superior wisdom.
Each of the four began to sink a shaft to the bed-rock of his claim. A single man can sink a hole ten, even twelve, feet: but after that a windla.s.s is necessary to hoist the dirt.
It was arranged that the first day they all should work, George and Frank continuing the watch through the night. They began early in the morning of the first day, each on his claim. Each made a little clearing around the spot he had chosen as the locality of his first shaft. The growth was not heavy, and was quickly disposed of. By noon each had made a hole about three feet deep. No frost was met as yet.
It was George who first reached bed-rock at five-foot depth! He went to the other workers and announced the fact. Hugh had expected it to be thirty, or twenty-five, feet at least. Their first feeling was of disappointment.
The party gathered about the pit, and Hugh jumped into it. There was about a foot of gravel above the bed-rock. Hugh picked out a pebble lying directly on bed-rock, and smoothed over its muddy surface with his fingers. His eyes brightened. It gleamed with half-a-dozen specks of gold. He pa.s.sed it up to the others, who gazed on it gladly. They gave him a pan. Hugh scooped it full of gravel and scrambled out of the hole.
The others turned towards the creek.
"No, fellows, I"ve got a pool located up in the bushes here," and he looked away from the creek. "What those fellows on the creek don"t know won"t do them no harm." He led the way through the bushes. Arriving at the pool, he dipped the pan into the water and shook it. He then placed it on the ground, grabbed a handful of the pebbles, washed them in the water of the pan, and threw them away. He continued this process till he had removed the larger stones. Then again he whirled the pan in the water, this time more vigorously. He picked out the smaller pebbles, and replaced the pan in the water, whirled and shook it again, frequently lifting it out on an incline, allowing the off-rushing water to carry away the small pebbles and sand.
This process he kept up till but a handful of stuff remained at the bottom. He kept the pan on an incline, which caused the stuff to remain at one side. He moved the pan gently to and fro, with occasional quick shakings; very gently he drew the pan in and out of the water, the ebb to draw off the lighter sand. The residue in the pan became but a spoonful or two, and now occasionally a golden speck shone and gleamed.
The sand in the pan became less, and some of it was black--the black sand of the miners, magnetic from the iron which so largely composes it.
As the process proceeded the sideward motion occasionally carried the body of black sand away, leaving a trail of gleaming yellow dust. The black sand had at last all been washed over the side of the pan. Hugh, with his fingers, ma.s.sed the gold into a little pile, and muttered, "Seventy-five cents."
"Three bob," George repeated after him. The pan was pa.s.sed from hand to hand for scrutiny and comment.
"Not bad!" said John.
"You bet it ain"t!" agreed Hugh, "even if it don"t rank with Eldorado.
This ground ain"t deep, and the surface can be ground-sluiced off. Let us try another pan off of bed-rock."
The pan was again filled and the process of washing resumed. "If we get two cents in this gravel a foot off of bed-rock I"ll be satisfied," was Hugh"s comment. He got this time what he estimated to be five cents.
"Perhaps this is above average," he muttered. Your old-time miner is ever a sceptic.
So while he was washing this second pan Hugh"s mind was at work.
"George, I guess you had better go and chuck back all the gravel and wash into the hole and get a fire built on it quick. The ashes will hide the wash, and any person looking down the hole will simply think that you have struck frost and are using fire. The rest of us will keep going till we strike wash."
Frank reached gravel at about seven feet, and reported the same to Hugh, who suggested that he should work a small hole to bed-rock to get a pan of gravel from that point. Hugh cautioned Frank against throwing any gravel out of the shaft to attract the notice of pa.s.sers-by.
Frank secured a pan of dirt immediately on bed-rock, and Hugh panned it for him. Frank was the only one of the four not a miner.
The pan yielded a little better than that of George had done. Hugh suggested, significantly, that Frank had found frost at the bottom of his shaft, which induced the latter to mutter: "Ground heap frozen all same rock, no ketchum gold without fire, he! he!" This was supposed to be a humorous imitation of the Siwash.
"Never mind your Siwash sweethearts, but get the fire in quick. I suppose if you do strike it rich, or ever get this claim, which is sure worth something, it will be heap klootch, heap dance, all the time! Get a move on, or some rubber-neck will be mooching round here!"
Hugh went back to his pit, and both he and John had struck real frost before Frank roared, "Supper!"