"This is worth about sixty dollars."
"More like forty," said Dillon.
They were of every conceivable shape and shapelessness, most of them flattened; some of them, the greenhorn would swear, were fashioned by man into roughly embossed hearts, or sh.e.l.ls, or polished discs like rude, defaced coins. One was a perfect staple, another the letter "L,"
another like an axe-head, and one like a peasant"s sabot. Some were almost black with iron stains, and some were set with "jewels" of quartz, but for the most part they were formless fragments of a rich and bra.s.sy yellow.
"Lots of the little fellas are like melon-seeds"; and the Boy pointed a shaking finger, longing and still not daring to touch the treasure.
Each man had a dim feeling in the back of his head that, after all, the hillock of gold was an illusion, and his own hand upon the dazzling pile would clutch the empty air.
"Where"s your dust?" asked the Boy.
Dillon stared.
"Why, here."
"This is all nuggets and grains."
"Well, what more do you want?"
"Oh, it"d do well enough for me, but it ain"t dust."
"It"s what we call dust."
"As coa.r.s.e as this?"
The Sour-dough nodded, and Lighter laughed.
"There"s a fox"s mask," said the Colonel at the bottom of the table, pointing a triangular bit out.
"Let me look at it a minute," begged the Boy.
"Hand it round," whispered Schiff.
It was real. It was gold. Their fingers tingled under the first contact. This was the beginning.
The rude bit of metal bred a glorious confidence. Under the magic of its touch Robert Bruce"s expensive education became a simple certainty.
In Potts"s hand the nugget gave birth to a mighty progeny. He saw himself pouring out sackfuls before his enraptured girl.
The Boy lifted his flaring torch with a victorious sense of having just bought back the Orange Grove; and Salmon P. pa.s.sed the nugget to his partner with a blissful sigh.
"Well, I"m glad we didn"t get cold feet," says he.
"Yes," whispered Schiff; "it looks like we goin" to the right place."
The sheen of the heap of yellow treasure was trying even to the nerves of the Colonel.
"Put it away," he said quite solemnly, laying the nugget on the paper--"put it all away before the firelight dies down."
Dillon leisurely gathered it up and dropped the nuggets, with an absent-minded air, into the pouch which Lighter held.
But the San Francisco _Examiner_ had been worn to the softness of an old rag and the thinness of tissue. Under Dillon"s sinewy fingers pinching up the gold the paper gave way.
"Oh!" exclaimed more than one voice, as at some grave mishap.
Dillon improvised a scoop out of a dirty envelope. n.o.body spoke and everybody watched, and when, finally, with his hand, he brushed the remaining grains off the torn paper into the envelope, poured them into the gaping sack-mouth, and lazily pulled at the buckskin draw-string, everybody sat wondering how much, if any, of the precious metal had escaped through the tear, and how soon Dillon would come out of his brown study, remember, and recover the loss. But a spell seemed to have fallen on the company. No one spoke, till Dillon, with that lazy motion, hoisting one square shoulder and half turning his body round, was in the act of returning the sack to his hip-pocket.
"Wait!" said Mac, with the explosiveness of a firearm, and O"Flynn jumped.
"You ain"t got it all," whispered Schiff hurriedly.
"Oh, I"m leavin" the fox-face for luck," Dillon nodded at the Colonel.
But Schiff pointed reverently at the tear in the paper, as Dillon only went on pushing his sack deep down in his pocket, while Mac lifted the _Examiner_. All but the two millionaires bent forward and scrutinised the table. O"Flynn impulsively ran one lone hand over the place where the gold-heap had lain, his other hand held ready at the table"s edge to catch any sweepings. None! But the result of O"Flynn"s action was that those particles of gold that that fallen through the paper were driven into the cracks and inequalities of the board.
"There! See?"
"Now look what you"ve done!"
Mac pointed out a rough knot-hole, too, that slyly held back a pinch of gold.
"Oh, that!"
Dillon slapped his hip, and settled into his place. But the men nearest the crack and the knot-hole fell to digging out the renegade grains, and piously offering them to their lawful owner.
"That ain"t worth botherin" about," laughed Dillon; "you always reckon to lose a little each time, even if you got a China soup-plate."
"Plenty more where that came from," said the General, easily.
Such indifference was felt to be magnificent indeed. The little incident said more for the richness of Minook than all the General"s blowing; they forgot that what was lost would amount to less than fifty cents. The fact that it was gold--Minook gold--gave it a symbolic value not to be computed in coin.
"How do you go?" asked the Colonel, as the two millionaires began putting on their things.
"We cut across to Kuskoquim. Take on an Indian guide there to Nus.h.a.gak, and from there with dogs across the ocean ice to Kadiak."
"Oh! the way the letters go out."
"When they _do_," smiled Dillon. "Yes, it"s the old Russian Post Trail, I believe. South of Kadiak Island the sea is said to be open as early as the first of March. We"ll get a steamer to Sitka, and from Sitka, of course, the boats run regular."
"Seattle by the middle of March!" says the General. "Come along, Dillon; the sooner you get to Seattle, and blow in a couple o" hundred thousand, the sooner you"ll get back to Minook."
Dillon went out and roused up the dogs, asleep in the snow, with their bushy tails sheltering their sharp noses.
"See you later?"
"Yes, "outside.""
"Outside? No, sir! _Inside_."