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Great Gold Rush: A Tale of the Klondike

<h3>A LOTTERY</h3> 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 quantity 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 nobody wanted[Pg 183] 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 windlass 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[Pg 184] 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 passed 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[Pg 185] 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, massed the gold into a little pile, and muttered, "Seventy-five cents." "Three bob," George repeated after him. The pan was passed 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[Pg 186] 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 passers-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,[Pg 187] 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!" During the meal, and afterwards, the conversation was about the claims and the prospect of their getting them. It was two weeks yet before they could be judiciously staked. In the meantime, Frank and George could put down other shafts prospecting the width and extent of the pay streak, while John and Hugh were getting their shaft down to bed-rock. It would be slow work for these two, now that they had struck frost, which necessitated thawing by wood-fires. "I guess we need a cabin on these claims," said Hugh. "It's more a sign we're holding them down, and if we start building it we can kill time so as not to look conspicuous, as we[Pg 188] would if we was just to sit and do nothing. It would have the rubber-necks guessing." So the work continued upon the four hillside claims on Dominion Creek, John and Hugh working at day, George and Frank at night. These two, holding the vigil of the second night, again found bed-rock and gold, twenty feet further up the hillside than their first shafts. On the day following John and Hugh quickly cleared the bottom of their shafts of the earth which the fires, burning through the night, had thawed. They then set new fires, and sat in the shade of a tree while they burned. The bed-rock on each of their claims was deeper than that on the claims of their two associates, and both felt that their claims would prove the richer, though neither of them uttered this thought. The minds of all were planning how best to gain possession of their discoveries. "I guess," said Hugh, as he lit his pipe, and slapped divers mosquitoes to death, "that it ain't altogether judicious for George and Frank to perforate this here landscape with any more shafts. There is sure to be some fellows rubber-necking here soon. I see some water has seeped into the two holes they sunk first, and the other two will probably fill soon. This will keep others from investigating. I guess they had better get to work on a cabin, which we will help them with as[Pg 189] soon as we get bed-rock ourselves. These claims is mighty well worth holding on to, and we don't want to run no chances of not getting them—which we, sure, won't do if Poo-Bah's gang gets on to the fact that they are any good." When the four were seated round the evening meal the matter was talked over, and Frank and George agreed to start building a cabin. The work was begun that very night. Days came and went; yet neither John nor Hugh found bed-rock, although each shaft was now fifteen feet deep. At twelve-foot depth a windlass had been constructed on each claim, and the earth hoisted from the shaft. At eighteen feet Hugh struck gravel. As John, who worked the windlass, dumped a bucket of gravel, he would hide it by shovelling over it earth from the dump. Finding gravel there at that depth suggested gold; in fact, the depth to which the shaft was sunk without striking bed-rock was sufficiently compromising. At last bed-rock was reached, and a pan of dirt extracted. The pan was washed, and a nugget worth fully a dollar and a half, besides about two dollars in fine gold, was its product. Here was wealth and no mistake! "Hi-u chickaman stuff, he! he!" laughed Frank. They all looked into each other's eyes. Hugh gritted his teeth as he thought of Poo-Bah.[Pg 190] If there was any extent of this gravel it constituted a fortune—yes, very little of this ground meant wealth. How much of it would there be? Was this gold of Dominion Creek pay-streak? He did not know: the great thing about mining is, you never know. John's shaft found bed-rock at twenty-two feet, where he got a good five dollars to the pan. Frank jabbered; the others said but little. It was late in the afternoon when the pan of dirt from John's shaft was tried. After supper Hugh took a stroll. He walked far up the hillside, and gazed at the tributary valley that ran into Dominion Creek, just up-stream from John's claim. This "pup"—as the miners term these small tributaries—Hugh noticed had been staked and prospected, but had not yielded pay. He had already planned to use its water for the washing of the gravel should he gain possession of his claim. He then walked down to the adjacent claim being worked on Dominion Creek, and began asking questions of the man at the windlass. He was always ready to receive information, though he seldom gave any. The ground on Dominion was rich—enormously rich—ten, twenty, and sometimes fifty dollar pans. Up-stream the second claim was not nearly so rich. The man at the windlass did not know the value of the[Pg 191] intervening claim; it was held by the Government. "How far are you to bed-rock?" "About twenty-five feet." "Much gravel?" "About three feet—hardly three feet." Hugh was tempted to ask how deep the miners, who had prospected the pup, had gone before they had struck pay; but did not, because he gave the man credit for intelligence. "Black muck above gravel?" he asked. "Yes, or we would not be working with wood-fires now. Black muck takes a lot to thaw; but, as it is, I guess we shall have to quit till winter—but we have proved our ground rich." Until the advent of steam-thawing machines, the Klondike miners thawed their ground by wood-fires, which process can only be carried on extensively in winter. Hugh left the miner and walked to the mouth of the pup. With a pole he sounded the depth of an abandoned shaft. It was fifteen feet. He walked to the camp and found John, the others being at work on the cabin. "John, the bed-rock at the bottom of your shaft dips towards my claim, and the bed-rock in my shaft dips towards your claim." "Yes." "The fellow at the windlass on the creek claim[Pg 192] tells me that he is in the biggest kind of pay outside of Eldorado, but that the second claim up-stream is not up to much. He has muck." "Yes." "We have earth and broken rock down to the gravel." "Yes." "His shaft is twenty-five feet to bed-rock, and if we sank a shaft half-way between yours and mine we would find it deeper than either." "In all probability, yes." "Don't you see what I am driving at?" "No," John answered bluntly. "You've caught on to that pup up-stream there." "I have!" "Well, it's only fifteen feet to bed-rock there. The old channel of that pup runs underneath your claim and mine and is mighty rich. The gold found on the creek claim looks exactly like ours: I saw some of it lying in a pan." John was watching the face of his friend intently. "These hillside claims are two hundred and fifty feet long, and stretch one thousand feet back, which means the chances are that the claims you and I are prospecting cover one thousand feet of mighty rich ground." "We are wealthy men," said John.[Pg 193] And his thought passed in a flash to Alice Peel. "Hold on!—we ain't got them yet," counselled Hugh. His mind reverted to Poo-Bah. <hr style="width: 65%;"/>[Pg 194] <h2>CHAPTER XXI</h2> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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