It was the urge of Life healthy and strong, unaware of frailty and decay, drunken with sublime complacence, ego-mad, enchanted by its own mighty optimism.
And ever in vaguest whisperings and clearest trumpet-calls came the message that sometime, somewhere, somehow, he would run Luck down, make himself the master of Luck, and tie it and brand it as his own.
When he played poker, the whisper was of four aces and royal flushes. When he prospected, it was of gold in the grass-roots, gold on bed-rock, and gold all the way down.
At the sharpest hazards of trail and river and famine, the message was that other men might die, but that he would pull through triumphant.
It was the old, old lie of Life fooling itself, believing itself—immortal and indestructible, bound to achieve over other lives and win to its heart's desire.
And so, reversing at times, Daylight waltzed off his dizziness and led the way to the bar.
But a united protest went up.
His theory that the winner paid was no longer to be tolerated.
It was contrary to custom and common sense, and while it emphasized good-fellowship, nevertheless, in the name of good-fellowship it must cease.
The drinks were rightfully on Ben Davis, and Ben Davis must buy them.
Furthermore, all drinks and general treats that Daylight was guilty of ought to be paid by the house, for Daylight brought much custom to it whenever he made a night.
Bettles was the spokesman, and his argument, tersely and offensively vernacular, was unanimously applauded.
Daylight grinned, stepped aside to the roulette-table, and bought a stack of yellow chips.
At the end of ten minutes he weighed in at the scales, and two thousand dollars in gold-dust was poured into his own and an extra sack.
Luck, a mere flutter of luck, but it was his.
Elation was added to elation.
He was living, and the night was his.
He turned upon his well-wishing critics.
"Now the winner sure does pay," he said.
And they surrendered.
There was no withstanding Daylight when he vaulted on the back of life, and rode it bitted and spurred.
At one in the morning he saw Elijah Davis herding Henry Finn and Joe Hines, the lumber-jack, toward the door.
Daylight interfered.
"Where are you-all going?" he demanded, attempting to draw them to the bar.
"Bed," Elijah Davis answered.
He was a lean tobacco-chewing New Englander, the one daring spirit in his family that had heard and answered the call of the West shouting through the Mount Desert back odd-lots.
"Got to," Joe Hines added apologetically.
"We're mushing out in the mornin'."
Daylight still detained them.
"Where to?
What's the excitement?"
"No excitement," Elijah explained.
"We're just a-goin' to play your hunch, an' tackle the Upper Country.
Don't you want to come along?"
"I sure do," Daylight affirmed.
But the question had been put in fun, and Elijah ignored the acceptance.
"We're tacklin' the Stewart," he went on.
"Al Mayo told me he seen some likely lookin' bars first time he come down the Stewart, and we're goin' to sample 'em while the river's froze.
You listen, Daylight, an' mark my words, the time's comin' when winter diggin's'll be all the go.
There'll be men in them days that'll laugh at our summer stratchin' an' ground-wallerin'."
At that time, winter mining was undreamed of on the Yukon.
From the moss and grass the land was frozen to bed-rock, and frozen gravel, hard as granite, defied pick and shovel.
In the summer the men stripped the earth down as fast as the sun thawed it.
Then was the time they did their mining.
During the winter they freighted their provisions, went moose-hunting, got all ready for the summer's work, and then loafed the bleak, dark months through in the big central camps such as Circle City and Forty Mile.
"Winter diggin's sure comin'," Daylight agreed.
"Wait till that big strike is made up river.
Then you-all'll see a new kind of mining.
What's to prevent wood-burning and sinking shafts and drifting along bed-rock?
Won't need to timber.