"Just supposing the big strike does come on the Stewart," he argued.
"Mebbe you-all'll be in on it, and then again mebbe you-all won't.
But I sure will.
You-all'd better reconsider and go in with me on it."
But they were stubborn.
"You're as bad as Harper and Joe Ladue," said Joe Hines.
"They're always at that game.
You know that big flat jest below the Klondike and under Moosehide Mountain?
Well, the recorder at Forty Mile was tellin' me they staked that not a month ago—The Harper & Ladue Town Site.
Ha!
Ha! Ha!"
Elijah and Finn joined him in his laughter; but Daylight was gravely in earnest.
"There she is!" he cried.
"The hunch is working! It's in the air, I tell you-all!
What'd they-all stake the big flat for if they-all didn't get the hunch?
Wish I'd staked it."
The regret in his voice was provocative of a second burst of laughter.
"Laugh, you-all, laugh!
That's what's the trouble with you-all.
You-all think gold-hunting is the only way to make a stake.
But let me tell you-all that when the big strike sure does come, you-all'll do a little surface-scratchin' and muck-raking, but danged little you-all'll have to show for it.
You-all laugh at quicksilver in the riffles and think flour gold was manufactured by God Almighty for the express purpose of fooling suckers and chechaquos.
Nothing but coarse gold for you-all, that's your way, not getting half of it out of the ground and losing into the tailings half of what you-all do get.
"But the men that land big will be them that stake the town sites, organize the tradin' companies, start the banks—"
Here the explosion of mirth drowned him out.
Banks in Alaska!
The idea of it was excruciating.
"Yep, and start the stock exchanges—"
Again they were convulsed.
Joe Hines rolled over on his sleeping-robe, holding his sides.
"And after them will come the big mining sharks that buy whole creeks where you-all have been scratching like a lot of picayune hens, and they-all will go to hydraulicking in summer and steam-thawing in winter—"
Steam-thawing!
That was the limit.
Daylight was certainly exceeding himself in his consummate fun-making.
Steam-thawing—when even wood-burning was an untried experiment, a dream in the air!
"Laugh, dang you, laugh!
Why your eyes ain't open yet.
You-all are a bunch of little mewing kittens.
I tell you-all if that strike comes on Klondike, Harper and Ladue will be millionaires.
And if it comes on Stewart, you-all watch the Elam Harnish town site boom.
In them days, when you-all come around makin' poor mouths..." He heaved a sigh of resignation.
"Well, I suppose I'll have to give you-all a grub-stake or soup, or something or other."
Daylight had vision.
His scope had been rigidly limited, yet whatever he saw, he saw big.
His mind was orderly, his imagination practical, and he never dreamed idly.
When he superimposed a feverish metropolis on a waste of timbered, snow-covered flat, he predicated first the gold-strike that made the city possible, and next he had an eye for steamboat landings, sawmill and warehouse locations, and all the needs of a far-northern mining city.
But this, in turn, was the mere setting for something bigger, namely, the play of temperament.
Opportunities swarmed in the streets and buildings and human and economic relations of the city of his dream.
It was a larger table for gambling. The limit was the sky, with the Southland on one side and the aurora borealis on the other.
The play would be big, bigger than any Yukoner had ever imagined, and he, Burning Daylight, would see that he got in on that play.