I ask you straight: When did Carmack do this here prospecting?
You said yourself he was lying in camp, fishing salmon along with his Siwash relations, and that was only the other day."
"And Daylight told the truth," Carmack interrupted excitedly.
"And I'm telling the truth, the gospel truth.
I wasn't prospecting.
Hadn't no idea of it.
But when Daylight pulls out, the very same day, who drifts in, down river, on a raft-load of supplies, but Bob Henderson.
He'd come out to Sixty Mile, planning to go back up Indian River and portage the grub across the divide between Quartz Creek and Gold Bottom—"
"Where in hell's Gold Bottom?" Curly Parsons demanded.
"Over beyond Bonanza that was Rabbit Creek," the squaw-man went on.
"It's a draw of a big creek that runs into the Klondike.
That's the way I went up, but I come back by crossing the divide, keeping along the crest several miles, and dropping down into Bonanza.
'Come along with me, Carmack, and get staked,' says Bob Henderson to me.
'I've hit it this time, on Gold Bottom.
I've took out forty-five ounces already.'
And I went along, Skookum Jim and Cultus Charlie, too.
And we all staked on Gold Bottom. I come back by Bonanza on the chance of finding a moose.
Along down Bonanza we stopped and cooked grub.
I went to sleep, and what does Skookum Jim do but try his hand at prospecting. He'd been watching Henderson, you see.
He goes right slap up to the foot of a birch tree, first pan, fills it with dirt, and washes out more'n a dollar coarse gold.
Then he wakes me up, and I goes at it.
I got two and a half the first lick.
Then I named the creek
'Bonanza,' staked Discovery, and we come here and recorded."
He looked about him anxiously for signs of belief, but found himself in a circle of incredulous faces—all save Daylight, who had studied his countenance while he told his story.
"How much is Harper and Ladue givin' you for manufacturing a stampede?" some one asked.
"They don't know nothing about it," Carmack answered.
"I tell you it's the God Almighty's truth.
I washed out three ounces in an hour."
"And there's the gold," Daylight said.
"I tell you-all boys they ain't never been gold like that in the blower before.
Look at the color of it."
"A trifle darker," Curly Parson said.
"Most likely Carmack's been carrying a couple of silver dollars along in the same sack.
And what's more, if there's anything in it, why ain't Bob Henderson smoking along to record?"
"He's up on Gold Bottom," Carmack explained.
"We made the strike coming back."
A burst of laughter was his reward.
"Who-all'll go pardners with me and pull out in a poling-boat to-morrow for this here Bonanza?" Daylight asked.
No one volunteered.
"Then who-all'll take a job from me, cash wages in advance, to pole up a thousand pounds of grub?"
Curly Parsons and another, Pat Monahan, accepted, and, with his customary speed, Daylight paid them their wages in advance and arranged the purchase of the supplies, though he emptied his sack in doing so.
He was leaving the Sourdough, when he suddenly turned back to the bar from the door.
"Got another hunch?" was the query.
"I sure have," he answered.
"Flour's sure going to be worth what a man will pay for it this winter up on the Klondike.
Who'll lend me some money?"
On the instant a score of the men who had declined to accompany him on the wild-goose chase were crowding about him with proffered gold-sacks.
"How much flour do you want?" asked the Alaska Commercial Company's storekeeper.
"About two ton."