"But don't you-all come squealing if I take twenty or thirty thousand out of it."
Johnny grinned cheerfully.
"Gimme the tobacco," he said.
"Wish I'd staked alongside," Long Jim murmured plaintively.
"It ain't too late," Daylight replied.
"But it's a twenty-mile walk there and back."
"I'll stake it for you to-morrow when I go up," Daylight offered.
"Then you do the same as Johnny.
Get the fees from Tim Logan.
He's tending bar in the Sourdough, and he'll lend it to me.
Then fill in your own name, transfer to me, and turn the papers over to Tim."
"Me, too," chimed in the third old-timer.
And for three pounds of Star plug chewing tobacco, Daylight bought outright three five-hundred-foot claims on Bonanza.
He could still stake another claim in his own name, the others being merely transfers.
"Must say you're almighty brash with your chewin' tobacco," Long Jim grinned.
"Got a factory somewheres?"
"Nope, but I got a hunch," was the retort, "and I tell you-all it's cheaper than dirt to ride her at the rate of three plugs for three claims."
But an hour later, at his own camp, Joe Ladue strode in, fresh from Bonanza Creek.
At first, non-committal over Carmack's strike, then, later, dubious, he finally offered Daylight a hundred dollars for his share in the town site.
"Cash?" Daylight queried.
"Sure.
There she is."
So saying, Ladue pulled out his gold-sack.
Daylight hefted it absent-mindedly, and, still absent-mindedly, untied the strings and ran some of the gold-dust out on his palm.
It showed darker than any dust he had ever seen, with the exception of Carmack's.
He ran the gold back tied the mouth of the sack, and returned it to Ladue.
"I guess you-all need it more'n I do," was Daylight's comment.
"Nope; got plenty more," the other assured him.
"Where that come from?"
Daylight was all innocence as he asked the question, and Ladue received the question as stolidly as an Indian.
Yet for a swift instant they looked into each other's eyes, and in that instant an intangible something seemed to flash out from all the body and spirit of Joe Ladue.
And it seemed to Daylight that he had caught this flash, sensed a secret something in the knowledge and plans behind the other's eyes.
"You-all know the creek better'n me," Daylight went on.
"And if my share in the town site's worth a hundred to you-all with what you-all know, it's worth a hundred to me whether I know it or not."
"I'll give you three hundred," Ladue offered desperately.
"Still the same reasoning.
No matter what I don't know, it's worth to me whatever you-all are willing to pay for it."
Then it was that Joe Ladue shamelessly gave over.
He led Daylight away from the camp and men and told him things in confidence.
"She's sure there," he said in conclusion.
"I didn't sluice it, or cradle it.
I panned it, all in that sack, yesterday, on the rim-rock.
I tell you, you can shake it out of the grassroots.
And what's on bed-rock down in the bottom of the creek they ain't no way of tellin'.
But she's big, I tell you, big.
Keep it quiet, and locate all you can.
It's in spots, but I wouldn't be none surprised if some of them claims yielded as high as fifty thousand.
The only trouble is that it's spotted."
A month passed by, and Bonanza Creek remained quiet.
A sprinkling of men had staked; but most of them, after staking, had gone on down to Forty Mile and Circle City.