The most popular of these creeks was Adams. The one least fancied was Eldorado, which flowed into Bonanza, just above Karmack's Discovery claim.
Even Daylight disliked the looks of Eldorado; but, still riding his hunch, he bought a half share in one claim on it for half a sack of flour.
A month later he paid eight hundred dollars for the adjoining claim.
Three months later, enlarging this block of property, he paid forty thousand for a third claim; and, though it was concealed in the future, he was destined, not long after, to pay one hundred and fifty thousand for a fourth claim on the creek that had been the least liked of all the creeks.
In the meantime, and from the day he washed seven hundred dollars from a single pan and squatted over it and thought a long thought, he never again touched hand to pick and shovel.
As he said to Joe Ladue the night of that wonderful washing:—
"Joe, I ain't never going to work hard again.
Here's where I begin to use my brains.
I'm going to farm gold.
Gold will grow gold if you-all have the savvee and can get hold of some for seed.
When I seen them seven hundred dollars in the bottom of the pan, I knew I had the seed at last."
"Where are you going to plant it?" Joe Ladue had asked.
And Daylight, with a wave of his hand, definitely indicated the whole landscape and the creeks that lay beyond the divides.
"There she is," he said, "and you-all just watch my smoke.
There's millions here for the man who can see them.
And I seen all them millions this afternoon when them seven hundred dollars peeped up at me from the bottom of the pan and chirruped,
'Well, if here ain't Burning Daylight come at last.'"
CHAPTER XI
The hero of the Yukon in the younger days before the Carmack strike, Burning Daylight now became the hero of the strike.
The story of his hunch and how he rode it was told up and down the land.
Certainly he had ridden it far and away beyond the boldest, for no five of the luckiest held the value in claims that he held.
And, furthermore, he was still riding the hunch, and with no diminution of daring.
The wise ones shook their heads and prophesied that he would lose every ounce he had won.
He was speculating, they contended, as if the whole country was made of gold, and no man could win who played a placer strike in that fashion.
On the other hand, his holdings were reckoned as worth millions, and there were men so sanguine that they held the man a fool who coppered[6] any bet Daylight laid.
Behind his magnificent free-handedness and careless disregard for money were hard, practical judgment, imagination and vision, and the daring of the big gambler.
He foresaw what with his own eyes he had never seen, and he played to win much or lose all.
"There's too much gold here in Bonanza to be just a pocket," he argued.
"It's sure come from a mother-lode somewhere, and other creeks will show up.
You-all keep your eyes on Indian River.
The creeks that drain that side the Klondike watershed are just as likely to have gold as the creeks that drain this side."
And he backed this opinion to the extent of grub-staking half a dozen parties of prospectors across the big divide into the Indian River region.
Other men, themselves failing to stake on lucky creeks, he put to work on his Bonanza claims.
And he paid them well—sixteen dollars a day for an eight-hour shift, and he ran three shifts.
He had grub to start them on, and when, on the last water, the Bella arrived loaded with provisions, he traded a warehouse site to Jack Kearns for a supply of grub that lasted all his men through the winter of 1896.
And that winter, when famine pinched, and flour sold for two dollars a pound, he kept three shifts of men at work on all four of the Bonanza claims.
Other mine-owners paid fifteen dollars a day to their men; but he had been the first to put men to work, and from the first he paid them a full ounce a day. One result was that his were picked men, and they more than earned their higher pay.
One of his wildest plays took place in the early winter after the freeze-up.
Hundreds of stampeders, after staking on other creeks than Bonanza, had gone on disgruntled down river to Forty Mile and Circle City.
Daylight mortgaged one of his Bonanza dumps with the Alaska Commercial Company, and tucked a letter of credit into his pouch. Then he harnessed his dogs and went down on the ice at a pace that only he could travel.
One Indian down, another Indian back, and four teams of dogs was his record.
And at Forty Mile and Circle City he bought claims by the score.
Many of these were to prove utterly worthless, but some few of them were to show up more astoundingly than any on Bonanza.
He bought right and left, paying as low as fifty dollars and as high as five thousand.
This highest one he bought in the Tivoli Saloon.
It was an upper claim on Eldorado, and when he agreed to the price, Jacob Wilkins, an old-timer just returned from a look at the moose-pasture, got up and left the room, saying:—
"Daylight, I've known you seven year, and you've always seemed sensible till now.
And now you're just letting them rob you right and left.
That's what it is—robbery.
Five thousand for a claim on that damned moose-pasture is bunco.