I just can't stay in the room and see you buncoed that way."
"I tell you-all," Daylight answered,
"Wilkins, Carmack's strike's so big that we-all can't see it all.
It's a lottery.
Every claim I buy is a ticket.
And there's sure going to be some capital prizes."
Jacob Wilkins, standing in the open door, sniffed incredulously.
"Now supposing, Wilkins," Daylight went on, "supposing you-all knew it was going to rain soup.
What'd you-all do?
Buy spoons, of course.
Well, I'm sure buying spoons.
She's going to rain soup up there on the Klondike, and them that has forks won't be catching none of it."
But Wilkins here slammed the door behind him, and Daylight broke off to finish the purchase of the claim.
Back in Dawson, though he remained true to his word and never touched hand to pick and shovel, he worked as hard as ever in his life.
He had a thousand irons in the fire, and they kept him busy.
Representation work was expensive, and he was compelled to travel often over the various creeks in order to decide which claims should lapse and which should be retained.
A quartz miner himself in his early youth, before coming to Alaska, he dreamed of finding the mother-lode.
A placer camp he knew was ephemeral, while a quartz camp abided, and he kept a score of men in the quest for months.
The mother-lode was never found, and, years afterward, he estimated that the search for it had cost him fifty thousand dollars.
But he was playing big.
Heavy as were his expenses, he won more heavily.
He took lays, bought half shares, shared with the men he grub-staked, and made personal locations.
Day and night his dogs were ready, and he owned the fastest teams; so that when a stampede to a new discovery was on, it was Burning Daylight to the fore through the longest, coldest nights till he blazed his stakes next to Discovery.
In one way or another (to say nothing of the many worthless creeks) he came into possession of properties on the good creeks, such as Sulphur, Dominion, Excelsis, Siwash, Cristo, Alhambra, and Doolittle.
The thousands he poured out flowed back in tens of thousands.
Forty Mile men told the story of his two tons of flour, and made calculations of what it had returned him that ranged from half a million to a million.
One thing was known beyond all doubt, namely, that the half share in the first Eldorado claim, bought by him for a half sack of flour, was worth five hundred thousand.
On the other hand, it was told that when Freda, the dancer, arrived from over the passes in a Peterborough canoe in the midst of a drive of mush-ice on the Yukon, and when she offered a thousand dollars for ten sacks and could find no sellers, he sent the flour to her as a present without ever seeing her.
In the same way ten sacks were sent to the lone Catholic priest who was starting the first hospital.
His generosity was lavish.
Others called it insane.
At a time when, riding his hunch, he was getting half a million for half a sack of flour, it was nothing less than insanity to give twenty whole sacks to a dancing-girl and a priest.
But it was his way.
Money was only a marker.
It was the game that counted with him.
The possession of millions made little change in him, except that he played the game more passionately.
Temperate as he had always been, save on rare occasions, now that he had the wherewithal for unlimited drinks and had daily access to them, he drank even less.
The most radical change lay in that, except when on trail, he no longer did his own cooking.
A broken-down miner lived in his log cabin with him and now cooked for him.
But it was the same food: bacon, beans, flour, prunes, dried fruits, and rice.
He still dressed as formerly: overalls, German socks, moccasins, flannel shirt, fur cap, and blanket coat.
He did not take up with cigars, which cost, the cheapest, from half a dollar to a dollar each. The same Bull Durham and brown-paper cigarette, hand-rolled, contented him.
It was true that he kept more dogs, and paid enormous prices for them. They were not a luxury, but a matter of business. He needed speed in his travelling and stampeding.
And by the same token, he hired a cook. He was too busy to cook for himself, that was all.
It was poor business, playing for millions, to spend time building fires and boiling water.
Dawson grew rapidly that winter of 1896.
Money poured in on Daylight from the sale of town lots.
He promptly invested it where it would gather more.
In fact, he played the dangerous game of pyramiding, and no more perilous pyramiding than in a placer camp could be imagined.
But he played with his eyes wide open.