A Claim on Klondyke Part 6

We had been forty-five days on the journey in. Considering all things, we had done well. It was now, we believed, the third day of July, but we were not certain. We had endeavoured to keep a log of our voyaging, but from there always being daylight now, and from the irregularity with which we had eaten and slept, we were not very sure even of the day of the week!

[1] "Clark, how are you?" is the greeting Sir James (then Mr) Douglas used to his second-in-command many years ago, which the Indians caught up, and it is to this day the form of greeting between whites and reds on the Pacific coast.

CHAPTER IV.

In a bank near the creek, which was about twenty yards wide and had a fairly swift current, there was a rough door, which, being half open, disclosed a dark cave within. One sees similar places in railway cuttings and cliffs in Britain, where workmen keep their tools.

In this "dug-out" Meade had lived.

A few cut stumps, some wood chopped for fuel, and the ground bared around this door, were the only indications of any person having ever been about.

There was a quant.i.ty of timber growing around, but no really large trees; all were of the fir tribe. The earth was, as usual, covered with moss some feet in thickness, much of it pink and golden, and very beautiful. From the lower branches of trees hung long streamers of gray lichen; rotting logs, dead branches, and rock were cushioned in brilliant mosses, green and orange, whilst creepers and bushes were thickly matted everywhere. Yet, as we well knew, beneath this and for many feet below it the ground was frozen, in spite of the sun's great heat, which could not penetrate that ma.s.s of vegetation.

There we were, then, entirely alone, so far as we could tell, many miles from any one but Jim and his klootchman. Yet we thought it better, in spite of this belief, not to put up our white tent: some wandering prospector might come our way, and it was better not to attract attention, therefore we decided to enlarge this dug-out and dwell in it.

Fancy a hole scooped out of the bank about ten feet square, very little higher than a man, with a hole in one corner of the roof to allow the smoke from the fire to escape: that was all, and that was to be our home--for three months, we said.

How little we knew what was before us!

The front of this luxurious habitation was built up with logs, the c.h.i.n.ks between stuffed with moss; the door was of rough split slabs; it had no hinges--to open and close it one had to lift it bodily. There were a few notches in the top which admitted all the light we had when it was shut.

The remains of Meade's last year's bedding (fir twigs), a few old tins, and bits of rubbish, strewed the floor. It was just a den, and a very dismal one at that,--far worse than the meanest hopper's crib in Kent.

First we lit a big fire inside, and when the frost was driven out we set to with pick and shovel and very quickly enlarged it by about five feet, after which we strewed a thick layer of fresh pine brush over the floor, spread our bedding, and were at home!

"It'll do," said Meade; "we can exist here till we've got all the gold we want--that will not take long, you'll see. Then for England, home, and beauty, eh?"

I said, "All right, it's good enough for me."

We made a pot of tea, boiled part of a salmon we had taken just before we landed--the creek appeared to be full of them--then we rolled ourselves in our blankets, tired out, and I soon slept in spite of dirt and heat.

The sun was high when I was awakened by my companion, who called me excitedly. He held a tin pannikin in his hand. "See," he exclaimed; "it was a shame to rouse you, but I could not help it. I went down to the bar and got a pan of dirt, and this is what I have washed out of it!" and he held the tin close to my face, and there was a handful of gold in it, dust and small nuggets--bright, shining, yellow nuggets, looking like pieces of sh.e.l.led walnuts which had been gilded!

"Now, Bertie, what d'ye say?" he went on, as I stared at the gold, took some up and let it run through my fingers; "are you sorry you have come? Isn't all we have gone through a mere nothing? isn't it all forgotten?--and there's heaps and heaps of it!"

I was on my feet now. I could not say I was amazed, for I had heard so much about it from my friend, and had learned to trust his words so implicitly; but I was pleased, I was delighted, in fact, to find that he had not been mistaken, and that we had not come up to this dismal place and pa.s.sed through all our hardships in vain. Indeed it was grand, and I said so.

We hardly had patience to wait for the kettle to boil. We swallowed some breakfast in a hurry, then with shovel and tin dish we each went at it, and we worked away till we judged that it was noon, out on a gravelly point that jutted into the stream close to the shanty.

As we moved this gravel we could see the gold; no wonder Meade had brought out what he did--it was easy to do it. I picked out several handfuls myself that morning, and so did he, and this, with what we washed out, weighed over fifty ounces!

We had thus proved that all was right. I had myself seen it, handled it, washed it, picked it out. Naturally we were both highly elated.

It was hard to drag myself away from all this, but I had to. I took a blanket and a little grub, got into the canoe, and paddled off down the creek. I was returning to Jim and his wife to bring up the rest of our property. Jim was to return with me; Fan was to remain there until her husband came down with the canoe which we had given them, then they were to get back to the headquarters of their band.

Meade had said farewell to them already, now I had to do so. It was not a pleasant business, for we had both become really attached to these two Indians, and I am sure that the liking was mutual. We had found them perfectly trustworthy and reliable, and very different in their habits and, so far as we could judge, in their ideas, to what we had always supposed were characteristic of their race. We had treated them in terms of equality with ourselves; we had shared alike of late, and had learnt much that was useful and interesting from them, and I believe they had learnt some good from us. At any rate, Fan said to me one day, "S'pose all white folk same as you and Meade, there no be so plenty bad Injun"; which was satisfactory.

Paddling energetically, the current with me, I reached their camp the following evening, so fatigued that I slept nearly twelve hours on end!

It was noon next day before Jim and I had the canoe loaded and were able to start up stream again.

My leave-taking with Fan was really quite sad: I must admit that I never supposed I could have felt it so. As for the poor girl, she showed no apathy: she shed many tears, and made me certain that if I should ever go to that country again I would find a welcome from Fan, her husband, and her entire nation. True, they had been well treated, and, I suppose for them, well paid. They had a handsome canoe given to them, and many other little things which they valued; but, for all that, I believe their grief at parting from us was quite genuine.

Fan shouted to me as I paddled up stream with her man, "Plenty come again soon; my will be sick by'me-by, all er time, for love of you!"

I did not take Jim right up to our shanty. About a mile below it, where a small stream trickled down a bank, we landed the cargo. I had to make him suppose that it was up there we intended to remain, as we did not wish him to know exactly where we were, and what we were doing.

With many a hearty hand-clasp, with many a good wish on both sides, I parted with that Indian. I have never seen him since, nor have I heard of him or his good wife, but the day may come when I shall do so. I believe their a.s.sociation with us did them good, and I know that always in the future, when men speak evil of Indians, I shall adhere to my opinion that there are some good and true ones.

I found that Meade had increased our lot of gold during my absence to over one hundred ounces!

After packing in our stores, amongst which were a few tools and a trifle of ironmongery, with which we did a little to our domicile, and having fed and slept, which we considered all but waste of time, we went at gold getting.

It was most absorbing, and, in a sense, glorious work. For over a week we worked with pans and fingers only. A ridge of rock ran across the creek, against which the gravel had been washed by the stream; this formed a bar, and here we were getting the gold, and down on this rock itself, the bed rock, was where we found it richest. By the week-end we had hidden away what was worth one thousand pounds each--some fifty pounds weight of gold!

At the finish of the next we had more than doubled the quant.i.ty, and we were reckoning that if we could keep going like that till the middle of September, we should be able to take out ten thousand pounds apiece--five hundred pounds weight of it! We could think of nothing to prevent it.

We had by working, often to our waists, in ice-cold water, got out all the gravel we could from the river; we then began to trace the run of golden dirt in along the rock, which led into the bank a few yards only from our den. We found that it continued quite rich, and so far as we could tell this vein or lead might continue into the hill to an indefinite distance. We removed the moss and vegetation, then raised a huge fire over the spot where we wished to dig; in a few hours the ground was thawed a foot or two; we dug that out, and lit another fire, and thawed a little more. We kept at it thus almost day and night. We were well paid for it, no doubt, so far as getting gold went.

In three weeks we had excavated into the bank ten feet and more, following the streak on bed rock, and found it always rich. We made a dump, or heap of wash dirt, at the entrance. Our piles were in it, we had good reason to feel sure; besides, we had, as we considered, equally rich ground ahead of us.

One thing we knew, that if we should be discovered we could each claim five hundred feet along the creek; indeed, we thought twice that, as discoverers, so that our claim on the Klond.y.k.e might be two thousand feet in length. Therefore we need not have been so much afraid of being found. I used to say so to Meade, who invariably replied that we were better as we were, and were bound to keep our secret as long as possible.

It was now the middle of August--we had attempted to continue a sort of diary, but we had quite lost count by this time of dates and days. For weeks there had been no darkness, there was only what the Shetlanders call "the dim," and which we could then perceive was becoming more p.r.o.nounced. We ate and slept when we felt we must; the rest of the time we worked without ceasing--we took no relaxation whatever.

Our creek was now alive with salmon; we could, with a long-handled shovel, scoop one out whenever we liked. They were so closely packed that they crowded each other out. In places many had been forced on to the land, where they lay rotting by the hundred: crows and ravens, jays, magpies, and hawks were numerous, feeding on dead fish, and several times we noticed bears dragging the salmon out and gorging themselves with them--not one bear only, often we saw several at once catching and eating them, or lying, surfeited with food, on sunny banks asleep.

We could easily have killed all we wished of them, but we did not dream of doing so; we had stores in plenty, as much salmon as we chose--why should we bother about bear meat?

About this time Meade first complained of being out of sorts. He was a powerful man, and had, till lately, looked the picture of health, but now clearly a change had come over him. He was pale, always tired, and did not eat properly. Was it to be wondered at? Such work, such living, such worry with mosquitos would tell on any one.

I, too, felt that I was not the man I should be. Yet in spite of all, we told each other we must stick to it for another six weeks, then we could rest, which was foolishness. One night we both felt so bad that we could neither work nor eat; it had become serious. Then we settled to devote the next few days to making a sluice with the boards we had brought, hoping that change of work, which, it is said, is as good as play, would prove so in our case: it did.

We constructed three-sided boxes, the depth and width of our boards, and about six feet long, an inch or two wider at one end than the other; across the inside, along the bottom, we put bars or riffles a foot apart. We made six of these boxes, then went up stream, where a little obstruction, a sort of dam, raised the water; there we cut a groove, or ditch, and led a powerful stream into the boxes, which we had set up by our dump, one behind the other on a slant, the narrow ends fitting into the wider, so as to form a trough some thirty feet long. This was our sluice.

Into the upper boxes we threw the wash dirt, allowing the water to rush over it. One of us was continually throwing in the dirt, the other stirred it about and flung out the large stones and coa.r.s.e gravel with a long-handled shovel.

[Ill.u.s.tration: OUR DUG-OUT, OUR TUNNEL, AND OUR SLUICE.]

Thus, by degrees, against the riffles was collected fine sand and gold, which once a day we cleared away thoroughly, turning the run of water on one side whilst we did it. This washed stuff we then panned off in the usual way, and a very delightful operation this was, for the amount of gold we got and stored away daily was immense.

By this process we were able to wash a very much larger amount of stuff than before, and we soon had our dump cleared away, and found we had, in old meat tins and bags, not less than three hundred pounds weight of gold!

Feeling much better after this, we stupidly went on working as hard as ever, and in a few days were queer again. Then we realised that this would not do at all, and we determined to take things much easier. We had done splendidly; we could go home with a large sum each, and we believed that we could at Dawson City register, or in some way secure, our claim, and could return to it next season. Or, as we said, we could surely find capitalists in Canada or England to pay us well for such a splendid property. At any rate, we knew we should do well to cease this extraordinary labour, yet every day add something to our pile.