The Magnetic North Part 101

"So I am if you won't----"

"I tell you we got every ounce we can carry."

"Oh, take me back to Minook, anyway!"

He said a few words about fare to the Captain's back. As that magnate did not distinctly say "No"--indeed, walked off making conversation with the engineer--twenty hands helped the new pa.s.senger to get Nig and the canoe on board.

"Well, got a gold-mine?" asked Potts.

"Yes, sir."

"Where's the Colonel?" Mac rasped out, with his square jaw set for judgment.

"Colonel's all right--at Minook. We've got a gold-mine apiece."

"Anny gowld in 'em?"

"Yes, sir, and no salt, neither."

"Sorry to see success has gone to your head," drawled Potts, eyeing the Boy's long hair. "I don't see any undue signs of it elsewhere."

"Faith! I do, thin. He's turned wan o' thim hungry, grabbin'

millionaires."

"What makes you think that?" laughed the Boy, poking his brown fingers through the knee-hole of his breeches.

"Arre ye contint wid that gowld-mine at Minook? No, be the Siven!

What's wan gowld-mine to a millionaire? What forr wud ye be prospectin that desert oiland, you and yer faithful man Froyday, if ye wasn't rooned intoirely be riches?"

The Boy tore himself away from his old friends, and followed the arbiter of his fate. The engines had started up again, and they were going on.

"I'm told," said the Captain rather severely, "that Minook's a busted camp."

"Oh, is it?" returned the ragged one cheerfully. Then he remembered that this Captain Rainey had grub-staked a man in the autumn--a man who was reported to know where to look for the Mother Lode, the mighty parent of the Yukon placers. "I can tell you the facts about Minook."

He followed the Captain up on the hurricane-deck, giving him details about the new strike, and the wonderful richness of Idaho Bar. "n.o.body would know about it to-day, but that the right man went prospecting there." (One in the eye for whoever said Minook was "busted," and another for the prospector Rainey had sent to look for----) "You see, men like Pitcairn have given up lookin' for the Mother Lode. They say you might as well look for Mother Eve; you got to make out with her descendants. Yukon gold, Pitcairn says, comes from an older rock series than this"--he stood in the shower of sparks constantly spraying from the smoke-stack to the fireproof deck, and he waved his hand airily at the red rock of the Ramparts--"far older than any of these. The gold up here has all come out o' rock that went out o' the rock business millions o' years ago. Most o' that Mother Lode the miners are lookin'

for is sand now, thirteen hundred miles away in Norton Sound."

"Just my luck," said the Captain gloomily, going a little for'ard, as though definitely giving up mining and returning to his own proper business.

"But the rest o' the Mother Lode, the gold and magnetic iron, was too heavy to travel. That's what's linin' the gold basins o' the North--linin' Idaho Bar thick."

The Captain sighed.

"Twelve," a voice sang out on the lower deck.

"Twelve," repeated the Captain.

"Twelve," echoed the pilot at the wheel.

"Twelve and a half," from the man below, a tall, lean fellow, casting the sounding-pole. With a rhythmic nonchalance he plants the long black and white staff at the ship's side, draws it up dripping, plunges it down again, draws it up, and sends it down hour after hour. He never seems to tire; he never seems to see anything but the water-mark, never to say anything but what he is chanting now, "Twelve and a half," or some variation merely numerical. You come to think him as little human as the calendar, only that his numbers are told off with the significance of sound, the suggested menace of a cry. If the "sounding"

comes too near the steamer's draught, or the pilot fails to hear the reading, the Captain repeats it. He often does so when there is no need; it is a form of conversation, noncommittal, yet smacking of authority.

"Ten."

"Ten," echoed the pilot, while the Captain was admitting that he had been mining vicariously "for twenty years, and never made a cent.

Always keep thinkin' I'll soon be able to give up steamboatin' and buy a farm."

He shook his head as one who sees his last hope fade.

But his ragged companion turned suddenly, and while the sparks fell in a fresh shower, "Well, Captain," says he, "you've got the chance of your life right now."

"Ten and a half."

"Just what they've all said. Wish I had the money I've wasted on grub-stakin'."

The ragged one thrust his hands in the pockets of his chaparejos.

"I grub-staked myself, and I'm very glad I did."

"n.o.body in with you?"

"No."

"Nine."

Echo, "Nine."

"Ten."

"Pitcairn says, somehow or other, there's been gold-washin' goin' on up here pretty well ever since the world began."

"Indians?"

"No; seems to have been a bigger job than even white men could manage.

Instead o' stamp-mills, glaciers grindin' up the Mother Lode; instead o' little sluice-boxes, rivers; instead o' riffles, gravel bottoms.

Work, work, wash, wash, day and night, every summer for a million years. Never a clean-up since the foundation of the world. No, sir, waitin' for us to do that--waitin' now up on Idaho Bar."

The Captain looked at him, trying to conceal the envy in his soul. They were sounding low water, but he never heard. He looked round sharply as the course changed.

"I've done my a.s.sessment," the ragged man went on joyously, "and I'm going to Dawson."

This was bad navigation. He felt instantly he had struck a snag. The Captain smiled, and pa.s.sed on sounding: "Nine and a half."

"But I've got a fortune on the Bar. I'm not a boomer, but I believe in the Bar."

"Six."

"Six. Gettin' into low water."