The Magnetic North Part 49

The General reappeared with the whisky, stamping the snow off his feet before he joined the group at the table, where the Christmas-tree was seasonably cheek by jowl with the punch-bowl between the low-burnt candles. Mixing the new brew did not interrupt the General's ecstatic references to Minook.

"Look here!" he shouted across to Mac, "I'll give you a lay on my best claim for two thousand down and a small royalty."

Mac stuck out his jaw.

"I'd like to take a look at the country before I deal."

"Well, see here. When will you go?"

"We got no dogs."

"_We_ have!" exclaimed Salmon P. and Scruff with one voice.

"Well, I _can_ offer you fellows--"

"How many miles did you travel a day?"

"Sixty," said the General promptly.

"Oh Lord!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Benham, and hurriedly he made his good-byes.

"What's the matter with _you?_" demanded the General with dignity.

"I'm only surprised to hear Minook's twenty-four hundred miles away."

"More like six hundred," says the Colonel.

"And you've been forty days coming, and you cover sixty miles a day--Good-bye," he laughed, and was gone.

"Well--a--" The General looked round.

"Travelin' depends on the weather." Dillon helped him out.

"Exactly. Depends on the weather," echoed the General. "You don't get an old Sour-dough like Dillon to travel at forty degrees."

"How are you to know?" whispered Schiff.

"Tie a little bottle o' quick to your sled," answered Dillon.

"Bottle o' what?" asked the Boy.

"Quicksilver--mercury," interpreted the General.

"No dog-puncher who knows what he's about travels when his quick goes dead."

"If the stuff's like lead in your bottle--" The General stopped to sample the new brew. In the pause, from the far side of the cabin Dillon spat straight and clean into the heart of the coals.

"Well, what do you do when the mercury freezes?" asked the Boy.

"Camp," said Dillon impa.s.sively, resuming his pipe.

"I suppose," the Boy went on wistfully--"I suppose you met men all the way making straight for Minook?"

"Only on this last lap."

"They don't get far, most of 'em."

"But... but it's worth trying!" the Boy hurried to bridge the chasm.

The General lifted his right arm in the att.i.tude of the orator about to make a telling hit, but he was hampered by having a mug at his lips. In the pause, as he stood commanding attention, at the same time that he swallowed half a pint of liquor, he gave Dillon time leisurely to get up, knock the ashes out of his pipe stick it in his belt, put a slow hand behind him towards his pistol pocket, and bring out his buckskin gold sack. Now, only Mac of the other men had ever seen a miner's purse before, but every one of the four cheechalkos knew instinctively what it was that Dillon held so carelessly. In that long, narrow bag, like the leg of a child's stocking, was the stuff they had all come seeking.

The General smacked his lips, and set down the granite cup.

"_That's_ the argument," he said. "Got a noospaper?"

The Colonel looked about in a fl.u.s.tered way for the tattered San Francisco _Examiner_; Potts and the Boy hustled the punch-bowl on to the bucket board, recklessly spilling some of the precious contents.

O'Flynn and Salmon P. whisked the Christmas tree into the corner, and not even the Boy remonstrated when a gingerbread man broke his neck, and was trampled under foot.

"Quick! the candles are going out!" shouted the Boy, and in truth each wick lay languishing in a little island of grease, now flaring bravely, now flickering to dusk. It took some time to find in the San Francisco _Examiner_ of August 7 a foot square s.p.a.ce that was whole. But as quickly as possible the best bit was spread in the middle of the table.

Dillon, in the breathless silence having slowly untied the thongs, held his sack aslant between the two lights, and poured out a stream-nuggets and coa.r.s.e bright gold.

The crowd about the table drew audible breath. n.o.body actually spoke at first, except O'Flynn, who said reverently: "Be--the Siven! Howly Pipers!--that danced at me--gran'-mother's weddin'--when the divvle--called the chune!" Even the swimming wicks flared up, and seemed to reach out, each a hungry tongue of flame to touch and taste the glittering heap, before they went into the dark. Low exclamations, hands thrust out to feel, and drawn back in a sort of superst.i.tious awe.

Here it was, this wonderful stuff they'd come for! Each one knew by the wild excitement in his own breast, how in secret he had been brought to doubt its being here. But here it was lying in a heap on the Big Cabin table! and--now it was gone.

The right candle had given out, and O'Flynn, blowing with impatience like a walrus, had simultaneously extinguished the other.

For an instant a group of men with strained and dazzled eyes still bent above the blackness on the boards.

"Stir the fire," called the Colonel, and flew to do it himself.

"I'll light a piece of fat pine," shouted the Boy, catching up a stick, and thrusting it into the coals.

"Where's your b.i.t.c.h?" said Dillon calmly.

"b.i.t.c.h?"

"Haven't you got a condensed milk can with some bacon grease in it, and a rag wick? Makes a good enough light."

But the fire had been poked up, and the cabin was full of dancing lights and shadows. Besides that, the Boy was holding a resinous stick alight over the table, and they all bent down as before.

"It was pa.s.sin' a bank in 'Frisco wid a windy full o' that stuff that brought me up here," said O'Flynn.

"It was hearin' about that winder brought _me_" added Potts.

Everyone longed to touch and feel about in the glittering pile, but no one as yet had dared to lay a finger on the smallest grain in the h.o.a.rd. An electrical shock flashed through the company when the General picked up one of the biggest nuggets and threw it down with a rich, full-bodied thud. "That one is four ounces."

He took up another.