he
snow was not too deep. The boys kept at a respectful distance behind us,
and we mushed along between low hills mostly up the streams on the ice.

"To make my story shorter, we staked what we wanted of the creek, and
let the other fellows in on what was left. After that, without sleeping,
but with a hasty meal, we put back home again as fast as our dogs would
travel.

"Three months later, when the snow was about gone, and we thought the
time ripe for prospectin', I took my two men and an outfit and gave that
blamed old creek a fair trial. We hustled and rustled to beat the band.
We shovelled, panned, built dams, and worked like beavers in water above
our knees. We moved our tents further up on the bank at midnight at the
risin' of the creek durin' a hard rain--but, egad! after two weeks of
that sort of thing, no gold could we find. Not a color! We cursed and
tore around something fierce among the Queen's English, but it did not
help matters a particle.

"There was no gold there.

"When we reported to the little woman she would not believe a word of
it. She did not think we had tried to find it. Perhaps we had not gone
deep enough. We should have waited until midsummer when we could have
done better work; and a lot of other things of like description. When I
insisted that we had done the very best we possibly could, and that
there was positively no gold there, she still persisted in sayin' she
wanted that bunch of claims recorded. In vain I told her it was no use;
the creek was no good, and to record the claims was a waste of money.

"While I talked, the little woman stood lookin' in an absent-minded way
before her. When I had finished she turned toward me with considerable
spirit, and almost with anger said, the tears comin' into her eyes
meanwhile, 'I will never again ask you to stake a claim for me, so
there! and she ran into the next room and shut the door.

"The claims were never recorded.

"Well, boys, she kept her word, and I wish she hadn't. I would be
willin' to let her pick out creeks for me forever, for, say, let me tell
you, fellows," dropping his voice and taking the pipe from between his
teeth he knocked its ashes out upon the cold hearth, "that creek bed was
solid stream tin; pure cassiterite, the best on the Seward Peninsula,
and a whole fortune for anyone; but we did not know it.

"Next time a woman like that one tells me to do any recordin' of claims
I'll do it, you bet; for somehow, I can't