p-river strike. And I tell you-all, clear and forcible,
this is it. There ain't never been gold like that in a blower in this
country before. It's new gold. It's got more silver in it. You-all
can see it by the color. Carmack's sure made a strike. Who-all's got
faith to come along with me?"

There were no volunteers. Instead, laughter and jeers went up.

"Mebbe you got a town site up there," some one suggested.

"I sure have," was the retort, "and a third interest in Harper and
Ladue's. And I can see my corner lots selling out for more than your
hen-scratching ever turned up on Birch Creek."

"That's all right, Daylight," one Curly Parson interposed soothingly.
"You've got a reputation, and we know you're dead sure on the square.
But you're as likely as any to be mistook on a flimflam game, such as
these loafers is putting up. I ask you straight: When did Carmack do
this here prospecting? You said yourself he was lying in camp, fishing
salmon along with his Siwash relations, and that was only the other
day."

"And Daylight told the truth," Carmack interrupted excitedly. "And I'm
telling the truth, the gospel truth. I wasn't prospecting. Hadn't no
idea of it. But when Daylight pulls out, the very same day, who drifts
in, down river, on a raft-load of supplies, but Bob Henderson. He'd
come out to Sixty Mile, planning to go back up Indian River and portage
the grub across the divide between Quartz Creek and Gold Bottom--"

"Where in hell's Gold Bottom?" Curly Parsons demanded.

"Over beyond Bonanza that was Rabbit Creek," the squaw-man went on.
"It's a draw of a big creek that runs into the Klondike. That's the way
I went up, but I come back by crossing the divide, keeping along the
crest several miles, and dropping down into Bonanza. 'Come along with
me, Carmack, and get staked,' says Bob Henderson to me. 'I've hit it
this time, on Gold Bottom. I've took out forty-five ounces already.'
And I went along, Skookum Jim and Cultus Charlie, too. And we all
staked on Gold Bottom. I come back by Bonanza on the chance of finding
a moose. Along down Bonanza we stopped and cooked grub. I went to
sleep, and what does Skookum Jim do but try his hand at prospecting.
He'd been watching Henderson, you see. He goes right slap up to the
foot of a birch tree, first pan, fills it with dirt, and washes out
more'n a dollar coarse gold. Then he wakes me up, and I goes at it. I
got two and a half the first lick. T