r was left hopelessly in the earth. Given another
year, and most of the claims would be worked out, and the sum of the
gold taken out would no more than equal what was left behind.

Organization was what was needed, he decided; and his quick imagination
sketched Eldorado Creek, from mouth to source, and from mountain top to
mountain top, in the hands of one capable management. Even
steam-thawing, as yet untried, but bound to come, he saw would be a
makeshift. What should be done was to hydraulic the valley sides and
benches, and then, on the creek bottom, to use gold-dredges such as he
had heard described as operating in California.

There was the very chance for another big killing. He had wondered
just what was precisely the reason for the Guggenhammers and the big
English concerns sending in their high-salaried experts. That was
their scheme. That was why they had approached him for the sale of
worked-out claims and tailings. They were content to let the small
mine-owners gopher out what they could, for there would be millions in
the leavings.

And, gazing down on the smoky inferno of crude effort, Daylight
outlined the new game he would play, a game in which the Guggenhammers
and the rest would have to reckon with him. Cut along with the delight
in the new conception came a weariness. He was tired of the long Arctic
years, and he was curious about the Outside--the great world of which
he had heard other men talk and of which he was as ignorant as a child.
There were games out there to play. It was a larger table, and there
was no reason why he with his millions should not sit in and take a
hand. So it was, that afternoon on Skookum Hill, that he resolved to
play this last best Klondike hand and pull for the Outside.

It took time, however. He put trusted agents to work on the heels of
great experts, and on the creeks where they began to buy he likewise
bought. Wherever they tried to corner a worked-out creek, they found
him standing in the way, owning blocks of claims or artfully scattered
claims that put all their plans to naught.

"I play you-all wide open to win--am I right" he told them once, in a
heated conference.

Followed wars, truces, compromises, victories, and defeats. By 1898,
sixty thousand men were on the Klondike and all their fortunes and
affairs rocked back and forth and were affected by the battles Daylight
fought. And more and more the taste for the larger game urged in
Dayligh