where he was.
He was possessed by no overweening desire for the strenuous life. Salmon
were good enough for him. But Henderson urged him to come on and locate,
until, when he yielded, he wanted to take the whole tribe along.
Henderson refused to stand for this, said that he must give the
preference over Siwashes to his old Sixty Mile friends, and, it is
rumoured, said some things about Siwashes that were not nice.
The next morning Henderson went on alone up the Klondike to Gold Bottom.
Carmack, by this time aroused, took a short cut afoot for the same place.
Accompanied by his two Indian brothers-in-law, Skookum Jim and Tagish
Charley, he went up Rabbit Creek (now Bonanza), crossed into Gold Bottom,
and staked near Henderson's discovery. On the way up he had panned a few
shovels on Rabbit Creek, and he showed Henderson "colours" he had
obtained. Henderson made him promise, if he found anything on the way
back, that he would send up one of the Indians with the news. Henderson
also agreed to pay for his service, for he seemed to feel that they were
on the verge of something big, and he wanted to make sure.
Carmack returned down Rabbit Creek. While he was taking a sleep on the
bank about half a mile below the mouth of what was to be known as
Eldorado, Skookum Jim tried his luck, and from surface prospects got from
ten cents to a dollar to the pan. Carmack and his brother-in-law staked
and hit "the high places" for Forty Mile, where they filed on the claims
before Captain Constantine, and renamed the creek Bonanza. And Henderson
was forgotten. No word of it reached him. Carmack broke his promise.
Weeks afterward, when Bonanza and Eldorado were staked from end to end
and there was no more room, a party of late comers pushed over the divide
and down to Gold Bottom, where they found Henderson still at work. When
they told him they were from Bonanza, he was nonplussed. He had never
heard of such a place. But when they described it, he recognized it as
Rabbit Creek. Then they told him of its marvellous richness, and, as
Tappan Adney relates, when Henderson realized what he had lost through
Carmack's treachery, "he threw down his shovel and went and sat on the
bank, so sick at heart that it was some time before he could speak."
Then there were the rest of the old-timers, the men of Forty Mile and
Circle City. At the time of the discovery, nearly all of them were over
to the west at work in the old diggings o
|