nter, and to wash it when the creek ran
again. Unlike the claims nearer Dawson, it made small appeal to the big
Capitalized Syndicate. Lonagon was of opinion that more gold could be
washed out in one season than the Syndicate would be willing to pay as
purchase price.

Lonagon's optimism had been vindicated. The pay streak seemed to run along
the whole length of creek.

"It sure goes to the North Pole!" ejaculated Shanks gleefully.

D'Arcy realized that he had struck a good proposition. They built the
rough hut and commenced their awful task. Day by day the dump of excavated
pay dirt grew larger. They tested it at times to find the yield of gold
ever-increasing. At nights they sat and talked of the future. Shanks and
Lonagon were for running a big hotel in San Francisco. That seemed to be
their highest ideal, and nothing could shift them from it.

The fact that each of them would in all probability possess little short
of a million dollars made no difference whatever. They were set on a
drinking-place--where one could get drink any hour of the night without
having to knock folks up, or even to get out of bed for it!

D'Arcy was planning for a life of absolute luxury. He had been poor from
birth--the worst poverty of all, coupled as it was with social prominence.
He glowed with pleasure as he looked forward to a time when moneylenders
and dunning creditors would be conspicuously absent.

It was Shanks who brought the trouble upon them. Shanks had hit upon a
Thlinklet encampment a mile or two down the creek. There were about a
dozen mop-headed, beady-eyed men, and some two dozen women--two
apiece--and children. Shanks in his wanderings after adventure had met a
more than usually attractive Thlinklet girl. She had not been averse to
his approaches and it ended in a pretty little love-scene, upon which the
husband was indiscreet enough to intrude. Having some hard things to say
to Shanks, who unfortunately for the devoted husband, knew a lot of the
Thlinklet dialect, and who resented aspersions upon his character from an
"Injun Polygamist," the latter promptly shot him.

The girl screamed with terror, and the Thlinklet community ran as one man
to the scene of the tragedy. Shanks, reading swift annihilation in their
eyes, promptly "beat it" for the hut.

They were now in the midst of their trouble. All the Indians had turned
out armed to the teeth. Not unskilled in the art of war, they had garbed
themselves in white