MAKE GOLD WHILE THE WATER RUNS
By ROBERT RUSSELL STRANG
Author of "Sawing Wood and Saying Nothing," "The Witness from Circle City," etc.
LUCK CHANGES IN THE NORTH COUNTRY AS IT DOES THE WORLD OVER—BUT ALASKA IS A HARD COUNTRY TO GET OUT OF, IF YOU'RE WANTED
"There's no use talkin' fellas, I'm the luckiest guy that ever was born!"
The speaker began to sing:
"I held a flush in Klondyke,
A full house down in Nome;
I rolled 'em sevens on Tanana
On the creek we called it Dome.
I'd four of a kind in Koyukuk,
Three kings in the Kuskoquim,
And I'm known from Skagway to Chandelar
As your uncle Lucky Jim.
"No brains at all, y' understand, boys, nor need for 'em. If I depended on the gray stuff under my hat for my three daily squares, I'd have to worry along with a stomach no bigger than a walnut. But me and luck are the best of tillicums. He has helped me get away with a stake in every placer camp in Alaska. Fact!"
"Did you get very far with any of 'em?" sneered Chenoa Pete, a man with pig's eyes and a hanging lower lip.
The crowd laughed at this sally, but no one louder than Lucky Jim himself.
"I did not," he replied with a wry face. "I never tried to. But one of these days I'll be makin' a little trip to Frisco."
"Why don't you go out and make a strike in this district?" Mike Haggart wanted to know. "We surely need one."
"I never try to make a strike within a hundred miles of a'gin mill. Hootch and work don't mix."
This statement riled Pinleg Scoddy, the proprietor of the Red Fox. An ugly, domineering, soulless brute he was.
"The sooner yuh goes out and makes a stake the better I'll like yuh," he growled. "Yuh owes me ten ounces now."
The tin clock back of the bar had it all to itself for a full ten seconds, which it made the most of.
"Ain't it awful, fellas?" Lucky Jim asked the group of parka clad men who stood about the big stove, "Ain't it hell? The man behind the bar says I owe him ten ounces!"
Nonchalantly he rolled a cigarette, lighted it and took a deep pull, then turned and faced Pinleg Scoddy.
"I owe you ten ounces, you say." He blew a cloud of smoke from his mouth. "I don't doubt you. I take a man's word every time. 'Cause if you can't take that, he ain't got nothin' else wuth a hoot." He took another leisurely pull at his smoke. "I owe you ten ounces, and since last fall I've shoved over three hundred ounces across your spruce planks. Ain't that right?"
"It don't matter a damn what you've spent!" Pinleg shot back. "You'll decorate the bar next time yuh invites the bunch to drink."
"I'm invitin' them right now!" Lucky Jim cried in a voice that caused Pinleg Scoddy to start. "Have a drink with me, boys!" he shouted. To Pinleg he added, "I'll be in town but two days more, but I mean to have my drink when I want it and where I spent my money. Set 'em up!"
Out of the corner of his eye the proprietor of the Red Fox got a glimpse of the hard looks that were being directed at him.
"This will be the last one," he growled sullenly as he set out the glasses.
By ones and twos—and an embarrassed lot they were—the men strolled up to the bar. Dad Manslow was the only one that made no move. Lucky Jim did not notice this until after the glasses were filled.
"What's the matter, Dad?" he inquired.
"I'll tell yuh what!" wrathfully shouted the old man. "After such an uncalled-for bawl-out I'll never again lift another glass of hootch off'n Pinleg Scoddy's bar! He's the cheapest skate that ever struck Totatla City—which has always been my opinion of him."
In high dudgeon the speaker got on his crutches and began to thump toward the door.
"Just a minute, Dad!" called Lucky Jim. "You've taught me a lesson."
Lucky Jim lifted his glass and tossed its contents on the floor.
"What's good enough for you, Dad," he observed, "is pie for me. Add this to the ten ounces," he flung at Pinleg, then turned and joined Dad Manslow at the door.
With two exceptions—Chenoa Pete and Mike Haggart—the others left their drinks untouched and returned to their seats.
Lucky Jim opened the door for his companion and followed him to the street.
"I wants yuh to come around to my shack, Lucky. I've a proposition to make yuh."
"Right," returned Lucky Jim.
They started up the waterfront.
The young moon crested with silver the snow-billows of the seemingly interminable flat across the frozen river. The air was absolutely soundless, and cold enough to bite like fire. Totatla City, a one-sided street of log cabins and stores half-buried in snow, seemed deserted.
They had traveled scarce a hundred yards when Chenoa Pete slipped out of the Red Fox and peered cautiously up the street. He kept his eye on them until they entered Dad Manslow's cabin, then hastened in that direction.
Chenoa Pete was a man who didn't believe in hard work. He did a little gambling, some polite stealing, and a bit of rough stuff when the opportunity presented itself. A man who lived by his wits. Mike Haggart was his side-kick.
He approached Dad Manslow's cabin with the caution of a cat on the hunt. When he arrived at the door he turned back the hood of his parka and began to listen with all his might.
"—I've drank yore hootch ever since yuh struck the camp," Dad was saying, "and enjoyed yore comp'ny mightily. The spirit, as ye might say, of Alaska is strong in yuh. Yo're the man I've bin a-lookin' fur fur a year. Are yuh open fur a proposition this summer that'll net yuh anywheres frum three to five thousand dollars?"
"Hold on, Dad," cautioned Lucky Jim. "Since I struck Totatla City I've heard whisperin's about you hitting the camp a year ago last fall with a couple of thousand in dust, and believe me, there's a few who would give something to know where you got it. I don't. A secret ain't a secret when two know it, and you really don't know me from one of the ravens down on the bluff. Besides, I'm so lucky myself that—so to speak—I've always got a little pot of gold in the hole."
"Lucky Jim, I've lost my strength, I admit, but, by gum! I've still got my judgment. I'll put it to yuh another way. Yo're a pioneer yoreself, will yuh do a pioneer a favor?"
Lucky Jim reached a hand across the table. Dad pressed it in silence.
"A year ago last fall I arrived in the camp with $2000 and the scurvy. I had been in the hills for over a year, and had lived on meat and fish straight for half that time. After I've eaten a peck of raw potatoes and put the scurvy on the run, my next choice is rheumatism. It was winter, so couldn't go nowheres.
"Now and again I used to make a trip over to the Red Fox and spend the evenin'. One night along toward spring they knock me out over there and take $1200 of my dust. Anyway, when I wake up in my cabin next morning, I've got but $400 left. I've been living on that for a year now.
"I've always blamed Pinleg Scoddy, Chenoa Pete and Mike Haggart for that trick. Next day they told me I got awful drunk and just threw my gold around like sawdust. Seein' I never did that all my life before, I'm pretty certain I didn't do it that night. Since then I've suspicioned every man that hangs around there but you.
"In the condition I'm now in, one night in the open would be the death o' me. I don't want charity, but I do want to get hold of enough dust to take me to the hot springs at Sitka and get the aches and pains boiled outa my old carcass. I figger a thousand dollars would put me on my feet again as fit as a fiddle—why, man, I'm only seventy-seven! After that I'm goin' back to the Caribou diggin's. I had good ground there in the seventies. And there's a gulch there—But never mind that. Get me a thousand dollars, Lucky Jim, and you can keep every other color you take out of Easy Money bar this summer, and keep the bar to boot."
"You'll go to Sitka next fall, Dad!"
The old man's Adam's apple worked up and down for a few moments.
"This yere Easy Money bar," he resumed, "is about two hundred miles up the river, but easily located once yuh have the key to its position. I cached my rocker under some moss on the mainland, and I reckon the high water last spring wiped out all traces of me, but yuh can't miss it. I'll tell yuh why."
Dad lowered his voice to a whisper and imparted to Lucky Jim the information necessary to a recognition of Easy Money bar.
While this was taking place Chenoa Pete cursed softly and fluently. He did not catch a word of the directions. He tiptoed away, still cursing.
For some moments after Dad concluded Lucky Jim made no comment, just sat there smiling to himself.
"Have I made it plain enough to yuh?" Dad inquired.
Lucky Jim started.
"As plain as day!" he rejoined. "Bein' the luckiest guy that ever was born, I could go up the river blindfold and find it. I'll hit the trail day after tomorrow sometime. How are you fixed for grub till I get back?"
"I'll manage! I'll manage!" Dad hastily exclaimed.
Lucky Jim threw a hurried glance around the cabin. The only thing his eye encountered in the line of food was half a sack of flour.
"I'll tell you why I asked," he said. "I've got three hundred pounds of good grub down in my shack that the dogs can't possibly haul, and if I leave it behind you know what the squirrels will do to it. Wish you'd let me haul it over here."
"I—I ain't got much room," Dad lied. "Yuh see——"
"I'll haul it over anyway. Then you can use what you want of it and pay me for it in the fall. How is that?"
"Well," Dad laughed, "since yuh put it thataway. And I'll sure settle for it in the fall."
"Much obliged," said Lucky Jim. "I'll be over with that junk tomorrow night."
He lifted the latch and departed.
"Wonders will never cease!" declared Lucky Jim as he returned over town. "To think that his Easy Money should be my Gold Tender, the bar I staked last July!"
He strode into the Arctic Trading Company's store. From beneath his parka he withdrew a gold watch to which was attached a heavy nugget chain. He detached the timekeeper and threw the chain in the gold scales.
"See how much you make that," he asked Ned Griffin.
The latter balanced the chain with weights.
"Fourteen ounces two pennyweights," he made answer.
Jim spent nearly all of it on provisions, all of which he took to his own shack first to allay any suspicions Dad might have had.
Then he loaded up the things and took them to Dad's cabin, remarking he was glad to have somewhere to leave the grub, as he couldn't possibly pack it with him.
Dad eyed the outfit, then tried to catch Lucky Jim's eye, but failed.
"Yuh must have put in a hell of an outfit last fall," he at length remarked suspiciously.
"It's the first thing I attend to when I hit a camp with a poke. Get me a cabin and fill it with grub."
The provisions were stowed away in silence.
"I'll be hittin' the trail between now and morning," whispered Lucky Jim, "that is, if she snows. What was it you named that bar again?"
"Easy Money."
Lucky Jim slapped his knees and laughed uproariously.
Dad stared at him in amazement.
"Anythin' the matter with it?" he inquired.
"Nothing; nothing at all. But did you ever get any easy money out of the ground, Dad?"
Dad smiled. "Every color I've ever panned or rocked I've always considered easy money."
"Though you had to work your head off to get it."
Dad nodded. "But it's the only life," he declared.
"There's no doubt about it!" seconded Lucky Jim. "Well, look for me the third week of September. That will give you time to get down to Fort Gibbon and catch a boat for the Outside. So long."
"And good luck," wished Dad.
"I never travel without her," Lucky Jim called over his shoulder.