“What I’d like to know is if this metal is really up here,” he finally said to Jack, “why haven’t men like Jack McQuesten, Doc Marling, Sam Stoneback and all the other old timers who have lived in Ilasker ever since gold was discovered, searched for and found this treasure.”
Jack smiled cynically—that is, as cynically as a boy can smile.
“You might just as reasonably ask me why the head door-keeper of the Stock Exchange has not made a fortune on the floor—he’s on the ground too you know. Or why is it a boot-black sometimes becomes a millionaire, or a girl from Tin Can Alley rises out of the depths and is crowned a queen?” Jack argued.
“Or Bill Adams, of Claremont Avenoo, seekin’ the yellow metal in the shadow o’ the North Pole,” Bill commented and then he added, “I’m gettin’ to be some poet like Mr. Service, what say, Jack?”
“Yes, this beautiful Northland will make a poet of anybody. But were the bootblack and the alley wench destined to do and become what they did do and did become?” Jack went on.
“Is it because they thought their way up, or is the element of chance responsible for it all? Perhaps it is like pemmican, due to a little of everything mixed together. These are things for you to think about, Bill.”
Bill was thinking but he couldn’t think fast enough to keep up with Jack’s line of talk, though he had the satisfaction of knowing what his partner was driving at and this was more than he was sometimes able to do.
“It sounds to me, Jack,” he finally said, “but I’m hopin’ as how you’re right. I wouldn’t take any stock in it comin’ from any one else ’ceptin’ yourself. Your hunches from the time I first knowed you has got the weegie board locked in a vault. An’ consekently I’m sayin’ as how I take it your hunch inkubator is in just as good workin’ order and reliable here in Ilasker, as it was down in Mexico.”
“Now you’re talking sense,” said Jack, throwing out his chest, only it couldn’t be noticed from the exterior because his caribou coat was so big it covered up his abnormal expansion. “And see here, Bill, you want to cut out this ‘it sounds to me’ stuff. I’m not exactly what you call a Christian Scientist but we’ll never find the pot of gold if you’re going to keep doubting it all the time.”
This little talk gave Bill some food for thought too, and he resolved that let come what may he would never show any signs of its “sounding to him” again.