“No,” he said finally, “I never found it though I searched diligently for it winter and summer for the first five years I was here. I speak the Hupa tongue which is the tongue of the Athapascans and I learned to talk it so that I could find out what the Indians knew about it.
“There was once a tribe of Indians, who lived hereabouts and they were different from any of the Indians that are living in the Yukon or Alaska to-day, for they were as fierce and bloodthirsty as the Apaches down under. Among our natives here there is a legend about a pocket of gold that was found by these Indians long before the gold seekers came on to it.
“Then hunters and trappers from the Hudson Bay Company pushed their way across the desolate wastes of upper Canada and coming upon this tribe they killed them and took the gold from them. Before they could get the metal out of the country they were attacked by the Yeehats, another band of Indians, and, in turn, lost their lives. These latter Indians cached the gold in a pile of stones but how long it remained there it is hard to say for the Indians now living seem not to know.
“Many years after, when men swarmed over Chilcoot Pass and White Pass like so many black flies, floated down the Yukon River and on to the Klondike, a miner named John Thornton and a couple of pards, left the others and pushed farther north. And then, like the fools for luck they were, they discovered the cache and in it the pile of nuggets that is worth millions.
“How to get it over to the Yukon River and down under in safety were their only worries but they were big ones. They were rich beyond the dreams of the wildest stampeder and so to lessen the chances of loss by any means they took their time and laid the most painstaking plans.
“First they hunted the moose and made sacks of the hides; into these they packed the gold nuggets fifty pounds to the sack, and there were five hundred sacks which were worth millions. No sooner had they started than the Yeehats swooped down on them and although Thornton and his men put up a desperate fight they fell before the larger number of Indians and the moosehide sacks of gold stayed right where they found them.
“In a few years the Yeehats as a tribe were practically exterminated by starvation and disease and so the gold is still here, but exactly where, no one knows. But sometime it will be found again and if those who strike it are luckier than the others they will get it out; but that time has not yet come. To keep me going I began to trap and hunt and a year or so ago the Minister of the Interior made me Indian Agent for this part of the Yukon.”
“‘THESE INDIANS CACHED THE GOLD IN A PILE OF STONES.’”
“How did you come to take up moose-hunting?” Jack asked him.