“I calculated that when I found the gold I wouldn’t want to wait until I killed the moose needed to make the new sacks I should need, so I began to hunt them long ago and there they are,” and he pointed to a pile of finished sacks over in the corner. “You see I took time by the forelock.
“There’s only one other man up here that has any kind of a reputation as a moose-hunter other than myself and that’s Moosehide Mike who lives somewhere over in the Klondike River district. I met him a few years ago at a potlatch but as soon as we found out that each was looking for the same pot of gold we didn’t hit it up very well together.”
When the boys left Bull Moose Joe’s cabin they were on pins and needles, for their thoughts were of the most conflicting nature. Their belief that the gold was there was now for the first time fixed to a certainty; on the other hand what ghost of a chance had they of finding it when an old timer like Bull Moose Joe who had lived there for years and covered the ground in winter and summer had not unearthed it?
“We won’t be quitters anyway,” announced Jack, “we’ll keep right on as per schedule.”
“You said it,” affirmed his partner.
As they had met with quite a few Indians during their sojourn at Circle and had since run into several Indian villages, the boys had acquired a fair vocabulary of the Chinook jargon; which is a simple universal language formed of a lot of heterogeneous words which every Indian and white man understands and by which they are able to hold intelligible though limited conversation.
For instance, in the Chinook jargon the word English is called Boston; to go toward the shore is called Friday; a big lot of anything is expressed by saying hi-ya; a vile native alcoholic drink is known as hootchenoo, and from this latter word comes the word hootch which is used by the frontiersmen everywhere. Do you understand, or you do understand, is kum-tux; anything to eat is muck-a-muck; a strong person or animal is skookum; a friend, tillacum, and so on.
With a vocabulary of a couple of dozen words of Chinook the boys were able to get along fairly well with any of the Indian tribes they happened to meet. In all of the Indian villages they came to everything was quiet and peaceful excepting the fiendish howling and barking of the half-starved dogs. There was nothing to indicate the cruelty and ferociousness that marked the Yeehats and the Indians who lived in these parts before them.
Jack and Bill easily made friends with the Indians they came in contact with for they bought dried fish of them for their teams, gave them a few provisions where the need was great and Jack always carried his medicine case and treated the sick for such ailments as were not beyond his poor ability. These latter he had to leave for the medicine man, or Shamen, as he is called, to kill or cure.
One afternoon as they neared an Indian village of considerable size near the head waters of the Tatonduk River they met with whole families of Indians and on scraping up an acquaintance with some of them the boys gathered the information that they were going to a potlatch.