"Well, you won't be once you have tried it yourself. Mining up here's an awful gamble. Colours pretty well everywhere, and a few flakes of flour gold, just enough to send the average cheechalko crazy, but no real 'pay' outside of this little gulch. And even here, every inch has been scrambled for—and staked, too—and lots of it fought over. Men died here in the fall defending their ground from the jumpers—ground that hadn't a dollar in it."
"Well, your ground was worth looking after, and John Dillon's. Which is his claim?"
Salaman led the way over the heaps of gravel and round a windlass to No. 6, admitting:
"Oh, yes, Dillon and I, and a few others, have come out of it all right, but Lord! it's a gamble."
Dillon's pardner, Kennedy, did the honours, showing the Big Chimney men the very shaft out of which their Christmas heap of gold had been hoisted. It was true after all. For the favoured there was "plenty o' gold—plenty o' gold."
"But," said Salaman, "there are few things more mysterious than its whereabouts or why it should be where it is. Don't talk to me about mining experts—we've had 'em here. But who can explain the mystery of Minóok? There are six claims in all this country that pay to work. The pay begins in No. 5; before that, nothing. Just up yonder, above No. 10, the pay-streak pinches out. No mortal knows why. A whole winter's toiling and moiling, and thousands of dollars put into the ground, haven't produced an ounce of gold above that claim or below No. 5. I tell you it's an awful gamble. Hunter Creek, Hoosier, Bear, Big Minóok, I You, Quail, Alder, Mike Hess, Little Nell—the whole blessed country, rivers, creeks, pups, and all, staked for a radius of forty miles just because there's gold here, where we're standing."
"You don't mean there's nothing left!"
"Nothing within forty miles that somebody hasn't either staked or made money by abandoning."
"Made money?"
Salaman laughed.