It was true there was widespread dissatisfaction with the Klondyke. Everyone agreed it had been overdone. It would support one-quarter of the people already here, and tens of thousands on their way! "Say Klondyke, and instantly your soberest man goes mad; say anything else, and he goes deaf."
Minóok was a good camp, but it had the disadvantage of lying outside the magic district. The madness would, of course, not last, but meanwhile the time went by, and the people poured in day and night. Six great steamers full came up from the Lower River, and still the small craft kept on flocking like coveys of sea-fowl through the Upper Lakes, each party saying, "The crowd is behind."
On the 14th of June a toy whistle sounded shrill above the town, and in puffed a Liliputian "steel-hull" steamer that had actually come "on her own" through the canon and shot the White Horse Rapids. A steamer from the Upper River! after that, others. Two were wrecked, but who minded? And still the people pouring in, and still that cry, "The crowd's behind!" and still the clamour for quicker, ampler means of transport to the North, no matter what it cost. The one consideration "to get there," and to get there "quickly," brought most of the horde by the Canadian route; yet, as against the two ocean steamers—all-sufficient the year before to meet the five river boats at St. Michael's—now, by the All-American route alone, twenty ocean steamers and forty-seven river boats, double-deckers, some two hundred and twenty-five feet long, and every one crowded to the guards with people coming to the Klondyke.
Meanwhile, many of those already there were wondering why they came and how they could get home. In the tons of "mail matter" for Dawson, stranded at Skaguay, must be those "instructions" from the Colonel's bank, at home, to the Canadian Bank of Commerce, Dawson City. He agreed with the Boy that if—very soon now—they had not disposed of the Minóok property, they would go to the mines.
"What's the good?" rasped Mac. "Every foot staked for seventy miles."
"For my part," admitted the Boy, "I'm less grand than I was. I meant to make some poor devil dig out my Minóok gold for me. It'll be the other way about: I'll dig gold for any man on Bonanza that'll pay me wages."
They sat slapping at the mosquitoes till a whistle screamed on the Lower River. The Boy called to Nig, and went down to the town to hear the news. By-and-by Mac came out with a pack, and said he'd be back in a day or two. After he had disappeared among the tents—a conquering army that had forced its way far up the hill by now—the Colonel got up and went to the spring for a drink. He stood there a long time looking out wistfully, not towards the common magnet across the Klondyke, but quite in the other direction towards the nearer gate of exit—towards home.
"What special brand of fool am I to be here?"
Down below, Nig, with hot tongue hanging out of the side of his mouth, now followed, now led, his master, coming briskly up the slope.
"That was the Weare we heard whistlin'," said the Boy, breathless. "And who d'you think's aboard?"