"In '98, I joins the rush to Nome, an' there's a roarin' wild town! But luck ain't runnin' my way. Like the rest, I starts to wash the sand o' the sea-beach, the last place a prospector'd ever look. I clean up thirty a day, maybe, jest enough to keep goin'. I'm no richer'n no poorer'n I was ten years afore, but I got Bull's little gal to work for, an' that keeps me pluggin'.
"Then, sudden, I gets a letter from the gal, enclosin' a note she's received. It's short:
"'Rich pay gravel here.' It's signed with a circle, an' a cross. On the back, there's a map.
"I figures this is the Road-Agent o' Circle, an' he's dyin' an' wants to make restitootion. It's my dooty to Bull's little gal to go an' find the place. I've jest about money enough to go there, an' the lay is right. There's a bank of pay gravel more'n two miles long, an' a hundred feet deep, maybe more. It's frozen, summer'n' winter, an' too hard for thawin' with wood fires."
Jim halted for emphasis and looked keenly at the mine-owner.
"I was thawin' it out wi' coal, when I was there," he said, slowly, "soft, smudgy coal, brown an' sticky-like."
"What!" cried Owens in amazement. "Lignite coal?"
"Not a mile away from the gravel."
"But why, man—?" Owens stopped.
"A bunch o' Russian seal-poachers come up an' chased me off, sayin' it was Russian territory. I believed 'em, at first. I didn't say nothin' about the gold, but made believe I was huntin' coal. But that lignite, as you call it, was so sure low-grade that they jest laughed at me.