“Up by the Katakoolanat Pass,” she said, unconcerned-like, as if it was pig-iron. “I picked it up because it was heavy.”
“Can you find the place again?” I asked her.
She studied a while. But the Indians never forget anything. It’s book-learning that makes you forget. I knew she’d remember before she got through, and she did. She took her fish-line and laid it out in funny curves and loops on the top of the snow like a map, knotting it here and there to show places she knew, mountain-peaks, lakes and such-like. Then she pointed out the way with her finger. She had it down fine. When she got done she looked up to me with a grin and said: “Why?”
Then it came to me all of a sudden that she had no idea of the worth of her find. This was before the big rush, and her tribe didn’t see white men more than twice a year. Their regular hunting grounds were far to the north. They traded skins and dogs and fish once in a while with traders, and got beads and truck in return. With the other Indians they made change by strings of wampum they call alligacheeks. She had no idea of the value of gold, and she’d never seen a piece of money in her life. But I didn’t stop to explain then.
“Come on,” I said, “we’re going to borrow dogs, and sled north to the Katakoolanat country for sure!” She never said a word, but packed up and followed, the way she was trained to do.
We found the place the third day, just like she said we would. Lord, that was a bonanza all right! You could dig out nuggets with a stick. It was the Katakoolanat diggings you may have heard about.
When I had staked out my claims, two prospectors got wind of it and started the rush. I got our band to move up and help me hold my rights, and when some Seattle agents offered me four hundred thousand dollars for my claims, I took it, you bet.
The first thing I did after that was to pay back a hundred dogs for the ten I had promised for Kate; then I bought up all the provisions I could get hold of—eggs a dollar apiece, bacon five dollars a pound—and I fed our band of Indians till they couldn’t hold any more. It was Kate brought me the luck, and I felt the winnings were more hers than mine. There wasn’t anything too good for her. When a Scandihoovian missionary came up to the place we went and got married white fashion, for I wanted my wife to be respected, and after that I always insisted that everybody should call her Mrs. Saul Timney, which made her feel about six foot high every time she heard it.
Well, sir, Kate was a study in those times. She couldn’t quite get it through her head for a good while why we could put it over the rest of ’em the way we did. The more I got for her, the more puzzled she was. I recall the first time she ever saw money passed. It was when I bought the dogs. I was paying twenty-dollar gold pieces out of a sack, and she asked me what they were. She thought they were stones, because they looked more than anything else like the flat, round pebbles she had seen on the beach, the kind you throw to skip on the water.
“They’re just all alligacheek,” I said; then, partly for the joke on her, I said, “Good medicine (meaning magic); you can get anything you want with ’em!”