The city was unusually hot when he reached it, but he fancied that alone did not account for the crowded state of the saloons he passed. It also seemed to him that the groups of men who stood here and there on the sidewalks talking animatedly must have found some unusually interesting topic; but he had his own affairs to think of, and, as they appeared sufficient for him just then, he walked on quietly until he reached Jordan's office. It was not elaborately furnished. In fact, there was very little in it besides a table, a safe, a chair or two, and an American stump-puller standing against one wall. Jordan sat reading a newspaper, with a cigar, which had gone out, in his hand, but he looked up and threw the paper on the table when Jimmy came in.
"Read that. They've struck it rich at last," he said. "Guess there are men who have believed in that gold ever since we bought Alaska from the Russians. Ran across one of them, 'most eight years ago, Commercial Company man, and he told me it was a sure thing there was gold up the Yukon. Odd prospectors had struck a pocket here and there, but though they brought a few ounces out, nobody seemed inclined to take up the thing. Practically every white man in that country was connected with the Indian trade in furs, and I'm not sure they were anxious to see an army of diggers marching in. Anyway, the few men who believed in the gold couldn't put up the money to prove their confidence warranted. Now, as you see, they've found it, and before long the whole Slope will be humming from Wrangel to Lower California."
Jimmy read a column of the paper with almost breathless interest, as many another man had done that day in every seaboard city and lonely wooden settlement to which the news had spread. Then he looked at Jordan.
"The thing appears almost incredible," he said.
"It isn't," said his companion. "I know what the Alaska Commercial old-timer told me quite a while ago. It's going leagues ahead of Caribou. They'll be going up in their thousands in a month or two. Now, you sit still a minute, and listen to me. This is a thing I believe in, and I'll tell you what I know."
He spoke for ten minutes with dark eyes snapping, and Jimmy's blood tingled as he listened. Jordan's faith, the all-daring optimism of the Pacific Slope of which many men have died in the wilderness, was infectious, and something in Jimmy's nature responded. He had fought with bitter gales and frothing seas, and it seemed to him that the struggle with ice and frost, rock and snow, could not be harder. He was also, though he had not quite realized it until that moment, one of those who are born to play their part in the forefront of the battle between man and nature—and nature is not beneficent, but very grim and terrible until she is subdued, as everybody who has seen that strife knows.
Then Jimmy stood up and slowly straightened himself, with a quiet smile.
"You'll have to get a new skipper for the Shasta—I'm going north," he said.
Jordan gazed at him a moment in amazement, and then laughed in a fashion which suggested that comprehension had dawned on him.
"Sit down again," he said. "I begin to understand how it is with you. Still, you can't afford to do the thing you want to. It quite often happens that way."