“Gone, all gone.” The old man shook his head sadly, rummaging in an absent way among the dusty bottles.
“Great Sardanapolis! Where?” Kink Mitchell exploded, unable longer to restrain himself. “You don’t say you’ve had the plague?”
“Why, ain’t you heerd?” The old man chuckled quietly. “They-all’s gone to Dawson.”
“What-like is that?” Bill demanded. “A creek? or a bar? or a place?”
“Ain’t never heered of Dawson, eh?” The old man chuckled exasperatingly. “Why, Dawson’s a town, a city, bigger’n Forty Mile. Yes, sir, bigger’n Forty Mile.”
“I’ve ben in this land seven year,” Bill announced emphatically, “an’ I make free to say I never heard tell of the burg before. Hold on! Let’s have some more of that whisky. Your information’s flabbergasted me, that it has. Now just whereabouts is this Dawson-place you was a-mentionin’?”
“On the big flat jest below the mouth of Klondike,” ol’ Jim answered. “But where has you-all ben this summer?”
“Never you mind where we-all’s ben,” was Kink Mitchell’s testy reply. “We-all’s ben where the skeeters is that thick you’ve got to throw a stick into the air so as to see the sun and tell the time of day. Ain’t I right, Bill?”
“Right you are,” said Bill. “But speakin’ of this Dawson-place how like did it happen to be, Jim?”
“Ounce to the pan on a creek called Bonanza, an’ they ain’t got to bedrock yet.”