"Good heavens, do you mean to say it is all a fraud?"
"Less that than a fiction," amended the older man. "Sit here and I'll tell you all about it." He sank wearily on the ground, leaning against a huge pine tree, and when Walter had placed himself beside him, began his strange tale. "Oh, the money has been no fraud, as your bank can testify. I'm an old miner—a born prospector, with a nose for gold—and I've always had streaks of luck; I've always made my pile, in California, Colorado, and up here in Canada. But it has only been a rich pocket here and there. I've never managed to develop a proposition into a paying claim, or a paying claim into an exhaustless mine. But whenever I've had a big clean-up I've blown it all in, as your born miner invariably does, trusting to luck for the morrow. Some miners blow it in on cards, drink—on worthless properties—but I've had only one extravagance—my daughter. My wife always had vast ambitions, and when the wife died she passed them on to me for our only child. To educate Evelyn, to have her brought up a flower of civilization, that always has been my dream, as I have roughed it in camps or tramped over glaciers, through forests, sleeping under the stars. And so I sent the little one to school in 'Frisco, Chicago, New York, with a European polishing off. And somehow, the further East she traveled the grander her notions grew—and as for myself, on my flying visits to her I took pride in seeing my girl hold her own with the daughters of oil, beef and railways trusts, and then with the daughters of princes of the Old World. And the luck held out. However grand Evie's whims, I always had the stuff to back her—and I always lived in hopes that any turn of the pick and shovel would yield me, not merely a rich clean-up, but the inexhaustible fortune that is every miner's dream. And so, between what Evie took for granted and what I told her, half in jest, there grew up this fable of the Rainbow Mine. But this season—I suppose it is my punishment for my deception—the luck has turned clean against me. The gold is here in the earth, as it always has been—but I've lost my knack of finding it. The old earth no longer trusts me with her secrets." He groaned, covering his face with his rough, knotted hands for a minute, during which young Pierce exclaimed, bitterly:
"Then what is to become of me?"
"Ah, well!" Recovering composure, Durant rose. "It won't do to loaf. I'm sorry for your disappointment, Walter. And the worst is, I can't do much for you; can't show you any hospitality. In order to maintain life till the luck turns, I am sharing the outfit of a chap named Blenksoe. That's he, yon." He indicated a man of evil aspect, who was lounging at the entrance of a rude hut nearby. "Blenksoe is grub-staking me through a superstition about my luck. But Blenksoe is a bad lot. You must not have anything to do with him."
"But what in the world am I to do?" cried Pierce. "I tell you, I am penniless—penniless!"
"You must work," Durant admonished. "You must get employment on a lay—that is, you must induce some one to let you help work his claim on shares. I'll teach you the trick of panning gold."
"But if gold-dust can be taken out by the dish-pan," cried Walter, with bulging eyes, "why should any one go poor?"
"You young fool! First you have to find in which patch out of desert areas of mud and cobblestone the gold-dust hides. And then you have to pay the Government for the privilege of staking, working it. Look along the banks of this creek. As far as eye can see every inch of pay-dirt is claimed, staked, defended, not only by law, but by miners' justice, with a shooting-iron. In a mining camp human life ain't worth a damn, as you'll find if you trespass on another man's claim, or if he should take a fancy to yours. Just be content if, for the present, by working eighteen hours of daylight during the twenty-four, during the short summer, you can pay your way."
"Good heavens!" again cried Pierce. "Then are the stories of gold all a fable? Surely many fortunes are made up here?"
"Surely," replied Durant, "and lost here, too. Every Klondike camp is the garden for a score of fortunes, and the graveyard of a thousand hopes. Well, I must go get pick and shovel." He moved toward his tent. "I must go out on the hills, prospecting. Thank God, I left my girl a tidy sum in the bank—and before that is spent her daddy will have found her Rainbow Mine—or will die like a trail-dog in the traces!"