"Every one's crazy about it. They're rushing now in thousands, to get there before the winter begins. Next spring there will be the biggest stampede the world has ever seen. Say, Scotty, I've the greatest notion to try it. Let's go, you and I. I had a partner once, who'd been up there. It's a big, dark, grim land, but there's the gold, shining, shining, and it's calling us to go. Somehow it haunts me, that soft, gleamy, virgin gold there in the solitary rivers with not a soul to pick it up. I don't care one rip for the value of it. I can make all I want out of glue. But the adventure, the excitement, it's that that makes me fit for the foolish house."
He was silent a long time while my imagination conjured up terrible, fascinating pictures of the vast, unawakened land, and a longing came over me to dare its shadows.
As we said good-night, his last words were:
"Remember, Scotty, we're both going to join the Big Stampede, you and I."
CHAPTER VI
I slept but fitfully, for the night air was nipping, and the bunkhouse nigh as open as a cage. A bonny morning it was, and the sun warmed me nicely, so that over breakfast I was in a cheerful humour. Afterwards I watched the gang labouring, and showed such an injudicious interest that that afternoon I too was put to work.
It was very simple. Running into the mountain there was a tunnel, which they were lining with concrete, and it was the task of I and another to push cars of the stuff from the outlet to the scene of operations. My partner was a Swede who had toiled from boyhood, while I had never done a day's work in my life. It was as much as I could do to lift the loaded boxes into the car. Then we left the sunshine behind us, and for a quarter of a mile of darkness we strained in an uphill effort.
From the roof, which we stooped to avoid, sheets of water descended. Every now and then the heavy cars would run off the rails, which were of scantling, worn and frayed by friction. Then my Swede would storm in Berserker rage, and we would lift till the veins throbbed in my head. Never had time seemed so long. A convict working in the salt mines of Siberia did not revolt more against his task than I. The sweat blinded me; a bright steel pain throbbed in my head; my heart seemed to hammer. Never so thankful was I as when we had made our last trip, and sick and dizzy I put on my coat to go home.
It was dark. There was a cable line running from the tunnel to the camp, and down this we shot in buckets two at a clip. The descent gave me a creepy sensation, but it saved a ten minutes' climb down the mountain side, and I was grateful.