News spreads in a mining-camp with amazing rapidity, and the crowd of hurrying men grew greater as the party progressed. It was also noted that the fever was most marked in those who felt themselves at the rear of the stampede. Those in the lead carried nothing save a little axe—their body's sustenance was in their pockets, often consisting only of a few pots of beef extract. When time for resting came the little axe would serve to make a spruce bed. Covering was not needed in the summer, as rest was taken in daytime—often in the full glare of the sun—a form of repose generally limited to negroes and savages.
The 12th of July, 1898, was one of the hottest days of the hottest season Dawson had ever known. The thermometer was nearly ninety in the shade. The land was parched for water, and the smoke of forest-fires filled the air, which seemed to burn the throats of those mad men. They coughed as they hurried by.
The party passed the Bonanza Dome and commenced the decline into the Bonanza Valley. The trail followed the hog's-back which ends in Carmacks Forks, the confluence of two branches of the Upper Bonanza.
The descent to them was rapid, and the steep ascent of a thousand feet seemed terrible to the stampeders. Yet up it they stormed and struggled till they fell exhausted. Even in the glaring sun men lay dead beat, panting. They were twenty miles from Dawson; twenty hard miles yet rested between them and their goal!
It seemed as if this stampede were born of frenzy in a last final effort of the desperate gold-seekers of that year. They were close to the end of the rainbow, where lay prizes for a few. There was no more of the old affected humour of the road. Drawn faces and staring eyes were telling of soul-strain. It was the last scene of the last act of a real tragedy!
At the spring beneath a group of stunted spruce-trees—at which, more or less, every man who has sought the glittering dust of the Klondike has gained refreshment—the party of four halted for lunch. A dozen men were already about it in all postures of fatigue. As soon as one got up and staggered on his place was occupied by a new-comer, who would gulp his fill of the blessed water and lie for a time inert. They came and they went. Not a word was said.
"Where are you stampeding to?" John at last asked one, who seemed less exhausted than the others.
"I don't know; just following the crowd. Something doing on Dominion, they say, the hillsides. Some say the creek claims held by the Government are being thrown open, but I guess not."
Just following the crowd! It is ever the way in gold rushes. No wonder the man who had advised them to "keep on going till they struck St. Michael's" had said it was a disease!
They passed on down the Bonanza trail; soon the majority of the people met were other than the stampeders. The stampeders were in the crowd, but the bulk were those engaged in the ordinary economic development of Bonanza.