CHAPTER XIX
GRAFT
John and his fellow prospector were working with hammer and drill on their quartz claims, three weeks after they had staked them, when Hugh Spencer and Corte paid them a first visit. Hugh scrutinized the quartz his friends had mined.
"Well, this is poverty rock, for sure; why don't you quit it?"
"That's what we've been thinking lately," George confessed; "but what shall we do—go to work for wages?"
"Better earn ten dollars a day than get nothing here after blowing in your money buying grub and powder; but why not take a chance in the new stampede to Australia Creek, that runs into Dominion Creek on the Indian River side of the Divide? That's what we hunted you up for."
John and George gazed at one another. Not a word was said. John walked to the tent and began taking it down. Four packs were made of the camp and the equipment, and the party, well-loaded, returned to Dawson. So John passed from a place of many dreams.
Hugh had already made his plans.
"Australia Creek is already taken up," he said, "and, besides, it is too far away. It's two days' trip out there, about sixty miles. My idea is to hunt up a creek for ourselves. I hear the grafters in the Gold Commissioner's office already refuse applications on the grounds that the creek is all applied for. There was some sort of a row in the office when the discoverers came in to record. Things is getting pretty bad when even a discoverer is refused a record!"