The Magnetic North Part 107

flowed by the idler on the bank.

"You seem to have a lot to do," Seymour would now and then say with a laugh.

"So I have."

"What do you call it?"

"Takin' stock."

"Of us?"

"Of things in general."

"What did you mean by that?" demanded the Colonel suspiciously when the Superintendent had pa.s.sed up the line.

The shovelling in was done for the time being. The water was to be regulated, and then the clean-up as soon as the owner came down.

"Better not let Austin hear you say you're takin' stock. He'll run you out o' the creek."

The Boy only smiled, and went on fillipping little stones at Nig.

"What did you mean?" the Colonel persisted, with a look as suspicious as Scowl Austin's own.

"Oh, nothin'. I'm only thinkin' out things."

"Your future, I suppose?" he said testily.

"Mine and other men's. The Klond.y.k.e's a great place to get things clear in your head."

"Don't find it so." The Colonel put up his hand with that now familiar action as if to clear away a cloud. "It's days since I had anything clear in my head, except the lesson we learned on the trail."

The Boy stopped throwing stones, and fixed his eyes on his friend, as the Colonel went on:

"We had that hammered into us, didn't we?"

"What?"

"Oh, that--you know--that--I don't know quite how to put it so it'll sound as orthodox as it might be, bein' true; but it looks pretty clear even to me"--again the big hand brus.h.i.+ng at the unmoted suns.h.i.+ne--"that the only reason men got over bein' beasts was because they began to be brothers."

"Don't," said the Boy.

"Don't what?"

"I've always known I should have to tell you some time. I won't be able to put it off if I stay ... and I hate tellin' you now. See here: I b'lieve I'll get a pack-mule and go over to Indian River."

The Colonel looked round angrily. Standing high against the sky, Seymour, with the gateman up at the lock, was moderating the strong head of water. It began to flow sluggishly over the gravel-clogged riffles, and Scowl Austin was coming down the hill.

"I don't know what you're drivin' at, about somethin' to tell. I know one thing, though, and I learned it up here in the North: men were meant to stick to one another."

"Don't, I say."

"Here's Austin," whispered the Colonel.

The Silesian philosopher stood in his "gum-boots" in the puddling-box as on a rostrum; but silent now, as ever, when Scowl Austin was in sight. With the great sluice-fork, the philosopher took up, washed, and threw out the few remaining big stones that they might not clog the narrow boxes below.

Seymour had so regulated the stream that, in place of the gush and foam of a few minutes before, there was now only a scant and gently falling veil of water playing over the bright gravel caught in the riffle-lined bottoms of the boxes.

As the Boy got up and reached for his stick, Austin stood there saying, to n.o.body in particular, that he'd just been over to No. 29, where they were trying a new-fangled riffle.

"Don't your riffles do the trick all right?" asked the Boy.

"If you're in any doubt, come and see," he said.

They stood together, leaning over the sluice, looking in at one of the things human industry has failed to disfigure, nearly as beautiful to-day as long ago on Pactolus' banks when Lydian shepherds, with great stones, fastened fleeces in the river that they might catch and gather for King Croesus the golden sands of Tmolus. Improving, not in beauty, but economy, quite in the modern spirit, the Greeks themselves discovered that they lost less gold if they led the stream through fleece-lined water-troughs--and beyond this device of those early placer-miners we have not progressed so far but that, in every long, narrow sluice-box in the world to-day, you may see a Lydian water-trough with a riffle in the bottom for a golden fleece.

The rich Klond.y.k.er and the poor one stood together looking in at the water, still low, still slipping softly over polished pebbles, catching at the sunlight, winking, dimpling, glorifying flint and jasper, agate and obsidian, dazzling the uncommercial eye to blind forgetfulness of the magic substance underneath.

Austin gathered up, one by one, a handful of the s.h.i.+ning stones, and tossed them out. Then, bending down, "See?"

There, under where the stones had been, neatly caught in the lattice of the riffle, lying thick and packed by the water action, a heavy ridge of black and yellow--magnetic sand and gold.

"Riffles out!" called Seymour, and the men, who had been extracting the rusty nails that held them firm, lifted out from the bottom of each box a wooden lattice, soused it gently in the water, and laid it on the bank.

The Boy had turned away again, but stood an instant noticing how the sun caught at the countless particles of gold still clinging to the wood; for this was one of the old riffles, frayed by the action of much water and the fret of many stones. Soon it would have to be burned, and out of its ashes the careful Austin would gather up with mercury all those million points of light.

Meanwhile, Seymour had called to the gateman for more water, and himself joining the gang, armed now with flat metal scoops, they all began to turn over and throw back against the stream the debris in the bottom of the boxes, giving the water another chance to wash out the lighter stuff and clean the gold from all impurity. Away went the last of the sand, and away went the pebbles, dark or bright, away went much of the heavy magnetic iron. Scowl Austin, at the end of the line, had a corn-whisk with which he swept the floor of the box, always upstream, gathering the contents in a heap, now on this side, now on that, letting the water play and sort and carry away, condensing, hastening the process that for ages had been concentrating gold in the Arctic placers.

"Say, look here!" shouted Austin to the Boy, already limping up the hill.

When he had reached the sluice again he found that all Scowl Austin wanted, apparently, was to show him how, when he held the water back with the whisk, it eddied softly at each side of the broad little broom, leaving exposed the swept-up pile.

"See?"

"What's all that?"

"What do you think?"

"Looks like a heap o' sawdust."

Austin actually laughed.

"See if it feels like sawdust. Take it up like this," he ordered.

His visitor obeyed, lifting a double handful out of the water and holding it over the box, dripping, gleaming, the most beautiful thing that comes out of the earth, save only life, and the a.s.sertion may stand, even if the distinction is without difference, if the crystal is born, grows old, and dies as undeniably as the rose.

The Boy held the double handful of well-washed gold up to the suns.h.i.+ne, feeling to the full the immemorial spell cast by the King of Metals.

Nothing that men had ever made out of gold was so entirely beautiful as this.

Scowl Austin's grim gratification was openly heightened with the rich man's sense of superiority, but his visitor seemed to have forgotten him.