The Magnetic North Part 46

"Nop! Bet your life."

The "Salmi of ptarmigan" appeared as a great wash of gravy in which portions of the much cut-up bird swam in vain for their lives. But the high flat rim of the dish was plentifully garnished by fingers of corn-bread, and the gravy was "galoppshus," so Potts said.

Salmon P., having appeased the pangs of hunger, returned to his perplexed study of Benham.

"Did I understand you to say you came into this country to _prospect_?"

"Came down the Never-Know-What and prospected a whole summer at Forty Mile."

"What river did you come by?"

"Same as you go by--the Yukon. Indians up yonder call it the Never-Know-What, and the more you find out about it, the better you think the name."

"Did you do any good at Forty Mile?"

"Not enough to turn my head, so I tried the Koyukuk--and other diggins too."

"Hear that, Schiff?" he roared at his bandaged friend. "Never say die!

This gen'l'man's been at it twelve years--tried more 'n one camp, but now--well, he's so well fixed he don't care a cuss about the Klond.y.k.e."

Schiff lit up and pulled hard at the cutty.

O'Flynn had taken Kaviak to the fire, and was showing him how to roast half a petaty in wood ashes; but he was listening to the story and putting in "Be the Siven!" at appropriate moments.

Schiff poured out a cloud of rank smoke.

"Gen'lemen," he said, "the best Klond.y.k.e claims'll be potted. Minook's the camp o' the future. You'd better come along with us."

"Got no dogs," sighed the Boy; but the two strangers looked hard at the man who hadn't that excuse.

Benham sat and idly watched preparations for the next course.

"Say, a nabob like you might give us a tip. How did you do the trick?"

"Well, I'd been playing your game for three years, and no galley slave ever worked half as hard--"

"That's it! work like the devil for a couple o' years and then live like a lord for ever after."

"Yes; well, when the time came for me to go into the Lord business I had just forty-two dollars and sixty cents to set up on."

"What had you done with the rest?"

"I'd spent the five thousand dollars my father left me, and I'd cleaned up just forty-two dollars sixty cents in my three years' mining."

The announcement fell chill on the company.

"I was dead broke and I had no credit. I went home."

"But"--Mac roused himself--"you didn't stay--"

"No, you don't stay--as a rule;"--Mac remembered Caribou--"get used to this kind o' thing, and miss it. Miss it so you--"

"You came back," says Salmon P., impatient of generalities.

"And won this time," whispered Schiff.

For that is how every story must end. The popular taste in fiction is universal.

"A friend at home grub-staked me, and I came in again--came down on the high water in June. Prospected as long as my stuff lasted, and then--well, I didn't care about starving, I became an A. C. Trader."

A long pause. This was no climax; everybody waited.

"And now I'm on my own. I often make more money in a day trading with the Indians in furs, fish, and cord-wood, than I made in my whole experience as a prospector and miner."

A frost had fallen on the genial company.

"But even if _you_ hadn't any luck," the Boy suggested, "you must have seen others--"

"Oh, I saw some was.h.i.+ng gravel that kept body and soul together, and I saw some ... that didn't."

In the pause he added, remorseless:

"I helped to bury some of them."

"Your experience was unusual, or why do men come back year after year?"

"Did you ever hear of a thing called Hope?"

They moved uneasily on their stools, and some rubbed stubbly chins with perplexed, uncertain fingers, and they all glowered at the speaker. He was uncomfortable, this fellow.

"Well, there mayn't be as much gold up here as men think, but there's more hope than anywhere on earth."

"To h.e.l.l with hope; give me certainty," says Salmon P.

"Exactly. So you shuffle the cards, and laugh down the five-cent limit.

You'll play one last big game, and it'll be for life this time as well as fortune."

"Cheerful cuss, ain't he?" whispered Schiff.

"They say we're a nation of gamblers. Well, sir, the biggest game we play is the game that goes on near the Arctic Circle."

"What's the matter with Wall Street?"

"'Tisn't such a pretty game, and they don't play for their lives. I tell you it's love of gambling brings men here, and it's the splendid stiff game they find going on that keeps them. There's nothing like it on earth."

His belated enthusiasm deceived n.o.body.

"It don't seem to have excited you much," said Mac.