Part 47 (2/2)

both o' them!”

Millionaires or not, they'll never, either of them, create a greater sensation than they did that Christmas Day, in the Big Chimney Cabin, on the bleak hillside, up above the Never-Know-What. Here was Certainty at last! Here was Justification!

Precious symbols of success, they were taken by both hands, they were shaken and wildly welcomed, ”peeled,” set down by the fire, given punch, asked ten thousand questions all in a breath, rejoiced over, and looked up to as glorious dispellers of doubt, blessed saviours from despair.

Schiff had tottered forward on bandaged feet, hand round ear, mouth open, as if to swallow whole whatever he couldn't hear. The Colonel kept on bowing magnificently at intervals and pressing refreshment, O'Flynn slapping his thigh and reiterating, ”Be the Siven!” Potts not only widened his mouth from ear to ear, but, as O'Flynn said after, ”stretched it clane round his head and tyed it up furr jy in a nate knot behind.” Benham took a back seat, and when anybody remembered him for the next hour it was openly to gloat over his discomfiture.

John Dillon was one of those frontiersmen rightly called typically American. You see him again and again--as a cowboy in Texas, as a miner or herdsman all through the Far West; you see him cutting lumber along the Columbia, or throwing the diamond hitch as he goes from camp to camp for gold and freedom. He takes risks cheerfully, and he never works for wages when he can go ”on his own.”

John Dillon was like the majority, tall, lean, muscular, not an ounce of superfluous flesh on his bones, a face almost gaunt in its clearness of cut, a thin straight nose, chin not heavy but well curved out, the eye orbit arched and deep, a frown fixed between thick eyebrows, and few words in his firm, rather grim-looking mouth. He was perhaps thirty-six, had been ”in” ten years, and had mined before that in Idaho. Under his striped parki he was dressed in spotted deer-skin, wore white deer-skin mucklucks, Arctic cap, and moose mittens. Pinned on his inner s.h.i.+rt was the badge of the Yukon Order of Pioneers--a footrule bent like the letter A above a scroll of leaves, and in the angle two linked O's over Y. P.

It was the other man--the western towns are full of General Lighters--who did the talking. An attorney from Seattle, he had come up in the July rush with very little but boundless a.s.surance, fell in with an old miner who had been grubstaked by Captain Rainey out of the _Oklahoma's_ supplies, and got to Minook before the river went to sleep.

”No, we're not pardners exactly,” he said, glancing good-humouredly at Dillon; ”we've worked separate, but we're going home two by two like animals into the Ark. We've got this in common. We've both 'struck ile'--haven't we, Dillon?”

Dillon nodded.

”Little Minook's as rich a camp as Dawson, and the gold's of higher grade--isn't it, Dillon?”

”That's right.”

”One of the many great advantages of Minook is that it's the _nearest_ place on the river where they've struck pay dirt.” says the General.

”And another great advantage is that it's on the American side of the line.”

”What advantage is that?” Mac grated out.

”Just the advantage of not having all your hard earnings taken away by an iniquitous tax.”

”Look out! this fella's a Britisher--”

”Don't care if he is, and no disrespect to you, sir. The Canadians in the Klond.y.k.e are the first to say the tax is nothing short of highway robbery. You'll see! The minute they hear of gold across the line there'll be a stampede out of Dawson. I can put you in the way of getting a claim for eight thousand dollars that you can take eighty thousand out of next August, with no inspector coming round to check your clean-up, and no Government grabbing at your royalties.”

”Why aren't you taking out that eighty thousand yourself?” asked Mac bluntly.

”Got more 'n one man can handle,” answered the General. ”Reckon we've earned a holiday.”

Dillon backed him up.

”Then it isn't shortage in provisions that takes you outside,” said the Boy.

”Not much.”

”Plenty of food at Rampart City; that's the name o' the town where the Little Minook meets the Yukon.”

”Food at gold-craze prices, I suppose.”

”No. Just about the same they quote you in Seattle.”

<script>