Burning Daylight Page 13

  CHAPTER XIII

  Six thousand spent the winter of 1897 in Dawson, work on the creekswent on apace, while beyond the passes it was reported that one hundredthousand more were waiting for the spring. Late one brief afternoon,Daylight, on the benches between French Hill and Skookum Hill, caught awider vision of things. Beneath him lay the richest part of EldoradoCreek, while up and down Bonanza he could see for miles. It was ascene of a vast devastation. The hills, to their tops, had been shornof trees, and their naked sides showed signs of goring and perforatingthat even the mantle of snow could not hide. Beneath him, in everydirection were the cabins of men. But not many men were visible. Ablanket of smoke filled the valleys and turned the gray day tomelancholy twilight. Smoke arose from a thousand holes in the snow,where, deep down on bed-rock, in the frozen muck and gravel, men creptand scratched and dug, and ever built more fires to break the grip ofthe frost. Here and there, where new shafts were starting, these firesflamed redly. Figures of men crawled out of the holes, or disappearedinto them, or, on raised platforms of hand-hewn timber, windlassed thethawed gravel to the surface, where it immediately froze. The wreckageof the spring washing appeared everywhere--piles of sluice-boxes,sections of elevated flumes, huge water-wheels,--all the debris of anarmy of gold-mad men.

  "It-all's plain gophering," Daylight muttered aloud.

  He looked at the naked hills and realized the enormous wastage of woodthat had taken place. From this bird's-eye view he realized themonstrous confusion of their excited workings. It was a giganticinadequacy. Each worked for himself, and the result was chaos. Inthis richest of diggings it cost out by their feverish, unthinkingmethods another dollar was left hopelessly in the earth. Given anotheryear, and most of the claims would be worked out, and the sum of thegold taken out would no more than equal what was left behind.

  Organization was what was needed, he decided; and his quick imaginationsketched Eldorado Creek, from mouth to source, and from mountain top tomountain top, in the hands of one capable management. Evensteam-thawing, as yet untried, but bound to come, he saw would be amakeshift. What should be done was to hydraulic the valley sides andbenches, and then, on the creek bottom, to use gold-dredges such as hehad heard described as operating in California.

  There was the very chance for another big killing. He had wonderedjust what was precisely the reason for the Guggenhammers and the bigEnglish concerns sending in their high-salaried experts. That wastheir scheme. That was why they had approached him for the sale ofworked-out claims and tailings. They were content to let the smallmine-owners gopher out what they could, for there would be millions inthe leavings.

  And, gazing down on the smoky inferno of crude effort, Daylightoutlined the new game he would play, a game in which the Guggenhammersand the rest would have to reckon with him. Cut along with the delightin the new conception came a weariness. He was tired of the long Arcticyears, and he was curious about the Outside--the great world of whichhe had heard other men talk and of which he was as ignorant as a child.There were games out there to play. It was a larger table, and therewas no reason why he with his millions should not sit in and take ahand. So it was, that afternoon on Skookum Hill, that he resolved toplay this last best Klondike hand and pull for the Outside.

  It took time, however. He put trusted agents to work on the heels ofgreat experts, and on the creeks where they began to buy he likewisebought. Wherever they tried to corner a worked-out creek, they foundhim standing in the way, owning blocks of claims or artfully scatteredclaims that put all their plans to naught.

  "I play you-all wide open to win--am I right" he told them once, in aheated conference.

  Followed wars, truces, compromises, victories, and defeats. By 1898,sixty thousand men were on the Klondike and all their fortunes andaffairs rocked back and forth and were affected by the battles Daylightfought. And more and more the taste for the larger game urged inDaylight's mouth. Here he was already locked in grapples with thegreat Guggenhammers, and winning, fiercely winning. Possibly theseverest struggle was waged on Ophir, the veriest of moose-pastures,whose low-grade dirt was valuable only because of its vastness. Theownership of a block of seven claims in the heart of it gave Daylighthis grip and they could not come to terms. The Guggenhammer expertsconcluded that it was too big for him to handle, and when they gave himan ultimatum to that effect he accepted and bought them out.

  The plan was his own, but he sent down to the States for competentengineers to carry it out. In the Rinkabilly watershed, eighty milesaway, he built his reservoir, and for eighty miles the huge woodenconduit carried the water across country to Ophir. Estimated at threemillions, the reservoir and conduit cost nearer four. Nor did he stopwith this. Electric power plants were installed, and his workings werelighted as well as run by electricity. Other sourdoughs, who hadstruck it rich in excess of all their dreams, shook their headsgloomily, warned him that he would go broke, and declined to invest inso extravagant a venture.

  But Daylight smiled, and sold out the remainder of his town-siteholdings. He sold at the right time, at the height of the placer boom.When he prophesied to his old cronies, in the Moosehorn Saloon, thatwithin five years town lots in Dawson could not be given away, whilethe cabins would be chopped up for firewood, he was laughed at roundly,and assured that the mother-lode would be found ere that time. But hewent ahead, when his need for lumber was finished, selling out hissawmills as well. Likewise, he began to get rid of his scatteredholdings on the various creeks, and without thanks to any one hefinished his conduit, built his dredges, imported his machinery, andmade the gold of Ophir immediately accessible. And he, who five yearsbefore had crossed over the divide from Indian River and threaded thesilent wilderness, his dogs packing Indian fashion, himself livingIndian fashion on straight moose meat, now heard the hoarse whistlescalling his hundreds of laborers to work, and watched them toil underthe white glare of the arc-lamps.

  But having done the thing, he was ready to depart. And when he let theword go out, the Guggenhammers vied with the English concerns and witha new French company in bidding for Ophir and all its plant. TheGuggenhammers bid highest, and the price they paid netted Daylight aclean million. It was current rumor that he was worth anywhere fromtwenty to thirty millions. But he alone knew just how he stood, andthat, with his last claim sold and the table swept clean of hiswinnings, he had ridden his hunch to the tune of just a trifle overeleven millions.

  His departure was a thing that passed into the history of the Yukonalong with his other deeds. All the Yukon was his guest, Dawson theseat of the festivity. On that one last night no man's dust save hisown was good. Drinks were not to be purchased. Every saloon ran open,with extra relays of exhausted bartenders, and the drinks were givenaway. A man who refused this hospitality, and persisted in paying,found a dozen fights on his hands. The veriest chechaquos rose up todefend the name of Daylight from such insult. And through it all, onmoccasined feet, moved Daylight, hell-roaring Burning Daylight,over-spilling with good nature and camaraderie, howling his he-wolfhowl and claiming the night as his, bending men's arms down on thebars, performing feats of strength, his bronzed face flushed withdrink, his black eyes flashing, clad in overalls and blanket coat, hisear-flaps dangling and his gauntleted mittens swinging from the cordacross the shoulders. But this time it was neither an ante nor a stakethat he threw away, but a mere marker in the game that he who held somany markers would not miss.

  As a night, it eclipsed anything that Dawson had ever seen. It wasDaylight's desire to make it memorable, and his attempt was a success.A goodly portion of Dawson got drunk that night. The fall weather wason, and, though the freeze-up of the Yukon still delayed, thethermometer was down to twenty-five below zero and falling. Wherefore,it was necessary to organize gangs of life-savers, who patrolled thestreets to pick up drunken men from where they fell in the snow andwhere an hour's sleep would be fatal. Daylight, whose whim it was tomake them drunk by hundreds and by thousands, was t
he one who initiatedthis life saving. He wanted Dawson to have its night, but, in hisdeeper processes never careless nor wanton, he saw to it that it was anight without accident. And, like his olden nights, his ukase wentforth that there should be no quarrelling nor fighting, offenders to bedealt with by him personally. Nor did he have to deal with any.Hundreds of devoted followers saw to it that the evilly disposed wererolled in the snow and hustled off to bed. In the great world, wheregreat captains of industry die, all wheels under their erstwhilemanagement are stopped for a minute.

  But in the Klondike, such was its hilarious sorrow at the departure ofits captain, that for twenty-four hours no wheels revolved. Even greatOphir, with its thousand men on the pay-roll, closed down. On the dayafter the night there were no men present or fit to go to work.

  Next morning, at break of day, Dawson said good-by. The thousands thatlined the bank wore mittens and their ear-flaps pulled down and tied.It was thirty below zero, the rim-ice was thickening, and the Yukoncarried a run of mush-ice. From the deck of the Seattle, Daylightwaved and called his farewells. As the lines were cast off and thesteamer swung out into the current, those near him saw the moisturewell up in Daylight's eyes. In a way, it was to him departure from hisnative land, this grim Arctic region which was practically the onlyland he had known. He tore off his cap and waved it.

  "Good-by, you-all!" he called. "Good-by, you-all!"

  PART II