Breakfast over, the party set out, and in an hour had poled and tracked the boat half a mile up the Klondike. They pa.s.sed under a crude suspension bridge and saw two ferries and innumerable boats plying across the river.

Hugh noticed a break or "draw" in the cliff, marked by a trail that led to the bench on which the party was to locate, and stopped the boat.

"Get out the axes, fellows; and, Frank, you pack the tent up the hill.

It will make you think of what you have done with your last winter's wages. John, you're the honoured guest--you're going to boss the job."

Berwick, without any load, found the climb to the top of the hill sufficiently exhausting, as he was not yet fully recovered. After Frank had thrown down the tent Hugh unlashed it, and spread it in the sun, folded one end to make a pillow, and told John to lie upon it. And then he addressed his partners,

"Look here, fellows--one thing is certain. Whatever we do as regards prospecting and taking up claims, we want a home-camp as a sort of headquarters; and we might as well make it here and now. We need not bother building a cabin, but we can put up a wall of logs the size of the tent and put the tent on top. This will do till the fall, by which time we will all be millionaires--except Frank here, unless he quits dancing! Now we'll pack up the rest of the outfit. Come on, boys!"

By four o'clock their new habitation was completed: two beds were built and the little stove erected inside the tent. Frank had an early supper and went to bed. The others built a camp-fire outside to keep away the flies, and discussed mining far into the night.

CHAPTER XVIII

POO-BAH!

During the days of his convalescence John Berwick spent many hours roaming about the bluff, indulging his pa.s.sion for the sights of Nature, and thinking--quite without panic now--of the infinite problems a.s.sociated with human existence in an universe governed by an inscrutable Providence. Much of his thought, too, naturally turned to the girl he had left behind him. His illness and these after-thoughts had taught him lessons, and given him hopes.

In the steep ascent, one day, of the bench on the south side of the Klondike, John came up with a tottering figure bent under a heavy load.

The man was old, and the temptation came to John--invalid as he was--to offer to relieve him of the burden for a bit; when the man sat down to rest, and wiped away the perspiration with a much-soiled red handkerchief. John sat down near him; but for a time he paid no attention to him, or to any of the pa.s.sers-by.

"It's a nice day," John began.

"It's only chechachoes that talk about the weather," was the blunt reply.

"I'm a chechacho."

"Don't have to tell me that: what in h.e.l.l are you fellows coming here for?"

"To stake a claim and get rich."

"Poo-Bah will get it!"

"Poo-Bah--Poo-Bah of the _Mikado_?"

"This ain't the Mikie-do's Poo-Bah--this is the Octopus' Poo-Bah! He's got the Mikie-do and the Czar of Russia skinned to death. Poo-Bah comes pretty near running things in Dawson. If you stake a claim, and go to Poo-Bah and give him half interest, you may get a grant for it--that is, if Poo-Bah can't find any person to run it for him! Then, again, he may think he wants it all himself--in which case you can go to h.e.l.l! If you wants to start manufacturing hootch, just go to Poo-Bah, and he will fix things so as you won't be touched."

"But are you sure? This is British territory."

"British!--nothing: this is the Octopus' country; and him and Poo-Bah is old friends! Fellows tell me Poo-Bah helped elect the Octopus back east to Parliament--or whatever you Britishers call your Government lay-out.

Look at this royalty they are putting on our gold!--how much of this here royalty ever gets to Queen Victoria? No, sir; I bet Sir Wilfrid Laurier never gets his hands on one-half of what's robbed from us poor devils."

"But the expenses of Government must be raised, and you must admit that you have good law and order, and that you never get held up."

"Held up! Law and order! h.e.l.l! What's the difference between being held up by fellows like the Soapy Smith gang, or being held up by the blooming yellow-legs? You have some chance of getting clear of Soapy Smith--and it's only a matter of time till some fellow takes a shot at him; but you can't get past the yellow-legs: they won't stand for no bluffs."

"The Government will build roads."

"Roads! Then why ain't they building them? No; the Government says Poo-Bah will build them, and has given Poo-Bah a franchise to charge fellows going up Bonanza Creek trail twenty-five cents apiece, and for each pack-animal two dollars and a half. Poo-Bah started to build the road all right; but he quit just as soon as he got the toll-gate up!

What do you think I'm climbing this two thousand feet for?--mountain scenery, same as you're doing? No, it's a mighty sight easier to climb this blooming hill than to wade through Poo-Bah's bog-holes. The Bonanza trail makes 'the slough of despond' look like the rocky road to Dublin!

But say! I must be getting. You're away from the land of dooks and earls, and kings and queens, and all that brand of cattle; and you'd better turn white man with a new set of notions in your head."

"Let me carry your load a little way."

"Go on! I ain't dead yet! It serves me right for getting caught in a country ruled by a Government my fathers bled to get rid of, about the time of the Boston tea-party." The old man struggled into his harness again. "G.o.d! I wished I was back again under Old Glory."

John shrank under the insult. Tears came to his eyes. What soul cherishing the honour of British inst.i.tutions would not have protested at such a state of things as his eyes were daily being opened to?

Sadness came over him. Here was a great injustice, and sordid, festering corruption, inspired by greed. He gritted his teeth--and a resolve came to him. If he found these stories true he would strive, somehow, anyhow, to overthrow Poo-Bah and his _clique_ of corruption.

After a while John again came up to the old man resting by the side of the trail, who blurted out, "I thought I had given you enough to send you out of the country!"

"Then you didn't. Tell me this, are you aware of any case of a miner being cheated out of his claim?"

"Yes, lots. There's my own, for one."

"Where and how was that?"

The old man was not disinclined to talk.

"Well, stranger, it was this way. Me and my partner staked a claim on French Hill, and we was sure first on the ground. We went to Dawson and gave a lawyer a hundred dollars to apply for the claim for us. They told him that we must have a survey before they would give the grant. Well, we gave a surveyor two hundred dollars to survey the claim for us, and we went out there with him. When we got there with the surveyor we found a dozen fellows with rockers taking the rich pay off the rim rock. It was three weeks before we got our grant. The Gold Commissioner's gang took $30,000 out of it, and now we have the leavings, not worth much! If we hadn't thought of getting the lawyer, we wouldn't have even got the leavings!"

That was enough for John. He arose and pushed through the bushes on the opposite side of the trail, walking in the general direction of the hill-top. He desired solitude that he might think.

He felt fiercely angry at these wrongs. They were intolerable; they struck at the simplest principles of human liberty. Here were men enduring privations which sometimes caused permanent bodily harm--John remembered the snow-blinded traveller of Cape Le Berge--only to have the fruits of their strenuous endeavour mercilessly taken from them!

Before he could control his indignation he had wandered miles from Dawson, and gained the summit of the hill, where he sat to eat his luncheon.

To the eastward was the valley of the great gold-bearing creek, Bonanza.

He noted the great rounded ridges, which, with their intervening valleys, ran along the slopes to its bottom. He marvelled at the softness and beauty of their lines, each of which ended in a gracefully-rounded head, standing sentinel over the creek. And well they might appear to guard its riches, for those heads contained immense deposits of bench gravels that were to cause extraordinary sensation in the days to come.

Finishing his lunch, he was idly working at the moss with his heels when he noticed that the rock beneath was white as milk. He examined it closely; yes, it was quartz, the parent rock of gold.

Immediately the instinct of the miner was aroused. He took a piece of loose rock and easily broke off several pieces. These he put into his pockets, and set out eagerly for home. His mind was free of politics now! A tinge of palest green was on the hills; this one day's sun had burst a myriad of buds upon a million poplars. Yes, it was summer!

George and Hugh, coming in soon after John's return, were shown the find, and all was enthusiasm.

"Pretty hungry-looking stuff," was Hugh's comment on close inspection.

"How will you get water up there for your stamp-mill?"

John found an answer, as he remembered the long, gently-reclining ridge to Bonanza Creek with its flanking valleys on either side.

"I'll take my ore to Bonanza Creek."

"But they won't let you take the water out of Bonanza Creek."