CHAPTER III
THE NEW CAMP
The fame of Ten Bow travelled to far reaches, and because in the goldcountry men are fascinated by prosperity, even though it is theprosperity of others, the shortening days brought many new faces intothe mining camp of Ten Bow. Notwithstanding the fact that every squarefoot of the valley was staked, gaunt men, whose hollow eyes and depletedoutfits spoke failure, mushed in from the hills, knowing that herecordwood must be chopped, windlasses cranked, and fires kept going, andpreferring the certainty of high wages at day labour to the uncertaintyof a new strike in unscarred valleys.
It was six months since Waseche Bill had burst into Scotty McCollough'sstore at Hesitation with the news of his great strike in the red rockvalley to the southward--news that spread like wildfire through the campand sent two hundred men over the trail in a frenzied rush for gold.
It was a race long to be remembered in the Northland--the Ten Bowstampede. It is told to this day on the trails, by bearded _tillicums_amid roars of bull-throated laughter and deep man-growls of approval,how the race was won by a boy--a slight, wiry, fifteen-year-old_chechako_ who, scorning the broad river trail with its hundred rushingdog teams, struck straight through the hill with a misfit three-dogoutfit, and staked "One Below Discovery" under the very noses of BigMcDougall and his mail team of gaunt _malamutes_, and Dutch Henry withhis Hudson Bays.
From the glacier-studded seaboard to the great white death barriersbeyond the Yukon, wherever men forgathered, the fame of Connie Morgan,and old Boris, Mutt, and Slasher, passed from bearded lip to beardedlip, and the rough hearts of big, trail-toughened prospectors swelledwith pride at the mention of his name. Only, in the big white country,he is never called Connie Morgan, but Sam Morgan's boy; for Sam Morganwas Alaska's--big, quiet Sam Morgan, who never made a "strike," butstood for a square deal and the right of things as they are. And, asthey loved Sam Morgan, these men loved Sam Morgan's boy. For it had beentold in the hills how Dick Colton found him, ill-clad and ragged,forlornly watching the wheezy little Yukon steamer swing out into thestream at Anvik, whence he had come in search of his father. And how,when he learned that Sam Morgan had crossed the Big Divide, he bravelyclenched his little fists, choked back the hot tears, and told the bigmen of the North, as he faced them there, that he would stay in Alaskaand dig for the gold his father never found.
The Ten Bow stampede depopulated Hesitation, and the new camp of Ten Bowsprang up in a day, two hundred miles to the southward. A camp of tentsand _igloos_ it was, for in the mad scramble for gold men do not stopto build substantial cabins, but improvise makeshift shelters from thebitter cold of the long nights, out of whatever material is at hand. Forthe Ten Bow strike came late in the season and, knowing that soon thewater from the melting snows would drive them from their claims, menworked feverishly in the black-mouthed shafts that dotted the valley,and at night chopped cordwood and kept the fires blazing that thawed outthe gravel for the morrow's digging. When the break-up came menabandoned the shafts and, with rude cradles and sluices, and deep goldpans, set to work on the frozen gravel of the dumps.
And then it was men realized the richness of the Ten Bow strike. Notsince the days of Sand Creek and the Klondike had gravel yielded suchstore of the precious metal. As they cleaned up the riffles they laughedand talked wildly of wealth undreamed; for the small dumps, representinga scant sixty days' digging, panned out more gold than any man in TenBow had ever taken out in a year--more than most men had taken out inmany years of disheartening, bone-racking toil.
During the long days of the short summer, while the cold waters of TenBow rushed northward toward the Yukon, log cabins replaced the tents and_igloos_, and by the end of August Ten Bow assumed an air of stabilitywhich its prosperity warranted. Scotty McCollough freighted his goodsfrom Hesitation and soon presided over a brand new log store, whichvaried in no whit nor particular from the other log stores of othercamps.
Those were wonderful days for Connie Morgan. Days during which thevague, half-formed impressions of youth were recast in a rough mould byassociation with the bearded men who treated him as an equal. He learnedtheir likes and dislikes, their joys and sorrows, their shortcomings andvirtues, and in the learning, he came instinctively to look under thesurface and gauge men by their true worth--which is so rarely the greatworld's measure of men. And, under the unconscious tutelage of thesemen, was laid the foundation for the uncompromising sense of right andjustice which was to become the underlying principle of thehand-hammered character of the man who would one day help shape thedestiny of Alaska, and safeguard her people from the outreaching greedof monopoly.
Daily the boy worked shoulder to shoulder with his partner, WasecheBill, the man who had presented him with old Boris, and whispered of theshort-cut through the hills which had enabled him to beat out the TenBow stampede.
Now, the building of cabins is not easy work. Getting out logs, notchingtheir ends, and rolling them into place, one above another, is a man'sjob. And many were the pretexts and fictions by which the men of Ten Bowcontrived to relieve Connie of the heavier work in the building of hishome.
"Sonny," said Big McDougall one day, loafing casually over from theadjoining claim where his own cabin was nearing completion, "swar togudeness, my back's like to bust wi' stoopin' over yon chinkin'.C'u'dn't ye jist slip over to my place an' spell the auld mon off a bit.I'm mos' petered out." So Connie obligingly departed and, as he rammedin the moss and daubed it with mud, peered through a crack and smiledknowingly as he watched the "petered out" man heaving and straining bythe side of Waseche Bill in the setting of a log. And the next day itwas Dutch Henry who removed the short pipe from his mouth and calledfrom his doorway:
"Hey, kid! Them dawgs o' mine is gittin' plumb scan'lous fat an' lazy.Seems like ef they don't git a workin' out they'll spile on me complete.Looks like I never fin' no time to fool with 'em. Now, ef you c'd makeout to take 'em down the trail today, I'd sure take it mighty kind ofye." And when Connie returned to the camp it was to find Dutch Henryhelping Waseche Bill in the rope-rolling of a roof log. And so it wenteach day until the cabin stood complete under its dirt roof. Some one oranother of the big-hearted miners, with a sly wink at Waseche Bill,invented a light job which would take the boy from the claim and thentook his place, grinning happily.
But Connie Morgan understood, and because he loved these men, kept hisown counsel, and the big men never knew that the small, serious-eyed boysaw through their deception.
At last the cabin was finished and the boy took a keen delight inhelping his big partner in the building of the furniture. Two bunks, atable, three or four chairs, and a wash bench--rude butserviceable--were fashioned from light saplings and packing case boards,brought up from Scotty's store. In the new camps lumber is scarce, andthe canny Scotchman realized a tidy sum from the sale of his emptyboxes.
In the shortening days men returned to the diggings and sloshed about inthe wet gravel, cleaning up as they went; for before long, the freezingof the water would compel them to throw the gravel onto dumps to beworked out the following spring.
The partners hired a man to help with the heavier work and Connie busiedhimself with the hundred and one odd jobs about the claims and cabin. Hebecame a wonderful cook, and Waseche Bill, returning from the diggings,always found a hot meal of well-prepared food awaiting his ravenousappetite, while the men of other cabins returned tired and wet to growland grumble over the cooking of their grub.
Late in September the creek froze. Blizzard after whirling blizzardfollowed upon the heels of a heavy snowfall, and the Northland lay whiteand cold in the grip of the long winter. Ten Bow was a humming hive ofactivity. Windlasses creaked in the thin, frosty air, to thehalf-muffled cries of "haul away" which floated upward from the depthsof the shafts, and the hillsides rang with the stroke of axes and thelong crash of falling trees. By night the red flare of a hundred fireslighted the snow for miles and seemed reflected in the aurora-shot sky;and with each added bucketful, the dumps grew larger and
showed blackand ugly against the white snow of the valley.
To conform to the mining laws the partners sank a shaft on each claim,working them alternately, and the experienced eye of Waseche Bill toldhim that the gravel he daily shovelled into the bucket was fabulouslyrich in gold.
And then, one day, at a depth of ten feet, Waseche Bill's pick struckagainst something hard. He struck again and the steel rang loudly in thecistern-like shaft. With his shovel he scraped away the thin covering ofloose gravel which was deepest where his claim joined Connie's.
That evening the boy wondered at the silence of his big partner, whodevoured his beans and bacon and sourdough bread, and washed them downwith great draughts of black coffee. But he spoke no word, and aftersupper helped Connie with the dishes and then, filling his pipe, tiltedhis chair against the log wall and smoked, apparently engrossed in deepthought. At the table, Connie, poring over the contents of a year-oldillustrated magazine, from time to time cast furtive glances toward theman and wondered at his strange silence. After a while the boy laid themagazine aside, drew the bootjack from beneath the bunk, pulled off hissmall boots, and with a sleepy "good-night, pardner," rolled snugly intohis blankets.