Samuel Alexander White

“ Sitting smoking upon a huge outjutting boulder on the ridge, Sark and Bassett watched Tagish complete the staking. When the Chilcat had inscribed, he took his ax and began to blaze more open his location line. Below him another Chilcat was working at the same thing, and below that one, dim in the hazy distance and moving like gnomes on the face of the ridge, other Chilcats staked other claims.
"The hour's about up," announced Sark, glancing at his watch. "They ought to be all on the job now. Wonder how long it'll be before Casino sees them?" ”

“ Nobody'll know we're gone till we're staked on Fresno!"
CASINO waved his comrades out, turned up the oil-lamp on the wall so that it blazed brighter and followed through the doorway. In spite of his precautions with the key, Tom and Eric heard it grate in the lock as Casino slipped by the back route out of the Northern Light.
"Thar's whar he fools himself," chuckled Bassett in an undertone. "We know, and we'll sure make urgent use of our knowledge. But foller Casino's cue, Eric, and eschew the dash. Walk funereally slow and whistle the Dead March in Saul. ”

“ In the first place I don't for a minute believe that four-dollar pan guff. That's always the cry. Twenty-five cent pans grow into four- and five-dollar pans mighty quick when there's a rush on.
"I don't see Halpune swaggering 'round anywhere. He's a gambler like Casino, and if he'd have struck it that big, he'd be snooping around, up-creek and down, buying all the cheap claims he could get his claws on. And in the second place, if the creek shows up anything in placer, I'll take my oath it'll prove patchy. Fact is, partner, Fresno never did look to me like a placer proposition. ”

“ My respeck for that geezer Casino's increasin' every day, Eric. He's more'n a conscientious artist. He's a deep student of human nature. He was aware of our frailties and our love of lucre. He knowed as sure as the Yukon Summer's back agin that we'd buy the creek if we struck any kind of showin'. He seen us do it many a time, and he knowed we'd do it once too often."
"Well, we've gone and done it once too often," chuckled Sark mirthlessly. "And Casino's pocketed the money. Wonder what he paid each man to run in the salted stampede?"
"Twenty-five dollars and the fun of it," hazarded Tom. ”

“ As Tom came up and beckoned, Tagish Jim arose from his men about the oval of red coals.
"What um want now?" he grinned.
"Quartz claims, Tagish," Bassett explained tersely. "That ridge. You savvy? Send the men to stake from the mouth of Fresno up. The lower ones kin go in boats. The middle ones kin run down. The upper ones kin walk. I want 'em all to stake at one time, within about an hour, and git back here as soon as they stake. You stake the last claim, here at the head, yourself. ”

“ You can go back to your ax and the horny-handed toil you seem to love so well. I've asked you all I want to know. The rest of my palaver concerns your employers only."
He wheeled on Sark and Bassett.
"You heard that hard-shelled heathen's admissions? Well, so did Ante, Gunboat Slim and Alabama. They're my witnesses. And if we took the matter to court and got a rulin' on it, just as sure as there's gold in that ledge, the court would view your action as subterfuge in the face of your surrendered rights and throw them seventeen claims open to relocation. But law and courts are slow. ”

“ Casino's worked a colossal come-on, and we fell for it. I'll tell you of another discovery I made while you was gone. I discovered that the claims we staked was salted. Salted on the boundary line jist whar two pardners would nacherally sink their prospeck hole."
"Salted, Tom? But there you're wrong. There you sure touch my pride. No man can sell me ground that's been dug before without me knowing it. I'll take my altar oath that nobody had put shovel into the muck of that prospect hole before mine. I'm always on my guard against that trick. The stuff we panned was there by nature." ”

“ I ain't no man to move contrary to the law. You and me had already staked claims on this creek. What kinda claims nobody could say if the matter popped up for jurisdiction. Because the hull thing was a salt, you see. We couldn't prove placer or pay-streak. And you sure kin't stake twice on the same creek. So if our Twenty-Four and Twenty-Five Above happened to be rooled on as quartz, our stakin' on this ledge would be void, and we'd lose the hull thing.
"Casino and the rest of his bunch is in the same box. ”

“ I've found out, Eric, that the date on the location notices on every claim we've bought is June the tenth."
"Tarnation, Tom! I was suspicious as soon as I saw it. Only I thought there might have been some mistake. But the date of Halpune's recording and the date on the notices sure can't both be mistakes. There's only one thing that can mean."
"Only one thing, pardner. Them claims was all measured out and staked the day before the stampede started. Casino's the man as did it. ”

“ We have staked somethin' down thar. We dunno whether it's a quartz claim, placer claim or dredgin' limit, but we're law-abidin' men, and we live up to the letter of the minin' regulations. You're runnin' the hull show, and if anybody happens along jist tell 'em so. That ground under your feet is worth twelve thousand dollars if its worth a disfigured cent. You kin drive your Discovery stake right thar whar that outcrop is."
Methodically Tagish Jim went about the business. First of all he drove his recovery stake at the spot Bassett indicated. ”

“ All um Chilcats own um claims. We sell. We don't want see um bosses killed. We sell. But we sell whole claims. No shares. Me speak for um all. Me foreman."
"Good! Better than ever!" exulted Casino, clawing his way through his comrades toward Tagish Jim and pulling out some paper from his pocket. "Here, I'll write bills of sale for the seventeen. You sign. How much do you want?"
"Don't you sell, Tagish! Don't you sell!" warned both Sark and Bassett. ”

“ Even if it should be, it'll average up. Look at our two claims! Worth half a million dollars apiece if they're worth an ounce. The other'll average up to that figger on the basis of this hat. If some slump under, others'll produce over.
"Twenty-five million dollars, Eric, is the value of this valley, and we kin buy it for a hundred thousand. Don't the opportunity smite you blind and give you a gone feelin' in the pit of your stomach? It does me. But we gotta shake our nerves together and act abrupt or prices'll go up. I hear Casino and his friends talkin' down yonder now. ”

“ Every man here knows I fought dead aginst sellin' to the last. You forced the Chilcats to sell to you. And they're the only ones as benefited by the deal. You've made 'em a present of six thousand dollars apiece. Eric and me git back what you skinned us outs by hikin' us forth on a fixed stampede, plankin' us down on two salted claims prepared beforehand and enticin' us to buy up Fresno Creek. ”

“ I warn you that you and forty-six others constrained us against our will and robbed us of a quartz ledge three feet wide, twenty-five thousand, five bundled feet long, runnin' in your own words four hundred dollars to the ton. Now the hull bunch of you jist let them terms and figgers sink into your dissipated consciousnesses. ”

“ But Tom and Eric had scarcely landed the first two blows when the hurtling body of Tagish Jim, jumping off the boulder above, launched through the ring.
"Wait," commanded the Chilcat. He pushed back the foremost attackers. ”

“ He snickers to himself that he's got a dead-sealed secret padlocked in his lonely breast, but when it comes to the lightin'-out point, they's other, at the same stunt, swarms of 'em, jumpin' out of the grass like skeeters in Jooly. ”

“ You'd better bring Tagish Jim and a dozen or a dozen and a half of the Chilcats with you to prove up the rest of the holdin's. Things'll sure assume gigantic proportions here, and we'll need that many at the start. ”