“Where are you going to plant it?” Joe
Ladue had asked.
And Daylight, with a wave of his hand, definitely
indicated the whole landscape and the creeks that
lay beyond the divides.
“There she is,” he said, “and you-all
just watch my smoke. There’s millions here
for the man who can see them. And I seen all
them millions this afternoon when them seven hundred
dollars peeped up at me from the bottom of the pan
and chirruped, ’Well, if here ain’t Burning
Daylight come at last.’”
The hero of the Yukon in the younger days before the
Carmack strike, Burning Daylight now became the hero
of the strike. The story of his hunch and how
he rode it was told up and down the land. Certainly
he had ridden it far and away beyond the boldest,
for no five of the luckiest held the value in claims
that he held. And, furthermore, he was still
riding the hunch, and with no diminution of daring.
The wise ones shook their heads and prophesied that
he would lose every ounce he had won. He was
speculating, they contended, as if the whole country
was made of gold, and no man could win who played
a placer strike in that fashion.
On the other hand, his holdings were reckoned as worth
millions, and there were men so sanguine that they
held the man a fool who coppered[6] any bet Daylight
laid. Behind his magnificent free-handedness
and careless disregard for money were hard, practical
judgment, imagination and vision, and the daring of
the big gambler. He foresaw what with his own
eyes he had never seen, and he played to win much
or lose all.
[6] To copper: a term in faro, meaning to play
a card to lose.
“There’s too much gold here in Bonanza
to be just a pocket,” he argued. “It’s
sure come from a mother-lode somewhere, and other
creeks will show up. You-all keep your eyes on
Indian River. The creeks that drain that side
the Klondike watershed are just as likely to have
gold as the creeks that drain this side.”
And he backed this opinion to the extent of grub-staking
half a dozen parties of prospectors across the big
divide into the Indian River region. Other men,
themselves failing to stake on lucky creeks, he put
to work on his Bonanza claims. And he paid them
well—sixteen dollars a day for an eight-hour
shift, and he ran three shifts. He had grub
to start them on, and when, on the last water, the
Bella arrived loaded with provisions, he traded a
warehouse site to Jack Kearns for a supply of grub
that lasted all his men through the winter of 1896.
And that winter, when famine pinched, and flour sold
for two dollars a pound, he kept three shifts of men
at work on all four of the Bonanza claims. Other
mine-owners paid fifteen dollars a day to their men;
but he had been the first to put men to work, and
from the first he paid them a full ounce a day.
One result was that his were picked men, and they
more than earned their higher pay.
