Burning Daylight

by Jack London

  CHAPTER XI

  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 hishunch and how he rode it was told up and down the land. Certainly hehad ridden it far and away beyond the boldest, for no five of theluckiest held the value in claims that he held. And, furthermore, hewas still riding the hunch, and with no diminution of daring. The wiseones shook their heads and prophesied that he would lose every ounce hehad won. He was speculating, they contended, as if the whole countrywas made of gold, and no man could win who played a placer strike inthat fashion.

  On the other hand, his holdings were reckoned as worth millions, andthere were men so sanguine that they held the man a fool whocoppered[6] any bet Daylight laid. Behind his magnificentfree-handedness and careless disregard for money were hard, practicaljudgment, imagination and vision, and the daring of the big gambler.He foresaw what with his own eyes he had never seen, and he played towin much or lose all.

  "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 willshow up. You-all keep your eyes on Indian River. The creeks that drainthat side the Klondike watershed are just as likely to have gold as thecreeks that drain this side."

  And he backed this opinion to the extent of grub-staking half a dozenparties of prospectors across the big divide into the Indian Riverregion. Other men, themselves failing to stake on lucky creeks, he putto work on his Bonanza claims. And he paid them well--sixteen dollarsa day for an eight-hour shift, and he ran three shifts. He had grub tostart them on, and when, on the last water, the Bella arrived loadedwith provisions, he traded a warehouse site to Jack Kearns for a supplyof grub that lasted all his men through the winter of 1896. And thatwinter, when famine pinched, and flour sold for two dollars a pound, hekept 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 hadbeen the first to put men to work, and from the first he paid them afull ounce a day. One result was that his were picked men, and theymore than earned their higher pay.

  One of his wildest plays took place in the early winter after thefreeze-up. Hundreds of stampeders, after staking on other creeks thanBonanza, had gone on disgruntled down river to Forty Mile and CircleCity. Daylight mortgaged one of his Bonanza dumps with the AlaskaCommercial Company, and tucked a letter of credit into his pouch. Thenhe harnessed his dogs and went down on the ice at a pace that only hecould travel. One Indian down, another Indian back, and four teams ofdogs was his record. And at Forty Mile and Circle City he boughtclaims by the score. Many of these were to prove utterly worthless, butsome few of them were to show up more astoundingly than any on Bonanza.He bought right and left, paying as low as fifty dollars and as high asfive thousand. This highest one he bought in the Tivoli Saloon. Itwas an upper claim on Eldorado, and when he agreed to the price, JacobWilkins, an old-timer just returned from a look at the moose-pasture,got up and left the room, saying:--

  "Daylight, I've known you seven year, and you've always seemed sensibletill now. And now you're just letting them rob you right and left.That's what it is--robbery. Five thousand for a claim on that damnedmoose-pasture is bunco. I just can't stay in the room and see youbuncoed that way."

  "I tell you-all," Daylight answered, "Wilkins, Carmack's strike's sobig that we-all can't see it all. It's a lottery. Every claim I buyis a ticket. And there's sure going to be some capital prizes."

  Jacob Wilkins, standing in the open door, sniffed incredulously.

  "Now supposing, Wilkins," Daylight went on, "supposing you-all knew itwas going to rain soup. What'd you-all do? Buy spoons, of course.Well, I'm sure buying spoons. She's going to rain soup up there on theKlondike, and them that has forks won't be catching none of it."

  But Wilkins here slammed the door behind him, and Daylight broke off tofinish the purchase of the claim.

  Back in Dawson, though he remained true to his word and never touchedhand to pick and shovel, he worked as hard as ever in his life. He hada thousand irons in the fire, and they kept him busy. Representationwork was expensive, and he was compelled to travel often over thevarious creeks in order to decide which claims should lapse and whichshould be retained. A quartz miner himself in his early youth, beforecoming to Alaska, he dreamed of finding the mother-lode. A placer camphe knew was ephemeral, while a quartz camp abided, and he kept a scoreof men in the quest for months. The mother-lode was never found, and,years afterward, he estimated that the search for it had cost him fiftythousand dollars.

  But he was playing big. Heavy as were his expenses, he won moreheavily. He took lays, bought half shares, shared with the men hegrub-staked, and made personal locations. Day and night his dogs wereready, and he owned the fastest teams; so that when a stampede to a newdiscovery was on, it was Burning Daylight to the fore through thelongest, coldest nights till he blazed his stakes next to Discovery.In one way or another (to say nothing of the many worthless creeks) hecame into possession of properties on the good creeks, such as Sulphur,Dominion, Excelsis, Siwash, Cristo, Alhambra, and Doolittle. Thethousands he poured out flowed back in tens of thousands. Forty Milemen told the story of his two tons of flour, and made calculations ofwhat it had returned him that ranged from half a million to a million.One thing was known beyond all doubt, namely, that the half share inthe first Eldorado claim, bought by him for a half sack of flour, wasworth five hundred thousand. On the other hand, it was told that whenFreda, the dancer, arrived from over the passes in a Peterborough canoein the midst of a drive of mush-ice on the Yukon, and when she offereda thousand dollars for ten sacks and could find no sellers, he sent theflour to her as a present without ever seeing her. In the same way tensacks were sent to the lone Catholic priest who was starting the firsthospital.

  His generosity was lavish. Others called it insane. At a time when,riding his hunch, he was getting half a million for half a sack offlour, it was nothing less than insanity to give twenty whole sacks toa dancing-girl and a priest. But it was his way. Money was only amarker. It was the game that counted with him. The possession ofmillions made little change in him, except that he played the game morepassionately. Temperate as he had always been, save on rare occasions,now that he had the wherewithal for unlimited drinks and had dailyaccess to them, he drank even less. The most radical change lay inthat, except when on trail, he no longer did his own cooking. Abroken-down miner lived in his log cabin with him and now cooked forhim. But it was the same food: bacon, beans, flour, prunes, driedfruits, and rice. He still dressed as formerly: overalls, German socks,moccasins, flannel shirt, fur cap, and blanket coat. He did not takeup with cigars, which cost, the cheapest, from half a dollar to adollar each. The same Bull Durham and brown-paper cigarette,hand-rolled, contented him. It was true that he kept more dogs, andpaid enormous prices for them. They were not a luxury, but a matter ofbusiness. He needed speed in his travelling and stampeding. And bythe same token, he hired a cook. He was too busy to cook for himself,that was all. It was poor business, playing for millions, to spendtime building fires and boiling water.

  Dawson grew rapidly that winter of 1896. Money poured in on Daylightfrom the sale of town lots. He promptly invested it where it wouldgather more. In fact, he played the dangerous game of pyramiding, andno more perilous pyramiding than in a placer camp could be imagined.But he played with his eyes wide open.

  "You-all just wait till the news of this strike reaches the Outside,"he told his old-timer cronies in the Moosehorn Saloon. "The news won'tget out till next spring. Then there's going to be three rushes. Asummer rush of men coming in light; a fall rush of men with outfits;and a spring rush, the next year after that, of fifty thousand.You-all won't be able to see the landscape for chechaquos. Well,there's the summer and fall rush of 1897 to commence with. What areyou-all going to do about it?"

  "What are you going to do about it?" a friend demanded.

/>   "Nothing," he answered. "I've sure already done it. I've got a dozengangs strung out up the Yukon getting out logs. You-all'll see theirrafts coming down after the river breaks. Cabins! They sure will beworth what a man can pay for them next fall. Lumber! It will sure go totop-notch. I've got two sawmills freighting in over the passes.They'll come down as soon as the lakes open up. And if you-all arethinking of needing lumber, I'll make you-all contracts rightnow--three hundred dollars a thousand, undressed."

  Corner lots in desirable locations sold that winter for from ten tothirty thousand dollars. Daylight sent word out over the trails andpasses for the newcomers to bring down log-rafts, and, as a result, thesummer of 1897 saw his sawmills working day and night, on three shifts,and still he had logs left over with which to build cabins. Thesecabins, land included, sold at from one to several thousand dollars.Two-story log buildings, in the business part of town, brought him fromforty to fifty thousand dollars apiece. These fresh accretions ofcapital were immediately invested in other ventures. He turned goldover and over, until everything that he touched seemed to turn to gold.

  But that first wild winter of Carmack's strike taught Daylight manythings. Despite the prodigality of his nature, he had poise. Hewatched the lavish waste of the mushroom millionaires, and failed quiteto understand it. According to his nature and outlook, it was all verywell to toss an ante away in a night's frolic. That was what he haddone the night of the poker-game in Circle City when he lost fiftythousand--all that he possessed. But he had looked on that fiftythousand as a mere ante. When it came to millions, it was different.Such a fortune was a stake, and was not to be sown on bar-room floors,literally sown, flung broadcast out of the moosehide sacks by drunkenmillionaires who had lost all sense of proportion. There was McMann,who ran up a single bar-room bill of thirty-eight thousand dollars; andJimmie the Rough, who spent one hundred thousand a month for fourmonths in riotous living, and then fell down drunk in the snow oneMarch night and was frozen to death; and Swiftwater Bill, who, afterspending three valuable claims in an extravagance of debauchery,borrowed three thousand dollars with which to leave the country, andwho, out of this sum, because the lady-love that had jilted him likedeggs, cornered the one hundred and ten dozen eggs on the Dawson market,paying twenty-four dollars a dozen for them and promptly feeding themto the wolf-dogs.

  Champagne sold at from forty to fifty dollars a quart, and cannedoyster stew at fifteen dollars. Daylight indulged in no such luxuries.He did not mind treating a bar-room of men to whiskey at fifty cents adrink, but there was somewhere in his own extravagant nature a sense offitness and arithmetic that revolted against paying fifteen dollars forthe contents of an oyster can. On the other hand, he possibly spentmore money in relieving hard-luck cases than did the wildest of the newmillionaires on insane debauchery. Father Judge, of the hospital,could have told of far more important donations than that first tensacks of flour. And old-timers who came to Daylight invariably wentaway relieved according to their need. But fifty dollars for a quart offizzy champagne! That was appalling.

  And yet he still, on occasion, made one of his old-time hell-roaringnights. But he did so for different reasons. First, it was expected ofhim because it had been his way in the old days. And second, he couldafford it. But he no longer cared quite so much for that form ofdiversion. He had developed, in a new way, the taste for power. Ithad become a lust with him. By far the wealthiest miner in Alaska, hewanted to be still wealthier. It was a big game he was playing in, andhe liked it better than any other game. In a way, the part he playedwas creative. He was doing something. And at no time, strikinganother chord of his nature, could he take the joy in a million-dollarEldorado dump that was at all equivalent to the joy he took in watchinghis two sawmills working and the big down river log-rafts swinging intothe bank in the big eddy just above Moosehide Mountain. Gold, even onthe scales, was, after all, an abstraction. It represented things andthe power to do. But the sawmills were the things themselves, concreteand tangible, and they were things that were a means to the doing ofmore things. They were dreams come true, hard and indubitablerealizations of fairy gossamers.

  With the summer rush from the Outside came special correspondents forthe big newspapers and magazines, and one and all, using unlimitedspace, they wrote Daylight up; so that, so far as the world wasconcerned, Daylight loomed the largest figure in Alaska. Of course,after several months, the world became interested in the Spanish War,and forgot all about him; but in the Klondike itself Daylight stillremained the most prominent figure. Passing along the streets ofDawson, all heads turned to follow him, and in the saloons chechaquoswatched him awesomely, scarcely taking their eyes from him as long ashe remained in their range of vision. Not alone was he the richest manin the country, but he was Burning Daylight, the pioneer, the man who,almost in the midst of antiquity of that young land, had crossed theChilcoot and drifted down the Yukon to meet those elder giants, Al Mayoand Jack McQuestion. He was the Burning Daylight of scores of wildadventures, the man who carried word to the ice-bound whaling fleetacross the tundra wilderness to the Arctic Sea, who raced the mail fromCircle to Salt Water and back again in sixty days, who saved the wholeTanana tribe from perishing in the winter of '91--in short, the man whosmote the chechaquos' imaginations more violently than any other dozenmen rolled into one.

  He had the fatal facility for self-advertisement. Things he did, nomatter how adventitious or spontaneous, struck the popular imaginationas remarkable. And the latest thing he had done was always on men'slips, whether it was being first in the heartbreaking stampede toDanish Creek, in killing the record baldface grizzly over on SulphurCreek, or in winning the single-paddle canoe race on the Queen'sBirthday, after being forced to participate at the last moment by thefailure of the sourdough representative to appear. Thus, one night inthe Moosehorn, he locked horns with Jack Kearns in the long-promisedreturn game of poker. The sky and eight o'clock in the morning weremade the limits, and at the close of the game Daylight's winnings weretwo hundred and thirty thousand dollars. To Jack Kearns, already aseveral-times millionaire, this loss was not vital. But the wholecommunity was thrilled by the size of the stakes, and each one of thedozen correspondents in the field sent out a sensational article.

  [6] To copper: a term in faro, meaning to play a card to lose.