t it was practically
unstaked, but they had no intention of staking. The trip was made more
for the purpose of giving vent to their ill-humour than for anything
else. They had become quite cynical, sceptical. They jeered and scoffed
at everything, and insulted every _chechaquo_ they met along the way.

At No. 23 the stakes ceased. The remainder of the creek was open for
location.

"Moose pasture," sneered Kink Mitchell.

But Bill gravely paced off five hundred feet up the creek and blazed the
corner-stakes. He had picked up the bottom of a candle-box, and on the
smooth side he wrote the notice for his centre-stake:-

THIS MOOSE PASTURE IS RESERVED FOR THE
SWEDES AND CHECHAQUOS.
--BILL RADER.

Kink read it over with approval, saying:-

"As them's my sentiments, I reckon I might as well subscribe."

So the name of Charles Mitchell was added to the notice; and many an old
sour dough's face relaxed that day at sight of the handiwork of a kindred
spirit.

"How's the pup?" Carmack inquired when they strolled back into camp.

"To hell with pups!" was Hootchinoo Bill's reply. "Me and Kink's goin' a-
lookin' for Too Much Gold when we get rested up."

Too Much Gold was the fabled creek of which all sour doughs dreamed,
whereof it was said the gold was so thick that, in order to wash it,
gravel must first be shovelled into the sluice-boxes. But the several
days' rest, preliminary to the quest for Too Much Gold, brought a slight
change in their plan, inasmuch as it brought one Ans Handerson, a Swede.

Ans Handerson had been working for wages all summer at Miller Creek over
on the Sixty Mile, and, the summer done, had strayed up Bonanza like many
another waif helplessly adrift on the gold tides that swept willy-nilly
across the land. He was tall and lanky. His arms were long, like
prehistoric man's, and his hands were like soup-plates, twisted and
gnarled, and big-knuckled from toil. He was slow of utterance and
movement, and his eyes, pale blue as his hair was pale yellow, seemed
filled with an immortal dreaming, the stuff of which no man knew, and
himself least of all. Perhaps this appearance of immortal dreaming was
due to a supreme and vacuous innocence. At any rate, this was the
valuation men of ordinary clay put upon him, and there was nothing
extraordinary about the composition of Hootchinoo Bill and Kink Mitchell.

The partners had spent a day of visiting and gossip, and in the evening
met