and the smell of burning wood filled the air, the
ground turned up and dotted at intervals with piles of frozen gravel
that had been hoisted from the shafts by windlass, forlorn little
cabins and tents scattered indiscriminately, a vast number of empty
bottles and cans sown broadcast, and, early as it was, a line of
sluices upon Salaman's claim.

They had heard a great deal about the dark, keen-looking young Oregon
lawyer, for Salaman was the most envied man in Minook. "Come over to my
dump and get some nuggets," says Mr. Salaman, as in other parts of the
world a man will say, "Come into the smoking-room and have a cigar."

The snow was melted from the top of Salaman's dump, and his guests had
no difficulty in picking several rough little bits of gold out of the
thawing gravel. It was an exhilarating occupation.

"Come down my shaft and see my cross-cuts"; and they followed him.

He pointed out how the frozen gravel made solid wall, or pillar, and no
curbing was necessary. With the aid of a candle and their host's
urging, they picked out several dollars' worth of coarse gold from the
gravel "in place" at the edge of the bed-rock. When he had got his
guests thoroughly warmed up:

"Yes, I took out several thousand last fall, and I'll have twenty
thousand more out of my first summer clean-up."

"And after that?"

"After that I'm going home. I wouldn't stay here and work this way and
live this way another winter, not for twenty millions."

"I'm surprised to hear _you_ talking like that, sah."

"Well, you won't be once you have tried it yourself. Mining up here's
an awful gamble. Colours pretty well everywhere, and a few flakes of
flour gold, just enough to send the average cheechalko crazy, but no
real 'pay' outside of this little gulch. And even here, every inch has
been scrambled for--and staked, too--and lots of it fought over. Men
died here in the fall defending their ground from the jumpers--ground
that hadn't a dollar in it."

"Well, your ground was worth looking after, and John Dillon's. Which is
his claim?"

Salaman led the way over the heaps of gravel and round a windlass to
No. 6, admitting:

"Oh, yes, Dillon and I, and a few others, have come out of it all
right, but Lord! it's a gamble."

Dillon's pardner, Kennedy, did the honours, showing the Big Chimney men
the very shaft out of which their Christmas heap of gold had been
hoisted. It was true after all. For the favoured there _was_ "plenty o'