Chapter I: How the Trouble Started

“Well glory be! an’ if it ain’t Jack Heaton hisself. An’ right glad am I to see yuh, Jack. Bill will be mighty glad, too, for he’s that bugs on goin’ to South America for them di-_am_-onds. Sure he’s been talkin’ o’ nothin’ else these last two weeks gone Saturday. An’ how are yuh anyhow, Jack?”

It was Mrs. Adams, Bill’s warm-hearted and courageous mother, who had answered the bell and was greeting Jack in this whole-souled fashion.

Since the boys had returned from Mexico and had come into possession of all that money for the services they had rendered the _American Consolidated Oil Company, Inc._, the Adamses, mother and son, had risen in the world not only figuratively but very literally, for instead of living in a shanty hard by the gas-house under the viaduct which spans Manhattan Street, they had moved into a five room apartment on Claremont Avenue--and a front apartment overlooking the Hudson River at that. No wonder, then, that Mrs. Adams was emitting her good nature in all directions like rays of radium and that of all persons Jack was an especial target for them.

“Bill’s in the parlor, Jack; go right in,” she said with emphasis on the _parlor_, for it was the only one she had ever been the mistress of in all her hardworking life.

“Well, Bill, what do you think you’re doing, getting ready to go after a _yegg_ or rehearsing for a movie?” asked Jack as he reached the front room, which by the grace of landlords and popular usage is known as the parlor, where he found his _pal_ engaged in the gentle pastime of snapping a six-gun.

Bill cut short his exercises with the weapon that had seen such hard service in Mexico so recently and he laughed lightly, though no one except his closest friends would have been aware of it.

“Nary one, Jack, but I’ve had one o’ them hunch things that you used to get and it’s the one best bet as how me and you are goin’ to the wilds o’ the Amazon and capture some o’ them chunks o’ mud similar like and appertainin’ to the one you wears on your mitt. So I was just limberin’ up my trigger finger a bit with a little action.”

“Oh, you were, were you,” remarked Jack with a mild touch of sarcasm in his voice.

“Yes, an’ I was just thinkin’ about ’phonin’ you to find out how soon we could get under way. You see, I haven’t done a tap to make a dollar since our landfall and owin’ to the high cost o’ livin’--we’re over two hundred feet above Manhattan Street now--my pile’s nosin’ down like a submarine and it’ll soon be restin’ on the bottom and we’ll be back where we come from. So I’m askin’ you, not only as man to man but as my pal, when do we start?”

“We don’t head that way this time,” replied Jack, “we head _north_, with a capital N.”

“Whad’a mean we head north?” asked Bill in utter amazement.

“That’s exactly what I came over to see you about, Bill. I’ve had half-a-dozen jobs offered me since we came back but routine work is entirely out of my line so what’s the use in wasting someone else’s good money and my own good time. No, I’ve tried it and I can’t be a good man Friday for any business concern--not even for my dad’s.

“So you see you and I are in the same class--everything going out and nothing coming in and I’ve been wondering a lot lately what we could scare up that would make a noise like a million dollars. Say Bill, did you ever read Jack London’s ‘Call of the Wild’?” Jack put the question without notice.

“‘Call o’ the Wild’?” mused Bill, turning the phrase over in his dome of thought; “I’ve heard all kinds o’ calls o’ wild men an’ wild women but never do I remember any wild call by this blokie Jack London. Who is this guy anyway?”

“There’s no use talking to a fellow like that,” thought Jack, but then, as in dozens of other instances in the past, he patiently explained who Jack London was and repeated the tale as told by that past master of fiction, for the benefit of his less well-read pal.

“Now the point I’m driving at is this,” he went on. “Jack London tells us that white men who were prospecting in the land of the _Yeehats_, a tribe of Indians in the gold country of Alaska, found diggings where there was _gold, gold, nothing but gold_, I tell you, and they packed it in moosehide sacks so that they could get it back to civilization. Then the Yeehats came upon and killed them and the shining yellow metal fell into their hands. The gold must still be up there, and you can’t dispute it either.”

At this recital Bill’s big blue eyes bulged out like those of a spider watching a fly. He had caught the drift of what Jack was saying and if there is any one thing that will set an inert imagination to functioning quicker or fix the attention of the human mind faster than another it is the mordant of seeking out this precious metal that we call gold. Then he blinked his eyes and shook his head.

“It sounds to me,” he said finally, which in the lingo of the cowboy, means that he had his doubts. “If this is a yarn this London feller wrote how do we know that he didn’t make up the Yeehats and the gold just like he made up the rest of it,” Bill wanted to know, and not without reason.

“I’ll tell you how. That book was given to me for a birthday present when I was about ten years old and whenever I wanted to read a good story I took it up just as everybody, from the rag-picker to the president, re-reads ‘Robinson Crusoe’ and ‘Treasure Island.’ So one fine day, not long after we got back from the oil-fields I spied the book and read it again; then all of a sudden this ending about the Yeehats and the gold in sacks struck me that there might be some truth lurking behind the fiction like a _greaser_ behind a giant cactus or a Siwash behind a totem pole.”

“But how can we find out for sure?”

“I have found out already. I wrote to the _Secretary of the Bureau of Ethnology_ at Washington and to the _Minister of the Interior of Canada_, and they sent me handbooks that tell all about the Indians of Alaska and the Yukon Territory and I’ve got the real _dope_ on them.”

Bill had a high regard for Jack’s way of boring into things and this scheme of going to the governments for information about the Indians up there in the far Northland seemed to his untrained mind to approach very closely to a high order of genius. Still he was not entirely convinced.

“That shows that the climax of London’s book relating to the Yeehats is straight from the shoulder, doesn’t it?” Jack wound up.

“That part about the Yeehats is all right but how about the gold? Because a tribe of Indians called the Yeehats lived up there doesn’t say that pioneer prospectors actually found the nuggets, got it, piled it up in sacks ready to bring back where they could spend it and then were killed off by the Indians. Mind you, Jack, I’m not sayin’ as how it couldn’t have happened but I’m only sayin’ as how I’d like to know for sure afore we goes, see?”

“Well first of all there’s the Yeehats--” Jack began to explain all over again.

“That part about the Yeehats is all O.K.; there’s no blinkin’ at facts. No one I’ll say, no not even a bookmaker could think up such an outlandish name as _Yeehat_ even to splice it to a redskin for a name, but any one who couldn’t think about gold in chunks would be lonesome if he had a brain,” argued Bill.

“Wait a minute, wait a minute,” called out Jack. “First of all never call a man who writes books a bookmaker. A man who puts his pen to paper and writes down various things for other folks to read is a _maker of books_ while a man that takes bets at a race track is a _bookmaker_. Now don’t get these two professions mixed up again.”

“The trouble with you, Jack, is that you can’t see the woods because o’ the trees, as you used to tell me down in Mexico when I picked you up on some point that didn’t have anything to do with the case. What’s the _diff_ I’d like to know, whether he was a maker o’ books as you calls him or a bookmaker as I calls him. Well go on with your ratkillin’.”

“What I was going to say when you sidetracked me was that when a writer writes a book every idea that goes into it really comes from some outside source and consequently all this stuff that we call inspiration and imagination is more or less bunk. This being true, I hold that what London wrote about the prospectors, the gold they found, the moosehide sacks of it they piled up and the Yeehats, were not just mere fleeting fancies which were conjured up in his brain to serve his purpose for the story but hard and fast facts that he had heard about when he was up above there in Alaska.”

“I knows what you say and I guess I knows what you’re talking about, but as against the book that tells about the Yeehats and the sacks o’ gold in the land where the rainbow ends give me the straight tip on the di-_am_-onds that Jack Heaton got from the cannibal princess where the rainbow begins,” plugged in Bill, still bent on the diamond project.

“Don’t you see, Bill, it will take a mint of money to outfit that diamond hunting expedition--why, we’d have to take a small army with us to cope with those Amazonian savages while as I told you before they’re all Christianized, peace-loving folks in the far north--too cold to be anything else. Why, we couldn’t begin to finance this diamond proposition between us even if we put every dollar we have to our names in it,” Jack drove his argument home and he could see that the force of his logic and oratory was beginning to have the desired effect on his hard-headed pal.

“Couldn’t you get the directors of the _American Consolidated Oil Company_ to take a flyer and back us in the di-_am_-ond venture,” further persisted Bill.

“I might be able to get them to see it but those old four-per-centers are long on sure things and very short on anything that looks like a gamble. I’d hate to have any of them go into anything with us that was not as sure of succeeding as to-morrow’s sun is sure of rising, for if we ever went down there and failed to bring back a boat load of diamonds as large as the _Koohinoor_, or _Mountain of Light_ as it is called, they’d think they’d been stung by a nest of hornets and if we didn’t bring back any at all they’d want to throw us into the Atlantic Ocean.”

“They’re sure enough dead-game sports,” Bill commented sadly, “but there’s one thing certain and that is if I don’t make a ten-strike soon I’ll have to get a job as a longshoreman and me mudder and me ’ull be movin’ down to the shanty. Get me?”

“As a longshoreman only gets ten dollars a day for six or eight hours’ work I guess the job at that might net you enough to keep the coyote from sleeping in the vestibule of your apartment. If I wasn’t too heavy for light work and too light for heavy work I’d get a job on the docks myself. As things now stand I’m going to Alaska and I’ll bring back so much gold that if I threw it on the market there’d be a slump in the price of it,” orated Jack boastfully, as he rubbed his hands together in pleasurable anticipation like a miserable young Shylock. But the magic of gold is apt to make misers of even the most generous folks.

“Yuh lads come now and have a bite to eat,” sang out Mrs. Adams cheerily and the two youngsters went through an arched hole in the wall that connected, yet separated the parlor from the dining room, though this may sound a bit paradoxical. The latter room was decorated with a plate rail around the wall and a great vari-colored dome lamp hanging from the ceiling.

Under the lamp was a table laid with a cloth as white, silver as bright and china as fine as would be found, Jack opined, up or down the Avenue or even over on Riverside Drive. Bill’s mother was almost as proud of her new home and its fixtures as she was of her boy and that is saying all of it. As for Jack, why she thought he was the smartest boy in the world; yes, she truly did, and whatever he said went with her.

Their apartment was tastily furnished and comfortable, and he was glad to know that he had been, in a measure, indirectly responsible for it. It has often been said that travel is the great educator but the possession of money goes a mighty long ways toward making gentlemen out of coal heavers and ladies out of scrub women. True there was still some room for improvement in the way Bill and his mother handled “English as she is spoke” but no improvement was needed in their hearts.

“So yuh lads are goin’ to South America for di-_am_-onds, are yuh,” said Mrs. Adams when they were seated. “Well, it ’ud be a fine and ge-glorious thing if you’d fetch home a couple of scuttles of them baubles and throw them to those as can afford ’em at so much per throw,” and her eyes reflected the happy thought which she had voiced, as a Kimberly blue-white stone reflects the light of the sun. “But do yuh know Jack,” she added pensively, “I’d a deal ruther have me boy Bill livin’ with me in the shanty than to have him riskin’ his young life down there on the equator with those man-eaters.”

“You can rest easy in your mind on that score, Mrs. Adams,” Jack assured her, “for I’ve nearly persuaded Bill to give up this South American venture and join me in an expedition to the Alaskan gold fields, to search for a few sacks of nuggets.”

“Ilasker, Ilasker? No, I never heard of the place before. It must not have been on the map when I went to school,” thought Mrs. Adams out loud.

“You’ve heard of the Yukon?” suggested Jack.

“Yukon, Yukon? I can’t say that I have, but,” and her eyes brightened as though she had solved a jigsaw puzzle, “I have heard of the Klondike.”

“That accounts for it then,” said Jack, “for the Klondike is a gold district and it is named from the Klondike River which it is on. The Klondike River is in the Yukon Territory, which belongs to Canada, and this is directly east of Alaska. The Klondike River is really only a stream, perhaps not over a hundred feet wide, but so rich were the early gold fields there that practically all of the Yukon Territory and a part of Alaska to boot has been called the Klondike country. Such is the fame and power of gold.”

“We own Ilasker, don’t we Jack?” Bill wanted to know.

“Yes, though she used to belong to Russia but the U. S. bought her about fifty years ago for seven million, two hundred thousand dollars. Since then she has produced three hundred million dollars worth of gold. Some bargain, what say, Bill?”

“I’ll say it was,” replied his pal.

“It came about this way,” continued Jack, “when she was owned by Russia she was a losing deal for that country because in the first place she was too far away from the seat of government and there was no wire or wireless communication at that time between them; and in the second place Russia hadn’t any more of a notion as to how to govern her than she has of governing herself now.

“When the Civil War was on Russia was a good friend of the Union and helped us in every way she could, even to loaning us her warships. As Russia wanted to dispose of Alaska and Uncle Sam wanted to pay something for the services she had rendered, Mr. Seward, who was Secretary of State in President Lincoln’s Cabinet, bought the territory, which was then considered entirely worthless, from her.

“The International boundary line that divides Alaska from Canada was in dispute between the United States and Great Britain almost from the time we got her from Russia but neither country did any worrying over it for Alaska was not supposed to be worth arguing about. But when gold was discovered on the Yukon River in 1896 and at Cape Nome in 1898 there was a great stampede, just as there was to California in ’49. Then it was that both the United States and Great Britain got busy and a commission met in London, England, in 1903 to settle the matter, which was done to the satisfaction of both countries.”

“How far away are these gold fields that you and Bill are goin’ to?” Mrs. Adams asked; “are they as far away as the di-_am_-ond fields of South America?”

“I should say about the same distance, Mrs. Adams, and that is in the neighborhood of some five thousand miles.”

“It’s sure some little ways off,” chipped in Bill, “but distance doesn’t count; what we wants is the yellow butter, hey Buddie?”

“That’s what we’re after; other folks have found it and we stand as good a chance as they did. Are you with me, Bill?”

“It sounds to me, Jack, but I’ll go with youse to Ilasker on your hunch even if we have to walk back.”

“Good!” ejaculated Jack; “I guessed you would from the start. And so you see all of this six-gun practice is tommyrot, for the men of the frozen north are different from those of the burnt-up south, for whether they are Americans, French-Canadians, Indians or half-breeds, they are all white men--white at heart--and you’ll never have any use for a side arm up there.”

“It must be a orful nice country, but if you don’t mind I’m going to tote mine along just the same.”

“Then it’s all settled, is it, Bill?”

“I’m right there, pal o’ mine, every time.”

The boys struck hands and their new adventure was on.