The next day they went eight miles out in slush and in alternate rain and sunshine, to Little Minook Creek, where the biggest paying claims were universally agreed to be.  They found a place even more ragged and desolate than McGinty’s, where smoke was rising sullenly from underground fires 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’ gold—­plenty o’ gold.”