The eight miles were covered in less
than two hours. It was a killing pace, over so rough trail, and
they passed scores of exhausted men that had fallen by the wayside.
At Discovery little was to be learned of the upper creek.
Cormack's Indian brother-in-law, Skookum Jim, had a hazy notion
that the creek was staked as high as the 30's; but when Kink and
Bill looked at the corner-stakes of 79 ABOVE, they threw their
stampeding packs off their backs and sat down to smoke. All their
efforts had been vain. Bonanza was staked from mouth to source,--
"out of sight and across the next divide." Bill complained that
night as they fried their bacon and boiled their coffee over
Cormack's fire at Discovery.
"Try that pup," Carmack suggested next morning.
"That pup" was a broad creek that flowed into Bonanza at 7 ABOVE.
The partners received his advice with the magnificent contempt of
the sour dough for a squaw-man, and, instead, spent the day on
Adam's Creek, another and more likely-looking tributary of Bonanza.
But it was the old story over again--staked to the sky-line.
For threes days Carmack repeated his advice, and for three days
they received it contemptuously. But on the fourth day, there
being nowhere else to go, they went up "that pup.
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