was quite sure that my two claims contained a hundred times as much gold as I had taken out—all I had to do was to find its location.

"What Mordaunt said to you about me was true—my sudden good fortune had turned my head; I flung my earnings right and left, spending them on the most foolish extravagances, and still remained avaricious. I developed a mania for asserting my power and getting myself talked about. You know that in those days a new 'millionaire' in the Klondike was expected to do some of that; if, when he came to Dawson, he was sparing, and refused to treat the town to half-dollar drinks till everyone was drunk, they'd take him by his legs and arms and batter him against a wall until he[43] gave in and cried, 'Yes.' Why, I've seen men set to and pan out from the sawdust on the floor of a saloon the gold which I had scattered. I performed such follies as made Swiftwater Bill famous when, after he had squabbled with his 'lady-friend,' and he saw her ordering eggs, of which she happened to be fond, he bought up every egg in town at a dollar a piece, nine hundred in all, and smashed them, to spite her, against the side of her house. I was a confounded fool; if I hadn't been, I shouldn't have quarrelled with you, and we shouldn't have been here now—we might have been in El Dorado, perhaps.

[43]

"Well, when I'd blown a good part of my money over stupidities for which I scarcely received even pleasure in return, I awoke to the fact that my workings had ceased to bear. Already the Sleeping River had got a bad name and was deserted; it was a commonplace that 'Drunkman's Shallows was played out.' I wouldn't acknowledge it. I took pride in the Shallows because I had discovered them; I wasted the remainder of my money in buying up other men's useless claims, and in engaging men to work them. Towards the end, even I had to own to myself that the streaks had pinched out and the Shallows were barren; but out of desperate bravado I kept on until my money was at an end. Then, when I was clean broke, I chose out a partner and went prospecting once again.

"At first we found nothing, for, as I say, when you left me my luck departed. For months we wandered, finding only pay and colours, till we entered the Squaw River and discovered what we wanted at Gold Bug Bend. We stayed there working and testing the dirt till well into January; then one day we drifted into a[44] streak which panned out twenty dollars to the pan, and so we knew at last that we had struck it. We eyed one another suspiciously, for we each of us remembered how you had been treated, and we began to talk about the 

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