Bankruptcy -- Fiction; Gold mines and mining -- Alaska -- Fiction; Oakland (Calif.) -- Fiction; Western stories; Women pioneers -- Fiction
The plan was his own, but he sent down to the States for competent
engineers to carry it out. In the Rinkabilly watershed, eighty miles
away, he built his reservoir, and for eighty miles the huge wooden
conduit carried the water across country to Ophir. Estimated at three
millions, the reservoir and conduit cost nearer four. Nor did he stop
with this. Electric power plants were installed, and his workings were
lighted as well as run by electricity. Other sourdoughs, who had
struck it rich in excess of all their dreams, shook their heads
gloomily, warned him that he would go broke, and declined to invest in
so extravagant a venture.
But Daylight smiled, and sold out the remainder of his town-site
holdings. He sold at the right time, at the height of the placer boom.
When he prophesied to his old cronies, in the Moosehorn Saloon, that
within five years town lots in Dawson could not be given away, while
the cabins would be chopped up for firewood, he was laughed at roundly,
and assured that the mother-lode would be found ere that time. But he
went ahead, when his need for lumber was finished, selling out his
sawmills as well. Likewise, he began to get rid of his scattered
holdings on the various creeks, and without thanks to any one he
finished his conduit, built his dredges, imported his machinery, and
made the gold of Ophir immediately accessible. And he, who five years
before had crossed over the divide from Indian River and threaded the
silent wilderness, his dogs packing Indian fashion, himself living
Indian fashion on straight moose meat, now heard the hoarse whistles
calling his hundreds of laborers to work, and watched them toil under
the white glare of the arc-lamps.
But having done the thing, he was ready to depart. And when he let the
word go out, the Guggenhammers vied with the English concerns and with
a new French company in bidding for Ophir and all its plant. The
Guggenhammers bid highest, and the price they paid netted Daylight a
clean million. It was current rumor that he was worth anywhere from
twenty to thirty millions. But he alone knew just how he stood, and
that, with his last claim sold and the table swept clean of his
winnings, he had ridden his hunch to the tune of just a trifle over
eleven millions.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account