As the spring broke up the river and then summer took the place of spring in Dawson, the traders from the outside brought in supplies of fresh eggs, fresh oranges, lettuce, new onions--all the delicacies greatly to be prized and more esteemed after a long winter than the rarest fruits and dainties of the States. When summer came, Dawson got its first shipment of new watermelons from the outside, Swiftwater bought the first melon he could find and paid $40 in dust for it, and brought it home, simply to please Bera and to make his home that much happier. CHAPTER VII. HYDRAULIC mining in the Klondike country, by the time that Swiftwater had assembled his big outfit on Quartz Creek was in its very infancy, yet there were plenty of wise men in Dawson who knew that the tens of thousands of acres of hillside slopes and old abandoned creek beds would some day produce more gold when washed into sluice boxes with gigantic rams, than the native miner and prospector had been able to show, even with the figures, $50,000,000, output to his credit. The Canadian government had given Swiftwater and his partner, Joe Boyle, a princely fortune in the three mile concession on Quartz Creek. So great was the reputation of Swiftwater Bill--so intimately was his name linked with the idea of immense quantities of gold--and so high was his standing as a practical miner, that Swiftwater was able to borrow money right and left to carry on his work on Quartz Creek. Thus it was that before anybody could realize it, including myself, Swiftwater’s financial standing actually was $100,000 worse off than nothing. This was about the amount of money that he used and in that tidy sum was all the savings of my winter in Dawson and my dividends from my hotel, which aggregated at least $35,000. “When Joe comes in this spring from London,” said Swiftwater to me, “we’ll have all the money we want and more, too, Mrs. Beebe. He has cabled twice to Seattle that our money is all raised and we will have a million-dollar clean-up on Quartz Creek this fall.” As the spring came on and reports from the mines on Quartz Creek became brighter, Swiftwater became more enthusiastic and confident. The fact that his creditors were beginning to worry, and that there is a nasty law in Canada which affects debtors who seek to leave the country in a restraining way, did not seriously worry Swiftwater. He seemed to think more of the coming of his child than anything else, next to the work on Quartz Creek. “That baby is going to be born on Quartz Creek, Mrs. B--” Swiftwater said. “It is my determination that my first child shall be born where I will make a greater fortune than anybody hereabouts.” I told Swiftwater that he was talking arrant nonsense.