“One at a time, young feller,” said Blenship. “He is one of Pap Lane’s men. The benches are the hillside claims. He may stake ’em, but I doubt it. He won’t wait. He’ll light out across tundra as fast as his horse can carry him, and tell his boss about this. Meanwhile we can wait, and we might as well get what’s coming to us. If one of you boys will try and handle that water, I’ll show you how to shovel.” Joe thought himself a good deal of a man, but he could not keep up with the other in shoveling. He hung sturdily to his task, however, and for three hours more shoveled wet sand and clayey gravel into the sluice while Harry regulated the water according to occasional directions from Blenship. The latter instructed Joe in the best methods of scraping bed rock, and showed him how the best of the gold was liable to lie in the little hollows of the clay, and be missed by an inexperienced hand. At the end of three hours Blenship ordered a cessation of work once more, much to Joe’s relief, for five hours of labor with the shovel had thoroughly exhausted him. He lay back on the tundra while Harry and Blenship cleaned up. The result showed Blenship’s superior skill in mining, and the longer run. It was nearly double the other. “Guess we’ll call it a day’s work,” said he. “Pretty near two thousand dollars. Have I earned my hundred?” The boys thought he had indeed, and pressed him to take more for his share, but he resolutely refused. In the tent he took from his outfit a pair of miner’s scales and weighed out his wages carefully, putting them in a little chamois bag in his bosom. The balance he turned over to the boys, and they stowed it in the bandana with what they already had. “You see,” said Blenship, “the better showing your little pocket makes in the next ten days, the better price the whole creek will bring when Pap Lane or the Alaska Commercial Company or some of those fellows come up here to buy it.” “But why should we sell?” asked Joe. “Young feller,” said Blenship, “don’t you make no mistake. If you can sell out your share of this creek at a good price, you do it. You’ve got a little spot that’s mighty rich. The rest of your claim may not pay for the labor of working it. Two months from now it will be frozen up, and will stay so for nine months more. A man with a million behind him can take this creek and work it to advantage. You and I might peck at it for ten years and then not get a living out of it. If you get a good chance, sell.”