"And I'm the pertickler party that hocus-pocused 'em."
"Not you. I gave special orders to the clerks. They weren't sold in
lots."
"No more they wa'n't. One man to the pair and one pair to the man, and
a couple of hundred of them; but it was my dust they chucked into the
scales an nobody else's. Drink? Don't mind. Easy! Put up your sack.
Call it rebate, for I kin afford it. . . Goin' out? Not this year, I
guess. Wash-up's comin'."
A strike on Henderson the middle of April, which promised to be
sensational, drew St. Vincent to Stewart River. And a little later,
Jacob Welse, interested on Gallagher Gulch and with an eye riveted on
the copper mines of White River, went up into the same district, and
with him went Frona, for it was more vacation than business. In the
mean time, Corliss and Bishop, who had been on trail for a month or
more running over the Mayo and McQuestion Country, rounded up on the
left fork of Henderson, where a block of claims waited to be surveyed.
But by May, spring was so far advanced that travel on the creeks became
perilous, and on the last of the thawing ice the miners travelled down
to the bunch of islands below the mouth of the Stewart, where they went
into temporary quarters or crowded the hospitality of those who
possessed cabins. Corliss and Bishop located on Split-up Island (so
called through the habit parties from the Outside had of dividing there
and going several ways), where Tommy McPherson was comfortably
situated.
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