The Night-Born by Jack London
page 16 of 216 (07%)
page 16 of 216 (07%)
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"'You say you're a mining engineer,' she said, 'and you know
this country. Can you name a pay-creek that has the color of that gold!' "I couldn't! There wasn't a trace of silver. It was almost pure, and I told her so. "'You bet,' she said. 'I sell that for nineteen dollars an ounce. You can't get over seventeen for Eldorado gold, and Minook gold don't fetch quite eighteen. Well, that was what I found among the bones--eight horse-loads of it, one hundred and fifty pounds to the load.' "'A quarter of a million dollars!' I cried out. "'That's what I reckoned it roughly,' she answered. 'Talk about Romance! And me a slaving the way I had all the years, when as soon as I ventured out, inside three days, this was what happened. And what became of the men that mined all that gold? Often and often I wonder about it. They left their horses, loaded and tied, and just disappeared off the face of the earth, leaving neither hide nor hair behind them. I never heard tell of them. Nobody knows anything about them. Well, being the night-born, I reckon I was their rightful heir.' Trefethan stopped to light a cigar. "Do you know what that girl did? She cached the gold, saving out thirty pounds, which she carried back to the coast. Then she signaled a passing canoe, made her way to Pat Healy's |
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