The Popular Magazine/Volume 58/Number 4/The Implacable Friend/Chapter 7

Manners sat into the game, through his intimacy with Al Tholmes, for whom he had acted as attorney, some years before, in Dawson. When Tholmes learned of the judge's acquaintanceship with Waring and of the letter Ticely had brought, he took Manners into the secret and suggested that his friend had better get in while the getting was good. They needed counsel, anyway. Manners, who had played in hard luck in Alaska, was strongly disposed toward the venture from his confidence in Waring, whom he would have picked at a glance as a sterling and dependable fellow, even if he had not rendered Joan so signal a service.

He advised Tholmes, Collins, and the others. And when Ticely “let go” some interests on the creek, to finance himself properly, he became the legal corner stone of the quietly formed Midas Mining and Development Company, as president of which he qualified by the purchase of as much of the stock as he was able to buy. He had not liked the means by which the secret information concerning Midas had been obtained. But it had been done, and was over with; and he saw no reason why he should not profit, as others were going to profit, by the knowledge that was theirs.

When the company had been formed, Manners had Ticely to dinner. It was by no means the first time that Joan had cooked her best for Bruce Waring's partner.

“How are you getting along with your financing, Ticely?” asked the judge, over their cigars.

“Why, very well. Too well, really,” was the modest reply. “I began by letting Tholmes have a quarter interest in One Below Discovery, and Collins a half interest in Number Two. I was mighty glad to do it in order to pay for our thawing outfit and tools. I find that steam hose is fearfully high. I had cash only for a very meager outfit, you know—not nearly enough to do any real mining. Then Baker—of course, you know Baker, of the Nome Trading and Commercial Company? He bought another interest for enough to give us a year's supply of grub. And when one of Tholmes' friends asked me for an interest in One Above, and offered me enough to freight all our stuff to the head of Norton Sound, or even up the Yukon—unless the rate proves too high—naturally I let it go. Then some of Collins' friends persuaded me to let them have some small interests, for cash to go on. I much prefer not to sell any more than is necessary to safely finance the work.”

Then Manners told him that these interests had been pooled under the name of the Midas Mining and Development Company, of which he himself was to be president and James Collins general manager.It was not easy to tell whether Ticely was pleased or displeased, for in truth the Midas promoter was a little perturbed by his own success.

While the whole affair was still nominally a deep secret, too many, he knew, were privy to it. He had considerable cash in hand, and saw that much more was going to be offered him in the month or two that must elapse before they would be able to take the trail with their advance outfits. And, knowing what he knew, he was anxious to confine his operations to the fewest men from whom he could obtain the necessary dollars to extricate the Ticely Realty Corporation from its dilemma. In this he was not successful, and the situation became more awkward than even Ticely, shrewd as he was, had feared.

Othmer, the painter, was partly responsible for this, aided and abetted by one or two others who, like himself, had friends whose prosperity lay close to their hearts. Each had whispered the secret to these friends—whom they swore to secrecy, of course. And when the friends converted into cash their holdings in mine and store and workshop, or begged or borrowed funds for fictitious purposes, and then besought Othmer and the others to buy interests for them—any interests, no matter how small, or how remote from the discovery claim—there was simply nothing for these soft-hearted ones to do but beg Ticely to let them have a little more ground. And when Ticely yielded, they immediately reconveyed to the friends, who thereupon became sick with rapture. There are no sheep like mining-camp sheep!

In addition to the score or more of men who had obtained interests upon Midas Creek, there were numerous others whose speculative enthusiasms took commercial and industrial directions. They quietly prepared to join the little stampede that was forming, each to follow his chosen vocation.

A blacksmith fairly coins money at first in a placer camp, sharpening picks, ironing buckets, shoeing horses that freight on the “summer trails;” and Bill Colwell, the giant smith, quietly sold his shop. A lodging house outfit was quietly got together by the brawny Corliss “girls,” those persistently trusting followers of many a false stampede. Charley Miller, Known from the north pole to “Fifty-three” for his chop-house specialties, got his tip from Annie Corliss, and agreed to quietly follow them and open up in a corner of their big lodging-house tent. Jimmy Head, the packer, began quietly to pick up old skates. And numerous others, whose policy in a new mining camp was to engage in business and let mining alone, made their equally quiet preparations. So much quietude attracted the attention, finally, of a contingent of canny and crafty ones who were footloose and unencumbered—true camp followers, these, whose only equipment would be alertness and a wit to profit by whatever might happen, meretriciously or otherwise.

Of much of this enterprise and preparation Ticely himself knew little. For though a man now and again, and once a woman, carried tales to him, to gain his favor, he was obliged to depend for the most part on his own observation to estimate the extent of the movement toward Midas Creek. When he realized that this was to be considerably greater than he had counted on, he was fain to quit the whole affair, with the little stake that his interests and his honor in Seattle demanded. But two things held him—Waring, and his own gameness, the latter aided by his entire self-confidence to cope with any situation in which mere men were the only obstacles!

In point of fact a retreat would not have been easy; for Collins and his closest friends, while confident that this picture of Midas was a reality, were too well schooled in the strategies of the gold game to fail of vigilance against the unexpected. They thought it easily a ten-to-one shot that Ticely “had the stuff.” But still there was that eleventh shot; and some very literal shots would have followed Ticely, had he attempted to decamp.

As for Collins, a certain circumstance, that might have possessed meaning for Joan Manners, had she known it, featured Slim Jim's handling of his Midas venture: he never met Judge Gordon Manners in his own house!

He did not care to be recognized there by the young woman whose girlish form appeared to his eyes whenever-he looked away—as he frequently did—from Miss Pearl O'Brien. Not until they should find themselves on the trail together did he wish Joan Manners to know that the man from whose questionable attentions she had escaped was one of her father's closest associates in this final mining chance he was taking in Alaska. Joan had seen him once on the street. He raised his hat and hurried on. She gave him the curtest of nods—and forgot him!

In preparation for the stampede, Manners resigned his commissionership in the Nome district and was appointed by the district court commissioner and recorder of the Midas precinct of the fifth judicial district, as the new mining camp was to be known. The taking of the legal steps he managed without publicity. Only the boundaries of the new precinct had to be set forth, and by this time it was no secret among the purchasers of Ticely's claims that Midas was a tributary of a creek in the southwestern portion of the Koyukuk basin—a definite enough description for temporary jurisdictional purposes, yet indefinite enough to protect the new mining company and its immediate followers from molestation. Ticely, at his own suggestion, was appointed deputy marshal—which was rather a good idea, he thought, in view of possible eventualities. But in this he erred!

With the shaping of these latter affairs, Ticely realized that the procedure for the testing of Midas was now completely forecast, and it was high time that instructions should go to Waring to make certain needful preparations. About three weeks before the first light outfits were freighted to Norton Sound, Ak Tuk started on his return journey to Midas.