Laughing Bill Hyde | Page 9

Ponatah's offer of marriage did not in the
least affect their friendly relations. She continued to visit the cabin, and
not infrequently she reverted to the forbidden topic, only to meet with
discouragement.
Doctor Thomas had opened an office, of course, but business was light
and expenses heavy. Supplies were low in Nome and prices high; coal,
for instance, was a hundred dollars a ton and, as a result, most of the
idle citizens spent their evenings---but precious little else--around the
saloon stoves. When April came Laughing Bill regretfully decided that
it was necessary for him to go to work. The prospect was depressing,
and he did not easily reconcile himself to it, for he would have
infinitely preferred some less degraded and humiliating way out of the
difficulty. He put up a desperate battle against the necessity, and he did

not accept the inevitable until thoroughly convinced that the practice of
medicine and burglary could not be carried on from the same residence
without the risk of serious embarrassment to his benefactor.
However, to find employment in a community where there were two
men to one job was not easy, but happily--or unhappily--Bill had a
smattering of many trades, and eventually there came an opening as
handy-man at a mine. It was a lowly position, and Bill had little pride
in it, for he was put to helping the cook, waiting on table, washing
dishes, sweeping cabins, making beds, and the like. He had been
assured that the work was light, and so it was, but it was also
continuous. He could summon not the slightest interest in it until he
discovered that this was the very claim which rightfully belonged to
Ponatah. Then, indeed, he pricked up his ears.
The Aurora Borealis, as the mine was now called, had been working all
winter, and gigantic dumps of red pay-dirt stood as monuments to the
industry of its workmen. Rumor had it that the "streak" was rich, and
that Doctor Slayforth, the owner, would be in on the first boat to
personally oversee the clean-ups. The ex-missionary, Bill discovered,
had the reputation of being a tight man, and meanly suspicious in
money matters. He reposed no confidence in his superintendent, a surly,
saturnine fellow known as Black Jack Berg, nor in Denny Slevin, his
foreman. So much Laughing Bill gathered from camp gossip.
It soon became evident that Black Jack was a hard driver, for sluicing
began with the first trickle of snow water--even while the ditches were
still ice-bound--and it continued with double shifts thereafter. A
representative of Doctor Slayforth came out from Nome to watch the
first clean-up, and Bill, in his capacity as chambermaid, set up a cot for
him in the cabin shared by Black Jack and Denny. While so engaged
the latter discovered him, and gruffly ordered him to remove the cot to
the bunk-house.
"Put him in with the men," growled Slevin. "Serves the dam' spy right."
"Spy? Is he a gum-shoe?" Mr. Hyde paused, a pillow slip between his
teeth.

"That's what! Me and Jack was honest enough to run things all winter,
but we ain't honest enough to clean up. That's like old
Slayforth--always lookin' to get the worst of it. I'm square, and so's
Jack. Makes me sick, this spyin' on honest folks. Everybody knows we
wouldn't turn a trick."
Now it was Laughing Bill's experience that honesty needs no boosting,
and that he who most loudly vaunts his rectitude is he who is least
certain of it.
"The boss must be a good man, him being a sort of psalm-singer," Bill
ventured, guilelessly.
Denny snorted: "Oh, sure! He's good, all right. He's 'most too good--to
be true. Billy, my boy, when you've seen as many crooks as I have
you'll know 'em, no matter how they come dressed."
As he folded the cot Mr. Hyde opined that worldly experience must
indeed be a fine thing to possess.
"You go gamble on it!" Slevin agreed. "Now then, just tell that
Hawkshaw we don't want no dam' spies in our house. We're square
guys, and we can't stomach 'em."
That evening Black Jack called upon the handy-man to help with the
clean-up, and put him to tend the water while he and Denny, under the
watchful eye of the owner's representative, lifted the riffles, worked
down the concentrates, and removed them from the boxes.
Bill was an experienced placer miner, so it was not many days before
he was asked to help in the actual cleaning of the sluices. He was glad
of the promotion, for, as he told himself, no man can squeeze a lemon
without getting juice on his fingers. It will be seen, alas! that Mr.
Hyde's moral sense remained blunted in spite of the refining influence
of his association