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The Red One by Jack London
page 99 of 140 (70%)

"For all anybody knows," he said, pointing to a hillside across the
creek bottom, "the moss under the snow there may be plumb rooted in
nugget gold."

He said no more, but as the sun rose higher and the days grew
longer and warmer, he gazed often across the creek at the definite
bench-formation half way up the hill. And, one day, when the thaw
was in full swing, he crossed the stream and climbed to the bench.
Exposed patches of ground had already thawed an inch deep. On one
such patch he stopped, gathered a bunch of moss in his big gnarled
hands, and ripped it out by the roots. The sun smouldered on dully
glistening yellow. He shook the handful of moss, and coarse
nuggets, like gravel, fell to the ground. It was the Golden Fleece
ready for the shearing.

Not entirely unremembered in Alaskan annals is the summer stampede
of 1898 from Fort Yukon to the bench diggings of Tarwater Hill.
And when Tarwater sold his holdings to the Bowdie interests for a
sheer half-million and faced for California, he rode a mule over a
new-cut trail, with convenient road houses along the way, clear to
the steamboat landing at Fort Yukon.

At the first meal on the ocean-going steamship out of St. Michaels,
a waiter, greyish-haired, pain-ravaged of face, scurvy-twisted of
body, served him. Old Tarwater was compelled to look him over
twice in order to make certain he was Charles Crayton.

"Got it bad, eh, son?" Tarwater queried.

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