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London, Jack, 1876-1916

"Revolution, and Other Essays"


Carmack returned down Rabbit Creek. While he was taking a sleep on
the bank about half a mile below the mouth of what was to be known as
Eldorado, Skookum Jim tried his luck, and from surface prospects got
from ten cents to a dollar to the pan. Carmack and his brother-in-
law staked and hit "the high places" for Forty Mile, where they filed
on the claims before Captain Constantine, and renamed the creek
Bonanza. And Henderson was forgotten. No word of it reached him.
Carmack broke his promise.
Weeks afterward, when Bonanza and Eldorado were staked from end to
end and there was no more room, a party of late comers pushed over
the divide and down to Gold Bottom, where they found Henderson still
at work. When they told him they were from Bonanza, he was
nonplussed. He had never heard of such a place. But when they
described it, he recognized it as Rabbit Creek. Then they told him
of its marvellous richness, and, as Tappan Adney relates, when
Henderson realized what he had lost through Carmack's treachery, "he
threw down his shovel and went and sat on the bank, so sick at heart
that it was some time before he could speak.


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