And so it went. They continued valiantly to lie, but
the truth continued to outrun them.
But the Northland's hyperborean laugh was not yet ended. When
Bonanza was staked from mouth to source, those who had failed to "get
in," disgruntled and sore, went up the "pups" and feeders. Eldorado
was one of these feeders, and many men, after locating on it, turned
their backs upon their claims and never gave them a second thought.
One man sold a half-interest in five hundred feet of it for a sack of
flour. Other owners wandered around trying to bunco men into buying
them out for a song. And then Eldorado "showed up." It was far, far
richer than Bonanza, with an average value of a thousand dollars a
foot to every foot of it.
A Swede named Charley Anderson had been at work on Miller Creek the
year of the strike, and arrived in Dawson with a few hundred dollars.
Two miners, who had staked No. 29 Eldorado, decided that he was the
proper man upon whom to "unload." He was too canny to approach
sober, so at considerable expense they got him drunk.
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