It required a week of hard work to transport the contents of the cache at the lake by frequent trips to the claims ten miles away. The tents were pitched on the grassy top of the bank from which Uncle Will had panned the gold in April. In the Kah Sha gorge there yet remained a few old drifts of snow which dwindled day by day, but under the influence of the almost incessant sunlight, vegetation was everywhere springing fresh and green.

There were now seven members of the Thirty-six—no longer mysterious—encamped in the gorge hardly a mile above its entrance, under the leadership of Moran, a gray-haired veteran of the Civil War, who was the only practical miner among them. The rest, like the majority of men who entered Alaska and the Northwest in the great rush of 1898, were drawn from other walks of life. One had been a railroad brakeman, another a railroad clerk, a third an ice-man, a fourth a travelling salesman, a fifth a farmer, and the sixth a steamboat man. The occupations represented were still more numerous when Pennock's men arrived[211] several days behind the Bradfords, Pennock himself having gone out to the coast. One of these had been a grocer, another a foreman employed by a gas company, and another a journalist.

Still further accessions were made from time to time, as men were sent back from the camps beyond Pennock's, till Moran's Camp became a bustling and populous place. A log cabin was built for a kitchen, dining-room, and storehouse, and half a dozen tents were set up for sleeping quarters. This little settlement was situated in a wild and rugged spot, bounded in front and at the sides by the roaring, foaming torrent of the Kah Sha River. Directly at the rear rose foot-hills, and beyond them a high mountain, while from the water's edge across the stream frowned an enormous perpendicular cliff of dark rock three hundred feet high, from which not infrequently a mass of crumbling débris came crashing down. The sun now rose over the mountain to the east at about nine o'clock and set behind this cliff at four, after which the gorge was always chill and damp.

The Thirty-six had located their claims along the river and on Alder Creek. They had found numerous colors of gold in the gravel of the hillside which they had levelled for the cabin, and operations for taking out the gold were actively begun. As soon as the cabin was finished, the men turned to whip-sawing boards from spruce logs, nailing the boards together in[212] the form of sluice-boxes, and digging prospect-holes here and there along the streams to find the most promising spot.

They were still hampered by an insufficiency of food, but as the captain had sent word that he had bought supplies from several discouraged prospectors at Dalton's Post, a party of six was detailed to go to the Post with an Indian guide and bring back as much as they could carry. They returned six days later, footsore and lame, with loads of from fifty to eighty pounds. There was no late news of the war at Dalton's, they said. The Alsek was very high and running at least ten miles an hour. Ike Martin, the storekeeper, had onions already sprouted in his little garden-patch, and he had sown some barley. One of the men told with much relish how he had found enough dandelions for a "mess o' greens."

This meagre batch of news was eagerly seized upon, the least item possessing no little interest to men so long shut away from all the world beyond their own camps. The Bradfords, having heard it all as they passed the cabin, imparted every scrap faithfully to Moore and King and the latter's partner Baldwin, who had recently returned, and so every one in the district soon had the latest information from the Post.

Early in June the gorge became almost impassable by reason of the rising waters. The snow in the mountains[213] was melting rapidly, and every brooklet grew into a flo............