The One Thousand Dozen
David Rasmunsen was a hustler, and, like many a greater man, a man
of the one idea. Wherefore, when the clarion call of the North
rang on his ear, he conceived an adventure in eggs and bent all his
energy to its achievement. He figured briefly and to the point, and the adventure became iridescent-hued, splendid. That eggs would sell at Dawson for five dollars a dozen was a safe working premise. Whence it was incontrovertible that one thousand dozen would bring, in the Golden Metropolis, five thousand dollars.
On the other hand, expense was to be considered, and he considered
it well, for he was a careful man, keenly practical, with a hard
head and a heart that imagination never warmed. At fifteen cents a
dozen, the initial cost of his thousand dozen would be one hundred
and fifty dollars, a mere bagatelle in face of the enormous profit. And suppose, just suppose, to be wildly extravagant for once, that transportation for himself and eggs should run up eight hundred and fifty more; he would still have four thousand clear cash and clean when the last egg was disposed of and the last dust had rippled into his sack
"You see, Alma,"—he figured it over with his wife, the cosy
dining-room submerged in a sea of maps, government surveys, guide-
books, and Alaskan itineraries,—"you see, expenses don't really
begin till you make Dyea—fifty dollars'll cover it with a first-class passage thrown in. Now from Dyea to Lake Linderman, Indian packers take your goods over for twelve cents a pound, twelve dollars a hundred, or one hundred and twenty dollars a thousand. Say I have fifteen hundred pounds, it'll cost one hundred and eighty dollars—call it two hundred and be safe. I am creditably informed by a Klondiker just come out that I can buy a boat for three hundred. But the same man says I'm sure to get a couple of passengers for one hundred and fifty each, which will give me the boat for nothing, and, further, they can help me manage it. And . . . that's all; I put my eggs ashore from the boat at Dawson. Now let me see how much is that?"
"Fifty dollars from San Francisco to Dyea, two hundred from Dyea to
Linderman, passengers pay for the boat—two hundred and fifty all
told," she summed up swiftly.
"And a hundred for my clothes and personal outfit," he went on
happily; "that leaves a margin of five hundred for emergencies. And what possible emergencies can arise?"
Alma shrugged her shoulders and elevated her brows. If that vast
Northland was capable of swallowing up a man and a thousand dozen
eggs, surely there was room and to spare for whatever else he might
happen to possess. So she thought, but she said nothing. She knew
David Rasmunsen too well to say anything.
"Doubling the time because of chance delays, I should make the trip
in two months. Think of it, Alma! Four thousand in two months! Beats the paltry hundred a month I'm getting now. Why, we'll build further out where we'll have more space, gas in every room, and a view, and the rent of the cottage'll pay taxes, insurance, and water, and leave something over. And then there's always the chance of my striking it and coming out a millionaire. Now tell me, Alma, don't you think I'm very moderate?"
And Alma could hardly think otherwise. Besides, had not her own
cousin,—though a remote and distant one to be sure, the black
sheep, the harum-scarum, the ne'er-do-well,—had not he come down
out of that weird North country with a hundred thousand in yellow
dust, to say nothing of a half-ownership in the hole from which it
came?