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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Smoke Bellew, by Jack London
+
+
+*******************************************************************
+THIS EBOOK WAS ONE OF PROJECT GUTENBERG'S EARLY FILES PRODUCED AT A
+TIME WHEN PROOFING METHODS AND TOOLS WERE NOT WELL DEVELOPED. THERE
+IS AN IMPROVED EDITION OF THIS TITLE WHICH MAY BE VIEWED AS EBOOK
+(#5737) at https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/5737
+*******************************************************************
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Smoke Bellew
+
+Author: Jack London
+
+Posting Date: February 12, 2013 [EBook #1596]
+Release Date: January, 1998
+First Posted: September 7, 1998
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SMOKE BELLEW ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Les Bowler
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Smoke Bellew
+
+
+
+
+Contents
+
+  THE TASTE OF THE MEAT
+  THE MEAT
+  THE STAMPEDE TO SQUAW CREEK
+  SHORTY DREAMS
+  THE MAN ON THE OTHER BANK
+  THE RACE FOR NUMBER ONE
+
+
+
+
+THE TASTE OF THE MEAT.
+
+
+
+
+I.
+
+
+In the beginning he was Christopher Bellew.  By the time he was at
+college he had become Chris Bellew.  Later, in the Bohemian crowd of
+San Francisco, he was called Kit Bellew.  And in the end he was known
+by no other name than Smoke Bellew.  And this history of the evolution
+of his name is the history of his evolution.  Nor would it have
+happened had he not had a fond mother and an iron uncle, and had he not
+received a letter from Gillet Bellamy.
+
+"I have just seen a copy of the Billow," Gillet wrote from Paris. "Of
+course O'Hara will succeed with it.  But he's missing some plays."
+(Here followed details in the improvement of the budding society
+weekly.)  "Go down and see him.  Let him think they're your own
+suggestions.  Don't let him know they're from me.  If he does, he'll
+make me Paris correspondent, which I can't afford, because I'm getting
+real money for my stuff from the big magazines.  Above all, don't
+forget to make him fire that dub who's doing the musical and art
+criticism.  Another thing, San Francisco has always had a literature of
+her own.  But she hasn't any now.  Tell him to kick around and get some
+gink to turn out a live serial, and to put into it the real romance and
+glamour and colour of San Francisco."
+
+And down to the office of the Billow went Kit Bellew faithfully to
+instruct.  O'Hara listened.  O'Hara debated.  O'Hara agreed.  O'Hara
+fired the dub who wrote criticism.  Further, O'Hara had a way with
+him--the very way that was feared by Gillet in distant Paris.  When
+O'Hara wanted anything, no friend could deny him.  He was sweetly and
+compellingly irresistible.  Before Kit Bellew could escape from the
+office he had become an associate editor, had agreed to write weekly
+columns of criticism till some decent pen was found, and had pledged
+himself to write a weekly instalment of ten thousand words on the San
+Francisco serial--and all this without pay.  The Billow wasn't paying
+yet, O'Hara explained; and just as convincingly had he exposited that
+there was only one man in San Francisco capable of writing the serial,
+and that man Kit Bellew.
+
+"Oh, Lord, I'm the gink!" Kit had groaned to himself afterwards on the
+narrow stairway.
+
+And thereat had begun his servitude to O'Hara and the insatiable
+columns of the Billow.  Week after week he held down an office chair,
+stood off creditors, wrangled with printers, and turned out twenty-five
+thousand words of all sorts weekly.  Nor did his labours lighten.  The
+Billow was ambitious.  It went in for illustration. The processes were
+expensive.  It never had any money to pay Kit Bellew, and by the same
+token it was unable to pay for any additions to the office staff.
+
+"This is what comes of being a good fellow," Kit grumbled one day.
+
+"Thank God for good fellows then," O'Hara cried, with tears in his eyes
+as he gripped Kit's hand.  "You're all that's saved me, Kit. But for
+you I'd have gone bust.  Just a little longer, old man, and things will
+be easier."
+
+"Never," was Kit's plaint.  "I see my fate clearly.  I shall be here
+always."
+
+A little later he thought he saw his way out.  Watching his chance, in
+O'Hara's presence, he fell over a chair.  A few minutes afterwards he
+bumped into the corner of the desk, and, with fumbling fingers,
+capsized a paste pot.
+
+"Out late?" O'Hara queried.
+
+Kit brushed his eyes with his hands and peered about him anxiously
+before replying.
+
+"No, it's not that.  It's my eyes.  They seem to be going back on me,
+that's all."
+
+For several days he continued to fall over and bump into the office
+furniture.  But O'Hara's heart was not softened.
+
+"I tell you what, Kit," he said one day, "you've got to see an oculist.
+There's Doctor Hassdapple.  He's a crackerjack.  And it won't cost you
+anything.  We can get it for advertizing.  I'll see him myself."
+
+And, true to his word, he dispatched Kit to the oculist.
+
+"There's nothing the matter with your eyes," was the doctor's verdict,
+after a lengthy examination.  "In fact, your eyes are magnificent--a
+pair in a million."
+
+"Don't tell O'Hara," Kit pleaded.  "And give me a pair of black
+glasses."
+
+The result of this was that O'Hara sympathized and talked glowingly of
+the time when the Billow would be on its feet.
+
+Luckily for Kit Bellew, he had his own income.  Small it was, compared
+with some, yet it was large enough to enable him to belong to several
+clubs and maintain a studio in the Latin Quarter.  In point of fact,
+since his associate editorship, his expenses had decreased
+prodigiously.  He had no time to spend money.  He never saw the studio
+any more, nor entertained the local Bohemians with his famous
+chafing-dish suppers.  Yet he was always broke, for the Billow, in
+perennial distress, absorbed his cash as well as his brains.  There
+were the illustrators who periodically refused to illustrate, the
+printers who periodically refused to print, and the office boy who
+frequently refused to officiate.  At such times O'Hara looked at Kit,
+and Kit did the rest.
+
+When the steamship Excelsior arrived from Alaska, bringing the news of
+the Klondike strike that set the country mad, Kit made a purely
+frivolous proposition.
+
+"Look here, O'Hara," he said.  "This gold rush is going to be big--the
+days of '49 over again.  Suppose I cover it for the Billow? I'll pay my
+own expenses."
+
+O'Hara shook his head.
+
+"Can't spare you from the office, Kit.  Then there's that serial.
+Besides, I saw Jackson not an hour ago.  He's starting for the Klondike
+to-morrow, and he's agreed to send a weekly letter and photos.  I
+wouldn't let him get away till he promised.  And the beauty of it is,
+that it doesn't cost us anything."
+
+The next Kit heard of the Klondike was when he dropped into the club
+that afternoon, and, in an alcove off the library, encountered his
+uncle.
+
+"Hello, avuncular relative," Kit greeted, sliding into a leather chair
+and spreading out his legs.  "Won't you join me?"
+
+He ordered a cocktail, but the uncle contented himself with the thin
+native claret he invariably drank.  He glanced with irritated
+disapproval at the cocktail, and on to his nephew's face.  Kit saw a
+lecture gathering.
+
+"I've only a minute," he announced hastily.  "I've got to run and take
+in that Keith exhibition at Ellery's and do half a column on it."
+
+"What's the matter with you?" the other demanded.  "You're pale. You're
+a wreck."
+
+Kit's only answer was a groan.
+
+"I'll have the pleasure of burying you, I can see that."
+
+Kit shook his head sadly.
+
+"No destroying worm, thank you.  Cremation for mine."
+
+John Bellew came of the old hard and hardy stock that had crossed the
+plains by ox-team in the fifties, and in him was this same hardness and
+the hardness of a childhood spent in the conquering of a new land.
+
+"You're not living right, Christopher.  I'm ashamed of you."
+
+"Primrose path, eh?" Kit chuckled.
+
+The older man shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"Shake not your gory locks at me, avuncular.  I wish it were the
+primrose path.  But that's all cut out.  I have no time."
+
+"Then what in-?"
+
+"Overwork."
+
+John Bellew laughed harshly and incredulously.
+
+"Honest?"
+
+Again came the laughter.
+
+"Men are the products of their environment," Kit proclaimed, pointing
+at the other's glass.  "Your mirth is thin and bitter as your drink."
+
+"Overwork!" was the sneer.  "You never earned a cent in your life."
+
+"You bet I have--only I never got it.  I'm earning five hundred a week
+right now, and doing four men's work."
+
+"Pictures that won't sell?  Or--er--fancy work of some sort?  Can you
+swim?"
+
+"I used to."
+
+"Sit a horse?"
+
+"I have essayed that adventure."
+
+John Bellew snorted his disgust.
+
+"I'm glad your father didn't live to see you in all the glory of your
+gracelessness," he said.  "Your father was a man, every inch of him.
+Do you get it?  A Man.  I think he'd have whaled all this musical and
+artistic tomfoolery out of you."
+
+"Alas! these degenerate days," Kit sighed.
+
+"I could understand it, and tolerate it," the other went on savagely,
+"if you succeeded at it.  You've never earned a cent in your life, nor
+done a tap of man's work."
+
+"Etchings, and pictures, and fans," Kit contributed unsoothingly.
+
+"You're a dabbler and a failure.  What pictures have you painted? Dinky
+water-colours and nightmare posters.  You've never had one exhibited,
+even here in San Francisco-"
+
+"Ah, you forget.  There is one in the jinks room of this very club."
+
+"A gross cartoon.  Music?  Your dear fool of a mother spent hundreds on
+lessons.  You've dabbled and failed.  You've never even earned a
+five-dollar piece by accompanying some one at a concert.  Your
+songs?--rag-time rot that's never printed and that's sung only by a
+pack of fake Bohemians."
+
+"I had a book published once--those sonnets, you remember," Kit
+interposed meekly.
+
+"What did it cost you?"
+
+"Only a couple of hundred."
+
+"Any other achievements?"
+
+"I had a forest play acted at the summer jinks."
+
+"What did you get for it?"
+
+"Glory."
+
+"And you used to swim, and you have essayed to sit a horse!"  John
+Bellew set his glass down with unnecessary violence.  "What earthly
+good are you anyway?  You were well put up, yet even at university you
+didn't play football.  You didn't row.  You didn't-"
+
+"I boxed and fenced--some."
+
+"When did you last box?"
+
+"Not since; but I was considered an excellent judge of time and
+distance, only I was--er-"
+
+"Go on."
+
+"Considered desultory."
+
+"Lazy, you mean."
+
+"I always imagined it was an euphemism."
+
+"My father, sir, your grandfather, old Isaac Bellew, killed a man with
+a blow of his fist when he was sixty-nine years old."
+
+"The man?"
+
+"No, your--you graceless scamp!  But you'll never kill a mosquito at
+sixty-nine."
+
+"The times have changed, oh, my avuncular.  They send men to state
+prisons for homicide now."
+
+"Your father rode one hundred and eighty-five miles, without sleeping,
+and killed three horses."
+
+"Had he lived to-day, he'd have snored over the course in a Pullman."
+
+The older man was on the verge of choking with wrath, but swallowed it
+down and managed to articulate:
+
+"How old are you?"
+
+"I have reason to believe-"
+
+"I know.  Twenty-seven.  You finished college at twenty-two.  You've
+dabbled and played and frilled for five years.  Before God and man, of
+what use are you?  When I was your age I had one suit of underclothes.
+I was riding with the cattle in Colusa.  I was hard as rocks, and I
+could sleep on a rock.  I lived on jerked beef and bear-meat.  I am a
+better man physically right now than you are. You weigh about one
+hundred and sixty-five.  I can throw you right now, or thrash you with
+my fists."
+
+"It doesn't take a physical prodigy to mop up cocktails or pink tea,"
+Kit murmured deprecatingly.  "Don't you see, my avuncular, the times
+have changed.  Besides, I wasn't brought up right.  My dear fool of a
+mother-"
+
+John Bellew started angrily.
+
+"-As you described her, was too good to me; kept me in cotton wool and
+all the rest.  Now, if when I was a youngster I had taken some of those
+intensely masculine vacations you go in for--I wonder why you didn't
+invite me sometimes?  You took Hal and Robbie all over the Sierras and
+on that Mexico trip."
+
+"I guess you were too Lord Fauntleroyish."
+
+"Your fault, avuncular, and my dear--er--mother's.  How was I to know
+the hard?  I was only a chee-ild.  What was there left but etchings and
+pictures and fans?  Was it my fault that I never had to sweat?"
+
+The older man looked at his nephew with unconcealed disgust.  He had no
+patience with levity from the lips of softness.
+
+"Well, I'm going to take another one of those what-you-call masculine
+vacations.  Suppose I asked you to come along?"
+
+"Rather belated, I must say.  Where is it?"
+
+"Hal and Robert are going in to Klondike, and I'm going to see them
+across the Pass and down to the Lakes, then return-"
+
+He got no further, for the young man had sprung forward and gripped his
+hand.
+
+"My preserver!"
+
+John Bellew was immediately suspicious.  He had not dreamed the
+invitation would be accepted.
+
+"You don't mean it," he said.
+
+"When do we start?"
+
+"It will be a hard trip.  You'll be in the way."
+
+"No, I won't.  I'll work.  I've learned to work since I went on the
+Billow."
+
+"Each man has to take a year's supplies in with him.  There'll be such
+a jam the Indian packers won't be able to handle it.  Hal and Robert
+will have to pack their outfits across themselves.  That's what I'm
+going along for--to help them pack.  It you come you'll have to do the
+same."
+
+"Watch me."
+
+"You can't pack," was the objection.
+
+"When do we start?"
+
+"To-morrow."
+
+"You needn't take it to yourself that your lecture on the hard has done
+it," Kit said, at parting.  "I just had to get away, somewhere,
+anywhere, from O'Hara."
+
+"Who is O'Hara?  A Jap?"
+
+"No; he's an Irishman, and a slave-driver, and my best friend.  He's
+the editor and proprietor and all-around big squeeze of the Billow.
+What he says goes.  He can make ghosts walk."
+
+That night Kit Bellew wrote a note to O'Hara.
+
+"It's only a several weeks' vacation," he explained.  "You'll have to
+get some gink to dope out instalments for that serial.  Sorry, old man,
+but my health demands it.  I'll kick in twice as hard when I get back."
+
+
+
+II.
+
+Kit Bellew landed through the madness of the Dyea beach, congested with
+thousand-pound outfits of thousands of men.  This immense mass of
+luggage and food, flung ashore in mountains by the steamers, was
+beginning slowly to dribble up the Dyea valley and across Chilcoot. It
+was a portage of twenty-eight miles, and could be accomplished only on
+the backs of men.  Despite the fact that the Indian packers had jumped
+the freight from eight cents a pound to forty, they were swamped with
+the work, and it was plain that winter would catch the major portion of
+the outfits on the wrong side of the divide.
+
+Tenderest of the tender-feet was Kit.  Like many hundreds of others he
+carried a big revolver swung on a cartridge-belt.  Of this, his uncle,
+filled with memories of old lawless days, was likewise guilty.  But Kit
+Bellew was romantic.  He was fascinated by the froth and sparkle of the
+gold rush, and viewed its life and movement with an artist's eye.  He
+did not take it seriously.  As he said on the steamer, it was not his
+funeral.  He was merely on a vacation, and intended to peep over the
+top of the pass for a 'look see' and then to return.
+
+Leaving his party on the sand to wait for the putting ashore of the
+freight, he strolled up the beach toward the old trading post.  He did
+not swagger, though he noticed that many of the be-revolvered
+individuals did.  A strapping, six-foot Indian passed him, carrying an
+unusually large pack.  Kit swung in behind, admiring the splendid
+calves of the man, and the grace and ease with which he moved along
+under his burden.  The Indian dropped his pack on the scales in front
+of the post, and Kit joined the group of admiring gold-rushers who
+surrounded him.  The pack weighed one hundred and twenty pounds, which
+fact was uttered back and forth in tones of awe.  It was going some,
+Kit decided, and he wondered if he could lift such a weight, much less
+walk off with it.
+
+"Going to Lake Linderman with it, old man?" he asked.
+
+The Indian, swelling with pride, grunted an affirmative.
+
+"How much you make that one pack?"
+
+"Fifty dollar."
+
+Here Kit slid out of the conversation.  A young woman, standing in the
+doorway, had caught his eye.  Unlike other women landing from the
+steamers, she was neither short-skirted nor bloomer-clad.  She was
+dressed as any woman travelling anywhere would be dressed.  What struck
+him was the justness of her being there, a feeling that somehow she
+belonged.  Moreover, she was young and pretty.  The bright beauty and
+colour of her oval face held him, and he looked over-long--looked till
+she resented, and her own eyes, long-lashed and dark, met his in cool
+survey.
+
+From his face they travelled in evident amusement down to the big
+revolver at his thigh.  Then her eyes came back to his, and in them was
+amused contempt.  It struck him like a blow.  She turned to the man
+beside her and indicated Kit.  The man glanced him over with the same
+amused contempt.
+
+"Chechaquo," the girl said.
+
+The man, who looked like a tramp in his cheap overalls and dilapidated
+woollen jacket, grinned dryly, and Kit felt withered though he knew not
+why.  But anyway she was an unusually pretty girl, he decided, as the
+two moved off.  He noted the way of her walk, and recorded the judgment
+that he would recognize it after the lapse of a thousand years.
+
+"Did you see that man with the girl?" Kit's neighbour asked him
+excitedly.  "Know who he is?"
+
+Kit shook his head.
+
+"Cariboo Charley.  He was just pointed out to me.  He struck it big on
+Klondike.  Old timer.  Been on the Yukon a dozen years.  He's just come
+out."
+
+"What's chechaquo mean?" Kit asked.
+
+"You're one; I'm one," was the answer.
+
+"Maybe I am, but you've got to search me.  What does it mean?"
+
+"Tender-foot."
+
+On his way back to the beach Kit turned the phrase over and over. It
+rankled to be called tender-foot by a slender chit of a woman.
+
+Going into a corner among the heaps of freight, his mind still filled
+with the vision of the Indian with the redoubtable pack, Kit essayed to
+learn his own strength.  He picked out a sack of flour which he knew
+weighed an even hundred pounds.  He stepped astride of it, reached
+down, and strove to get it on his shoulder.  His first conclusion was
+that one hundred pounds was the real heavy.  His next was that his back
+was weak.  His third was an oath, and it occurred at the end of five
+futile minutes, when he collapsed on top of the burden with which he
+was wrestling.  He mopped his forehead, and across a heap of grub-sacks
+saw John Bellew gazing at him, wintry amusement in his eyes.
+
+"God!" proclaimed that apostle of the hard.  "Out of our loins has come
+a race of weaklings.  When I was sixteen I toyed with things like that."
+
+"You forget, avuncular," Kit retorted, "that I wasn't raised on
+bear-meat."
+
+"And I'll toy with it when I'm sixty."
+
+"You've got to show me."
+
+John Bellew did.  He was forty-eight, but he bent over the sack,
+applied a tentative, shifting grip that balanced it, and, with a quick
+heave, stood erect, the somersaulted sack of flour on his shoulder.
+
+"Knack, my boy, knack--and a spine."
+
+Kit took off his hat reverently.
+
+"You're a wonder, avuncular, a shining wonder.  D'ye think I can learn
+the knack?"
+
+John Bellew shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"You'll be hitting the back trail before we get started."
+
+"Never you fear," Kit groaned.  "There's O'Hara, the roaring lion, down
+there.  I'm not going back till I have to."
+
+
+
+III.
+
+Kit's first pack was a success.  Up to Finnegan's Crossing they had
+managed to get Indians to carry the twenty-five hundred-pound outfit.
+From that point their own backs must do the work.  They planned to move
+forward at the rate of a mile a day.  It looked easy--on paper.  Since
+John Bellew was to stay in camp and do the cooking, he would be unable
+to make more than an occasional pack; so, to each of the three young
+men fell the task of carrying eight hundred pounds one mile each day.
+If they made fifty-pound packs, it meant a daily walk of sixteen miles
+loaded and of fifteen miles light--"Because we don't back-trip the last
+time," Kit explained the pleasant discovery; eighty-pound packs meant
+nineteen miles travel each day; and hundred-pound packs meant only
+fifteen miles.
+
+"I don't like walking," said Kit.  "Therefore I shall carry one hundred
+pounds."  He caught the grin of incredulity on his uncle's face, and
+added hastily:  "Of course I shall work up to it.  A fellow's got to
+learn the ropes and tricks.  I'll start with fifty."
+
+He did, and ambled gaily along the trail.  He dropped the sack at the
+next camp-site and ambled back.  It was easier than he had thought.
+But two miles had rubbed off the velvet of his strength and exposed the
+underlying softness.  His second pack was sixty-five pounds.  It was
+more difficult, and he no longer ambled.  Several times, following the
+custom of all packers, he sat down on the ground, resting the pack
+behind him on a rock or stump.  With the third pack he became bold.  He
+fastened the straps to a ninety-five-pound sack of beans and started.
+At the end of a hundred yards he felt that he must collapse.  He sat
+down and mopped his face.
+
+"Short hauls and short rests," he muttered.  "That's the trick."
+
+Sometimes he did not make a hundred yards, and each time he struggled
+to his feet for another short haul the pack became undeniably heavier.
+He panted for breath, and the sweat streamed from him.  Before he had
+covered a quarter of a mile he stripped off his woollen shirt and hung
+it on a tree.  A little later he discarded his hat.  At the end of half
+a mile he decided he was finished.  He had never exerted himself so in
+his life, and he knew that he was finished.  As he sat and panted, his
+gaze fell upon the big revolver and the heavy cartridge-belt.
+
+"Ten pounds of junk," he sneered, as he unbuckled it.
+
+He did not bother to hang it on a tree, but flung it into the
+underbush.  And as the steady tide of packers flowed by him, up trail
+and down, he noted that the other tender-feet were beginning to shed
+their shooting irons.
+
+His short hauls decreased.  At times a hundred feet was all he could
+stagger, and then the ominous pounding of his heart against his
+ear-drums and the sickening totteriness of his knees compelled him to
+rest.  And his rests grew longer.  But his mind was busy.  It was a
+twenty-eight mile portage, which represented as many days, and this, by
+all accounts, was the easiest part of it.  "Wait till you get to
+Chilcoot," others told him as they rested and talked, "where you climb
+with hands and feet."
+
+"They ain't going to be no Chilcoot," was his answer.  "Not for me.
+Long before that I'll be at peace in my little couch beneath the moss."
+
+A slip, and a violent wrenching effort at recovery, frightened him. He
+felt that everything inside him had been torn asunder.
+
+"If ever I fall down with this on my back I'm a goner," he told another
+packer.
+
+"That's nothing," came the answer.  "Wait till you hit the Canyon.
+You'll have to cross a raging torrent on a sixty-foot pine tree.  No
+guide ropes, nothing, and the water boiling at the sag of the log to
+your knees.  If you fall with a pack on your back, there's no getting
+out of the straps.  You just stay there and drown."
+
+"Sounds good to me," he retorted; and out of the depths of his
+exhaustion he almost half meant it.
+
+"They drown three or four a day there," the man assured him.  "I helped
+fish a German out there.  He had four thousand in greenbacks on him."
+
+"Cheerful, I must say," said Kit, battling his way to his feet and
+tottering on.
+
+He and the sack of beans became a perambulating tragedy.  It reminded
+him of the old man of the sea who sat on Sinbad's neck. And this was
+one of those intensely masculine vacations, he meditated.  Compared
+with it, the servitude to O'Hara was sweet. Again and again he was
+nearly seduced by the thought of abandoning the sack of beans in the
+brush and of sneaking around the camp to the beach and catching a
+steamer for civilization.
+
+But he didn't.  Somewhere in him was the strain of the hard, and he
+repeated over and over to himself that what other men could do, he
+could.  It became a nightmare chant, and he gibbered it to those that
+passed him on the trail.  At other times, resting, he watched and
+envied the stolid, mule-footed Indians that plodded by under heavier
+packs.  They never seemed to rest, but went on and on with a steadiness
+and certitude that was to him appalling.
+
+He sat and cursed--he had no breath for it when under way--and fought
+the temptation to sneak back to San Francisco.  Before the mile pack
+was ended he ceased cursing and took to crying.  The tears were tears
+of exhaustion and of disgust with self.  If ever a man was a wreck, he
+was.  As the end of the pack came in sight, he strained himself in
+desperation, gained the camp-site, and pitched forward on his face, the
+beans on his back.  It did not kill him, but he lay for fifteen minutes
+before he could summon sufficient shreds of strength to release himself
+from the straps.  Then he became deathly sick, and was so found by
+Robbie, who had similar troubles of his own.  It was this sickness of
+Robbie that braced him up.
+
+"What other men can do, we can do," Kit told him, though down in his
+heart he wondered whether or not he was bluffing.
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+"And I am twenty-seven years old and a man," he privately assured
+himself many times in the days that followed.  There was need for it.
+At the end of a week, though he had succeeded in moving his eight
+hundred pounds forward a mile a day, he had lost fifteen pounds of his
+own weight.  His face was lean and haggard.  All resilience had gone
+out of his body and mind.  He no longer walked, but plodded.  And on
+the back-trips, travelling light, his feet dragged almost as much as
+when he was loaded.
+
+He had become a work animal.  He fell asleep over his food, and his
+sleep was heavy and beastly, save when he was aroused, screaming with
+agony, by the cramps in his legs.  Every part of him ached.  He tramped
+on raw blisters, yet this was even easier than the fearful bruising his
+feet received on the water-rounded rocks of the Dyea Flats, across
+which the trail led for two miles.  These two miles represented
+thirty-eight miles of travelling.  He washed his face once a day.  His
+nails, torn and broken and afflicted with hangnails, were never
+cleaned.  His shoulders and chest, galled by the pack-straps, made him
+think, and for the first time with understanding, of the horses he had
+seen on city streets.
+
+One ordeal that nearly destroyed him at first had been the food. The
+extraordinary amount of work demanded extraordinary stoking, and his
+stomach was unaccustomed to great quantities of bacon and of the
+coarse, highly poisonous brown beans.  As a result, his stomach went
+back on him, and for several days the pain and irritation of it and of
+starvation nearly broke him down.  And then came the day of joy when he
+could eat like a ravenous animal, and, wolf-eyed, ask for more.
+
+When they had moved the outfit across the foot-logs at the mouth of the
+Canyon, they made a change in their plans.  Word had come across the
+Pass that at Lake Linderman the last available trees for building boats
+were being cut.  The two cousins, with tools, whipsaw, blankets, and
+grub on their backs, went on, leaving Kit and his uncle to hustle along
+the outfit.  John Bellew now shared the cooking with Kit, and both
+packed shoulder to shoulder.  Time was flying, and on the peaks the
+first snow was falling.  To be caught on the wrong side of the Pass
+meant a delay of nearly a year.  The older man put his iron back under
+a hundred pounds.  Kit was shocked, but he gritted his teeth and
+fastened his own straps to a hundred pounds.  It hurt, but he had
+learned the knack, and his body, purged of all softness and fat, was
+beginning to harden up with lean and bitter muscle.  Also, he observed
+and devised.  He took note of the head-straps worn by the Indians, and
+manufactured one for himself, which he used in addition to the
+shoulder-straps. It made things easier, so that he began the practice
+of piling any light, cumbersome piece of luggage on top.  Thus, he was
+soon able to bend along with a hundred pounds in the straps, fifteen or
+twenty more lying loosely on top the pack and against his neck, an axe
+or a pair of oars in one hand, and in the other the nested
+cooking-pails of the camp.
+
+But work as they would, the toil increased.  The trail grew more
+rugged; their packs grew heavier; and each day saw the snow-line
+dropping down the mountains, while freight jumped to sixty cents. No
+word came from the cousins beyond, so they knew they must be at work
+chopping down the standing trees, and whipsawing them into boat-planks.
+John Bellew grew anxious.  Capturing a bunch of Indians back-tripping
+from Lake Linderman, he persuaded them to put their straps on the
+outfit.  They charged thirty cents a pound to carry it to the summit of
+Chilcoot, and it nearly broke him.  As it was, some four hundred pounds
+of clothes-bags and camp outfit was not handled.  He remained behind to
+move it along, dispatching Kit with the Indians.  At the summit Kit was
+to remain, slowly moving his ton until overtaken by the four hundred
+pounds with which his uncle guaranteed to catch him.
+
+
+
+V.
+
+Kit plodded along the trail with his Indian packers.  In recognition of
+the fact that it was to be a long pack, straight to the top of
+Chilcoot, his own load was only eighty pounds.  The Indians plodded
+under their loads, but it was a quicker gait than he had practised. Yet
+he felt no apprehension, and by now had come to deem himself almost the
+equal of an Indian.
+
+At the end of a quarter of a mile he desired to rest.  But the Indians
+kept on.  He stayed with them, and kept his place in the line.  At the
+half mile he was convinced that he was incapable of another step, yet
+he gritted his teeth, kept his place, and at the end of the mile was
+amazed that he was still alive.  Then, in some strange way, came the
+thing called second wind, and the next mile was almost easier than the
+first.  The third mile nearly killed him, and, though half delirious
+with pain and fatigue, he never whimpered.  And then, when he felt he
+must surely faint, came the rest.  Instead of sitting in the straps, as
+was the custom of the white packers, the Indians slipped out of the
+shoulder- and head-straps and lay at ease, talking and smoking.  A full
+half hour passed before they made another start.  To Kit's surprise he
+found himself a fresh man, and 'long hauls and long rests' became his
+newest motto.
+
+The pitch of Chilcoot was all he had heard of it, and many were the
+occasions when he climbed with hands as well as feet.  But when he
+reached the crest of the divide in the thick of a driving snow-squall,
+it was in the company of his Indians, and his secret pride was that he
+had come through with them and never squealed and never lagged.  To be
+almost as good as an Indian was a new ambition to cherish.
+
+When he had paid off the Indians and seen them depart, a stormy
+darkness was falling, and he was left alone, a thousand feet above
+timber line, on the back-bone of a mountain.  Wet to the waist,
+famished and exhausted, he would have given a year's income for a fire
+and a cup of coffee.  Instead, he ate half a dozen cold flap-jacks and
+crawled into the folds of the partly unrolled tent.  As he dozed off he
+had time only for one fleeting thought, and he grinned with vicious
+pleasure at the picture of John Bellew in the days to follow,
+masculinely back-tripping his four hundred pounds up Chilcoot.  As for
+himself, even though burdened with two thousand pounds, he was bound
+down the hill.
+
+In the morning, stiff from his labours and numb with the frost, he
+rolled out of the canvas, ate a couple of pounds of uncooked bacon,
+buckled the straps on a hundred pounds, and went down the rocky way.
+Several hundred yards beneath, the trail led across a small glacier and
+down to Crater Lake.  Other men packed across the glacier.  All that
+day he dropped his packs at the glacier's upper edge, and, by virtue of
+the shortness of the pack, he put his straps on one hundred and fifty
+pounds each load.  His astonishment at being able to do it never
+abated.  For two dollars he bought from an Indian three leathery
+sea-biscuits, and out of these, and a huge quantity of raw bacon, made
+several meals.  Unwashed, unwarmed, his clothing wet with sweat, he
+slept another night in the canvas.
+
+In the early morning he spread a tarpaulin on the ice, loaded it with
+three-quarters of a ton, and started to pull.  Where the pitch of the
+glacier accelerated, his load likewise accelerated, overran him,
+scooped him in on top, and ran away with him.
+
+A hundred packers, bending under their loads, stopped to watch him. He
+yelled frantic warnings, and those in his path stumbled and staggered
+clear.  Below, on the lower edge of the glacier, was pitched a small
+tent, which seemed leaping toward him, so rapidly did it grow larger.
+He left the beaten track where the packers' trail swerved to the left,
+and struck a patch of fresh snow.  This arose about him in frosty
+smoke, while it reduced his speed.  He saw the tent the instant he
+struck it, carrying away the corner guys, bursting in the front flaps,
+and fetching up inside, still on top of the tarpaulin and in the midst
+of his grub-sacks.  The tent rocked drunkenly, and in the frosty vapour
+he found himself face to face with a startled young woman who was
+sitting up in her blankets--the very one who had called him chechaquo
+at Dyea.
+
+"Did you see my smoke?" he queried cheerfully.
+
+She regarded him with disapproval.
+
+"Talk about your magic carpets!" he went on.
+
+"Do you mind removing that sack from my foot?" she said coldly.
+
+He looked, and lifted his weight quickly.
+
+"It wasn't a sack.  It was my elbow.  Pardon me."
+
+The information did not perturb her, and her coolness was a challenge.
+
+"It was a mercy you did not overturn the stove," she said.
+
+He followed her glance and saw a sheet-iron stove and a coffee-pot,
+attended by a young squaw.  He sniffed the coffee and looked back to
+the girl.
+
+"I'm a chechaquo," he said.
+
+Her bored expression told him that he was stating the obvious.  But he
+was unabashed.
+
+"I've shed my shooting-irons," he added.
+
+Then she recognized him, and her eyes lighted.
+
+"I never thought you'd get this far," she informed him.
+
+Again, and greedily, he sniffed the air.
+
+"As I live, coffee!"  He turned and directly addressed her.  "I'll give
+you my little finger--cut it right off now; I'll do anything; I'll be
+your slave for a year and a day or any other odd time, if you'll give
+me a cup out of that pot."
+
+And over the coffee he gave his name and learned hers--Joy Gastell.
+Also, he learned that she was an old-timer in the country.  She had
+been born in a trading post on the Great Slave, and as a child had
+crossed the Rockies with her father and come down to the Yukon.  She
+was going in, she said, with her father, who had been delayed by
+business in Seattle, and who had then been wrecked on the ill-fated
+Chanter and carried back to Puget Sound by the rescuing steamer.
+
+In view of the fact that she was still in her blankets, he did not make
+it a long conversation, and, heroically declining a second cup of
+coffee, he removed himself and his quarter of a ton of baggage from her
+tent.  Further, he took several conclusions away with him: she had a
+fetching name and fetching eyes; could not be more than twenty, or
+twenty-one or -two; her father must be French; she had a will of her
+own and temperament to burn; and she had been educated elsewhere than
+on the frontier.
+
+
+
+VI.
+
+Over the ice-scoured rocks, and above the timber-line, the trail ran
+around Crater Lake and gained the rocky defile that led toward Happy
+Camp and the first scrub pines.  To pack his heavy outfit around would
+take days of heart-breaking toil.  On the lake was a canvas boat
+employed in freighting.  Two trips with it, in two hours, would see him
+and his ton across.  But he was broke, and the ferryman charged forty
+dollars a ton.
+
+"You've got a gold-mine, my friend, in that dinky boat," Kit said to
+the ferryman.  "Do you want another gold-mine?"
+
+"Show me," was the answer.
+
+"I'll sell it to you for the price of ferrying my outfit.  It's an
+idea, not patented, and you can jump the deal as soon as I tell you it.
+Are you game?"
+
+The ferryman said he was, and Kit liked his looks.
+
+"Very well.  You see that glacier.  Take a pick-axe and wade into it.
+In a day you can have a decent groove from top to bottom.  See the
+point?  The Chilcoot and Crater Lake Consolidated Chute Corporation,
+Limited.  You can charge fifty cents a hundred, get a hundred tons a
+day, and have no work to do but collect the coin."
+
+Two hours later, Kit's ton was across the lake, and he had gained three
+days on himself.  And when John Bellew overtook him, he was well along
+toward Deep Lake, another volcanic pit filled with glacial water.
+
+
+
+VII.
+
+The last pack, from Long Lake to Linderman, was three miles, and the
+trail, if trail it could be called, rose up over a thousand-foot
+hogback, dropped down a scramble of slippery rocks, and crossed a wide
+stretch of swamp.  John Bellew remonstrated when he saw Kit arise with
+a hundred pounds in the straps and pick up a fifty-pound sack of flour
+and place it on top of the pack against the back of his neck.
+
+"Come on, you chunk of the hard," Kit retorted.  "Kick in on your
+bear-meat fodder and your one suit of underclothes."
+
+But John Bellew shook his head.
+
+"I'm afraid I'm getting old, Christopher."
+
+"You're only forty-eight.  Do you realize that my grandfather, sir,
+your father, old Isaac Bellew, killed a man with his fist when he was
+sixty-nine years old?"
+
+John Bellew grinned and swallowed his medicine.
+
+"Avuncular, I want to tell you something important.  I was raised a
+Lord Fauntleroy, but I can outpack you, outwalk you, put you on your
+back, or lick you with my fists right now."
+
+John Bellew thrust out his hand and spoke solemnly.
+
+"Christopher, my boy, I believe you can do it.  I believe you can do it
+with that pack on your back at the same time.  You've made good, boy,
+though it's too unthinkable to believe."
+
+Kit made the round trip of the last pack four times a day, which is to
+say that he daily covered twenty-four miles of mountain climbing,
+twelve miles of it under one hundred and fifty pounds.  He was proud,
+hard, and tired, but in splendid physical condition.  He ate and slept
+as he had never eaten and slept in his life, and as the end of the work
+came in sight, he was almost half sorry.
+
+One problem bothered him.  He had learned that he could fall with a
+hundredweight on his back and survive; but he was confident, if he fell
+with that additional fifty pounds across the back of his neck, that it
+would break it clean.  Each trail through the swamp was quickly churned
+bottomless by the thousands of packers, who were compelled continually
+to make new trails.  It was while pioneering such a new trail, that he
+solved the problem of the extra fifty.
+
+The soft, lush surface gave way under him; he floundered, and pitched
+forward on his face.  The fifty pounds crushed his face in the mud and
+went clear without snapping his neck.  With the remaining hundred
+pounds on his back, he arose on hands and knees. But he got no farther.
+One arm sank to the shoulder, pillowing his cheek in the slush.  As he
+drew this arm clear, the other sank to the shoulder.  In this position
+it was impossible to slip the straps, and the hundredweight on his back
+would not let him rise. On hands and knees, sinking first one arm and
+then the other, he made an effort to crawl to where the small sack of
+flour had fallen. But he exhausted himself without advancing, and so
+churned and broke the grass surface, that a tiny pool of water began to
+form in perilous proximity to his mouth and nose.
+
+He tried to throw himself on his back with the pack underneath, but
+this resulted in sinking both arms to the shoulders and gave him a
+foretaste of drowning.  With exquisite patience, he slowly withdrew one
+sucking arm and then the other and rested them flat on the surface for
+the support of his chin.  Then he began to call for help.  After a time
+he heard the sound of feet sucking through the mud as some one advanced
+from behind.
+
+"Lend a hand, friend," he said.  "Throw out a life-line or something."
+
+It was a woman's voice that answered, and he recognized it.
+
+"If you'll unbuckle the straps I can get up."
+
+The hundred pounds rolled into the mud with a soggy noise, and he
+slowly gained his feet.
+
+"A pretty predicament," Miss Gastell laughed, at sight of his
+mud-covered face.
+
+"Not at all," he replied airily.  "My favourite physical exercise
+stunt.  Try it some time.  It's great for the pectoral muscles and the
+spine."
+
+He wiped his face, flinging the slush from his hand with a snappy jerk.
+
+"Oh!" she cried in recognition.  "It's Mr--ah--Mr Smoke Bellew."
+
+"I thank you gravely for your timely rescue and for that name," he
+answered.  "I have been doubly baptized.  Henceforth I shall insist
+always on being called Smoke Bellew.  It is a strong name, and not
+without significance."
+
+He paused, and then voice and expression became suddenly fierce.
+
+"Do you know what I'm going to do?" he demanded.  "I'm going back to
+the States.  I am going to get married.  I am going to raise a large
+family of children.  And then, as the evening shadows fall, I shall
+gather those children about me and relate the sufferings and hardships
+I endured on the Chilcoot Trail.  And if they don't cry--I repeat, if
+they don't cry, I'll lambaste the stuffing out of them."
+
+
+
+VIII.
+
+The arctic winter came down apace.  Snow that had come to stay lay six
+inches on the ground, and the ice was forming in quiet ponds, despite
+the fierce gales that blew.  It was in the late afternoon, during a
+lull in such a gale, that Kit and John Bellew helped the cousins load
+the boat and watched it disappear down the lake in a snow-squall.
+
+"And now a night's sleep and an early start in the morning," said John
+Bellew.  "If we aren't storm-bound at the summit we'll make Dyea
+to-morrow night, and if we have luck in catching a steamer we'll be in
+San Francisco in a week."
+
+"Enjoyed your vacation?" Kit asked absently.
+
+Their camp for that last night at Linderman was a melancholy remnant.
+Everything of use, including the tent, had been taken by the cousins.
+A tattered tarpaulin, stretched as a wind-break, partially sheltered
+them from the driving snow.  Supper they cooked on an open fire in a
+couple of battered and discarded camp utensils. All that was left them
+were their blankets, and food for several meals.
+
+From the moment of the departure of the boat, Kit had become absent and
+restless.  His uncle noticed his condition, and attributed it to the
+fact that the end of the hard toil had come.  Only once during supper
+did Kit speak.
+
+"Avuncular," he said, relevant of nothing, "after this, I wish you'd
+call me Smoke.  I've made some smoke on this trail, haven't I?"
+
+A few minutes later he wandered away in the direction of the village of
+tents that sheltered the gold-rushers who were still packing or
+building their boats.  He was gone several hours, and when he returned
+and slipped into his blankets John Bellew was asleep.
+
+In the darkness of a gale-driven morning, Kit crawled out, built a fire
+in his stocking feet, by which he thawed out his frozen shoes, then
+boiled coffee and fried bacon.  It was a chilly, miserable meal.  As
+soon as finished, they strapped their blankets.  As John Bellew turned
+to lead the way toward the Chilcoot Trail, Kit held out his hand.
+
+"Good-bye, avuncular," he said.
+
+John Bellew looked at him and swore in his surprise.
+
+"Don't forget my name's Smoke," Kit chided.
+
+"But what are you going to do?"
+
+Kit waved his hand in a general direction northward over the
+storm-lashed lake.
+
+"What's the good of turning back after getting this far?" he asked.
+"Besides, I've got my taste of meat, and I like it.  I'm going on."
+
+"You're broke," protested John Bellew.  "You have no outfit."
+
+"I've got a job.  Behold your nephew, Christopher Smoke Bellew! He's
+got a job at a hundred and fifty per month and grub.  He's going down
+to Dawson with a couple of dudes and another gentleman's
+man--camp-cook, boatman, and general all-around hustler.  And O'Hara
+and the Billow can go to hell.  Good-bye."
+
+But John Bellew was dazed, and could only mutter:
+
+"I don't understand."
+
+"They say the baldface grizzlies are thick in the Yukon Basin," Kit
+explained.  "Well, I've got only one suit of underclothes, and I'm
+going after the bear-meat, that's all."
+
+
+
+
+THE MEAT.
+
+
+
+
+I.
+
+Half the time the wind blew a gale, and Smoke Bellew staggered against
+it along the beach.  In the gray of dawn a dozen boats were being
+loaded with the precious outfits packed across Chilcoot.  They were
+clumsy, home-made boats, put together by men who were not
+boat-builders, out of planks they had sawed by hand from green spruce
+trees.  One boat, already loaded, was just starting, and Kit paused to
+watch.
+
+The wind, which was fair down the lake, here blew in squarely on the
+beach, kicking up a nasty sea in the shallows.  The men of the
+departing boat waded in high rubber boots as they shoved it out toward
+deeper water.  Twice they did this.  Clambering aboard and failing to
+row clear, the boat was swept back and grounded.  Kit noticed that the
+spray on the sides of the boat quickly turned to ice.  The third
+attempt was a partial success.  The last two men to climb in were wet
+to their waists, but the boat was afloat.  They struggled awkwardly at
+the heavy oars, and slowly worked off shore. Then they hoisted a sail
+made of blankets, had it carried away in a gust, and were swept a third
+time back on the freezing beach.
+
+Kit grinned to himself and went on.  This was what he must expect to
+encounter, for he, too, in his new role of gentleman's man, was to
+start from the beach in a similar boat that very day.
+
+Everywhere men were at work, and at work desperately, for the closing
+down of winter was so imminent that it was a gamble whether or not they
+would get across the great chain of lakes before the freeze-up.  Yet,
+when Kit arrived at the tent of Messrs Sprague and Stine, he did not
+find them stirring.
+
+By a fire, under the shelter of a tarpaulin, squatted a short, thick
+man smoking a brown-paper cigarette.
+
+"Hello," he said.  "Are you Mister Sprague's new man?"
+
+As Kit nodded, he thought he had noted a shade of emphasis on the
+mister and the man, and he was sure of a hint of a twinkle in the
+corner of the eye.
+
+"Well, I'm Doc Stine's man," the other went on.  "I'm five feet two
+inches long, and my name's Shorty, Jack Short for short, and sometimes
+known as Johnny-on-the-Spot."
+
+Kit put out his hand and shook.
+
+"Were you raised on bear-meat?" he queried.
+
+"Sure," was the answer; "though my first feedin' was buffalo-milk as
+near as I can remember.  Sit down an' have some grub.  The bosses ain't
+turned out yet."
+
+And despite the one breakfast, Kit sat down under the tarpaulin and ate
+a second breakfast thrice as hearty.  The heavy, purging toil of weeks
+had given him the stomach and appetite of a wolf.  He could eat
+anything, in any quantity, and be unaware that he possessed a
+digestion.  Shorty he found voluble and pessimistic, and from him he
+received surprising tips concerning their bosses, and ominous forecasts
+of the expedition.  Thomas Stanley Sprague was a budding mining
+engineer and the son of a millionaire.  Doctor Adolph Stine was also
+the son of a wealthy father.  And, through their fathers, both had been
+backed by an investing syndicate in the Klondike adventure.
+
+"Oh, they're sure made of money," Shorty expounded.  "When they hit the
+beach at Dyea, freight was seventy cents, but no Indians.  There was a
+party from Eastern Oregon, real miners, that'd managed to get a team of
+Indians together at seventy cents.  Indians had the straps on the
+outfit, three thousand pounds of it, when along comes Sprague and
+Stine.  They offered eighty cents and ninety, and at a dollar a pound
+the Indians jumped the contract and took off their straps. Sprague and
+Stine came through, though it cost them three thousand, and the Oregon
+bunch is still on the beach.  They won't get through till next year.
+
+"Oh, they are real hummers, your boss and mine, when it comes to
+sheddin' the mazuma an' never mindin' other folks' feelin's.  What did
+they do when they hit Linderman?  The carpenters was just putting in
+the last licks on a boat they'd contracted to a 'Frisco bunch for six
+hundred.  Sprague and Stine slipped 'em an even thousand, and they
+jumped their contract.  It's a good-lookin' boat, but it's jiggered the
+other bunch.  They've got their outfit right here, but no boat.  And
+they're stuck for next year.
+
+"Have another cup of coffee, and take it from me that I wouldn't travel
+with no such outfit if I didn't want to get to Klondike so blamed bad.
+They ain't hearted right.  They'd take the crape off the door of a
+house in mourning if they needed it in their business. Did you sign a
+contract?"
+
+Kit shook his head.
+
+"Then I'm sorry for you, pardner.  They ain't no grub in the country,
+and they'll drop you cold as soon as they hit Dawson.  Men are going to
+starve there this winter."
+
+"They agreed--" Kit began.
+
+"Verbal," Shorty snapped him short.  "It's your say so against theirs,
+that's all.  Well, anyway--what's your name, pardner?"
+
+"Call me Smoke," said Kit.
+
+"Well, Smoke, you'll have a run for your verbal contract just the same.
+This is a plain sample of what to expect.  They can sure shed mazuma,
+but they can't work, or turn out of bed in the morning.  We should have
+been loaded and started an hour ago.  It's you an' me for the big work.
+Pretty soon you'll hear 'em shoutin' for their coffee--in bed, mind
+you, and they grown men.  What d'ye know about boatin' on the water?
+I'm a cowman and a prospector, but I'm sure tender-footed on water, an'
+they don't know punkins.  What d'ye know?"
+
+"Search me," Kit answered, snuggling in closer under the tarpaulin as
+the snow whirled before a fiercer gust.  "I haven't been on a small
+boat since a boy.  But I guess we can learn."
+
+A corner of the tarpaulin tore loose, and Shorty received a jet of
+driven snow down the back of his neck.
+
+"Oh, we can learn all right," he muttered wrathfully.  "Sure we can. A
+child can learn.  But it's dollars to doughnuts we don't even get
+started to-day."
+
+It was eight o'clock when the call for coffee came from the tent, and
+nearly nine before the two employers emerged.
+
+"Hello," said Sprague, a rosy-cheeked, well-fed young man of
+twenty-five.  "Time we made a start, Shorty.  You and--"  Here he
+glanced interrogatively at Kit.  "I didn't quite catch your name last
+evening."
+
+"Smoke."
+
+"Well, Shorty, you and Mr Smoke had better begin loading the boat."
+
+"Plain Smoke--cut out the Mister," Kit suggested.
+
+Sprague nodded curtly and strolled away among the tents, to be followed
+by Doctor Stine, a slender, pallid young man.
+
+Shorty looked significantly at his companion.
+
+"Over a ton and a half of outfit, and they won't lend a hand. You'll
+see."
+
+"I guess it's because we're paid to do the work," Kit answered
+cheerfully, "and we might as well buck in."
+
+To move three thousand pounds on the shoulders a hundred yards was no
+slight task, and to do it in half a gale, slushing through the snow in
+heavy rubber boots, was exhausting.  In addition, there was the taking
+down of the tent and the packing of small camp equipage. Then came the
+loading.  As the boat settled, it had to be shoved farther and farther
+out, increasing the distance they had to wade. By two o'clock it had
+all been accomplished, and Kit, despite his two breakfasts, was weak
+with the faintness of hunger.  His knees were shaking under him.
+Shorty, in similar predicament, foraged through the pots and pans, and
+drew forth a big pot of cold boiled beans in which were imbedded large
+chunks of bacon.  There was only one spoon, a long-handled one, and
+they dipped, turn and turn about, into the pot.  Kit was filled with an
+immense certitude that in all his life he had never tasted anything so
+good.
+
+"Lord, man," he mumbled between chews, "I never knew what appetite was
+till I hit the trail."
+
+Sprague and Stine arrived in the midst of this pleasant occupation.
+
+"What's the delay?" Sprague complained. "Aren't we ever going to get
+started?"
+
+Shorty dipped in turn, and passed the spoon to Kit.  Nor did either
+speak till the pot was empty and the bottom scraped.
+
+"Of course we ain't ben doin' nothing," Shorty said, wiping his mouth
+with the back of his hand.  "We ain't ben doin' nothing at all.  And of
+course you ain't had nothing to eat.  It was sure careless of me."
+
+"Yes, yes," Stine said quickly.  "We ate at one of the tents--friends
+of ours."
+
+"Thought so," Shorty grunted.
+
+"But now that you're finished, let us get started," Sprague urged.
+
+"There's the boat," said Shorty.  "She's sure loaded.  Now, just how
+might you be goin' about to get started?"
+
+"By climbing aboard and shoving off.  Come on."
+
+They waded out, and the employers got on board, while Kit and Shorty
+shoved clear.  When the waves lapped the tops of their boots they
+clambered in.  The other two men were not prepared with the oars, and
+the boat swept back and grounded.  Half a dozen times, with a great
+expenditure of energy, this was repeated.
+
+Shorty sat down disconsolately on the gunwale, took a chew of tobacco,
+and questioned the universe, while Kit baled the boat and the other two
+exchanged unkind remarks.
+
+"If you'll take my orders, I'll get her off," Sprague finally said.
+
+The attempt was well intended, but before he could clamber on board he
+was wet to the waist.
+
+"We've got to camp and build a fire," he said, as the boat grounded
+again.  "I'm freezing."
+
+"Don't be afraid of a wetting," Stine sneered.  "Other men have gone
+off to-day wetter than you.  Now I'm going to take her out."
+
+This time it was he who got the wetting, and who announced with
+chattering teeth the need of a fire.
+
+"A little splash like that," Sprague chattered spitefully.  "We'll go
+on."
+
+"Shorty, dig out my clothes-bag and make a fire," the other commanded.
+
+"You'll do nothing of the sort," Sprague cried.
+
+Shorty looked from one to the other, expectorated, but did not move.
+
+"He's working for me, and I guess he obeys my orders," Stine retorted.
+"Shorty, take that bag ashore."
+
+Shorty obeyed, and Sprague shivered in the boat.  Kit, having received
+no orders, remained inactive, glad of the rest.
+
+"A boat divided against itself won't float," he soliloquized.
+
+"What's that?" Sprague snarled at him.
+
+"Talking to myself--habit of mine," he answered.
+
+His employer favoured him with a hard look, and sulked several minutes
+longer.  Then he surrendered.
+
+"Get out my bag, Smoke," he ordered, "and lend a hand with that fire.
+We won't get off till the morning now."
+
+
+
+II.
+
+Next day the gale still blew.  Lake Linderman was no more than a narrow
+mountain gorge filled with water.  Sweeping down from the mountains
+through this funnel, the wind was irregular, blowing great guns at
+times and at other times dwindling to a strong breeze.
+
+"If you give me a shot at it, I think I can get her off," Kit said,
+when all was ready for the start.
+
+"What do you know about it?" Stine snapped at him.
+
+"Search me," Kit answered, and subsided.
+
+It was the first time he had worked for wages in his life, but he was
+learning the discipline of it fast.  Obediently and cheerfully he
+joined in various vain efforts to get clear of the beach.
+
+"How would you go about it?" Sprague finally half-panted, half-whined
+at him.
+
+"Sit down and get a good rest till a lull comes in the wind, and then
+buck in for all we're worth."
+
+Simple as the idea was, he had been the first to evolve it; the first
+time it was applied it worked, and they hoisted a blanket to the mast
+and sped down the lake.  Stine and Sprague immediately became cheerful.
+Shorty, despite his chronic pessimism, was always cheerful, and Kit was
+too interested to be otherwise.  Sprague struggled with the steering
+sweep for a quarter of an hour, and then looked appealingly at Kit, who
+relieved him.
+
+"My arms are fairly broken with the strain of it," Sprague muttered
+apologetically.
+
+"You never ate bear-meat, did you?" Kit asked sympathetically.
+
+"What the devil do you mean?"
+
+"Oh, nothing; I was just wondering."
+
+But behind his employer's back Kit caught the approving grin of Shorty,
+who had already caught the whim of his simile.
+
+Kit steered the length of Linderman, displaying an aptitude that caused
+both young men of money and disinclination for work to name him
+boat-steerer.  Shorty was no less pleased, and volunteered to continue
+cooking and leave the boat work to the other.
+
+Between Linderman and Lake Bennet was a portage.  The boat, lightly
+loaded, was lined down the small but violent connecting stream, and
+here Kit learned a vast deal more about boats and water.  But when it
+came to packing the outfit, Stine and Sprague disappeared, and their
+men spent two days of back-breaking toil in getting the outfit across.
+And this was the history of many miserable days of the trip--Kit and
+Shorty working to exhaustion, while their masters toiled not and
+demanded to be waited upon.
+
+But the iron-bound arctic winter continued to close down, and they were
+held back by numerous and avoidable delays.  At Windy Arm, Stine
+arbitrarily dispossessed Kit of the steering-sweep and within the hour
+wrecked the boat on a wave-beaten lee shore.  Two days were lost here
+in making repairs, and the morning of the fresh start, as they came
+down to embark, on stern and bow, in large letters, was charcoaled 'The
+Chechaquo.'
+
+Kit grinned at the appropriateness of the invidious word.
+
+"Huh!" said Shorty, when accused by Stine.  "I can sure read and spell,
+an' I know that Chechaquo means tenderfoot, but my education never went
+high enough to learn me to spell a jaw-breaker like that."
+
+Both employers looked daggers at Kit, for the insult rankled; nor did
+he mention that the night before, Shorty had besought him for the
+spelling of that particular word.
+
+"That's 'most as bad as your bear-meat slam at 'em," Shorty confided
+later.
+
+Kit chuckled.  Along with the continuous discovery of his own powers
+had come an ever-increasing disapproval of the two masters.  It was not
+so much irritation, which was always present, as disgust.  He had got
+his taste of the meat, and liked it; but they were teaching him how not
+to eat it.  Privily, he thanked God that he was not made as they.  He
+came to dislike them to a degree that bordered on hatred.  Their
+malingering bothered him less than their helpless inefficiency.
+Somewhere in him, old Isaac Bellew and all the rest of the hardy
+Bellews were making good.
+
+"Shorty," he said one day, in the usual delay of getting started, "I
+could almost fetch them a rap over the head with an oar and bury them
+in the river."
+
+"Same here," Shorty agreed.  "They're not meat-eaters.  They're
+fish-eaters, and they sure stink."
+
+
+
+III.
+
+They came to the rapids, first, the Box Canyon, and, several miles
+below, the White Horse.  The Box Canyon was adequately named.  It was a
+box, a trap.  Once in it, the only way out was through.  On either side
+arose perpendicular walls of rock.  The river narrowed to a fraction of
+its width, and roared through this gloomy passage in a madness of
+motion that heaped the water in the centre into a ridge fully eight
+feet higher than at the rocky sides.  This ridge, in turn, was crested
+with stiff, upstanding waves that curled over, yet remained each in its
+unvarying place.  The Canyon was well feared, for it had collected its
+toll of dead from the passing gold-rushers.
+
+Tying to the bank above, where lay a score of other anxious boats, Kit
+and his companions went ahead on foot to investigate.  They crept to
+the brink and gazed down at the swirl of water.  Sprague drew back
+shuddering.
+
+"My God!" he exclaimed.  "A swimmer hasn't a chance in that."
+
+Shorty touched Kit significantly with his elbow and said in an
+undertone:
+
+"Cold feet.  Dollars to doughnuts they don't go through."
+
+Kit scarcely heard.  From the beginning of the boat trip he had been
+learning the stubbornness and inconceivable viciousness of the
+elements, and this glimpse of what was below him acted as a challenge.
+
+"We've got to ride that ridge," he said.  "If we get off of it we'll
+hit the walls--"
+
+"And never know what hit us," was Shorty's verdict.  "Can you swim,
+Smoke?"
+
+"I'd wish I couldn't if anything went wrong in there."
+
+"That's what I say," a stranger, standing alongside and peering down
+into the Canyon, said mournfully.  "And I wish I were through it."
+
+"I wouldn't sell my chance to go through," Kit answered.
+
+He spoke honestly, but it was with the idea of heartening the man. He
+turned to go back to the boat.
+
+"Are you going to tackle it?" the man asked.
+
+Kit nodded.
+
+"I wish I could get the courage to," the other confessed.  "I've been
+here for hours.  The longer I look, the more afraid I am.  I am not a
+boatman, and I have only my nephew with me, who is a young boy, and my
+wife.  If you get through safely, will you run my boat through?"
+
+Kit looked at Shorty, who delayed to answer.
+
+"He's got his wife with him," Kit suggested.  Nor had he mistaken his
+man.
+
+"Sure," Shorty affirmed.  "It was just that I was stopping to think
+about.  I knew there was some reason I ought to do it."
+
+Again they turned to go, but Sprague and Stine made no movement.
+
+"Good luck, Smoke," Sprague called to him.  "I'll--er--"  He hesitated.
+"I'll just stay here and watch you."
+
+"We need three men in the boat, two at the oars and one at the steering
+sweep," Kit said quietly.
+
+Sprague looked at Stine.
+
+"I'm damned if I do," said that gentleman.  "If you're not afraid to
+stand here and look on, I'm not."
+
+"Who's afraid?" Sprague demanded hotly.
+
+Stine retorted in kind, and their two men left them in the thick of a
+squabble.
+
+"We can do without them," Kit said to Shorty.  "You take the bow with a
+paddle, and I'll handle the steering sweep.  All you'll have to do is
+just to keep her straight.  Once we're started, you won't be able to
+hear me, so just keep on keeping straight."
+
+They cast off the boat and worked out to middle in the quickening
+current.  From the Canyon came an ever-growing roar.  The river sucked
+in to the entrance with the smoothness of molten glass, and here, as
+the darkening walls received them, Shorty took a chew of tobacco, and
+dipped his paddle.  The boat leaped on the first crests of the ridge,
+and they were deafened by the uproar of wild water that reverberated
+from the narrow walls and multiplied itself.  They were half-smothered
+with flying spray.  At times Kit could not see his comrade at the bow.
+It was only a matter of two minutes, in which time they rode the ridge
+three-quarters of a mile, and emerged in safety and tied to the bank in
+the eddy below.
+
+Shorty emptied his mouth of tobacco juice--he had forgotten to
+spit--and spoke.
+
+"That was bear-meat," he exulted, "the real bear-meat.  Say, we want a
+few, didn't we, Smoke, I don't mind tellin' you in confidence that
+before we started I was the gosh-dangdest scaredest man this side of
+the Rocky-Mountains.  Now I'm a bear-eater.  Come on an' we'll run that
+other boat through."
+
+Midway back, on foot, they encountered their employers, who had watched
+the passage from above.
+
+"There comes the fish-eaters," said Shorty.  "Keep to win'ward."
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+After running the strangers' boat through, whose name proved to be
+Breck, Kit and Shorty met his wife, a slender, girlish woman whose blue
+eyes were moist with gratitude.  Breck himself tried to hand Kit fifty
+dollars, and then attempted it on Shorty.
+
+"Stranger," was the latter's rejection, "I come into this country to
+make money outa the ground an' not outa my fellow critters."
+
+Breck rummaged in his boat and produced a demijohn of whiskey. Shorty's
+hand half went out to it and stopped abruptly.  He shook his head.
+
+"There's that blamed White Horse right below, an' they say it's worse
+than the Box.  I reckon I don't dast tackle any lightning."
+
+Several miles below they ran in to the bank, and all four walked down
+to look at the bad water.  The river, which was a succession of rapids,
+was here deflected toward the right bank by a rocky reef. The whole
+body of water, rushing crookedly into the narrow passage, accelerated
+its speed frightfully, and was upflung unto huge waves, white and
+wrathful.  This was the dread Mane of the White Horse, and here an even
+heavier toll of dead had been exacted.  On one side of the Mane was a
+corkscrew curl-over and suck-under, and on the opposite side was the
+big whirlpool.  To go through, the Mane itself must be ridden.
+
+"This plum rips the strings outa the Box," Shorty concluded.
+
+As they watched, a boat took the head of the rapids above.  It was a
+large boat, fully thirty feet long, laden with several tons of outfit
+and handled by six men.  Before it reached the Mane it was plunging and
+leaping, at times almost hidden by the foam and spray.
+
+Shorty shot a slow, sidelong glance at Kit, and said:
+
+"She's fair smoking, and she hasn't hit the worst.  They've hauled the
+oars in.  There she takes it now.  God!  She's gone!  No; there she is!"
+
+Big as the boat was, it had been buried from sight in the flying
+smother between crests.  The next moment, in the thick of the Mane, the
+boat leaped up a crest and into view.  To Kit's amazement he saw the
+whole long bottom clearly outlined.  The boat, for the fraction of an
+instant, was in the air, the men sitting idly in their places, all save
+one in the stern who stood at the steering sweep.  Then came the
+downward plunge into the trough and a second disappearance. Three times
+the boat leaped and buried itself, then those on the bank saw its nose
+take the whirlpool as it slipped off the Mane. The steersman, vainly
+opposing with his full weight on the steering-gear, surrendered to the
+whirlpool and helped the boat to take the circle.
+
+Three times it went around, each time so close to the rocks on which
+Kit and Shorty stood, that either could have leaped on board.  The
+steersman, a man with a reddish beard of recent growth, waved his hand
+to them.  The only way out of the whirlpool was by the Mane, and on the
+round the boat entered the Mane obliquely at its upper end.  Possibly
+out of fear of the draw of the whirlpool, the steersman did not attempt
+to straighten out quickly enough.  When he did, it was too late.
+Alternately in the air and buried, the boat angled the Mane and sucked
+into and down through the stiff wall of the corkscrew on the opposite
+side of the river.  A hundred feet below, boxes and bales began to
+float up.  Then appeared the bottom of the boat and the scattered heads
+of six men.  Two managed to make the bank in the eddy below.  The
+others were drawn under, and the general flotsam was lost to view,
+borne on by the swift current around the bend.
+
+There was a long minute of silence.  Shorty was the first to speak.
+
+"Come on," he said.  "We might as well tackle it.  My feet'll get cold
+if I stay here any longer."
+
+"We'll smoke some," Kit grinned at him.
+
+"And you'll sure earn your name," was the rejoinder.  Shorty turned to
+their employers.  "Comin'?" he queried.
+
+Perhaps the roar of the water prevented them from hearing the
+invitation.
+
+Shorty and Kit tramped back through a foot of snow to the head of the
+rapids and cast off the boat.  Kit was divided between two impressions:
+one, of the caliber of his comrade, which served as a spur to him; the
+other, likewise a spur, was the knowledge that old Isaac Bellew, and
+all the other Bellews, had done things like this in their westward
+march of empire.  What they had done, he could do. It was the meat, the
+strong meat, and he knew, as never before, that it required strong men
+to eat such meat.
+
+"You've sure got to keep the top of the ridge," Shorty shouted at him,
+the plug tobacco lifting to his mouth, as the boat quickened in the
+quickening current and took the head of the rapids.
+
+Kit nodded, swayed his strength and weight tentatively on the steering
+oar, and headed the boat for the plunge.
+
+Several minutes later, half-swamped and lying against the bank in the
+eddy below the White Horse, Shorty spat out a mouthful of tobacco juice
+and shook Kit's hand.
+
+"Meat! Meat!" Shorty chanted.  "We eat it raw!  We eat it alive!"
+
+At the top of the bank they met Breck.  His wife stood at a little
+distance.  Kit shook his hand.
+
+"I'm afraid your boat can't make it," he said.  "It is smaller than
+ours and a bit cranky."
+
+The man pulled out a row of bills.
+
+"I'll give you each a hundred if you run it through."
+
+Kit looked out and up the tossing Mane of the White Horse.  A long,
+gray twilight was falling, it was turning colder, and the landscape
+seemed taking on a savage bleakness.
+
+"It ain't that," Shorty was saying.  "We don't want your money.
+Wouldn't touch it nohow.  But my pardner is the real meat with boats,
+and when he says yourn ain't safe I reckon he knows what he's talkin'
+about."
+
+Kit nodded affirmation, and chanced to glance at Mrs Breck.  Her eyes
+were fixed upon him, and he knew that if ever he had seen prayer in a
+woman's eyes he was seeing it then.  Shorty followed his gaze and saw
+what he saw.  They looked at each other in confusion and did not speak.
+Moved by the common impulse, they nodded to each other and turned to
+the trail that led to the head of the rapids. They had not gone a
+hundred yards when they met Stine and Sprague coming down.
+
+"Where are you going?" the latter demanded.
+
+"To fetch that other boat through," Shorty answered.
+
+"No you're not.  It's getting dark.  You two are going to pitch camp."
+
+So huge was Kit's disgust that he forebore to speak.
+
+"He's got his wife with him," Shorty said.
+
+"That's his lookout," Stine contributed.
+
+"And Smoke's and mine," was Shorty's retort.
+
+"I forbid you," Sprague said harshly.  "Smoke, if you go another step
+I'll discharge you."
+
+"And you, too, Shorty," Stine added.
+
+"And a hell of a pickle you'll be in with us fired," Shorty replied.
+"How'll you get your blamed boat to Dawson?  Who'll serve you coffee in
+your blankets and manicure your finger-nails?  Come on, Smoke. They
+don't dast fire us.  Besides, we've got agreements.  It they fire us
+they've got to divvy up grub to last us through the winter."
+
+Barely had they shoved Breck's boat out from the bank and caught the
+first rough water, when the waves began to lap aboard.  They were small
+waves, but it was an earnest of what was to come.  Shorty cast back a
+quizzical glance as he gnawed at his inevitable plug, and Kit felt a
+strange rush of warmth at his heart for this man who couldn't swim and
+who couldn't back out.
+
+The rapids grew stiffer, and the spray began to fly.  In the gathering
+darkness, Kit glimpsed the Mane and the crooked fling of the current
+into it.  He worked into this crooked current, and felt a glow of
+satisfaction as the boat hit the head of the Mane squarely in the
+middle.  After that, in the smother, leaping and burying and swamping,
+he had no clear impression of anything save that he swung his weight on
+the steering oar and wished his uncle were there to see.  They emerged,
+breathless, wet through, and filled with water almost to the gunwale.
+Lighter pieces of baggage and outfit were floating inside the boat.  A
+few careful strokes on Shorty's part worked the boat into the draw of
+the eddy, and the eddy did the rest till the boat softly touched
+against the bank.  Looking down from above was Mrs Breck.  Her prayer
+had been answered, and the tears were streaming down her cheeks.
+
+"You boys have simply got to take the money," Breck called down to them.
+
+Shorty stood up, slipped, and sat down in the water, while the boat
+dipped one gunwale under and righted again.
+
+"Damn the money," said Shorty.  "Fetch out that whiskey.  Now that it's
+over I'm getting cold feet, an' I'm sure likely to have a chill."
+
+
+
+V.
+
+In the morning, as usual, they were among the last of the boats to
+start.  Breck, despite his boating inefficiency, and with only his wife
+and nephew for crew, had broken camp, loaded his boat, and pulled out
+at the first streak of day.  But there was no hurry in Stine and
+Sprague, who seemed incapable of realizing that the freeze-up might
+come at any time.  They malingered, got in the way, delayed, and
+doubted the work of Kit and Shorty.
+
+"I'm sure losing my respect for God, seein' as he must a-made them two
+mistakes in human form," was the latter's blasphemous way of expressing
+his disgust.
+
+"Well, you're the real goods at any rate," Kit grinned back at him. "It
+makes me respect God the more just to look at you."
+
+"He was sure goin' some, eh?" was Shorty's fashion of overcoming the
+embarrassment of the compliment.
+
+The trail by water crossed Lake Le Barge.  Here was no fast current,
+but a tideless stretch of forty miles which must be rowed unless a fair
+wind blew.  But the time for fair wind was past, and an icy gale blew
+in their teeth out of the north.  This made a rough sea, against which
+it was almost impossible to pull the boat.  Added to their troubles was
+driving snow; also, the freezing of the water on their oar-blades kept
+one man occupied in chopping it off with a hatchet.  Compelled to take
+their turn at the oars, Sprague and Stine patently loafed.  Kit had
+learned how to throw his weight on an oar, but he noted that his
+employers made a seeming of throwing their weights and that they dipped
+their oars at a cheating angle.
+
+At the end of three hours, Sprague pulled his oar in and said they
+would run back into the mouth of the river for shelter.  Stine seconded
+him, and the several hard-won miles were lost.  A second day, and a
+third, the same fruitless attempt was made.  In the river mouth, the
+continually arriving boats from White Horse made a flotilla of over two
+hundred.  Each day forty or fifty arrived, and only two or three won to
+the north-west short of the lake and did not come back.  Ice was now
+forming in the eddies, and connecting from eddy to eddy in thin lines
+around the points.  The freeze-up was very imminent.
+
+"We could make it if they had the souls of clams," Kit told Shorty, as
+they dried their moccasins by the fire on the evening of the third day.
+"We could have made it to-day if they hadn't turned back.  Another
+hour's work would have fetched that west shore. They're--they're babes
+in the woods."
+
+"Sure," Shorty agreed.  He turned his moccasin to the flame and debated
+a moment.  "Look here, Smoke.  It's hundreds of miles to Dawson.  If we
+don't want to freeze in here, we've got to do something.  What d'ye
+say?"
+
+Kit looked at him, and waited.
+
+"We've got the immortal cinch on them two babes," Shorty expounded.
+"They can give orders an' shed mazuma, but, as you say, they're plum
+babes.  If we're goin' to Dawson, we got to take charge of this here
+outfit."
+
+They looked at each other.
+
+"It's a go," said Kit, as his hand went out in ratification.
+
+In the morning, long before daylight, Shorty issued his call.
+
+"Come on!" he roared.  "Tumble out, you sleepers!  Here's your coffee!
+Kick in to it!  We're goin' to make a start!"
+
+Grumbling and complaining, Stine and Sprague were forced to get under
+way two hours earlier than ever before.  If anything, the gale was
+stiffer, and in a short time every man's face was iced up, while the
+oars were heavy with ice.  Three hours they struggled, and four, one
+man steering, one chopping ice, two toiling at the oars, and each
+taking his various turns.  The north-west shore loomed nearer and
+nearer.  The gale blew even harder, and at last Sprague pulled in his
+oar in token of surrender.  Shorty sprang to it, though his relief had
+only begun.
+
+"Chop ice," he said, handing Sprague the hatchet.
+
+"But what's the use?" the other whined.  "We can't make it.  We're
+going to turn back."
+
+"We're going on," said Shorty.  "Chop ice.  An' when you feel better
+you can spell me."
+
+It was heart-breaking toil, but they gained the shore, only to find it
+composed of surge-beaten rocks and cliffs, with no place to land.
+
+"I told you so," Sprague whimpered.
+
+"You never peeped," Shorty answered.
+
+"We're going back."
+
+Nobody spoke, and Kit held the boat into the seas as they skirted the
+forbidding shore.  Sometimes they gained no more than a foot to the
+stroke, and there were times when two or three strokes no more than
+enabled them to hold their own.  He did his best to hearten the two
+weaklings.  He pointed out that the boats which had won to this shore
+had never come back.  Perforce, he argued, they had found a shelter
+somewhere ahead.  Another hour they laboured, and a second.
+
+"If you fellows put into your oars some of that coffee you swig in your
+blankets, we'd make it," was Shorty's encouragement.  "You're just
+goin' through the motions an' not pullin' a pound."
+
+A few minutes later Sprague drew in his oar.
+
+"I'm finished," he said, and there were tears in his voice.
+
+"So are the rest of us," Kit answered, himself ready to cry or to
+commit murder, so great was his exhaustion.  "But we're going on just
+the same."
+
+"We're going back.  Turn the boat around."
+
+"Shorty, if he won't pull, take that oar yourself," Kit commanded.
+
+"Sure," was the answer.  "He can chop ice."
+
+But Sprague refused to give over the oar; Stine had ceased rowing, and
+the boat was drifting backward.
+
+"Turn around, Smoke," Sprague ordered.
+
+And Kit, who never in his life had cursed any man, astonished himself.
+
+"I'll see you in hell, first," he replied.  "Take hold of that oar and
+pull."
+
+It is in moments of exhaustion that men lose all their reserves of
+civilization, and such a moment had come.  Each man had reached the
+breaking-point.  Sprague jerked off a mitten, drew his revolver, and
+turned it on his steersman.  This was a new experience to Kit.  He had
+never had a gun presented at him in his life.  And now, to his
+surprise, it seemed to mean nothing at all.  It was the most natural
+thing in the world.
+
+"If you don't put that gun up," he said, "I'll take it away and rap you
+over the knuckles with it."
+
+"If you don't turn the boat around I'll shoot you," Sprague threatened.
+
+Then Shorty took a hand.  He ceased chopping ice and stood up behind
+Sprague.
+
+"Go on an' shoot," said Shorty, wiggling the hatchet.  "I'm just aching
+for a chance to brain you.  Go on an' start the festivities."
+
+"This is mutiny," Stine broke in.  "You were engaged to obey orders."
+
+Shorty turned on him.
+
+"Oh, you'll get yours as soon as I finish with your pardner, you little
+hog-wallopin' snooper, you."
+
+"Sprague," Kit said, "I'll give you just thirty seconds to put away
+that gun and get that oar out."
+
+Sprague hesitated, gave a short hysterical laugh, put the revolver away
+and bent his back to the work.
+
+For two hours more, inch by inch, they fought their way along the edge
+of the foaming rocks, until Kit feared he had made a mistake. And then,
+when on the verge of himself turning back, they came abreast of a
+narrow opening, not twenty feet wide, which led into a land-locked
+inclosure where the fiercest gusts scarcely flawed the surface.  It was
+the haven gained by the boats of previous days. They landed on a
+shelving beach, and the two employers lay in collapse in the boat,
+while Kit and Shorty pitched the tent, built a fire, and started the
+cooking.
+
+"What's a hog-walloping snooper, Shorty?" Kit asked.
+
+"Blamed if I know," was the answer; "but he's one just the same."
+
+The gale, which had been dying quickly, ceased at nightfall, and it
+came on clear and cold.  A cup of coffee, set aside to cool and
+forgotten, a few minutes later was found coated with half an inch of
+ice.  At eight o'clock, when Sprague and Stine, already rolled in their
+blankets, were sleeping the sleep of exhaustion, Kit came back from a
+look at the boat.
+
+"It's the freeze-up, Shorty," he announced.  "There's a skin of ice
+over the whole pond already."
+
+"What are you going to do?"
+
+"There's only one thing.  The lake of course freezes first.  The rapid
+current of the river may keep it open for days.  This time to-morrow
+any boat caught in Lake Le Barge remains there until next year."
+
+"You mean we got to get out to-night?  Now?"
+
+Kit nodded.
+
+"Tumble out, you sleepers!" was Shorty's answer, couched in a roar, as
+he began casting off the guy-ropes of the tent.
+
+The other two awoke, groaning with the pain of stiffened muscles and
+the pain of rousing from exhausted sleep.
+
+"What time is it?" Stine asked.
+
+"Half-past eight."
+
+"It's dark yet," was the objection.
+
+Shorty jerked out a couple of guy-ropes, and the tent began to sag.
+
+"It's not morning," he said.  "It's evening.  Come on.  The lake's
+freezin'.  We got to get acrost."
+
+Stine sat up, his face bitter and wrathful.
+
+"Let it freeze.  We're not going to stir."
+
+"All right," said Shorty.  "We're goin' on with the boat."
+
+"You were engaged--"
+
+"To take you to Dawson," Shorty caught him up.  "Well, we're takin'
+you, ain't we?"
+
+He punctuated his query by bringing half the tent down on top of them.
+
+They broke their way through the thin ice in the little harbour, and
+came out on the lake, where the water, heavy and glassy, froze on their
+oars with every stroke.  The water soon became like mush, clogging the
+stroke of the oars and freezing in the air even as it dripped.  Later
+the surface began to form a skin, and the boat proceeded slower and
+slower.
+
+Often, afterwards, when Kit tried to remember that night and failed to
+bring up aught but nightmare recollections, he wondered what must have
+been the sufferings of Stine and Sprague.  His one impression of
+himself was that he struggled through biting frost and intolerable
+exertion for a thousand years more or less.
+
+Morning found them stationary.  Stine complained of frosted fingers,
+and Sprague of his nose, while the pain in Kit's cheeks and nose told
+him that he, too, had been touched.  With each accretion of daylight
+they could see farther, and far as they could see was icy surface.  The
+water of the lake was gone.  A hundred yards away was the shore of the
+north end.  Shorty insisted that it was the opening of the river and
+that he could see water.  He and Kit alone were able to work, and with
+their oars they broke the ice and forced the boat along.  And at the
+last gasp of their strength they made the suck of the rapid river.  One
+look back showed them several boats which had fought through the night
+and were hopelessly frozen in; then they whirled around a bend in a
+current running six miles an hour.
+
+
+
+VI.
+
+Day by day they floated down the swift river, and day by day the
+shore-ice extended farther out.  When they made camp at nightfall, they
+chopped a space in the ice in which to lay the boat, and carried the
+camp outfit hundreds of feet to shore.  In the morning, they chopped
+the boat out through the new ice and caught the current.  Shorty set up
+the sheet-iron stove in the boat, and over this Stine and Sprague hung
+through the long, drifting hours.  They had surrendered, no longer gave
+orders, and their one desire was to gain Dawson.  Shorty, pessimistic,
+indefatigable, and joyous, at frequent intervals roared out the three
+lines of the first four-line stanza of a song he had forgotten.  The
+colder it got the oftener he sang:
+
+     "Like Argus of the ancient times,
+       We leave this Modern Greece;
+      Tum-tum, tum-tum; tum-tum, tum-tum,
+       To shear the Golden Fleece."
+
+As they passed the mouths of the Hootalinqua and the Big and Little
+Salmon, they found these streams throwing mush-ice into the main Yukon.
+This gathered about the boat and attached itself, and at night they
+found themselves compelled to chop the boat out of the current.  In the
+morning they chopped the boat back into the current.
+
+The last night ashore was spent between the mouths of the White River
+and the Stewart.  At daylight they found the Yukon, half a mile wide,
+running white from ice-rimmed bank to ice-rimmed bank. Shorty cursed
+the universe with less geniality than usual, and looked at Kit.
+
+"We'll be the last boat this year to make Dawson," Kit said.
+
+"But they ain't no water, Smoke."
+
+"Then we'll ride the ice down.  Come on."
+
+Futilely protesting, Sprague and Stine were bundled on board.  For half
+an hour, with axes, Kit and Shorty struggled to cut a way into the
+swift but solid stream.  When they did succeed in clearing the
+shore-ice, the floating ice forced the boat along the edge for a
+hundred yards, tearing away half of one gunwale and making a partial
+wreck of it.  Then they caught the current at the lower end of the bend
+that flung off-shore.  They proceeded to work farther toward the
+middle.  The stream was no longer composed of mush-ice but of hard
+cakes.  In between the cakes only was mush-ice, that froze solidly as
+they looked at it.  Shoving with the oars against the cakes, sometimes
+climbing out on the cakes in order to force the boat along, after an
+hour they gained the middle.  Five minutes after they ceased their
+exertions, the boat was frozen in.  The whole river was coagulating as
+it ran.  Cake froze to cake, until at last the boat was the centre of a
+cake seventy-five feet in diameter.  Sometimes they floated sidewise,
+sometimes stern-first, while gravity tore asunder the forming fetters
+in the moving mass, only to be manacled by faster-forming ones.  While
+the hours passed, Shorty stoked the stove, cooked meals, and chanted
+his war song.
+
+Night came, and after many efforts, they gave up the attempt to force
+the boat to shore, and through the darkness they swept helplessly
+onward.
+
+"What if we pass Dawson?" Shorty queried.
+
+"We'll walk back," Kit answered, "if we're not crushed in a jam."
+
+The sky was clear, and in the light of the cold leaping stars they
+caught occasional glimpses of the loom of mountains on either hand. At
+eleven o'clock, from below, came a dull, grinding roar.  Their speed
+began to diminish, and cakes of ice to up-end and crash and smash about
+them.  The river was jamming.  One cake, forced upward, slid across
+their cake and carried one side of the boat away.  It did not sink, for
+its own cake still upbore it, but in a whirl they saw dark water show
+for an instant within a foot of them.  Then all movement ceased.  At
+the end of half an hour the whole river picked itself up and began to
+move.  This continued for an hour, when again it was brought to rest by
+a jam.  Once again it started, running swiftly and savagely, with a
+great grinding.  Then they saw lights ashore, and, when abreast,
+gravity and the Yukon surrendered, and the river ceased for six months.
+
+On the shore at Dawson, curious ones gathered to watch the river
+freeze, heard from out of the darkness the war-song of Shorty:
+
+     "Like Argus of the ancient times,
+       We leave this Modern Greece;
+      Tum-tum, tum-tum; tum-tum, tum-tum,
+       To shear the Golden Fleece."
+
+
+
+VII.
+
+For three days Kit and Shorty laboured, carrying the ton and a half of
+outfit from the middle of the river to the log-cabin Stine and Sprague
+had bought on the hill overlooking Dawson.  This work finished, in the
+warm cabin, as twilight was falling, Sprague motioned Kit to him.
+Outside the thermometer registered sixty-five below zero.
+
+"Your full month isn't up, Smoke," Sprague said.  "But here it is in
+full.  I wish you luck."
+
+"How about the agreement?" Kit asked.  "You know there's a famine here.
+A man can't get work in the mines even, unless he has his own grub.
+You agreed--"
+
+"I know of no agreement," Sprague interrupted.  "Do you, Stine?  We
+engaged you by the month.  There's your pay.  Will you sign the
+receipt?"
+
+Kit's hands clenched, and for the moment he saw red.  Both men shrank
+away from him.  He had never struck a man in anger in his life, and he
+felt so certain of his ability to thrash Sprague that he could not
+bring himself to do it.
+
+Shorty saw his trouble and interposed.
+
+"Look here, Smoke, I ain't travelin' no more with a ornery outfit like
+this.  Right here's where I sure jump it.  You an' me stick together.
+Savve?  Now, you take your blankets an' hike down to the Elkhorn.  Wait
+for me.  I'll settle up, collect what's comin', an' give them what's
+comin'.  I ain't no good on the water, but my feet's on terry-fermy now
+an' I'm sure goin' to make smoke."
+
+          .          .          .          .          .
+
+Half an hour afterwards Shorty appeared at the Elkhorn.  From his
+bleeding knuckles and the skin off one cheek, it was evident that he
+had given Stine and Sprague what was coming.
+
+"You ought to see that cabin," he chuckled, as they stood at the bar.
+"Rough-house ain't no name for it.  Dollars to doughnuts nary one of
+'em shows up on the street for a week.  An' now it's all figgered out
+for you an' me.  Grub's a dollar an' a half a pound. They ain't no work
+for wages without you have your own grub.  Moose-meat's sellin' for two
+dollars a pound an' they ain't none.  We got enough money for a month's
+grub an' ammunition, an' we hike up the Klondike to the back country.
+If they ain't no moose, we go an' live with the Indians.  But if we
+ain't got five thousand pounds of meat six weeks from now, I'll--I'll
+sure go back an' apologize to our bosses.  Is it a go?"
+
+Kit's hand went out and they shook.  Then he faltered.
+
+"I don't know anything about hunting," he said.
+
+Shorty lifted his glass.
+
+"But you're a sure meat-eater, an' I'll learn you."
+
+
+
+
+THE STAMPEDE TO SQUAW CREEK.
+
+
+
+
+I.
+
+Two months after Smoke Bellew and Shorty went after moose for a
+grubstake, they were back in the Elkhorn saloon at Dawson.  The hunting
+was done, the meat hauled in and sold for two dollars and a half a
+pound, and between them they possessed three thousand dollars in gold
+dust and a good team of dogs.  They had played in luck. Despite the
+fact that the gold rush had driven the game a hundred miles or more
+into the mountains, they had, within half that distance, bagged four
+moose in a narrow canyon.
+
+The mystery of the strayed animals was no greater than the luck of
+their killers, for within the day four famished Indian families
+reporting no game in three days' journey back, camped beside them. Meat
+was traded for starving dogs, and after a week of feeding, Smoke and
+Shorty harnessed the animals and began freighting the meat to the eager
+Dawson market.
+
+The problem of the two men now, was to turn their gold-dust into food.
+The current price for flour and beans was a dollar and a half a pound,
+but the difficulty was to find a seller.  Dawson was in the throes of
+famine.  Hundreds of men, with money but no food, had been compelled to
+leave the country.  Many had gone down the river on the last water, and
+many more with barely enough food to last, had walked the six hundred
+miles over the ice to Dyea.
+
+Smoke met Shorty in the warm saloon, and found the latter jubilant.
+
+"Life ain't no punkins without whiskey an' sweetenin'," was Shorty's
+greeting, as he pulled lumps of ice from his thawing moustache and
+flung them rattling on the floor.  "An' I sure just got eighteen pounds
+of that same sweetenin'.  The geezer only charged three dollars a pound
+for it.  What luck did you have?"
+
+"I, too, have not been idle," Smoke answered with pride.  "I bought
+fifty pounds of flour.  And there's a man up on Adam Creek says he'll
+let me have fifty pounds more to-morrow."
+
+"Great!  We'll sure live till the river opens.  Say, Smoke, them dogs
+of ourn is the goods.  A dog-buyer offered me two hundred apiece for
+the five of them.  I told him nothin' doin'.  They sure took on class
+when they got meat to get outside of; but it goes against the grain
+feedin' dog-critters on grub that's worth two and a half a pound.  Come
+on an' have a drink.  I just got to celebrate them eighteen pounds of
+sweetenin'."
+
+Several minutes later, as he weighed in on the gold-scales for the
+drinks, he gave a start of recollection.
+
+"I plum forgot that man I was to meet in the Tivoli.  He's got some
+spoiled bacon he'll sell for a dollar an' a half a pound.  We can feed
+it to the dogs an' save a dollar a day on each's board bill. So long."
+
+"So long," said Smoke.  "I'm goin' to the cabin an' turn in."
+
+Hardly had Shorty left the place, when a fur-clad man entered through
+the double storm-doors.  His face lighted at sight of Smoke, who
+recognized him as Breck, the man whose boat he had run through the Box
+Canyon and White Horse rapids.
+
+"I heard you were in town," Breck said hurriedly, as they shook hands.
+"Been looking for you for half an hour.  Come outside, I want to talk
+with you."
+
+Smoke looked regretfully at the roaring, red-hot stove.
+
+"Won't this do?"
+
+"No; it's important.  Come outside."
+
+As they emerged, Smoke drew off one mitten, lighted a match, and
+glanced at the thermometer that hung beside the door.  He re-mittened
+his naked hand hastily as if the frost had burnt him. Overhead arched
+the flaming aurora borealis, while from all Dawson arose the mournful
+howling of thousands of wolf-dogs.
+
+"What did it say?" Breck asked.
+
+"Sixty below."  Kit spat experimentally, and the spittle crackled in
+the air.  "And the thermometer is certainly working.  It's falling all
+the time.  An hour ago it was only fifty-two.  Don't tell me it's a
+stampede."
+
+"It is," Breck whispered back cautiously, casting anxious eyes about in
+fear of some other listener.  "You know Squaw Creek?--empties in on the
+other side the Yukon thirty miles up?"
+
+"Nothing doing there," was Smoke's judgment.  "It was prospected years
+ago."
+
+"So were all the other rich creeks.  Listen!  It's big.  Only eight to
+twenty feet to bedrock.  There won't be a claim that don't run to half
+a million.  It's a dead secret.  Two or three of my close friends let
+me in on it.  I told my wife right away that I was going to find you
+before I started.  Now, so long.  My pack's hidden down the bank.  In
+fact, when they told me, they made me promise not to pull out until
+Dawson was asleep.  You know what it means if you're seen with a
+stampeding outfit.  Get your partner and follow.  You ought to stake
+fourth or fifth claim from Discovery.  Don't forget--Squaw Creek.  It's
+the third after you pass Swede Creek."
+
+
+
+II.
+
+When Smoke entered the little cabin on the hillside back of Dawson, he
+heard a heavy familiar breathing.
+
+"Aw, go to bed," Shorty mumbled, as Smoke shook his shoulder.  "I'm not
+on the night shift," was his next remark, as the rousing hand became
+more vigorous.  "Tell your troubles to the bar-keeper."
+
+"Kick into your clothes," Smoke said.  "We've got to stake a couple of
+claims."
+
+Shorty sat up and started to explode, but Smoke's hand covered his
+mouth.
+
+"Ssh!" Smoke warned.  "It's a big strike.  Don't wake the
+neighbourhood.  Dawson's asleep."
+
+"Huh!  You got to show me.  Nobody tells anybody about a strike, of
+course not.  But ain't it plum amazin' the way everybody hits the trail
+just the same?"
+
+"Squaw Creek," Smoke whispered.  "It's right.  Breck gave me the tip.
+Shallow bedrock.  Gold from the grass-roots down.  Come on. We'll sling
+a couple of light packs together and pull out."
+
+Shorty's eyes closed as he lapsed back into sleep.  The next moment his
+blankets were swept off him.
+
+"If you don't want them, I do," Smoke explained.
+
+Shorty followed the blankets and began to dress.
+
+"Goin' to take the dogs?" he asked.
+
+"No.  The trail up the creek is sure to be unbroken, and we can make
+better time without them."
+
+"Then I'll throw 'em a meal, which'll have to last 'em till we get
+back.  Be sure you take some birch-bark and a candle."
+
+Shorty opened the door, felt the bite of the cold, and shrank back to
+pull down his ear-flaps and mitten his hands.
+
+Five minutes later he returned, sharply rubbing his nose.
+
+"Smoke, I'm sure opposed to makin' this stampede.  It's colder than the
+hinges of hell a thousand years before the first fire was lighted.
+Besides, it's Friday the thirteenth, an' we're goin' to trouble as the
+sparks fly upward."
+
+With small stampeding packs on their backs, they closed the door behind
+them and started down the hill.  The display of the aurora borealis had
+ceased, and only the stars leaped in the great cold, and by their
+uncertain light made traps for the feet.  Shorty floundered off a turn
+of the trail into deep snow, and raised his voice in blessing of the
+date of the week and month and year.
+
+"Can't you keep still?" Smoke chided.  "Leave the almanac alone. You'll
+have all Dawson awake and after us."
+
+"Huh!  See the light in that cabin?  And in that one over there? An'
+hear that door slam?  Oh, sure Dawson's asleep.  Them lights? Just
+buryin' their dead.  They ain't stampedin', betcher life they ain't."
+
+By the time they reached the foot of the hill and were fairly in
+Dawson, lights were springing up in the cabins, doors were slamming,
+and from behind came the sound of many moccasins on the hard-packed
+snow.  Again Shorty delivered himself.
+
+"But it beats hell the amount of mourners there is."
+
+They passed a man who stood by the path and was calling anxiously in a
+low voice:  "Oh, Charley; get a move on."
+
+"See that pack on his back, Smoke?  The graveyard's sure a long ways
+off when the mourners got to pack their blankets."
+
+By the time they reached the main street a hundred men were in line
+behind them, and while they sought in the deceptive starlight for the
+trail that dipped down the bank to the river, more men could be heard
+arriving.  Shorty slipped and shot down the thirty-foot chute into the
+soft snow.  Smoke followed, knocking him over as he was rising to his
+feet.
+
+"I found it first," he gurgled, taking off his mittens to shake the
+snow out of the gauntlets.
+
+The next moment they were scrambling wildly out of the way of the
+hurtling bodies of those that followed.  At the time of the freeze-up,
+a jam had occurred at this point, and cakes of ice were up-ended in
+snow-covered confusion.  After several hard falls, Smoke drew out his
+candle and lighted it.  Those in the rear hailed it with acclaim.  In
+the windless air it burned easily, and he led the way more quickly.
+
+"It's a sure stampede," Shorty decided.  "Or might all them be
+sleep-walkers?"
+
+"We're at the head of the procession at any rate," was Smoke's answer.
+
+"Oh, I don't know.  Mebbe that's a firefly ahead there.  Mebbe they're
+all fireflies--that one, an' that one.  Look at 'em. Believe me, they
+is whole strings of processions ahead."
+
+It was a mile across the jams to the west bank of the Yukon, and
+candles flickered the full length of the twisting trail.  Behind them,
+clear to the top of the bank they had descended, were more candles.
+
+"Say, Smoke, this ain't no stampede.  It's a exode-us.  They must be a
+thousand men ahead of us an' ten thousand behind.  Now, you listen to
+your uncle.  My medicine's good.  When I get a hunch it's sure right.
+An' we're in wrong on this stampede.  Let's turn back an' hit the
+sleep."
+
+"You'd better save your breath if you intend to keep up," Smoke
+retorted gruffly.
+
+"Huh!  My legs is short, but I slog along slack at the knees an' don't
+worry my muscles none, an' I can sure walk every piker here off the
+ice."
+
+And Smoke knew he was right, for he had long since learned his
+comrade's phenomenal walking powers.
+
+"I've been holding back to give you a chance," Smoke jeered.
+
+"An' I'm plum troddin' on your heels.  If you can't do better, let me
+go ahead and set pace."
+
+Smoke quickened, and was soon at the rear of the nearest bunch of
+stampeders.
+
+"Hike along, you, Smoke," the other urged.  "Walk over them unburied
+dead.  This ain't no funeral.  Hit the frost like you was goin'
+somewheres."
+
+Smoke counted eight men and two women in this party, and before the way
+across the jam-ice was won, he and Shorty had passed another party
+twenty strong.  Within a few feet of the west bank, the trail swerved
+to the south, emerging from the jam upon smooth ice.  The ice, however,
+was buried under several feet of fine snow.  Through this the
+sled-trail ran, a narrow ribbon of packed footing barely two feet in
+width.  On either side one sank to his knees and deeper in the snow.
+The stampeders they overtook were reluctant to give way, and often
+Smoke and Shorty had to plunge into the deep snow, and by supreme
+efforts flounder past.
+
+Shorty was irrepressible and pessimistic.  When the stampeders resented
+being passed, he retorted in kind.
+
+"What's your hurry?" one of them asked.
+
+"What's yours?" he answered.  "A stampede come down from Indian River
+yesterday afternoon an' beat you to it.  They ain't no claims left."
+
+"That being so, I repeat, what's your hurry?"
+
+"WHO?  Me?  I ain't no stampeder.  I'm workin' for the government. I'm
+on official business.  I'm just traipsin' along to take the census of
+Squaw Creek."
+
+To another, who hailed him with:  "Where away, little one?  Do you
+really expect to stake a claim?" Shorty answered:
+
+"Me?  I'm the discoverer of Squaw Creek.  I'm just comin' back from
+recordin' so as to see no blamed chechaquo jumps my claim."
+
+The average pace of the stampeders on the smooth going was three miles
+and a half an hour.  Smoke and Shorty were doing four and a half,
+though sometimes they broke into short runs and went faster.
+
+"I'm going to travel your feet clean off, Shorty," Smoke challenged.
+
+"Huh!  I can hike along on the stumps an' wear the heels off your
+moccasins.  Though it ain't no use.  I've ben figgerin'.  Creek claims
+is five hundred feet.  Call 'em ten to the mile.  They's a thousand
+stampeders ahead of us, an' that creek ain't no hundred miles long.
+Somebody's goin' to get left, an' it makes a noise like you an' me."
+
+Before replying, Smoke let out an unexpected link that threw Shorty
+half a dozen feet in the rear.
+
+"If you saved your breath and kept up, we'd cut down a few of that
+thousand," he chided.
+
+"Who?  Me?  If you's get outa the way I'd show you a pace what is."
+
+Smoke laughed, and let out another link.  The whole aspect of the
+adventure had changed.  Through his brain was running a phrase of the
+mad philosopher--"the transvaluation of  values."  In truth, he was
+less interested in staking a fortune than in beating Shorty. After all,
+he concluded, it wasn't the reward of the game but the playing of it
+that counted.  Mind, and muscle, and stamina, and soul, were challenged
+in a contest with this Shorty, a man who had never opened the books,
+and who did not know grand opera from rag-time, nor an epic from a
+chilblain.
+
+"Shorty, I've got you skinned to death.  I've reconstructed every cell
+in my body since I hit the beach at Dyea.  My flesh is as stringy as
+whipcords, and as bitter and mean as the bite of a rattlesnake.  A few
+months ago I'd have patted myself on the back to write such words, but
+I couldn't have written them.  I had to live them first, and now that
+I'm living them there's no need to write them.  I'm the real, bitter,
+stinging goods, and no scrub of a mountaineer can put anything over on
+me without getting it back compound.  Now, you go ahead and set pace
+for half an hour.  Do your worst, and when you're all in I'll go ahead
+and give you half an hour of the real worst."
+
+"Huh!" Shorty sneered genially.  "An' him not dry behind the ears yet.
+Get outa the way an' let your father show you some goin'."
+
+Half-hour by half-hour they alternated in setting pace.  Nor did they
+talk much.  Their exertions kept them warm, though their breath froze
+on their faces from lips to chin.  So intense was the cold that they
+almost continually rubbed their noses and cheeks with their mittens.  A
+few minutes cessation from this allowed the flesh to grow numb, and
+then most vigorous rubbing was required to produce the burning prickle
+of returning circulation.
+
+Often they thought they had reached the lead, but always they overtook
+more stampeders who had started before them.  Occasionally, groups of
+men attempted to swing in behind to their pace, but invariably they
+were discouraged after a mile or two, and disappeared in the darkness
+to the rear.
+
+"We've been out on trail all winter," was Shorty's comment.  "An' them
+geezers, soft from laying around their cabins, has the nerve to think
+they can keep our stride.  Now, if they was real sour-doughs it'd be
+different.  If there's one thing a sour-dough can do it's sure walk."
+
+Once, Smoke lighted a match and glanced at his watch.  He never
+repeated it, for so quick was the bite of the frost on his bared hands,
+that half an hour passed before they were again comfortable.
+
+"Four o'clock," he said, as he pulled on his mittens, "and we've
+already passed three hundred."
+
+"Three hundred and thirty-eight," Shorty corrected.  "I ben keepin'
+count.  Get outa the way, stranger.  Let somebody stampede that knows
+how to stampede."
+
+The latter was addressed to a man, evidently exhausted, who could no
+more than stumble along, and who blocked the trail.  This, and one
+other, were the only played-out men they encountered, for they were
+very near to the head of the stampede.  Nor did they learn till
+afterwards the horrors of that night.  Exhausted men sat down to rest
+by the way, and failed to get up.  Seven were frozen to death, while
+scores of amputations of toes, feet, and fingers were performed in the
+Dawson hospitals on the survivors.  For of all nights for a stampede,
+the one to Squaw Creek occurred on the coldest night of the year.
+Before morning, the spirit thermometers at Dawson registered seventy
+degrees below zero.  The men composing the stampede, with few
+exceptions, were new-comers in the country who did not know the way of
+the cold.
+
+The other played-out man they found a few minutes later, revealed by a
+streamer of aurora borealis that shot like a searchlight from horizon
+to zenith.  He was sitting on a piece of ice beside the trail.
+
+"Hop along, sister Mary," Shorty gaily greeted him.  "Keep movin'. If
+you sit there you'll freeze stiff."
+
+The man made no response, and they stopped to investigate.
+
+"Stiff as a poker," was Shorty's verdict.  "If you tumbled him over
+he'd break."
+
+"See if he's breathing," Smoke said, as, with bared hands, he sought
+through furs and woollens for the man's heart.
+
+Shorty lifted one ear-flap and bent to the iced lips.
+
+"Nary breathe," he reported.
+
+"Nor heart-beat," said Smoke.
+
+He mittened his hand and beat it violently for a minute before exposing
+it to the frost to strike a match.  It was an old man, incontestably
+dead.  In the moment of illumination, they saw a long grey beard,
+massed with ice to the nose, cheeks that were white with frost, and
+closed eyes with frost-rimmed lashes frozen together. Then the match
+went out.
+
+"Come on," Shorty said, rubbing his ear.  "We can't do nothing for the
+old geezer.  An' I've sure frosted my ear.  Now all the blamed skin'll
+peel off and it'll be sore for a week."
+
+A few minutes later, when a flaming ribbon spilled pulsating fire over
+the heavens, they saw on the ice a quarter of a mile ahead two forms.
+Beyond, for a mile, nothing moved.
+
+"They're leading the procession," Smoke said, as darkness fell again.
+"Come on, let's get them."
+
+At the end of half an hour, not yet having overtaken the two in front,
+Shorty broke into a run.
+
+"If we catch 'em we'll never pass 'em," he panted.  "Lord, what a pace
+they're hittin'.  Dollars to doughnuts they're no chechaquos. They're
+the real sour-dough variety, you can stack on that."
+
+Smoke was leading when they finally caught up, and he was glad to ease
+to a walk at their heels.  Almost immediately he got the impression
+that the one nearer him was a woman.  How this impression came, he
+could not tell.  Hooded and furred, the dark form was as any form; yet
+there was a haunting sense of familiarity about it. He waited for the
+next flame of the aurora, and by its light saw the smallness of the
+moccasined feet.  But he saw more--the walk; and knew it for the
+unmistakable walk he had once resolved never to forget.
+
+"She's a sure goer," Shorty confided hoarsely.  "I'll bet it's an
+Indian."
+
+"How do you do, Miss Gastell," Smoke addressed.
+
+"How do you do," she answered, with a turn of the head and a quick
+glance.  "It's too dark to see.  Who are you?"
+
+"Smoke,"
+
+She laughed in the frost, and he was certain it was the prettiest
+laughter he had ever heard.
+
+"And have you married and raised all those children you were telling me
+about?"  Before he could retort, she went on.  "How many chechaquos are
+there behind?"
+
+"Several thousand, I imagine.  We passed over three hundred.  And they
+weren't wasting any time."
+
+"It's the old story," she said bitterly.  "The new-comers get in on the
+rich creeks, and the old-timers who dared and suffered and made this
+country, get nothing.  Old-timers made this discovery on Squaw
+Creek--how it leaked out is the mystery--and they sent word up to all
+the old-timers on Sea Lion.  But it's ten miles farther than Dawson,
+and when they arrive they'll find the creek staked to the skyline by
+the Dawson chechaquos.  It isn't right, it isn't fair, such perversity
+of luck."
+
+"It is too bad," Smoke sympathized.  "But I'm hanged if I know what
+you're going to do about it.  First come, first served, you know."
+
+"I wish I could do something," she flashed back at him.  "I'd like to
+see them all freeze on the trail, or have everything terrible happen to
+them, so long as the Sea Lion stampede arrived first."
+
+"You've certainly got it in for us, hard," he laughed.
+
+"It isn't that," she said quickly.  "Man by man, I know the crowd from
+Sea Lion, and they are men.  They starved in this country in the old
+days, and they worked like giants to develop it.  I went through the
+hard times on the Koyokuk with them when I was a little girl.  And I
+was with them in the Birch Creek famine, and in the Forty Mile famine.
+They are heroes, and they deserve some reward, and yet here are
+thousands of green softlings who haven't earned the right to stake
+anything, miles and miles ahead of them.  And now, if you'll forgive my
+tirade, I'll save my breath, for I don't know when you and all the rest
+may try to pass dad and me."
+
+No further talk passed between Joy and Smoke for an hour or so, though
+he noticed that for a time she and her father talked in low tones.
+
+"I know'm now," Shorty told Smoke.  "He's old Louis Gastell, an' the
+real goods.  That must be his kid.  He come into this country so long
+ago they ain't nobody can recollect, an' he brought the girl with him,
+she only a baby.  Him an' Beetles was tradin' partners an' they ran the
+first dinkey little steamboat up the Koyokuk."
+
+"I don't think we'll try to pass them," Smoke said.  "We're at the head
+of the stampede, and there are only four of us."
+
+Shorty agreed, and another hour of silence followed, during which they
+swung steadily along.  At seven o'clock, the blackness was broken by a
+last display of the aurora borealis, which showed to the west a broad
+opening between snow-clad mountains.
+
+"Squaw Creek!" Joy exclaimed.
+
+"Goin' some," Shorty exulted.  "We oughtn't to ben there for another
+half hour to the least, accordin' to my reckonin'.  I must a' ben
+spreadin' my legs."
+
+It was at this point that the Dyea trail, baffled by ice-jams, swerved
+abruptly across the Yukon to the east bank.  And here they must leave
+the hard-packed, main-travelled trail, mount the jams, and follow a dim
+trail, but slightly packed, that hovered the west bank.
+
+Louis Gastell, leading, slipped in the darkness on the rough ice, and
+sat up, holding his ankle in both his hands.  He struggled to his feet
+and went on, but at a slower pace and with a perceptible limp.  After a
+few minutes he abruptly halted.
+
+"It's no use," he said to his daughter.  "I've sprained a tendon. You
+go ahead and stake for me as well as yourself."
+
+"Can't we do something?" Smoke asked.
+
+Louis Gastell shook his head.
+
+"She can stake two claims as well as one.  I'll crawl over to the bank,
+start a fire, and bandage my ankle.  I'll be all right.  Go on, Joy.
+Stake ours above the Discovery claim; it's richer higher up."
+
+"Here's some birch bark," Smoke said, dividing his supply equally.
+"We'll take care of your daughter."
+
+Louis Gastell laughed harshly.
+
+"Thank you just the same," he said.  "But she can take care of herself.
+Follow her and watch her."
+
+"Do you mind if I lead?" she asked Smoke, as she headed on.  "I know
+this country better than you."
+
+"Lead on," Smoke answered gallantly, "though I agree with you it's a
+darned shame all us chechaquos are going to beat that Sea Lion bunch to
+it.  Isn't there some way to shake them?"
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"We can't hide our trail, and they'll follow it like sheep."
+
+After a quarter of a mile, she turned sharply to the west.  Smoke
+noticed that they were going through unpacked snow, but neither he nor
+Shorty observed that the dim trail they had been on still led south.
+Had they witnessed the subsequent procedure of Louis Gastell, the
+history of the Klondike would have been written differently; for they
+would have seen that old-timer, no longer limping, running with his
+nose to the trail like a hound, following them.  Also, they would have
+seen him trample and widen the turn they had made to the west.  And,
+finally, they would have seen him keep on the old dim trail that still
+led south.
+
+A trail did run up the creek, but so slight was it that they
+continually lost it in the darkness.  After a quarter of an hour, Joy
+Gastell was willing to drop into the rear and let the two men take
+turns in breaking a way through the snow.  This slowness of the leaders
+enabled the whole stampede to catch up, and when daylight came, at nine
+o'clock, as far back as they could see was an unbroken line of men.
+Joy's dark eyes sparkled at the sight.
+
+"How long since we started up the creek?" she asked.
+
+"Fully two hours," Smoke answered.
+
+"And two hours back makes four," she laughed.  "The stampede from Sea
+Lion is saved."
+
+A faint suspicion crossed Smoke's mind, and he stopped and confronted
+her.
+
+"I don't understand," he said.
+
+"You don't.  Then I'll tell you.  This is Norway Creek.  Squaw Creek is
+the next to the south."
+
+Smoke was for the moment, speechless.
+
+"You did it on purpose?" Shorty demanded.
+
+"I did it to give the old-timers a chance."
+
+She laughed mockingly.  The men grinned at each other and finally
+joined her.
+
+"I'd lay you across my knee an' give you a wallopin', if womenfolk
+wasn't so scarce in this country," Shorty assured her.
+
+"Your father didn't sprain a tendon, but waited till we were out of
+sight and then went on?" Smoke asked.
+
+She nodded.
+
+"And you were the decoy."
+
+Again she nodded, and this time Smoke's laughter rang out clear and
+true.  It was the spontaneous laughter of a frankly beaten man.
+
+"Why don't you get angry with me?" she queried ruefully.  "Or--or
+wallop me?"
+
+"Well, we might as well be starting back," Shorty urged.  "My feet's
+gettin' cold standin' here."
+
+Smoke shook his head.
+
+"That would mean four hours lost.  We must be eight miles up this Creek
+now, and from the look ahead Norway is making a long swing south.
+We'll follow it, then cross over the divide somehow, and tap Squaw
+Creek somewhere above Discovery."  He looked at Joy.  "Won't you come
+along with us?  I told your father we'd look after you."
+
+"I--"  She hesitated.  "I think I shall, if you don't mind."  She was
+looking straight at him, and her face was no longer defiant and
+mocking.  "Really, Mr Smoke, you make me almost sorry for what I have
+done.  But somebody had to save the old-timers."
+
+"It strikes me that stampeding is at best a sporting proposition."
+
+"And it strikes me you two are very game about it," she went on, then
+added with the shadow of a sigh:  "What a pity you are not old-timers."
+
+For two hours more they kept to the frozen creek-bed of Norway, then
+turned into a narrow and rugged tributary that flowed from the south.
+At midday they began the ascent of the divide itself. Behind them,
+looking down and back, they could see the long line of stampeders
+breaking up.  Here and there, in scores of places, thin smoke-columns
+advertised the making of camps.
+
+As for themselves, the going was hard.  They wallowed through snow to
+their waists, and were compelled to stop every few yards to breathe.
+Shorty was the first to call a halt.
+
+"We ben hittin' the trail for over twelve hours," he said.  "Smoke, I'm
+plum willin' to say I'm good an' tired.  An' so are you.  An' I'm free
+to shout that I can sure hang on to this here pascar like a starvin'
+Indian to a hunk of bear-meat.  But this poor girl here can't keep her
+legs no time if she don't get something in her stomach.  Here's where
+we build a fire.  What d'ye say?"
+
+So quickly, so deftly and methodically, did they go about making a
+temporary camp, that Joy, watching with jealous eyes, admitted to
+herself that the old-timers could not do it better.  Spruce boughs,
+with a spread blanket on top, gave a foundation for rest and cooking
+operations.  But they kept away from the heat of the fire until noses
+and cheeks had been rubbed cruelly.
+
+Smoke spat in the air, and the resultant crackle was so immediate and
+loud that he shook his head.
+
+"I give it up," he said.  "I've never seen cold like this."
+
+"One winter on the Koyokuk it went to eighty-six below," Joy answered.
+"It's at least seventy or seventy-five right now, and I know I've
+frosted my cheeks.  They're burning like fire."
+
+On the steep slope of the divide there was no ice, while snow, as fine
+and hard and crystalline as granulated sugar, was poured into the
+gold-pan by the bushel until enough water was melted for the coffee.
+Smoke fried bacon and thawed biscuits.  Shorty kept the fuel supplied
+and tended the fire, and Joy set the simple table composed of two
+plates, two cups, two spoons, a tin of mixed salt and pepper, and a tin
+of sugar.  When it came to eating, she and Smoke shared one set between
+them.  They ate out of the same plate and drank from the same cup.
+
+It was nearly two in the afternoon when they cleared the crest of the
+divide and began dropping down a feeder of Squaw Creek.  Earlier in the
+winter some moose-hunter had made a trail up the canyon--that is, in
+going up and down he had stepped always in his previous tracks.  As a
+result, in the midst of soft snow, and veiled under later snow falls,
+was a line of irregular hummocks.  If one's foot missed a hummock, he
+plunged down through unpacked snow and usually to a fall.  Also, the
+moose-hunter had been an exceptionally long-legged individual.  Joy,
+who was eager now that the two men should stake, and fearing that they
+were slackening pace on account of her evident weariness, insisted on
+taking the lead.  The speed and manner in which she negotiated the
+precarious footing, called out Shorty's unqualified approval.
+
+"Look at her!" he cried.  "She's the real goods an' the red meat. Look
+at them moccasins swing along.  No high-heels there.  She uses the legs
+God gave her.  She's the right squaw for any bear-hunter."
+
+She flashed back a smile of acknowledgment that included Smoke.  He
+caught a feeling of chumminess, though at the same time he was bitingly
+aware that it was very much of a woman who embraced him in that
+comradely smile.
+
+Looking back, as they came to the bank of Squaw Creek, they could see
+the stampede, strung out irregularly, struggling along the descent of
+the divide.
+
+They slipped down the bank to the creek bed.  The stream, frozen
+solidly to bottom, was from twenty to thirty feet wide and ran between
+six- and eight-foot earth banks of alluvial wash.  No recent feet had
+disturbed the snow that lay upon its ice, and they knew they were above
+the Discovery claim and the last stakes of the Sea Lion stampeders.
+
+"Look out for springs," Joy warned, as Smoke led the way down the
+creek.  "At seventy below you'll lose your feet if you break through."
+
+These springs, common to most Klondike streams, never ceased at the
+lowest temperatures.  The water flowed out from the banks and lay in
+pools which were cuddled from the cold by later surface-freezings and
+snow falls.  Thus, a man, stepping on dry snow, might break through
+half an inch of ice-skin and find himself up to the knees in water.  In
+five minutes, unless able to remove the wet gear, the loss of one's
+foot was the penalty.
+
+Though only three in the afternoon, the long grey twilight of the
+Arctic had settled down.  They watched for a blazed tree on either
+bank, which would show the centre-stake of the last claim located. Joy,
+impulsively eager, was the first to find it.  She darted ahead of
+Smoke, crying:  "Somebody's been here!  See the snow!  Look for the
+blaze!  There it is!  See that spruce!"
+
+She sank suddenly to her waist in the snow.
+
+"Now I've done it," she said woefully.  Then she cried:  "Don't come
+near me!  I'll wade out."
+
+Step by step, each time breaking through the thin skin of ice concealed
+under the dry snow, she forced her way to solid footing. Smoke did not
+wait, but sprang to the bank, where dry and seasoned twigs and sticks,
+lodged amongst the brush by spring freshets, waited the match.  By the
+time she reached his side, the first flames and flickers of an assured
+fire were rising.
+
+"Sit down!" he commanded.
+
+She obediently sat down in the snow.  He slipped his pack from his
+back, and spread a blanket for her feet.
+
+From above came the voices of the stampeders who followed them.
+
+"Let Shorty stake," she urged
+
+"Go on, Shorty," Smoke said, as he attacked her moccasins, already
+stiff with ice.  "Pace off a thousand feet and place the two
+centre-stakes.  We can fix the corner-stakes afterwards."
+
+With his knife Smoke cut away the lacings and leather of the moccasins.
+So stiff were they with ice that they snapped and crackled under the
+hacking and sawing.  The Siwash socks and heavy woollen stockings were
+sheaths of ice.  It was as if her feet and calves were encased in
+corrugated iron.
+
+"How are your feet?" he asked, as he worked.
+
+"Pretty numb.  I can't move nor feel my toes.  But it will be all
+right.  The fire is burning beautifully.  Watch out you don't freeze
+your own hands.  They must be numb now from the way you're fumbling."
+
+He slipped his mittens on, and for nearly a minute smashed the open
+hands savagely against his sides.  When he felt the blood-prickles, he
+pulled off the mittens and ripped and tore and sawed and hacked at the
+frozen garments.  The white skin of one foot appeared, then that of the
+other, to be exposed to the bite of seventy below zero, which is the
+equivalent of one hundred and two below freezing.
+
+Then came the rubbing with snow, carried on with an intensity of cruel
+fierceness, till she squirmed and shrank and moved her toes, and
+joyously complained of the hurt.
+
+He half-dragged her, and she half-lifted herself, nearer to the fire.
+He placed her feet on the blanket close to the flesh-saving flames.
+
+"You'll have to take care of them for a while," he said.
+
+She could now safely remove her mittens and manipulate her own feet,
+with the wisdom of the initiated, being watchful that the heat of the
+fire was absorbed slowly.  While she did this, he attacked his hands.
+The snow did not melt nor moisten.  Its light crystals were like so
+much sand.  Slowly the stings and pangs of circulation came back into
+the chilled flesh.  Then he tended the fire, unstrapped the light pack
+from her back, and got out a complete change of foot-gear.
+
+Shorty returned along the creek-bed and climbed the bank to them.
+
+"I sure staked a full thousan' feet," he proclaimed.  "Number
+twenty-seven and number twenty-eight, though I'd only got the upper
+stake of twenty-seven, when I met the first geezer of the bunch behind.
+He just straight declared I wasn't goin' to stake twenty-eight.  An' I
+told him . . . ."
+
+"Yes, yes," Joy cried.  "What did you tell him?"
+
+"Well, I told him straight that if he didn't back up plum five hundred
+feet I'd sure punch his frozen nose into ice-cream an' chocolate
+eclaires.  He backed up, an' I've got in the centre-stakes of two full
+an' honest five-hundred-foot claims.  He staked next, and I guess by
+now the bunch has Squaw Creek located to head-waters an' down the other
+side.  Ourn is safe.  It's too dark to see now, but we can put out the
+corner-stakes in the mornin'."
+
+
+
+III.
+
+When they awoke, they found a change had taken place during the night.
+So warm was it, that Shorty and Smoke, still in their mutual blankets,
+estimated the temperature at no more than twenty below. The cold snap
+had broken.  On top their blankets lay six inches of frost crystals.
+
+"Good morning! how's your feet?" was Smoke's greeting across the ashes
+of the fire to where Joy Gastell, carefully shaking aside the snow, was
+sitting up in her sleeping furs.
+
+Shorty built the fire and quarried ice from the creek, while Smoke
+cooked breakfast.  Daylight came on as they finished the meal.
+
+"You go an' fix them corner-stakes, Smoke," Shorty said.  "There's a
+gravel under where I chopped ice for the coffee, an' I'm goin' to melt
+water and wash a pan of that same gravel for luck."
+
+Smoke departed, axe in hand, to blaze the stakes.  Starting from the
+down-stream centre-stake of 'twenty-seven,' he headed at right angles
+across the narrow valley towards its rim.  He proceeded methodically,
+almost automatically, for his mind was alive with recollections of the
+night before.  He felt, somehow, that he had won to empery over the
+delicate lines and firm muscles of those feet and ankles he had rubbed
+with snow, and this empery seemed to extend to all women.  In dim and
+fiery ways a feeling of possession mastered him.  It seemed that all
+that was necessary was for him to walk up to this Joy Gastell, take her
+hand in his, and say "Come."
+
+It was in this mood that he discovered something that made him forget
+empery over the white feet of woman.  At the valley rim he blazed no
+corner-stake.  He did not reach the valley rim, but, instead, he found
+himself confronted by another stream.  He lined up with his eye a
+blasted willow tree and a big and recognizable spruce.  He returned to
+the stream where were the centre stakes.  He followed the bed of the
+creek around a wide horseshoe bend through the flat, and found that the
+two creeks were the same creek.  Next, he floundered twice through the
+snow from valley rim to valley rim, running the first line from the
+lower stake of 'twenty-seven,' the second from the upper stake of
+'twenty-eight,' and he found that THE UPPER STAKE OF THE LATTER WAS
+LOWER THAN THE LOWER STAKE OF THE FORMER.  In the gray twilight and
+half-darkness Shorty had located their two claims on the horseshoe.
+
+Smoke plodded back to the little camp.  Shorty, at the end of washing a
+pan of gravel, exploded at sight of him.
+
+"We got it!" Shorty cried, holding out the pan.  "Look at it!  A nasty
+mess of gold.  Two hundred right there if it's a cent.  She runs rich
+from the top of the wash-gravel.  I've churned around placers some, but
+I never got butter like what's in this pan."
+
+Smoke cast an incurious glance at the coarse gold, poured himself a cup
+of coffee at the fire, and sat down.  Joy sensed something wrong and
+looked at him with eagerly solicitous eyes.  Shorty, however, was
+disgruntled by his partner's lack of delight in the discovery.
+
+"Why don't you kick in an' get excited?" he demanded.  "We got our pile
+right here, unless you're stickin' up your nose at two-hundred-dollar
+pans."
+
+Smoke took a swallow of coffee before replying.
+
+"Shorty, why are our two claims here like the Panama Canal?"
+
+"What's the answer?"
+
+"Well, the eastern entrance of the Panama Canal is west of the western
+entrance, that's all."
+
+"Go on," Shorty said.  "I ain't seen the joke yet."
+
+"In short, Shorty, you staked our two claims on a big horseshoe bend."
+
+Shorty set the gold pan down in the snow and stood up.
+
+"Go on," he repeated.
+
+"The upper stake of twenty-eight is ten feet below the lower stake of
+twenty-seven."
+
+"You mean we ain't got nothin', Smoke?"
+
+"Worse than that; we've got ten feet less than nothing."
+
+Shorty departed down the bank on the run.  Five minutes later he
+returned.  In response to Joy's look, he nodded.  Without speech, he
+went over to a log and sat down to gaze steadily at the snow in front
+of his moccasins.
+
+"We might as well break camp and start back for Dawson," Smoke said,
+beginning to fold the blankets.
+
+"I am sorry, Smoke," Joy said.  "It's all my fault."
+
+"It's all right," he answered.  "All in the day's work, you know."
+
+"But it's my fault, wholly mine," she persisted.  "Dad's staked for me
+down near Discovery, I know.  I'll give you my claim."
+
+He shook his head.
+
+"Shorty," she pleaded.
+
+Shorty shook his head and began to laugh.  It was a colossal laugh.
+Chuckles and muffled explosions yielded to hearty roars.
+
+"It ain't hysterics," he explained, "I sure get powerful amused at
+times, an' this is one of them."
+
+His gaze chanced to fall on the gold pan.  He walked over and gravely
+kicked it, scattering the gold over the landscape.
+
+"It ain't ourn," he said.  "It belongs to the geezer I backed up five
+hundred feet last night.  An' what gets me is four hundred an' ninety
+of them feet was to the good . . . his good.  Come on, Smoke. Let's
+start the hike to Dawson.  Though if you're hankerin' to kill me I
+won't lift a finger to prevent."
+
+
+
+
+SHORTY DREAMS.
+
+
+
+
+I.
+
+"Funny you don't gamble none," Shorty said to Smoke one night in the
+Elkhorn.  "Ain't it in your blood?"
+
+"It is," Smoke answered.  "But the statistics are in my head.  I like
+an even break for my money."
+
+All about them, in the huge bar-room, arose the click and rattle and
+rumble of a dozen games, at which fur-clad, moccasined men tried their
+luck.  Smoke waved his hand to include them all.
+
+"Look at them," he said.  "It's cold mathematics that they will lose
+more than they win to-night, that the big proportion is losing right
+now."
+
+"You're sure strong on figgers," Shorty murmured admiringly.  "An' in
+the main you're right.  But they's such a thing as facts.  An' one fact
+is streaks of luck.  They's times when every geezer playin' wins, as I
+know, for I've sat in in such games an' saw more'n one bank busted.
+The only way to win at gamblin' is wait for a hunch that you've got a
+lucky streak comin' and then to play it to the roof."
+
+"It sounds simple," Smoke criticized.  "So simple I can't see how men
+can lose."
+
+"The trouble is," Shorty admitted, "that most men gets fooled on their
+hunches.  On occasion I sure get fooled on mine.  The thing is to try,
+an' find out."
+
+Smoke shook his head.
+
+"That's a statistic, too, Shorty.  Most men prove wrong on their
+hunches."
+
+"But don't you ever get one of them streaky feelin's that all you got
+to do is put your money down an' pick a winner?"
+
+Smoke laughed.
+
+"I'm too scared of the percentage against me.  But I'll tell you what,
+Shorty.  I'll throw a dollar on the 'high card' right now and see if it
+will buy us a drink."
+
+Smoke was edging his way in to the faro table, when Shorty caught his
+arm.
+
+"Hold on.  I'm gettin' one of them hunches now.  You put that dollar on
+roulette."
+
+They went over to a roulette table near the bar.
+
+"Wait till I give the word," Shorty counselled.
+
+"What number?" Smoke asked.
+
+"Pick it yourself.  But wait till I say let her go."
+
+"You don't mean to say I've got an even chance on that table?" Smoke
+argued.
+
+"As good as the next geezers."
+
+"But not as good as the bank's."
+
+"Wait and see," Shorty urged.  "Now!  Let her go!"
+
+The game-keeper had just sent the little ivory ball whirling around the
+smooth rim above the revolving, many-slotted wheel.  Smoke, at the
+lower end of the table, reached over a player, and blindly tossed the
+dollar.  It slid along the smooth, green cloth and stopped fairly in
+the centre of '34.'
+
+The ball came to rest, and the game-keeper announced, "Thirty-four
+wins!"  He swept the table, and alongside of Smoke's dollar, stacked
+thirty-five dollars.  Smoke drew the money in, and Shorty slapped him
+on the shoulder.
+
+"Now, that was the real goods of a hunch, Smoke!  How'd I know it?
+There's no tellin'.  I just knew you'd win.  Why, if that dollar of
+yourn'd fell on any other number it'd won just the same.  When the
+hunch is right, you just can't help winnin'."
+
+"Suppose it had come 'double nought'?" Smoke queried, as they made
+their way to the bar.
+
+"Then your dollar'd ben on 'double nought,'" was Shorty's answer.
+"They's no gettin' away from it.  A hunch is a hunch.  Here's how. Come
+on back to the table.  I got a hunch, after pickin' you for a winner,
+that I can pick some few numbers myself."
+
+"Are you playing a system?" Smoke asked, at the end of ten minutes,
+when his partner had dropped a hundred dollars.
+
+Shorty shook his head indignantly, as he spread his chips out in the
+vicinities of '3,' '11,' and '17,' and tossed a spare chip on the
+'green.'
+
+"Hell is sure cluttered with geezers that played systems," he
+exposited, as the keeper raked the table.
+
+From idly watching, Smoke became fascinated, following closely every
+detail of the game from the whirling of the ball to the making and the
+paying of the bets.  He made no plays, however, merely contenting
+himself with looking on.  Yet so interested was he, that Shorty,
+announcing that he had had enough, with difficulty drew Smoke away from
+the table.  The game-keeper returned Shorty the gold sack he had
+deposited as a credential for playing, and with it went a slip of paper
+on which was scribbled, "Out . . . 350 dollars." Shorty carried the
+sack and the paper across the room and handed them to the weigher, who
+sat behind a large pair of gold-scales. Out of Shorty's sack he weighed
+350 dollars, which he poured into the coffer of the house.
+
+"That hunch of yours was another one of those statistics," Smoke jeered.
+
+"I had to play it, didn't I, in order to find out?" Shorty retorted. "I
+reckon I was crowdin' some just on account of tryin' to convince you
+they's such a thing as hunches."
+
+"Never mind, Shorty," Smoke laughed. "I've got a hunch right now--"
+
+Shorty's eyes sparkled as he cried eagerly:  "What is it?  Kick in an'
+play it pronto."
+
+"It's not that kind, Shorty.  Now, what I've got is a hunch that some
+day I'll work out a system that will beat the spots off that table."
+
+"System!" Shorty groaned, then surveyed his partner with a vast pity.
+"Smoke, listen to your side-kicker an' leave system alone. Systems is
+sure losers.  They ain't no hunches in systems."
+
+"That's why I like them," Smoke answered.  "A system is statistical.
+When you get the right system you can't lose, and that's the difference
+between it and a hunch.  You never know when the right hunch is going
+wrong."
+
+"But I know a lot of systems that went wrong, an' I never seen a system
+win."  Shorty paused and sighed.  "Look here, Smoke, if you're gettin'
+cracked on systems this ain't no place for you, an' it's about time we
+hit the trail again."
+
+
+
+II.
+
+During the several following weeks, the two partners played at cross
+purposes.  Smoke was bent on spending his time watching the roulette
+game in the Elkhorn, while Shorty was equally bent on travelling trail.
+At last Smoke put his foot down when a stampede was proposed for two
+hundred miles down the Yukon.
+
+"Look here, Shorty," he said, "I'm not going.  That trip will take ten
+days, and before that time I hope to have my system in proper working
+order.  I could almost win with it now.  What are you dragging me
+around the country this way for anyway?"
+
+"Smoke, I got to take care of you," was Shorty's reply.  "You're
+getting nutty.  I'd drag you stampedin' to Jericho or the North Pole if
+I could keep you away from that table."
+
+"It's all right, Shorty.  But just remember I've reached full
+man-grown, meat-eating size.  The only dragging you'll do, will be
+dragging home the dust I'm going to win with that system of mine, and
+you'll most likely have to do it with a dog-team."
+
+Shorty's response was a groan.
+
+"And I don't want you to be bucking any games on your own," Smoke went
+on.  "We're going to divide the winnings, and I'll need all our money
+to get started.  That system's young yet, and it's liable to trip me
+for a few falls before I get it lined up."
+
+
+
+III.
+
+At last, after long hours and days spent at watching the table, the
+night came when Smoke proclaimed he was ready, and Shorty, glum and
+pessimistic, with all the seeming of one attending a funeral,
+accompanied his partner to the Elkhorn.  Smoke bought a stack of chips
+and stationed himself at the game-keeper's end of the table. Again and
+again the ball was whirled and the other players won or lost, but Smoke
+did not venture a chip.  Shorty waxed impatient.
+
+"Buck in, buck in," he urged.  "Let's get this funeral over.  What's
+the matter?  Got cold feet?"
+
+Smoke shook his head and waited.  A dozen plays went by, and then,
+suddenly, he placed ten one-dollar chips on '26.'  The number won, and
+the keeper paid Smoke three hundred and fifty dollars.  A dozen plays
+went by, twenty plays, and thirty, when Smoke placed ten dollars on
+'32.'  Again he received three hundred and fifty dollars.
+
+"It's a hunch."  Shorty whispered vociferously in his ear.  "Ride it!
+Ride it!"
+
+Half an hour went by, during which Smoke was inactive, then he placed
+ten dollars on '34' and won.
+
+"A hunch!" Shorty whispered.
+
+"Nothing of the sort," Smoke whispered back.  "It's the system. Isn't
+she a dandy?"
+
+"You can't tell me," Shorty contended.  "Hunches comes in mighty funny
+ways.  You might think it's a system, but it ain't.  Systems is
+impossible.  They can't happen.  It's a sure hunch you're playin'."
+
+Smoke now altered his play.  He bet more frequently, with single chips,
+scattered here and there, and he lost more often than he won.
+
+"Quit it," Shorty advised.  "Cash in.  You've rung the bull's eye three
+times, an' you're ahead a thousand.  You can't keep it up."
+
+At this moment the ball started whirling, and Smoke dropped ten chips
+on '26.'  The ball fell into the slot of '26,' and the keeper again
+paid him three hundred and fifty dollars.  "If you're plum crazy an'
+got the immortal cinch, bet'm the limit," Shorty said. "Put down
+twenty-five next time."
+
+A quarter of an hour passed, during which Smoke won and lost on small
+scattering bets.  Then, with the abruptness that characterized his big
+betting, he placed twenty-five dollars on the 'double nought,' and the
+keeper paid him eight hundred and seventy-five dollars.
+
+"Wake me up, Smoke, I'm dreamin'," Shorty moaned.
+
+Smoke smiled, consulted his note-book, and became absorbed in
+calculation.  He continually drew the note-book from his pocket, and
+from time to time jotted down figures.
+
+A crowd had packed densely around the table, while the players
+themselves were attempting to cover the same numbers he covered.  It
+was then that a change came over his play.  Ten times in succession he
+placed ten dollars on '18' and lost.  At this stage he was deserted by
+the hardiest.  He changed his number and won another three hundred and
+fifty dollars.  Immediately the players were back with him, deserting
+again after a series of losing bets.
+
+"Quit it, Smoke, quit it," Shorty advised.  "The longest string of
+hunches is only so long, an' your string's finished.  No more
+bull's-eyes for you."
+
+"I'm going to ring her once again before I cash in," Smoke answered.
+
+For a few minutes, with varying luck, he played scattering chips over
+the table, and then dropped twenty-five dollars on the 'double nought.'
+
+"I'll take my slip now," he said to the dealer, as he won.
+
+"Oh, you don't need to show it to me," Shorty said, as they walked to
+the weigher.  "I ben keepin' track.  You're something like thirty-six
+hundred to the good.  How near am I?"
+
+"Thirty-six-thirty," Smoke replied.  "And now you've got to pack the
+dust home.  That was the agreement."
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+"Don't crowd your luck," Shorty pleaded with Smoke, the next night, in
+the cabin, as he evidenced preparations to return to the Elkhorn. "You
+played a mighty long string of hunches, but you played it out. If you
+go back you'll sure drop all your winnings."
+
+"But I tell you it isn't hunches, Shorty.  It's statistics.  It's a
+system.  It can't lose."
+
+"System be damned.  They ain't no such a thing as system.  I made
+seventeen straight passes at a crap table once.  Was it system? Nope.
+It was fool luck, only I had cold feet an' didn't dast let it ride.  It
+it'd rid, instead of me drawin' down after the third pass, I'd a won
+over thirty thousan' on the original two-bit piece."
+
+"Just the same, Shorty, this is a real system."
+
+"Huh!  You got to show me."
+
+"I did show you.  Come on with me now and I'll show you again."
+
+When they entered the Elkhorn, all eyes centred on Smoke, and those
+about the table made way for him as he took up his old place at the
+keeper's end.  His play was quite unlike that of the previous night. In
+the course of an hour and a half he made only four bets, but each bet
+was for twenty-five dollars, and each bet won.  He cashed in
+thirty-five hundred dollars, and Shorty carried the dust home to the
+cabin.
+
+"Now's the time to jump the game," Shorty advised, as he sat on the
+edge of his bunk and took off his moccasins.  "You're seven thousan'
+ahead.  A man's a fool that'd crowd his luck harder."
+
+"Shorty, a man would be a blithering lunatic if he didn't keep on
+backing a winning system like mine."
+
+"Smoke, you're a sure bright boy.  You're college-learnt.  You know
+more'n a minute than I could know in forty thousan' years.  But just
+the same you're dead wrong when you call your luck a system.  I've ben
+around some, an' seen a few, an' I tell you straight an' confidential
+an' all-assurin', a system to beat a bankin' game ain't possible."
+
+"But I'm showing you this one.  It's a pipe."
+
+"No, you're not, Smoke.  It's a pipe-dream.  I'm asleep.  Bime by I'll
+wake up, an' build the fire, an' start breakfast."
+
+"Well, my unbelieving friend, there's the dust.  Heft it."
+
+So saying, Smoke tossed the bulging gold-sack upon his partner's knees.
+It weighed thirty-five pounds, and Shorty was fully aware of the crush
+of its impact on his flesh.
+
+"It's real," Smoke hammered his point home.
+
+"Huh!  I've saw some mighty real dreams in my time.  In a dream all
+things is possible.  In real life a system ain't possible.  Now, I
+ain't never ben to college, but I'm plum justified in sizin' up this
+gamblin' orgy of ourn as a sure enough dream."
+
+"Hamilton's 'Law of Parsimony,'" Smoke laughed.
+
+"I ain't never heard of the geezer, but his dope's sure right.  I'm
+dreamin', Smoke, an' you're just snoopin' around in my dream an'
+tormentin' me with system.  If you love me, if you sure do love me,
+you'll just yell, 'Shorty!  Wake up!'  An' I'll wake up an' start
+breakfast."
+
+
+
+V.
+
+The third night of play, as Smoke laid his first bet, the game-keeper
+shoved fifteen dollars back to him.
+
+"Ten's all you can play," he said.  "The limit's come down."
+
+"Gettin' picayune," Shorty sneered.
+
+"No one has to play at this table that don't want to," the keeper
+retorted.  "And I'm willing to say straight out in meeting that we'd
+sooner your pardner didn't play at our table."
+
+"Scared of his system, eh?" Shorty challenged, as the keeper paid over
+three hundred and fifty dollars.
+
+"I ain't saying I believe in system, because I don't.  There never was
+a system that'd beat roulette or any percentage game.  But just the
+same I've seen some queer strings of luck, and I ain't going to let
+this bank go bust if I can help it."
+
+"Cold feet."
+
+"Gambling is just as much business, my friend, as any other business.
+We ain't philanthropists."
+
+Night by night, Smoke continued to win.  His method of play varied.
+Expert after expert, in the jam about the table, scribbled down his
+bets and numbers in vain attempts to work out his system.  They
+complained of their inability to get a clew to start with, and swore
+that it was pure luck, though the most colossal streak of it they had
+ever seen.
+
+It was Smoke's varied play that obfuscated them.  Sometimes, consulting
+his note-book or engaging in long calculations, an hour elapsed without
+his staking a chip.  At other times he would win three limit-bets and
+clean up a thousand dollars and odd in five or ten minutes.  At still
+other times, his tactics would be to scatter single chips prodigally
+and amazingly over the table.  This would continue for from ten to
+thirty minutes of play, when, abruptly, as the ball whirled through the
+last few of its circles, he would play the limit on column, colour, and
+number, and win all three.  Once, to complete confusion in the minds of
+those that strove to divine his secret, he lost forty straight bets,
+each at the limit.  But each night, play no matter how diversely,
+Shorty carried home thirty-five hundred dollars for him.
+
+"It ain't no system," Shorty expounded at one of their bed-going
+discussions.  "I follow you, an' follow you, but they ain't no
+figgerin' it out.  You never play twice the same.  All you do is pick
+winners when you want to, an' when you don't want to, you just on
+purpose don't."
+
+"Maybe you're nearer right than you think, Shorty.  I've just got to
+pick losers sometimes.  It's part of the system."
+
+"System--hell!  I've talked with every gambler in town, an' the last
+one is agreed they ain't no such thing as system."
+
+"Yet I'm showing them one all the time."
+
+"Look here, Smoke."  Shorty paused over the candle, in the act of
+blowing it out.  "I'm real irritated.  Maybe you think this is a
+candle.  It ain't.  An' this ain't me neither.  I'm out on trail
+somewheres, in my blankets, lyin' on my back with my mouth open, an'
+dreamin' all this.  That ain't you talkin', any more than this candle
+is a candle."
+
+"It's funny, how I happen to be dreaming along with you then," Smoke
+persisted.
+
+"No, it ain't.  You're part of my dream, that's all.  I've hearn many a
+man talk in my dreams.  I want to tell you one thing, Smoke. I'm
+gettin' mangy an' mad.  If this here dream keeps up much more I'm goin'
+to bite my veins an' howl."
+
+
+
+VI.
+
+On the sixth night of play at the Elkhorn, the limit was reduced to
+five dollars.
+
+"It's all right," Smoke assured the game-keeper.  "I want thirty-five
+hundred to-night, as usual, and you only compel me to play longer.
+I've got to pick twice as many winners, that's all."
+
+"Why don't you buck somebody else's table?" the keeper demanded
+wrathfully.
+
+"Because I like this one." Smoke glanced over to the roaring stove only
+a few feet away.  "Besides, there are no draughts here, and it is warm
+and comfortable."
+
+On the ninth night, when Shorty had carried the dust home, he had a fit.
+
+"I quit, Smoke, I quit," he began.  "I know when I got enough.  I ain't
+dreamin'.  I'm wide awake.  A system can't be, but you got one just the
+same.  There's nothin' in the rule o' three.  The almanac's clean out.
+The world's gone smash.  There's nothin' regular an' uniform no more.
+The multiplication table's gone loco.  Two is eight, nine is eleven,
+and two-times-six is eight hundred an' forty-six--an'--an' a half.
+Anything is everything, an' nothing's all, an' twice all is cold cream,
+milk-shakes, an' calico horses.  You've got a system.  Figgers beat the
+figgerin'.  What ain't is, an' what isn't has to be.  The sun rises in
+the west, the moon's a paystreak, the stars is canned corn-beef,
+scurvy's the blessin' of God, him that dies kicks again, rocks floats,
+water's gas, I ain't me, you're somebody else, an' mebbe we're twins if
+we ain't hashed-brown potatoes fried in verdigris.  Wake me up!
+Somebody!  Oh!  Wake me up!"
+
+
+
+VII.
+
+The next morning a visitor came to the cabin.  Smoke knew him, Harvey
+Moran, the owner of all the games in the Tivoli.  There was a note of
+appeal in his deep gruff voice as he plunged into his business.
+
+"It's like this, Smoke," he began.  "You've got us all guessing. I'm
+representing nine other game-owners and myself from all the saloons in
+town.  We don't understand.  We know that no system ever worked against
+roulette.  All the mathematic sharps in the colleges have told us
+gamblers the same thing.  They say that roulette itself is the system,
+the one and only system, and, therefore, that no system can beat it,
+for that would mean arithmetic has gone bug-house."
+
+Shorty nodded his head violently.
+
+"If a system can beat a system, then there's no such thing as system,"
+the gambler went on.  "In such a case anything could be possible--a
+thing could be in two different places at once, or two things could be
+in the same place that's only large enough for one at the same time."
+
+"Well, you've seen me play," Smoke answered defiantly; "and if you
+think it's only a string of luck on my part, why worry?"
+
+"That's the trouble.  We can't help worrying.  It's a system you've
+got, and all the time we know it can't be.  I've watched you five
+nights now, and all I can make out is that you favour certain numbers
+and keep on winning.  Now the ten of us game-owners have got together,
+and we want to make a friendly proposition.  We'll put a roulette table
+in a back room of the Elkhorn, pool the bank against you, and have you
+buck us.  It will be all quiet and private.  Just you and Shorty and
+us.  What do you say?"
+
+"I think it's the other way around," Smoke answered.  "It's up to you
+to come and see me.  I'll be playing in the bar-room of the Elkhorn
+to-night.  You can watch me there just as well."
+
+
+
+VIII.
+
+That night, when Smoke took up his customary place at the table, the
+keeper shut down the game.
+
+"The game's closed," he said.  "Boss's orders."
+
+But the assembled game-owners were not to be balked.  In a few minutes
+they arranged a pool, each putting in a thousand, and took over the
+table.
+
+"Come on and buck us," Harvey Moran challenged, as the keeper sent the
+ball on its first whirl around.
+
+"Give me the twenty-five limit," Smoke suggested.
+
+"Sure; go to it."
+
+Smoke immediately placed twenty-five chips on the 'double nought,' and
+won.
+
+Moran wiped the sweat from his forehead.
+
+"Go on," he said.  "We got ten thousand in this bank."
+
+At the end of an hour and a half, the ten thousand was Smoke's.
+
+"The bank's bust," the keeper announced.
+
+"Got enough?" Smoke asked.
+
+The game-owners looked at one another.  They were awed.  They, the
+fatted proteges of the laws of chance, were undone.  They were up
+against one who had more intimate access to those laws, or who had
+invoked higher and undreamed laws.
+
+"We quit," Moran said.  "Ain't that right, Burke?"
+
+Big Burke, who owned the games in the M. and G. Saloon, nodded.
+
+"The impossible has happened," he said.  "This Smoke here has got a
+system all right.  If we let him go on we'll all bust.  All I can see,
+if we're goin' to keep our tables running, is to cut down the limit to
+a dollar, or to ten cents, or a cent.  He won't win much in a night
+with such stakes."
+
+All looked at Smoke.  He shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"In that case, gentlemen, I'll have to hire a gang of men to play at
+all your tables.  I can pay them ten dollars for a four-hour shift and
+make money."
+
+"Then we'll shut down our tables," Big Burke replied.  "Unless--" He
+hesitated and ran his eye over his fellows to see that they were with
+him.  "Unless you're willing to talk business.  What will you sell the
+system for?"
+
+"Thirty thousand dollars," Smoke answered.  "That's a tax of three
+thousand apiece."
+
+They debated and nodded.
+
+"And you'll tell us your system?"
+
+"Surely."
+
+"And you'll promise not to play roulette in Dawson ever again?"
+
+"No, sir," Smoke said positively.  "I'll promise not to play this
+system again."
+
+"My God!" Moran exploded.  "You haven't got other systems, have you?"
+
+"Hold on!" Shorty cried.  "I want to talk to my pardner.  Come over
+here, Smoke, on the side."
+
+Smoke followed into a quiet corner of the room, while hundreds of
+curious eyes centred on him and Shorty.
+
+"Look here, Smoke," Shorty whispered hoarsely.  "Mebbe it ain't a
+dream.  In which case you're sellin' out almighty cheap.  You've sure
+got the world by the slack of its pants.  They's millions in it.  Shake
+it!  Shake it hard!"
+
+"But if it's a dream?" Smoke queried softly.
+
+"Then, for the sake of the dream an' the love of Mike, stick them
+gamblers up good and plenty.  What's the good of dreamin' if you can't
+dream to the real right, dead sure, eternal finish?"
+
+"Fortunately, this isn't a dream, Shorty."
+
+"Then if you sell out for thirty thousan', I'll never forgive you."
+
+"When I sell out for thirty thousand, you'll fall on my neck an' wake
+up to find out that you haven't been dreaming at all.  This is no
+dream, Shorty.  In about two minutes you'll see you have been wide
+awake all the time.  Let me tell you that when I sell out it's because
+I've got to sell out."
+
+Back at the table, Smoke informed the game-owners that his offer still
+held.  They proffered him their paper to the extent of three thousand
+each.
+
+"Hold out for the dust," Shorty cautioned.
+
+"I was about to intimate that I'd take the money weighed out," Smoke
+said.
+
+The owner of the Elkhorn cashed their paper, and Shorty took possession
+of the gold-dust.
+
+"Now, I don't want to wake up," he chortled, as he hefted the various
+sacks.  "Toted up, it's a seventy thousan' dream.  It's be too blamed
+expensive to open my eyes, roll out of the blankets, an' start
+breakfast."
+
+"What's your system?" Big Burke demanded.  "We've paid for it, and we
+want it."
+
+Smoke led the way to the table.
+
+"Now, gentlemen, bear with me a moment.  This isn't an ordinary system.
+It can scarcely be called legitimate, but its one great virtue is that
+it works.  I've got my suspicious, but I'm not saying anything.  You
+watch.  Mr Keeper, be ready with the ball.  Wait, I am going to pick
+'26.'  Consider I've bet on it.  Be ready, Mr Keeper--Now!"
+
+The ball whirled around.
+
+"You observe," Smoke went on, "that '9' was directly opposite."
+
+The ball finished in '26.'
+
+Big Burke swore deep in his chest, and all waited.
+
+"For 'double nought' to win, '11' must be opposite.  Try it yourself
+and see."
+
+"But the system?" Moran demanded impatiently.  "We know you can pick
+winning numbers, and we know what those numbers are; but how do you do
+it?"
+
+"By observed sequences.  By accident I chanced twice to notice the ball
+whirled when '9' was opposite.  Both times '26' won.  After that I saw
+it happen again.  Then I looked for other sequences, and found them.
+'Double nought' opposite fetches '32,' and '11' fetches 'double
+nought.'  It doesn't always happen, but it USUALLY happens. You notice,
+I say 'usually.'  As I said before, I have my suspicions, but I'm not
+saying anything."
+
+Big Burke, with a sudden dawn of comprehension reached over, stopped
+the wheel, and examined it carefully.  The heads of the nine other
+game-owners bent over and joined in the examination.  Big Burke
+straightened up and cast a glance at the near-by stove.
+
+"Hell," he said.  "It wasn't any system at all.  The table stood close
+to the fire, and the blamed wheel's warped.  And we've been worked to a
+frazzle.  No wonder he liked this table.  He couldn't have bucked for
+sour apples at any other table."
+
+Harvey Moran gave a great sigh of relief and wiped his forehead.
+
+"Well, anyway," he said, "it's cheap at the price just to find out that
+it wasn't a system."  His face began to work, and then he broke into
+laughter and slapped Smoke on the shoulder.  "Smoke, you had us going
+for a while, and we patting ourselves on the back because you were
+letting our tables alone!  Say, I've got some real fizz I'll open if
+all you'll come over to the Tivoli with me."
+
+Later, back in the cabin, Shorty silently overhauled and hefted the
+various bulging gold-sacks.  He finally piled them on the table, sat
+down on the edge of his bunk, and began taking off his moccasins.
+
+"Seventy thousan'," he calculated.  "It weighs three hundred and fifty
+pounds.  And all out of a warped wheel an' a quick eye. Smoke, you
+eat'm raw, you eat'm alive, you work under water, you've given me the
+jim-jams; but just the same I know it's a dream.  It's only in dreams
+that the good things comes true.  I'm almighty unanxious to wake up.  I
+hope I never wake up."
+
+"Cheer up," Smoke answered.  "You won't.  There are a lot of philosophy
+sharps that think men are sleep-walkers.  You're in good company."
+
+Shorty got up, went to the table, selected the heaviest sack, and
+cuddled it in his arms as if it were a baby.
+
+"I may be sleep-walkin'," he said, "but as you say, I'm sure in mighty
+good company."
+
+
+
+
+THE MAN ON THE OTHER BANK.
+
+
+
+
+I.
+
+It was before Smoke Bellew staked the farcical town-site of Tra-Lee,
+made the historic corner of eggs that nearly broke Swiftwater Bill's
+bank account, or won the dog-team race down the Yukon for an even
+million dollars, that he and Shorty parted company on the Upper
+Klondike.  Shorty's task was to return down the Klondike to Dawson to
+record some claims they had staked.
+
+Smoke, with the dog-team, turned south.  His quest was Surprise Lake
+and the mythical Two Cabins.  His traverse was to cut the headwaters of
+the Indian River and cross the unknown region over the mountains to the
+Stewart River.  Here, somewhere, rumour persisted, was Surprise Lake,
+surrounded by jagged mountains and glaciers, its bottom paved with raw
+gold.  Old-timers, it was said, whose very names were forgotten in the
+forests of earlier years, had dived in the ice-waters of Surprise Lake
+and fetched lump-gold to the surface in both hands.  At different
+times, parties of old-timers had penetrated the forbidding fastness and
+sampled the lake's golden bottom.  But the water was too cold.  Some
+died in the water, being pulled up dead.  Others died of consumption.
+And one who had gone down never did come up.  All survivors had planned
+to return and drain the lake, yet none had ever gone back.  Disaster
+always happened.  One man fell into an air-hole below Forty Mile;
+another was killed and eaten by his dogs; a third was crushed by a
+falling tree.  And so the tale ran.  Surprise Lake was a hoodoo; its
+location was unremembered; and the gold still paved its undrained
+bottom.
+
+Two Cabins, no less mythical, was more definitely located.  'Five
+sleeps,' up the McQuestion River from the Stewart, stood two ancient
+cabins.  So ancient were they that they must have been built before
+ever the first known gold-hunter had entered the Yukon Basin. Wandering
+moose-hunters, whom even Smoke had met and talked with, claimed to have
+found the two cabins in the old days, but to have sought vainly for the
+mine which those early adventurers must have worked.
+
+"I wish you was goin' with me," Shorty said wistfully, at parting.
+"Just because you got the Indian bug ain't no reason for to go pokin'
+into trouble.  They's no gettin' away from it, that's loco country
+you're bound for.  The hoodoo's sure on it, from the first flip to the
+last call, judgin' from all you an' me has hearn tell about it."
+
+"It's all right, Shorty.  I'll make the round trip and be back in
+Dawson in six weeks.  The Yukon trail is packed, and the first hundred
+miles or so of the Stewart ought to be packed.  Old-timers from
+Henderson have told me a number of outfits went up last fall after the
+freeze-up.  When I strike their trail I ought to hit her up forty or
+fifty miles a day.  I'm likely to be back inside a month, once I get
+across."
+
+"Yes, once you get acrost.  But it's the gettin' acrost that worries
+me.  Well, so long, Smoke.  Keep your eyes open for that hoodoo, that's
+all.  An' don't be ashamed to turn back if you don't kill any meat."
+
+
+
+II.
+
+A week later, Smoke found himself among the jumbled ranges south of
+Indian River.  On the divide from the Klondike he had abandoned the
+sled and packed his wolf-dogs.  The six big huskies each carried fifty
+pounds, and on his own back was an equal burden.  Through the soft snow
+he led the way, packing it down under his snow-shoes, and behind, in
+single file, toiled the dogs.
+
+He loved the life, the deep arctic winter, the silent wilderness, the
+unending snow-surface unpressed by the foot of any man.  About him
+towered icy peaks unnamed and uncharted.  No hunter's camp-smoke,
+rising in the still air of the valleys, ever caught his eye. He, alone,
+moved through the brooding quiet of the untravelled wastes; nor was he
+oppressed by the solitude.  He loved it all, the day's toil, the
+bickering wolf-dogs, the making of the camp in the long twilight, the
+leaping stars overhead and the flaming pageant of the aurora borealis.
+
+Especially he loved his camp at the end of the day, and in it he saw a
+picture which he ever yearned to paint and which he knew he would never
+forget--a beaten place in the snow, where burned his fire; his bed, a
+couple of rabbit-skin robes spread on fresh-chopped spruce-boughs; his
+shelter, a stretched strip of canvas that caught and threw back the
+heat of the fire; the blackened coffee-pot and pail resting on a length
+of log, the moccasins propped on sticks to dry, the snow-shoes up-ended
+in the snow; and across the fire the wolf-dogs snuggling to it for the
+warmth, wistful and eager, furry and frost-rimed, with bushy tails
+curled protectingly over their feet; and all about, pressed backward
+but a space, the wall of encircling darkness.
+
+At such times San Francisco, The Billow, and O'Hara seemed very far
+away, lost in a remote past, shadows of dreams that had never happened.
+He found it hard to believe that he had known any other life than this
+of the wild, and harder still was it for him to reconcile himself to
+the fact that he had once dabbled and dawdled in the Bohemian drift of
+city life.  Alone, with no one to talk to, he thought much, and deeply,
+and simply.  He was appalled by the wastage of his city years, by the
+cheapness, now, of the philosophies of the schools and books, of the
+clever cynicism of the studio and editorial room, of the cant of the
+business men in their clubs.  They knew neither food nor sleep, nor
+health; nor could they ever possibly know the sting of real appetite,
+the goodly ache of fatigue, nor the rush of mad strong blood that bit
+like wine through all one's body as work was done.
+
+And all the time this fine, wise, Spartan North Land had been here, and
+he had never known.  What puzzled him was, that, with such intrinsic
+fitness, he had never heard the slightest calling whisper, had not
+himself gone forth to seek.  But this, too, he solved in time.
+
+"Look here, Yellow-face, I've got it clear!"
+
+The dog addressed lifted first one fore-foot and then the other with
+quick, appeasing movements, curled his bush of a tail about them again,
+and laughed across the fire.
+
+"Herbert Spencer was nearly forty before he caught the vision of his
+greatest efficiency and desire.  I'm none so slow.  I didn't have to
+wait till I was thirty to catch mine.  Right here is my efficiency and
+desire.  Almost, Yellow Face, do I wish I had been born a wolf-boy and
+been brother all my days to you and yours."
+
+For days he wandered through a chaos of canyons and divides which did
+not yield themselves to any rational topographical plan.  It was as if
+they had been flung there by some cosmic joker.  In vain he sought for
+a creek or feeder that flowed truly south toward the McQuestion and the
+Stewart.  Then came a mountain storm that blew a blizzard across the
+riff-raff of high and shallow divides.  Above timber-line, fireless,
+for two days, he struggled blindly to find lower levels.  On the second
+day he came out upon the rim of an enormous palisade.  So thickly drove
+the snow that he could not see the base of the wall, nor dared he
+attempt the descent.  He rolled himself in his robes and huddled the
+dogs about him in the depths of a snow-drift, but did not permit
+himself to sleep.
+
+In the morning, the storm spent, he crawled out to investigate.  A
+quarter of a mile beneath him, beyond all mistake, lay a frozen,
+snow-covered lake.  About it, on every side, rose jagged peaks.  It
+answered the description.  Blindly, he had found Surprise Lake.
+
+"Well-named," he muttered, an hour later, as he came out upon its
+margin.  A clump of aged spruce was the only woods.  On his way to it,
+he stumbled upon three graves, snow-buried, but marked by hand-hewn
+head-posts and undecipherable writing.  On the edge of the woods was a
+small ramshackle cabin.  He pulled the latch and entered.  In a corner,
+on what had once been a bed of spruce-boughs, still wrapped in mangy
+furs, that had rotted to fragments, lay a skeleton.  The last visitor
+to Surprise Lake, was Smoke's conclusion, as he picked up a lump of
+gold as large as his doubled fist.  Beside the lump was a pepper-can
+filled with nuggets of the size of walnuts, rough-surfaced, showing no
+signs of wash.
+
+So true had the tale run, that Smoke accepted without question that the
+source of the gold was the lake's bottom.  Under many feet of ice and
+inaccessible, there was nothing to be done, and at mid-day, from the
+rim of the palisade, he took a farewell look back and down at his find.
+
+"It's all right, Mr Lake," he said.  "You just keep right on staying
+there.  I'm coming back to drain you--if that hoodoo doesn't catch me.
+I don't know how I got here, but I'll know by the way I go out."
+
+
+
+III.
+
+In a little valley, beside a frozen stream and under beneficent spruce
+trees, he built a fire four days later.  Somewhere in that white
+anarchy he left behind him, was Surprise Lake--somewhere, he knew not
+where; for a hundred hours of driftage and struggle through blinding
+driving snow, had concealed his course from him, and he knew not in
+what direction lay BEHIND.  It was as if he had just emerged from a
+nightmare.  He was not sure that four days or a week had passed.  He
+had slept with the dogs, fought across a forgotten number of shallow
+divides, followed the windings of weird canyons that ended in pockets,
+and twice had managed to make a fire and thaw out frozen moose-meat.
+And here he was, well-fed and well-camped. The storm had passed, and it
+had turned clear and cold.  The lay of the land had again become
+rational.  The creek he was on was natural in appearance, and trended
+as it should toward the southwest.  But Surprise Lake was as lost to
+him as it had been to all its seekers in the past.
+
+Half a day's journey down the creek brought him to the valley of a
+larger stream which he decided was the McQuestion.  Here he shot a
+moose, and once again each wolf-dog carried a full fifty-pound pack of
+meat.  As he turned down the McQuestion, he came upon a sled-trail.
+The late snows had drifted over, but underneath, it was well-packed by
+travel.  His conclusion was that two camps had been established on the
+McQuestion, and that this was the connecting trail.  Evidently, Two
+Cabins had been found and it was the lower camp, so he headed down the
+stream.
+
+It was forty below zero when he camped that night, and he fell asleep
+wondering who were the men who had rediscovered the Two Cabins, and if
+he would fetch it next day.  At the first hint of dawn he was under
+way, easily following the half-obliterated trail and packing the recent
+snow with his webbed shoes so that the dogs should not wallow.
+
+And then it came, the unexpected, leaping out upon him on a bend of the
+river.  It seemed to him that he heard and felt simultaneously. The
+crack of the rifle came from the right, and the bullet, tearing through
+and across the shoulders of his drill parka and woollen coat, pivoted
+him half around with the shock of its impact.  He staggered on his
+twisted snow-shoes to recover balance, and heard a second crack of the
+rifle.  This time it was a clean miss.  He did not wait for more, but
+plunged across the snow for the sheltering trees of the bank a hundred
+feet away.  Again and again the rifle cracked, and he was unpleasantly
+aware of a trickle of warm moisture down his back.
+
+He climbed the bank, the dogs floundering behind, and dodged in among
+the trees and brush.  Slipping out of his snow-shoes, he wallowed
+forward at full length and peered cautiously out.  Nothing was to be
+seen.  Whoever had shot at him was lying quiet among the trees of the
+opposite bank.
+
+"If something doesn't happen pretty soon," he muttered at the end of
+half an hour, "I'll have to sneak away and build a fire or freeze my
+feet.  Yellow Face, what'd you do, lying in the frost with circulation
+getting slack and a man trying to plug you?"
+
+He crawled back a few yards, packed down the snow, danced a jig that
+sent the blood back into his feet, and managed to endure another half
+hour.  Then, from down the river, he heard the unmistakable jingle of
+dog-bells.  Peering out, he saw a sled round the bend. Only one man was
+with it, straining at the gee-pole and urging the dogs along.  The
+effect on Smoke was one of shock, for it was the first human he had
+seen since he parted from Shorty three weeks before.  His next thought
+was of the potential murderer concealed on the opposite bank.
+
+Without exposing himself, Smoke whistled warningly.  The man did not
+hear, and came on rapidly.  Again, and more sharply, Smoke whistled.
+The man whoa'd his dogs, stopped, and had turned and faced Smoke when
+the rifle cracked.  The instant afterwards, Smoke fired into the wood
+in the direction of the sound.  The man on the river had been struck by
+the first shot.  The shock of the high velocity bullet staggered him.
+He stumbled awkwardly to the sled, half-falling, and pulled a rifle out
+from under the lashings.  As he strove to raise it to his shoulder, he
+crumpled at the waist and sank down slowly to a sitting posture on the
+sled.  Then, abruptly, as the gun went off aimlessly, he pitched
+backward and across a corner of the sled-load, so that Smoke could see
+only his legs and stomach.
+
+From below came more jingling bells.  The man did not move.  Around the
+bend swung three sleds, accompanied by half a dozen men.  Smoke cried
+warningly, but they had seen the condition of the first sled, and they
+dashed on to it.  No shots came from the other bank, and Smoke, calling
+his dogs to follow, emerged into the open.  There were exclamations
+from the men, and two of them, flinging off the mittens of their right
+hands, levelled their rifles at him.
+
+"Come on, you red-handed murderer, you," one of them, a black-bearded
+man, commanded, "an' jest pitch that gun of yourn in the snow."
+
+Smoke hesitated, then dropped his rifle and came up to them.
+
+"Go through him, Louis, an' take his weapons," the black-bearded man
+ordered.
+
+Louis, a French-Canadian voyageur, Smoke decided, as were four of the
+others, obeyed.  His search revealed only Smoke's hunting knife, which
+was appropriated.
+
+"Now, what have you got to say for yourself, Stranger, before I shoot
+you dead?" the black-bearded man demanded.
+
+"That you're making a mistake if you think I killed that man," Smoke
+answered.
+
+A cry came from one of the voyageurs.  He had quested along the trail
+and found Smoke's tracks where he had left it to take refuge on the
+bank.  The man explained the nature of his find.
+
+"What'd you kill Joe Kinade for?" he of the black beard asked.
+
+"I tell you I didn't--" Smoke began.
+
+"Aw, what's the good of talkin'.  We got you red-handed.  Right up
+there's where you left the trail when you heard him comin'.  You laid
+among the trees an' bushwhacked him.  A short shot.  You couldn't
+a-missed.  Pierre, go an' get that gun he dropped."
+
+"You might let me tell what happened," Smoke objected.
+
+"You shut up," the man snarled at him.  "I reckon your gun'll tell the
+story."
+
+All the men examined Smoke's rifle, ejecting and counting the
+cartridges, and examining the barrel at muzzle and breech.
+
+"One shot," Blackbeard concluded.
+
+Pierre, with nostrils that quivered and distended like a deer's,
+sniffed at the breech.
+
+"Him one fresh shot," he said.
+
+"The bullet entered his back," Smoke said.  "He was facing me when he
+was shot.  You see, it came from the other bank."
+
+Blackbeard considered this proposition for a scant second, and shook
+his head.
+
+"Nope.  It won't do.  Turn him around to face the other bank--that's
+how you whopped him in the back.  Some of you boys run up an' down the
+trail and see if you can see any tracks making for the other bank."
+
+Their report was, that on that side the snow was unbroken.  Not even a
+snow-shoe rabbit had crossed it.  Blackbeard, bending over the dead
+man, straightened up, with a woolly, furry wad in his hand. Shredding
+this, he found imbedded in the centre the bullet which had perforated
+the body.  Its nose was spread to the size of a half-dollar, its
+butt-end, steel-jacketed, was undamaged.  He compared it with a
+cartridge from Smoke's belt.
+
+"That's plain enough evidence, Stranger, to satisfy a blind man. It's
+soft-nosed an' steel-jacketed; yourn is soft-nosed and steel-jacketed.
+It's thirty-thirty; yourn is thirty-thirty.  It's manufactured by the
+J. and T. Arms Company; yourn is manufactured by the J. and T. Arms
+Company.  Now you come along an' we'll go over to the bank an' see jest
+how you done it."
+
+"I was bushwhacked myself," Smoke said.  "Look at the hole in my parka."
+
+While Blackbeard examined it, one of the voyageurs threw open the
+breech of the dead man's gun.  It was patent to all that it had been
+fired once.  The empty cartridge was still in the chamber.
+
+"A damn shame poor Joe didn't get you," Blackbeard said bitterly. "But
+he did pretty well with a hole like that in him.  Come on, you."
+
+"Search the other bank first," Smoke urged.
+
+"You shut up an' come on, an' let the facts do the talkin'."
+
+They left the trail at the same spot he had, and followed it on up the
+bank and in among the trees.
+
+"Him dance that place keep him feet warm," Louis pointed out.  "That
+place him crawl on belly.  That place him put one elbow w'en him
+shoot--"
+
+"And by God there's the empty cartridge he had done it with!" was
+Blackbeard's discovery.  "Boys, there's only one thing to do--"
+
+"You might ask me how I came to fire that shot," Smoke interrupted.
+
+"An' I might knock your teeth into your gullet if you butt in again.
+You can answer them questions later on.  Now, boys, we're decent an'
+law-abidin', an' we got to handle this right an' regular.  How far do
+you reckon we've come, Pierre?"
+
+"Twenty mile I t'ink for sure."
+
+"All right.  We'll cache the outfit an' run him an' poor Joe back to
+Two Cabins.  I reckon we've seen an' can testify to what'll stretch his
+neck."
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+It was three hours after dark when the dead man, Smoke, and his captors
+arrived at Two Cabins.  By the starlight, Smoke could make out a dozen
+or more recently built cabins snuggling about a larger and older cabin
+on a flat by the river bank.  Thrust inside this older cabin, he found
+it tenanted by a young giant of a man, his wife, and an old blind man.
+The woman, whom her husband called 'Lucy,' was herself a strapping
+creature of the frontier type.  The old man, as Smoke learned
+afterwards, had been a trapper on the Stewart for years, and had gone
+finally blind the winter before. The camp of Two Cabins, he was also to
+learn, had been made the previous fall by a dozen men who arrived in
+half as many poling-boats loaded with provisions.  Here they had found
+the blind trapper, on the site of Two Cabins, and about his cabin they
+had built their own.  Later arrivals, mushing up the ice with
+dog-teams, had tripled the population.  There was plenty of meat in
+camp, and good low-pay dirt had been discovered and was being worked.
+
+In five minutes, all the men of Two cabins were jammed into the room.
+Smoke, shoved off into a corner, ignored and scowled at, his hands and
+feet tied with thongs of moosehide, looked on.  Thirty-eight men he
+counted, a wild and husky crew, all frontiersmen of the States or
+voyageurs from Upper Canada.  His captors told the tale over and over,
+each the centre of an excited and wrathful group. There were mutterings
+of "Lynch him now--why wait?"  And, once, a big Irishman was restrained
+only by force from rushing upon the helpless prisoner and giving him a
+beating.
+
+It was while counting the men that Smoke caught sight of a familiar
+face.  It was Breck, the man whose boat Smoke had run through the
+rapids.  He wondered why the other did not come and speak to him, but
+himself gave no sign of recognition.  Later, when with shielded face
+Breck passed him a significant wink, Smoke understood.
+
+Blackbeard, whom Smoke heard called Eli Harding, ended the discussion
+as to whether or not the prisoner should be immediately lynched.
+
+"Hold on," Harding roared.  "Keep your shirts on.  That man belongs to
+me.  I caught him an' I brought him here.  D'ye think I brought him all
+the way here to be lynched?  Not on your life.  I could a-done that
+myself when I found him.  I brought him here for a fair an' impartial
+trial, an' by God, a fair an' impartial trial he's goin' to get.  He's
+tied up safe an' sound.  Chuck him in a bunk till morning, an' we'll
+hold the trial right here."
+
+
+
+V.
+
+Smoke woke up.  A draught, that possessed all the rigidity of an
+icicle, was boring into the front of his shoulder as he lay on his side
+facing the wall.  When he had been tied into the bunk there had been no
+such draught, and now the outside air, driving into the heated
+atmosphere of the cabin with the pressure of fifty below zero, was
+sufficient advertizement that some one from without had pulled away the
+moss-chinking between the logs.  He squirmed as far as his bonds would
+permit, then craned his neck forward until his lips just managed to
+reach the crack.
+
+"Who is it?" he whispered.
+
+"Breck," came the answer.  "Be careful you don't make a noise.  I'm
+going to pass a knife in to you."
+
+"No good," Smoke said.  "I couldn't use it.  My hands are tied behind
+me and made fast to the leg of the bunk.  Besides, you couldn't get a
+knife through that crack.  But something must be done.  Those fellows
+are of a temper to hang me, and, of course, you know I didn't kill that
+man."
+
+"It wasn't necessary to mention it, Smoke.  And if you did you had your
+reasons.  Which isn't the point at all.  I want to get you out of this.
+It's a tough bunch of men here.  You've seen them. They're shut off
+from the world, and they make and enforce their own law--by miner's
+meeting, you know.  They handled two men already--both grub-thieves.
+One they hiked from camp without an ounce of grub and no matches.  He
+made about forty miles and lasted a couple of days before he froze
+stiff.  Two weeks ago they hiked the second man.  They gave him his
+choice:  no grub, or ten lashes for each day's ration.  He stood for
+forty lashes before he fainted.  And now they've got you, and every
+last one is convinced you killed Kinade."
+
+"The man who killed Kinade, shot at me, too.  His bullet broke the skin
+on my shoulder.  Get them to delay the trial till some one goes up and
+searches the bank where the murderer hid."
+
+"No use.  They take the evidence of Harding and the five Frenchmen with
+him.  Besides, they haven't had a hanging yet, and they're keen for it.
+You see, things have been pretty monotonous.  They haven't located
+anything big, and they got tired of hunting for Surprise Lake.  They
+did some stampeding the first part of the winter, but they've got over
+that now.  Scurvy is beginning to show up amongst them, too, and
+they're just ripe for excitement."
+
+"And it looks like I'll furnish it," was Smoke's comment.  "Say, Breck,
+how did you ever fall in with such a God-forsaken bunch?"
+
+"After I got the claims at Squaw Creek opened up and some men to
+working, I came up here by way of the Stewart, hunting for Two Cabins.
+They'd beaten me to it, so I've been higher up the Stewart. Just got
+back yesterday out of grub."
+
+"Find anything?"
+
+"Nothing much.  But I think I've got a hydraulic proposition that'll
+work big when the country's opened up.  It's that, or a gold-dredger."
+
+"Hold on," Smoke interrupted.  "Wait a minute.  Let me think."
+
+He was very much aware of the snores of the sleepers as he pursued the
+idea that had flashed into his mind.
+
+"Say, Breck, have they opened up the meat-packs my dogs carried?"
+
+"A couple.  I was watching.  They put them in Harding's cache."
+
+"Did they find anything?"
+
+"Meat."
+
+"Good.  You've got to get into the brown canvas pack that's patched
+with moosehide.  You'll find a few pounds of lumpy gold.  You've never
+seen gold like it in the country, nor has anybody else. Here's what
+you've got to do.  Listen."
+
+A quarter of an hour later, fully instructed and complaining that his
+toes were freezing, Breck went away.  Smoke, his own nose and one cheek
+frosted by proximity to the chink, rubbed them against the blankets for
+half an hour before the blaze and bite of the returning blood assured
+him of the safety of his flesh.
+
+
+
+VI.
+
+"My mind's made up right now.  There ain't no doubt but what he killed
+Kinade.  We heard the whole thing last night.  What's the good of goin'
+over it again?  I vote guilty."
+
+In such fashion, Smoke's trial began.  The speaker, a loose-jointed,
+hard-rock man from Colorado, manifested irritation and disgust when
+Harding set his suggestion aside, demanded the proceedings should be
+regular, and nominated one, Shunk Wilson, for judge and chairman of the
+meeting.  The population of Two Cabins constituted the jury, though,
+after some discussion, the woman, Lucy, was denied the right to vote on
+Smoke's guilt or innocence.
+
+While this was going on, Smoke, jammed into a corner on a bunk,
+overheard a whispered conversation between Breck and a miner.
+
+"You haven't fifty pounds of flour you'll sell?" Breck queried.
+
+"You ain't got the dust to pay the price I'm askin'," was the reply.
+
+"I'll give you two hundred."
+
+The man shook his head.
+
+"Three hundred.  Three-fifty."
+
+At four hundred, the man nodded, and said:  "Come on over to my cabin
+an' weigh out the dust."
+
+The two squeezed their way to the door, and slipped out.  After a few
+minutes Breck returned alone.
+
+Harding was testifying, when Smoke saw the door shoved open slightly,
+and in the crack appear the face of the man who had sold the flour.  He
+was grimacing and beckoning emphatically to one inside, who arose from
+near the stove and started to work toward the door.
+
+"Where are you goin', Sam?" Shunk Wilson demanded.
+
+"I'll be back in a jiffy," Sam explained.  "I jes' got to go."
+
+Smoke was permitted to question the witnesses, and he was in the middle
+of the cross-examination of Harding, when from without came the whining
+of dogs in harness, and the grind and churn of sled-runners.  Somebody
+near the door peeped out.
+
+"It's Sam an' his pardner an' a dog-team hell-bent down the trail for
+Stewart River," the man reported.
+
+Nobody spoke for a long half-minute, but men glanced significantly at
+one another, and a general restlessness pervaded the packed room. Out
+of the corner of his eye, Smoke caught a glimpse of Breck, Lucy, and
+her husband whispering together.
+
+"Come on, you," Shunk Wilson said gruffly to Smoke.  "Cut this
+questionin' short.  We know what you're tryin' to prove--that the other
+bank wasn't searched.  The witness admits it.  We admit it. It wasn't
+necessary.  No tracks led to that bank.  The snow wasn't broke."
+
+"There was a man on the other bank just the same," Smoke insisted.
+
+"That's too thin for skatin', young man.  There ain't many of us on the
+McQuestion, an' we got every man accounted for."
+
+"Who was the man you hiked out of camp two weeks ago?" Smoke asked.
+
+"Alonzo Miramar.  He was a Mexican.  What's that grub-thief got to do
+with it?"
+
+"Nothing, except that you haven't accounted for HIM, Mr Judge."
+
+"He went down the river, not up."
+
+"How do you know where he went?"
+
+"Saw him start."
+
+"And that's all you know of what became of him?"
+
+"No, it ain't, young man.  I know, we all know, he had four day's grub
+an' no gun to shoot meat with.  If he didn't make the settlement on the
+Yukon he'd croaked long before this."
+
+"I suppose you've got all the guns in this part of the country
+accounted for, too," Smoke observed pointedly.
+
+Shunk Wilson was angry.
+
+"You'd think I was the prisoner the way you slam questions into me.
+Come on with the next witness.  Where's French Louis?"
+
+While French Louis was shoving forward, Lucy opened the door.
+
+"Where you goin'?" Shunk Wilson shouted.
+
+"I reckon I don't have to stay," she answered defiantly.  "I ain't got
+no vote, an' besides my cabin's so jammed up I can't breathe."
+
+In a few minutes her husband followed.  The closing of the door was the
+first warning the judge received of it.
+
+"Who was that?" he interrupted Pierre's narrative to ask.
+
+"Bill Peabody," somebody spoke up.  "Said he wanted to ask his wife
+something and was coming right back."
+
+Instead of Bill, it was Lucy who re-entered, took off her furs, and
+resumed her place by the stove.
+
+"I reckon we don't need to hear the rest of the witnesses," was Shunk
+Wilson's decision, when Pierre had finished.  "We know they only can
+testify to the same facts we've already heard.  Say, Sorensen, you go
+an' bring Bill Peabody back.  We'll be votin' a verdict pretty short.
+Now, Stranger, you can get up an' say your say concernin' what
+happened.  In the meantime we'll just be savin' delay by passin' around
+the two rifles, the ammunition, an' the bullets that done the killin'."
+
+Midway in his story of how he had arrived in that part of the country,
+and at the point in his narrative where he described his own ambush and
+how he had fled to the bank, Smoke was interrupted by the indignant
+Shunk Wilson.
+
+"Young man, what sense is there in you testifyin' that way?  You're
+just takin' up valuable time.  Of course you got the right to lie to
+save your neck, but we ain't goin' to stand for such foolishness. The
+rifle, the ammunition, the bullet that killed Joe Kinade is against
+you--What's that?  Open the door, somebody!"
+
+The frost rushed in, taking form and substance in the heat of the room,
+while through the open door came the whining of dogs that decreased
+rapidly with distance.
+
+"It's Sorensen an' Peabody," some one cried, "a-throwin' the whip into
+the dawgs an' headin' down river!"
+
+"Now, what the hell--!"  Shunk Wilson paused, with dropped jaw, and
+glared at Lucy.  "I reckon you can explain, Mrs Peabody."
+
+She tossed her head and compressed her lips, and Shunk Wilson's
+wrathful and suspicious gaze passed on and rested on Breck.
+
+"An' I reckon that new-comer you've ben chinning with could explain if
+HE had a mind to."
+
+Breck, now very uncomfortable, found all eyes centred on him.
+
+"Sam was chewing the rag with him, too, before he hit out," some one
+said.
+
+"Look here, Mr Breck," Shunk Wilson continued.  "You've ben
+interruptin' proceedings, and you got to explain the meanin' of it.
+What was you chinnin' about?"
+
+Breck cleared his throat timidly and replied.  "I was just trying to
+buy some grub."
+
+"What with?"
+
+"Dust, of course."
+
+"Where'd you get it?"
+
+Breck did not answer.
+
+"He's ben snoopin' around up the Stewart," a man volunteered.  "I run
+across his camp a week ago when I was huntin'.  An' I want to tell you
+he was almighty secretious about it."
+
+"The dust didn't come from there," Breck said.  "That's only a
+low-grade hydraulic proposition."
+
+"Bring your poke here an' let's see your dust," Wilson commanded.
+
+"I tell you it didn't come from there."
+
+"Let's see it just the same."
+
+Breck made as if to refuse, but all about him were menacing faces.
+Reluctantly, he fumbled in his coat pocket.  In the act of drawing
+forth a pepper can, it rattled against what was evidently a hard object.
+
+"Fetch it all out!" Shunk Wilson thundered.
+
+And out came the big nugget, first-size, yellow as no gold any onlooker
+had ever seen.  Shunk Wilson gasped.  Half a dozen, catching one
+glimpse, made a break for the door.  They reached it at the same
+moment, and, with cursing and scuffling, jammed and pivoted through.
+The judge emptied the contents of the pepper can on the table, and the
+sight of the rough lump-gold sent half a dozen more toward the door.
+
+"Where are you goin'?" Eli Harding asked, as Shunk started to follow.
+
+"For my dogs, of course."
+
+"Ain't you goin' to hang him?"
+
+"It'd take too much time right now.  He'll keep till we get back, so I
+reckon this court is adjourned.  This ain't no place for lingerin'."
+
+Harding hesitated.  He glanced savagely at Smoke, saw Pierre beckoning
+to Louis from the doorway, took one last look at the lump-gold on the
+table, and decided.
+
+"No use you tryin' to get away," he flung back over his shoulder.
+"Besides, I'm goin' to borrow your dogs."
+
+"What is it--another one of them blamed stampedes?" the old blind
+trapper asked in a queer and petulant falsetto, as the cries of men and
+dogs and the grind of the sleds swept the silence of the room.
+
+"It sure is," Lucy answered.  "An' I never seen gold like it.  Feel
+that, old man."
+
+She put the big nugget in his hand.  He was but slightly interested.
+
+"It was a good fur-country," he complained, "before them danged miners
+come in an' scared back the game."
+
+The door opened, and Breck entered.
+
+"Well," he said, "we four are all that are left in camp.  It's forty
+miles to the Stewart by the cut-off I broke, and the fastest of them
+can't make the round trip in less than five or six days.  But it's time
+you pulled out, Smoke, just the same."
+
+Breck drew his hunting knife across the other's bonds, and glanced at
+the woman.
+
+"I hope you don't object?" he said, with significant politeness.
+
+"If there's goin' to be any shootin'," the blind man broke out, "I wish
+somebody'd take me to another cabin first."
+
+"Go on, an' don't mind me," Lucy answered.  "If I ain't good enough to
+hang a man, I ain't good enough to hold him."
+
+Smoke stood up, rubbing his wrists where the thongs had impeded the
+circulation.
+
+"I've got a pack all ready for you," Breck said.  "Ten days' grub,
+blankets, matches, tobacco, an axe, and a rifle."
+
+"Go to it," Lucy encouraged.  "Hit the high places, Stranger.  Beat it
+as fast as God'll let you."
+
+"I'm going to have a square meal before I start," Smoke said.  "And
+when I start it will be up the McQuestion, not down.  I want you to go
+along with me, Breck.  We're going to search that other bank for the
+man that really did the killing."
+
+"If you'll listen to me, you'll head down for the Stewart and the
+Yukon," Breck objected.  "When this gang gets back from my low-grade
+hydraulic proposition, it will be seeing red."
+
+Smoke laughed and shook his head.
+
+"I can't jump this country, Breck.  I've got interests here.  I've got
+to stay and make good.  I don't care whether you believe me or not, but
+I've found Surprise Lake.  That's where that gold came from.  Besides,
+they took my dogs, and I've got to wait to get them back.  Also, I know
+what I'm about.  There was a man hidden on that bank.  He came pretty
+close to emptying his magazine at me."
+
+Half an hour afterward, with a big plate of moose-steak before him and
+a big mug of coffee at his lips, Smoke half-started up from his seat.
+He had heard the sounds first.  Lucy threw open the door.
+
+"Hello, Spike; hello, Methody," she greeted the two frost-rimed men who
+were bending over the burden on their sled.
+
+"We just come down from Upper Camp," one said, as the pair staggered
+into the room with a fur-wrapped object which they handled with
+exceeding gentleness.  "An' this is what we found by the way.  He's all
+in, I guess."
+
+"Put him in the near bunk there," Lucy said.  She bent over and pulled
+back the furs, disclosing a face composed principally of large,
+staring, black eyes, and of skin, dark and scabbed by repeated
+frost-bite, tightly stretched across the bones.
+
+"If it ain't Alonzo!" she cried.  "You pore, starved devil!"
+
+"That's the man on the other bank," Smoke said in an undertone to Breck.
+
+"We found it raidin' a cache that Harding must a-made," one of the men
+was explaining.  "He was eatin' raw flour an' frozen bacon, an' when we
+got 'm he was cryin' an' squealin' like a hawk.  Look at him!  He's all
+starved, an' most of him frozen.  He'll kick at any moment."
+
+          .          .          .          .          .
+
+Half an hour later, when the furs had been drawn over the face of the
+still form in the bunk, Smoke turned to Lucy.
+
+"If you don't mind, Mrs Peabody, I'll have another whack at that steak.
+Make it thick and not so well done."
+
+
+
+
+THE RACE FOR NUMBER ONE.
+
+
+
+
+I.
+
+"Huh!  Get on to the glad rags!"
+
+Shorty surveyed his partner with simulated disapproval, and Smoke,
+vainly attempting to rub the wrinkles out of the pair of trousers he
+had just put on, was irritated.
+
+"They sure fit you close for a second-hand buy," Shorty went on. "What
+was the tax?"
+
+"One hundred and fifty for the suit," Smoke answered.  "The man was
+nearly my own size.  I thought it was remarkable reasonable.  What are
+you kicking about?"
+
+"Who?  Me?  Oh, nothin'.  I was just thinkin' it was goin' some for a
+meat-eater that hit Dawson in an ice-jam, with no grub, one suit of
+underclothes, a pair of mangy moccasins, an' overalls that looked like
+they'd ben through the wreck of the Hesperus.  Pretty gay front,
+pardner.  Pretty gay front.  Say--?"
+
+"What do you want now?" Smoke demanded testily.
+
+"What's her name?"
+
+"There isn't any her, my friend.  I'm to have dinner at Colonel
+Bowie's, if you want to know.  The trouble with you, Shorty, is you're
+envious because I'm going into high society and you're not invited."
+
+"Ain't you some late?" Shorty queried with concern.
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"For dinner.  They'll be eatin' supper when you get there."
+
+Smoke was about to explain with elaborate sarcasm when he caught the
+twinkle in the others' eyes.  He went on dressing, with fingers that
+had lost their deftness, tying a Windsor tie in a bow-knot at the
+throat of the soft cotton shirt.
+
+"Wish I hadn't sent all my starched shirts to the laundry," Shorty
+murmured sympathetically.  "I might a-fitted you out."
+
+By this time Smoke was straining at a pair of shoes.  The thick woollen
+socks were too thick to go into them.  He looked appealingly at Shorty,
+who shook his head.
+
+"Nope.  If I had thin ones I wouldn't lend 'em to you.  Back to the
+moccasins, pardner.  You'd sure freeze your toes in skimpy-fangled gear
+like that."
+
+"I paid fifteen dollars for them, second-hand," Smoke lamented.
+
+"I reckon they won't be a man not in moccasins."
+
+"But there are to be women, Shorty.  I'm going to sit down and eat with
+real live women--Mrs Bowie, and several others, so the Colonel told me."
+
+"Well, moccasins won't spoil their appetite none," was Shorty's
+comment.  "Wonder what the Colonel wants with you?"
+
+"I don't know, unless he's heard about my finding Surprise Lake.  It
+will take a fortune to drain it, and the Guggenheims are out for
+investment."
+
+"Reckon that's it.  That's right, stick to the moccasins.  Gee! That
+coat is sure wrinkled, an' it fits you a mite too swift.  Just peck
+around at your vittles.  If you eat hearty you'll bust through. And if
+them women-folks gets to droppin' handkerchiefs, just let 'em lay.
+Don't do any pickin' up.  Whatever you do, don't."
+
+
+
+II.
+
+As became a high-salaried expert and the representative of the great
+house of Guggenheim, Colonel Bowie lived in one of the most magnificent
+cabins in Dawson.  Of squared logs, hand-hewn, it was two stories high,
+and of such extravagant proportions that it boasted a big living room
+that was used for a living room and for nothing else.
+
+Here were big bear-skins on the rough board floor, and on the walls
+horns of moose and caribou.  Here roared an open fireplace and a big
+wood-burning stove.  And here Smoke met the social elect of Dawson--not
+the mere pick-handle millionaires, but the ultra-cream of a mining city
+whose population had been recruited from all the world--men like
+Warburton Jones, the explorer and writer, Captain Consadine of the
+Mounted Police, Haskell, Gold Commissioner of the North-West Territory,
+and Baron Von Schroeder, an emperor's favourite with an international
+duelling reputation.
+
+And here, dazzling in evening gown, he met Joy Gastell, whom hitherto
+he had encountered only on trail, befurred and moccasined. At dinner he
+found himself beside her.
+
+"I feel like a fish out of water," he confessed.  "All you folks are so
+real grand you know.  Besides I never dreamed such oriental luxury
+existed in the Klondike.  Look at Von Schroeder there.  He's actually
+got a dinner jacket, and Consadine's got a starched shirt. I noticed he
+wore moccasins just the same.  How do you like MY outfit?"
+
+He moved his shoulders about as if preening himself for Joy's approval.
+
+"It looks as if you'd grown stout since you came over the Pass," she
+laughed.
+
+"Wrong.  Guess again."
+
+"It's somebody else's."
+
+"You win.  I bought it for a price from one of the clerks at the A. C.
+Company."
+
+"It's a shame clerks are so narrow-shouldered," she sympathized. "And
+you haven't told me what you think of MY outfit."
+
+"I can't," he said.  "I'm out of breath.  I've been living on trail too
+long.  This sort of thing comes to me with a shock, you know. I'd quite
+forgotten that women have arms and shoulders.  To-morrow morning, like
+my friend Shorty, I'll wake up and know it's all a dream.  Now, the
+last time I saw you on Squaw Creek--"
+
+"I was just a squaw," she broke in.
+
+"I hadn't intended to say that.  I was remembering that it was on Squaw
+Creek that I discovered you had feet."
+
+"And I can never forget that you saved them for me," she said. "I've
+been wanting to see you ever since to thank you--"  (He shrugged his
+shoulders deprecatingly).  "And that's why you are here to-night--"
+
+"You asked the Colonel to invite me?"
+
+"No!  Mrs Bowie.  And I asked her to let me have you at table.  And
+here's my chance.  Everybody's talking.  Listen, and don't interrupt.
+You know Mono Creek?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"It has turned out rich--dreadfully rich.  They estimate the claims as
+worth a million and more apiece.  It was only located the other day."
+
+"I remember the stampede."
+
+"Well, the whole creek was staked to the sky-line, and all the feeders,
+too.  And yet, right now, on the main creek, Number Three below
+Discovery is unrecorded.  The creek was so far away from Dawson that
+the Commissioner allowed sixty days for recording after location.
+Every claim was recorded except Number Three Below.  It was staked by
+Cyrus Johnson.  And that was all.  Cyrus Johnson has disappeared.
+Whether he died, whether he went down river or up, nobody knows.
+Anyway, in six days, the time for recording will be up.  Then the man
+who stakes it, and reaches Dawson first and records it, gets it."
+
+"A million dollars," Smoke murmured.
+
+"Gilchrist, who has the next claim below, has got six hundred dollars
+in a single pan off bedrock.  He's burned one hole down. And the claim
+on the other side is even richer.  I know."
+
+"But why doesn't everybody know?" Smoke queried skeptically.
+
+"They're beginning to know.  They kept it secret for a long time, and
+it is only now that it's coming out.  Good dog-teams will be at a
+premium in another twenty-four hours.  Now, you've got to get away as
+decently as you can as soon as dinner is over.  I've arranged it. An
+Indian will come with a message for you.  You read it, let on that
+you're very much put out, make your excuses, and get away."
+
+"I--er--I fail to follow."
+
+"Ninny!" she exclaimed in a half-whisper.  "What you must do is to get
+out to-night and hustle dog-teams.  I know of two.  There's Hanson's
+team, seven big Hudson Bay dogs--he's holding them at four hundred
+each.  That's top price to-night, but it won't be to-morrow. And Sitka
+Charley has eight Malemutes he's asking thirty-five hundred for.
+To-morrow he'll laugh at an offer of five thousand. Then you've got
+your own team of dogs.  And you'll have to buy several more teams.
+That's your work to-night.  Get the best.  It's dogs as well as men
+that will win this race.  It's a hundred and ten miles, and you'll have
+to relay as frequently as you can."
+
+"Oh, I see, you want me to go in for it," Smoke drawled.
+
+"If you haven't the money for the dogs, I'll--"
+
+She faltered, but before she could continue, Smoke was speaking.
+
+"I can buy the dogs.  But--er--aren't you afraid this is gambling?"
+
+"After your exploits at roulette in the Elkhorn," she retorted, "I'm
+not afraid that you're afraid.  It's a sporting proposition, if that's
+what you mean.  A race for a million, and with some of the stiffest
+dog-mushers and travellers in the country entered against you.  They
+haven't entered yet, but by this time to-morrow they will, and dogs
+will be worth what the richest man can afford to pay. Big Olaf is in
+town.  He came up from Circle City last month.  He is one of the most
+terrible dog-mushers in the country, and if he enters he will be your
+most dangerous man.  Arizona Bill is another. He's been a professional
+freighter and mail-carrier for years.  It he goes in, interest will be
+centred on him and Big Olaf."
+
+"And you intend me to come along as a sort of dark horse."
+
+"Exactly.  And it will have its advantages.  You will not be supposed
+to stand a show.  After all, you know, you are still classed as a
+chechaquo.  You haven't seen the four seasons go around.  Nobody will
+take notice of you until you come into the home stretch in the lead."
+
+"It's on the home stretch the dark horse is to show up its classy form,
+eh?"
+
+She nodded, and continued earnestly.  "Remember, I shall never forgive
+myself for the trick I played on the Squaw Creek Stampede until you win
+this Mono claim.  And if any man can win this race against the
+old-timers, it's you."
+
+It was the way she said it.  He felt warm all over, and in his heart
+and head.  He gave her a quick, searching look, involuntary and
+serious, and for the moment that her eyes met his steadily, ere they
+fell, it seemed to him that he read something of vaster import than the
+claim Cyrus Johnson had failed to record.
+
+"I'll do it," he said.  "I'll win it."
+
+The glad light in her eyes seemed to promise a greater need than all
+the gold in the Mono claim.  He was aware of a movement of her hand in
+her lap next to his.  Under the screen of the tablecloth he thrust his
+own hand across and met a firm grip of woman's fingers that sent
+another wave of warmth through him.
+
+"What will Shorty say?" was the thought that flashed whimsically
+through his mind as he withdrew his hand.  He glanced almost jealously
+at the faces of Von Schroeder and Jones, and wondered if they had not
+divined the remarkableness and deliciousness of this woman who sat
+beside him.
+
+He was aroused by her voice, and realized that she had been speaking
+some moments.
+
+"So you see, Arizona Bill is a white Indian," she was saying.  "And Big
+Olaf is--a bear wrestler, a king of the snows, a mighty savage. He can
+out-travel and out-endure an Indian, and he's never known any other
+life but that of the wild and the frost."
+
+"Who's that?" Captain Consadine broke in from across the table.
+
+"Big Olaf," she answered.  "I was just telling Mr Bellew what a
+traveller he is."
+
+"You're right," the Captain's voice boomed.  "Big Olaf is the greatest
+traveller in the Yukon.  I'd back him against Old Nick himself for
+snow-bucking and ice-travel.  He brought in the government dispatches
+in 1895, and he did it after two couriers were frozen on Chilcoot and
+the third drowned in the open water of Thirty Mile."
+
+
+
+III.
+
+Smoke had travelled in a leisurely fashion up to Mono Creek, fearing to
+tire his dogs before the big race.  Also, he had familiarized himself
+with every mile of the trail and located his relay camps. So many men
+had entered the race, that the hundred and ten miles of its course was
+almost a continuous village.  Relay camps were everywhere along the
+trail.  Von Schroeder, who had gone in purely for the sport, had no
+less than eleven dog teams--a fresh one for every ten miles.  Arizona
+Bill had been forced to content himself with eight teams.  Big Olaf had
+seven, which was the complement of Smoke.  In addition, over two-score
+of other men were in the running.  Not every day, even in the golden
+north, was a million dollars the prize for a dog race.  The country had
+been swept of dogs.  No animal of speed and endurance escaped the
+fine-tooth comb that had raked the creeks and camps, and the prices of
+dogs had doubled and quadrupled in the course of the frantic
+speculation.
+
+Number Three Below Discovery was ten miles up Mono Creek from its
+mouth.  The remaining hundred miles was to be run on the frozen breast
+of the Yukon.  On Number Three itself were fifty tents and over three
+hundred dogs.  The old stakes, blazed and scrawled sixty days before by
+Cyrus Johnson, still stood, and every man had gone over the boundaries
+of the claim again and again, for the race with dogs was to be preceded
+by a foot and obstacle race.  Each man had to re-locate the claim for
+himself, and this meant that he must place two centre-stakes and four
+corner-stakes and cross the creek twice, before he could start for
+Dawson with his dogs.
+
+Furthermore, there were to be no 'sooners.'  Not until the stroke of
+midnight of Friday night was the claim open for re-location, and not
+until the stroke of midnight could a man plant a stake.  This was the
+ruling of the Gold Commissioner at Dawson, and Captain Consadine had
+sent up a squad of mounted police to enforce it.  Discussion had arisen
+about the difference between sun-time and police-time, but Consadine
+had sent forth his fiat that police time went, and, further, that it
+was the watch of Lieutenant Pollock that went.
+
+The Mono trail ran along the level creek-bed, and, less than two feet
+in width, was like a groove, walled on either side by the snow-fall of
+months.  The problem of how forty-odd sleds and three hundred dogs were
+to start in so narrow a course was in everybody's mind.
+
+"Huh!" said Shorty.  "It's goin' to be the gosh-dangdest mix-up that
+ever was.  I can't see no way out, Smoke, except main strength an'
+sweat an' to plow through.  If the whole creek was glare-ice they ain't
+room for a dozen teams abreast.  I got a hunch right now they's goin'
+to be a heap of scrappin' before they get strung out. An' if any of it
+comes our way you got to let me do the punchin'."
+
+Smoke squared his shoulders and laughed non-committally.
+
+"No you don't!" his partner cried in alarm.  "No matter what happens,
+you don't dast hit.  You can't handle dogs a hundred miles with a
+busted knuckle, an' that's what'll happen if you land on somebody's
+jaw."
+
+Smoke nodded his head.
+
+"You're right, Shorty.  I couldn't risk the chance."
+
+"An' just remember," Shorty went on, "that I got to do all the shovin'
+for them first ten miles an' you got to take it easy as you can.  I'll
+sure jerk you through to the Yukon.  After that it's up to you an' the
+dogs.  Say--what d'ye think Schroeder's scheme is? He's got his first
+team a quarter of a mile down the creek an' he'll know it by a green
+lantern.  But we got him skinned.  Me for the red flare every time."
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+The day had been clear and cold, but a blanket of cloud formed across
+the face of the sky and the night came on warm and dark, with the hint
+of snow impending.  The thermometer registered fifteen below zero, and
+in the Klondike-winter fifteen below is esteemed very warm.
+
+At a few minutes before midnight, leaving Shorty with the dogs five
+hundred yards down the creek, Smoke joined the racers on Number Three.
+There were forty-five of them waiting the start for the
+thousand-thousand dollars Cyrus Johnson had left lying in the frozen
+gravel.  Each man carried six stakes and a heavy wooden mallet, and was
+clad in a smock-like parka of heavy cotton drill.
+
+Lieutenant Pollock, in a big bearskin coat, looked at his watch by the
+light of a fire.  It lacked a minute of midnight.
+
+"Make ready," he said, as he raised a revolver in his right hand and
+watched the second hand tick around.
+
+Forty-five hoods were thrown back from the parkas.  Forty-five pairs of
+hands unmittened, and forty-five pairs of moccasins pressed tensely
+into the packed snow.  Also, forty-five stakes were thrust into the
+snow, and the same number of mallets lifted in the air.
+
+The shots rang out, and the mallets fell.  Cyrus Johnson's right to the
+million had expired.  To prevent confusion, Lieutenant Pollock had
+insisted that the lower centre-stake be driven first, next the
+south-eastern; and so on around the four sides, including the upper
+centre-stake on the way.
+
+Smoke drove in his stake and was away with the leading dozen.  Fires
+had been lighted at the corners, and by each fire stood a policeman,
+list in hand, checking off the names of the runners.  A man was
+supposed to call out his name and show his face.  There was to be no
+staking by proxy while the real racer was off and away down the creek.
+
+At the first corner, beside Smoke's stake, Von Schroeder placed his.
+The mallets struck at the same instant.  As they hammered, more arrived
+from behind and with such impetuosity as to get in one another's way
+and cause jostling and shoving.  Squirming through the press and
+calling his name to the policeman, Smoke saw the Baron, struck in
+collision by one of the rushers, hurled clean off his feet into the
+snow.  But Smoke did not wait.  Others were still ahead of him.  By the
+light of the vanishing fire he was certain that he saw the back, hugely
+looming, of Big Olaf, and at the south-western corner Big Olaf and he
+drove their stakes side by side.
+
+It was no light work, this preliminary obstacle race.  The boundaries
+of the claim totalled nearly a mile, and most of it was over the uneven
+surface of a snow-covered, niggerhead flat.  All about Smoke men
+tripped and fell, and several times he pitched forward himself,
+jarringly, on hands and knees.  Once, Big Olaf fell so immediately in
+front of him as to bring him down on top.
+
+The upper centre-stake was driven by the edge of the bank, and down the
+bank the racers plunged, across the frozen creek-bed, and up the other
+side.  Here, as Smoke clambered, a hand gripped his ankle and jerked
+him back.  In the flickering light of a distant fire, it was impossible
+to see who had played the trick.  But Arizona Bill, who had been
+treated similarly, rose to his feet and drove his fist with a crunch
+into the offender's face.  Smoke saw and heard as he was scrambling to
+his feet, but before he could make another lunge for the bank a fist
+dropped him half-stunned into the snow.  He staggered up, located the
+man, half-swung a hook for his jaw, then remembered Shorty's warning
+and refrained.  The next moment, struck below the knees by a hurtling
+body, he went down again.
+
+It was a foretaste of what would happen when the men reached their
+sleds.  Men were pouring over the other bank and piling into the jam.
+They swarmed up the bank in bunches, and in bunches were dragged back
+by their impatient fellows.  More blows were struck, curses rose from
+the panting chests of those who still had wind to spare, and Smoke,
+curiously visioning the face of Joy Gastell, hoped that the mallets
+would not be brought into play.  Overthrown, trod upon, groping in the
+snow for his lost stakes, he at last crawled out of the crush and
+attacked the bank farther along.  Others were doing this, and it was
+his luck to have many men in advance of him in the race for the
+northwestern corner.
+
+Down to the fourth corner, he tripped midway and in the long sprawling
+fall lost his remaining stake.  For five minutes he groped in the
+darkness before he found it, and all the time the panting runners were
+passing him.  From the last corner to the creek he began overtaking men
+for whom the mile-run had been too much.  In the creek itself Bedlam
+had broken loose.  A dozen sleds were piled up and overturned, and
+nearly a hundred dogs were locked in combat. Among them men struggled,
+tearing the tangled animals apart, or beating them apart with clubs.
+In the fleeting glimpse he caught of it, Smoke wondered if he had ever
+seen a Dore grotesquery to compare.
+
+Leaping down the bank beyond the glutted passage, he gained the
+hard-footing of the sled-trail and made better time.  Here, in packed
+harbours beside the narrow trail, sleds and men waited for runners that
+were still behind.  From the rear came the whine and rush of dogs, and
+Smoke had barely time to leap aside into the deep snow.  A sled tore
+past, and he made out the man, kneeling and shouting madly.  Scarcely
+was it by when it stopped with a crash of battle.  The excited dogs of
+a harboured sled, resenting the passing animals, had got out of hand
+and sprung upon them.
+
+Smoke plunged around and by.  He could see the green lantern of Von
+Schroeder, and, just below it, the red flare that marked his own team.
+Two men were guarding Schroeder's dogs, with short clubs interposed
+between them and the trail.
+
+"Come on, you Smoke!  Come on, you Smoke!" he could hear Shorty calling
+anxiously.
+
+"Coming!" he gasped.
+
+By the red flare he could see the snow torn up and trampled, and from
+the way his partner breathed he knew a battle had been fought. He
+staggered to the sled, and, in a moment he was falling on it, Shorty's
+whip snapped as he yelled:  "Mush! you devils!  Mush!"
+
+The dogs sprang into the breast-bands, and the sled jerked abruptly
+ahead.  They were big animals--Hanson's prize team of Hudson Bays--and
+Smoke had selected them for the first stage, which included the ten
+miles of Mono, the heavy-going of the cut-off across the flat at the
+mouth, and the first ten miles of the Yukon stretch.
+
+"How many are ahead?" he asked.
+
+"You shut up an' save your wind," Shorty answered.  "Hi! you brutes!
+Hit her up!  Hit her up!"
+
+He was running behind the sled, towing on a short rope.  Smoke could
+not see him; nor could he see the sled on which he lay at full length.
+The fires had been left in the rear, and they were tearing through a
+wall of blackness as fast as the dogs could spring into it.  This
+blackness was almost sticky, so nearly did it take on the seeming of
+substance.
+
+Smoke felt the sled heel up on one runner as it rounded an invisible
+curve, and from ahead came the snarls of beasts and the oaths of men.
+This was known afterward as the Barnes-Slocum Jam.  It was the teams of
+these two men which first collided, and into it, at full career, piled
+Smoke's seven big fighters.  Scarcely more than semi-domesticated
+wolves, the excitement of that night on Mono Creek had sent every dog
+fighting-mad.  The Klondike dogs, driven without reins, cannot be
+stopped except by voice, so that there was no stopping this glut of
+struggle that heaped itself between the narrow rims of the creek.  From
+behind, sled after sled hurled into the turmoil.  Men who had their
+teams nearly extricated were overwhelmed by fresh avalanches of
+dogs--each animal well-fed, well-rested, and ripe for battle.
+
+"It's knock down an' drag out an' plow through!" Shorty yelled in his
+partner's ear.  "An' watch out for your knuckles!  You drag out an' let
+me do the punchin'!"
+
+What happened in the next half hour Smoke never distinctly remembered.
+At the end he emerged exhausted, sobbing for breath, his jaw sore from
+a first-blow, his shoulder aching from the bruise of a club, the blood
+running warmly down one leg from the rip of a dog's fangs, and both
+sleeves of his parka torn to shreds.  As in a dream, while the battle
+still raged behind, he helped Shorty reharness the dogs.  One, dying,
+they cut from the traces, and in the darkness they felt their way to
+the repair of the disrupted harnesses.
+
+"Now you lie down an' get your wind back," Shorty commanded.
+
+And through the darkness the dogs sped, with unabated strength, down
+Mono Creek, across the long cut-off, and to the Yukon.  Here, at the
+junction with the main river-trail, somebody had lighted a fire, and
+here Shorty said good bye.  By the light of the fire, as the sled
+leaped behind the flying dogs, Smoke caught another of the
+unforgettable pictures of the North Land.  It was of Shorty, swaying
+and sinking down limply in the snow, yelling his parting encouragement,
+one eye blackened and closed, knuckles bruised and broken, and one arm,
+ripped and fang-torn, gushing forth a steady stream of blood.
+
+
+
+V.
+
+"How many ahead?" Smoke asked, as he dropped his tired Hudson Bays and
+sprang on the waiting sled at the first relay station.
+
+"I counted eleven," the man called after him, for he was already away
+behind the leaping dogs.
+
+Fifteen miles they were to carry him on the next stage, which would
+fetch him to the mouth of White River.  There were nine of them, but
+they composed his weakest team.  The twenty-five miles between White
+River and Sixty Mile he had broken into two stages because of ice-jams,
+and here two of his heaviest, toughest teams were stationed.
+
+He lay on the sled at full length, face-down, holding on with both
+hands.  Whenever the dogs slacked from topmost speed he rose to his
+knees, and, yelling and urging, clinging precariously with one hand,
+threw his whip into them.  Poor team that it was, he passed two sleds
+before White River was reached.  Here, at the freeze-up, a jam had
+piled a barrier allowing the open water, that formed for half a mile
+below, to freeze smoothly.  This smooth stretch enabled the racers to
+make flying exchanges of sleds, and down all the course they had placed
+their relays below the jams.
+
+Over the jam and out on to the smooth, Smoke tore along, calling
+loudly, "Billy!  Billy!"
+
+Billy heard and answered, and by the light of the many fires on the
+ice, Smoke saw a sled swing in from the side and come abreast.  Its
+dogs were fresh and overhauled his.  As the sleds swerved toward each
+other he leaped across and Billy promptly rolled off.
+
+"Where's Big Olaf?" Smoke cried.
+
+"Leading!" Billy's voice answered; and the fires were left behind and
+Smoke was again flying through the wall of blackness.
+
+In the jams of that relay, where the way led across a chaos of up-ended
+ice-cakes, and where Smoke slipped off the forward end of the sled and
+with a haul-rope toiled behind the wheel-dog, he passed three sleds.
+Accidents had happened, and he could hear the men cutting out dogs and
+mending harnesses.
+
+Among the jams of the next short relay into Sixty Mile, he passed two
+more teams.  And that he might know adequately what had happened to
+them, one of his own dogs wrenched a shoulder, was unable to keep up,
+and was dragged in the harness.  Its team-mates, angered, fell upon it
+with their fangs, and Smoke was forced to club them off with the heavy
+butt of his whip.  As he cut the injured animal out, he heard the
+whining cries of dogs behind him and the voice of a man that was
+familiar.  It was Von Schroeder.  Smoke called a warning to prevent a
+rear-end collision, and the Baron, hawing his animals and swinging on
+the gee-pole, went by a dozen feet to the side.  Yet so impenetrable
+was the blackness that Smoke heard him pass but never saw him.
+
+On the smooth stretch of ice beside the trading post at Sixty Mile,
+Smoke overtook two more sleds.  All had just changed teams, and for
+five minutes they ran abreast, each man on his knees and pouring whip
+and voice into the maddened dogs.  But Smoke had studied out that
+portion of the trail, and now marked the tall pine on the bank that
+showed faintly in the light of the many fires.  Below that pine was not
+merely darkness, but an abrupt cessation of the smooth stretch.  There
+the trail, he knew, narrowed to a single sled-width. Leaning out ahead,
+he caught the haul-rope and drew his leaping sled up to the wheel-dog.
+He caught the animal by the hind-legs and threw it.  With a snarl of
+rage it tried to slash him with its fangs, but was dragged on by the
+rest of the team.  Its body proved an efficient brake, and the two
+other teams, still abreast, dashed ahead into the darkness for the
+narrow way.
+
+Smoke heard the crash and uproar of their collision, released his
+wheeler, sprang to the gee-pole, and urged his team to the right into
+the soft snow where the straining animals wallowed to their necks.  It
+was exhausting work, but he won by the tangled teams and gained the
+hard-packed trail beyond.
+
+
+
+VI.
+
+On the relay out of Sixty Mile, Smoke had next to his poorest team, and
+though the going was good, he had set it a short fifteen miles. Two
+more teams would bring him in to Dawson and to the Gold-Recorder's
+office, and Smoke had selected his best animals for the last two
+stretches.  Sitka Charley himself waited with the eight Malemutes that
+would jerk Smoke along for twenty miles, and for the finish, with a
+fifteen-mile run, was his own team--the team he had had all winter and
+which had been with him in the search for Surprise Lake.
+
+The two men he had left entangled at Sixty Mile failed to overtake him,
+and, on the other hand, his team failed to overtake any of the three
+that still led.  His animals were willing, though they lacked stamina
+and speed, and little urging was needed to keep them jumping into it at
+their best.  There was nothing for Smoke to do but to lie face-downward
+and hold on.  Now and again he would plunge out of the darkness into
+the circle of light about a blazing fire, catch a glimpse of furred men
+standing by harnessed and waiting dogs, and plunge into the darkness
+again.  Mile after mile, with only the grind and jar of the runners in
+his ears, he sped on.  Almost automatically he kept his place as the
+sled bumped ahead or half-lifted and heeled on the swings and swerves
+of the bends.  First one, and then another, without apparent rhyme or
+reason, three faces limned themselves on his consciousness:  Joy
+Gastell's, laughing and audacious; Shorty's, battered and exhausted by
+the struggle down Mono Creek; and John Bellew's, seamed and rigid, as
+if cast in iron, so unrelenting was its severity.  And sometimes Smoke
+wanted to shout aloud, to chant a paean of savage exultation, as he
+remembered the office of the Billow and the serial story of San
+Francisco which he had left unfinished, along with the other fripperies
+of those empty days.
+
+The grey twilight of morning was breaking as he exchanged his weary
+dogs for the eight fresh Malemutes.  Lighter animals than Hudson Bays,
+they were capable of greater speed, and they ran with the supple
+tirelessness of true wolves.  Sitka Charley called out the order of the
+teams ahead.  Big Olaf led, Arizona Bill was second, and Von Schroeder
+third.  These were the three best men in the country.  In fact, ere
+Smoke had left Dawson, the popular betting had placed them in that
+order.  While they were racing for a million, at least half a million
+had been staked by others on the outcome of the race.  No one had bet
+on Smoke, who, despite his several known exploits, was still accounted
+a chechaquo with much to learn.
+
+As daylight strengthened, Smoke caught sight of a sled ahead, and, in
+half an hour, his own lead-dog was leaping at its tail.  Not until the
+man turned his head to exchange greetings, did Smoke recognize him as
+Arizona Bill.  Von Schroeder had evidently passed him.  The trail,
+hard-packed, ran too narrowly through the soft snow, and for another
+half-hour Smoke was forced to stay in the rear.  Then they topped an
+ice-jam and struck a smooth stretch below, where were a number of relay
+camps and where the snow was packed widely.  On his knees, swinging his
+whip and yelling, Smoke drew abreast.  He noted that Arizona Bill's
+right arm hung dead at his side, and that he was compelled to pour
+leather with his left hand.  Awkward as it was, he had no hand left
+with which to hold on, and frequently he had to cease from the whip and
+clutch to save himself from falling off.  Smoke remembered the
+scrimmage in the creek bed at Three Below Discovery, and understood.
+Shorty's advice had been sound.
+
+"What's happened?" Smoke asked, as he began to pull ahead.
+
+"I don't know," Arizona Bill answered.  "I think I threw my shoulder
+out in the scrapping."
+
+He dropped behind very slowly, though when the last relay station was
+in sight he was fully half a mile in the rear.  Ahead, bunched
+together, Smoke could see Big Olaf and Von Schroeder.  Again Smoke
+arose to his knees, and he lifted his jaded dogs into a burst of speed
+such as a man only can who has the proper instinct for dog-driving.  He
+drew up close to the tail of Von Schroeder's sled, and in this order
+the three sleds dashed out on the smooth going, below a jam, where many
+men and many dogs waited.  Dawson was fifteen miles away.
+
+Von Schroeder, with his ten-mile relays, had changed five miles back,
+and would change five miles ahead.  So he held on, keeping his dogs at
+full leap.  Big Olaf and Smoke made flying changes, and their fresh
+teams immediately regained what had been lost to the Baron.  Big Olaf
+led past, and Smoke followed into the narrow trail beyond.
+
+"Still good, but not so good," Smoke paraphrased Spencer to himself.
+
+Of Von Schroeder, now behind, he had no fear; but ahead was the
+greatest dog-driver in the country.  To pass him seemed impossible.
+Again and again, many times, Smoke forced his leader to the other's
+sled-trail, and each time Big Olaf let out another link and drew away.
+Smoke contented himself with taking the pace, and hung on grimly.  The
+race was not lost until one or the other won, and in fifteen miles many
+things could happen.
+
+Three miles from Dawson something did happen.  To Smoke's surprise, Big
+Olaf rose up and with oaths and leather proceeded to fetch out the last
+ounce of effort in his animals.  It was a spurt that should have been
+reserved for the last hundred yards instead of being begun three miles
+from the finish.  Sheer dog-killing that it was, Smoke followed.  His
+own team was superb.  No dogs on the Yukon had had harder work or were
+in better condition.  Besides, Smoke had toiled with them, and eaten
+and bedded with them, and he knew each dog as an individual, and how
+best to win in to the animal's intelligence and extract its last least
+shred of willingness.
+
+They topped a small jam and struck the smooth-going below.  Big Olaf
+was barely fifty feet ahead.  A sled shot out from the side and drew in
+toward him, and Smoke understood Big Olaf's terrific spurt.  He had
+tried to gain a lead for the change.  This fresh team that waited to
+jerk him down the home stretch had been a private surprise of his.
+Even the men who had backed him to win had had no knowledge of it.
+
+Smoke strove desperately to pass during the exchange of sleds. Lifting
+his dogs to the effort, he ate up the intervening fifty feet.  With
+urging and pouring of leather, he went to the side and on until his
+lead-dog was jumping abreast of Big Olaf's wheeler.  On the other side,
+abreast, was the relay sled.  At the speed they were going, Big Olaf
+did not dare the flying leap.  If he missed and fell off, Smoke would
+be in the lead and the race would be lost.
+
+Big Olaf tried to spurt ahead, and he lifted his dogs magnificently,
+but Smoke's leader still continued to jump beside Big Olaf's wheeler.
+For half a mile the three sleds tore and bounced along side by side.
+The smooth stretch was nearing its end when Big Olaf took the chance.
+As the flying sleds swerved toward each other, he leaped, and the
+instant he struck he was on his knees, with whip and voice spurting the
+fresh team.  The smooth pinched out into the narrow trail, and he
+jumped his dogs ahead and into it with a lead of barely a yard.
+
+A man was not beaten until he was beaten, was Smoke's conclusion, and
+drive no matter how, Big Olaf failed to shake him off.  No team Smoke
+had driven that night could have stood such a killing pace and kept up
+with fresh dogs--no team save this one.  Nevertheless, the pace WAS
+killing it, and as they began to round the bluff at Klondike City, he
+could feel the pitch of strength going out of his animals.  Almost
+imperceptibly they lagged, and foot by foot Big Olaf drew away until he
+led by a score of yards.
+
+A great cheer went up from the population of Klondike City assembled on
+the ice.  Here the Klondike entered the Yukon, and half a mile away,
+across the Klondike, on the north bank, stood Dawson.  An outburst of
+madder cheering arose, and Smoke caught a glimpse of a sled shooting
+out to him.  He recognized the splendid animals that drew it.  They
+were Joy Gastell's.  And Joy Gastell drove them.  The hood of her
+squirrel-skin parka was tossed back, revealing the cameo-like oval of
+her face outlined against her heavily-massed hair.  Mittens had been
+discarded, and with bare hands she clung to whip and sled.
+
+"Jump!" she cried, as her leader snarled at Smoke's.
+
+Smoke struck the sled behind her.  It rocked violently from the impact
+of his body, but she was full up on her knees and swinging the whip.
+
+"Hi!  You!  Mush on!  Chook!  Chook!" she was crying, and the dogs
+whined and yelped in eagerness of desire and effort to overtake Big
+Olaf.
+
+And then, as the lead-dog caught the tail of Big Olaf's sled, and yard
+by yard drew up abreast, the great crowd on the Dawson bank went mad.
+It WAS a great crowd, for the men had dropped their tools on all the
+creeks and come down to see the outcome of the race, and a dead heat at
+the end of a hundred and ten miles justified any madness.
+
+"When you're in the lead I'm going to drop off!" Joy cried out over her
+shoulder.
+
+Smoke tried to protest.
+
+"And watch out for the dip curve half way up the bank," she warned.
+
+Dog by dog, separated by half a dozen feet, the two teams were running
+abreast.  Big Olaf, with whip and voice, held his own for a minute.
+Then, slowly, an inch at a time, Joy's leader began to forge past.
+
+"Get ready!" she cried to Smoke.  "I'm going to leave you in a minute.
+Get the whip."
+
+And as he shifted his hand to clutch the whip, they heard Big Olaf roar
+a warning, but too late.  His lead-dog, incensed at being passed,
+swerved in to the attack.  His fangs struck Joy's leader on the flank.
+The rival teams flew at one another's throats.  The sleds overran the
+fighting brutes and capsized.  Smoke struggled to his feet and tried to
+lift Joy up.  But she thrust him from her, crying:  "Go!"
+
+On foot, already fifty feet in advance, was Big Olaf, still intent on
+finishing the race.  Smoke obeyed, and when the two men reached the
+foot of the Dawson bank, he was at the others heels.  But up the bank
+Big Olaf lifted his body hugely, regaining a dozen feet.
+
+Five blocks down the main street was the Gold Recorder's office. The
+street was packed as for the witnessing of a parade.  Not so easily
+this time did Smoke gain to his giant rival, and when he did he was
+unable to pass.  Side by side they ran along the narrow aisle between
+the solid walls of fur-clad, cheering men.  Now one, now the other,
+with great convulsive jerks, gained an inch or so only to lose it
+immediately after.
+
+If the pace had been a killing one for their dogs, the one they now set
+themselves was no less so.  But they were racing for a million dollars
+and great honour in Yukon Country.  The only outside impression that
+came to Smoke on that last mad stretch was one of astonishment that
+there should be so many people in the Klondike. He had never seen them
+all at once before.
+
+He felt himself involuntarily lag, and Big Olaf sprang a full stride in
+the lead.  To Smoke it seemed that his heart would burst, while he had
+lost all consciousness of his legs.  He knew they were flying under
+him, but he did not know how he continued to make them fly, nor how he
+put even greater pressure of will upon them and compelled them again to
+carry him to his giant competitor's side.
+
+The open door of the Recorder's office appeared ahead of them.  Both
+men made a final, futile spurt.  Neither could draw away from the
+other, and side by side they hit the doorway, collided violently, and
+fell headlong on the office floor.
+
+They sat up, but were too exhausted to rise.  Big Olaf, the sweat
+pouring from him, breathing with tremendous, painful gasps, pawed the
+air and vainly tried to speak.  Then he reached out his hand with
+unmistakable meaning; Smoke extended his, and they shook.
+
+"It's a dead heat," Smoke could hear the Recorder saying, but it was as
+if in a dream, and the voice was very thin and very far away. "And all
+I can say is that you both win.  You'll have to divide the claim
+between you.  You're partners."
+
+Their two arms pumped up and down as they ratified the decision. Big
+Olaf nodded his head with great emphasis, and spluttered.  At last he
+got it out.
+
+"You damn chechaquo," was what he said, but in the saying of it was
+admiration.  "I don't know how you done it, but you did."
+
+Outside the great crowd was noisily massed, while the office was
+packing and jamming.  Smoke and Big Olaf essayed to rise, and each
+helped the other to his feet.  Smoke found his legs weak under him, and
+staggered drunkenly.  Big Olaf tottered toward him.
+
+"I'm sorry my dogs jumped yours."
+
+"It couldn't be helped," Smoke panted back.  "I heard you yell."
+
+"Say," Big Olaf went on with shining eyes.  "That girl--one damn fine
+girl, eh?"
+
+"One damn fine girl," Smoke agreed.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Smoke Bellew, by Jack London
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+**The Project Gutenberg Etext of Smoke Bellew, by Jack London**
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+Smoke Bellew
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+by Jack London
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+January, 1998  [Etext 1596#]
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+**The Project Gutenberg Etext of Smoke Bellew, by Jack London**
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+
+
+
+
+
+This etext was prepared from the 1913 Mills and Boon edition
+by Les Bowler, St. Ives, Dorest.
+
+
+
+
+
+Smoke Bellew
+
+
+
+
+Contents
+
+THE TASTE OF THE MEAT
+THE MEAT
+THE STAMPEDE TO SQUAW CREEK
+SHORTY DREAMS
+THE MAN ON THE OTHER BANK
+THE RACE FOR NUMBER ONE
+
+
+
+
+THE TASTE OF THE MEAT.
+
+
+
+
+I.
+
+
+In the beginning he was Christopher Bellew.  By the time he was at
+college he had become Chris Bellew.  Later, in the Bohemian crowd of
+San Francisco, he was called Kit Bellew.  And in the end he was
+known by no other name than Smoke Bellew.  And this history of the
+evolution of his name is the history of his evolution.  Nor would it
+have happened had he not had a fond mother and an iron uncle, and
+had he not received a letter from Gillet Bellamy.
+
+"I have just seen a copy of the Billow," Gillet wrote from Paris.
+"Of course O'Hara will succeed with it.  But he's missing some
+plays."  (Here followed details in the improvement of the budding
+society weekly.)  "Go down and see him.  Let him think they're your
+own suggestions.  Don't let him know they're from me.  If he does,
+he'll make me Paris correspondent, which I can't afford, because I'm
+getting real money for my stuff from the big magazines.  Above all,
+don't forget to make him fire that dub who's doing the musical and
+art criticism.  Another thing, San Francisco has always had a
+literature of her own.  But she hasn't any now.  Tell him to kick
+around and get some gink to turn out a live serial, and to put into
+it the real romance and glamour and colour of San Francisco."
+
+And down to the office of the Billow went Kit Bellew faithfully to
+instruct.  O'Hara listened.  O'Hara debated.  O'Hara agreed.  O'Hara
+fired the dub who wrote criticism.  Further, O'Hara had a way with
+him--the very way that was feared by Gillet in distant Paris.  When
+O'Hara wanted anything, no friend could deny him.  He was sweetly
+and compellingly irresistible.  Before Kit Bellew could escape from
+the office he had become an associate editor, had agreed to write
+weekly columns of criticism till some decent pen was found, and had
+pledged himself to write a weekly instalment of ten thousand words
+on the San Francisco serial--and all this without pay.  The Billow
+wasn't paying yet, O'Hara explained; and just as convincingly had he
+exposited that there was only one man in San Francisco capable of
+writing the serial, and that man Kit Bellew.
+
+"Oh, Lord, I'm the gink!" Kit had groaned to himself afterwards on
+the narrow stairway.
+
+And thereat had begun his servitude to O'Hara and the insatiable
+columns of the Billow.  Week after week he held down an office
+chair, stood off creditors, wrangled with printers, and turned out
+twenty-five thousand words of all sorts weekly.  Nor did his labours
+lighten.  The Billow was ambitious.  It went in for illustration.
+The processes were expensive.  It never had any money to pay Kit
+Bellew, and by the same token it was unable to pay for any additions
+to the office staff.
+
+"This is what comes of being a good fellow," Kit grumbled one day.
+
+"Thank God for good fellows then," O'Hara cried, with tears in his
+eyes as he gripped Kit's hand.  "You're all that's saved me, Kit.
+But for you I'd have gone bust.  Just a little longer, old man, and
+things will be easier."
+
+"Never," was Kit's plaint.  "I see my fate clearly.  I shall be here
+always."
+
+A little later he thought he saw his way out.  Watching his chance,
+in O'Hara's presence, he fell over a chair.  A few minutes
+afterwards he bumped into the corner of the desk, and, with fumbling
+fingers, capsized a paste pot.
+
+"Out late?" O'Hara queried.
+
+Kit brushed his eyes with his hands and peered about him anxiously
+before replying.
+
+"No, it's not that.  It's my eyes.  They seem to be going back on
+me, that's all."
+
+For several days he continued to fall over and bump into the office
+furniture.  But O'Hara's heart was not softened.
+
+"I tell you what, Kit," he said one day, "you've got to see an
+oculist.  There's Doctor Hassdapple.  He's a crackerjack.  And it
+won't cost you anything.  We can get it for advertizing.  I'll see
+him myself."
+
+And, true to his word, he dispatched Kit to the oculist.
+
+"There's nothing the matter with your eyes," was the doctor's
+verdict, after a lengthy examination.  "In fact, your eyes are
+magnificent--a pair in a million."
+
+"Don't tell O'Hara," Kit pleaded.  "And give me a pair of black
+glasses."
+
+The result of this was that O'Hara sympathized and talked glowingly
+of the time when the Billow would be on its feet.
+
+Luckily for Kit Bellew, he had his own income.  Small it was,
+compared with some, yet it was large enough to enable him to belong
+to several clubs and maintain a studio in the Latin Quarter.  In
+point of fact, since his associate editorship, his expenses had
+decreased prodigiously.  He had no time to spend money.  He never
+saw the studio any more, nor entertained the local Bohemians with
+his famous chafing-dish suppers.  Yet he was always broke, for the
+Billow, in perennial distress, absorbed his cash as well as his
+brains.  There were the illustrators who periodically refused to
+illustrate, the printers who periodically refused to print, and the
+office boy who frequently refused to officiate.  At such times
+O'Hara looked at Kit, and Kit did the rest.
+
+When the steamship Excelsior arrived from Alaska, bringing the news
+of the Klondike strike that set the country mad, Kit made a purely
+frivolous proposition.
+
+"Look here, O'Hara," he said.  "This gold rush is going to be big--
+the days of '49 over again.  Suppose I cover it for the Billow?
+I'll pay my own expenses."
+
+O'Hara shook his head.
+
+"Can't spare you from the office, Kit.  Then there's that serial.
+Besides, I saw Jackson not an hour ago.  He's starting for the
+Klondike to-morrow, and he's agreed to send a weekly letter and
+photos.  I wouldn't let him get away till he promised.  And the
+beauty of it is, that it doesn't cost us anything."
+
+The next Kit heard of the Klondike was when he dropped into the club
+that afternoon, and, in an alcove off the library, encountered his
+uncle.
+
+"Hello, avuncular relative," Kit greeted, sliding into a leather
+chair and spreading out his legs.  "Won't you join me?"
+
+He ordered a cocktail, but the uncle contented himself with the thin
+native claret he invariably drank.  He glanced with irritated
+disapproval at the cocktail, and on to his nephew's face.  Kit saw a
+lecture gathering.
+
+"I've only a minute," he announced hastily.  "I've got to run and
+take in that Keith exhibition at Ellery's and do half a column on
+it."
+
+"What's the matter with you?" the other demanded.  "You're pale.
+You're a wreck."
+
+Kit's only answer was a groan.
+
+"I'll have the pleasure of burying you, I can see that."
+
+Kit shook his head sadly.
+
+"No destroying worm, thank you.  Cremation for mine."
+
+John Bellew came of the old hard and hardy stock that had crossed
+the plains by ox-team in the fifties, and in him was this same
+hardness and the hardness of a childhood spent in the conquering of
+a new land.
+
+"You're not living right, Christopher.  I'm ashamed of you."
+
+"Primrose path, eh?" Kit chuckled.
+
+The older man shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"Shake not your gory locks at me, avuncular.  I wish it were the
+primrose path.  But that's all cut out.  I have no time."
+
+"Then what in-?"
+
+"Overwork."
+
+John Bellew laughed harshly and incredulously.
+
+"Honest?"
+
+Again came the laughter.
+
+"Men are the products of their environment," Kit proclaimed,
+pointing at the other's glass.  "Your mirth is thin and bitter as
+your drink."
+
+"Overwork!" was the sneer.  "You never earned a cent in your life."
+
+"You bet I have--only I never got it.  I'm earning five hundred a
+week right now, and doing four men's work."
+
+"Pictures that won't sell?  Or--er--fancy work of some sort?  Can
+you swim?"
+
+"I used to."
+
+"Sit a horse?"
+
+"I have essayed that adventure."
+
+John Bellew snorted his disgust.
+
+"I'm glad your father didn't live to see you in all the glory of
+your gracelessness," he said.  "Your father was a man, every inch of
+him.  Do you get it?  A Man.  I think he'd have whaled all this
+musical and artistic tomfoolery out of you."
+
+"Alas! these degenerate days," Kit sighed.
+
+"I could understand it, and tolerate it," the other went on
+savagely, "if you succeeded at it.  You've never earned a cent in
+your life, nor done a tap of man's work."
+
+"Etchings, and pictures, and fans," Kit contributed unsoothingly.
+
+"You're a dabbler and a failure.  What pictures have you painted?
+Dinky water-colours and nightmare posters.  You've never had one
+exhibited, even here in San Francisco-"
+
+"Ah, you forget.  There is one in the jinks room of this very club."
+
+"A gross cartoon.  Music?  Your dear fool of a mother spent hundreds
+on lessons.  You've dabbled and failed.  You've never even earned a
+five-dollar piece by accompanying some one at a concert.  Your
+songs?--rag-time rot that's never printed and that's sung only by a
+pack of fake Bohemians."
+
+"I had a book published once--those sonnets, you remember," Kit
+interposed meekly.
+
+"What did it cost you?"
+
+"Only a couple of hundred."
+
+"Any other achievements?"
+
+"I had a forest play acted at the summer jinks."
+
+"What did you get for it?"
+
+"Glory."
+
+"And you used to swim, and you have essayed to sit a horse!"  John
+Bellew set his glass down with unnecessary violence.  "What earthly
+good are you anyway?  You were well put up, yet even at university
+you didn't play football.  You didn't row.  You didn't-"
+
+"I boxed and fenced--some."
+
+"When did you last box?"
+
+"Not since; but I was considered an excellent judge of time and
+distance, only I was--er-"
+
+"Go on."
+
+"Considered desultory."
+
+"Lazy, you mean."
+
+"I always imagined it was an euphemism."
+
+"My father, sir, your grandfather, old Isaac Bellew, killed a man
+with a blow of his fist when he was sixty-nine years old."
+
+"The man?"
+
+"No, your--you graceless scamp!  But you'll never kill a mosquito at
+sixty-nine."
+
+"The times have changed, oh, my avuncular.  They send men to state
+prisons for homicide now."
+
+"Your father rode one hundred and eighty-five miles, without
+sleeping, and killed three horses."
+
+"Had he lived to-day, he'd have snored over the course in a
+Pullman."
+
+The older man was on the verge of choking with wrath, but swallowed
+it down and managed to articulate:
+
+"How old are you?"
+
+"I have reason to believe-"
+
+"I know.  Twenty-seven.  You finished college at twenty-two.  You've
+dabbled and played and frilled for five years.  Before God and man,
+of what use are you?  When I was your age I had one suit of
+underclothes.  I was riding with the cattle in Colusa.  I was hard
+as rocks, and I could sleep on a rock.  I lived on jerked beef and
+bear-meat.  I am a better man physically right now than you are.
+You weigh about one hundred and sixty-five.  I can throw you right
+now, or thrash you with my fists."
+
+"It doesn't take a physical prodigy to mop up cocktails or pink
+tea," Kit murmured deprecatingly.  "Don't you see, my avuncular, the
+times have changed.  Besides, I wasn't brought up right.  My dear
+fool of a mother-"
+
+John Bellew started angrily.
+
+"-As you described her, was too good to me; kept me in cotton wool
+and all the rest.  Now, if when I was a youngster I had taken some
+of those intensely masculine vacations you go in for--I wonder why
+you didn't invite me sometimes?  You took Hal and Robbie all over
+the Sierras and on that Mexico trip."
+
+"I guess you were too Lord Fauntleroyish."
+
+"Your fault, avuncular, and my dear--er--mother's.  How was I to
+know the hard?  I was only a chee-ild.  What was there left but
+etchings and pictures and fans?  Was it my fault that I never had to
+sweat?"
+
+The older man looked at his nephew with unconcealed disgust.  He had
+no patience with levity from the lips of softness.
+
+"Well, I'm going to take another one of those what-you-call
+masculine vacations.  Suppose I asked you to come along?"
+
+"Rather belated, I must say.  Where is it?"
+
+"Hal and Robert are going in to Klondike, and I'm going to see them
+across the Pass and down to the Lakes, then return-"
+
+He got no further, for the young man had sprung forward and gripped
+his hand.
+
+"My preserver!"
+
+John Bellew was immediately suspicious.  He had not dreamed the
+invitation would be accepted.
+
+"You don't mean it," he said.
+
+"When do we start?"
+
+"It will be a hard trip.  You'll be in the way."
+
+"No, I won't.  I'll work.  I've learned to work since I went on the
+Billow."
+
+"Each man has to take a year's supplies in with him.  There'll be
+such a jam the Indian packers won't be able to handle it.  Hal and
+Robert will have to pack their outfits across themselves.  That's
+what I'm going along for--to help them pack.  It you come you'll
+have to do the same."
+
+"Watch me."
+
+"You can't pack," was the objection.
+
+"When do we start?"
+
+"To-morrow."
+
+"You needn't take it to yourself that your lecture on the hard has
+done it," Kit said, at parting.  "I just had to get away, somewhere,
+anywhere, from O'Hara."
+
+"Who is O'Hara?  A Jap?"
+
+"No; he's an Irishman, and a slave-driver, and my best friend.  He's
+the editor and proprietor and all-around big squeeze of the Billow.
+What he says goes.  He can make ghosts walk."
+
+That night Kit Bellew wrote a note to O'Hara.
+
+"It's only a several weeks' vacation," he explained.  "You'll have
+to get some gink to dope out instalments for that serial.  Sorry,
+old man, but my health demands it.  I'll kick in twice as hard when
+I get back."
+
+
+
+II.
+
+Kit Bellew landed through the madness of the Dyea beach, congested
+with thousand-pound outfits of thousands of men.  This immense mass
+of luggage and food, flung ashore in mountains by the steamers, was
+beginning slowly to dribble up the Dyea valley and across Chilcoot.
+It was a portage of twenty-eight miles, and could be accomplished
+only on the backs of men.  Despite the fact that the Indian packers
+had jumped the freight from eight cents a pound to forty, they were
+swamped with the work, and it was plain that winter would catch the
+major portion of the outfits on the wrong side of the divide.
+
+Tenderest of the tender-feet was Kit.  Like many hundreds of others
+he carried a big revolver swung on a cartridge-belt.  Of this, his
+uncle, filled with memories of old lawless days, was likewise
+guilty.  But Kit Bellew was romantic.  He was fascinated by the
+froth and sparkle of the gold rush, and viewed its life and movement
+with an artist's eye.  He did not take it seriously.  As he said on
+the steamer, it was not his funeral.  He was merely on a vacation,
+and intended to peep over the top of the pass for a 'look see' and
+then to return.
+
+Leaving his party on the sand to wait for the putting ashore of the
+freight, he strolled up the beach toward the old trading post.  He
+did not swagger, though he noticed that many of the be-revolvered
+individuals did.  A strapping, six-foot Indian passed him, carrying
+an unusually large pack.  Kit swung in behind, admiring the splendid
+calves of the man, and the grace and ease with which he moved along
+under his burden.  The Indian dropped his pack on the scales in
+front of the post, and Kit joined the group of admiring gold-rushers
+who surrounded him.  The pack weighed one hundred and twenty pounds,
+which fact was uttered back and forth in tones of awe.  It was going
+some, Kit decided, and he wondered if he could lift such a weight,
+much less walk off with it.
+
+"Going to Lake Linderman with it, old man?" he asked.
+
+The Indian, swelling with pride, grunted an affirmative.
+
+"How much you make that one pack?"
+
+"Fifty dollar."
+
+Here Kit slid out of the conversation.  A young woman, standing in
+the doorway, had caught his eye.  Unlike other women landing from
+the steamers, she was neither short-skirted nor bloomer-clad.  She
+was dressed as any woman travelling anywhere would be dressed.  What
+struck him was the justness of her being there, a feeling that
+somehow she belonged.  Moreover, she was young and pretty.  The
+bright beauty and colour of her oval face held him, and he looked
+over-long--looked till she resented, and her own eyes, long-lashed
+and dark, met his in cool survey.
+
+From his face they travelled in evident amusement down to the big
+revolver at his thigh.  Then her eyes came back to his, and in them
+was amused contempt.  It struck him like a blow.  She turned to the
+man beside her and indicated Kit.  The man glanced him over with the
+same amused contempt.
+
+"Chechaquo," the girl said.
+
+The man, who looked like a tramp in his cheap overalls and
+dilapidated woollen jacket, grinned dryly, and Kit felt withered
+though he knew not why.  But anyway she was an unusually pretty
+girl, he decided, as the two moved off.  He noted the way of her
+walk, and recorded the judgment that he would recognize it after the
+lapse of a thousand years.
+
+"Did you see that man with the girl?" Kit's neighbour asked him
+excitedly.  "Know who he is?"
+
+Kit shook his head.
+
+"Cariboo Charley.  He was just pointed out to me.  He struck it big
+on Klondike.  Old timer.  Been on the Yukon a dozen years.  He's
+just come out."
+
+"What's chechaquo mean?" Kit asked.
+
+"You're one; I'm one," was the answer.
+
+"Maybe I am, but you've got to search me.  What does it mean?"
+
+"Tender-foot."
+
+On his way back to the beach Kit turned the phrase over and over.
+It rankled to be called tender-foot by a slender chit of a woman.
+
+Going into a corner among the heaps of freight, his mind still
+filled with the vision of the Indian with the redoubtable pack, Kit
+essayed to learn his own strength.  He picked out a sack of flour
+which he knew weighed an even hundred pounds.  He stepped astride of
+it, reached down, and strove to get it on his shoulder.  His first
+conclusion was that one hundred pounds was the real heavy.  His next
+was that his back was weak.  His third was an oath, and it occurred
+at the end of five futile minutes, when he collapsed on top of the
+burden with which he was wrestling.  He mopped his forehead, and
+across a heap of grub-sacks saw John Bellew gazing at him, wintry
+amusement in his eyes.
+
+"God!" proclaimed that apostle of the hard.  "Out of our loins has
+come a race of weaklings.  When I was sixteen I toyed with things
+like that."
+
+"You forget, avuncular," Kit retorted, "that I wasn't raised on
+bear-meat."
+
+"And I'll toy with it when I'm sixty."
+
+"You've got to show me."
+
+John Bellew did.  He was forty-eight, but he bent over the sack,
+applied a tentative, shifting grip that balanced it, and, with a
+quick heave, stood erect, the somersaulted sack of flour on his
+shoulder.
+
+"Knack, my boy, knack--and a spine."
+
+Kit took off his hat reverently.
+
+"You're a wonder, avuncular, a shining wonder.  D'ye think I can
+learn the knack?"
+
+John Bellew shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"You'll be hitting the back trail before we get started."
+
+"Never you fear," Kit groaned.  "There's O'Hara, the roaring lion,
+down there.  I'm not going back till I have to."
+
+
+
+III.
+
+Kit's first pack was a success.  Up to Finnegan's Crossing they had
+managed to get Indians to carry the twenty-five hundred-pound
+outfit.  From that point their own backs must do the work.  They
+planned to move forward at the rate of a mile a day.  It looked
+easy--on paper.  Since John Bellew was to stay in camp and do the
+cooking, he would be unable to make more than an occasional pack;
+so, to each of the three young men fell the task of carrying eight
+hundred pounds one mile each day.  If they made fifty-pound packs,
+it meant a daily walk of sixteen miles loaded and of fifteen miles
+light--"Because we don't back-trip the last time," Kit explained the
+pleasant discovery; eighty-pound packs meant nineteen miles travel
+each day; and hundred-pound packs meant only fifteen miles.
+
+"I don't like walking," said Kit.  "Therefore I shall carry one
+hundred pounds."  He caught the grin of incredulity on his uncle's
+face, and added hastily:  "Of course I shall work up to it.  A
+fellow's got to learn the ropes and tricks.  I'll start with fifty."
+
+He did, and ambled gaily along the trail.  He dropped the sack at
+the next camp-site and ambled back.  It was easier than he had
+thought.  But two miles had rubbed off the velvet of his strength
+and exposed the underlying softness.  His second pack was sixty-five
+pounds.  It was more difficult, and he no longer ambled.  Several
+times, following the custom of all packers, he sat down on the
+ground, resting the pack behind him on a rock or stump.  With the
+third pack he became bold.  He fastened the straps to a ninety-five-
+pound sack of beans and started.  At the end of a hundred yards he
+felt that he must collapse.  He sat down and mopped his face.
+
+"Short hauls and short rests," he muttered.  "That's the trick."
+
+Sometimes he did not make a hundred yards, and each time he
+struggled to his feet for another short haul the pack became
+undeniably heavier.  He panted for breath, and the sweat streamed
+from him.  Before he had covered a quarter of a mile he stripped off
+his woollen shirt and hung it on a tree.  A little later he
+discarded his hat.  At the end of half a mile he decided he was
+finished.  He had never exerted himself so in his life, and he knew
+that he was finished.  As he sat and panted, his gaze fell upon the
+big revolver and the heavy cartridge-belt.
+
+"Ten pounds of junk," he sneered, as he unbuckled it.
+
+He did not bother to hang it on a tree, but flung it into the
+underbush.  And as the steady tide of packers flowed by him, up
+trail and down, he noted that the other tender-feet were beginning
+to shed their shooting irons.
+
+His short hauls decreased.  At times a hundred feet was all he could
+stagger, and then the ominous pounding of his heart against his ear-
+drums and the sickening totteriness of his knees compelled him to
+rest.  And his rests grew longer.  But his mind was busy.  It was a
+twenty-eight mile portage, which represented as many days, and this,
+by all accounts, was the easiest part of it.  "Wait till you get to
+Chilcoot," others told him as they rested and talked, "where you
+climb with hands and feet."
+
+"They ain't going to be no Chilcoot," was his answer.  "Not for me.
+Long before that I'll be at peace in my little couch beneath the
+moss."
+
+A slip, and a violent wrenching effort at recovery, frightened him.
+He felt that everything inside him had been torn asunder.
+
+"If ever I fall down with this on my back I'm a goner," he told
+another packer.
+
+"That's nothing," came the answer.  "Wait till you hit the Canyon.
+You'll have to cross a raging torrent on a sixty-foot pine tree.  No
+guide ropes, nothing, and the water boiling at the sag of the log to
+your knees.  If you fall with a pack on your back, there's no
+getting out of the straps.  You just stay there and drown."
+
+"Sounds good to me," he retorted; and out of the depths of his
+exhaustion he almost half meant it.
+
+"They drown three or four a day there," the man assured him.  "I
+helped fish a German out there.  He had four thousand in greenbacks
+on him."
+
+"Cheerful, I must say," said Kit, battling his way to his feet and
+tottering on.
+
+He and the sack of beans became a perambulating tragedy.  It
+reminded him of the old man of the sea who sat on Sinbad's neck.
+And this was one of those intensely masculine vacations, he
+meditated.  Compared with it, the servitude to O'Hara was sweet.
+Again and again he was nearly seduced by the thought of abandoning
+the sack of beans in the brush and of sneaking around the camp to
+the beach and catching a steamer for civilization.
+
+But he didn't.  Somewhere in him was the strain of the hard, and he
+repeated over and over to himself that what other men could do, he
+could.  It became a nightmare chant, and he gibbered it to those
+that passed him on the trail.  At other times, resting, he watched
+and envied the stolid, mule-footed Indians that plodded by under
+heavier packs.  They never seemed to rest, but went on and on with a
+steadiness and certitude that was to him appalling.
+
+He sat and cursed--he had no breath for it when under way--and
+fought the temptation to sneak back to San Francisco.  Before the
+mile pack was ended he ceased cursing and took to crying.  The tears
+were tears of exhaustion and of disgust with self.  If ever a man
+was a wreck, he was.  As the end of the pack came in sight, he
+strained himself in desperation, gained the camp-site, and pitched
+forward on his face, the beans on his back.  It did not kill him,
+but he lay for fifteen minutes before he could summon sufficient
+shreds of strength to release himself from the straps.  Then he
+became deathly sick, and was so found by Robbie, who had similar
+troubles of his own.  It was this sickness of Robbie that braced him
+up.
+
+"What other men can do, we can do," Kit told him, though down in his
+heart he wondered whether or not he was bluffing.
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+"And I am twenty-seven years old and a man," he privately assured
+himself many times in the days that followed.  There was need for
+it.  At the end of a week, though he had succeeded in moving his
+eight hundred pounds forward a mile a day, he had lost fifteen
+pounds of his own weight.  His face was lean and haggard.  All
+resilience had gone out of his body and mind.  He no longer walked,
+but plodded.  And on the back-trips, travelling light, his feet
+dragged almost as much as when he was loaded.
+
+He had become a work animal.  He fell asleep over his food, and his
+sleep was heavy and beastly, save when he was aroused, screaming
+with agony, by the cramps in his legs.  Every part of him ached.  He
+tramped on raw blisters, yet this was even easier than the fearful
+bruising his feet received on the water-rounded rocks of the Dyea
+Flats, across which the trail led for two miles.  These two miles
+represented thirty-eight miles of travelling.  He washed his face
+once a day.  His nails, torn and broken and afflicted with
+hangnails, were never cleaned.  His shoulders and chest, galled by
+the pack-straps, made him think, and for the first time with
+understanding, of the horses he had seen on city streets.
+
+One ordeal that nearly destroyed him at first had been the food.
+The extraordinary amount of work demanded extraordinary stoking, and
+his stomach was unaccustomed to great quantities of bacon and of the
+coarse, highly poisonous brown beans.  As a result, his stomach went
+back on him, and for several days the pain and irritation of it and
+of starvation nearly broke him down.  And then came the day of joy
+when he could eat like a ravenous animal, and, wolf-eyed, ask for
+more.
+
+When they had moved the outfit across the foot-logs at the mouth of
+the Canyon, they made a change in their plans.  Word had come across
+the Pass that at Lake Linderman the last available trees for
+building boats were being cut.  The two cousins, with tools,
+whipsaw, blankets, and grub on their backs, went on, leaving Kit and
+his uncle to hustle along the outfit.  John Bellew now shared the
+cooking with Kit, and both packed shoulder to shoulder.  Time was
+flying, and on the peaks the first snow was falling.  To be caught
+on the wrong side of the Pass meant a delay of nearly a year.  The
+older man put his iron back under a hundred pounds.  Kit was
+shocked, but he gritted his teeth and fastened his own straps to a
+hundred pounds.  It hurt, but he had learned the knack, and his
+body, purged of all softness and fat, was beginning to harden up
+with lean and bitter muscle.  Also, he observed and devised.  He
+took note of the head-straps worn by the Indians, and manufactured
+one for himself, which he used in addition to the shoulder-straps.
+It made things easier, so that he began the practice of piling any
+light, cumbersome piece of luggage on top.  Thus, he was soon able
+to bend along with a hundred pounds in the straps, fifteen or twenty
+more lying loosely on top the pack and against his neck, an axe or a
+pair of oars in one hand, and in the other the nested cooking-pails
+of the camp.
+
+But work as they would, the toil increased.  The trail grew more
+rugged; their packs grew heavier; and each day saw the snow-line
+dropping down the mountains, while freight jumped to sixty cents.
+No word came from the cousins beyond, so they knew they must be at
+work chopping down the standing trees, and whipsawing them into
+boat-planks.  John Bellew grew anxious.  Capturing a bunch of
+Indians back-tripping from Lake Linderman, he persuaded them to put
+their straps on the outfit.  They charged thirty cents a pound to
+carry it to the summit of Chilcoot, and it nearly broke him.  As it
+was, some four hundred pounds of clothes-bags and camp outfit was
+not handled.  He remained behind to move it along, dispatching Kit
+with the Indians.  At the summit Kit was to remain, slowly moving
+his ton until overtaken by the four hundred pounds with which his
+uncle guaranteed to catch him.
+
+
+
+V.
+
+Kit plodded along the trail with his Indian packers.  In recognition
+of the fact that it was to be a long pack, straight to the top of
+Chilcoot, his own load was only eighty pounds.  The Indians plodded
+under their loads, but it was a quicker gait than he had practised.
+Yet he felt no apprehension, and by now had come to deem himself
+almost the equal of an Indian.
+
+At the end of a quarter of a mile he desired to rest.  But the
+Indians kept on.  He stayed with them, and kept his place in the
+line.  At the half mile he was convinced that he was incapable of
+another step, yet he gritted his teeth, kept his place, and at the
+end of the mile was amazed that he was still alive.  Then, in some
+strange way, came the thing called second wind, and the next mile
+was almost easier than the first.  The third mile nearly killed him,
+and, though half delirious with pain and fatigue, he never
+whimpered.  And then, when he felt he must surely faint, came the
+rest.  Instead of sitting in the straps, as was the custom of the
+white packers, the Indians slipped out of the shoulder- and head-
+straps and lay at ease, talking and smoking.  A full half hour
+passed before they made another start.  To Kit's surprise he found
+himself a fresh man, and 'long hauls and long rests' became his
+newest motto.
+
+The pitch of Chilcoot was all he had heard of it, and many were the
+occasions when he climbed with hands as well as feet.  But when he
+reached the crest of the divide in the thick of a driving snow-
+squall, it was in the company of his Indians, and his secret pride
+was that he had come through with them and never squealed and never
+lagged.  To be almost as good as an Indian was a new ambition to
+cherish.
+
+When he had paid off the Indians and seen them depart, a stormy
+darkness was falling, and he was left alone, a thousand feet above
+timber line, on the back-bone of a mountain.  Wet to the waist,
+famished and exhausted, he would have given a year's income for a
+fire and a cup of coffee.  Instead, he ate half a dozen cold flap-
+jacks and crawled into the folds of the partly unrolled tent.  As he
+dozed off he had time only for one fleeting thought, and he grinned
+with vicious pleasure at the picture of John Bellew in the days to
+follow, masculinely back-tripping his four hundred pounds up
+Chilcoot.  As for himself, even though burdened with two thousand
+pounds, he was bound down the hill.
+
+In the morning, stiff from his labours and numb with the frost, he
+rolled out of the canvas, ate a couple of pounds of uncooked bacon,
+buckled the straps on a hundred pounds, and went down the rocky way.
+Several hundred yards beneath, the trail led across a small glacier
+and down to Crater Lake.  Other men packed across the glacier.  All
+that day he dropped his packs at the glacier's upper edge, and, by
+virtue of the shortness of the pack, he put his straps on one
+hundred and fifty pounds each load.  His astonishment at being able
+to do it never abated.  For two dollars he bought from an Indian
+three leathery sea-biscuits, and out of these, and a huge quantity
+of raw bacon, made several meals.  Unwashed, unwarmed, his clothing
+wet with sweat, he slept another night in the canvas.
+
+In the early morning he spread a tarpaulin on the ice, loaded it
+with three-quarters of a ton, and started to pull.  Where the pitch
+of the glacier accelerated, his load likewise accelerated, overran
+him, scooped him in on top, and ran away with him.
+
+A hundred packers, bending under their loads, stopped to watch him.
+He yelled frantic warnings, and those in his path stumbled and
+staggered clear.  Below, on the lower edge of the glacier, was
+pitched a small tent, which seemed leaping toward him, so rapidly
+did it grow larger.  He left the beaten track where the packers'
+trail swerved to the left, and struck a patch of fresh snow.  This
+arose about him in frosty smoke, while it reduced his speed.  He saw
+the tent the instant he struck it, carrying away the corner guys,
+bursting in the front flaps, and fetching up inside, still on top of
+the tarpaulin and in the midst of his grub-sacks.  The tent rocked
+drunkenly, and in the frosty vapour he found himself face to face
+with a startled young woman who was sitting up in her blankets--the
+very one who had called him chechaquo at Dyea.
+
+"Did you see my smoke?" he queried cheerfully.
+
+She regarded him with disapproval.
+
+"Talk about your magic carpets!" he went on.
+
+"Do you mind removing that sack from my foot?" she said coldly.
+
+He looked, and lifted his weight quickly.
+
+"It wasn't a sack.  It was my elbow.  Pardon me."
+
+The information did not perturb her, and her coolness was a
+challenge.
+
+"It was a mercy you did not overturn the stove," she said.
+
+He followed her glance and saw a sheet-iron stove and a coffee-pot,
+attended by a young squaw.  He sniffed the coffee and looked back to
+the girl.
+
+"I'm a chechaquo," he said.
+
+Her bored expression told him that he was stating the obvious.  But
+he was unabashed.
+
+"I've shed my shooting-irons," he added.
+
+Then she recognized him, and her eyes lighted.
+
+"I never thought you'd get this far," she informed him.
+
+Again, and greedily, he sniffed the air.
+
+"As I live, coffee!"  He turned and directly addressed her.  "I'll
+give you my little finger--cut it right off now; I'll do anything;
+I'll be your slave for a year and a day or any other odd time, if
+you'll give me a cup out of that pot."
+
+And over the coffee he gave his name and learned hers--Joy Gastell.
+Also, he learned that she was an old-timer in the country.  She had
+been born in a trading post on the Great Slave, and as a child had
+crossed the Rockies with her father and come down to the Yukon.  She
+was going in, she said, with her father, who had been delayed by
+business in Seattle, and who had then been wrecked on the ill-fated
+Chanter and carried back to Puget Sound by the rescuing steamer.
+
+In view of the fact that she was still in her blankets, he did not
+make it a long conversation, and, heroically declining a second cup
+of coffee, he removed himself and his quarter of a ton of baggage
+from her tent.  Further, he took several conclusions away with him:
+she had a fetching name and fetching eyes; could not be more than
+twenty, or twenty-one or -two; her father must be French; she had a
+will of her own and temperament to burn; and she had been educated
+elsewhere than on the frontier.
+
+
+
+VI.
+
+Over the ice-scoured rocks, and above the timber-line, the trail ran
+around Crater Lake and gained the rocky defile that led toward Happy
+Camp and the first scrub pines.  To pack his heavy outfit around
+would take days of heart-breaking toil.  On the lake was a canvas
+boat employed in freighting.  Two trips with it, in two hours, would
+see him and his ton across.  But he was broke, and the ferryman
+charged forty dollars a ton.
+
+"You've got a gold-mine, my friend, in that dinky boat," Kit said to
+the ferryman.  "Do you want another gold-mine?"
+
+"Show me," was the answer.
+
+"I'll sell it to you for the price of ferrying my outfit.  It's an
+idea, not patented, and you can jump the deal as soon as I tell you
+it.  Are you game?"
+
+The ferryman said he was, and Kit liked his looks.
+
+"Very well.  You see that glacier.  Take a pick-axe and wade into
+it.  In a day you can have a decent groove from top to bottom.  See
+the point?  The Chilcoot and Crater Lake Consolidated Chute
+Corporation, Limited.  You can charge fifty cents a hundred, get a
+hundred tons a day, and have no work to do but collect the coin."
+
+Two hours later, Kit's ton was across the lake, and he had gained
+three days on himself.  And when John Bellew overtook him, he was
+well along toward Deep Lake, another volcanic pit filled with
+glacial water.
+
+
+
+VII.
+
+The last pack, from Long Lake to Linderman, was three miles, and the
+trail, if trail it could be called, rose up over a thousand-foot
+hogback, dropped down a scramble of slippery rocks, and crossed a
+wide stretch of swamp.  John Bellew remonstrated when he saw Kit
+arise with a hundred pounds in the straps and pick up a fifty-pound
+sack of flour and place it on top of the pack against the back of
+his neck.
+
+"Come on, you chunk of the hard," Kit retorted.  "Kick in on your
+bear-meat fodder and your one suit of underclothes."
+
+But John Bellew shook his head.
+
+"I'm afraid I'm getting old, Christopher."
+
+"You're only forty-eight.  Do you realize that my grandfather, sir,
+your father, old Isaac Bellew, killed a man with his fist when he
+was sixty-nine years old?"
+
+John Bellew grinned and swallowed his medicine.
+
+"Avuncular, I want to tell you something important.  I was raised a
+Lord Fauntleroy, but I can outpack you, outwalk you, put you on your
+back, or lick you with my fists right now."
+
+John Bellew thrust out his hand and spoke solemnly.
+
+"Christopher, my boy, I believe you can do it.  I believe you can do
+it with that pack on your back at the same time.  You've made good,
+boy, though it's too unthinkable to believe."
+
+Kit made the round trip of the last pack four times a day, which is
+to say that he daily covered twenty-four miles of mountain climbing,
+twelve miles of it under one hundred and fifty pounds.  He was
+proud, hard, and tired, but in splendid physical condition.  He ate
+and slept as he had never eaten and slept in his life, and as the
+end of the work came in sight, he was almost half sorry.
+
+One problem bothered him.  He had learned that he could fall with a
+hundredweight on his back and survive; but he was confident, if he
+fell with that additional fifty pounds across the back of his neck,
+that it would break it clean.  Each trail through the swamp was
+quickly churned bottomless by the thousands of packers, who were
+compelled continually to make new trails.  It was while pioneering
+such a new trail, that he solved the problem of the extra fifty.
+
+The soft, lush surface gave way under him; he floundered, and
+pitched forward on his face.  The fifty pounds crushed his face in
+the mud and went clear without snapping his neck.  With the
+remaining hundred pounds on his back, he arose on hands and knees.
+But he got no farther.  One arm sank to the shoulder, pillowing his
+cheek in the slush.  As he drew this arm clear, the other sank to
+the shoulder.  In this position it was impossible to slip the
+straps, and the hundredweight on his back would not let him rise.
+On hands and knees, sinking first one arm and then the other, he
+made an effort to crawl to where the small sack of flour had fallen.
+But he exhausted himself without advancing, and so churned and broke
+the grass surface, that a tiny pool of water began to form in
+perilous proximity to his mouth and nose.
+
+He tried to throw himself on his back with the pack underneath, but
+this resulted in sinking both arms to the shoulders and gave him a
+foretaste of drowning.  With exquisite patience, he slowly withdrew
+one sucking arm and then the other and rested them flat on the
+surface for the support of his chin.  Then he began to call for
+help.  After a time he heard the sound of feet sucking through the
+mud as some one advanced from behind.
+
+"Lend a hand, friend," he said.  "Throw out a life-line or
+something."
+
+It was a woman's voice that answered, and he recognized it.
+
+"If you'll unbuckle the straps I can get up."
+
+The hundred pounds rolled into the mud with a soggy noise, and he
+slowly gained his feet.
+
+"A pretty predicament," Miss Gastell laughed, at sight of his mud-
+covered face.
+
+"Not at all," he replied airily.  "My favourite physical exercise
+stunt.  Try it some time.  It's great for the pectoral muscles and
+the spine."
+
+He wiped his face, flinging the slush from his hand with a snappy
+jerk.
+
+"Oh!" she cried in recognition.  "It's Mr--ah--Mr Smoke Bellew."
+
+"I thank you gravely for your timely rescue and for that name," he
+answered.  "I have been doubly baptized.  Henceforth I shall insist
+always on being called Smoke Bellew.  It is a strong name, and not
+without significance."
+
+He paused, and then voice and expression became suddenly fierce.
+
+"Do you know what I'm going to do?" he demanded.  "I'm going back to
+the States.  I am going to get married.  I am going to raise a large
+family of children.  And then, as the evening shadows fall, I shall
+gather those children about me and relate the sufferings and
+hardships I endured on the Chilcoot Trail.  And if they don't cry--I
+repeat, if they don't cry, I'll lambaste the stuffing out of them."
+
+
+
+VIII.
+
+The arctic winter came down apace.  Snow that had come to stay lay
+six inches on the ground, and the ice was forming in quiet ponds,
+despite the fierce gales that blew.  It was in the late afternoon,
+during a lull in such a gale, that Kit and John Bellew helped the
+cousins load the boat and watched it disappear down the lake in a
+snow-squall.
+
+"And now a night's sleep and an early start in the morning," said
+John Bellew.  "If we aren't storm-bound at the summit we'll make
+Dyea to-morrow night, and if we have luck in catching a steamer
+we'll be in San Francisco in a week."
+
+"Enjoyed your vacation?" Kit asked absently.
+
+Their camp for that last night at Linderman was a melancholy
+remnant.  Everything of use, including the tent, had been taken by
+the cousins.  A tattered tarpaulin, stretched as a wind-break,
+partially sheltered them from the driving snow.  Supper they cooked
+on an open fire in a couple of battered and discarded camp utensils.
+All that was left them were their blankets, and food for several
+meals.
+
+From the moment of the departure of the boat, Kit had become absent
+and restless.  His uncle noticed his condition, and attributed it to
+the fact that the end of the hard toil had come.  Only once during
+supper did Kit speak.
+
+"Avuncular," he said, relevant of nothing, "after this, I wish you'd
+call me Smoke.  I've made some smoke on this trail, haven't I?"
+
+A few minutes later he wandered away in the direction of the village
+of tents that sheltered the gold-rushers who were still packing or
+building their boats.  He was gone several hours, and when he
+returned and slipped into his blankets John Bellew was asleep.
+
+In the darkness of a gale-driven morning, Kit crawled out, built a
+fire in his stocking feet, by which he thawed out his frozen shoes,
+then boiled coffee and fried bacon.  It was a chilly, miserable
+meal.  As soon as finished, they strapped their blankets.  As John
+Bellew turned to lead the way toward the Chilcoot Trail, Kit held
+out his hand.
+
+"Good-bye, avuncular," he said.
+
+John Bellew looked at him and swore in his surprise.
+
+"Don't forget my name's Smoke," Kit chided.
+
+"But what are you going to do?"
+
+Kit waved his hand in a general direction northward over the storm-
+lashed lake.
+
+"What's the good of turning back after getting this far?" he asked.
+"Besides, I've got my taste of meat, and I like it.  I'm going on."
+
+"You're broke," protested John Bellew.  "You have no outfit."
+
+"I've got a job.  Behold your nephew, Christopher Smoke Bellew!
+He's got a job at a hundred and fifty per month and grub.  He's
+going down to Dawson with a couple of dudes and another gentleman's
+man--camp-cook, boatman, and general all-around hustler.  And O'Hara
+and the Billow can go to hell.  Good-bye."
+
+But John Bellew was dazed, and could only mutter:
+
+"I don't understand."
+
+"They say the baldface grizzlies are thick in the Yukon Basin," Kit
+explained.  "Well, I've got only one suit of underclothes, and I'm
+going after the bear-meat, that's all."
+
+
+
+
+THE MEAT.
+
+
+
+
+I.
+
+Half the time the wind blew a gale, and Smoke Bellew staggered
+against it along the beach.  In the gray of dawn a dozen boats were
+being loaded with the precious outfits packed across Chilcoot.  They
+were clumsy, home-made boats, put together by men who were not boat-
+builders, out of planks they had sawed by hand from green spruce
+trees.  One boat, already loaded, was just starting, and Kit paused
+to watch.
+
+The wind, which was fair down the lake, here blew in squarely on the
+beach, kicking up a nasty sea in the shallows.  The men of the
+departing boat waded in high rubber boots as they shoved it out
+toward deeper water.  Twice they did this.  Clambering aboard and
+failing to row clear, the boat was swept back and grounded.  Kit
+noticed that the spray on the sides of the boat quickly turned to
+ice.  The third attempt was a partial success.  The last two men to
+climb in were wet to their waists, but the boat was afloat.  They
+struggled awkwardly at the heavy oars, and slowly worked off shore.
+Then they hoisted a sail made of blankets, had it carried away in a
+gust, and were swept a third time back on the freezing beach.
+
+Kit grinned to himself and went on.  This was what he must expect to
+encounter, for he, too, in his new role of gentleman's man, was to
+start from the beach in a similar boat that very day.
+
+Everywhere men were at work, and at work desperately, for the
+closing down of winter was so imminent that it was a gamble whether
+or not they would get across the great chain of lakes before the
+freeze-up.  Yet, when Kit arrived at the tent of Messrs Sprague and
+Stine, he did not find them stirring.
+
+By a fire, under the shelter of a tarpaulin, squatted a short, thick
+man smoking a brown-paper cigarette.
+
+"Hello," he said.  "Are you Mister Sprague's new man?"
+
+As Kit nodded, he thought he had noted a shade of emphasis on the
+mister and the man, and he was sure of a hint of a twinkle in the
+corner of the eye.
+
+"Well, I'm Doc Stine's man," the other went on.  "I'm five feet two
+inches long, and my name's Shorty, Jack Short for short, and
+sometimes known as Johnny-on-the-Spot."
+
+Kit put out his hand and shook.
+
+"Were you raised on bear-meat?" he queried.
+
+"Sure," was the answer; "though my first feedin' was buffalo-milk as
+near as I can remember.  Sit down an' have some grub.  The bosses
+ain't turned out yet."
+
+And despite the one breakfast, Kit sat down under the tarpaulin and
+ate a second breakfast thrice as hearty.  The heavy, purging toil of
+weeks had given him the stomach and appetite of a wolf.  He could
+eat anything, in any quantity, and be unaware that he possessed a
+digestion.  Shorty he found voluble and pessimistic, and from him he
+received surprising tips concerning their bosses, and ominous
+forecasts of the expedition.  Thomas Stanley Sprague was a budding
+mining engineer and the son of a millionaire.  Doctor Adolph Stine
+was also the son of a wealthy father.  And, through their fathers,
+both had been backed by an investing syndicate in the Klondike
+adventure.
+
+"Oh, they're sure made of money," Shorty expounded.  "When they hit
+the beach at Dyea, freight was seventy cents, but no Indians.  There
+was a party from Eastern Oregon, real miners, that'd managed to get
+a team of Indians together at seventy cents.  Indians had the straps
+on the outfit, three thousand pounds of it, when along comes Sprague
+and Stine.  They offered eighty cents and ninety, and at a dollar a
+pound the Indians jumped the contract and took off their straps.
+Sprague and Stine came through, though it cost them three thousand,
+and the Oregon bunch is still on the beach.  They won't get through
+till next year.
+
+"Oh, they are real hummers, your boss and mine, when it comes to
+sheddin' the mazuma an' never mindin' other folks' feelin's.  What
+did they do when they hit Linderman?  The carpenters was just
+putting in the last licks on a boat they'd contracted to a 'Frisco
+bunch for six hundred.  Sprague and Stine slipped 'em an even
+thousand, and they jumped their contract.  It's a good-lookin' boat,
+but it's jiggered the other bunch.  They've got their outfit right
+here, but no boat.  And they're stuck for next year.
+
+"Have another cup of coffee, and take it from me that I wouldn't
+travel with no such outfit if I didn't want to get to Klondike so
+blamed bad.  They ain't hearted right.  They'd take the crape off
+the door of a house in mourning if they needed it in their business.
+Did you sign a contract?"
+
+Kit shook his head.
+
+"Then I'm sorry for you, pardner.  They ain't no grub in the
+country, and they'll drop you cold as soon as they hit Dawson.  Men
+are going to starve there this winter."
+
+"They agreed--" Kit began.
+
+"Verbal," Shorty snapped him short.  "It's your say so against
+theirs, that's all.  Well, anyway--what's your name, pardner?"
+
+"Call me Smoke," said Kit.
+
+"Well, Smoke, you'll have a run for your verbal contract just the
+same.  This is a plain sample of what to expect.  They can sure shed
+mazuma, but they can't work, or turn out of bed in the morning.  We
+should have been loaded and started an hour ago.  It's you an' me
+for the big work.  Pretty soon you'll hear 'em shoutin' for their
+coffee--in bed, mind you, and they grown men.  What d'ye know about
+boatin' on the water?  I'm a cowman and a prospector, but I'm sure
+tender-footed on water, an' they don't know punkins.  What d'ye
+know?"
+
+"Search me," Kit answered, snuggling in closer under the tarpaulin
+as the snow whirled before a fiercer gust.  "I haven't been on a
+small boat since a boy.  But I guess we can learn."
+
+A corner of the tarpaulin tore loose, and Shorty received a jet of
+driven snow down the back of his neck.
+
+"Oh, we can learn all right," he muttered wrathfully.  "Sure we can.
+A child can learn.  But it's dollars to doughnuts we don't even get
+started to-day."
+
+It was eight o'clock when the call for coffee came from the tent,
+and nearly nine before the two employers emerged.
+
+"Hello," said Sprague, a rosy-cheeked, well-fed young man of twenty-
+five.  "Time we made a start, Shorty.  You and--"  Here he glanced
+interrogatively at Kit.  "I didn't quite catch your name last
+evening."
+
+"Smoke."
+
+"Well, Shorty, you and Mr Smoke had better begin loading the boat."
+
+"Plain Smoke--cut out the Mister," Kit suggested.
+
+Sprague nodded curtly and strolled away among the tents, to be
+followed by Doctor Stine, a slender, pallid young man.
+
+Shorty looked significantly at his companion.
+
+"Over a ton and a half of outfit, and they won't lend a hand.
+You'll see."
+
+"I guess it's because we're paid to do the work," Kit answered
+cheerfully, "and we might as well buck in."
+
+To move three thousand pounds on the shoulders a hundred yards was
+no slight task, and to do it in half a gale, slushing through the
+snow in heavy rubber boots, was exhausting.  In addition, there was
+the taking down of the tent and the packing of small camp equipage.
+Then came the loading.  As the boat settled, it had to be shoved
+farther and farther out, increasing the distance they had to wade.
+By two o'clock it had all been accomplished, and Kit, despite his
+two breakfasts, was weak with the faintness of hunger.  His knees
+were shaking under him.  Shorty, in similar predicament, foraged
+through the pots and pans, and drew forth a big pot of cold boiled
+beans in which were imbedded large chunks of bacon.  There was only
+one spoon, a long-handled one, and they dipped, turn and turn about,
+into the pot.  Kit was filled with an immense certitude that in all
+his life he had never tasted anything so good.
+
+"Lord, man," he mumbled between chews, "I never knew what appetite
+was till I hit the trail."
+
+Sprague and Stine arrived in the midst of this pleasant occupation.
+
+"What's the delay?" Sprague complained. "Aren't we ever going to get
+started?"
+
+Shorty dipped in turn, and passed the spoon to Kit.  Nor did either
+speak till the pot was empty and the bottom scraped.
+
+"Of course we ain't ben doin' nothing," Shorty said, wiping his
+mouth with the back of his hand.  "We ain't ben doin' nothing at
+all.  And of course you ain't had nothing to eat.  It was sure
+careless of me."
+
+"Yes, yes," Stine said quickly.  "We ate at one of the tents--
+friends of ours."
+
+"Thought so," Shorty grunted.
+
+"But now that you're finished, let us get started," Sprague urged.
+
+"There's the boat," said Shorty.  "She's sure loaded.  Now, just how
+might you be goin' about to get started?"
+
+"By climbing aboard and shoving off.  Come on."
+
+They waded out, and the employers got on board, while Kit and Shorty
+shoved clear.  When the waves lapped the tops of their boots they
+clambered in.  The other two men were not prepared with the oars,
+and the boat swept back and grounded.  Half a dozen times, with a
+great expenditure of energy, this was repeated.
+
+Shorty sat down disconsolately on the gunwale, took a chew of
+tobacco, and questioned the universe, while Kit baled the boat and
+the other two exchanged unkind remarks.
+
+"If you'll take my orders, I'll get her off," Sprague finally said.
+
+The attempt was well intended, but before he could clamber on board
+he was wet to the waist.
+
+"We've got to camp and build a fire," he said, as the boat grounded
+again.  "I'm freezing."
+
+"Don't be afraid of a wetting," Stine sneered.  "Other men have gone
+off to-day wetter than you.  Now I'm going to take her out."
+
+This time it was he who got the wetting, and who announced with
+chattering teeth the need of a fire.
+
+"A little splash like that," Sprague chattered spitefully.  "We'll
+go on."
+
+"Shorty, dig out my clothes-bag and make a fire," the other
+commanded.
+
+"You'll do nothing of the sort," Sprague cried.
+
+Shorty looked from one to the other, expectorated, but did not move.
+
+"He's working for me, and I guess he obeys my orders," Stine
+retorted.  "Shorty, take that bag ashore."
+
+Shorty obeyed, and Sprague shivered in the boat.  Kit, having
+received no orders, remained inactive, glad of the rest.
+
+"A boat divided against itself won't float," he soliloquized.
+
+"What's that?" Sprague snarled at him.
+
+"Talking to myself--habit of mine," he answered.
+
+His employer favoured him with a hard look, and sulked several
+minutes longer.  Then he surrendered.
+
+"Get out my bag, Smoke," he ordered, "and lend a hand with that
+fire.  We won't get off till the morning now."
+
+
+
+II.
+
+Next day the gale still blew.  Lake Linderman was no more than a
+narrow mountain gorge filled with water.  Sweeping down from the
+mountains through this funnel, the wind was irregular, blowing great
+guns at times and at other times dwindling to a strong breeze.
+
+"If you give me a shot at it, I think I can get her off," Kit said,
+when all was ready for the start.
+
+"What do you know about it?" Stine snapped at him.
+
+"Search me," Kit answered, and subsided.
+
+It was the first time he had worked for wages in his life, but he
+was learning the discipline of it fast.  Obediently and cheerfully
+he joined in various vain efforts to get clear of the beach.
+
+"How would you go about it?" Sprague finally half-panted, half-
+whined at him.
+
+"Sit down and get a good rest till a lull comes in the wind, and
+then buck in for all we're worth."
+
+Simple as the idea was, he had been the first to evolve it; the
+first time it was applied it worked, and they hoisted a blanket to
+the mast and sped down the lake.  Stine and Sprague immediately
+became cheerful.  Shorty, despite his chronic pessimism, was always
+cheerful, and Kit was too interested to be otherwise.  Sprague
+struggled with the steering sweep for a quarter of an hour, and then
+looked appealingly at Kit, who relieved him.
+
+"My arms are fairly broken with the strain of it," Sprague muttered
+apologetically.
+
+"You never ate bear-meat, did you?" Kit asked sympathetically.
+
+"What the devil do you mean?"
+
+"Oh, nothing; I was just wondering."
+
+But behind his employer's back Kit caught the approving grin of
+Shorty, who had already caught the whim of his simile.
+
+Kit steered the length of Linderman, displaying an aptitude that
+caused both young men of money and disinclination for work to name
+him boat-steerer.  Shorty was no less pleased, and volunteered to
+continue cooking and leave the boat work to the other.
+
+Between Linderman and Lake Bennet was a portage.  The boat, lightly
+loaded, was lined down the small but violent connecting stream, and
+here Kit learned a vast deal more about boats and water.  But when
+it came to packing the outfit, Stine and Sprague disappeared, and
+their men spent two days of back-breaking toil in getting the outfit
+across.  And this was the history of many miserable days of the
+trip--Kit and Shorty working to exhaustion, while their masters
+toiled not and demanded to be waited upon.
+
+But the iron-bound arctic winter continued to close down, and they
+were held back by numerous and avoidable delays.  At Windy Arm,
+Stine arbitrarily dispossessed Kit of the steering-sweep and within
+the hour wrecked the boat on a wave-beaten lee shore.  Two days were
+lost here in making repairs, and the morning of the fresh start, as
+they came down to embark, on stern and bow, in large letters, was
+charcoaled 'The Chechaquo.'
+
+Kit grinned at the appropriateness of the invidious word.
+
+"Huh!" said Shorty, when accused by Stine.  "I can sure read and
+spell, an' I know that Chechaquo means tenderfoot, but my education
+never went high enough to learn me to spell a jaw-breaker like
+that."
+
+Both employers looked daggers at Kit, for the insult rankled; nor
+did he mention that the night before, Shorty had besought him for
+the spelling of that particular word.
+
+"That's 'most as bad as your bear-meat slam at 'em," Shorty confided
+later.
+
+Kit chuckled.  Along with the continuous discovery of his own powers
+had come an ever-increasing disapproval of the two masters.  It was
+not so much irritation, which was always present, as disgust.  He
+had got his taste of the meat, and liked it; but they were teaching
+him how not to eat it.  Privily, he thanked God that he was not made
+as they.  He came to dislike them to a degree that bordered on
+hatred.  Their malingering bothered him less than their helpless
+inefficiency.  Somewhere in him, old Isaac Bellew and all the rest
+of the hardy Bellews were making good.
+
+"Shorty," he said one day, in the usual delay of getting started, "I
+could almost fetch them a rap over the head with an oar and bury
+them in the river."
+
+"Same here," Shorty agreed.  "They're not meat-eaters.  They're
+fish-eaters, and they sure stink."
+
+
+
+III.
+
+They came to the rapids, first, the Box Canyon, and, several miles
+below, the White Horse.  The Box Canyon was adequately named.  It
+was a box, a trap.  Once in it, the only way out was through.  On
+either side arose perpendicular walls of rock.  The river narrowed
+to a fraction of its width, and roared through this gloomy passage
+in a madness of motion that heaped the water in the centre into a
+ridge fully eight feet higher than at the rocky sides.  This ridge,
+in turn, was crested with stiff, upstanding waves that curled over,
+yet remained each in its unvarying place.  The Canyon was well
+feared, for it had collected its toll of dead from the passing gold-
+rushers.
+
+Tying to the bank above, where lay a score of other anxious boats,
+Kit and his companions went ahead on foot to investigate.  They
+crept to the brink and gazed down at the swirl of water.  Sprague
+drew back shuddering.
+
+"My God!" he exclaimed.  "A swimmer hasn't a chance in that."
+
+Shorty touched Kit significantly with his elbow and said in an
+undertone:
+
+"Cold feet.  Dollars to doughnuts they don't go through."
+
+Kit scarcely heard.  From the beginning of the boat trip he had been
+learning the stubbornness and inconceivable viciousness of the
+elements, and this glimpse of what was below him acted as a
+challenge.
+
+"We've got to ride that ridge," he said.  "If we get off of it we'll
+hit the walls--"
+
+"And never know what hit us," was Shorty's verdict.  "Can you swim,
+Smoke?"
+
+"I'd wish I couldn't if anything went wrong in there."
+
+"That's what I say," a stranger, standing alongside and peering down
+into the Canyon, said mournfully.  "And I wish I were through it."
+
+"I wouldn't sell my chance to go through," Kit answered.
+
+He spoke honestly, but it was with the idea of heartening the man.
+He turned to go back to the boat.
+
+"Are you going to tackle it?" the man asked.
+
+Kit nodded.
+
+"I wish I could get the courage to," the other confessed.  "I've
+been here for hours.  The longer I look, the more afraid I am.  I am
+not a boatman, and I have only my nephew with me, who is a young
+boy, and my wife.  If you get through safely, will you run my boat
+through?"
+
+Kit looked at Shorty, who delayed to answer.
+
+"He's got his wife with him," Kit suggested.  Nor had he mistaken
+his man.
+
+"Sure," Shorty affirmed.  "It was just that I was stopping to think
+about.  I knew there was some reason I ought to do it."
+
+Again they turned to go, but Sprague and Stine made no movement.
+
+"Good luck, Smoke," Sprague called to him.  "I'll--er--"  He
+hesitated.  "I'll just stay here and watch you."
+
+"We need three men in the boat, two at the oars and one at the
+steering sweep," Kit said quietly.
+
+Sprague looked at Stine.
+
+"I'm damned if I do," said that gentleman.  "If you're not afraid to
+stand here and look on, I'm not."
+
+"Who's afraid?" Sprague demanded hotly.
+
+Stine retorted in kind, and their two men left them in the thick of
+a squabble.
+
+"We can do without them," Kit said to Shorty.  "You take the bow
+with a paddle, and I'll handle the steering sweep.  All you'll have
+to do is just to keep her straight.  Once we're started, you won't
+be able to hear me, so just keep on keeping straight."
+
+They cast off the boat and worked out to middle in the quickening
+current.  From the Canyon came an ever-growing roar.  The river
+sucked in to the entrance with the smoothness of molten glass, and
+here, as the darkening walls received them, Shorty took a chew of
+tobacco, and dipped his paddle.  The boat leaped on the first crests
+of the ridge, and they were deafened by the uproar of wild water
+that reverberated from the narrow walls and multiplied itself.  They
+were half-smothered with flying spray.  At times Kit could not see
+his comrade at the bow.  It was only a matter of two minutes, in
+which time they rode the ridge three-quarters of a mile, and emerged
+in safety and tied to the bank in the eddy below.
+
+Shorty emptied his mouth of tobacco juice--he had forgotten to spit-
+-and spoke.
+
+"That was bear-meat," he exulted, "the real bear-meat.  Say, we want
+a few, didn't we, Smoke, I don't mind tellin' you in confidence that
+before we started I was the gosh-dangdest scaredest man this side of
+the Rocky-Mountains.  Now I'm a bear-eater.  Come on an' we'll run
+that other boat through."
+
+Midway back, on foot, they encountered their employers, who had
+watched the passage from above.
+
+"There comes the fish-eaters," said Shorty.  "Keep to win'ward."
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+After running the strangers' boat through, whose name proved to be
+Breck, Kit and Shorty met his wife, a slender, girlish woman whose
+blue eyes were moist with gratitude.  Breck himself tried to hand
+Kit fifty dollars, and then attempted it on Shorty.
+
+"Stranger," was the latter's rejection, "I come into this country to
+make money outa the ground an' not outa my fellow critters."
+
+Breck rummaged in his boat and produced a demijohn of whiskey.
+Shorty's hand half went out to it and stopped abruptly.  He shook
+his head.
+
+"There's that blamed White Horse right below, an' they say it's
+worse than the Box.  I reckon I don't dast tackle any lightning."
+
+Several miles below they ran in to the bank, and all four walked
+down to look at the bad water.  The river, which was a succession of
+rapids, was here deflected toward the right bank by a rocky reef.
+The whole body of water, rushing crookedly into the narrow passage,
+accelerated its speed frightfully, and was upflung unto huge waves,
+white and wrathful.  This was the dread Mane of the White Horse, and
+here an even heavier toll of dead had been exacted.  On one side of
+the Mane was a corkscrew curl-over and suck-under, and on the
+opposite side was the big whirlpool.  To go through, the Mane itself
+must be ridden.
+
+"This plum rips the strings outa the Box," Shorty concluded.
+
+As they watched, a boat took the head of the rapids above.  It was a
+large boat, fully thirty feet long, laden with several tons of
+outfit and handled by six men.  Before it reached the Mane it was
+plunging and leaping, at times almost hidden by the foam and spray.
+
+Shorty shot a slow, sidelong glance at Kit, and said:
+
+"She's fair smoking, and she hasn't hit the worst.  They've hauled
+the oars in.  There she takes it now.  God!  She's gone!  No; there
+she is!"
+
+Big as the boat was, it had been buried from sight in the flying
+smother between crests.  The next moment, in the thick of the Mane,
+the boat leaped up a crest and into view.  To Kit's amazement he saw
+the whole long bottom clearly outlined.  The boat, for the fraction
+of an instant, was in the air, the men sitting idly in their places,
+all save one in the stern who stood at the steering sweep.  Then
+came the downward plunge into the trough and a second disappearance.
+Three times the boat leaped and buried itself, then those on the
+bank saw its nose take the whirlpool as it slipped off the Mane.
+The steersman, vainly opposing with his full weight on the steering-
+gear, surrendered to the whirlpool and helped the boat to take the
+circle.
+
+Three times it went around, each time so close to the rocks on which
+Kit and Shorty stood, that either could have leaped on board.  The
+steersman, a man with a reddish beard of recent growth, waved his
+hand to them.  The only way out of the whirlpool was by the Mane,
+and on the round the boat entered the Mane obliquely at its upper
+end.  Possibly out of fear of the draw of the whirlpool, the
+steersman did not attempt to straighten out quickly enough.  When he
+did, it was too late.  Alternately in the air and buried, the boat
+angled the Mane and sucked into and down through the stiff wall of
+the corkscrew on the opposite side of the river.  A hundred feet
+below, boxes and bales began to float up.  Then appeared the bottom
+of the boat and the scattered heads of six men.  Two managed to make
+the bank in the eddy below.  The others were drawn under, and the
+general flotsam was lost to view, borne on by the swift current
+around the bend.
+
+There was a long minute of silence.  Shorty was the first to speak.
+
+"Come on," he said.  "We might as well tackle it.  My feet'll get
+cold if I stay here any longer."
+
+"We'll smoke some," Kit grinned at him.
+
+"And you'll sure earn your name," was the rejoinder.  Shorty turned
+to their employers.  "Comin'?" he queried.
+
+Perhaps the roar of the water prevented them from hearing the
+invitation.
+
+Shorty and Kit tramped back through a foot of snow to the head of
+the rapids and cast off the boat.  Kit was divided between two
+impressions:  one, of the caliber of his comrade, which served as a
+spur to him; the other, likewise a spur, was the knowledge that old
+Isaac Bellew, and all the other Bellews, had done things like this
+in their westward march of empire.  What they had done, he could do.
+It was the meat, the strong meat, and he knew, as never before, that
+it required strong men to eat such meat.
+
+"You've sure got to keep the top of the ridge," Shorty shouted at
+him, the plug tobacco lifting to his mouth, as the boat quickened in
+the quickening current and took the head of the rapids.
+
+Kit nodded, swayed his strength and weight tentatively on the
+steering oar, and headed the boat for the plunge.
+
+Several minutes later, half-swamped and lying against the bank in
+the eddy below the White Horse, Shorty spat out a mouthful of
+tobacco juice and shook Kit's hand.
+
+"Meat! Meat!" Shorty chanted.  "We eat it raw!  We eat it alive!"
+
+At the top of the bank they met Breck.  His wife stood at a little
+distance.  Kit shook his hand.
+
+"I'm afraid your boat can't make it," he said.  "It is smaller than
+ours and a bit cranky."
+
+The man pulled out a row of bills.
+
+"I'll give you each a hundred if you run it through."
+
+Kit looked out and up the tossing Mane of the White Horse.  A long,
+gray twilight was falling, it was turning colder, and the landscape
+seemed taking on a savage bleakness.
+
+"It ain't that," Shorty was saying.  "We don't want your money.
+Wouldn't touch it nohow.  But my pardner is the real meat with
+boats, and when he says yourn ain't safe I reckon he knows what he's
+talkin' about."
+
+Kit nodded affirmation, and chanced to glance at Mrs Breck.  Her
+eyes were fixed upon him, and he knew that if ever he had seen
+prayer in a woman's eyes he was seeing it then.  Shorty followed his
+gaze and saw what he saw.  They looked at each other in confusion
+and did not speak.  Moved by the common impulse, they nodded to each
+other and turned to the trail that led to the head of the rapids.
+They had not gone a hundred yards when they met Stine and Sprague
+coming down.
+
+"Where are you going?" the latter demanded.
+
+"To fetch that other boat through," Shorty answered.
+
+"No you're not.  It's getting dark.  You two are going to pitch
+camp."
+
+So huge was Kit's disgust that he forebore to speak.
+
+"He's got his wife with him," Shorty said.
+
+"That's his lookout," Stine contributed.
+
+"And Smoke's and mine," was Shorty's retort.
+
+"I forbid you," Sprague said harshly.  "Smoke, if you go another
+step I'll discharge you."
+
+"And you, too, Shorty," Stine added.
+
+"And a hell of a pickle you'll be in with us fired," Shorty replied.
+"How'll you get your blamed boat to Dawson?  Who'll serve you coffee
+in your blankets and manicure your finger-nails?  Come on, Smoke.
+They don't dast fire us.  Besides, we've got agreements.  It they
+fire us they've got to divvy up grub to last us through the winter."
+
+Barely had they shoved Breck's boat out from the bank and caught the
+first rough water, when the waves began to lap aboard.  They were
+small waves, but it was an earnest of what was to come.  Shorty cast
+back a quizzical glance as he gnawed at his inevitable plug, and Kit
+felt a strange rush of warmth at his heart for this man who couldn't
+swim and who couldn't back out.
+
+The rapids grew stiffer, and the spray began to fly.  In the
+gathering darkness, Kit glimpsed the Mane and the crooked fling of
+the current into it.  He worked into this crooked current, and felt
+a glow of satisfaction as the boat hit the head of the Mane squarely
+in the middle.  After that, in the smother, leaping and burying and
+swamping, he had no clear impression of anything save that he swung
+his weight on the steering oar and wished his uncle were there to
+see.  They emerged, breathless, wet through, and filled with water
+almost to the gunwale.  Lighter pieces of baggage and outfit were
+floating inside the boat.  A few careful strokes on Shorty's part
+worked the boat into the draw of the eddy, and the eddy did the rest
+till the boat softly touched against the bank.  Looking down from
+above was Mrs Breck.  Her prayer had been answered, and the tears
+were streaming down her cheeks.
+
+"You boys have simply got to take the money," Breck called down to
+them.
+
+Shorty stood up, slipped, and sat down in the water, while the boat
+dipped one gunwale under and righted again.
+
+"Damn the money," said Shorty.  "Fetch out that whiskey.  Now that
+it's over I'm getting cold feet, an' I'm sure likely to have a
+chill."
+
+
+
+V.
+
+In the morning, as usual, they were among the last of the boats to
+start.  Breck, despite his boating inefficiency, and with only his
+wife and nephew for crew, had broken camp, loaded his boat, and
+pulled out at the first streak of day.  But there was no hurry in
+Stine and Sprague, who seemed incapable of realizing that the
+freeze-up might come at any time.  They malingered, got in the way,
+delayed, and doubted the work of Kit and Shorty.
+
+"I'm sure losing my respect for God, seein' as he must a-made them
+two mistakes in human form," was the latter's blasphemous way of
+expressing his disgust.
+
+"Well, you're the real goods at any rate," Kit grinned back at him.
+"It makes me respect God the more just to look at you."
+
+"He was sure goin' some, eh?" was Shorty's fashion of overcoming the
+embarrassment of the compliment.
+
+The trail by water crossed Lake Le Barge.  Here was no fast current,
+but a tideless stretch of forty miles which must be rowed unless a
+fair wind blew.  But the time for fair wind was past, and an icy
+gale blew in their teeth out of the north.  This made a rough sea,
+against which it was almost impossible to pull the boat.  Added to
+their troubles was driving snow; also, the freezing of the water on
+their oar-blades kept one man occupied in chopping it off with a
+hatchet.  Compelled to take their turn at the oars, Sprague and
+Stine patently loafed.  Kit had learned how to throw his weight on
+an oar, but he noted that his employers made a seeming of throwing
+their weights and that they dipped their oars at a cheating angle.
+
+At the end of three hours, Sprague pulled his oar in and said they
+would run back into the mouth of the river for shelter.  Stine
+seconded him, and the several hard-won miles were lost.  A second
+day, and a third, the same fruitless attempt was made.  In the river
+mouth, the continually arriving boats from White Horse made a
+flotilla of over two hundred.  Each day forty or fifty arrived, and
+only two or three won to the north-west short of the lake and did
+not come back.  Ice was now forming in the eddies, and connecting
+from eddy to eddy in thin lines around the points.  The freeze-up
+was very imminent.
+
+"We could make it if they had the souls of clams," Kit told Shorty,
+as they dried their moccasins by the fire on the evening of the
+third day.  "We could have made it to-day if they hadn't turned
+back.  Another hour's work would have fetched that west shore.
+They're--they're babes in the woods."
+
+"Sure," Shorty agreed.  He turned his moccasin to the flame and
+debated a moment.  "Look here, Smoke.  It's hundreds of miles to
+Dawson.  If we don't want to freeze in here, we've got to do
+something.  What d'ye say?"
+
+Kit looked at him, and waited.
+
+"We've got the immortal cinch on them two babes," Shorty expounded.
+"They can give orders an' shed mazuma, but, as you say, they're plum
+babes.  If we're goin' to Dawson, we got to take charge of this here
+outfit."
+
+They looked at each other.
+
+"It's a go," said Kit, as his hand went out in ratification.
+
+In the morning, long before daylight, Shorty issued his call.
+
+"Come on!" he roared.  "Tumble out, you sleepers!  Here's your
+coffee!  Kick in to it!  We're goin' to make a start!"
+
+Grumbling and complaining, Stine and Sprague were forced to get
+under way two hours earlier than ever before.  If anything, the gale
+was stiffer, and in a short time every man's face was iced up, while
+the oars were heavy with ice.  Three hours they struggled, and four,
+one man steering, one chopping ice, two toiling at the oars, and
+each taking his various turns.  The north-west shore loomed nearer
+and nearer.  The gale blew even harder, and at last Sprague pulled
+in his oar in token of surrender.  Shorty sprang to it, though his
+relief had only begun.
+
+"Chop ice," he said, handing Sprague the hatchet.
+
+"But what's the use?" the other whined.  "We can't make it.  We're
+going to turn back."
+
+"We're going on," said Shorty.  "Chop ice.  An' when you feel better
+you can spell me."
+
+It was heart-breaking toil, but they gained the shore, only to find
+it composed of surge-beaten rocks and cliffs, with no place to land.
+
+"I told you so," Sprague whimpered.
+
+"You never peeped," Shorty answered.
+
+"We're going back."
+
+Nobody spoke, and Kit held the boat into the seas as they skirted
+the forbidding shore.  Sometimes they gained no more than a foot to
+the stroke, and there were times when two or three strokes no more
+than enabled them to hold their own.  He did his best to hearten the
+two weaklings.  He pointed out that the boats which had won to this
+shore had never come back.  Perforce, he argued, they had found a
+shelter somewhere ahead.  Another hour they laboured, and a second.
+
+"If you fellows put into your oars some of that coffee you swig in
+your blankets, we'd make it," was Shorty's encouragement.  "You're
+just goin' through the motions an' not pullin' a pound."
+
+A few minutes later Sprague drew in his oar.
+
+"I'm finished," he said, and there were tears in his voice.
+
+"So are the rest of us," Kit answered, himself ready to cry or to
+commit murder, so great was his exhaustion.  "But we're going on
+just the same."
+
+"We're going back.  Turn the boat around."
+
+"Shorty, if he won't pull, take that oar yourself," Kit commanded.
+
+"Sure," was the answer.  "He can chop ice."
+
+But Sprague refused to give over the oar; Stine had ceased rowing,
+and the boat was drifting backward.
+
+"Turn around, Smoke," Sprague ordered.
+
+And Kit, who never in his life had cursed any man, astonished
+himself.
+
+"I'll see you in hell, first," he replied.  "Take hold of that oar
+and pull."
+
+It is in moments of exhaustion that men lose all their reserves of
+civilization, and such a moment had come.  Each man had reached the
+breaking-point.  Sprague jerked off a mitten, drew his revolver, and
+turned it on his steersman.  This was a new experience to Kit.  He
+had never had a gun presented at him in his life.  And now, to his
+surprise, it seemed to mean nothing at all.  It was the most natural
+thing in the world.
+
+"If you don't put that gun up," he said, "I'll take it away and rap
+you over the knuckles with it."
+
+"If you don't turn the boat around I'll shoot you," Sprague
+threatened.
+
+Then Shorty took a hand.  He ceased chopping ice and stood up behind
+Sprague.
+
+"Go on an' shoot," said Shorty, wiggling the hatchet.  "I'm just
+aching for a chance to brain you.  Go on an' start the festivities."
+
+"This is mutiny," Stine broke in.  "You were engaged to obey
+orders."
+
+Shorty turned on him.
+
+"Oh, you'll get yours as soon as I finish with your pardner, you
+little hog-wallopin' snooper, you."
+
+"Sprague," Kit said, "I'll give you just thirty seconds to put away
+that gun and get that oar out."
+
+Sprague hesitated, gave a short hysterical laugh, put the revolver
+away and bent his back to the work.
+
+For two hours more, inch by inch, they fought their way along the
+edge of the foaming rocks, until Kit feared he had made a mistake.
+And then, when on the verge of himself turning back, they came
+abreast of a narrow opening, not twenty feet wide, which led into a
+land-locked inclosure where the fiercest gusts scarcely flawed the
+surface.  It was the haven gained by the boats of previous days.
+They landed on a shelving beach, and the two employers lay in
+collapse in the boat, while Kit and Shorty pitched the tent, built a
+fire, and started the cooking.
+
+"What's a hog-walloping snooper, Shorty?" Kit asked.
+
+"Blamed if I know," was the answer; "but he's one just the same."
+
+The gale, which had been dying quickly, ceased at nightfall, and it
+came on clear and cold.  A cup of coffee, set aside to cool and
+forgotten, a few minutes later was found coated with half an inch of
+ice.  At eight o'clock, when Sprague and Stine, already rolled in
+their blankets, were sleeping the sleep of exhaustion, Kit came back
+from a look at the boat.
+
+"It's the freeze-up, Shorty," he announced.  "There's a skin of ice
+over the whole pond already."
+
+"What are you going to do?"
+
+"There's only one thing.  The lake of course freezes first.  The
+rapid current of the river may keep it open for days.  This time to-
+morrow any boat caught in Lake Le Barge remains there until next
+year."
+
+"You mean we got to get out to-night?  Now?"
+
+Kit nodded.
+
+"Tumble out, you sleepers!" was Shorty's answer, couched in a roar,
+as he began casting off the guy-ropes of the tent.
+
+The other two awoke, groaning with the pain of stiffened muscles and
+the pain of rousing from exhausted sleep.
+
+"What time is it?" Stine asked.
+
+"Half-past eight."
+
+"It's dark yet," was the objection.
+
+Shorty jerked out a couple of guy-ropes, and the tent began to sag.
+
+"It's not morning," he said.  "It's evening.  Come on.  The lake's
+freezin'.  We got to get acrost."
+
+Stine sat up, his face bitter and wrathful.
+
+"Let it freeze.  We're not going to stir."
+
+"All right," said Shorty.  "We're goin' on with the boat."
+
+"You were engaged--"
+
+"To take you to Dawson," Shorty caught him up.  "Well, we're takin'
+you, ain't we?"
+
+He punctuated his query by bringing half the tent down on top of
+them.
+
+They broke their way through the thin ice in the little harbour, and
+came out on the lake, where the water, heavy and glassy, froze on
+their oars with every stroke.  The water soon became like mush,
+clogging the stroke of the oars and freezing in the air even as it
+dripped.  Later the surface began to form a skin, and the boat
+proceeded slower and slower.
+
+Often, afterwards, when Kit tried to remember that night and failed
+to bring up aught but nightmare recollections, he wondered what must
+have been the sufferings of Stine and Sprague.  His one impression
+of himself was that he struggled through biting frost and
+intolerable exertion for a thousand years more or less.
+
+Morning found them stationary.  Stine complained of frosted fingers,
+and Sprague of his nose, while the pain in Kit's cheeks and nose
+told him that he, too, had been touched.  With each accretion of
+daylight they could see farther, and far as they could see was icy
+surface.  The water of the lake was gone.  A hundred yards away was
+the shore of the north end.  Shorty insisted that it was the opening
+of the river and that he could see water.  He and Kit alone were
+able to work, and with their oars they broke the ice and forced the
+boat along.  And at the last gasp of their strength they made the
+suck of the rapid river.  One look back showed them several boats
+which had fought through the night and were hopelessly frozen in;
+then they whirled around a bend in a current running six miles an
+hour.
+
+
+
+VI.
+
+Day by day they floated down the swift river, and day by day the
+shore-ice extended farther out.  When they made camp at nightfall,
+they chopped a space in the ice in which to lay the boat, and
+carried the camp outfit hundreds of feet to shore.  In the morning,
+they chopped the boat out through the new ice and caught the
+current.  Shorty set up the sheet-iron stove in the boat, and over
+this Stine and Sprague hung through the long, drifting hours.  They
+had surrendered, no longer gave orders, and their one desire was to
+gain Dawson.  Shorty, pessimistic, indefatigable, and joyous, at
+frequent intervals roared out the three lines of the first four-line
+stanza of a song he had forgotten.  The colder it got the oftener he
+sang:
+
+     "Like Argus of the ancient times,
+       We leave this Modern Greece;
+      Tum-tum, tum-tum; tum-tum, tum-tum,
+       To shear the Golden Fleece."
+
+As they passed the mouths of the Hootalinqua and the Big and Little
+Salmon, they found these streams throwing mush-ice into the main
+Yukon.  This gathered about the boat and attached itself, and at
+night they found themselves compelled to chop the boat out of the
+current.  In the morning they chopped the boat back into the
+current.
+
+The last night ashore was spent between the mouths of the White
+River and the Stewart.  At daylight they found the Yukon, half a
+mile wide, running white from ice-rimmed bank to ice-rimmed bank.
+Shorty cursed the universe with less geniality than usual, and
+looked at Kit.
+
+"We'll be the last boat this year to make Dawson," Kit said.
+
+"But they ain't no water, Smoke."
+
+"Then we'll ride the ice down.  Come on."
+
+Futilely protesting, Sprague and Stine were bundled on board.  For
+half an hour, with axes, Kit and Shorty struggled to cut a way into
+the swift but solid stream.  When they did succeed in clearing the
+shore-ice, the floating ice forced the boat along the edge for a
+hundred yards, tearing away half of one gunwale and making a partial
+wreck of it.  Then they caught the current at the lower end of the
+bend that flung off-shore.  They proceeded to work farther toward
+the middle.  The stream was no longer composed of mush-ice but of
+hard cakes.  In between the cakes only was mush-ice, that froze
+solidly as they looked at it.  Shoving with the oars against the
+cakes, sometimes climbing out on the cakes in order to force the
+boat along, after an hour they gained the middle.  Five minutes
+after they ceased their exertions, the boat was frozen in.  The
+whole river was coagulating as it ran.  Cake froze to cake, until at
+last the boat was the centre of a cake seventy-five feet in
+diameter.  Sometimes they floated sidewise, sometimes stern-first,
+while gravity tore asunder the forming fetters in the moving mass,
+only to be manacled by faster-forming ones.  While the hours passed,
+Shorty stoked the stove, cooked meals, and chanted his war song.
+
+Night came, and after many efforts, they gave up the attempt to
+force the boat to shore, and through the darkness they swept
+helplessly onward.
+
+"What if we pass Dawson?" Shorty queried.
+
+"We'll walk back," Kit answered, "if we're not crushed in a jam."
+
+The sky was clear, and in the light of the cold leaping stars they
+caught occasional glimpses of the loom of mountains on either hand.
+At eleven o'clock, from below, came a dull, grinding roar.  Their
+speed began to diminish, and cakes of ice to up-end and crash and
+smash about them.  The river was jamming.  One cake, forced upward,
+slid across their cake and carried one side of the boat away.  It
+did not sink, for its own cake still upbore it, but in a whirl they
+saw dark water show for an instant within a foot of them.  Then all
+movement ceased.  At the end of half an hour the whole river picked
+itself up and began to move.  This continued for an hour, when again
+it was brought to rest by a jam.  Once again it started, running
+swiftly and savagely, with a great grinding.  Then they saw lights
+ashore, and, when abreast, gravity and the Yukon surrendered, and
+the river ceased for six months.
+
+On the shore at Dawson, curious ones gathered to watch the river
+freeze, heard from out of the darkness the war-song of Shorty:
+
+     "Like Argus of the ancient times,
+       We leave this Modern Greece;
+      Tum-tum, tum-tum; tum-tum, tum-tum,
+       To shear the Golden Fleece."
+
+
+
+VII.
+
+For three days Kit and Shorty laboured, carrying the ton and a half
+of outfit from the middle of the river to the log-cabin Stine and
+Sprague had bought on the hill overlooking Dawson.  This work
+finished, in the warm cabin, as twilight was falling, Sprague
+motioned Kit to him.  Outside the thermometer registered sixty-five
+below zero.
+
+"Your full month isn't up, Smoke," Sprague said.  "But here it is in
+full.  I wish you luck."
+
+"How about the agreement?" Kit asked.  "You know there's a famine
+here.  A man can't get work in the mines even, unless he has his own
+grub.  You agreed--"
+
+"I know of no agreement," Sprague interrupted.  "Do you, Stine?  We
+engaged you by the month.  There's your pay.  Will you sign the
+receipt?"
+
+Kit's hands clenched, and for the moment he saw red.  Both men
+shrank away from him.  He had never struck a man in anger in his
+life, and he felt so certain of his ability to thrash Sprague that
+he could not bring himself to do it.
+
+Shorty saw his trouble and interposed.
+
+"Look here, Smoke, I ain't travelin' no more with a ornery outfit
+like this.  Right here's where I sure jump it.  You an' me stick
+together.  Savve?  Now, you take your blankets an' hike down to the
+Elkhorn.  Wait for me.  I'll settle up, collect what's comin', an'
+give them what's comin'.  I ain't no good on the water, but my
+feet's on terry-fermy now an' I'm sure goin' to make smoke."
+
+          .          .          .          .          .
+
+Half an hour afterwards Shorty appeared at the Elkhorn.  From his
+bleeding knuckles and the skin off one cheek, it was evident that he
+had given Stine and Sprague what was coming.
+
+"You ought to see that cabin," he chuckled, as they stood at the
+bar.  "Rough-house ain't no name for it.  Dollars to doughnuts nary
+one of 'em shows up on the street for a week.  An' now it's all
+figgered out for you an' me.  Grub's a dollar an' a half a pound.
+They ain't no work for wages without you have your own grub.  Moose-
+meat's sellin' for two dollars a pound an' they ain't none.  We got
+enough money for a month's grub an' ammunition, an' we hike up the
+Klondike to the back country.  If they ain't no moose, we go an'
+live with the Indians.  But if we ain't got five thousand pounds of
+meat six weeks from now, I'll--I'll sure go back an' apologize to
+our bosses.  Is it a go?"
+
+Kit's hand went out and they shook.  Then he faltered.
+
+"I don't know anything about hunting," he said.
+
+Shorty lifted his glass.
+
+"But you're a sure meat-eater, an' I'll learn you."
+
+
+
+
+THE STAMPEDE TO SQUAW CREEK.
+
+
+
+
+I.
+
+Two months after Smoke Bellew and Shorty went after moose for a
+grubstake, they were back in the Elkhorn saloon at Dawson.  The
+hunting was done, the meat hauled in and sold for two dollars and a
+half a pound, and between them they possessed three thousand dollars
+in gold dust and a good team of dogs.  They had played in luck.
+Despite the fact that the gold rush had driven the game a hundred
+miles or more into the mountains, they had, within half that
+distance, bagged four moose in a narrow canyon.
+
+The mystery of the strayed animals was no greater than the luck of
+their killers, for within the day four famished Indian families
+reporting no game in three days' journey back, camped beside them.
+Meat was traded for starving dogs, and after a week of feeding,
+Smoke and Shorty harnessed the animals and began freighting the meat
+to the eager Dawson market.
+
+The problem of the two men now, was to turn their gold-dust into
+food.  The current price for flour and beans was a dollar and a half
+a pound, but the difficulty was to find a seller.  Dawson was in the
+throes of famine.  Hundreds of men, with money but no food, had been
+compelled to leave the country.  Many had gone down the river on the
+last water, and many more with barely enough food to last, had
+walked the six hundred miles over the ice to Dyea.
+
+Smoke met Shorty in the warm saloon, and found the latter jubilant.
+
+"Life ain't no punkins without whiskey an' sweetenin'," was Shorty's
+greeting, as he pulled lumps of ice from his thawing moustache and
+flung them rattling on the floor.  "An' I sure just got eighteen
+pounds of that same sweetenin'.  The geezer only charged three
+dollars a pound for it.  What luck did you have?"
+
+"I, too, have not been idle," Smoke answered with pride.  "I bought
+fifty pounds of flour.  And there's a man up on Adam Creek says
+he'll let me have fifty pounds more to-morrow."
+
+"Great!  We'll sure live till the river opens.  Say, Smoke, them
+dogs of ourn is the goods.  A dog-buyer offered me two hundred
+apiece for the five of them.  I told him nothin' doin'.  They sure
+took on class when they got meat to get outside of; but it goes
+against the grain feedin' dog-critters on grub that's worth two and
+a half a pound.  Come on an' have a drink.  I just got to celebrate
+them eighteen pounds of sweetenin'."
+
+Several minutes later, as he weighed in on the gold-scales for the
+drinks, he gave a start of recollection.
+
+"I plum forgot that man I was to meet in the Tivoli.  He's got some
+spoiled bacon he'll sell for a dollar an' a half a pound.  We can
+feed it to the dogs an' save a dollar a day on each's board bill.
+So long."
+
+"So long," said Smoke.  "I'm goin' to the cabin an' turn in."
+
+Hardly had Shorty left the place, when a fur-clad man entered
+through the double storm-doors.  His face lighted at sight of Smoke,
+who recognized him as Breck, the man whose boat he had run through
+the Box Canyon and White Horse rapids.
+
+"I heard you were in town," Breck said hurriedly, as they shook
+hands.  "Been looking for you for half an hour.  Come outside, I
+want to talk with you."
+
+Smoke looked regretfully at the roaring, red-hot stove.
+
+"Won't this do?"
+
+"No; it's important.  Come outside."
+
+As they emerged, Smoke drew off one mitten, lighted a match, and
+glanced at the thermometer that hung beside the door.  He re-
+mittened his naked hand hastily as if the frost had burnt him.
+Overhead arched the flaming aurora borealis, while from all Dawson
+arose the mournful howling of thousands of wolf-dogs.
+
+"What did it say?" Breck asked.
+
+"Sixty below."  Kit spat experimentally, and the spittle crackled in
+the air.  "And the thermometer is certainly working.  It's falling
+all the time.  An hour ago it was only fifty-two.  Don't tell me
+it's a stampede."
+
+"It is," Breck whispered back cautiously, casting anxious eyes about
+in fear of some other listener.  "You know Squaw Creek?--empties in
+on the other side the Yukon thirty miles up?"
+
+"Nothing doing there," was Smoke's judgment.  "It was prospected
+years ago."
+
+"So were all the other rich creeks.  Listen!  It's big.  Only eight
+to twenty feet to bedrock.  There won't be a claim that don't run to
+half a million.  It's a dead secret.  Two or three of my close
+friends let me in on it.  I told my wife right away that I was going
+to find you before I started.  Now, so long.  My pack's hidden down
+the bank.  In fact, when they told me, they made me promise not to
+pull out until Dawson was asleep.  You know what it means if you're
+seen with a stampeding outfit.  Get your partner and follow.  You
+ought to stake fourth or fifth claim from Discovery.  Don't forget--
+Squaw Creek.  It's the third after you pass Swede Creek."
+
+
+
+II.
+
+When Smoke entered the little cabin on the hillside back of Dawson,
+he heard a heavy familiar breathing.
+
+"Aw, go to bed," Shorty mumbled, as Smoke shook his shoulder.  "I'm
+not on the night shift," was his next remark, as the rousing hand
+became more vigorous.  "Tell your troubles to the bar-keeper."
+
+"Kick into your clothes," Smoke said.  "We've got to stake a couple
+of claims."
+
+Shorty sat up and started to explode, but Smoke's hand covered his
+mouth.
+
+"Ssh!" Smoke warned.  "It's a big strike.  Don't wake the
+neighbourhood.  Dawson's asleep."
+
+"Huh!  You got to show me.  Nobody tells anybody about a strike, of
+course not.  But ain't it plum amazin' the way everybody hits the
+trail just the same?"
+
+"Squaw Creek," Smoke whispered.  "It's right.  Breck gave me the
+tip.  Shallow bedrock.  Gold from the grass-roots down.  Come on.
+We'll sling a couple of light packs together and pull out."
+
+Shorty's eyes closed as he lapsed back into sleep.  The next moment
+his blankets were swept off him.
+
+"If you don't want them, I do," Smoke explained.
+
+Shorty followed the blankets and began to dress.
+
+"Goin' to take the dogs?" he asked.
+
+"No.  The trail up the creek is sure to be unbroken, and we can make
+better time without them."
+
+"Then I'll throw 'em a meal, which'll have to last 'em till we get
+back.  Be sure you take some birch-bark and a candle."
+
+Shorty opened the door, felt the bite of the cold, and shrank back
+to pull down his ear-flaps and mitten his hands.
+
+Five minutes later he returned, sharply rubbing his nose.
+
+"Smoke, I'm sure opposed to makin' this stampede.  It's colder than
+the hinges of hell a thousand years before the first fire was
+lighted.  Besides, it's Friday the thirteenth, an' we're goin' to
+trouble as the sparks fly upward."
+
+With small stampeding packs on their backs, they closed the door
+behind them and started down the hill.  The display of the aurora
+borealis had ceased, and only the stars leaped in the great cold,
+and by their uncertain light made traps for the feet.  Shorty
+floundered off a turn of the trail into deep snow, and raised his
+voice in blessing of the date of the week and month and year.
+
+"Can't you keep still?" Smoke chided.  "Leave the almanac alone.
+You'll have all Dawson awake and after us."
+
+"Huh!  See the light in that cabin?  And in that one over there?
+An' hear that door slam?  Oh, sure Dawson's asleep.  Them lights?
+Just buryin' their dead.  They ain't stampedin', betcher life they
+ain't."
+
+By the time they reached the foot of the hill and were fairly in
+Dawson, lights were springing up in the cabins, doors were slamming,
+and from behind came the sound of many moccasins on the hard-packed
+snow.  Again Shorty delivered himself.
+
+"But it beats hell the amount of mourners there is."
+
+They passed a man who stood by the path and was calling anxiously in
+a low voice:  "Oh, Charley; get a move on."
+
+"See that pack on his back, Smoke?  The graveyard's sure a long ways
+off when the mourners got to pack their blankets."
+
+By the time they reached the main street a hundred men were in line
+behind them, and while they sought in the deceptive starlight for
+the trail that dipped down the bank to the river, more men could be
+heard arriving.  Shorty slipped and shot down the thirty-foot chute
+into the soft snow.  Smoke followed, knocking him over as he was
+rising to his feet.
+
+"I found it first," he gurgled, taking off his mittens to shake the
+snow out of the gauntlets.
+
+The next moment they were scrambling wildly out of the way of the
+hurtling bodies of those that followed.  At the time of the freeze-
+up, a jam had occurred at this point, and cakes of ice were up-ended
+in snow-covered confusion.  After several hard falls, Smoke drew out
+his candle and lighted it.  Those in the rear hailed it with
+acclaim.  In the windless air it burned easily, and he led the way
+more quickly.
+
+"It's a sure stampede," Shorty decided.  "Or might all them be
+sleep-walkers?"
+
+"We're at the head of the procession at any rate," was Smoke's
+answer.
+
+"Oh, I don't know.  Mebbe that's a firefly ahead there.  Mebbe
+they're all fireflies--that one, an' that one.  Look at 'em.
+Believe me, they is whole strings of processions ahead."
+
+It was a mile across the jams to the west bank of the Yukon, and
+candles flickered the full length of the twisting trail.  Behind
+them, clear to the top of the bank they had descended, were more
+candles.
+
+"Say, Smoke, this ain't no stampede.  It's a exode-us.  They must be
+a thousand men ahead of us an' ten thousand behind.  Now, you listen
+to your uncle.  My medicine's good.  When I get a hunch it's sure
+right.  An' we're in wrong on this stampede.  Let's turn back an'
+hit the sleep."
+
+"You'd better save your breath if you intend to keep up," Smoke
+retorted gruffly.
+
+"Huh!  My legs is short, but I slog along slack at the knees an'
+don't worry my muscles none, an' I can sure walk every piker here
+off the ice."
+
+And Smoke knew he was right, for he had long since learned his
+comrade's phenomenal walking powers.
+
+"I've been holding back to give you a chance," Smoke jeered.
+
+"An' I'm plum troddin' on your heels.  If you can't do better, let
+me go ahead and set pace."
+
+Smoke quickened, and was soon at the rear of the nearest bunch of
+stampeders.
+
+"Hike along, you, Smoke," the other urged.  "Walk over them unburied
+dead.  This ain't no funeral.  Hit the frost like you was goin'
+somewheres."
+
+Smoke counted eight men and two women in this party, and before the
+way across the jam-ice was won, he and Shorty had passed another
+party twenty strong.  Within a few feet of the west bank, the trail
+swerved to the south, emerging from the jam upon smooth ice.  The
+ice, however, was buried under several feet of fine snow.  Through
+this the sled-trail ran, a narrow ribbon of packed footing barely
+two feet in width.  On either side one sank to his knees and deeper
+in the snow.  The stampeders they overtook were reluctant to give
+way, and often Smoke and Shorty had to plunge into the deep snow,
+and by supreme efforts flounder past.
+
+Shorty was irrepressible and pessimistic.  When the stampeders
+resented being passed, he retorted in kind.
+
+"What's your hurry?" one of them asked.
+
+"What's yours?" he answered.  "A stampede come down from Indian
+River yesterday afternoon an' beat you to it.  They ain't no claims
+left."
+
+"That being so, I repeat, what's your hurry?"
+
+"WHO?  Me?  I ain't no stampeder.  I'm workin' for the government.
+I'm on official business.  I'm just traipsin' along to take the
+census of Squaw Creek."
+
+To another, who hailed him with:  "Where away, little one?  Do you
+really expect to stake a claim?" Shorty answered:
+
+"Me?  I'm the discoverer of Squaw Creek.  I'm just comin' back from
+recordin' so as to see no blamed chechaquo jumps my claim."
+
+The average pace of the stampeders on the smooth going was three
+miles and a half an hour.  Smoke and Shorty were doing four and a
+half, though sometimes they broke into short runs and went faster.
+
+"I'm going to travel your feet clean off, Shorty," Smoke challenged.
+
+"Huh!  I can hike along on the stumps an' wear the heels off your
+moccasins.  Though it ain't no use.  I've ben figgerin'.  Creek
+claims is five hundred feet.  Call 'em ten to the mile.  They's a
+thousand stampeders ahead of us, an' that creek ain't no hundred
+miles long.  Somebody's goin' to get left, an' it makes a noise like
+you an' me."
+
+Before replying, Smoke let out an unexpected link that threw Shorty
+half a dozen feet in the rear.
+
+"If you saved your breath and kept up, we'd cut down a few of that
+thousand," he chided.
+
+"Who?  Me?  If you's get outa the way I'd show you a pace what is."
+
+Smoke laughed, and let out another link.  The whole aspect of the
+adventure had changed.  Through his brain was running a phrase of
+the mad philosopher--"the transvaluation of  values."  In truth, he
+was less interested in staking a fortune than in beating Shorty.
+After all, he concluded, it wasn't the reward of the game but the
+playing of it that counted.  Mind, and muscle, and stamina, and
+soul, were challenged in a contest with this Shorty, a man who had
+never opened the books, and who did not know grand opera from rag-
+time, nor an epic from a chilblain.
+
+"Shorty, I've got you skinned to death.  I've reconstructed every
+cell in my body since I hit the beach at Dyea.  My flesh is as
+stringy as whipcords, and as bitter and mean as the bite of a
+rattlesnake.  A few months ago I'd have patted myself on the back to
+write such words, but I couldn't have written them.  I had to live
+them first, and now that I'm living them there's no need to write
+them.  I'm the real, bitter, stinging goods, and no scrub of a
+mountaineer can put anything over on me without getting it back
+compound.  Now, you go ahead and set pace for half an hour.  Do your
+worst, and when you're all in I'll go ahead and give you half an
+hour of the real worst."
+
+"Huh!" Shorty sneered genially.  "An' him not dry behind the ears
+yet.  Get outa the way an' let your father show you some goin'."
+
+Half-hour by half-hour they alternated in setting pace.  Nor did
+they talk much.  Their exertions kept them warm, though their breath
+froze on their faces from lips to chin.  So intense was the cold
+that they almost continually rubbed their noses and cheeks with
+their mittens.  A few minutes cessation from this allowed the flesh
+to grow numb, and then most vigorous rubbing was required to produce
+the burning prickle of returning circulation.
+
+Often they thought they had reached the lead, but always they
+overtook more stampeders who had started before them.  Occasionally,
+groups of men attempted to swing in behind to their pace, but
+invariably they were discouraged after a mile or two, and
+disappeared in the darkness to the rear.
+
+"We've been out on trail all winter," was Shorty's comment.  "An'
+them geezers, soft from laying around their cabins, has the nerve to
+think they can keep our stride.  Now, if they was real sour-doughs
+it'd be different.  If there's one thing a sour-dough can do it's
+sure walk."
+
+Once, Smoke lighted a match and glanced at his watch.  He never
+repeated it, for so quick was the bite of the frost on his bared
+hands, that half an hour passed before they were again comfortable.
+
+"Four o'clock," he said, as he pulled on his mittens, "and we've
+already passed three hundred."
+
+"Three hundred and thirty-eight," Shorty corrected.  "I ben keepin'
+count.  Get outa the way, stranger.  Let somebody stampede that
+knows how to stampede."
+
+The latter was addressed to a man, evidently exhausted, who could no
+more than stumble along, and who blocked the trail.  This, and one
+other, were the only played-out men they encountered, for they were
+very near to the head of the stampede.  Nor did they learn till
+afterwards the horrors of that night.  Exhausted men sat down to
+rest by the way, and failed to get up.  Seven were frozen to death,
+while scores of amputations of toes, feet, and fingers were
+performed in the Dawson hospitals on the survivors.  For of all
+nights for a stampede, the one to Squaw Creek occurred on the
+coldest night of the year.  Before morning, the spirit thermometers
+at Dawson registered seventy degrees below zero.  The men composing
+the stampede, with few exceptions, were new-comers in the country
+who did not know the way of the cold.
+
+The other played-out man they found a few minutes later, revealed by
+a streamer of aurora borealis that shot like a searchlight from
+horizon to zenith.  He was sitting on a piece of ice beside the
+trail.
+
+"Hop along, sister Mary," Shorty gaily greeted him.  "Keep movin'.
+If you sit there you'll freeze stiff."
+
+The man made no response, and they stopped to investigate.
+
+"Stiff as a poker," was Shorty's verdict.  "If you tumbled him over
+he'd break."
+
+"See if he's breathing," Smoke said, as, with bared hands, he sought
+through furs and woollens for the man's heart.
+
+Shorty lifted one ear-flap and bent to the iced lips.
+
+"Nary breathe," he reported.
+
+"Nor heart-beat," said Smoke.
+
+He mittened his hand and beat it violently for a minute before
+exposing it to the frost to strike a match.  It was an old man,
+incontestably dead.  In the moment of illumination, they saw a long
+grey beard, massed with ice to the nose, cheeks that were white with
+frost, and closed eyes with frost-rimmed lashes frozen together.
+Then the match went out.
+
+"Come on," Shorty said, rubbing his ear.  "We can't do nothing for
+the old geezer.  An' I've sure frosted my ear.  Now all the blamed
+skin'll peel off and it'll be sore for a week."
+
+A few minutes later, when a flaming ribbon spilled pulsating fire
+over the heavens, they saw on the ice a quarter of a mile ahead two
+forms.  Beyond, for a mile, nothing moved.
+
+"They're leading the procession," Smoke said, as darkness fell
+again.  "Come on, let's get them."
+
+At the end of half an hour, not yet having overtaken the two in
+front, Shorty broke into a run.
+
+"If we catch 'em we'll never pass 'em," he panted.  "Lord, what a
+pace they're hittin'.  Dollars to doughnuts they're no chechaquos.
+They're the real sour-dough variety, you can stack on that."
+
+Smoke was leading when they finally caught up, and he was glad to
+ease to a walk at their heels.  Almost immediately he got the
+impression that the one nearer him was a woman.  How this impression
+came, he could not tell.  Hooded and furred, the dark form was as
+any form; yet there was a haunting sense of familiarity about it.
+He waited for the next flame of the aurora, and by its light saw the
+smallness of the moccasined feet.  But he saw more--the walk; and
+knew it for the unmistakable walk he had once resolved never to
+forget.
+
+"She's a sure goer," Shorty confided hoarsely.  "I'll bet it's an
+Indian."
+
+"How do you do, Miss Gastell," Smoke addressed.
+
+"How do you do," she answered, with a turn of the head and a quick
+glance.  "It's too dark to see.  Who are you?"
+
+"Smoke,"
+
+She laughed in the frost, and he was certain it was the prettiest
+laughter he had ever heard.
+
+"And have you married and raised all those children you were telling
+me about?"  Before he could retort, she went on.  "How many
+chechaquos are there behind?"
+
+"Several thousand, I imagine.  We passed over three hundred.  And
+they weren't wasting any time."
+
+"It's the old story," she said bitterly.  "The new-comers get in on
+the rich creeks, and the old-timers who dared and suffered and made
+this country, get nothing.  Old-timers made this discovery on Squaw
+Creek--how it leaked out is the mystery--and they sent word up to
+all the old-timers on Sea Lion.  But it's ten miles farther than
+Dawson, and when they arrive they'll find the creek staked to the
+skyline by the Dawson chechaquos.  It isn't right, it isn't fair,
+such perversity of luck."
+
+"It is too bad," Smoke sympathized.  "But I'm hanged if I know what
+you're going to do about it.  First come, first served, you know."
+
+"I wish I could do something," she flashed back at him.  "I'd like
+to see them all freeze on the trail, or have everything terrible
+happen to them, so long as the Sea Lion stampede arrived first."
+
+"You've certainly got it in for us, hard," he laughed.
+
+"It isn't that," she said quickly.  "Man by man, I know the crowd
+from Sea Lion, and they are men.  They starved in this country in
+the old days, and they worked like giants to develop it.  I went
+through the hard times on the Koyokuk with them when I was a little
+girl.  And I was with them in the Birch Creek famine, and in the
+Forty Mile famine.  They are heroes, and they deserve some reward,
+and yet here are thousands of green softlings who haven't earned the
+right to stake anything, miles and miles ahead of them.  And now, if
+you'll forgive my tirade, I'll save my breath, for I don't know when
+you and all the rest may try to pass dad and me."
+
+No further talk passed between Joy and Smoke for an hour or so,
+though he noticed that for a time she and her father talked in low
+tones.
+
+"I know'm now," Shorty told Smoke.  "He's old Louis Gastell, an' the
+real goods.  That must be his kid.  He come into this country so
+long ago they ain't nobody can recollect, an' he brought the girl
+with him, she only a baby.  Him an' Beetles was tradin' partners an'
+they ran the first dinkey little steamboat up the Koyokuk."
+
+"I don't think we'll try to pass them," Smoke said.  "We're at the
+head of the stampede, and there are only four of us."
+
+Shorty agreed, and another hour of silence followed, during which
+they swung steadily along.  At seven o'clock, the blackness was
+broken by a last display of the aurora borealis, which showed to the
+west a broad opening between snow-clad mountains.
+
+"Squaw Creek!" Joy exclaimed.
+
+"Goin' some," Shorty exulted.  "We oughtn't to ben there for another
+half hour to the least, accordin' to my reckonin'.  I must a' ben
+spreadin' my legs."
+
+It was at this point that the Dyea trail, baffled by ice-jams,
+swerved abruptly across the Yukon to the east bank.  And here they
+must leave the hard-packed, main-travelled trail, mount the jams,
+and follow a dim trail, but slightly packed, that hovered the west
+bank.
+
+Louis Gastell, leading, slipped in the darkness on the rough ice,
+and sat up, holding his ankle in both his hands.  He struggled to
+his feet and went on, but at a slower pace and with a perceptible
+limp.  After a few minutes he abruptly halted.
+
+"It's no use," he said to his daughter.  "I've sprained a tendon.
+You go ahead and stake for me as well as yourself."
+
+"Can't we do something?" Smoke asked.
+
+Louis Gastell shook his head.
+
+"She can stake two claims as well as one.  I'll crawl over to the
+bank, start a fire, and bandage my ankle.  I'll be all right.  Go
+on, Joy.  Stake ours above the Discovery claim; it's richer higher
+up."
+
+"Here's some birch bark," Smoke said, dividing his supply equally.
+"We'll take care of your daughter."
+
+Louis Gastell laughed harshly.
+
+"Thank you just the same," he said.  "But she can take care of
+herself.  Follow her and watch her."
+
+"Do you mind if I lead?" she asked Smoke, as she headed on.  "I know
+this country better than you."
+
+"Lead on," Smoke answered gallantly, "though I agree with you it's a
+darned shame all us chechaquos are going to beat that Sea Lion bunch
+to it.  Isn't there some way to shake them?"
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"We can't hide our trail, and they'll follow it like sheep."
+
+After a quarter of a mile, she turned sharply to the west.  Smoke
+noticed that they were going through unpacked snow, but neither he
+nor Shorty observed that the dim trail they had been on still led
+south.  Had they witnessed the subsequent procedure of Louis
+Gastell, the history of the Klondike would have been written
+differently; for they would have seen that old-timer, no longer
+limping, running with his nose to the trail like a hound, following
+them.  Also, they would have seen him trample and widen the turn
+they had made to the west.  And, finally, they would have seen him
+keep on the old dim trail that still led south.
+
+A trail did run up the creek, but so slight was it that they
+continually lost it in the darkness.  After a quarter of an hour,
+Joy Gastell was willing to drop into the rear and let the two men
+take turns in breaking a way through the snow.  This slowness of the
+leaders enabled the whole stampede to catch up, and when daylight
+came, at nine o'clock, as far back as they could see was an unbroken
+line of men.  Joy's dark eyes sparkled at the sight.
+
+"How long since we started up the creek?" she asked.
+
+"Fully two hours," Smoke answered.
+
+"And two hours back makes four," she laughed.  "The stampede from
+Sea Lion is saved."
+
+A faint suspicion crossed Smoke's mind, and he stopped and
+confronted her.
+
+"I don't understand," he said.
+
+"You don't.  Then I'll tell you.  This is Norway Creek.  Squaw Creek
+is the next to the south."
+
+Smoke was for the moment, speechless.
+
+"You did it on purpose?" Shorty demanded.
+
+"I did it to give the old-timers a chance."
+
+She laughed mockingly.  The men grinned at each other and finally
+joined her.
+
+"I'd lay you across my knee an' give you a wallopin', if womenfolk
+wasn't so scarce in this country," Shorty assured her.
+
+"Your father didn't sprain a tendon, but waited till we were out of
+sight and then went on?" Smoke asked.
+
+She nodded.
+
+"And you were the decoy."
+
+Again she nodded, and this time Smoke's laughter rang out clear and
+true.  It was the spontaneous laughter of a frankly beaten man.
+
+"Why don't you get angry with me?" she queried ruefully.  "Or--or
+wallop me?"
+
+"Well, we might as well be starting back," Shorty urged.  "My feet's
+gettin' cold standin' here."
+
+Smoke shook his head.
+
+"That would mean four hours lost.  We must be eight miles up this
+Creek now, and from the look ahead Norway is making a long swing
+south.  We'll follow it, then cross over the divide somehow, and tap
+Squaw Creek somewhere above Discovery."  He looked at Joy.  "Won't
+you come along with us?  I told your father we'd look after you."
+
+"I--"  She hesitated.  "I think I shall, if you don't mind."  She
+was looking straight at him, and her face was no longer defiant and
+mocking.  "Really, Mr Smoke, you make me almost sorry for what I
+have done.  But somebody had to save the old-timers."
+
+"It strikes me that stampeding is at best a sporting proposition."
+
+"And it strikes me you two are very game about it," she went on,
+then added with the shadow of a sigh:  "What a pity you are not old-
+timers."
+
+For two hours more they kept to the frozen creek-bed of Norway, then
+turned into a narrow and rugged tributary that flowed from the
+south.  At midday they began the ascent of the divide itself.
+Behind them, looking down and back, they could see the long line of
+stampeders breaking up.  Here and there, in scores of places, thin
+smoke-columns advertised the making of camps.
+
+As for themselves, the going was hard.  They wallowed through snow
+to their waists, and were compelled to stop every few yards to
+breathe.  Shorty was the first to call a halt.
+
+"We ben hittin' the trail for over twelve hours," he said.  "Smoke,
+I'm plum willin' to say I'm good an' tired.  An' so are you.  An'
+I'm free to shout that I can sure hang on to this here pascar like a
+starvin' Indian to a hunk of bear-meat.  But this poor girl here
+can't keep her legs no time if she don't get something in her
+stomach.  Here's where we build a fire.  What d'ye say?"
+
+So quickly, so deftly and methodically, did they go about making a
+temporary camp, that Joy, watching with jealous eyes, admitted to
+herself that the old-timers could not do it better.  Spruce boughs,
+with a spread blanket on top, gave a foundation for rest and cooking
+operations.  But they kept away from the heat of the fire until
+noses and cheeks had been rubbed cruelly.
+
+Smoke spat in the air, and the resultant crackle was so immediate
+and loud that he shook his head.
+
+"I give it up," he said.  "I've never seen cold like this."
+
+"One winter on the Koyokuk it went to eighty-six below," Joy
+answered.  "It's at least seventy or seventy-five right now, and I
+know I've frosted my cheeks.  They're burning like fire."
+
+On the steep slope of the divide there was no ice, while snow, as
+fine and hard and crystalline as granulated sugar, was poured into
+the gold-pan by the bushel until enough water was melted for the
+coffee.  Smoke fried bacon and thawed biscuits.  Shorty kept the
+fuel supplied and tended the fire, and Joy set the simple table
+composed of two plates, two cups, two spoons, a tin of mixed salt
+and pepper, and a tin of sugar.  When it came to eating, she and
+Smoke shared one set between them.  They ate out of the same plate
+and drank from the same cup.
+
+It was nearly two in the afternoon when they cleared the crest of
+the divide and began dropping down a feeder of Squaw Creek.  Earlier
+in the winter some moose-hunter had made a trail up the canyon--that
+is, in going up and down he had stepped always in his previous
+tracks.  As a result, in the midst of soft snow, and veiled under
+later snow falls, was a line of irregular hummocks.  If one's foot
+missed a hummock, he plunged down through unpacked snow and usually
+to a fall.  Also, the moose-hunter had been an exceptionally long-
+legged individual.  Joy, who was eager now that the two men should
+stake, and fearing that they were slackening pace on account of her
+evident weariness, insisted on taking the lead.  The speed and
+manner in which she negotiated the precarious footing, called out
+Shorty's unqualified approval.
+
+"Look at her!" he cried.  "She's the real goods an' the red meat.
+Look at them moccasins swing along.  No high-heels there.  She uses
+the legs God gave her.  She's the right squaw for any bear-hunter."
+
+She flashed back a smile of acknowledgment that included Smoke.  He
+caught a feeling of chumminess, though at the same time he was
+bitingly aware that it was very much of a woman who embraced him in
+that comradely smile.
+
+Looking back, as they came to the bank of Squaw Creek, they could
+see the stampede, strung out irregularly, struggling along the
+descent of the divide.
+
+They slipped down the bank to the creek bed.  The stream, frozen
+solidly to bottom, was from twenty to thirty feet wide and ran
+between six- and eight-foot earth banks of alluvial wash.  No recent
+feet had disturbed the snow that lay upon its ice, and they knew
+they were above the Discovery claim and the last stakes of the Sea
+Lion stampeders.
+
+"Look out for springs," Joy warned, as Smoke led the way down the
+creek.  "At seventy below you'll lose your feet if you break
+through."
+
+These springs, common to most Klondike streams, never ceased at the
+lowest temperatures.  The water flowed out from the banks and lay in
+pools which were cuddled from the cold by later surface-freezings
+and snow falls.  Thus, a man, stepping on dry snow, might break
+through half an inch of ice-skin and find himself up to the knees in
+water.  In five minutes, unless able to remove the wet gear, the
+loss of one's foot was the penalty.
+
+Though only three in the afternoon, the long grey twilight of the
+Arctic had settled down.  They watched for a blazed tree on either
+bank, which would show the centre-stake of the last claim located.
+Joy, impulsively eager, was the first to find it.  She darted ahead
+of Smoke, crying:  "Somebody's been here!  See the snow!  Look for
+the blaze!  There it is!  See that spruce!"
+
+She sank suddenly to her waist in the snow.
+
+"Now I've done it," she said woefully.  Then she cried:  "Don't come
+near me!  I'll wade out."
+
+Step by step, each time breaking through the thin skin of ice
+concealed under the dry snow, she forced her way to solid footing.
+Smoke did not wait, but sprang to the bank, where dry and seasoned
+twigs and sticks, lodged amongst the brush by spring freshets,
+waited the match.  By the time she reached his side, the first
+flames and flickers of an assured fire were rising.
+
+"Sit down!" he commanded.
+
+She obediently sat down in the snow.  He slipped his pack from his
+back, and spread a blanket for her feet.
+
+From above came the voices of the stampeders who followed them.
+
+"Let Shorty stake," she urged
+
+"Go on, Shorty," Smoke said, as he attacked her moccasins, already
+stiff with ice.  "Pace off a thousand feet and place the two centre-
+stakes.  We can fix the corner-stakes afterwards."
+
+With his knife Smoke cut away the lacings and leather of the
+moccasins.  So stiff were they with ice that they snapped and
+crackled under the hacking and sawing.  The Siwash socks and heavy
+woollen stockings were sheaths of ice.  It was as if her feet and
+calves were encased in corrugated iron.
+
+"How are your feet?" he asked, as he worked.
+
+"Pretty numb.  I can't move nor feel my toes.  But it will be all
+right.  The fire is burning beautifully.  Watch out you don't freeze
+your own hands.  They must be numb now from the way you're
+fumbling."
+
+He slipped his mittens on, and for nearly a minute smashed the open
+hands savagely against his sides.  When he felt the blood-prickles,
+he pulled off the mittens and ripped and tore and sawed and hacked
+at the frozen garments.  The white skin of one foot appeared, then
+that of the other, to be exposed to the bite of seventy below zero,
+which is the equivalent of one hundred and two below freezing.
+
+Then came the rubbing with snow, carried on with an intensity of
+cruel fierceness, till she squirmed and shrank and moved her toes,
+and joyously complained of the hurt.
+
+He half-dragged her, and she half-lifted herself, nearer to the
+fire.  He placed her feet on the blanket close to the flesh-saving
+flames.
+
+"You'll have to take care of them for a while," he said.
+
+She could now safely remove her mittens and manipulate her own feet,
+with the wisdom of the initiated, being watchful that the heat of
+the fire was absorbed slowly.  While she did this, he attacked his
+hands.  The snow did not melt nor moisten.  Its light crystals were
+like so much sand.  Slowly the stings and pangs of circulation came
+back into the chilled flesh.  Then he tended the fire, unstrapped
+the light pack from her back, and got out a complete change of foot-
+gear.
+
+Shorty returned along the creek-bed and climbed the bank to them.
+
+"I sure staked a full thousan' feet," he proclaimed.  "Number
+twenty-seven and number twenty-eight, though I'd only got the upper
+stake of twenty-seven, when I met the first geezer of the bunch
+behind.  He just straight declared I wasn't goin' to stake twenty-
+eight.  An' I told him . . . ."
+
+"Yes, yes," Joy cried.  "What did you tell him?"
+
+"Well, I told him straight that if he didn't back up plum five
+hundred feet I'd sure punch his frozen nose into ice-cream an'
+chocolate eclaires.  He backed up, an' I've got in the centre-stakes
+of two full an' honest five-hundred-foot claims.  He staked next,
+and I guess by now the bunch has Squaw Creek located to head-waters
+an' down the other side.  Ourn is safe.  It's too dark to see now,
+but we can put out the corner-stakes in the mornin'."
+
+
+
+III.
+
+When they awoke, they found a change had taken place during the
+night.  So warm was it, that Shorty and Smoke, still in their mutual
+blankets, estimated the temperature at no more than twenty below.
+The cold snap had broken.  On top their blankets lay six inches of
+frost crystals.
+
+"Good morning! how's your feet?" was Smoke's greeting across the
+ashes of the fire to where Joy Gastell, carefully shaking aside the
+snow, was sitting up in her sleeping furs.
+
+Shorty built the fire and quarried ice from the creek, while Smoke
+cooked breakfast.  Daylight came on as they finished the meal.
+
+"You go an' fix them corner-stakes, Smoke," Shorty said.  "There's a
+gravel under where I chopped ice for the coffee, an' I'm goin' to
+melt water and wash a pan of that same gravel for luck."
+
+Smoke departed, axe in hand, to blaze the stakes.  Starting from the
+down-stream centre-stake of 'twenty-seven,' he headed at right
+angles across the narrow valley towards its rim.  He proceeded
+methodically, almost automatically, for his mind was alive with
+recollections of the night before.  He felt, somehow, that he had
+won to empery over the delicate lines and firm muscles of those feet
+and ankles he had rubbed with snow, and this empery seemed to extend
+to all women.  In dim and fiery ways a feeling of possession
+mastered him.  It seemed that all that was necessary was for him to
+walk up to this Joy Gastell, take her hand in his, and say "Come."
+
+It was in this mood that he discovered something that made him
+forget empery over the white feet of woman.  At the valley rim he
+blazed no corner-stake.  He did not reach the valley rim, but,
+instead, he found himself confronted by another stream.  He lined up
+with his eye a blasted willow tree and a big and recognizable
+spruce.  He returned to the stream where were the centre stakes.  He
+followed the bed of the creek around a wide horseshoe bend through
+the flat, and found that the two creeks were the same creek.  Next,
+he floundered twice through the snow from valley rim to valley rim,
+running the first line from the lower stake of 'twenty-seven,' the
+second from the upper stake of 'twenty-eight,' and he found that THE
+UPPER STAKE OF THE LATTER WAS LOWER THAN THE LOWER STAKE OF THE
+FORMER.  In the gray twilight and half-darkness Shorty had located
+their two claims on the horseshoe.
+
+Smoke plodded back to the little camp.  Shorty, at the end of
+washing a pan of gravel, exploded at sight of him.
+
+"We got it!" Shorty cried, holding out the pan.  "Look at it!  A
+nasty mess of gold.  Two hundred right there if it's a cent.  She
+runs rich from the top of the wash-gravel.  I've churned around
+placers some, but I never got butter like what's in this pan."
+
+Smoke cast an incurious glance at the coarse gold, poured himself a
+cup of coffee at the fire, and sat down.  Joy sensed something wrong
+and looked at him with eagerly solicitous eyes.  Shorty, however,
+was disgruntled by his partner's lack of delight in the discovery.
+
+"Why don't you kick in an' get excited?" he demanded.  "We got our
+pile right here, unless you're stickin' up your nose at two-hundred-
+dollar pans."
+
+Smoke took a swallow of coffee before replying.
+
+"Shorty, why are our two claims here like the Panama Canal?"
+
+"What's the answer?"
+
+"Well, the eastern entrance of the Panama Canal is west of the
+western entrance, that's all."
+
+"Go on," Shorty said.  "I ain't seen the joke yet."
+
+"In short, Shorty, you staked our two claims on a big horseshoe
+bend."
+
+Shorty set the gold pan down in the snow and stood up.
+
+"Go on," he repeated.
+
+"The upper stake of twenty-eight is ten feet below the lower stake
+of twenty-seven."
+
+"You mean we ain't got nothin', Smoke?"
+
+"Worse than that; we've got ten feet less than nothing."
+
+Shorty departed down the bank on the run.  Five minutes later he
+returned.  In response to Joy's look, he nodded.  Without speech, he
+went over to a log and sat down to gaze steadily at the snow in
+front of his moccasins.
+
+"We might as well break camp and start back for Dawson," Smoke said,
+beginning to fold the blankets.
+
+"I am sorry, Smoke," Joy said.  "It's all my fault."
+
+"It's all right," he answered.  "All in the day's work, you know."
+
+"But it's my fault, wholly mine," she persisted.  "Dad's staked for
+me down near Discovery, I know.  I'll give you my claim."
+
+He shook his head.
+
+"Shorty," she pleaded.
+
+Shorty shook his head and began to laugh.  It was a colossal laugh.
+Chuckles and muffled explosions yielded to hearty roars.
+
+"It ain't hysterics," he explained, "I sure get powerful amused at
+times, an' this is one of them."
+
+His gaze chanced to fall on the gold pan.  He walked over and
+gravely kicked it, scattering the gold over the landscape.
+
+"It ain't ourn," he said.  "It belongs to the geezer I backed up
+five hundred feet last night.  An' what gets me is four hundred an'
+ninety of them feet was to the good . . . his good.  Come on, Smoke.
+Let's start the hike to Dawson.  Though if you're hankerin' to kill
+me I won't lift a finger to prevent."
+
+
+
+
+SHORTY DREAMS.
+
+
+
+
+I.
+
+"Funny you don't gamble none," Shorty said to Smoke one night in the
+Elkhorn.  "Ain't it in your blood?"
+
+"It is," Smoke answered.  "But the statistics are in my head.  I
+like an even break for my money."
+
+All about them, in the huge bar-room, arose the click and rattle and
+rumble of a dozen games, at which fur-clad, moccasined men tried
+their luck.  Smoke waved his hand to include them all.
+
+"Look at them," he said.  "It's cold mathematics that they will lose
+more than they win to-night, that the big proportion is losing right
+now."
+
+"You're sure strong on figgers," Shorty murmured admiringly.  "An'
+in the main you're right.  But they's such a thing as facts.  An'
+one fact is streaks of luck.  They's times when every geezer playin'
+wins, as I know, for I've sat in in such games an' saw more'n one
+bank busted.  The only way to win at gamblin' is wait for a hunch
+that you've got a lucky streak comin' and then to play it to the
+roof."
+
+"It sounds simple," Smoke criticized.  "So simple I can't see how
+men can lose."
+
+"The trouble is," Shorty admitted, "that most men gets fooled on
+their hunches.  On occasion I sure get fooled on mine.  The thing is
+to try, an' find out."
+
+Smoke shook his head.
+
+"That's a statistic, too, Shorty.  Most men prove wrong on their
+hunches."
+
+"But don't you ever get one of them streaky feelin's that all you
+got to do is put your money down an' pick a winner?"
+
+Smoke laughed.
+
+"I'm too scared of the percentage against me.  But I'll tell you
+what, Shorty.  I'll throw a dollar on the 'high card' right now and
+see if it will buy us a drink."
+
+Smoke was edging his way in to the faro table, when Shorty caught
+his arm.
+
+"Hold on.  I'm gettin' one of them hunches now.  You put that dollar
+on roulette."
+
+They went over to a roulette table near the bar.
+
+"Wait till I give the word," Shorty counselled.
+
+"What number?" Smoke asked.
+
+"Pick it yourself.  But wait till I say let her go."
+
+"You don't mean to say I've got an even chance on that table?" Smoke
+argued.
+
+"As good as the next geezers."
+
+"But not as good as the bank's."
+
+"Wait and see," Shorty urged.  "Now!  Let her go!"
+
+The game-keeper had just sent the little ivory ball whirling around
+the smooth rim above the revolving, many-slotted wheel.  Smoke, at
+the lower end of the table, reached over a player, and blindly
+tossed the dollar.  It slid along the smooth, green cloth and
+stopped fairly in the centre of '34.'
+
+The ball came to rest, and the game-keeper announced, "Thirty-four
+wins!"  He swept the table, and alongside of Smoke's dollar, stacked
+thirty-five dollars.  Smoke drew the money in, and Shorty slapped
+him on the shoulder.
+
+"Now, that was the real goods of a hunch, Smoke!  How'd I know it?
+There's no tellin'.  I just knew you'd win.  Why, if that dollar of
+yourn'd fell on any other number it'd won just the same.  When the
+hunch is right, you just can't help winnin'."
+
+"Suppose it had come 'double nought'?" Smoke queried, as they made
+their way to the bar.
+
+"Then your dollar'd ben on 'double nought,'" was Shorty's answer.
+"They's no gettin' away from it.  A hunch is a hunch.  Here's how.
+Come on back to the table.  I got a hunch, after pickin' you for a
+winner, that I can pick some few numbers myself."
+
+"Are you playing a system?" Smoke asked, at the end of ten minutes,
+when his partner had dropped a hundred dollars.
+
+Shorty shook his head indignantly, as he spread his chips out in the
+vicinities of '3,' '11,' and '17,' and tossed a spare chip on the
+'green.'
+
+"Hell is sure cluttered with geezers that played systems," he
+exposited, as the keeper raked the table.
+
+From idly watching, Smoke became fascinated, following closely every
+detail of the game from the whirling of the ball to the making and
+the paying of the bets.  He made no plays, however, merely
+contenting himself with looking on.  Yet so interested was he, that
+Shorty, announcing that he had had enough, with difficulty drew
+Smoke away from the table.  The game-keeper returned Shorty the gold
+sack he had deposited as a credential for playing, and with it went
+a slip of paper on which was scribbled, "Out . . . 350 dollars."
+Shorty carried the sack and the paper across the room and handed
+them to the weigher, who sat behind a large pair of gold-scales.
+Out of Shorty's sack he weighed 350 dollars, which he poured into
+the coffer of the house.
+
+"That hunch of yours was another one of those statistics," Smoke
+jeered.
+
+"I had to play it, didn't I, in order to find out?" Shorty retorted.
+"I reckon I was crowdin' some just on account of tryin' to convince
+you they's such a thing as hunches."
+
+"Never mind, Shorty," Smoke laughed. "I've got a hunch right now--"
+
+Shorty's eyes sparkled as he cried eagerly:  "What is it?  Kick in
+an' play it pronto."
+
+"It's not that kind, Shorty.  Now, what I've got is a hunch that
+some day I'll work out a system that will beat the spots off that
+table."
+
+"System!" Shorty groaned, then surveyed his partner with a vast
+pity.  "Smoke, listen to your side-kicker an' leave system alone.
+Systems is sure losers.  They ain't no hunches in systems."
+
+"That's why I like them," Smoke answered.  "A system is statistical.
+When you get the right system you can't lose, and that's the
+difference between it and a hunch.  You never know when the right
+hunch is going wrong."
+
+"But I know a lot of systems that went wrong, an' I never seen a
+system win."  Shorty paused and sighed.  "Look here, Smoke, if
+you're gettin' cracked on systems this ain't no place for you, an'
+it's about time we hit the trail again."
+
+
+
+II.
+
+During the several following weeks, the two partners played at cross
+purposes.  Smoke was bent on spending his time watching the roulette
+game in the Elkhorn, while Shorty was equally bent on travelling
+trail.  At last Smoke put his foot down when a stampede was proposed
+for two hundred miles down the Yukon.
+
+"Look here, Shorty," he said, "I'm not going.  That trip will take
+ten days, and before that time I hope to have my system in proper
+working order.  I could almost win with it now.  What are you
+dragging me around the country this way for anyway?"
+
+"Smoke, I got to take care of you," was Shorty's reply.  "You're
+getting nutty.  I'd drag you stampedin' to Jericho or the North Pole
+if I could keep you away from that table."
+
+"It's all right, Shorty.  But just remember I've reached full man-
+grown, meat-eating size.  The only dragging you'll do, will be
+dragging home the dust I'm going to win with that system of mine,
+and you'll most likely have to do it with a dog-team."
+
+Shorty's response was a groan.
+
+"And I don't want you to be bucking any games on your own," Smoke
+went on.  "We're going to divide the winnings, and I'll need all our
+money to get started.  That system's young yet, and it's liable to
+trip me for a few falls before I get it lined up."
+
+
+
+III.
+
+At last, after long hours and days spent at watching the table, the
+night came when Smoke proclaimed he was ready, and Shorty, glum and
+pessimistic, with all the seeming of one attending a funeral,
+accompanied his partner to the Elkhorn.  Smoke bought a stack of
+chips and stationed himself at the game-keeper's end of the table.
+Again and again the ball was whirled and the other players won or
+lost, but Smoke did not venture a chip.  Shorty waxed impatient.
+
+"Buck in, buck in," he urged.  "Let's get this funeral over.  What's
+the matter?  Got cold feet?"
+
+Smoke shook his head and waited.  A dozen plays went by, and then,
+suddenly, he placed ten one-dollar chips on '26.'  The number won,
+and the keeper paid Smoke three hundred and fifty dollars.  A dozen
+plays went by, twenty plays, and thirty, when Smoke placed ten
+dollars on '32.'  Again he received three hundred and fifty dollars.
+
+"It's a hunch."  Shorty whispered vociferously in his ear.  "Ride
+it!  Ride it!"
+
+Half an hour went by, during which Smoke was inactive, then he
+placed ten dollars on '34' and won.
+
+"A hunch!" Shorty whispered.
+
+"Nothing of the sort," Smoke whispered back.  "It's the system.
+Isn't she a dandy?"
+
+"You can't tell me," Shorty contended.  "Hunches comes in mighty
+funny ways.  You might think it's a system, but it ain't.  Systems
+is impossible.  They can't happen.  It's a sure hunch you're
+playin'."
+
+Smoke now altered his play.  He bet more frequently, with single
+chips, scattered here and there, and he lost more often than he won.
+
+"Quit it," Shorty advised.  "Cash in.  You've rung the bull's eye
+three times, an' you're ahead a thousand.  You can't keep it up."
+
+At this moment the ball started whirling, and Smoke dropped ten
+chips on '26.'  The ball fell into the slot of '26,' and the keeper
+again paid him three hundred and fifty dollars.  "If you're plum
+crazy an' got the immortal cinch, bet'm the limit," Shorty said.
+"Put down twenty-five next time."
+
+A quarter of an hour passed, during which Smoke won and lost on
+small scattering bets.  Then, with the abruptness that characterized
+his big betting, he placed twenty-five dollars on the 'double
+nought,' and the keeper paid him eight hundred and seventy-five
+dollars.
+
+"Wake me up, Smoke, I'm dreamin'," Shorty moaned.
+
+Smoke smiled, consulted his note-book, and became absorbed in
+calculation.  He continually drew the note-book from his pocket, and
+from time to time jotted down figures.
+
+A crowd had packed densely around the table, while the players
+themselves were attempting to cover the same numbers he covered.  It
+was then that a change came over his play.  Ten times in succession
+he placed ten dollars on '18' and lost.  At this stage he was
+deserted by the hardiest.  He changed his number and won another
+three hundred and fifty dollars.  Immediately the players were back
+with him, deserting again after a series of losing bets.
+
+"Quit it, Smoke, quit it," Shorty advised.  "The longest string of
+hunches is only so long, an' your string's finished.  No more
+bull's-eyes for you."
+
+"I'm going to ring her once again before I cash in," Smoke answered.
+
+For a few minutes, with varying luck, he played scattering chips
+over the table, and then dropped twenty-five dollars on the 'double
+nought.'
+
+"I'll take my slip now," he said to the dealer, as he won.
+
+"Oh, you don't need to show it to me," Shorty said, as they walked
+to the weigher.  "I ben keepin' track.  You're something like
+thirty-six hundred to the good.  How near am I?"
+
+"Thirty-six-thirty," Smoke replied.  "And now you've got to pack the
+dust home.  That was the agreement."
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+"Don't crowd your luck," Shorty pleaded with Smoke, the next night,
+in the cabin, as he evidenced preparations to return to the Elkhorn.
+"You played a mighty long string of hunches, but you played it out.
+If you go back you'll sure drop all your winnings."
+
+"But I tell you it isn't hunches, Shorty.  It's statistics.  It's a
+system.  It can't lose."
+
+"System be damned.  They ain't no such a thing as system.  I made
+seventeen straight passes at a crap table once.  Was it system?
+Nope.  It was fool luck, only I had cold feet an' didn't dast let it
+ride.  It it'd rid, instead of me drawin' down after the third pass,
+I'd a won over thirty thousan' on the original two-bit piece."
+
+"Just the same, Shorty, this is a real system."
+
+"Huh!  You got to show me."
+
+"I did show you.  Come on with me now and I'll show you again."
+
+When they entered the Elkhorn, all eyes centred on Smoke, and those
+about the table made way for him as he took up his old place at the
+keeper's end.  His play was quite unlike that of the previous night.
+In the course of an hour and a half he made only four bets, but each
+bet was for twenty-five dollars, and each bet won.  He cashed in
+thirty-five hundred dollars, and Shorty carried the dust home to the
+cabin.
+
+"Now's the time to jump the game," Shorty advised, as he sat on the
+edge of his bunk and took off his moccasins.  "You're seven thousan'
+ahead.  A man's a fool that'd crowd his luck harder."
+
+"Shorty, a man would be a blithering lunatic if he didn't keep on
+backing a winning system like mine."
+
+"Smoke, you're a sure bright boy.  You're college-learnt.  You know
+more'n a minute than I could know in forty thousan' years.  But just
+the same you're dead wrong when you call your luck a system.  I've
+ben around some, an' seen a few, an' I tell you straight an'
+confidential an' all-assurin', a system to beat a bankin' game ain't
+possible."
+
+"But I'm showing you this one.  It's a pipe."
+
+"No, you're not, Smoke.  It's a pipe-dream.  I'm asleep.  Bime by
+I'll wake up, an' build the fire, an' start breakfast."
+
+"Well, my unbelieving friend, there's the dust.  Heft it."
+
+So saying, Smoke tossed the bulging gold-sack upon his partner's
+knees.  It weighed thirty-five pounds, and Shorty was fully aware of
+the crush of its impact on his flesh.
+
+"It's real," Smoke hammered his point home.
+
+"Huh!  I've saw some mighty real dreams in my time.  In a dream all
+things is possible.  In real life a system ain't possible.  Now, I
+ain't never ben to college, but I'm plum justified in sizin' up this
+gamblin' orgy of ourn as a sure enough dream."
+
+"Hamilton's 'Law of Parsimony,'" Smoke laughed.
+
+"I ain't never heard of the geezer, but his dope's sure right.  I'm
+dreamin', Smoke, an' you're just snoopin' around in my dream an'
+tormentin' me with system.  If you love me, if you sure do love me,
+you'll just yell, 'Shorty!  Wake up!'  An' I'll wake up an' start
+breakfast."
+
+
+
+V.
+
+The third night of play, as Smoke laid his first bet, the game-
+keeper shoved fifteen dollars back to him.
+
+"Ten's all you can play," he said.  "The limit's come down."
+
+"Gettin' picayune," Shorty sneered.
+
+"No one has to play at this table that don't want to," the keeper
+retorted.  "And I'm willing to say straight out in meeting that we'd
+sooner your pardner didn't play at our table."
+
+"Scared of his system, eh?" Shorty challenged, as the keeper paid
+over three hundred and fifty dollars.
+
+"I ain't saying I believe in system, because I don't.  There never
+was a system that'd beat roulette or any percentage game.  But just
+the same I've seen some queer strings of luck, and I ain't going to
+let this bank go bust if I can help it."
+
+"Cold feet."
+
+"Gambling is just as much business, my friend, as any other
+business.  We ain't philanthropists."
+
+Night by night, Smoke continued to win.  His method of play varied.
+Expert after expert, in the jam about the table, scribbled down his
+bets and numbers in vain attempts to work out his system.  They
+complained of their inability to get a clew to start with, and swore
+that it was pure luck, though the most colossal streak of it they
+had ever seen.
+
+It was Smoke's varied play that obfuscated them.  Sometimes,
+consulting his note-book or engaging in long calculations, an hour
+elapsed without his staking a chip.  At other times he would win
+three limit-bets and clean up a thousand dollars and odd in five or
+ten minutes.  At still other times, his tactics would be to scatter
+single chips prodigally and amazingly over the table.  This would
+continue for from ten to thirty minutes of play, when, abruptly, as
+the ball whirled through the last few of its circles, he would play
+the limit on column, colour, and number, and win all three.  Once,
+to complete confusion in the minds of those that strove to divine
+his secret, he lost forty straight bets, each at the limit.  But
+each night, play no matter how diversely, Shorty carried home
+thirty-five hundred dollars for him.
+
+"It ain't no system," Shorty expounded at one of their bed-going
+discussions.  "I follow you, an' follow you, but they ain't no
+figgerin' it out.  You never play twice the same.  All you do is
+pick winners when you want to, an' when you don't want to, you just
+on purpose don't."
+
+"Maybe you're nearer right than you think, Shorty.  I've just got to
+pick losers sometimes.  It's part of the system."
+
+"System--hell!  I've talked with every gambler in town, an' the last
+one is agreed they ain't no such thing as system."
+
+"Yet I'm showing them one all the time."
+
+"Look here, Smoke."  Shorty paused over the candle, in the act of
+blowing it out.  "I'm real irritated.  Maybe you think this is a
+candle.  It ain't.  An' this ain't me neither.  I'm out on trail
+somewheres, in my blankets, lyin' on my back with my mouth open, an'
+dreamin' all this.  That ain't you talkin', any more than this
+candle is a candle."
+
+"It's funny, how I happen to be dreaming along with you then," Smoke
+persisted.
+
+"No, it ain't.  You're part of my dream, that's all.  I've hearn
+many a man talk in my dreams.  I want to tell you one thing, Smoke.
+I'm gettin' mangy an' mad.  If this here dream keeps up much more
+I'm goin' to bite my veins an' howl."
+
+
+
+VI.
+
+On the sixth night of play at the Elkhorn, the limit was reduced to
+five dollars.
+
+"It's all right," Smoke assured the game-keeper.  "I want thirty-
+five hundred to-night, as usual, and you only compel me to play
+longer.  I've got to pick twice as many winners, that's all."
+
+"Why don't you buck somebody else's table?" the keeper demanded
+wrathfully.
+
+"Because I like this one." Smoke glanced over to the roaring stove
+only a few feet away.  "Besides, there are no draughts here, and it
+is warm and comfortable."
+
+On the ninth night, when Shorty had carried the dust home, he had a
+fit.
+
+"I quit, Smoke, I quit," he began.  "I know when I got enough.  I
+ain't dreamin'.  I'm wide awake.  A system can't be, but you got one
+just the same.  There's nothin' in the rule o' three.  The almanac's
+clean out.  The world's gone smash.  There's nothin' regular an'
+uniform no more.  The multiplication table's gone loco.  Two is
+eight, nine is eleven, and two-times-six is eight hundred an' forty-
+six--an'--an' a half.  Anything is everything, an' nothing's all,
+an' twice all is cold cream, milk-shakes, an' calico horses.  You've
+got a system.  Figgers beat the figgerin'.  What ain't is, an' what
+isn't has to be.  The sun rises in the west, the moon's a paystreak,
+the stars is canned corn-beef, scurvy's the blessin' of God, him
+that dies kicks again, rocks floats, water's gas, I ain't me, you're
+somebody else, an' mebbe we're twins if we ain't hashed-brown
+potatoes fried in verdigris.  Wake me up!  Somebody!  Oh!  Wake me
+up!"
+
+
+
+VII.
+
+The next morning a visitor came to the cabin.  Smoke knew him,
+Harvey Moran, the owner of all the games in the Tivoli.  There was a
+note of appeal in his deep gruff voice as he plunged into his
+business.
+
+"It's like this, Smoke," he began.  "You've got us all guessing.
+I'm representing nine other game-owners and myself from all the
+saloons in town.  We don't understand.  We know that no system ever
+worked against roulette.  All the mathematic sharps in the colleges
+have told us gamblers the same thing.  They say that roulette itself
+is the system, the one and only system, and, therefore, that no
+system can beat it, for that would mean arithmetic has gone bug-
+house."
+
+Shorty nodded his head violently.
+
+"If a system can beat a system, then there's no such thing as
+system," the gambler went on.  "In such a case anything could be
+possible--a thing could be in two different places at once, or two
+things could be in the same place that's only large enough for one
+at the same time."
+
+"Well, you've seen me play," Smoke answered defiantly; "and if you
+think it's only a string of luck on my part, why worry?"
+
+"That's the trouble.  We can't help worrying.  It's a system you've
+got, and all the time we know it can't be.  I've watched you five
+nights now, and all I can make out is that you favour certain
+numbers and keep on winning.  Now the ten of us game-owners have got
+together, and we want to make a friendly proposition.  We'll put a
+roulette table in a back room of the Elkhorn, pool the bank against
+you, and have you buck us.  It will be all quiet and private.  Just
+you and Shorty and us.  What do you say?"
+
+"I think it's the other way around," Smoke answered.  "It's up to
+you to come and see me.  I'll be playing in the bar-room of the
+Elkhorn to-night.  You can watch me there just as well."
+
+
+
+VIII.
+
+That night, when Smoke took up his customary place at the table, the
+keeper shut down the game.
+
+"The game's closed," he said.  "Boss's orders."
+
+But the assembled game-owners were not to be balked.  In a few
+minutes they arranged a pool, each putting in a thousand, and took
+over the table.
+
+"Come on and buck us," Harvey Moran challenged, as the keeper sent
+the ball on its first whirl around.
+
+"Give me the twenty-five limit," Smoke suggested.
+
+"Sure; go to it."
+
+Smoke immediately placed twenty-five chips on the 'double nought,'
+and won.
+
+Moran wiped the sweat from his forehead.
+
+"Go on," he said.  "We got ten thousand in this bank."
+
+At the end of an hour and a half, the ten thousand was Smoke's.
+
+"The bank's bust," the keeper announced.
+
+"Got enough?" Smoke asked.
+
+The game-owners looked at one another.  They were awed.  They, the
+fatted proteges of the laws of chance, were undone.  They were up
+against one who had more intimate access to those laws, or who had
+invoked higher and undreamed laws.
+
+"We quit," Moran said.  "Ain't that right, Burke?"
+
+Big Burke, who owned the games in the M. and G. Saloon, nodded.
+
+"The impossible has happened," he said.  "This Smoke here has got a
+system all right.  If we let him go on we'll all bust.  All I can
+see, if we're goin' to keep our tables running, is to cut down the
+limit to a dollar, or to ten cents, or a cent.  He won't win much in
+a night with such stakes."
+
+All looked at Smoke.  He shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"In that case, gentlemen, I'll have to hire a gang of men to play at
+all your tables.  I can pay them ten dollars for a four-hour shift
+and make money."
+
+"Then we'll shut down our tables," Big Burke replied.  "Unless--"
+He hesitated and ran his eye over his fellows to see that they were
+with him.  "Unless you're willing to talk business.  What will you
+sell the system for?"
+
+"Thirty thousand dollars," Smoke answered.  "That's a tax of three
+thousand apiece."
+
+They debated and nodded.
+
+"And you'll tell us your system?"
+
+"Surely."
+
+"And you'll promise not to play roulette in Dawson ever again?"
+
+"No, sir," Smoke said positively.  "I'll promise not to play this
+system again."
+
+"My God!" Moran exploded.  "You haven't got other systems, have
+you?"
+
+"Hold on!" Shorty cried.  "I want to talk to my pardner.  Come over
+here, Smoke, on the side."
+
+Smoke followed into a quiet corner of the room, while hundreds of
+curious eyes centred on him and Shorty.
+
+"Look here, Smoke," Shorty whispered hoarsely.  "Mebbe it ain't a
+dream.  In which case you're sellin' out almighty cheap.  You've
+sure got the world by the slack of its pants.  They's millions in
+it.  Shake it!  Shake it hard!"
+
+"But if it's a dream?" Smoke queried softly.
+
+"Then, for the sake of the dream an' the love of Mike, stick them
+gamblers up good and plenty.  What's the good of dreamin' if you
+can't dream to the real right, dead sure, eternal finish?"
+
+"Fortunately, this isn't a dream, Shorty."
+
+"Then if you sell out for thirty thousan', I'll never forgive you."
+
+"When I sell out for thirty thousand, you'll fall on my neck an'
+wake up to find out that you haven't been dreaming at all.  This is
+no dream, Shorty.  In about two minutes you'll see you have been
+wide awake all the time.  Let me tell you that when I sell out it's
+because I've got to sell out."
+
+Back at the table, Smoke informed the game-owners that his offer
+still held.  They proffered him their paper to the extent of three
+thousand each.
+
+"Hold out for the dust," Shorty cautioned.
+
+"I was about to intimate that I'd take the money weighed out," Smoke
+said.
+
+The owner of the Elkhorn cashed their paper, and Shorty took
+possession of the gold-dust.
+
+"Now, I don't want to wake up," he chortled, as he hefted the
+various sacks.  "Toted up, it's a seventy thousan' dream.  It's be
+too blamed expensive to open my eyes, roll out of the blankets, an'
+start breakfast."
+
+"What's your system?" Big Burke demanded.  "We've paid for it, and
+we want it."
+
+Smoke led the way to the table.
+
+"Now, gentlemen, bear with me a moment.  This isn't an ordinary
+system.  It can scarcely be called legitimate, but its one great
+virtue is that it works.  I've got my suspicious, but I'm not saying
+anything.  You watch.  Mr Keeper, be ready with the ball.  Wait, I
+am going to pick '26.'  Consider I've bet on it.  Be ready, Mr
+Keeper--Now!"
+
+The ball whirled around.
+
+"You observe," Smoke went on, "that '9' was directly opposite."
+
+The ball finished in '26.'
+
+Big Burke swore deep in his chest, and all waited.
+
+"For 'double nought' to win, '11' must be opposite.  Try it yourself
+and see."
+
+"But the system?" Moran demanded impatiently.  "We know you can pick
+winning numbers, and we know what those numbers are; but how do you
+do it?"
+
+"By observed sequences.  By accident I chanced twice to notice the
+ball whirled when '9' was opposite.  Both times '26' won.  After
+that I saw it happen again.  Then I looked for other sequences, and
+found them.  'Double nought' opposite fetches '32,' and '11' fetches
+'double nought.'  It doesn't always happen, but it USUALLY happens.
+You notice, I say 'usually.'  As I said before, I have my
+suspicions, but I'm not saying anything."
+
+Big Burke, with a sudden dawn of comprehension reached over, stopped
+the wheel, and examined it carefully.  The heads of the nine other
+game-owners bent over and joined in the examination.  Big Burke
+straightened up and cast a glance at the near-by stove.
+
+"Hell," he said.  "It wasn't any system at all.  The table stood
+close to the fire, and the blamed wheel's warped.  And we've been
+worked to a frazzle.  No wonder he liked this table.  He couldn't
+have bucked for sour apples at any other table."
+
+Harvey Moran gave a great sigh of relief and wiped his forehead.
+
+"Well, anyway," he said, "it's cheap at the price just to find out
+that it wasn't a system."  His face began to work, and then he broke
+into laughter and slapped Smoke on the shoulder.  "Smoke, you had us
+going for a while, and we patting ourselves on the back because you
+were letting our tables alone!  Say, I've got some real fizz I'll
+open if all you'll come over to the Tivoli with me."
+
+Later, back in the cabin, Shorty silently overhauled and hefted the
+various bulging gold-sacks.  He finally piled them on the table, sat
+down on the edge of his bunk, and began taking off his moccasins.
+
+"Seventy thousan'," he calculated.  "It weighs three hundred and
+fifty pounds.  And all out of a warped wheel an' a quick eye.
+Smoke, you eat'm raw, you eat'm alive, you work under water, you've
+given me the jim-jams; but just the same I know it's a dream.  It's
+only in dreams that the good things comes true.  I'm almighty
+unanxious to wake up.  I hope I never wake up."
+
+"Cheer up," Smoke answered.  "You won't.  There are a lot of
+philosophy sharps that think men are sleep-walkers.  You're in good
+company."
+
+Shorty got up, went to the table, selected the heaviest sack, and
+cuddled it in his arms as if it were a baby.
+
+"I may be sleep-walkin'," he said, "but as you say, I'm sure in
+mighty good company."
+
+
+
+
+THE MAN ON THE OTHER BANK.
+
+
+
+
+I.
+
+It was before Smoke Bellew staked the farcical town-site of Tra-Lee,
+made the historic corner of eggs that nearly broke Swiftwater Bill's
+bank account, or won the dog-team race down the Yukon for an even
+million dollars, that he and Shorty parted company on the Upper
+Klondike.  Shorty's task was to return down the Klondike to Dawson
+to record some claims they had staked.
+
+Smoke, with the dog-team, turned south.  His quest was Surprise Lake
+and the mythical Two Cabins.  His traverse was to cut the headwaters
+of the Indian River and cross the unknown region over the mountains
+to the Stewart River.  Here, somewhere, rumour persisted, was
+Surprise Lake, surrounded by jagged mountains and glaciers, its
+bottom paved with raw gold.  Old-timers, it was said, whose very
+names were forgotten in the forests of earlier years, had dived in
+the ice-waters of Surprise Lake and fetched lump-gold to the surface
+in both hands.  At different times, parties of old-timers had
+penetrated the forbidding fastness and sampled the lake's golden
+bottom.  But the water was too cold.  Some died in the water, being
+pulled up dead.  Others died of consumption.  And one who had gone
+down never did come up.  All survivors had planned to return and
+drain the lake, yet none had ever gone back.  Disaster always
+happened.  One man fell into an air-hole below Forty Mile; another
+was killed and eaten by his dogs; a third was crushed by a falling
+tree.  And so the tale ran.  Surprise Lake was a hoodoo; its
+location was unremembered; and the gold still paved its undrained
+bottom.
+
+Two Cabins, no less mythical, was more definitely located.  'Five
+sleeps,' up the McQuestion River from the Stewart, stood two ancient
+cabins.  So ancient were they that they must have been built before
+ever the first known gold-hunter had entered the Yukon Basin.
+Wandering moose-hunters, whom even Smoke had met and talked with,
+claimed to have found the two cabins in the old days, but to have
+sought vainly for the mine which those early adventurers must have
+worked.
+
+"I wish you was goin' with me," Shorty said wistfully, at parting.
+"Just because you got the Indian bug ain't no reason for to go
+pokin' into trouble.  They's no gettin' away from it, that's loco
+country you're bound for.  The hoodoo's sure on it, from the first
+flip to the last call, judgin' from all you an' me has hearn tell
+about it."
+
+"It's all right, Shorty.  I'll make the round trip and be back in
+Dawson in six weeks.  The Yukon trail is packed, and the first
+hundred miles or so of the Stewart ought to be packed.  Old-timers
+from Henderson have told me a number of outfits went up last fall
+after the freeze-up.  When I strike their trail I ought to hit her
+up forty or fifty miles a day.  I'm likely to be back inside a
+month, once I get across."
+
+"Yes, once you get acrost.  But it's the gettin' acrost that worries
+me.  Well, so long, Smoke.  Keep your eyes open for that hoodoo,
+that's all.  An' don't be ashamed to turn back if you don't kill any
+meat."
+
+
+
+II.
+
+A week later, Smoke found himself among the jumbled ranges south of
+Indian River.  On the divide from the Klondike he had abandoned the
+sled and packed his wolf-dogs.  The six big huskies each carried
+fifty pounds, and on his own back was an equal burden.  Through the
+soft snow he led the way, packing it down under his snow-shoes, and
+behind, in single file, toiled the dogs.
+
+He loved the life, the deep arctic winter, the silent wilderness,
+the unending snow-surface unpressed by the foot of any man.  About
+him towered icy peaks unnamed and uncharted.  No hunter's camp-
+smoke, rising in the still air of the valleys, ever caught his eye.
+He, alone, moved through the brooding quiet of the untravelled
+wastes; nor was he oppressed by the solitude.  He loved it all, the
+day's toil, the bickering wolf-dogs, the making of the camp in the
+long twilight, the leaping stars overhead and the flaming pageant of
+the aurora borealis.
+
+Especially he loved his camp at the end of the day, and in it he saw
+a picture which he ever yearned to paint and which he knew he would
+never forget--a beaten place in the snow, where burned his fire; his
+bed, a couple of rabbit-skin robes spread on fresh-chopped spruce-
+boughs; his shelter, a stretched strip of canvas that caught and
+threw back the heat of the fire; the blackened coffee-pot and pail
+resting on a length of log, the moccasins propped on sticks to dry,
+the snow-shoes up-ended in the snow; and across the fire the wolf-
+dogs snuggling to it for the warmth, wistful and eager, furry and
+frost-rimed, with bushy tails curled protectingly over their feet;
+and all about, pressed backward but a space, the wall of encircling
+darkness.
+
+At such times San Francisco, The Billow, and O'Hara seemed very far
+away, lost in a remote past, shadows of dreams that had never
+happened.  He found it hard to believe that he had known any other
+life than this of the wild, and harder still was it for him to
+reconcile himself to the fact that he had once dabbled and dawdled
+in the Bohemian drift of city life.  Alone, with no one to talk to,
+he thought much, and deeply, and simply.  He was appalled by the
+wastage of his city years, by the cheapness, now, of the
+philosophies of the schools and books, of the clever cynicism of the
+studio and editorial room, of the cant of the business men in their
+clubs.  They knew neither food nor sleep, nor health; nor could they
+ever possibly know the sting of real appetite, the goodly ache of
+fatigue, nor the rush of mad strong blood that bit like wine through
+all one's body as work was done.
+
+And all the time this fine, wise, Spartan North Land had been here,
+and he had never known.  What puzzled him was, that, with such
+intrinsic fitness, he had never heard the slightest calling whisper,
+had not himself gone forth to seek.  But this, too, he solved in
+time.
+
+"Look here, Yellow-face, I've got it clear!"
+
+The dog addressed lifted first one fore-foot and then the other with
+quick, appeasing movements, curled his bush of a tail about them
+again, and laughed across the fire.
+
+"Herbert Spencer was nearly forty before he caught the vision of his
+greatest efficiency and desire.  I'm none so slow.  I didn't have to
+wait till I was thirty to catch mine.  Right here is my efficiency
+and desire.  Almost, Yellow Face, do I wish I had been born a wolf-
+boy and been brother all my days to you and yours."
+
+For days he wandered through a chaos of canyons and divides which
+did not yield themselves to any rational topographical plan.  It was
+as if they had been flung there by some cosmic joker.  In vain he
+sought for a creek or feeder that flowed truly south toward the
+McQuestion and the Stewart.  Then came a mountain storm that blew a
+blizzard across the riff-raff of high and shallow divides.  Above
+timber-line, fireless, for two days, he struggled blindly to find
+lower levels.  On the second day he came out upon the rim of an
+enormous palisade.  So thickly drove the snow that he could not see
+the base of the wall, nor dared he attempt the descent.  He rolled
+himself in his robes and huddled the dogs about him in the depths of
+a snow-drift, but did not permit himself to sleep.
+
+In the morning, the storm spent, he crawled out to investigate.  A
+quarter of a mile beneath him, beyond all mistake, lay a frozen,
+snow-covered lake.  About it, on every side, rose jagged peaks.  It
+answered the description.  Blindly, he had found Surprise Lake.
+
+"Well-named," he muttered, an hour later, as he came out upon its
+margin.  A clump of aged spruce was the only woods.  On his way to
+it, he stumbled upon three graves, snow-buried, but marked by hand-
+hewn head-posts and undecipherable writing.  On the edge of the
+woods was a small ramshackle cabin.  He pulled the latch and
+entered.  In a corner, on what had once been a bed of spruce-boughs,
+still wrapped in mangy furs, that had rotted to fragments, lay a
+skeleton.  The last visitor to Surprise Lake, was Smoke's
+conclusion, as he picked up a lump of gold as large as his doubled
+fist.  Beside the lump was a pepper-can filled with nuggets of the
+size of walnuts, rough-surfaced, showing no signs of wash.
+
+So true had the tale run, that Smoke accepted without question that
+the source of the gold was the lake's bottom.  Under many feet of
+ice and inaccessible, there was nothing to be done, and at mid-day,
+from the rim of the palisade, he took a farewell look back and down
+at his find.
+
+"It's all right, Mr Lake," he said.  "You just keep right on staying
+there.  I'm coming back to drain you--if that hoodoo doesn't catch
+me.  I don't know how I got here, but I'll know by the way I go
+out."
+
+
+
+III.
+
+In a little valley, beside a frozen stream and under beneficent
+spruce trees, he built a fire four days later.  Somewhere in that
+white anarchy he left behind him, was Surprise Lake--somewhere, he
+knew not where; for a hundred hours of driftage and struggle through
+blinding driving snow, had concealed his course from him, and he
+knew not in what direction lay BEHIND.  It was as if he had just
+emerged from a nightmare.  He was not sure that four days or a week
+had passed.  He had slept with the dogs, fought across a forgotten
+number of shallow divides, followed the windings of weird canyons
+that ended in pockets, and twice had managed to make a fire and thaw
+out frozen moose-meat.  And here he was, well-fed and well-camped.
+The storm had passed, and it had turned clear and cold.  The lay of
+the land had again become rational.  The creek he was on was natural
+in appearance, and trended as it should toward the southwest.  But
+Surprise Lake was as lost to him as it had been to all its seekers
+in the past.
+
+Half a day's journey down the creek brought him to the valley of a
+larger stream which he decided was the McQuestion.  Here he shot a
+moose, and once again each wolf-dog carried a full fifty-pound pack
+of meat.  As he turned down the McQuestion, he came upon a sled-
+trail.  The late snows had drifted over, but underneath, it was
+well-packed by travel.  His conclusion was that two camps had been
+established on the McQuestion, and that this was the connecting
+trail.  Evidently, Two Cabins had been found and it was the lower
+camp, so he headed down the stream.
+
+It was forty below zero when he camped that night, and he fell
+asleep wondering who were the men who had rediscovered the Two
+Cabins, and if he would fetch it next day.  At the first hint of
+dawn he was under way, easily following the half-obliterated trail
+and packing the recent snow with his webbed shoes so that the dogs
+should not wallow.
+
+And then it came, the unexpected, leaping out upon him on a bend of
+the river.  It seemed to him that he heard and felt simultaneously.
+The crack of the rifle came from the right, and the bullet, tearing
+through and across the shoulders of his drill parka and woollen
+coat, pivoted him half around with the shock of its impact.  He
+staggered on his twisted snow-shoes to recover balance, and heard a
+second crack of the rifle.  This time it was a clean miss.  He did
+not wait for more, but plunged across the snow for the sheltering
+trees of the bank a hundred feet away.  Again and again the rifle
+cracked, and he was unpleasantly aware of a trickle of warm moisture
+down his back.
+
+He climbed the bank, the dogs floundering behind, and dodged in
+among the trees and brush.  Slipping out of his snow-shoes, he
+wallowed forward at full length and peered cautiously out.  Nothing
+was to be seen.  Whoever had shot at him was lying quiet among the
+trees of the opposite bank.
+
+"If something doesn't happen pretty soon," he muttered at the end of
+half an hour, "I'll have to sneak away and build a fire or freeze my
+feet.  Yellow Face, what'd you do, lying in the frost with
+circulation getting slack and a man trying to plug you?"
+
+He crawled back a few yards, packed down the snow, danced a jig that
+sent the blood back into his feet, and managed to endure another
+half hour.  Then, from down the river, he heard the unmistakable
+jingle of dog-bells.  Peering out, he saw a sled round the bend.
+Only one man was with it, straining at the gee-pole and urging the
+dogs along.  The effect on Smoke was one of shock, for it was the
+first human he had seen since he parted from Shorty three weeks
+before.  His next thought was of the potential murderer concealed on
+the opposite bank.
+
+Without exposing himself, Smoke whistled warningly.  The man did not
+hear, and came on rapidly.  Again, and more sharply, Smoke whistled.
+The man whoa'd his dogs, stopped, and had turned and faced Smoke
+when the rifle cracked.  The instant afterwards, Smoke fired into
+the wood in the direction of the sound.  The man on the river had
+been struck by the first shot.  The shock of the high velocity
+bullet staggered him.  He stumbled awkwardly to the sled, half-
+falling, and pulled a rifle out from under the lashings.  As he
+strove to raise it to his shoulder, he crumpled at the waist and
+sank down slowly to a sitting posture on the sled.  Then, abruptly,
+as the gun went off aimlessly, he pitched backward and across a
+corner of the sled-load, so that Smoke could see only his legs and
+stomach.
+
+From below came more jingling bells.  The man did not move.  Around
+the bend swung three sleds, accompanied by half a dozen men.  Smoke
+cried warningly, but they had seen the condition of the first sled,
+and they dashed on to it.  No shots came from the other bank, and
+Smoke, calling his dogs to follow, emerged into the open.  There
+were exclamations from the men, and two of them, flinging off the
+mittens of their right hands, levelled their rifles at him.
+
+"Come on, you red-handed murderer, you," one of them, a black-
+bearded man, commanded, "an' jest pitch that gun of yourn in the
+snow."
+
+Smoke hesitated, then dropped his rifle and came up to them.
+
+"Go through him, Louis, an' take his weapons," the black-bearded man
+ordered.
+
+Louis, a French-Canadian voyageur, Smoke decided, as were four of
+the others, obeyed.  His search revealed only Smoke's hunting knife,
+which was appropriated.
+
+"Now, what have you got to say for yourself, Stranger, before I
+shoot you dead?" the black-bearded man demanded.
+
+"That you're making a mistake if you think I killed that man," Smoke
+answered.
+
+A cry came from one of the voyageurs.  He had quested along the
+trail and found Smoke's tracks where he had left it to take refuge
+on the bank.  The man explained the nature of his find.
+
+"What'd you kill Joe Kinade for?" he of the black beard asked.
+
+"I tell you I didn't--" Smoke began.
+
+"Aw, what's the good of talkin'.  We got you red-handed.  Right up
+there's where you left the trail when you heard him comin'.  You
+laid among the trees an' bushwhacked him.  A short shot.  You
+couldn't a-missed.  Pierre, go an' get that gun he dropped."
+
+"You might let me tell what happened," Smoke objected.
+
+"You shut up," the man snarled at him.  "I reckon your gun'll tell
+the story."
+
+All the men examined Smoke's rifle, ejecting and counting the
+cartridges, and examining the barrel at muzzle and breech.
+
+"One shot," Blackbeard concluded.
+
+Pierre, with nostrils that quivered and distended like a deer's,
+sniffed at the breech.
+
+"Him one fresh shot," he said.
+
+"The bullet entered his back," Smoke said.  "He was facing me when
+he was shot.  You see, it came from the other bank."
+
+Blackbeard considered this proposition for a scant second, and shook
+his head.
+
+"Nope.  It won't do.  Turn him around to face the other bank--that's
+how you whopped him in the back.  Some of you boys run up an' down
+the trail and see if you can see any tracks making for the other
+bank."
+
+Their report was, that on that side the snow was unbroken.  Not even
+a snow-shoe rabbit had crossed it.  Blackbeard, bending over the
+dead man, straightened up, with a woolly, furry wad in his hand.
+Shredding this, he found imbedded in the centre the bullet which had
+perforated the body.  Its nose was spread to the size of a half-
+dollar, its butt-end, steel-jacketed, was undamaged.  He compared it
+with a cartridge from Smoke's belt.
+
+"That's plain enough evidence, Stranger, to satisfy a blind man.
+It's soft-nosed an' steel-jacketed; yourn is soft-nosed and steel-
+jacketed.  It's thirty-thirty; yourn is thirty-thirty.  It's
+manufactured by the J. and T. Arms Company; yourn is manufactured by
+the J. and T. Arms Company.  Now you come along an' we'll go over to
+the bank an' see jest how you done it."
+
+"I was bushwhacked myself," Smoke said.  "Look at the hole in my
+parka."
+
+While Blackbeard examined it, one of the voyageurs threw open the
+breech of the dead man's gun.  It was patent to all that it had been
+fired once.  The empty cartridge was still in the chamber.
+
+"A damn shame poor Joe didn't get you," Blackbeard said bitterly.
+"But he did pretty well with a hole like that in him.  Come on,
+you."
+
+"Search the other bank first," Smoke urged.
+
+"You shut up an' come on, an' let the facts do the talkin'."
+
+They left the trail at the same spot he had, and followed it on up
+the bank and in among the trees.
+
+"Him dance that place keep him feet warm," Louis pointed out.  "That
+place him crawl on belly.  That place him put one elbow w'en him
+shoot--"
+
+"And by God there's the empty cartridge he had done it with!" was
+Blackbeard's discovery.  "Boys, there's only one thing to do--"
+
+"You might ask me how I came to fire that shot," Smoke interrupted.
+
+"An' I might knock your teeth into your gullet if you butt in again.
+You can answer them questions later on.  Now, boys, we're decent an'
+law-abidin', an' we got to handle this right an' regular.  How far
+do you reckon we've come, Pierre?"
+
+"Twenty mile I t'ink for sure."
+
+"All right.  We'll cache the outfit an' run him an' poor Joe back to
+Two Cabins.  I reckon we've seen an' can testify to what'll stretch
+his neck."
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+It was three hours after dark when the dead man, Smoke, and his
+captors arrived at Two Cabins.  By the starlight, Smoke could make
+out a dozen or more recently built cabins snuggling about a larger
+and older cabin on a flat by the river bank.  Thrust inside this
+older cabin, he found it tenanted by a young giant of a man, his
+wife, and an old blind man.  The woman, whom her husband called
+'Lucy,' was herself a strapping creature of the frontier type.  The
+old man, as Smoke learned afterwards, had been a trapper on the
+Stewart for years, and had gone finally blind the winter before.
+The camp of Two Cabins, he was also to learn, had been made the
+previous fall by a dozen men who arrived in half as many poling-
+boats loaded with provisions.  Here they had found the blind
+trapper, on the site of Two Cabins, and about his cabin they had
+built their own.  Later arrivals, mushing up the ice with dog-teams,
+had tripled the population.  There was plenty of meat in camp, and
+good low-pay dirt had been discovered and was being worked.
+
+In five minutes, all the men of Two cabins were jammed into the
+room.  Smoke, shoved off into a corner, ignored and scowled at, his
+hands and feet tied with thongs of moosehide, looked on.  Thirty-
+eight men he counted, a wild and husky crew, all frontiersmen of the
+States or voyageurs from Upper Canada.  His captors told the tale
+over and over, each the centre of an excited and wrathful group.
+There were mutterings of "Lynch him now--why wait?"  And, once, a
+big Irishman was restrained only by force from rushing upon the
+helpless prisoner and giving him a beating.
+
+It was while counting the men that Smoke caught sight of a familiar
+face.  It was Breck, the man whose boat Smoke had run through the
+rapids.  He wondered why the other did not come and speak to him,
+but himself gave no sign of recognition.  Later, when with shielded
+face Breck passed him a significant wink, Smoke understood.
+
+Blackbeard, whom Smoke heard called Eli Harding, ended the
+discussion as to whether or not the prisoner should be immediately
+lynched.
+
+"Hold on," Harding roared.  "Keep your shirts on.  That man belongs
+to me.  I caught him an' I brought him here.  D'ye think I brought
+him all the way here to be lynched?  Not on your life.  I could a-
+done that myself when I found him.  I brought him here for a fair
+an' impartial trial, an' by God, a fair an' impartial trial he's
+goin' to get.  He's tied up safe an' sound.  Chuck him in a bunk
+till morning, an' we'll hold the trial right here."
+
+
+
+V.
+
+Smoke woke up.  A draught, that possessed all the rigidity of an
+icicle, was boring into the front of his shoulder as he lay on his
+side facing the wall.  When he had been tied into the bunk there had
+been no such draught, and now the outside air, driving into the
+heated atmosphere of the cabin with the pressure of fifty below
+zero, was sufficient advertizement that some one from without had
+pulled away the moss-chinking between the logs.  He squirmed as far
+as his bonds would permit, then craned his neck forward until his
+lips just managed to reach the crack.
+
+"Who is it?" he whispered.
+
+"Breck," came the answer.  "Be careful you don't make a noise.  I'm
+going to pass a knife in to you."
+
+"No good," Smoke said.  "I couldn't use it.  My hands are tied
+behind me and made fast to the leg of the bunk.  Besides, you
+couldn't get a knife through that crack.  But something must be
+done.  Those fellows are of a temper to hang me, and, of course, you
+know I didn't kill that man."
+
+"It wasn't necessary to mention it, Smoke.  And if you did you had
+your reasons.  Which isn't the point at all.  I want to get you out
+of this.  It's a tough bunch of men here.  You've seen them.
+They're shut off from the world, and they make and enforce their own
+law--by miner's meeting, you know.  They handled two men already--
+both grub-thieves.  One they hiked from camp without an ounce of
+grub and no matches.  He made about forty miles and lasted a couple
+of days before he froze stiff.  Two weeks ago they hiked the second
+man.  They gave him his choice:  no grub, or ten lashes for each
+day's ration.  He stood for forty lashes before he fainted.  And now
+they've got you, and every last one is convinced you killed Kinade."
+
+"The man who killed Kinade, shot at me, too.  His bullet broke the
+skin on my shoulder.  Get them to delay the trial till some one goes
+up and searches the bank where the murderer hid."
+
+"No use.  They take the evidence of Harding and the five Frenchmen
+with him.  Besides, they haven't had a hanging yet, and they're keen
+for it.  You see, things have been pretty monotonous.  They haven't
+located anything big, and they got tired of hunting for Surprise
+Lake.  They did some stampeding the first part of the winter, but
+they've got over that now.  Scurvy is beginning to show up amongst
+them, too, and they're just ripe for excitement."
+
+"And it looks like I'll furnish it," was Smoke's comment.  "Say,
+Breck, how did you ever fall in with such a God-forsaken bunch?"
+
+"After I got the claims at Squaw Creek opened up and some men to
+working, I came up here by way of the Stewart, hunting for Two
+Cabins.  They'd beaten me to it, so I've been higher up the Stewart.
+Just got back yesterday out of grub."
+
+"Find anything?"
+
+"Nothing much.  But I think I've got a hydraulic proposition that'll
+work big when the country's opened up.  It's that, or a gold-
+dredger."
+
+"Hold on," Smoke interrupted.  "Wait a minute.  Let me think."
+
+He was very much aware of the snores of the sleepers as he pursued
+the idea that had flashed into his mind.
+
+"Say, Breck, have they opened up the meat-packs my dogs carried?"
+
+"A couple.  I was watching.  They put them in Harding's cache."
+
+"Did they find anything?"
+
+"Meat."
+
+"Good.  You've got to get into the brown canvas pack that's patched
+with moosehide.  You'll find a few pounds of lumpy gold.  You've
+never seen gold like it in the country, nor has anybody else.
+Here's what you've got to do.  Listen."
+
+A quarter of an hour later, fully instructed and complaining that
+his toes were freezing, Breck went away.  Smoke, his own nose and
+one cheek frosted by proximity to the chink, rubbed them against the
+blankets for half an hour before the blaze and bite of the returning
+blood assured him of the safety of his flesh.
+
+
+
+VI.
+
+"My mind's made up right now.  There ain't no doubt but what he
+killed Kinade.  We heard the whole thing last night.  What's the
+good of goin' over it again?  I vote guilty."
+
+In such fashion, Smoke's trial began.  The speaker, a loose-jointed,
+hard-rock man from Colorado, manifested irritation and disgust when
+Harding set his suggestion aside, demanded the proceedings should be
+regular, and nominated one, Shunk Wilson, for judge and chairman of
+the meeting.  The population of Two Cabins constituted the jury,
+though, after some discussion, the woman, Lucy, was denied the right
+to vote on Smoke's guilt or innocence.
+
+While this was going on, Smoke, jammed into a corner on a bunk,
+overheard a whispered conversation between Breck and a miner.
+
+"You haven't fifty pounds of flour you'll sell?" Breck queried.
+
+"You ain't got the dust to pay the price I'm askin'," was the reply.
+
+"I'll give you two hundred."
+
+The man shook his head.
+
+"Three hundred.  Three-fifty."
+
+At four hundred, the man nodded, and said:  "Come on over to my
+cabin an' weigh out the dust."
+
+The two squeezed their way to the door, and slipped out.  After a
+few minutes Breck returned alone.
+
+Harding was testifying, when Smoke saw the door shoved open
+slightly, and in the crack appear the face of the man who had sold
+the flour.  He was grimacing and beckoning emphatically to one
+inside, who arose from near the stove and started to work toward the
+door.
+
+"Where are you goin', Sam?" Shunk Wilson demanded.
+
+"I'll be back in a jiffy," Sam explained.  "I jes' got to go."
+
+Smoke was permitted to question the witnesses, and he was in the
+middle of the cross-examination of Harding, when from without came
+the whining of dogs in harness, and the grind and churn of sled-
+runners.  Somebody near the door peeped out.
+
+"It's Sam an' his pardner an' a dog-team hell-bent down the trail
+for Stewart River," the man reported.
+
+Nobody spoke for a long half-minute, but men glanced significantly
+at one another, and a general restlessness pervaded the packed room.
+Out of the corner of his eye, Smoke caught a glimpse of Breck, Lucy,
+and her husband whispering together.
+
+"Come on, you," Shunk Wilson said gruffly to Smoke.  "Cut this
+questionin' short.  We know what you're tryin' to prove--that the
+other bank wasn't searched.  The witness admits it.  We admit it.
+It wasn't necessary.  No tracks led to that bank.  The snow wasn't
+broke."
+
+"There was a man on the other bank just the same," Smoke insisted.
+
+"That's too thin for skatin', young man.  There ain't many of us on
+the McQuestion, an' we got every man accounted for."
+
+"Who was the man you hiked out of camp two weeks ago?" Smoke asked.
+
+"Alonzo Miramar.  He was a Mexican.  What's that grub-thief got to
+do with it?"
+
+"Nothing, except that you haven't accounted for HIM, Mr Judge."
+
+"He went down the river, not up."
+
+"How do you know where he went?"
+
+"Saw him start."
+
+"And that's all you know of what became of him?"
+
+"No, it ain't, young man.  I know, we all know, he had four day's
+grub an' no gun to shoot meat with.  If he didn't make the
+settlement on the Yukon he'd croaked long before this."
+
+"I suppose you've got all the guns in this part of the country
+accounted for, too," Smoke observed pointedly.
+
+Shunk Wilson was angry.
+
+"You'd think I was the prisoner the way you slam questions into me.
+Come on with the next witness.  Where's French Louis?"
+
+While French Louis was shoving forward, Lucy opened the door.
+
+"Where you goin'?" Shunk Wilson shouted.
+
+"I reckon I don't have to stay," she answered defiantly.  "I ain't
+got no vote, an' besides my cabin's so jammed up I can't breathe."
+
+In a few minutes her husband followed.  The closing of the door was
+the first warning the judge received of it.
+
+"Who was that?" he interrupted Pierre's narrative to ask.
+
+"Bill Peabody," somebody spoke up.  "Said he wanted to ask his wife
+something and was coming right back."
+
+Instead of Bill, it was Lucy who re-entered, took off her furs, and
+resumed her place by the stove.
+
+"I reckon we don't need to hear the rest of the witnesses," was
+Shunk Wilson's decision, when Pierre had finished.  "We know they
+only can testify to the same facts we've already heard.  Say,
+Sorensen, you go an' bring Bill Peabody back.  We'll be votin' a
+verdict pretty short.  Now, Stranger, you can get up an' say your
+say concernin' what happened.  In the meantime we'll just be savin'
+delay by passin' around the two rifles, the ammunition, an' the
+bullets that done the killin'."
+
+Midway in his story of how he had arrived in that part of the
+country, and at the point in his narrative where he described his
+own ambush and how he had fled to the bank, Smoke was interrupted by
+the indignant Shunk Wilson.
+
+"Young man, what sense is there in you testifyin' that way?  You're
+just takin' up valuable time.  Of course you got the right to lie to
+save your neck, but we ain't goin' to stand for such foolishness.
+The rifle, the ammunition, the bullet that killed Joe Kinade is
+against you--What's that?  Open the door, somebody!"
+
+The frost rushed in, taking form and substance in the heat of the
+room, while through the open door came the whining of dogs that
+decreased rapidly with distance.
+
+"It's Sorensen an' Peabody," some one cried, "a-throwin' the whip
+into the dawgs an' headin' down river!"
+
+"Now, what the hell--!"  Shunk Wilson paused, with dropped jaw, and
+glared at Lucy.  "I reckon you can explain, Mrs Peabody."
+
+She tossed her head and compressed her lips, and Shunk Wilson's
+wrathful and suspicious gaze passed on and rested on Breck.
+
+"An' I reckon that new-comer you've ben chinning with could explain
+if HE had a mind to."
+
+Breck, now very uncomfortable, found all eyes centred on him.
+
+"Sam was chewing the rag with him, too, before he hit out," some one
+said.
+
+"Look here, Mr Breck," Shunk Wilson continued.  "You've ben
+interruptin' proceedings, and you got to explain the meanin' of it.
+What was you chinnin' about?"
+
+Breck cleared his throat timidly and replied.  "I was just trying to
+buy some grub."
+
+"What with?"
+
+"Dust, of course."
+
+"Where'd you get it?"
+
+Breck did not answer.
+
+"He's ben snoopin' around up the Stewart," a man volunteered.  "I
+run across his camp a week ago when I was huntin'.  An' I want to
+tell you he was almighty secretious about it."
+
+"The dust didn't come from there," Breck said.  "That's only a low-
+grade hydraulic proposition."
+
+"Bring your poke here an' let's see your dust," Wilson commanded.
+
+"I tell you it didn't come from there."
+
+"Let's see it just the same."
+
+Breck made as if to refuse, but all about him were menacing faces.
+Reluctantly, he fumbled in his coat pocket.  In the act of drawing
+forth a pepper can, it rattled against what was evidently a hard
+object.
+
+"Fetch it all out!" Shunk Wilson thundered.
+
+And out came the big nugget, first-size, yellow as no gold any
+onlooker had ever seen.  Shunk Wilson gasped.  Half a dozen,
+catching one glimpse, made a break for the door.  They reached it at
+the same moment, and, with cursing and scuffling, jammed and pivoted
+through.  The judge emptied the contents of the pepper can on the
+table, and the sight of the rough lump-gold sent half a dozen more
+toward the door.
+
+"Where are you goin'?" Eli Harding asked, as Shunk started to
+follow.
+
+"For my dogs, of course."
+
+"Ain't you goin' to hang him?"
+
+"It'd take too much time right now.  He'll keep till we get back, so
+I reckon this court is adjourned.  This ain't no place for
+lingerin'."
+
+Harding hesitated.  He glanced savagely at Smoke, saw Pierre
+beckoning to Louis from the doorway, took one last look at the lump-
+gold on the table, and decided.
+
+"No use you tryin' to get away," he flung back over his shoulder.
+"Besides, I'm goin' to borrow your dogs."
+
+"What is it--another one of them blamed stampedes?" the old blind
+trapper asked in a queer and petulant falsetto, as the cries of men
+and dogs and the grind of the sleds swept the silence of the room.
+
+"It sure is," Lucy answered.  "An' I never seen gold like it.  Feel
+that, old man."
+
+She put the big nugget in his hand.  He was but slightly interested.
+
+"It was a good fur-country," he complained, "before them danged
+miners come in an' scared back the game."
+
+The door opened, and Breck entered.
+
+"Well," he said, "we four are all that are left in camp.  It's forty
+miles to the Stewart by the cut-off I broke, and the fastest of them
+can't make the round trip in less than five or six days.  But it's
+time you pulled out, Smoke, just the same."
+
+Breck drew his hunting knife across the other's bonds, and glanced
+at the woman.
+
+"I hope you don't object?" he said, with significant politeness.
+
+"If there's goin' to be any shootin'," the blind man broke out, "I
+wish somebody'd take me to another cabin first."
+
+"Go on, an' don't mind me," Lucy answered.  "If I ain't good enough
+to hang a man, I ain't good enough to hold him."
+
+Smoke stood up, rubbing his wrists where the thongs had impeded the
+circulation.
+
+"I've got a pack all ready for you," Breck said.  "Ten days' grub,
+blankets, matches, tobacco, an axe, and a rifle."
+
+"Go to it," Lucy encouraged.  "Hit the high places, Stranger.  Beat
+it as fast as God'll let you."
+
+"I'm going to have a square meal before I start," Smoke said.  "And
+when I start it will be up the McQuestion, not down.  I want you to
+go along with me, Breck.  We're going to search that other bank for
+the man that really did the killing."
+
+"If you'll listen to me, you'll head down for the Stewart and the
+Yukon," Breck objected.  "When this gang gets back from my low-grade
+hydraulic proposition, it will be seeing red."
+
+Smoke laughed and shook his head.
+
+"I can't jump this country, Breck.  I've got interests here.  I've
+got to stay and make good.  I don't care whether you believe me or
+not, but I've found Surprise Lake.  That's where that gold came
+from.  Besides, they took my dogs, and I've got to wait to get them
+back.  Also, I know what I'm about.  There was a man hidden on that
+bank.  He came pretty close to emptying his magazine at me."
+
+Half an hour afterward, with a big plate of moose-steak before him
+and a big mug of coffee at his lips, Smoke half-started up from his
+seat.  He had heard the sounds first.  Lucy threw open the door.
+
+"Hello, Spike; hello, Methody," she greeted the two frost-rimed men
+who were bending over the burden on their sled.
+
+"We just come down from Upper Camp," one said, as the pair staggered
+into the room with a fur-wrapped object which they handled with
+exceeding gentleness.  "An' this is what we found by the way.  He's
+all in, I guess."
+
+"Put him in the near bunk there," Lucy said.  She bent over and
+pulled back the furs, disclosing a face composed principally of
+large, staring, black eyes, and of skin, dark and scabbed by
+repeated frost-bite, tightly stretched across the bones.
+
+"If it ain't Alonzo!" she cried.  "You pore, starved devil!"
+
+"That's the man on the other bank," Smoke said in an undertone to
+Breck.
+
+"We found it raidin' a cache that Harding must a-made," one of the
+men was explaining.  "He was eatin' raw flour an' frozen bacon, an'
+when we got 'm he was cryin' an' squealin' like a hawk.  Look at
+him!  He's all starved, an' most of him frozen.  He'll kick at any
+moment."
+
+          .          .          .          .          .
+
+Half an hour later, when the furs had been drawn over the face of
+the still form in the bunk, Smoke turned to Lucy.
+
+"If you don't mind, Mrs Peabody, I'll have another whack at that
+steak.  Make it thick and not so well done."
+
+
+
+
+THE RACE FOR NUMBER ONE.
+
+
+
+
+I.
+
+"Huh!  Get on to the glad rags!"
+
+Shorty surveyed his partner with simulated disapproval, and Smoke,
+vainly attempting to rub the wrinkles out of the pair of trousers he
+had just put on, was irritated.
+
+"They sure fit you close for a second-hand buy," Shorty went on.
+"What was the tax?"
+
+"One hundred and fifty for the suit," Smoke answered.  "The man was
+nearly my own size.  I thought it was remarkable reasonable.  What
+are you kicking about?"
+
+"Who?  Me?  Oh, nothin'.  I was just thinkin' it was goin' some for
+a meat-eater that hit Dawson in an ice-jam, with no grub, one suit
+of underclothes, a pair of mangy moccasins, an' overalls that looked
+like they'd ben through the wreck of the Hesperus.  Pretty gay
+front, pardner.  Pretty gay front.  Say--?"
+
+"What do you want now?" Smoke demanded testily.
+
+"What's her name?"
+
+"There isn't any her, my friend.  I'm to have dinner at Colonel
+Bowie's, if you want to know.  The trouble with you, Shorty, is
+you're envious because I'm going into high society and you're not
+invited."
+
+"Ain't you some late?" Shorty queried with concern.
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"For dinner.  They'll be eatin' supper when you get there."
+
+Smoke was about to explain with elaborate sarcasm when he caught the
+twinkle in the others' eyes.  He went on dressing, with fingers that
+had lost their deftness, tying a Windsor tie in a bow-knot at the
+throat of the soft cotton shirt.
+
+"Wish I hadn't sent all my starched shirts to the laundry," Shorty
+murmured sympathetically.  "I might a-fitted you out."
+
+By this time Smoke was straining at a pair of shoes.  The thick
+woollen socks were too thick to go into them.  He looked appealingly
+at Shorty, who shook his head.
+
+"Nope.  If I had thin ones I wouldn't lend 'em to you.  Back to the
+moccasins, pardner.  You'd sure freeze your toes in skimpy-fangled
+gear like that."
+
+"I paid fifteen dollars for them, second-hand," Smoke lamented.
+
+"I reckon they won't be a man not in moccasins."
+
+"But there are to be women, Shorty.  I'm going to sit down and eat
+with real live women--Mrs Bowie, and several others, so the Colonel
+told me."
+
+"Well, moccasins won't spoil their appetite none," was Shorty's
+comment.  "Wonder what the Colonel wants with you?"
+
+"I don't know, unless he's heard about my finding Surprise Lake.  It
+will take a fortune to drain it, and the Guggenheims are out for
+investment."
+
+"Reckon that's it.  That's right, stick to the moccasins.  Gee!
+That coat is sure wrinkled, an' it fits you a mite too swift.  Just
+peck around at your vittles.  If you eat hearty you'll bust through.
+And if them women-folks gets to droppin' handkerchiefs, just let 'em
+lay.  Don't do any pickin' up.  Whatever you do, don't."
+
+
+
+II.
+
+As became a high-salaried expert and the representative of the great
+house of Guggenheim, Colonel Bowie lived in one of the most
+magnificent cabins in Dawson.  Of squared logs, hand-hewn, it was
+two stories high, and of such extravagant proportions that it
+boasted a big living room that was used for a living room and for
+nothing else.
+
+Here were big bear-skins on the rough board floor, and on the walls
+horns of moose and caribou.  Here roared an open fireplace and a big
+wood-burning stove.  And here Smoke met the social elect of Dawson--
+not the mere pick-handle millionaires, but the ultra-cream of a
+mining city whose population had been recruited from all the world--
+men like Warburton Jones, the explorer and writer, Captain Consadine
+of the Mounted Police, Haskell, Gold Commissioner of the North-West
+Territory, and Baron Von Schroeder, an emperor's favourite with an
+international duelling reputation.
+
+And here, dazzling in evening gown, he met Joy Gastell, whom
+hitherto he had encountered only on trail, befurred and moccasined.
+At dinner he found himself beside her.
+
+"I feel like a fish out of water," he confessed.  "All you folks are
+so real grand you know.  Besides I never dreamed such oriental
+luxury existed in the Klondike.  Look at Von Schroeder there.  He's
+actually got a dinner jacket, and Consadine's got a starched shirt.
+I noticed he wore moccasins just the same.  How do you like MY
+outfit?"
+
+He moved his shoulders about as if preening himself for Joy's
+approval.
+
+"It looks as if you'd grown stout since you came over the Pass," she
+laughed.
+
+"Wrong.  Guess again."
+
+"It's somebody else's."
+
+"You win.  I bought it for a price from one of the clerks at the A.
+C. Company."
+
+"It's a shame clerks are so narrow-shouldered," she sympathized.
+"And you haven't told me what you think of MY outfit."
+
+"I can't," he said.  "I'm out of breath.  I've been living on trail
+too long.  This sort of thing comes to me with a shock, you know.
+I'd quite forgotten that women have arms and shoulders.  To-morrow
+morning, like my friend Shorty, I'll wake up and know it's all a
+dream.  Now, the last time I saw you on Squaw Creek--"
+
+"I was just a squaw," she broke in.
+
+"I hadn't intended to say that.  I was remembering that it was on
+Squaw Creek that I discovered you had feet."
+
+"And I can never forget that you saved them for me," she said.
+"I've been wanting to see you ever since to thank you--"  (He
+shrugged his shoulders deprecatingly).  "And that's why you are here
+to-night--"
+
+"You asked the Colonel to invite me?"
+
+"No!  Mrs Bowie.  And I asked her to let me have you at table.  And
+here's my chance.  Everybody's talking.  Listen, and don't
+interrupt.  You know Mono Creek?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"It has turned out rich--dreadfully rich.  They estimate the claims
+as worth a million and more apiece.  It was only located the other
+day."
+
+"I remember the stampede."
+
+"Well, the whole creek was staked to the sky-line, and all the
+feeders, too.  And yet, right now, on the main creek, Number Three
+below Discovery is unrecorded.  The creek was so far away from
+Dawson that the Commissioner allowed sixty days for recording after
+location.  Every claim was recorded except Number Three Below.  It
+was staked by Cyrus Johnson.  And that was all.  Cyrus Johnson has
+disappeared.  Whether he died, whether he went down river or up,
+nobody knows.  Anyway, in six days, the time for recording will be
+up.  Then the man who stakes it, and reaches Dawson first and
+records it, gets it."
+
+"A million dollars," Smoke murmured.
+
+"Gilchrist, who has the next claim below, has got six hundred
+dollars in a single pan off bedrock.  He's burned one hole down.
+And the claim on the other side is even richer.  I know."
+
+"But why doesn't everybody know?" Smoke queried skeptically.
+
+"They're beginning to know.  They kept it secret for a long time,
+and it is only now that it's coming out.  Good dog-teams will be at
+a premium in another twenty-four hours.  Now, you've got to get away
+as decently as you can as soon as dinner is over.  I've arranged it.
+An Indian will come with a message for you.  You read it, let on
+that you're very much put out, make your excuses, and get away."
+
+"I--er--I fail to follow."
+
+"Ninny!" she exclaimed in a half-whisper.  "What you must do is to
+get out to-night and hustle dog-teams.  I know of two.  There's
+Hanson's team, seven big Hudson Bay dogs--he's holding them at four
+hundred each.  That's top price to-night, but it won't be to-morrow.
+And Sitka Charley has eight Malemutes he's asking thirty-five
+hundred for.  To-morrow he'll laugh at an offer of five thousand.
+Then you've got your own team of dogs.  And you'll have to buy
+several more teams.  That's your work to-night.  Get the best.  It's
+dogs as well as men that will win this race.  It's a hundred and ten
+miles, and you'll have to relay as frequently as you can."
+
+"Oh, I see, you want me to go in for it," Smoke drawled.
+
+"If you haven't the money for the dogs, I'll--"
+
+She faltered, but before she could continue, Smoke was speaking.
+
+"I can buy the dogs.  But--er--aren't you afraid this is gambling?"
+
+"After your exploits at roulette in the Elkhorn," she retorted, "I'm
+not afraid that you're afraid.  It's a sporting proposition, if
+that's what you mean.  A race for a million, and with some of the
+stiffest dog-mushers and travellers in the country entered against
+you.  They haven't entered yet, but by this time to-morrow they
+will, and dogs will be worth what the richest man can afford to pay.
+Big Olaf is in town.  He came up from Circle City last month.  He is
+one of the most terrible dog-mushers in the country, and if he
+enters he will be your most dangerous man.  Arizona Bill is another.
+He's been a professional freighter and mail-carrier for years.  It
+he goes in, interest will be centred on him and Big Olaf."
+
+"And you intend me to come along as a sort of dark horse."
+
+"Exactly.  And it will have its advantages.  You will not be
+supposed to stand a show.  After all, you know, you are still
+classed as a chechaquo.  You haven't seen the four seasons go
+around.  Nobody will take notice of you until you come into the home
+stretch in the lead."
+
+"It's on the home stretch the dark horse is to show up its classy
+form, eh?"
+
+She nodded, and continued earnestly.  "Remember, I shall never
+forgive myself for the trick I played on the Squaw Creek Stampede
+until you win this Mono claim.  And if any man can win this race
+against the old-timers, it's you."
+
+It was the way she said it.  He felt warm all over, and in his heart
+and head.  He gave her a quick, searching look, involuntary and
+serious, and for the moment that her eyes met his steadily, ere they
+fell, it seemed to him that he read something of vaster import than
+the claim Cyrus Johnson had failed to record.
+
+"I'll do it," he said.  "I'll win it."
+
+The glad light in her eyes seemed to promise a greater need than all
+the gold in the Mono claim.  He was aware of a movement of her hand
+in her lap next to his.  Under the screen of the tablecloth he
+thrust his own hand across and met a firm grip of woman's fingers
+that sent another wave of warmth through him.
+
+"What will Shorty say?" was the thought that flashed whimsically
+through his mind as he withdrew his hand.  He glanced almost
+jealously at the faces of Von Schroeder and Jones, and wondered if
+they had not divined the remarkableness and deliciousness of this
+woman who sat beside him.
+
+He was aroused by her voice, and realized that she had been speaking
+some moments.
+
+"So you see, Arizona Bill is a white Indian," she was saying.  "And
+Big Olaf is--a bear wrestler, a king of the snows, a mighty savage.
+He can out-travel and out-endure an Indian, and he's never known any
+other life but that of the wild and the frost."
+
+"Who's that?" Captain Consadine broke in from across the table.
+
+"Big Olaf," she answered.  "I was just telling Mr Bellew what a
+traveller he is."
+
+"You're right," the Captain's voice boomed.  "Big Olaf is the
+greatest traveller in the Yukon.  I'd back him against Old Nick
+himself for snow-bucking and ice-travel.  He brought in the
+government dispatches in 1895, and he did it after two couriers were
+frozen on Chilcoot and the third drowned in the open water of Thirty
+Mile."
+
+
+
+III.
+
+Smoke had travelled in a leisurely fashion up to Mono Creek, fearing
+to tire his dogs before the big race.  Also, he had familiarized
+himself with every mile of the trail and located his relay camps.
+So many men had entered the race, that the hundred and ten miles of
+its course was almost a continuous village.  Relay camps were
+everywhere along the trail.  Von Schroeder, who had gone in purely
+for the sport, had no less than eleven dog teams--a fresh one for
+every ten miles.  Arizona Bill had been forced to content himself
+with eight teams.  Big Olaf had seven, which was the complement of
+Smoke.  In addition, over two-score of other men were in the
+running.  Not every day, even in the golden north, was a million
+dollars the prize for a dog race.  The country had been swept of
+dogs.  No animal of speed and endurance escaped the fine-tooth comb
+that had raked the creeks and camps, and the prices of dogs had
+doubled and quadrupled in the course of the frantic speculation.
+
+Number Three Below Discovery was ten miles up Mono Creek from its
+mouth.  The remaining hundred miles was to be run on the frozen
+breast of the Yukon.  On Number Three itself were fifty tents and
+over three hundred dogs.  The old stakes, blazed and scrawled sixty
+days before by Cyrus Johnson, still stood, and every man had gone
+over the boundaries of the claim again and again, for the race with
+dogs was to be preceded by a foot and obstacle race.  Each man had
+to re-locate the claim for himself, and this meant that he must
+place two centre-stakes and four corner-stakes and cross the creek
+twice, before he could start for Dawson with his dogs.
+
+Furthermore, there were to be no 'sooners.'  Not until the stroke of
+midnight of Friday night was the claim open for re-location, and not
+until the stroke of midnight could a man plant a stake.  This was
+the ruling of the Gold Commissioner at Dawson, and Captain Consadine
+had sent up a squad of mounted police to enforce it.  Discussion had
+arisen about the difference between sun-time and police-time, but
+Consadine had sent forth his fiat that police time went, and,
+further, that it was the watch of Lieutenant Pollock that went.
+
+The Mono trail ran along the level creek-bed, and, less than two
+feet in width, was like a groove, walled on either side by the snow-
+fall of months.  The problem of how forty-odd sleds and three
+hundred dogs were to start in so narrow a course was in everybody's
+mind.
+
+"Huh!" said Shorty.  "It's goin' to be the gosh-dangdest mix-up that
+ever was.  I can't see no way out, Smoke, except main strength an'
+sweat an' to plow through.  If the whole creek was glare-ice they
+ain't room for a dozen teams abreast.  I got a hunch right now
+they's goin' to be a heap of scrappin' before they get strung out.
+An' if any of it comes our way you got to let me do the punchin'."
+
+Smoke squared his shoulders and laughed non-committally.
+
+"No you don't!" his partner cried in alarm.  "No matter what
+happens, you don't dast hit.  You can't handle dogs a hundred miles
+with a busted knuckle, an' that's what'll happen if you land on
+somebody's jaw."
+
+Smoke nodded his head.
+
+"You're right, Shorty.  I couldn't risk the chance."
+
+"An' just remember," Shorty went on, "that I got to do all the
+shovin' for them first ten miles an' you got to take it easy as you
+can.  I'll sure jerk you through to the Yukon.  After that it's up
+to you an' the dogs.  Say--what d'ye think Schroeder's scheme is?
+He's got his first team a quarter of a mile down the creek an' he'll
+know it by a green lantern.  But we got him skinned.  Me for the red
+flare every time."
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+The day had been clear and cold, but a blanket of cloud formed
+across the face of the sky and the night came on warm and dark, with
+the hint of snow impending.  The thermometer registered fifteen
+below zero, and in the Klondike-winter fifteen below is esteemed
+very warm.
+
+At a few minutes before midnight, leaving Shorty with the dogs five
+hundred yards down the creek, Smoke joined the racers on Number
+Three.  There were forty-five of them waiting the start for the
+thousand-thousand dollars Cyrus Johnson had left lying in the frozen
+gravel.  Each man carried six stakes and a heavy wooden mallet, and
+was clad in a smock-like parka of heavy cotton drill.
+
+Lieutenant Pollock, in a big bearskin coat, looked at his watch by
+the light of a fire.  It lacked a minute of midnight.
+
+"Make ready," he said, as he raised a revolver in his right hand and
+watched the second hand tick around.
+
+Forty-five hoods were thrown back from the parkas.  Forty-five pairs
+of hands unmittened, and forty-five pairs of moccasins pressed
+tensely into the packed snow.  Also, forty-five stakes were thrust
+into the snow, and the same number of mallets lifted in the air.
+
+The shots rang out, and the mallets fell.  Cyrus Johnson's right to
+the million had expired.  To prevent confusion, Lieutenant Pollock
+had insisted that the lower centre-stake be driven first, next the
+south-eastern; and so on around the four sides, including the upper
+centre-stake on the way.
+
+Smoke drove in his stake and was away with the leading dozen.  Fires
+had been lighted at the corners, and by each fire stood a policeman,
+list in hand, checking off the names of the runners.  A man was
+supposed to call out his name and show his face.  There was to be no
+staking by proxy while the real racer was off and away down the
+creek.
+
+At the first corner, beside Smoke's stake, Von Schroeder placed his.
+The mallets struck at the same instant.  As they hammered, more
+arrived from behind and with such impetuosity as to get in one
+another's way and cause jostling and shoving.  Squirming through the
+press and calling his name to the policeman, Smoke saw the Baron,
+struck in collision by one of the rushers, hurled clean off his feet
+into the snow.  But Smoke did not wait.  Others were still ahead of
+him.  By the light of the vanishing fire he was certain that he saw
+the back, hugely looming, of Big Olaf, and at the south-western
+corner Big Olaf and he drove their stakes side by side.
+
+It was no light work, this preliminary obstacle race.  The
+boundaries of the claim totalled nearly a mile, and most of it was
+over the uneven surface of a snow-covered, niggerhead flat.  All
+about Smoke men tripped and fell, and several times he pitched
+forward himself, jarringly, on hands and knees.  Once, Big Olaf fell
+so immediately in front of him as to bring him down on top.
+
+The upper centre-stake was driven by the edge of the bank, and down
+the bank the racers plunged, across the frozen creek-bed, and up the
+other side.  Here, as Smoke clambered, a hand gripped his ankle and
+jerked him back.  In the flickering light of a distant fire, it was
+impossible to see who had played the trick.  But Arizona Bill, who
+had been treated similarly, rose to his feet and drove his fist with
+a crunch into the offender's face.  Smoke saw and heard as he was
+scrambling to his feet, but before he could make another lunge for
+the bank a fist dropped him half-stunned into the snow.  He
+staggered up, located the man, half-swung a hook for his jaw, then
+remembered Shorty's warning and refrained.  The next moment, struck
+below the knees by a hurtling body, he went down again.
+
+It was a foretaste of what would happen when the men reached their
+sleds.  Men were pouring over the other bank and piling into the
+jam.  They swarmed up the bank in bunches, and in bunches were
+dragged back by their impatient fellows.  More blows were struck,
+curses rose from the panting chests of those who still had wind to
+spare, and Smoke, curiously visioning the face of Joy Gastell, hoped
+that the mallets would not be brought into play.  Overthrown, trod
+upon, groping in the snow for his lost stakes, he at last crawled
+out of the crush and attacked the bank farther along.  Others were
+doing this, and it was his luck to have many men in advance of him
+in the race for the northwestern corner.
+
+Down to the fourth corner, he tripped midway and in the long
+sprawling fall lost his remaining stake.  For five minutes he groped
+in the darkness before he found it, and all the time the panting
+runners were passing him.  From the last corner to the creek he
+began overtaking men for whom the mile-run had been too much.  In
+the creek itself Bedlam had broken loose.  A dozen sleds were piled
+up and overturned, and nearly a hundred dogs were locked in combat.
+Among them men struggled, tearing the tangled animals apart, or
+beating them apart with clubs.  In the fleeting glimpse he caught of
+it, Smoke wondered if he had ever seen a Dore grotesquery to
+compare.
+
+Leaping down the bank beyond the glutted passage, he gained the
+hard-footing of the sled-trail and made better time.  Here, in
+packed harbours beside the narrow trail, sleds and men waited for
+runners that were still behind.  From the rear came the whine and
+rush of dogs, and Smoke had barely time to leap aside into the deep
+snow.  A sled tore past, and he made out the man, kneeling and
+shouting madly.  Scarcely was it by when it stopped with a crash of
+battle.  The excited dogs of a harboured sled, resenting the passing
+animals, had got out of hand and sprung upon them.
+
+Smoke plunged around and by.  He could see the green lantern of Von
+Schroeder, and, just below it, the red flare that marked his own
+team.  Two men were guarding Schroeder's dogs, with short clubs
+interposed between them and the trail.
+
+"Come on, you Smoke!  Come on, you Smoke!" he could hear Shorty
+calling anxiously.
+
+"Coming!" he gasped.
+
+By the red flare he could see the snow torn up and trampled, and
+from the way his partner breathed he knew a battle had been fought.
+He staggered to the sled, and, in a moment he was falling on it,
+Shorty's whip snapped as he yelled:  "Mush! you devils!  Mush!"
+
+The dogs sprang into the breast-bands, and the sled jerked abruptly
+ahead.  They were big animals--Hanson's prize team of Hudson Bays--
+and Smoke had selected them for the first stage, which included the
+ten miles of Mono, the heavy-going of the cut-off across the flat at
+the mouth, and the first ten miles of the Yukon stretch.
+
+"How many are ahead?" he asked.
+
+"You shut up an' save your wind," Shorty answered.  "Hi! you brutes!
+Hit her up!  Hit her up!"
+
+He was running behind the sled, towing on a short rope.  Smoke could
+not see him; nor could he see the sled on which he lay at full
+length.  The fires had been left in the rear, and they were tearing
+through a wall of blackness as fast as the dogs could spring into
+it.  This blackness was almost sticky, so nearly did it take on the
+seeming of substance.
+
+Smoke felt the sled heel up on one runner as it rounded an invisible
+curve, and from ahead came the snarls of beasts and the oaths of
+men.  This was known afterward as the Barnes-Slocum Jam.  It was the
+teams of these two men which first collided, and into it, at full
+career, piled Smoke's seven big fighters.  Scarcely more than semi-
+domesticated wolves, the excitement of that night on Mono Creek had
+sent every dog fighting-mad.  The Klondike dogs, driven without
+reins, cannot be stopped except by voice, so that there was no
+stopping this glut of struggle that heaped itself between the narrow
+rims of the creek.  From behind, sled after sled hurled into the
+turmoil.  Men who had their teams nearly extricated were overwhelmed
+by fresh avalanches of dogs--each animal well-fed, well-rested, and
+ripe for battle.
+
+"It's knock down an' drag out an' plow through!" Shorty yelled in
+his partner's ear.  "An' watch out for your knuckles!  You drag out
+an' let me do the punchin'!"
+
+What happened in the next half hour Smoke never distinctly
+remembered.  At the end he emerged exhausted, sobbing for breath,
+his jaw sore from a first-blow, his shoulder aching from the bruise
+of a club, the blood running warmly down one leg from the rip of a
+dog's fangs, and both sleeves of his parka torn to shreds.  As in a
+dream, while the battle still raged behind, he helped Shorty
+reharness the dogs.  One, dying, they cut from the traces, and in
+the darkness they felt their way to the repair of the disrupted
+harnesses.
+
+"Now you lie down an' get your wind back," Shorty commanded.
+
+And through the darkness the dogs sped, with unabated strength, down
+Mono Creek, across the long cut-off, and to the Yukon.  Here, at the
+junction with the main river-trail, somebody had lighted a fire, and
+here Shorty said good bye.  By the light of the fire, as the sled
+leaped behind the flying dogs, Smoke caught another of the
+unforgettable pictures of the North Land.  It was of Shorty, swaying
+and sinking down limply in the snow, yelling his parting
+encouragement, one eye blackened and closed, knuckles bruised and
+broken, and one arm, ripped and fang-torn, gushing forth a steady
+stream of blood.
+
+
+
+V.
+
+"How many ahead?" Smoke asked, as he dropped his tired Hudson Bays
+and sprang on the waiting sled at the first relay station.
+
+"I counted eleven," the man called after him, for he was already
+away behind the leaping dogs.
+
+Fifteen miles they were to carry him on the next stage, which would
+fetch him to the mouth of White River.  There were nine of them, but
+they composed his weakest team.  The twenty-five miles between White
+River and Sixty Mile he had broken into two stages because of ice-
+jams, and here two of his heaviest, toughest teams were stationed.
+
+He lay on the sled at full length, face-down, holding on with both
+hands.  Whenever the dogs slacked from topmost speed he rose to his
+knees, and, yelling and urging, clinging precariously with one hand,
+threw his whip into them.  Poor team that it was, he passed two
+sleds before White River was reached.  Here, at the freeze-up, a jam
+had piled a barrier allowing the open water, that formed for half a
+mile below, to freeze smoothly.  This smooth stretch enabled the
+racers to make flying exchanges of sleds, and down all the course
+they had placed their relays below the jams.
+
+Over the jam and out on to the smooth, Smoke tore along, calling
+loudly, "Billy!  Billy!"
+
+Billy heard and answered, and by the light of the many fires on the
+ice, Smoke saw a sled swing in from the side and come abreast.  Its
+dogs were fresh and overhauled his.  As the sleds swerved toward
+each other he leaped across and Billy promptly rolled off.
+
+"Where's Big Olaf?" Smoke cried.
+
+"Leading!" Billy's voice answered; and the fires were left behind
+and Smoke was again flying through the wall of blackness.
+
+In the jams of that relay, where the way led across a chaos of up-
+ended ice-cakes, and where Smoke slipped off the forward end of the
+sled and with a haul-rope toiled behind the wheel-dog, he passed
+three sleds.  Accidents had happened, and he could hear the men
+cutting out dogs and mending harnesses.
+
+Among the jams of the next short relay into Sixty Mile, he passed
+two more teams.  And that he might know adequately what had happened
+to them, one of his own dogs wrenched a shoulder, was unable to keep
+up, and was dragged in the harness.  Its team-mates, angered, fell
+upon it with their fangs, and Smoke was forced to club them off with
+the heavy butt of his whip.  As he cut the injured animal out, he
+heard the whining cries of dogs behind him and the voice of a man
+that was familiar.  It was Von Schroeder.  Smoke called a warning to
+prevent a rear-end collision, and the Baron, hawing his animals and
+swinging on the gee-pole, went by a dozen feet to the side.  Yet so
+impenetrable was the blackness that Smoke heard him pass but never
+saw him.
+
+On the smooth stretch of ice beside the trading post at Sixty Mile,
+Smoke overtook two more sleds.  All had just changed teams, and for
+five minutes they ran abreast, each man on his knees and pouring
+whip and voice into the maddened dogs.  But Smoke had studied out
+that portion of the trail, and now marked the tall pine on the bank
+that showed faintly in the light of the many fires.  Below that pine
+was not merely darkness, but an abrupt cessation of the smooth
+stretch.  There the trail, he knew, narrowed to a single sled-width.
+Leaning out ahead, he caught the haul-rope and drew his leaping sled
+up to the wheel-dog.  He caught the animal by the hind-legs and
+threw it.  With a snarl of rage it tried to slash him with its
+fangs, but was dragged on by the rest of the team.  Its body proved
+an efficient brake, and the two other teams, still abreast, dashed
+ahead into the darkness for the narrow way.
+
+Smoke heard the crash and uproar of their collision, released his
+wheeler, sprang to the gee-pole, and urged his team to the right
+into the soft snow where the straining animals wallowed to their
+necks.  It was exhausting work, but he won by the tangled teams and
+gained the hard-packed trail beyond.
+
+
+
+VI.
+
+On the relay out of Sixty Mile, Smoke had next to his poorest team,
+and though the going was good, he had set it a short fifteen miles.
+Two more teams would bring him in to Dawson and to the Gold-
+Recorder's office, and Smoke had selected his best animals for the
+last two stretches.  Sitka Charley himself waited with the eight
+Malemutes that would jerk Smoke along for twenty miles, and for the
+finish, with a fifteen-mile run, was his own team--the team he had
+had all winter and which had been with him in the search for
+Surprise Lake.
+
+The two men he had left entangled at Sixty Mile failed to overtake
+him, and, on the other hand, his team failed to overtake any of the
+three that still led.  His animals were willing, though they lacked
+stamina and speed, and little urging was needed to keep them jumping
+into it at their best.  There was nothing for Smoke to do but to lie
+face-downward and hold on.  Now and again he would plunge out of the
+darkness into the circle of light about a blazing fire, catch a
+glimpse of furred men standing by harnessed and waiting dogs, and
+plunge into the darkness again.  Mile after mile, with only the
+grind and jar of the runners in his ears, he sped on.  Almost
+automatically he kept his place as the sled bumped ahead or half-
+lifted and heeled on the swings and swerves of the bends.  First
+one, and then another, without apparent rhyme or reason, three faces
+limned themselves on his consciousness:  Joy Gastell's, laughing and
+audacious; Shorty's, battered and exhausted by the struggle down
+Mono Creek; and John Bellew's, seamed and rigid, as if cast in iron,
+so unrelenting was its severity.  And sometimes Smoke wanted to
+shout aloud, to chant a paean of savage exultation, as he remembered
+the office of the Billow and the serial story of San Francisco which
+he had left unfinished, along with the other fripperies of those
+empty days.
+
+The grey twilight of morning was breaking as he exchanged his weary
+dogs for the eight fresh Malemutes.  Lighter animals than Hudson
+Bays, they were capable of greater speed, and they ran with the
+supple tirelessness of true wolves.  Sitka Charley called out the
+order of the teams ahead.  Big Olaf led, Arizona Bill was second,
+and Von Schroeder third.  These were the three best men in the
+country.  In fact, ere Smoke had left Dawson, the popular betting
+had placed them in that order.  While they were racing for a
+million, at least half a million had been staked by others on the
+outcome of the race.  No one had bet on Smoke, who, despite his
+several known exploits, was still accounted a chechaquo with much to
+learn.
+
+As daylight strengthened, Smoke caught sight of a sled ahead, and,
+in half an hour, his own lead-dog was leaping at its tail.  Not
+until the man turned his head to exchange greetings, did Smoke
+recognize him as Arizona Bill.  Von Schroeder had evidently passed
+him.  The trail, hard-packed, ran too narrowly through the soft
+snow, and for another half-hour Smoke was forced to stay in the
+rear.  Then they topped an ice-jam and struck a smooth stretch
+below, where were a number of relay camps and where the snow was
+packed widely.  On his knees, swinging his whip and yelling, Smoke
+drew abreast.  He noted that Arizona Bill's right arm hung dead at
+his side, and that he was compelled to pour leather with his left
+hand.  Awkward as it was, he had no hand left with which to hold on,
+and frequently he had to cease from the whip and clutch to save
+himself from falling off.  Smoke remembered the scrimmage in the
+creek bed at Three Below Discovery, and understood.  Shorty's advice
+had been sound.
+
+"What's happened?" Smoke asked, as he began to pull ahead.
+
+"I don't know," Arizona Bill answered.  "I think I threw my shoulder
+out in the scrapping."
+
+He dropped behind very slowly, though when the last relay station
+was in sight he was fully half a mile in the rear.  Ahead, bunched
+together, Smoke could see Big Olaf and Von Schroeder.  Again Smoke
+arose to his knees, and he lifted his jaded dogs into a burst of
+speed such as a man only can who has the proper instinct for dog-
+driving.  He drew up close to the tail of Von Schroeder's sled, and
+in this order the three sleds dashed out on the smooth going, below
+a jam, where many men and many dogs waited.  Dawson was fifteen
+miles away.
+
+Von Schroeder, with his ten-mile relays, had changed five miles
+back, and would change five miles ahead.  So he held on, keeping his
+dogs at full leap.  Big Olaf and Smoke made flying changes, and
+their fresh teams immediately regained what had been lost to the
+Baron.  Big Olaf led past, and Smoke followed into the narrow trail
+beyond.
+
+"Still good, but not so good," Smoke paraphrased Spencer to himself.
+
+Of Von Schroeder, now behind, he had no fear; but ahead was the
+greatest dog-driver in the country.  To pass him seemed impossible.
+Again and again, many times, Smoke forced his leader to the other's
+sled-trail, and each time Big Olaf let out another link and drew
+away.  Smoke contented himself with taking the pace, and hung on
+grimly.  The race was not lost until one or the other won, and in
+fifteen miles many things could happen.
+
+Three miles from Dawson something did happen.  To Smoke's surprise,
+Big Olaf rose up and with oaths and leather proceeded to fetch out
+the last ounce of effort in his animals.  It was a spurt that should
+have been reserved for the last hundred yards instead of being begun
+three miles from the finish.  Sheer dog-killing that it was, Smoke
+followed.  His own team was superb.  No dogs on the Yukon had had
+harder work or were in better condition.  Besides, Smoke had toiled
+with them, and eaten and bedded with them, and he knew each dog as
+an individual, and how best to win in to the animal's intelligence
+and extract its last least shred of willingness.
+
+They topped a small jam and struck the smooth-going below.  Big Olaf
+was barely fifty feet ahead.  A sled shot out from the side and drew
+in toward him, and Smoke understood Big Olaf's terrific spurt.  He
+had tried to gain a lead for the change.  This fresh team that
+waited to jerk him down the home stretch had been a private surprise
+of his.  Even the men who had backed him to win had had no knowledge
+of it.
+
+Smoke strove desperately to pass during the exchange of sleds.
+Lifting his dogs to the effort, he ate up the intervening fifty
+feet.  With urging and pouring of leather, he went to the side and
+on until his lead-dog was jumping abreast of Big Olaf's wheeler.  On
+the other side, abreast, was the relay sled.  At the speed they were
+going, Big Olaf did not dare the flying leap.  If he missed and fell
+off, Smoke would be in the lead and the race would be lost.
+
+Big Olaf tried to spurt ahead, and he lifted his dogs magnificently,
+but Smoke's leader still continued to jump beside Big Olaf's
+wheeler.  For half a mile the three sleds tore and bounced along
+side by side.  The smooth stretch was nearing its end when Big Olaf
+took the chance.  As the flying sleds swerved toward each other, he
+leaped, and the instant he struck he was on his knees, with whip and
+voice spurting the fresh team.  The smooth pinched out into the
+narrow trail, and he jumped his dogs ahead and into it with a lead
+of barely a yard.
+
+A man was not beaten until he was beaten, was Smoke's conclusion,
+and drive no matter how, Big Olaf failed to shake him off.  No team
+Smoke had driven that night could have stood such a killing pace and
+kept up with fresh dogs--no team save this one.  Nevertheless, the
+pace WAS killing it, and as they began to round the bluff at
+Klondike City, he could feel the pitch of strength going out of his
+animals.  Almost imperceptibly they lagged, and foot by foot Big
+Olaf drew away until he led by a score of yards.
+
+A great cheer went up from the population of Klondike City assembled
+on the ice.  Here the Klondike entered the Yukon, and half a mile
+away, across the Klondike, on the north bank, stood Dawson.  An
+outburst of madder cheering arose, and Smoke caught a glimpse of a
+sled shooting out to him.  He recognized the splendid animals that
+drew it.  They were Joy Gastell's.  And Joy Gastell drove them.  The
+hood of her squirrel-skin parka was tossed back, revealing the
+cameo-like oval of her face outlined against her heavily-massed
+hair.  Mittens had been discarded, and with bare hands she clung to
+whip and sled.
+
+"Jump!" she cried, as her leader snarled at Smoke's.
+
+Smoke struck the sled behind her.  It rocked violently from the
+impact of his body, but she was full up on her knees and swinging
+the whip.
+
+"Hi!  You!  Mush on!  Chook!  Chook!" she was crying, and the dogs
+whined and yelped in eagerness of desire and effort to overtake Big
+Olaf.
+
+And then, as the lead-dog caught the tail of Big Olaf's sled, and
+yard by yard drew up abreast, the great crowd on the Dawson bank
+went mad.  It WAS a great crowd, for the men had dropped their tools
+on all the creeks and come down to see the outcome of the race, and
+a dead heat at the end of a hundred and ten miles justified any
+madness.
+
+"When you're in the lead I'm going to drop off!" Joy cried out over
+her shoulder.
+
+Smoke tried to protest.
+
+"And watch out for the dip curve half way up the bank," she warned.
+
+Dog by dog, separated by half a dozen feet, the two teams were
+running abreast.  Big Olaf, with whip and voice, held his own for a
+minute.  Then, slowly, an inch at a time, Joy's leader began to
+forge past.
+
+"Get ready!" she cried to Smoke.  "I'm going to leave you in a
+minute.  Get the whip."
+
+And as he shifted his hand to clutch the whip, they heard Big Olaf
+roar a warning, but too late.  His lead-dog, incensed at being
+passed, swerved in to the attack.  His fangs struck Joy's leader on
+the flank.  The rival teams flew at one another's throats.  The
+sleds overran the fighting brutes and capsized.  Smoke struggled to
+his feet and tried to lift Joy up.  But she thrust him from her,
+crying:  "Go!"
+
+On foot, already fifty feet in advance, was Big Olaf, still intent
+on finishing the race.  Smoke obeyed, and when the two men reached
+the foot of the Dawson bank, he was at the others heels.  But up the
+bank Big Olaf lifted his body hugely, regaining a dozen feet.
+
+Five blocks down the main street was the Gold Recorder's office.
+The street was packed as for the witnessing of a parade.  Not so
+easily this time did Smoke gain to his giant rival, and when he did
+he was unable to pass.  Side by side they ran along the narrow aisle
+between the solid walls of fur-clad, cheering men.  Now one, now the
+other, with great convulsive jerks, gained an inch or so only to
+lose it immediately after.
+
+If the pace had been a killing one for their dogs, the one they now
+set themselves was no less so.  But they were racing for a million
+dollars and great honour in Yukon Country.  The only outside
+impression that came to Smoke on that last mad stretch was one of
+astonishment that there should be so many people in the Klondike.
+He had never seen them all at once before.
+
+He felt himself involuntarily lag, and Big Olaf sprang a full stride
+in the lead.  To Smoke it seemed that his heart would burst, while
+he had lost all consciousness of his legs.  He knew they were flying
+under him, but he did not know how he continued to make them fly,
+nor how he put even greater pressure of will upon them and compelled
+them again to carry him to his giant competitor's side.
+
+The open door of the Recorder's office appeared ahead of them.  Both
+men made a final, futile spurt.  Neither could draw away from the
+other, and side by side they hit the doorway, collided violently,
+and fell headlong on the office floor.
+
+They sat up, but were too exhausted to rise.  Big Olaf, the sweat
+pouring from him, breathing with tremendous, painful gasps, pawed
+the air and vainly tried to speak.  Then he reached out his hand
+with unmistakable meaning; Smoke extended his, and they shook.
+
+"It's a dead heat," Smoke could hear the Recorder saying, but it was
+as if in a dream, and the voice was very thin and very far away.
+"And all I can say is that you both win.  You'll have to divide the
+claim between you.  You're partners."
+
+Their two arms pumped up and down as they ratified the decision.
+Big Olaf nodded his head with great emphasis, and spluttered.  At
+last he got it out.
+
+"You damn chechaquo," was what he said, but in the saying of it was
+admiration.  "I don't know how you done it, but you did."
+
+Outside the great crowd was noisily massed, while the office was
+packing and jamming.  Smoke and Big Olaf essayed to rise, and each
+helped the other to his feet.  Smoke found his legs weak under him,
+and staggered drunkenly.  Big Olaf tottered toward him.
+
+"I'm sorry my dogs jumped yours."
+
+"It couldn't be helped," Smoke panted back.  "I heard you yell."
+
+"Say," Big Olaf went on with shining eyes.  "That girl--one damn
+fine girl, eh?"
+
+"One damn fine girl," Smoke agreed.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg etext of Smoke Bellew, by Jack London
+
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