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diff --git a/old/smkbl10.txt b/old/smkbl10.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6625e88 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/smkbl10.txt @@ -0,0 +1,5729 @@ +**The Project Gutenberg Etext of Smoke Bellew, by Jack London** +#50 in our series by Jack London + + +Copyright laws are changing all over the world, be sure to check +the copyright laws for your country before posting these files!! + +Please take a look at the important information in this header. +We encourage you to keep this file on your own disk, keeping an +electronic path open for the next readers. Do not remove this. + + +**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts** + +**Etexts Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971** + +*These Etexts Prepared By Hundreds of Volunteers and Donations* + +Information on contacting Project Gutenberg to get Etexts, and +further information is included below. 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FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.04.29.93*END* + + + + + +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 + diff --git a/old/smkbl10.zip b/old/smkbl10.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..915fe2b --- /dev/null +++ b/old/smkbl10.zip |