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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Smoke Bellew, by Jack London
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Smoke Bellew
+
+Author: Jack London
+
+Release Date: May, 2004  [EBook #5737]
+Posting Date: June 4, 2009
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SMOKE BELLEW ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Les Bowler and Paul J. Hollander
+
+
+
+
+
+SMOKE BELLEW
+
+by Jack London
+
+
+
+
+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 Three*
+     The Little Man
+     The Hanging of Cultus George
+     The Mistake of Creation
+     A Flutter in Eggs
+     The Town-Site of Tra-Lee
+     Wonder of Woman
+
+     * Alternate title--The Race for Number One
+
+
+
+
+
+I. THE TASTE OF THE MEAT
+
+
+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 tricks." 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 you do, 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 criticisms. 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 afterward 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. 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 tom foolery 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 box last?"
+
+"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 prison 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 Coluso. 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. If 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-round 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."
+
+
+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 Chilkoot. 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 tenderfeet 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-five 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.
+
+"Chechako," 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 over the lapse of a thousand years.
+
+"Did you see that man with the girl?" Kit's neighbor 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 'chechako' 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?"
+
+"Tenderfoot."
+
+On his way back to the beach, Kit turned the phrase over and over. It
+rankled to be called tenderfoot 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 it, reached down,
+and strove to get it on his shoulder. His first conclusion was that one
+hundred pounds were 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."
+
+
+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 tenderfeet 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 eardrums
+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 Chilkoot," others told him
+as they rested and talked, "where you climb with hands and feet."
+
+"They ain't going to be no Chilkoot," 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 meant it.
+
+"They drown three or four a day there," the man assured him. "I helped
+fish a German out of 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 were 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 Kit up.
+
+"What other men can do, we can do," Kit told Robbie, though down in his
+heart he wondered whether or not he was bluffing.
+
+
+"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 even this was 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 of 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 Chilkoot, and it nearly broke
+him. As it was, some four hundred pounds of clothes-bags and camp outfit
+were 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.
+
+
+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 Chilkoot,
+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, but, 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 Chilkoot 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 backbone 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 flapjacks and crawled into the folds
+of the partly unrolled tent. As he dozed off he had time for only 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 a tenderfoot 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 chechako," 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 old 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 heaped and shifted 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.
+
+
+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
+Chilkoot 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.
+
+
+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
+hundred-weight 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 hundred-weight 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 Chilkoot Trail. And if they don't cry--I repeat, if they don't cry,
+I'll lambaste the stuffing out of them."
+
+
+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 it was 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! He's a gentleman's man! 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 the devil. 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."
+
+
+
+
+II. THE MEAT
+
+
+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 Chilkoot. 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
+carry 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
+them grown men. What d'ye know about boatin' on the water? I'm a cowman
+and a prospector, but I'm sure tenderfooted 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 been doin' nothing," Shorty said, wiping his mouth
+with the back of his hand. "We ain't been 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 morning now."
+
+
+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 metaphor.
+
+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 Bennett 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 unavoidable 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
+Chechako."
+
+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 chechako 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."
+
+
+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 center 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 goldrushers.
+
+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 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 with me only my nephew, 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 what 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 help keep her straight. Once we're started, you won't be able to
+hear me, so just keep on keeping her 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."
+
+
+After running the stranger's 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 up-flung into 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 third 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 was 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 of 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-gear, 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. If 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, the boat 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
+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."
+
+
+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 hurrying 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 doubled 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 Labarge. 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
+northwest shore 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 into 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 northwest shore loomed nearer and nearer. The gale
+blew ever 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 labored, and a second.
+
+"If you fellows'd 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 enclosure
+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 Labarge 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 the sleep of exhaustion.
+
+"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 your outfit to Dawson," Shorty caught him up. "Well, we're
+takin' it, 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 harbor, 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 as 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.
+
+
+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, at the
+lower end of the bend, they caught the current 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 center of a cake seventy-five feet in diameter. Sometimes
+they floated sideways, 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."
+
+
+For three days Kit and Shorty labored, 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.
+Savvy? 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."
+
+
+
+
+III. THE STAMPEDE TO SQUAW CREEK.
+
+
+Two months after Smoke Bellew and Shorty went after moose for a
+grub-stake, 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 who 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 an' 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 they 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 remittened his naked
+hand hastily as if the frost had burned 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 of 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."
+
+
+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 barkeeper."
+
+"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 neighborhood.
+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? An' 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 a
+whole string 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 chechako 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 been 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'd 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 layin' 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 been 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 again. Seven were frozen to death, while scores of
+amputations of toes, feet, and fingers were performed in the Dawson
+hospitals on the survivors. For the stampede 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 hand, 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 nothin' 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 chechakos. 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 her.
+
+"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 chechakos 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
+chechakos. 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 Koyukuk 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 'em 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 Koyukuk."
+
+"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 been there for another
+half hour to the least, accordin' to my reckonin'. I must 'a' been
+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 solicitously.
+
+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 chechakos 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 to the fresh trail 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 make 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 women folk 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 been 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 pasear 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 Koyukuk 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, so 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 their pace on account of her evident weariness, insisted
+on taking her turn in 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 cease at the
+lowest temperatures. The water flows out from the banks and lies in
+pools which are 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 center-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 center-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
+an' 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 center-stakes of two full
+an' honest five-hundred-foot creek 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'."
+
+
+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 of their blankets lay six inches of frost crystals.
+
+"Good morning! how are 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 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 center-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 the rest and all of
+this woman of his kind. 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 center-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."
+
+
+
+
+IV. SHORTY DREAMS.
+
+
+"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 are 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 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 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 geezer's."
+
+"But not as good as the bank's."
+
+"Wait an' 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 center
+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 naught'?" Smoke queried, as they made their
+way to the bar.
+
+"Then your dollar'd been on 'double naught,'" 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--$350.00." 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 three hundred and fifty
+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."
+
+
+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 gettin'
+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."
+
+
+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 'em 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 naught," and the
+keeper paid him eight hundred and seventy-five dollars.
+
+"Wake me up, Smoke, I'm dreamin'," Shorty moaned.
+
+Smoke smiled, consulted his notebook, and became absorbed in
+calculation. He continually drew the notebook 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 naught."
+
+"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 been keepin' track. You're something like thirty-six
+hundred to the good. How near am I?"
+
+"Thirty-six-sixty," Smoke replied. "And now you've got to pack the dust
+home. That was the agreement."
+
+
+"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. If 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 centered 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 been 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. Bimeby 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
+been 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."
+
+
+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.
+No, sir! An' this ain't me neither. I'm out on trail somewheres, in my
+blankets, lyin' flat 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."
+
+
+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 pay-streak, 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!"
+
+
+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 barroom of the Elkhorn to-night.
+You can watch me there just as well."
+
+
+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 naught," 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 centered 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'd 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 naught' 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
+naught' opposite fetches '32,' and '11' fetches 'double naught.'
+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 flash 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 you'll all
+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."
+
+
+
+
+V. THE MAN ON THE OTHER BANK.
+
+
+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
+frosts of earlier years, had dived into the icy 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 later 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 smote
+them. 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," replied Smoke. "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."
+
+"Yep, 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."
+
+
+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 Northland 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 forefoot 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 midday, 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."
+
+
+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 had 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 whether 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 tended 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 was a French-Canadian voyageur, Smoke decided, as were four of
+the others. 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 center 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 then 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 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."
+
+
+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 moose-hide, 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 center 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."
+
+
+Smoke woke up. A draught that possessed all the rigidity of an icicle
+was boring into the front of his shoulders 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 almost inaudible 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?" he
+asked.
+
+"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
+moose-hide. 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.
+
+
+"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 some 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 wa'n't searched. The witness admits it. We admit it. It wa'n't
+necessary. No tracks led to that bank. The snow wa'n'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 days' 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. Now then, 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 already 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 bullet 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, an' 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 newcomer you've been chinning with could explain if
+HE had a mind to."
+
+Breck, now very uncomfortable, found all eyes centered 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 been
+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 been 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, fist-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 hawg. 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. I'm a meat-eater, I am."
+
+
+
+
+VI. THE RACE FOR NUMBER THREE.
+
+
+"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 remarkably 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 been 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 crudely elaborate sarcasm when he caught
+the twinkle in the other's eye. He went on dressing, with fingers that
+had lost their deftness, tying a Windsor tie in a bow-knot at the throat
+of his soft cotton shirt.
+
+"Wisht 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 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. An' if them women
+folks gets to droppin' handkerchiefs, just let 'em lay. Don't do any
+pickin' up. Whatever you do, don't."
+
+
+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 Northwest 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. If he goes in, interest will be
+centered 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 chechako.
+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 unless 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 meed 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 Chilkoot and the
+third drowned in the open water of Thirty Mile."
+
+
+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 the dogs was to be preceded
+by a foot and obstacle race. Each man had to relocate the claim for
+himself, and this meant that he must place two center-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 relocation, 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 snowfall 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."
+
+
+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 shot 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 center-stake be driven first, next the
+south-eastern; and so on around the four sides, including the upper
+center-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 southwestern 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 center-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.
+
+Reaching the fourth corner, he tripped headlong 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
+harbors 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 harbored 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 dogs 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 fist-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 harness.
+
+"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 Northland. 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.
+
+
+"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 teammates, 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.
+
+
+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 into 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 chechako 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-tail, 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 try 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 stretch 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 behind, 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 other's 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 greatest 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 chechako," 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.
+
+
+
+
+VII. THE LITTLE MAN
+
+
+"I wisht you wasn't so set in your ways," Shorty demurred. "I'm sure
+scairt of that glacier. No man ought to tackle it by his lonely."
+
+Smoke laughed cheerfully, and ran his eye up the glistening face of
+the tiny glacier that filled the head of the valley. "Here it is August
+already, and the days have been getting shorter for two months," he
+epitomized the situation. "You know quartz, and I don't. But I can bring
+up the grub, while you keep after that mother lode. So-long. I'll be
+back by to-morrow evening."
+
+He turned and started.
+
+"I got a hunch something's goin' to happen," Shorty pleaded after him.
+
+But Smoke's reply was a bantering laugh. He held on down the little
+valley, occasionally wiping the sweat from his forehead, the while his
+feet crushed through ripe mountain raspberries and delicate ferns that
+grew beside patches of sun-sheltered ice.
+
+In the early spring he and Shorty had come up the Stewart River and
+launched out into the amazing chaos of the region where Surprise Lake
+lay. And all of the spring and half of the summer had been consumed in
+futile wanderings, when, on the verge of turning back, they caught their
+first glimpse of the baffling, gold-bottomed sheet of water which had
+lured and fooled a generation of miners. Making their camp in the old
+cabin which Smoke had discovered on his previous visit, they had learned
+three things: first, heavy nugget gold was carpeted thickly on the lake
+bottom; next, the gold could be dived for in the shallower portions, but
+the temperature of the water was man-killing; and, finally, the draining
+of the lake was too stupendous a task for two men in the shorter half
+of a short summer. Undeterred, reasoning from the coarseness of the gold
+that it had not traveled far, they had set out in search of the mother
+lode. They had crossed the big glacier that frowned on the southern rim
+and devoted themselves to the puzzling maze of small valleys and canyons
+beyond, which, by most unmountainlike methods, drained, or had at one
+time drained, into the lake.
+
+The valley Smoke was descending gradually widened after the fashion of
+any normal valley; but, at the lower end, it pinched narrowly between
+high precipitous walls and abruptly stopped in a cross wall. At the
+base of this, in a welter of broken rock, the streamlet disappeared,
+evidently finding its way out underground. Climbing the cross wall, from
+the top Smoke saw the lake beneath him. Unlike any mountain lake he had
+ever seen, it was not blue. Instead, its intense peacock-green tokened
+its shallowness. It was this shallowness that made its draining
+feasible. All about arose jumbled mountains, with ice-scarred peaks
+and crags, grotesquely shaped and grouped. All was topsyturvy and
+unsystematic--a Dore nightmare. So fantastic and impossible was it that
+it affected Smoke as more like a cosmic landscape-joke than a rational
+portion of earth's surface. There were many glaciers in the canyons,
+most of them tiny, and, as he looked, one of the larger ones, on the
+north shore, calved amid thunders and splashings. Across the lake,
+seemingly not more than half a mile, but, as he well knew, five miles
+away, he could see the bunch of spruce-trees and the cabin. He looked
+again to make sure, and saw smoke clearly rising from the chimney.
+Somebody else had surprised themselves into finding Surprise Lake, was
+his conclusion, as he turned to climb the southern wall.
+
+From the top of this he came down into a little valley, flower-floored
+and lazy with the hum of bees, that behaved quite as a reasonable valley
+should, in so far as it made legitimate entry on the lake. What was
+wrong with it was its length--scarcely a hundred yards; its head a
+straight up-and-down cliff of a thousand feet, over which a stream
+pitched itself in descending veils of mist.
+
+And here he encountered more smoke, floating lazily upward in the warm
+sunshine beyond an outjut of rock. As he came around the corner he heard
+a light, metallic tap-tapping and a merry whistling that kept the beat.
+Then he saw the man, an upturned shoe between his knees, into the sole
+of which he was driving hob-spikes.
+
+"Hello!" was the stranger's greeting, and Smoke's heart went out to the
+man in ready liking. "Just in time for a snack. There's coffee in the
+pot, a couple of cold flapjacks, and some jerky."
+
+"I'll go you if I lose," was Smoke's acceptance, as he sat down. "I've
+been rather skimped on the last several meals, but there's oodles of
+grub over in the cabin."
+
+"Across the lake? That's what I was heading for."
+
+"Seems Surprise Lake is becoming populous," Smoke complained, emptying
+the coffee-pot.
+
+"Go on, you're joking, aren't you?" the man said, astonishment painted
+on his face.
+
+Smoke laughed. "That's the way it takes everybody. You see those high
+ledges across there to the northwest? There's where I first saw it. No
+warning. Just suddenly caught the view of the whole lake from there. I'd
+given up looking for it, too.
+
+"Same here," the other agreed. "I'd headed back and was expecting to
+fetch the Stewart last night, when out I popped in sight of the lake. If
+that's it, where's the Stewart? And where have I been all the time? And
+how did you come here? And what's your name?"
+
+"Bellew. Kit Bellew."
+
+"Oh! I know you." The man's eyes and face were bright with a joyous
+smile, and his hand flashed eagerly out to Smoke's. "I've heard all
+about you."
+
+"Been reading police-court news, I see," Smoke sparred modestly.
+
+"Nope." The man laughed and shook his head. "Merely recent Klondike
+history. I might have recognized you if you'd been shaved. I watched you
+putting it all over the gambling crowd when you were bucking roulette
+in the Elkhorn. My name's Carson--Andy Carson; and I can't begin to tell
+you how glad I am to meet up with you."
+
+He was a slender man, wiry with health, with quick black eyes and a
+magnetism of camaraderie.
+
+"And this is Surprise Lake?" he murmured incredulously.
+
+"It certainly is."
+
+"And its bottom's buttered with gold?"
+
+"Sure. There's some of the churning." Smoke dipped in his overalls
+pocket and brought forth half a dozen nuggets. "That's the stuff. All
+you have to do is go down to bottom, blind if you want to, and pick up a
+handful. Then you've got to run half a mile to get up your circulation."
+
+"Well, gosh-dash my dingbats, if you haven't beaten me to it," Carson
+swore whimsically, but his disappointment was patent. "An' I thought I'd
+scooped the whole caboodle. Anyway, I've had the fun of getting here."
+
+"Fun!" Smoke cried. "Why, if we can ever get our hands on all that
+bottom, we'll make Rockefeller look like thirty cents."
+
+"But it's yours," was Carson's objection.
+
+"Nothing to it, my friend. You've got to realize that no gold deposit
+like it has been discovered in all the history of mining. It will take
+you and me and my partner and all the friends we've got to lay our hands
+on it. All Bonanza and Eldorado, dumped together, wouldn't be richer
+than half an acre down here. The problem is to drain the lake. It will
+take millions. And there's only one thing I'm afraid of. There's so
+much of it that if we fail to control the output it will bring about the
+demonetization of gold."
+
+"And you tell me--" Carson broke off, speechless and amazed.
+
+"And glad to have you. It will take a year or two, with all the money
+we can raise, to drain the lake. It can be done. I've looked over the
+ground. But it will take every man in the country that's willing to work
+for wages. We'll need an army, and we need right now decent men in on
+the ground floor. Are you in?"
+
+"Am I in? Don't I look it? I feel so much like a millionaire that I'm
+real timid about crossing that big glacier. Couldn't afford to break my
+neck now. Wish I had some more of those hob-spikes. I was just hammering
+the last in when you came along. How's yours? Let's see."
+
+Smoke held up his foot.
+
+"Worn smooth as a skating-rink!" Carson cried. "You've certainly been
+hiking some. Wait a minute, and I'll pull some of mine out for you."
+
+But Smoke refused to listen. "Besides," he said, "I've got about forty
+feet of rope cached where we take the ice. My partner and I used it
+coming over. It will be a cinch."
+
+It was a hard, hot climb. The sun blazed dazzlingly on the ice-surface,
+and with streaming pores they panted from the exertion. There were
+places, criss-crossed by countless fissures and crevasses, where an hour
+of dangerous toil advanced them no more than a hundred yards. At two in
+the afternoon, beside a pool of water bedded in the ice, Smoke called a
+halt.
+
+"Let's tackle some of that jerky," he said. "I've been on short
+allowance, and my knees are shaking. Besides, we're across the worst.
+Three hundred yards will fetch us to the rocks, and it's easy going,
+except for a couple of nasty fissures and one bad one that heads us
+down toward the bulge. There's a weak ice-bridge there, but Shorty and I
+managed it."
+
+Over the jerky, the two men got acquainted, and Andy Carson unbosomed
+himself of the story of his life. "I just knew I'd find Surprise Lake,"
+he mumbled in the midst of mouthfuls. "I had to. I missed the French
+Hill Benches, the Big Skookum, and Monte Cristo, and then it was
+Surprise Lake or bust. And here I am. My wife knew I'd strike it. I've
+got faith enough, but hers knocks mine galleywest. She's a corker,
+a crackerjack--dead game, grit to her finger-ends, never-say-die, a
+fighter from the drop of the hat, the one woman for me, true blue and
+all the rest. Take a look at that."
+
+He sprung open his watch, and on the inside cover Smoke saw the small,
+pasted photograph of a bright-haired woman, framed on either side by the
+laughing face of a child.
+
+"Boys?" he queried.
+
+"Boy and girl," Carson answered proudly. "He's a year and a half older."
+He sighed. "They might have been some grown, but we had to wait. You
+see, she was sick. Lungs. But she put up a fight. What'd we know
+about such stuff? I was clerking, railroad clerk, Chicago, when we got
+married. Her folks were tuberculous. Doctors didn't know much in those
+days. They said it was hereditary. All her family had it. Caught it from
+each other, only they never guessed it. Thought they were born with
+it. Fate. She and I lived with them the first couple of years. I
+wasn't afraid. No tuberculosis in my family. And I got it. That set me
+thinking. It was contagious. I caught it from breathing their air.
+
+"We talked it over, she and I. Then I jumped the family doctor and
+consulted an up-to-date expert. He told me what I'd figured out for
+myself, and said Arizona was the place for us. We pulled up stakes and
+went down--no money, nothing. I got a job sheep-herding, and left her in
+town--a lung town. It was filled to spilling with lungers.
+
+"Of course, living and sleeping in the clean open, I started right in
+to mend. I was away months at a time. Every time I came back, she was
+worse. She just couldn't pick up. But we were learning. I jerked her
+out of that town, and she went to sheep-herding with me. In four years,
+winter and summer, cold and heat, rain, snow, and frost, and all the
+rest, we never slept under a roof, and we were moving camp all the time.
+You ought to have seen the change--brown as berries, lean as Indians,
+tough as rawhide. When we figured we were cured, we pulled out for San
+Francisco. But we were too previous. By the second month we both had
+slight hemorrhages. We flew the coop back to Arizona and the sheep. Two
+years more of it. That fixed us. Perfect cure. All her family's dead.
+Wouldn't listen to us.
+
+"Then we jumped cities for keeps. Knocked around on the Pacific coast
+and southern Oregon looked good to us. We settled in the Rogue River
+Valley--apples. There's a big future there, only nobody knows it. I got
+my land--on time, of course--for forty an acre. Ten years from now it'll
+be worth five hundred.
+
+"We've done some almighty hustling. Takes money, and we hadn't a cent
+to start with, you know--had to build a house and barn, get horses and
+plows, and all the rest. She taught school two years. Then the boy came.
+But we've got it. You ought to see those trees we planted--a hundred
+acres of them, almost mature now. But it's all been outgo, and the
+mortgage working overtime. That's why I'm here. She'd 'a' come along
+only for the kids and the trees. She's handlin' that end, and here I am,
+a gosh-danged expensive millionaire--in prospect."
+
+He looked happily across the sun-dazzle on the ice to the green water of
+the lake along the farther shore, took a final look at the photograph,
+and murmured:
+
+"She's some woman, that. She's hung on. She just wouldn't die, though
+she was pretty close to skin and bone all wrapped around a bit of fire
+when she went out with the sheep. Oh, she's thin now. Never will be fat.
+But it's the prettiest thinness I ever saw, and when I get back, and
+the trees begin to bear, and the kids get going to school, she and I
+are going to do Paris. I don't think much of that burg, but she's just
+hankered for it all her life."
+
+"Well, here's the gold that will take you to Paris," Smoke assured him.
+"All we've got to do is to get our hands on it."
+
+Carson nodded with glistening eyes. "Say--that farm of ours is the
+prettiest piece of orchard land on all the Pacific coast. Good climate,
+too. Our lungs will never get touched again there. Ex-lungers have to be
+almighty careful, you know. If you're thinking of settling, well, just
+take a peep in at our valley before you settle, that's all. And fishing!
+Say!--did you ever get a thirty-five-pound salmon on a six-ounce rod?
+Some fight, bo', some fight!"
+
+
+"I'm lighter than you by forty pounds," Carson said. "Let me go first."
+
+They stood on the edge of the crevasse. It was enormous and ancient,
+fully a hundred feet across, with sloping, age-eaten sides instead of
+sharp-angled rims. At this one place it was bridged by a huge mass of
+pressure-hardened snow that was itself half ice. Even the bottom of this
+mass they could not see, much less the bottom of the crevasse. Crumbling
+and melting, the bridge threatened imminent collapse. There were signs
+where recent portions had broken away, and even as they studied it a
+mass of half a ton dislodged and fell.
+
+"Looks pretty bad," Carson admitted with an ominous head-shake. "And it
+looks much worse than if I wasn't a millionaire."
+
+"But we've got to tackle it," Smoke said. "We're almost across. We can't
+go back. We can't camp here on the ice all night. And there's no other
+way. Shorty and I explored for a mile up. It was in better shape,
+though, when we crossed."
+
+"It's one at a time, and me first." Carson took the part coil of rope
+from Smoke's hand. "You'll have to cast off. I'll take the rope and the
+pick. Gimme your hand so I can slip down easy."
+
+Slowly and carefully he lowered himself the several feet to the bridge,
+where he stood, making final adjustments for the perilous traverse. On
+his back was his pack outfit. Around his neck, resting on his shoulders,
+he coiled the rope, one end of which was still fast to his waist.
+
+"I'd give a mighty good part of my millions right now for a
+bridge-construction gang," he said, but his cheery, whimsical smile
+belied the words. Also, he added, "It's all right; I'm a cat."
+
+The pick, and the long stick he used as an alpenstock, he balanced
+horizontally after the manner of a rope-walker. He thrust one foot
+forward tentatively, drew it back, and steeled himself with a visible,
+physical effort.
+
+"I wish I was flat broke," he smiled up. "If ever I get out of being a
+millionaire this time, I'll never be one again. It's too uncomfortable."
+
+"It's all right," Smoke encouraged. "I've been over it before. Better
+let me try it first."
+
+"And you forty pounds to the worse," the little man flashed back.
+"I'll be all right in a minute. I'm all right now." And this time the
+nerving-up process was instantaneous. "Well, here goes for Rogue River
+and the apples," he said, as his foot went out, this time to rest
+carefully and lightly while the other foot was brought up and past. Very
+gently and circumspectly he continued on his way until two-thirds of the
+distance was covered. Here he stopped to examine a depression he must
+cross, at the bottom of which was a fresh crack. Smoke, watching, saw
+him glance to the side and down into the crevasse itself, and then begin
+a slight swaying.
+
+"Keep your eyes up!" Smoke commanded sharply. "Now! Go on!"
+
+The little man obeyed, nor faltered on the rest of the journey. The
+sun-eroded slope of the farther edge of the crevasse was slippery, but
+not steep, and he worked his way up to a narrow ledge, faced about, and
+sat down.
+
+"Your turn," he called across. "But just keep a-coming and don't look
+down. That's what got my goat. Just keep a-coming, that's all. And get a
+move on. It's almighty rotten."
+
+Balancing his own stick horizontally, Smoke essayed the passage. That
+the bridge was on its last legs was patent. He felt a jar under foot, a
+slight movement of the mass, and a heavier jar. This was followed by a
+single sharp crackle. Behind him he knew something was happening. If for
+no other reason, he knew it by the strained, tense face of Carson. From
+beneath, thin and faint, came the murmur of running water, and Smoke's
+eyes involuntarily wavered to a glimpse of the shimmering depths. He
+jerked them back to the way before him. Two-thirds over, he came to the
+depression. The sharp edges of the crack, but slightly touched by the
+sun, showed how recent it was. His foot was lifted to make the step
+across, when the crack began slowly widening, at the same time emitting
+numerous sharp snaps. He made the step quickly, increasing the stride
+of it, but the worn nails of his shoe skated on the farther slope of the
+depression. He fell on his face, and without pause slipped down and
+into the crack, his legs hanging clear, his chest supported by the stick
+which he had managed to twist crosswise as he fell.
+
+His first sensation was the nausea caused by the sickening up-leap of
+his pulse; his first idea was of surprise that he had fallen no farther.
+Behind him was crackling and jar and movement to which the stick
+vibrated. From beneath, in the heart of the glacier, came the soft and
+hollow thunder of the dislodged masses striking bottom. And still the
+bridge, broken from its farthest support and ruptured in the middle,
+held, though the portion he had crossed tilted downward at a pitch of
+twenty degrees. He could see Carson, perched on his ledge, his feet
+braced against the melting surface, swiftly recoiling the rope from his
+shoulders to his hand.
+
+"Wait!" he cried. "Don't move, or the whole shooting-match will come
+down."
+
+He calculated the distance with a quick glance, took the bandana from
+his neck and tied it to the rope, and increased the length by a second
+bandana from his pocket. The rope, manufactured from sled-lashings and
+short lengths of plaited rawhide knotted together, was both light and
+strong. The first cast was lucky as well as deft, and Smoke's fingers
+clutched it. He evidenced a hand-over-hand intention of crawling out of
+the crack. But Carson, who had refastened the rope around his own waist,
+stopped him.
+
+"Make it fast around yourself as well," he ordered.
+
+"If I go I'll take you with me," Smoke objected.
+
+The little man became very peremptory.
+
+"You shut up," he ordered. "The sound of your voice is enough to start
+the whole thing going."
+
+"If I ever start going--" Smoke began.
+
+"Shut up! You ain't going to ever start going. Now do what I say. That's
+right--under the shoulders. Make it fast. Now! Start! Get a move on, but
+easy as you go. I'll take in the slack. You just keep a-coming. That's
+it. Easy. Easy."
+
+Smoke was still a dozen feet away when the final collapse of the bridge
+began. Without noise, but in a jerky way, it crumbled to an increasing
+tilt.
+
+"Quick!" Carson called, coiling in hand-over-hand on the slack of the
+rope which Smoke's rush gave him.
+
+When the crash came, Smoke's fingers were clawing into the hard face of
+the wall of the crevasse, while his body dragged back with the falling
+bridge. Carson, sitting up, feet wide apart and braced, was heaving on
+the rope. This effort swung Smoke in to the side wall, but it jerked
+Carson out of his niche. Like a cat, he faced about, clawing wildly for
+a hold on the ice and slipping down. Beneath him, with forty feet of
+taut rope between them, Smoke was clawing just as wildly; and ere the
+thunder from below announced the arrival of the bridge, both men had
+come to rest. Carson had achieved this first, and the several pounds of
+pull he was able to put on the rope had helped bring Smoke to a stop.
+
+Each lay in a shallow niche, but Smoke's was so shallow that, tense with
+the strain of flattening and sticking, nevertheless he would have slid
+on had it not been for the slight assistance he took from the rope.
+He was on the verge of a bulge and could not see beneath him. Several
+minutes passed, in which they took stock of the situation and made rapid
+strides in learning the art of sticking to wet and slippery ice. The
+little man was the first to speak.
+
+"Gee!" he said; and, a minute later, "If you can dig in for a moment and
+slack on the rope, I can turn over. Try it."
+
+Smoke made the effort, then rested on the rope again. "I can do it," he
+said. "Tell me when you're ready. And be quick."
+
+"About three feet down is holding for my heels," Carson said. "It won't
+take a moment. Are you ready?"
+
+"Go on."
+
+It was hard work to slide down a yard, turn over and sit up; but it was
+even harder for Smoke to remain flattened and maintain a position that
+from instant to instant made a greater call upon his muscles. As it was,
+he could feel the almost perceptible beginning of the slip when the rope
+tightened and he looked up into his companion's face. Smoke noted the
+yellow pallor of sun-tan forsaken by the blood, and wondered what his
+own complexion was like. But when he saw Carson, with shaking fingers,
+fumble for his sheath-knife, he decided the end had come. The man was in
+a funk and was going to cut the rope.
+
+"Don't m-mind m-m-me," the little man chattered. "I ain't scared. It's
+only my nerves, gosh-dang them. I'll b-b-be all right in a minute."
+
+And Smoke watched him, doubled over, his shoulders between his knees,
+shivering and awkward, holding a slight tension on the rope with one
+hand while with the other he hacked and gouged holes for his heels in
+the ice.
+
+"Carson," he breathed up to him, "you're some bear, some bear."
+
+The answering grin was ghastly and pathetic. "I never could stand
+height," Carson confessed. "It always did get me. Do you mind if I stop
+a minute and clear my head? Then I'll make those heel-holds deeper so I
+can heave you up."
+
+Smoke's heart warmed. "Look here, Carson. The thing for you to do is
+to cut the rope. You can never get me up, and there's no use both of us
+being lost. You can make it out with your knife."
+
+"You shut up!" was the hurt retort. "Who's running this?"
+
+And Smoke could not help but see that anger was a good restorative
+for the other's nerves. As for himself, it was the more nerve-racking
+strain, lying plastered against the ice with nothing to do but strive to
+stick on.
+
+A groan and a quick cry of "Hold on!" warned him. With face pressed
+against the ice, he made a supreme sticking effort, felt the rope
+slacken, and knew Carson was slipping toward him. He did not dare look
+up until he felt the rope tighten and knew the other had again come to
+rest.
+
+"Gee, that was a near go," Carson chattered. "I came down over a yard.
+Now you wait. I've got to dig new holds. If this danged ice wasn't so
+melty we'd be hunky-dory."
+
+Holding the few pounds of strain necessary for Smoke with his left hand,
+the little man jabbed and chopped at the ice with his right. Ten minutes
+of this passed.
+
+"Now, I'll tell you what I've done," Carson called down. "I've made
+heel-holds and hand-holes for you alongside of me. I'm going to heave
+the rope in slow and easy, and you just come along sticking an' not too
+fast. I'll tell you what, first of all. I'll take you on the rope and
+you worry out of that pack. Get me?"
+
+Smoke nodded, and with infinite care unbuckled his pack-straps. With a
+wriggle of the shoulders he dislodged the pack, and Carson saw it slide
+over the bulge and out of sight.
+
+"Now, I'm going to ditch mine," he called down. "You just take it easy
+and wait."
+
+Five minutes later the upward struggle began. Smoke, after drying his
+hands on the insides of his arm-sleeves, clawed into the climb--bellied,
+and clung, and stuck, and plastered--sustained and helped by the pull
+of the rope. Alone, he could not have advanced. Despite his muscles,
+because of his forty pounds' handicap, he could not cling as did Carson.
+A third of the way up, where the pitch was steeper and the ice less
+eroded, he felt the strain on the rope decreasing. He moved slower and
+slower. Here was no place to stop and remain. His most desperate effort
+could not prevent the stop, and he could feel the down-slip beginning.
+
+"I'm going," he called up.
+
+"So am I," was the reply, gritted through Carson's teeth.
+
+"Then cast loose."
+
+Smoke felt the rope tauten in a futile effort, then the pace quickened,
+and as he went past his previous lodgment and over the bulge the last
+glimpse he caught of Carson he was turned over, with madly moving hands
+and feet striving to overcome the downward draw. To Smoke's surprise, as
+he went over the bulge, there was no sheer fall. The rope restrained him
+as he slid down a steeper pitch, which quickly eased until he came to a
+halt in another niche on the verge of another bulge. Carson was now out
+of sight, ensconced in the place previously occupied by Smoke.
+
+"Gee!" he could hear Carson shiver. "Gee!"
+
+An interval of quiet followed, and then Smoke could feel the rope
+agitated.
+
+"What are you doing?" he called up.
+
+"Making more hand- and foot-holds," came the trembling answer. "You just
+wait. I'll have you up here in a jiffy. Don't mind the way I talk. I'm
+just excited. But I'm all right. You wait and see."
+
+"You're holding me by main strength," Smoke argued. "Soon or late, with
+the ice melting, you'll slip down after me. The thing for you to do is
+to cut loose. Hear me! There's no use both of us going. Get that? You're
+the biggest little man in creation, but you've done your best. You cut
+loose."
+
+"You shut up. I'm going to make holes this time deep enough to haul up a
+span of horses."
+
+"You've held me up long enough," Smoke urged. "Let me go."
+
+"How many times have I held you up?" came the truculent query.
+
+"Some several, and all of them too many. You've been coming down all the
+time."
+
+"And I've been learning the game all the time. I'm going on holding you
+up until we get out of here. Savvy? When God made me a light-weight I
+guess he knew what he was about. Now, shut up. I'm busy."
+
+Several silent minutes passed. Smoke could hear the metallic strike and
+hack of the knife and occasional driblets of ice slid over the bulge
+and came down to him. Thirsty, clinging on hand and foot, he caught the
+fragments in his mouth and melted them to water, which he swallowed.
+
+He heard a gasp that slid into a groan of despair, and felt a slackening
+of the rope that made him claw. Immediately the rope tightened again.
+Straining his eyes in an upward look along the steep slope, he stared
+a moment, then saw the knife, point first, slide over the verge of the
+bulge and down upon him. He tucked his cheek to it, shrank from the pang
+of cut flesh, tucked more tightly, and felt the knife come to rest.
+
+"I'm a slob," came the wail down the crevasse.
+
+"Cheer up, I've got it," Smoke answered.
+
+"Say! Wait! I've a lot of string in my pocket. I'll drop it down to you,
+and you send the knife up."
+
+Smoke made no reply. He was battling with a sudden rush of thought.
+
+"Hey! You! Here comes the string. Tell me when you've got it."
+
+A small pocket-knife, weighted on the end of the string, slid down the
+ice. Smoke got it, opened the larger blade by a quick effort of his
+teeth and one hand, and made sure that the blade was sharp. Then he tied
+the sheath-knife to the end of the string.
+
+"Haul away!" he called.
+
+With strained eyes he saw the upward progress of the knife. But he saw
+more--a little man, afraid and indomitable, who shivered and chattered,
+whose head swam with giddiness, and who mastered his qualms and
+distresses and played a hero's part. Not since his meeting with Shorty
+had Smoke so quickly liked a man. Here was a proper meat-eater, eager
+with friendliness, generous to destruction, with a grit that
+shaking fear could not shake. Then, too, he considered the situation
+cold-bloodedly. There was no chance for two. Steadily, they were sliding
+into the heart of the glacier, and it was his greater weight that was
+dragging the little man down. The little man could stick like a fly.
+Alone, he could save himself.
+
+"Bully for us!" came the voice from above, down and across the bulge of
+ice. "Now we'll get out of here in two shakes."
+
+The awful struggle for good cheer and hope in Carson's voice decided
+Smoke.
+
+"Listen to me," he said steadily, vainly striving to shake the vision of
+Joy Gastell's face from his brain. "I sent that knife up for you to get
+out with. Get that? I'm going to chop loose with the jack-knife. It's
+one or both of us. Get that?"
+
+"Two or nothing," came the grim but shaky response. "If you'll hold on a
+minute--"
+
+"I've held on for too long now. I'm not married. I have no adorable thin
+woman nor kids nor apple-trees waiting for me. Get me? Now, you hike up
+and out of that!"
+
+"Wait! For God's sake, wait!" Carson screamed down. "You can't do that!
+Give me a chance to get you out. Be calm, old horse. We'll make the
+turn. You'll see. I'm going to dig holds that'll lift a house and barn."
+
+Smoke made no reply. Slowly and gently, fascinated by the sight, he cut
+with the knife until one of the three strands popped and parted.
+
+"What are you doing?" Carson cried desperately. "If you cut, I'll never
+forgive you--never. I tell you it's two or nothing. We're going to get
+out. Wait! For God's sake!"
+
+And Smoke, staring at the parted strand, five inches before his eyes,
+knew fear in all its weakness. He did not want to die; he recoiled from
+the shimmering abyss beneath him, and his panic brain urged all the
+preposterous optimism of delay. It was fear that prompted him to
+compromise.
+
+"All right," he called up. "I'll wait. Do your best. But I tell you,
+Carson, if we both start slipping again I'm going to cut."
+
+"Huh! Forget it. When we start, old horse, we start up. I'm a porous
+plaster. I could stick here if it was twice as steep. I'm getting a
+sizable hole for one heel already. Now, you hush, and let me work."
+
+The slow minutes passed. Smoke centered his soul on the dull hurt of
+a hang-nail on one of his fingers. He should have clipped it away that
+morning--it was hurting then--he decided; and he resolved, once clear
+of the crevasse, that it should immediately be clipped. Then, with
+short focus, he stared at the hang-nail and the finger with a new
+comprehension. In a minute, or a few minutes at best, that hang-nail,
+that finger, cunningly jointed and efficient, might be part of a mangled
+carcass at the bottom of the crevasse. Conscious of his fear, he
+hated himself. Bear-eaters were made of sterner stuff. In the anger of
+self-revolt he all but hacked at the rope with his knife. But fear
+made him draw back the hand and to stick himself again, trembling and
+sweating, to the slippery slope. To the fact that he was soaking wet
+by contact with the thawing ice he tried to attribute the cause of his
+shivering; but he knew, in the heart of him, that it was untrue.
+
+A gasp and a groan and an abrupt slackening of the rope, warned him. He
+began to slip. The movement was very slow. The rope tightened loyally,
+but he continued to slip. Carson could not hold him, and was slipping
+with him. The digging toe of his farther-extended foot encountered
+vacancy, and he knew that it was over the straight-away fall. And he
+knew, too, that in another moment his falling body would jerk Carson's
+after it.
+
+Blindly, desperately, all the vitality and life-love of him beaten down
+in a flashing instant by a shuddering perception of right and wrong,
+he brought the knife-edge across the rope, saw the strands part, felt
+himself slide more rapidly, and then fall.
+
+What happened then, he did not know. He was not unconscious, but it
+happened too quickly, and it was unexpected. Instead of falling to his
+death, his feet almost immediately struck in water, and he sat violently
+down in water that splashed coolingly on his face. His first impression
+was that the crevasse was shallower than he had imagined and that he
+had safely fetched bottom. But of this he was quickly disabused. The
+opposite wall was a dozen feet away. He lay in a basin formed in an
+out-jut of the ice-wall by melting water that dribbled and trickled over
+the bulge above and fell sheer down a distance of a dozen feet. This had
+hollowed out the basin. Where he sat the water was two feet deep, and
+it was flush with the rim. He peered over the rim and looked down the
+narrow chasm hundreds of feet to the torrent that foamed along the
+bottom.
+
+"Oh, why did you?" he heard a wail from above.
+
+"Listen," he called up. "I'm perfectly safe, sitting in a pool of water
+up to my neck. And here's both our packs. I'm going to sit on them.
+There's room for a half-dozen here. If you slip, stick close and
+you'll land. In the meantime you hike up and get out. Go to the cabin.
+Somebody's there. I saw the smoke. Get a rope, or anything that will
+make rope, and come back and fish for me."
+
+"Honest!" came Carson's incredulous voice.
+
+"Cross my heart and hope to die. Now, get a hustle on, or I'll catch my
+death of cold."
+
+Smoke kept himself warm by kicking a channel through the rim with the
+heel of his shoe. By the time he had drained off the last of the water,
+a faint call from Carson announced that he had reached the top.
+
+After that Smoke occupied himself with drying his clothes. The late
+afternoon sun beat warmly in upon him, and he wrung out his garments
+and spread them about him. His match-case was water-proof, and he
+manipulated and dried sufficient tobacco and rice-paper to make
+cigarettes.
+
+Two hours later, perched naked on the two packs and smoking, he heard a
+voice above that he could not fail to identify.
+
+"Oh, Smoke! Smoke!"
+
+"Hello, Joy Gastell!" he called back. "Where'd you drop from?"
+
+"Are you hurt?"
+
+"Not even any skin off!"
+
+"Father's paying the rope down now. Do you see it?"
+
+"Yes, and I've got it," he answered. "Now, wait a couple of minutes,
+please."
+
+"What's the matter?" came her anxious query, after several minutes. "Oh,
+I know, you're hurt."
+
+"No, I'm not. I'm dressing."
+
+"Dressing?"
+
+"Yes. I've been in swimming. Now! Ready? Hoist away!"
+
+He sent up the two packs on the first trip, was consequently rebuked by
+Joy Gastell, and on the second trip came up himself.
+
+
+Joy Gastell looked at him with glowing eyes, while her father and Carson
+were busy coiling the rope. "How could you cut loose in that splendid
+way?" she cried. "It was--it was glorious, that's all."
+
+Smoke waved the compliment away with a deprecatory hand.
+
+"I know all about it," she persisted. "Carson told me. You sacrificed
+yourself to save him."
+
+"Nothing of the sort," Smoke lied. "I could see that swimming-pool right
+under me all the time."
+
+
+
+
+VIII. THE HANGING OF CULTUS GEORGE
+
+
+The way led steeply up through deep, powdery snow that was unmarred
+by sled-track or moccasin impression. Smoke, in the lead, pressed the
+fragile crystals down under his fat, short snow-shoes. The task required
+lungs and muscle, and he flung himself into it with all his strength.
+Behind, on the surface he packed, strained the string of six dogs, the
+steam-jets of their breathing attesting their labor and the lowness of
+the temperature. Between the wheel-dog and the sled toiled Shorty, his
+weight divided between the guiding gee-pole and the haul, for he was
+pulling with the dogs. Every half-hour he and Smoke exchanged places,
+for the snow-shoe work was even more arduous than that of the gee-pole.
+
+The whole outfit was fresh and strong. It was merely hard work being
+efficiently done--the breaking of a midwinter trail across a divide. On
+this severe stretch, ten miles a day they called a decent stint.
+They kept in condition, but each night crawled well tired into their
+sleeping-furs. This was their sixth day out from the lively camp of
+Mucluc on the Yukon. In two days, with the loaded sled, they had covered
+the fifty miles of packed trail up Moose Creek. Then had come the
+struggle with the four feet of untouched snow that was really not snow,
+but frost-crystals, so lacking in cohesion that when kicked it flew with
+the thin hissing of granulated sugar. In three days they had wallowed
+thirty miles up Minnow Creek and across the series of low divides that
+separate the several creeks flowing south into Siwash River; and now
+they were breasting the big divide, past the Bald Buttes, where the
+way would lead them down Porcupine Creek to the middle reaches of Milk
+River. Higher up Milk River, it was fairly rumored, were deposits of
+copper. And this was their goal--a hill of pure copper, half a mile to
+the right and up the first creek after Milk River issued from a deep
+gorge to flow across a heavily timbered stretch of bottom. They would
+know it when they saw it. One-Eyed McCarthy had described it with sharp
+definiteness. It was impossible to miss it--unless McCarthy had lied.
+
+Smoke was in the lead, and the small scattered spruce-trees were
+becoming scarcer and smaller, when he saw one, dead and bone-dry, that
+stood in their path. There was no need for speech. His glance to Shorty
+was acknowledged by a stentorian "Whoa!" The dogs stood in the traces
+till they saw Shorty begin to undo the sled-lashings and Smoke attack
+the dead spruce with an ax; whereupon the animals dropped in the snow
+and curled into balls, the bush of each tail curved to cover four padded
+feet and an ice-rimmed muzzle.
+
+The men worked with the quickness of long practice. Gold-pan,
+coffee-pot, and cooking-pail were soon thawing the heaped frost-crystals
+into water. Smoke extracted a stick of beans from the sled. Already
+cooked, with a generous admixture of cubes of fat pork and bacon, the
+beans had been frozen into this portable immediacy. He chopped off
+chunks with an ax, as if it were so much firewood, and put them into
+the frying-pan to thaw. Solidly frozen sourdough biscuits were likewise
+placed to thaw. In twenty minutes from the time they halted, the meal
+was ready to eat.
+
+"About forty below," Shorty mumbled through a mouthful of beans. "Say--I
+hope it don't get colder--or warmer, neither. It's just right for trail
+breaking."
+
+Smoke did not answer. His own mouth full of beans, his jaws working,
+he had chanced to glance at the lead-dog, lying half a dozen feet
+away. That gray and frosty wolf was gazing at him with the infinite
+wistfulness and yearning that glimmers and hazes so often in the eyes of
+Northland dogs. Smoke knew it well, but never got over the unfathomable
+wonder of it. As if to shake off the hypnotism, he set down his plate
+and coffee-cup, went to the sled, and began opening the dried-fish sack.
+
+"Hey!" Shorty expostulated. "What 'r' you doin'?"
+
+"Breaking all law, custom, precedent, and trail usage," Smoke replied.
+"I'm going to feed the dogs in the middle of the day--just this once.
+They've worked hard, and that last pull to the top of the divide is
+before them. Besides, Bright there has been talking to me, telling me
+all untellable things with those eyes of his."
+
+Shorty laughed skeptically. "Go on an' spoil 'em. Pretty soon you'll
+be manicurin' their nails. I'd recommend cold cream and electric
+massage--it's great for sled-dogs. And sometimes a Turkish bath does 'em
+fine."
+
+"I've never done it before," Smoke defended. "And I won't again. But
+this once I'm going to. It's just a whim, I guess."
+
+"Oh, if it's a hunch, go to it." Shorty's tones showed how immediately
+he had been mollified. "A man's always got to follow his hunches."
+
+"It isn't a hunch, Shorty. Bright just sort of got on my imagination for
+a couple of twists. He told me more in one minute with those eyes of his
+than I could read in the books in a thousand years. His eyes were acrawl
+with the secrets of life. They were just squirming and wriggling there.
+The trouble is I almost got them, and then I didn't. I'm no wiser than
+I was before, but I was near them." He paused and then added, "I can't
+tell you, but that dog's eyes were just spilling over with cues to
+what life is, and evolution, and star-dust, and cosmic sap, and all the
+rest--everything."
+
+"Boiled down into simple American, you got a hunch," Shorty insisted.
+
+Smoke finished tossing the dried salmon, one to each dog, and shook his
+head.
+
+"I tell you yes," Shorty argued. "Smoke, it's a sure hunch. Something's
+goin' to happen before the day is out. You'll see. And them dried
+fish'll have a bearin'."
+
+"You've got to show me," said Smoke.
+
+"No, I ain't. The day'll take care of itself an' show you. Now listen to
+what I'm tellin' you. I got a hunch myself out of your hunch. I'll bet
+eleven ounces against three ornery toothpicks I'm right. When I get a
+hunch I ain't a-scared to ride it."
+
+"You bet the toothpicks, and I'll bet the ounces," Smoke returned.
+
+"Nope. That'd be plain robbery. I win. I know a hunch when it tickles
+me. Before the day's out somethin' 'll happen, an' them fish'll have a
+meanin'."
+
+"Hell," said Smoke, dismissing the discussion contemptuously.
+
+"An' it'll be hell," Shorty came back. "An' I'll take three more
+toothpicks with you on them same odds that it'll be sure-enough hell."
+
+"Done," said Smoke.
+
+"I win," Shorty exulted. "Chicken-feather toothpicks for mine."
+
+An hour later they cleared the divide, dipped down past the Bald Buttes
+through a sharp elbow-canyon, and took the steep open slope that dropped
+into Porcupine Creek. Shorty, in the lead, stopped abruptly, and Smoke
+whoaed the dogs. Beneath them, coming up, was a procession of humans,
+scattered and draggled, a quarter of a mile long.
+
+"They move like it was a funeral," Shorty noted.
+
+"They've no dogs," said Smoke.
+
+"Yep; there's a couple of men pullin' on a sled."
+
+"See that fellow fall down? There's something the matter, Shorty, and
+there must be two hundred of them."
+
+"Look at 'em stagger as if they was soused. There goes another."
+
+"It's a whole tribe. There are children there."
+
+"Smoke, I win," Shorty proclaimed. "A hunch is a hunch, an' you can't
+beat it. There she comes. Look at her!--surgin' up like a lot of
+corpses."
+
+The mass of Indians, at sight of the two men, had raised a weird cry of
+joy and accelerated its pace.
+
+"They're sure tolerable woozy," commented Shorty. "See 'em fallin' down
+in lumps and bunches."
+
+"Look at the face of that first one," Smoke said. "It's
+starvation--that's what's the matter with them. They've eaten their
+dogs."
+
+"What'll we do? Run for it?"
+
+"And leave the sled and dogs?" Smoke demanded reproachfully.
+
+"They'll sure eat us if we don't. They look hungry enough for it. Hello,
+old skeeziks. What's wrong with you? Don't look at that dog that way. No
+cookin'-pot for him--savvy?"
+
+The forerunners were arriving and crowding about them, moaning and
+plainting in an unfamiliar jargon. To Smoke the picture was grotesque
+and horrible. It was famine unmistakable. Their faces, hollow-cheeked
+and skin-stretched, were so many death's-heads. More and more arrived
+and crowded about, until Smoke and Shorty were hemmed in by the wild
+crew. Their ragged garments of skin and fur were cut and slashed away,
+and Smoke knew the reason for it when he saw a wizened child on a
+squaw's back that sucked and chewed a strip of filthy fur. Another child
+he observed steadily masticating a leather thong.
+
+"Keep off there!--keep back!" Shorty yelled, falling back on English
+after futile attempts with the little Indian he did know.
+
+Bucks and squaws and children tottered and swayed on shaking legs and
+continued to surge in, their mad eyes swimming with weakness and burning
+with ravenous desire. A woman, moaning, staggered past Shorty and fell
+with spread and grasping arms on the sled. An old man followed her,
+panting and gasping, with trembling hands striving to cast off the sled
+lashings, and get at the grub-sacks beneath. A young man, with a naked
+knife, tried to rush in, but was flung back by Smoke. The whole mass
+pressed in upon them, and the fight was on.
+
+At first Smoke and Shorty shoved and thrust and threw back. Then they
+used the butt of the dog-whip and their fists on the food-mad crowd. And
+all this against a background of moaning and wailing women and children.
+Here and there, in a dozen places, the sled-lashings were cut. Men
+crawled in on their bellies, regardless of a rain of kicks and blows,
+and tried to drag out the grub. These had to be picked up bodily and
+flung back. And such was their weakness that they fell continually,
+under the slightest pressures or shoves. Yet they made no attempt to
+injure the two men who defended the sled.
+
+It was the utter weakness of the Indians that saved Smoke and Shorty
+from being overborne. In five minutes the wall of up-standing,
+on-struggling Indians had been changed to heaps of fallen ones that
+moaned and gibbered in the snow, and cried and sniveled as their
+staring, swimming eyes focused on the grub that meant life to them
+and that brought the slaver to their lips. And behind it all arose the
+wailing of the women and children.
+
+"Shut up! Oh, shut up!" Shorty yelled, thrusting his fingers into his
+ears and breathing heavily from his exertions. "Ah, you would, would
+you!" was his cry as he lunged forward and kicked a knife from the hand
+of a man who, bellying through the snow, was trying to stab the lead-dog
+in the throat.
+
+"This is terrible," Smoke muttered.
+
+"I'm all het up," Shorty replied, returning from the rescue of Bright.
+"I'm real sweaty. An' now what 'r' we goin' to do with this ambulance
+outfit?"
+
+Smoke shook his head, and then the problem was solved for him. An Indian
+crawled forward, his one eye fixed on Smoke instead of on the sled, and
+in it Smoke could see the struggle of sanity to assert itself. Shorty
+remembered having punched the other eye, which was already swollen shut.
+The Indian raised himself on his elbow and spoke.
+
+"Me Carluk. Me good Siwash. Me savvy Boston man plenty. Me plenty
+hungry. All people plenty hungry. All people no savvy Boston man. Me
+savvy. Me eat grub now. All people eat grub now. We buy 'm grub. Got 'm
+plenty gold. No got 'm grub. Summer, salmon no come Milk River. Winter,
+caribou no come. No grub. Me make 'm talk all people. Me tell 'em plenty
+Boston man come Yukon. Boston man have plenty grub. Boston man like 'm
+gold. We take 'm gold, go Yukon, Boston man give 'm grub. Plenty gold.
+Me savvy Boston man like 'm gold."
+
+He began fumbling with wasted fingers at the draw-string of a pouch he
+took from his belt.
+
+"Too much make 'm noise," Shorty broke in distractedly. "You tell 'm
+squaw, you tell 'm papoose, shut 'm up mouth."
+
+Carluk turned and addressed the wailing women. Other bucks, listening,
+raised their voices authoritatively, and slowly the squaws stilled,
+and quieted the children near to them. Carluk paused from fumbling the
+draw-string and held up his fingers many times.
+
+"Him people make 'm die," he said.
+
+And Smoke, following the count, knew that seventy-five of the tribe had
+starved to death.
+
+"Me buy 'm grub," Carluk said, as he got the pouch open and drew out a
+large chunk of heavy metal. Others were following his example, and on
+every side appeared similar chunks. Shorty stared.
+
+"Great Jeminey!" he cried. "Copper! Raw, red copper! An' they think it's
+gold!"
+
+"Him gold," Carluk assured them confidently, his quick comprehension
+having caught the gist of Shorty's exclamation.
+
+"And the poor devils banked everything on it," Smoke muttered. "Look at
+it. That chunk there weighs forty pounds. They've got hundreds of pounds
+of it, and they've carried it when they didn't have strength enough to
+drag themselves. Look here, Shorty. We've got to feed them."
+
+"Huh! Sounds easy. But how about statistics? You an' me has a month's
+grub, which is six meals times thirty, which is one hundred an' eighty
+meals. Here's two hundred Indians, with real, full-grown appetites. How
+the blazes can we give 'm one meal even?"
+
+"There's the dog-grub," Smoke answered. "A couple of hundred pounds of
+dried salmon ought to help out. We've got to do it. They've pinned their
+faith on the white man, you know."
+
+"Sure, an' we can't throw 'm down," Shorty agreed. "An' we got two nasty
+jobs cut out for us, each just about twicet as nasty as the other. One
+of us has got to make a run of it to Mucluc an' raise a relief. The
+other has to stay here an' run the hospital an' most likely be eaten.
+Don't let it slip your noodle that we've been six days gettin' here; an'
+travelin' light, an' all played out, it can't be made back in less 'n
+three days."
+
+For a minute Smoke pondered the miles of the way they had come,
+visioning the miles in terms of time measured by his capacity for
+exertion. "I can get there to-morrow night," he announced.
+
+"All right," Shorty acquiesced cheerfully. "An' I'll stay an' be eaten."
+
+"But I'm going to take one fish each for the dogs," Smoke explained,
+"and one meal for myself."
+
+"An' you'll sure need it if you make Mucluc to-morrow night."
+
+Smoke, through the medium of Carluk, stated the program. "Make fires,
+long fires, plenty fires," he concluded. "Plenty Boston man stop Mucluc.
+Boston man much good. Boston man plenty grub. Five sleeps I come back
+plenty grub. This man, his name Shorty, very good friend of mine. He
+stop here. He big boss--savvy?"
+
+Carluk nodded and interpreted.
+
+"All grub stop here. Shorty, he give 'm grub. He boss--savvy?"
+
+Carluk interpreted, and nods and guttural cries of agreement proceeded
+from the men.
+
+Smoke remained and managed until the full swing of the arrangement was
+under way. Those who were able, crawled or staggered in the collecting
+of firewood. Long, Indian fires were built that accommodated all.
+Shorty, aided by a dozen assistants, with a short club handy for the
+rapping of hungry knuckles, plunged into the cooking. The women devoted
+themselves to thawing snow in every utensil that could be mustered.
+First, a tiny piece of bacon was distributed all around, and, next, a
+spoonful of sugar to cloy the edge of their razor appetites. Soon, on a
+circle of fires drawn about Shorty, many pots of beans were boiling,
+and he, with a wrathful eye for what he called renigers, was frying and
+apportioning the thinnest of flapjacks.
+
+"Me for the big cookin'," was his farewell to Smoke. "You just keep
+a-hikin'. Trot all the way there an' run all the way back. It'll take
+you to-day an' to-morrow to get there, and you can't be back inside of
+three days more. To-morrow they'll eat the last of the dog-fish, an'
+then there'll be nary a scrap for three days. You gotta keep a-comin',
+Smoke. You gotta keep a-comin'."
+
+Though the sled was light, loaded only with six dried salmon, a couple
+of pounds of frozen beans and bacon, and a sleeping-robe, Smoke could
+not make speed. Instead of riding the sled and running the dogs, he was
+compelled to plod at the gee-pole. Also, a day of work had already been
+done, and the freshness and spring had gone out of the dogs and himself.
+The long arctic twilight was on when he cleared the divide and left the
+Bald Buttes behind.
+
+Down the slope better time was accomplished, and often he was able to
+spring on the sled for short intervals and get an exhausting six-mile
+clip out of the animals. Darkness caught him and fooled him in a
+wide-valleyed, nameless creek. Here the creek wandered in broad
+horseshoe curves through the flats, and here, to save time, he began
+short-cutting the flats instead of keeping to the creek-bed. And black
+dark found him back on the creek-bed feeling for the trail. After an
+hour of futile searching, too wise to go farther astray, he built a
+fire, fed each dog half a fish, and divided his own ration in half.
+Rolled in his robe, ere quick sleep came he had solved the problem. The
+last big flat he had short-cut was the one that occurred at the forks
+of the creek. He had missed the trail by a mile. He was now on the main
+stream and below where his and Shorty's trail crossed the valley and
+climbed through a small feeder to the low divide on the other side.
+
+At the first hint of daylight he got under way, breakfastless, and
+wallowed a mile upstream to pick up the trail. And breakfastless, man
+and dogs, without a halt, for eight hours held back transversely across
+the series of small creeks and low divides and down Minnow Creek. By
+four in the afternoon, with darkness fast-set about him, he emerged on
+the hard-packed, running trail of Moose Creek. Fifty miles of it would
+end the journey. He called a rest, built a fire, threw each dog its
+half-salmon, and thawed and ate his pound of beans. Then he sprang on
+the sled, yelled, "Mush!" and the dogs went out strongly against their
+breast-bands.
+
+"Hit her up, you huskies!" he cried. "Mush on! Hit her up for grub! And
+no grub short of Mucluc! Dig in, you wolves! Dig in!"
+
+
+Midnight had gone a quarter of an hour in the Annie Mine. The main room
+was comfortably crowded, while roaring stoves, combined with lack of
+ventilation, kept the big room unsanitarily warm. The click of chips and
+the boisterous play at the craps-table furnished a monotonous background
+of sound to the equally monotonous rumble of men's voices where they
+sat and stood about and talked in groups and twos and threes. The
+gold-weighers were busy at their scales, for dust was the circulating
+medium, and even a dollar drink of whiskey at the bar had to be paid for
+to the weighers.
+
+The walls of the room were of tiered logs, the bark still on, and the
+chinking between the logs, plainly visible, was arctic moss. Through the
+open door that led to the dance-room came the rollicking strains of a
+Virginia reel, played by a piano and a fiddle. The drawing of Chinese
+lottery had just taken place, and the luckiest player, having cashed at
+the scales, was drinking up his winnings with half a dozen cronies.
+The faro- and roulette-tables were busy and quiet. The draw-poker and
+stud-poker tables, each with its circle of onlookers, were equally
+quiet. At another table, a serious, concentrated game of Black Jack was
+on. Only from the craps-table came noise, as the man who played rolled
+the dice, full sweep, down the green amphitheater of a table in pursuit
+of his elusive and long-delayed point. Ever he cried: "Oh! you Joe
+Cotton! Come a four! Come a Joe! Little Joe! Bring home the bacon, Joe!
+Joe, you Joe, you!"
+
+Cultus George, a big strapping Circle City Indian, leaned distantly and
+dourly against the log wall. He was a civilized Indian, if living like a
+white man connotes civilization; and he was sorely offended, though the
+offense was of long standing. For years he had done a white man's work,
+had done it alongside of white men, and often had done it better than
+they did. He wore the same pants they wore, the same hearty woolens and
+heavy shirts. He sported as good a watch as they, parted his short hair
+on the side, and ate the same food--bacon, beans, and flour; and yet he
+was denied their greatest diversion and reward; namely, whiskey. Cultus
+George was a money-earner. He had staked claims, and bought and sold
+claims. He had been grub-staked, and he had accorded grub-stakes. Just
+now he was a dog-musher and freighter, charging twenty-eight cents
+a pound for the winter haul from Sixty Mile to Mucluc--and for bacon
+thirty-three cents, as was the custom. His poke was fat with dust. He
+had the price of many drinks. Yet no barkeeper would serve him. Whiskey,
+the hottest, swiftest, completest gratifier of civilization, was not for
+him. Only by subterranean and cowardly and expensive ways could he get a
+drink. And he resented this invidious distinction, as he had resented
+it for years, deeply. And he was especially thirsty and resentful this
+night, while the white men he had so sedulously emulated he hated more
+bitterly than ever before. The white men would graciously permit him to
+lose his gold across their gaming-tables, but for neither love nor money
+could he obtain a drink across their bars. Wherefore he was very sober,
+and very logical, and logically sullen.
+
+The Virginia reel in the dance-room wound to a wild close that
+interfered not with the three camp drunkards who snored under the piano.
+"All couples promenade to the bar!" was the caller's last cry as the
+music stopped. And the couples were so promenading through the wide
+doorway into the main room--the men in furs and moccasins, the women
+in soft fluffy dresses, silk stockings, and dancing-slippers--when the
+double storm-doors were thrust open, and Smoke Bellew staggered wearily
+in.
+
+Eyes centered on him, and silence began to fall. He tried to speak,
+pulled off his mittens (which fell dangling from their cords), and
+clawed at the frozen moisture of his breath which had formed in fifty
+miles of running. He halted irresolutely, then went over and leaned his
+elbow on the end of the bar.
+
+Only the man at the craps-table, without turning his head, continued
+to roll the dice and to cry: "Oh! you Joe! Come on, you Joe!" The
+gamekeeper's gaze, fixed on Smoke, caught the player's attention, and
+he, too, with suspended dice, turned and looked.
+
+"What's up, Smoke?" Matson, the owner of the Annie Mine, demanded.
+
+With a last effort, Smoke clawed his mouth free. "I got some dogs out
+there--dead beat," he said huskily. "Somebody go and take care of them,
+and I'll tell you what's the matter."
+
+In a dozen brief sentences, he outlined the situation. The craps-player,
+his money still lying on the table and his slippery Joe Cotton still
+uncaptured, had come over to Smoke, and was now the first to speak.
+
+"We gotta do something. That's straight. But what? You've had time to
+think. What's your plan? Spit it out."
+
+"Sure," Smoke assented. "Here's what I've been thinking. We've got to
+hustle light sleds on the jump. Say a hundred pounds of grub on each
+sled. The driver's outfit and dog-grub will fetch it up fifty more.
+But they can make time. Say we start five of these sleds pronto--best
+running teams, best mushers and trail-eaters. On the soft trail the
+sleds can take the lead turn about. They've got to start at once. At the
+best, by the time they can get there, all those Indians won't have had a
+scrap to eat for three days. And then, as soon as we've got those sleds
+off we'll have to follow up with heavy sleds. Figure it out yourself.
+Two pounds a day is the very least we can decently keep those Indians
+traveling on. That's four hundred pounds a day, and, with the old people
+and the children, five days is the quickest time we can bring them into
+Mucluc. Now what are you going to do?"
+
+"Take up a collection to buy all the grub," said the craps-player.
+
+"I'll stand for the grub," Smoke began impatiently.
+
+"Nope," the other interrupted. "This ain't your treat. We're all in.
+Fetch a wash-basin somebody. It won't take a minute. An' here's a
+starter."
+
+He pulled a heavy gold-sack from his pocket, untied the mouth, and
+poured a stream of coarse dust and nuggets into the basin. A man beside
+him caught his hand up with a jerk and an oath, elevating the mouth
+of the sack so as to stop the run of the dust. To a casual eye, six or
+eight ounces had already run into the basin.
+
+"Don't be a hawg," cried the second man. "You ain't the only one with a
+poke. Gimme a chance at it."
+
+"Huh!" sneered the craps-player. "You'd think it was a stampede, you're
+so goshdanged eager about it."
+
+Men crowded and jostled for the opportunity to contribute, and when
+they were satisfied, Smoke hefted the heavy basin with both hands and
+grinned.
+
+"It will keep the whole tribe in grub for the rest of the winter," he
+said. "Now for the dogs. Five light teams that have some run in them."
+
+A dozen teams were volunteered, and the camp, as a committee of the
+whole, bickered and debated, accepted and rejected.
+
+"Huh! Your dray-horses!" Long Bill Haskell was told.
+
+"They can pull," he bristled with hurt pride.
+
+"They sure can," he was assured. "But they can't make time for sour
+apples. They've got theirs cut out for them bringing up the heavy
+loads."
+
+As fast as a team was selected, its owner, with half a dozen aids,
+departed to harness up and get ready.
+
+One team was rejected because it had come in tired that afternoon. One
+owner contributed his team, but apologetically exposed a bandaged ankle
+that prevented him from driving it. This team Smoke took, overriding the
+objection of the crowd that he was played out.
+
+Long Bill Haskell pointed out that while Fat Olsen's team was a
+crackerjack, Fat Olsen himself was an elephant. Fat Olsen's two hundred
+and forty pounds of heartiness was indignant. Tears of anger came into
+his eyes, and his Scandinavian explosions could not be stopped until he
+was given a place in the heavy division, the craps-player jumping at the
+chance to take out Olsen's light team.
+
+Five teams were accepted and were being harnessed and loaded, but only
+four drivers had satisfied the committee of the whole.
+
+"There's Cultus George," some one cried. "He's a trail-eater, and he's
+fresh and rested."
+
+All eyes turned upon the Indian, but his face was expressionless, and he
+said nothing.
+
+"You'll take a team," Smoke said to him.
+
+Still the big Indian made no answer. As with an electric thrill, it ran
+through all of them that something untoward was impending. A restless
+shifting of the group took place, forming a circle in which Smoke
+and Cultus George faced each other. And Smoke realized that by common
+consent he had been made the representative of his fellows in what was
+taking place, in what was to take place. Also, he was angered. It
+was beyond him that any human creature, a witness to the scramble of
+volunteers, should hang back. For another thing, in what followed,
+Smoke did not have Cultus George's point of view--did not dream that the
+Indian held back for any reason save the selfish, mercenary one.
+
+"Of course you will take a team," Smoke said.
+
+"How much?" Cultus George asked.
+
+A snarl, spontaneous and general, grated in the throats and twisted the
+mouths of the miners. At the same moment, with clenched fists or fingers
+crooked to grip, they pressed in on the offender.
+
+"Wait a bit, boys," Smoke cried. "Maybe he doesn't understand. Let me
+explain it to him. Look here, George. Don't you see, nobody is charging
+anything. They're giving everything to save two hundred Indians from
+starving to death." He paused, to let it sink home.
+
+"How much?" said Cultus George.
+
+"Wait, you fellows! Now listen, George. We don't want you to make any
+mistake. These starving people are your kind of people. They're another
+tribe, but they're Indians just the same. Now you've seen what the white
+men are doing--coughing up their dust, giving their dogs and sleds,
+falling over one another to hit the trail. Only the best men can go with
+the first sleds. Look at Fat Olsen there. He was ready to fight because
+they wouldn't let him go. You ought to be mighty proud because all men
+think you are a number-one musher. It isn't a case of how much, but how
+quick."
+
+"How much?" said Cultus George.
+
+"Kill him!" "Bust his head!" "Tar and feathers!" were several of the
+cries in the wild medley that went up, the spirit of philanthropy and
+good fellowship changed to brute savagery on the instant.
+
+In the storm-center Cultus George stood imperturbable, while Smoke
+thrust back the fiercest and shouted:
+
+"Wait! Who's running this?" The clamor died away. "Fetch a rope," he
+added quietly.
+
+Cultus George shrugged his shoulders, his face twisting tensely in a
+sullen and incredulous grin. He knew this white-man breed. He had toiled
+on trail with it and eaten its flour and bacon and beans too long not to
+know it. It was a law-abiding breed. He knew that thoroughly. It always
+punished the man who broke the law. But he had broken no law. He knew
+its law. He had lived up to it. He had neither murdered, stolen, nor
+lied. There was nothing in the white man's law against charging a price
+and driving a bargain. They all charged a price and drove bargains. He
+was doing nothing more than that, and it was the thing they had taught
+him. Besides, if he wasn't good enough to drink with them, then he was
+not good enough to be charitable with them, nor to join them in any
+other of their foolish diversions.
+
+Neither Smoke nor any man there glimpsed what lay in Cultus George's
+brain, behind his attitude and prompting his attitude. Though they
+did not know it, they were as beclouded as he in the matter of mutual
+understanding. To them, he was a selfish brute; to him, they were
+selfish brutes.
+
+When the rope was brought, Long Bill Haskell, Fat Olsen, and the
+craps-player, with much awkwardness and angry haste, got the slip-noose
+around the Indian's neck and rove the rope over a rafter. At the other
+end of the dangling thing a dozen men tailed on, ready to hoist away.
+
+Nor had Cultus George resisted. He knew it for what it was--bluff. The
+whites were strong on bluff. Was not draw-poker their favorite game? Did
+they not buy and sell and make all bargains with bluff? Yes; he had seen
+a white man do business with a look on his face of four aces and in his
+hand a busted straight.
+
+"Wait," Smoke commanded. "Tie his hands. We don't want him climbing."
+
+More bluff, Cultus George decided, and passively permitted his hands to
+be tied behind his back.
+
+"Now it's your last chance, George," said Smoke. "Will you take out the
+team?"
+
+"How much?" said Cultus George.
+
+Astounded at himself that he should be able to do such a thing, and at
+the same time angered by the colossal selfishness of the Indian, Smoke
+gave the signal. Nor was Cultus George any less astounded when he felt
+the noose tighten with a jerk and swing him off the floor. His stolidity
+broke on the instant. On his face, in quick succession, appeared
+surprise, dismay, and pain.
+
+Smoke watched anxiously. Having never been hanged himself, he felt a
+tyro at the business. The body struggled convulsively, the tied hands
+strove to burst the bonds, and from the throat came unpleasant noises of
+strangulation. Suddenly Smoke held up his hand.
+
+"Slack away" he ordered.
+
+Grumbling at the shortness of the punishment, the men on the rope
+lowered Cultus George to the floor. His eyes were bulging, and he was
+tottery on his feet, swaying from side to side and still making a
+fight with his hands. Smoke divined what was the matter, thrust violent
+fingers between the rope and the neck, and brought the noose slack with
+a jerk. With a great heave of the chest, Cultus George got his first
+breath.
+
+"Will you take that team out?" Smoke demanded.
+
+Cultus George did not answer. He was too busy breathing.
+
+"Oh, we white men are hogs," Smoke filled in the interval, resentful
+himself at the part he was compelled to play. "We'd sell our souls for
+gold, and all that; but once in a while we forget about it and turn
+loose and do something without a thought of how much there is in it. And
+when we do that, Cultus George, watch out. What we want to know now is:
+Are you going to take out that team?"
+
+Cultus George debated with himself. He was no coward. Perhaps this was
+the extent of their bluff, and if he gave in now he was a fool. And
+while he debated, Smoke suffered from secret worry lest this stubborn
+aborigine would persist in being hanged.
+
+"How much?" said Cultus George.
+
+Smoke started to raise his hand for the signal.
+
+"Me go," Cultus George said very quickly, before the rope could tighten.
+
+"An' when that rescue expedition found me," Shorty told it in the Annie
+Mine, "that ornery Cultus George was the first in, beatin' Smoke's sled
+by three hours, an' don't you forget it, Smoke comes in second at that.
+Just the same, it was about time, when I heard Cultus George a-yellin'
+at his dogs from the top of the divide, for those blamed Siwashes had
+ate my moccasins, my mitts, the leather lacin's, my knife-sheath, an'
+some of 'em was beginnin' to look mighty hungry at me--me bein' better
+nourished, you see.
+
+"An' Smoke? He was near dead. He hustled around a while, helpin' to
+start a meal for them two hundred sufferin' Siwashes; an' then he fell
+asleep, settin' on his haunches, thinkin' he was feedin' snow into a
+thawin'-pail. I fixed him my bed, an' dang me if I didn't have to help
+him into it, he was that give out. Sure I win the toothpicks. Didn't
+them dogs just naturally need the six salmon Smoke fed 'em at the
+noonin'?"
+
+
+
+
+IX. THE MISTAKE OF CREATION
+
+
+"Whoa!" Smoke yelled at the dogs, throwing his weight back on the
+gee-pole to bring the sled to a halt.
+
+"What's eatin' you now?" Shorty complained. "They ain't no water under
+that footing."
+
+"No; but look at that trail cutting out to the right," Smoke answered.
+"I thought nobody was wintering in this section."
+
+The dogs, on the moment they stopped, dropped in the snow and began
+biting out the particles of ice from between their toes. This ice had
+been water five minutes before. The animals had broken through a skein
+of ice, snow-powdered, which had hidden the spring water that oozed
+out of the bank and pooled on top of the three-foot winter crust of
+Nordbeska River.
+
+"First I heard of anybody up the Nordbeska," Shorty said, staring at the
+all but obliterated track covered by two feet of snow, that left the
+bed of the river at right angles and entered the mouth of a small stream
+flowing from the left. "Mebbe they're hunters and pulled their freight
+long ago."
+
+Smoke, scooping the light snow away with mittened hands, paused to
+consider, scooped again, and again paused. "No," he decided. "There's
+been travel both ways, but the last travel was up that creek. Whoever
+they are, they're there now--certain. There's been no travel for weeks.
+Now what's been keeping them there all the time? That's what I want to
+know."
+
+"And what I want to know is where we're going to camp to-night," Shorty
+said, staring disconsolately at the sky-line in the southwest, where the
+mid-afternoon twilight was darkening into night.
+
+"Let's follow the track up the creek," was Smoke's suggestion. "There's
+plenty of dead timber. We can camp any time."
+
+"Sure we can camp any time, but we got to travel most of the time if we
+ain't goin' to starve, an' we got to travel in the right direction."
+
+"We're going to find something up that creek," Smoke went on.
+
+"But look at the grub! Look at them dogs!" Shorty cried. "Look at--oh,
+hell, all right. You will have your will."
+
+"It won't make the trip a day longer," Smoke urged. "Possibly no more
+than a mile longer."
+
+"Men has died for as little as a mile," Shorty retorted, shaking his
+head with lugubrious resignation. "Come on for trouble. Get up, you poor
+sore-foots, you--get up! Haw! You Bright! Haw!"
+
+The lead-dog obeyed, and the whole team strained weakly into the soft
+snow.
+
+"Whoa!" Shorty yelled. "It's pack trail."
+
+Smoke pulled his snow-shoes from under the sled-lashings, bound them to
+his moccasined feet, and went to the fore to press and pack the light
+surface for the dogs.
+
+It was heavy work. Dogs and men had been for days on short rations, and
+few and limited were the reserves of energy they could call upon. Though
+they followed the creek bed, so pronounced was its fall that they toiled
+on a stiff and unrelenting up-grade. The high rocky walls quickly drew
+near together, so that their way led up the bottom of a narrow gorge.
+The long lingering twilight, blocked by the high mountains, was no more
+than semi-darkness.
+
+"It's a trap," Shorty said. "The whole look of it is rotten. It's a hole
+in the ground. It's the stampin'-ground of trouble."
+
+Smoke made no reply, and for half an hour they toiled on in silence--a
+silence that was again broken by Shorty.
+
+"She's a-workin'," he grumbled. "She's sure a-workin', an' I'll tell you
+if you're minded to hear an' listen."
+
+"Go on," Smoke answered.
+
+"Well, she tells me, plain an' simple, that we ain't never goin' to get
+out of this hole in the ground in days an' days. We're goin' to find
+trouble an' be stuck in here a long time an' then some."
+
+"Does she say anything about grub?" Smoke queried unsympathetically.
+"For we haven't grub for days and days and days and then some."
+
+"Nope. Nary whisper about grub. I guess we'll manage to make out. But
+I tell you one thing, Smoke, straight an' flat. I'll eat any dog in the
+team exceptin' Bright. I got to draw the line on Bright. I just couldn't
+scoff him."
+
+"Cheer up," Smoke girded. "My hunch is working overtime. She tells me
+there'll be no dogs eaten, and, whether it's moose or caribou or quail
+on toast, we'll all fatten up."
+
+Shorty snorted his unutterable disgust, and silence obtained for another
+quarter of an hour.
+
+"There's the beginning of your trouble," Smoke said, halting on his
+snow-shoes and staring at an object that lay on one side of the old
+trail.
+
+Shorty left the gee-pole and joined him, and together they gazed down on
+the body of a man beside the trail.
+
+"Well fed," said Smoke.
+
+"Look at them lips," said Shorty.
+
+"Stiff as a poker," said Smoke, lifting an arm, that, without moving,
+moved the whole body.
+
+"Pick 'm up an' drop 'm and he'd break to pieces," was Shorty's comment.
+
+The man lay on his side, solidly frozen. From the fact that no snow
+powdered him, it was patent that he had lain there but a short time.
+
+"There was a general fall of snow three days back," said Shorty.
+
+Smoke nodded, bending over the corpse, twisting it half up to face them,
+and pointing to a bullet wound in the temple. He glanced to the side and
+tilted his head at a revolver that lay on top of the snow.
+
+A hundred yards farther on they came upon a second body that lay face
+downward in the trail. "Two things are pretty clear," Smoke said.
+"They're fat. That means no famine. They've not struck it rich, else
+they wouldn't have committed suicide."
+
+"If they did," Shorty objected.
+
+"They certainly did. There are no tracks besides their own, and each is
+powder-burned." Smoke dragged the corpse to one side and with the toe
+of his moccasin nosed a revolver out of the snow into which it had been
+pressed by the body. "That's what did the work. I told you we'd find
+something."
+
+"From the looks of it we ain't started yet. Now what'd two fat geezers
+want to kill theirselves for?"
+
+"When we find that out we'll have found the rest of your trouble," Smoke
+answered. "Come on. It's blowing dark."
+
+Quite dark it was when Smoke's snow-shoe tripped him over a body. He
+fell across a sled, on which lay another body. And when he had dug the
+snow out of his neck and struck a match, he and Shorty glimpsed a third
+body, wrapped in blankets, lying beside a partially dug grave. Also, ere
+the match flickered out, they caught sight of half a dozen additional
+graves.
+
+"B-r-r-r," Shorty shivered. "Suicide Camp. All fed up. I reckon they're
+all dead."
+
+"No--peep at that." Smoke was looking farther along at a dim glimmer of
+light. "And there's another light--and a third one there. Come on. Let's
+hike."
+
+No more corpses delayed them, and in several minutes, over a hard-packed
+trail, they were in the camp.
+
+"It's a city," Shorty whispered. "There must be twenty cabins. An' not a
+dog. Ain't that funny!"
+
+"And that explains it," Smoke whispered back excitedly. "It's the Laura
+Sibley outfit. Don't you remember? Came up the Yukon last fall on the
+Port Townsend Number Six. Went right by Dawson without stopping. The
+steamer must have landed them at the mouth of the creek."
+
+"Sure. I remember. They was Mormons."
+
+"No--vegetarians." Smoke grinned in the darkness. "They won't eat meat
+and they won't work dogs."
+
+"It's all the same. I knowed they was something funny about 'em. Had
+the allwise steer to the yellow. That Laura Sibley was goin' to take 'em
+right to the spot where they'd all be millionaires."
+
+"Yes; she was their seeress--had visions and that sort of stuff. I
+thought they went up the Nordensjold."
+
+"Huh! Listen to that!"
+
+Shorty's hand in the darkness went out warningly to Smoke's chest, and
+together they listened to a groan, deep and long drawn, that came from
+one of the cabins. Ere it could die away it was taken up by another
+cabin, and another--a vast suspiration of human misery. The effect was
+monstrous and nightmarish.
+
+"B-r-r-r," Shorty shivered. "It's gettin' me goin'. Let's break in an'
+find what's eatin' 'em."
+
+Smoke knocked at a lighted cabin, and was followed in by Shorty in
+answer to the "Come in" of the voice they heard groaning. It was a
+simple log cabin, the walls moss-chinked, the earth floor covered with
+sawdust and shavings. The light was a kerosene-lamp, and they could
+make out four bunks, three of which were occupied by men who ceased from
+groaning in order to stare.
+
+"What's the matter?" Smoke demanded of one whose blankets could not
+hide his broad shoulders and massively muscled body, whose eyes were
+pain-racked and whose cheeks were hollow. "Smallpox? What is it?"
+
+In reply, the man pointed at his mouth, spreading black and swollen lips
+in the effort; and Smoke recoiled at the sight.
+
+"Scurvy," he muttered to Shorty; and the man confirmed the diagnosis
+with a nod of the head.
+
+"Plenty of grub?" Shorty asked.
+
+"Yep," was the answer from a man in another bunk. "Help yourself.
+There's slathers of it. The cabin next on the other side is empty. Cache
+is right alongside. Wade into it."
+
+In every cabin they visited that night they found a similar situation.
+Scurvy had smitten the whole camp. A dozen women were in the party,
+though the two men did not see all of them. Originally there had been
+ninety-three men and women. But ten had died, and two had recently
+disappeared. Smoke told of finding the two, and expressed surprise
+that none had gone that short distance down the trail to find out for
+themselves. What particularly struck him and Shorty was the helplessness
+of these people. Their cabins were littered and dirty. The dishes stood
+unwashed on the rough plank tables. There was no mutual aid. A cabin's
+troubles were its own troubles, and already they had ceased from the
+exertion of burying their dead.
+
+"It's almost weird," Smoke confided to Shorty. "I've met shirkers and
+loafers, but I never met so many all at one time. You heard what they
+said. They've never done a tap. I'll bet they haven't washed their own
+faces. No wonder they got scurvy."
+
+"But vegetarians hadn't ought to get scurvy," Shorty contended. "It's
+the salt-meat-eaters that's supposed to fall for it. And they don't eat
+meat, salt or fresh, raw or cooked, or any other way."
+
+Smoke shook his head. "I know. And it's vegetable diet that cures
+scurvy. No drugs will do it. Vegetables, especially potatoes, are the
+only dope. But don't forget one thing, Shorty: we are not up against
+a theory but a condition. The fact is these grass-eaters have all got
+scurvy."
+
+"Must be contagious."
+
+"No; that the doctors do know. Scurvy is not a germ disease. It can't
+be caught. It's generated. As near as I can get it, it's due to an
+impoverished condition of the blood. Its cause is not something they've
+got, but something they haven't got. A man gets scurvy for lack of
+certain chemicals in his blood, and those chemicals don't come out of
+powders and bottles, but do come out of vegetables."
+
+"An' these people eats nothin' but grass," Shorty groaned. "And they've
+got it up to their ears. That proves you're all wrong, Smoke. You're
+spielin' a theory, but this condition sure knocks the spots outa your
+theory. Scurvy's catchin', an' that's why they've all got it, an' rotten
+bad at that. You an' me'll get it too, if we hang around this diggin'.
+B-r-r-r!--I can feel the bugs crawlin' into my system right now."
+
+Smoke laughed skeptically, and knocked on a cabin door. "I suppose we'll
+find the same old thing," he said. "Come on. We've got to get a line on
+the situation."
+
+"What do you want?" came a woman's sharp voice.
+
+"We want to see you," Smoke answered.
+
+"Who are you?"
+
+"Two doctors from Dawson," Shorty blurted in, with a levity that brought
+a punch in the short ribs from Smoke's elbow.
+
+"Don't want to see any doctors," the woman said, in tones crisp and
+staccato with pain and irritation. "Go away. Good night. We don't
+believe in doctors."
+
+Smoke pulled the latch, shoved the door open, and entered, turning up
+the low-flamed kerosene-lamp so that he could see. In four bunks four
+women ceased from groaning and sighing to stare at the intruders. Two
+were young, thin-faced creatures, the third was an elderly and very
+stout woman, and the fourth, the one whom Smoke identified by her voice,
+was the thinnest, frailest specimen of the human race he had ever
+seen. As he quickly learned, she was Laura Sibley, the seeress and
+professional clairvoyant who had organized the expedition in Los Angeles
+and led it to this death-camp on the Nordbeska. The conversation that
+ensued was acrimonious. Laura Sibley did not believe in doctors. Also,
+to add to her purgatory, she had wellnigh ceased to believe in herself.
+
+"Why didn't you send out for help?" Smoke asked, when she paused,
+breathless and exhausted, from her initial tirade. "There's a camp at
+Stewart River, and eighteen days' travel would fetch Dawson from here."
+
+"Why didn't Amos Wentworth go?" she demanded, with a wrath that bordered
+on hysteria.
+
+"Don't know the gentleman," Smoke countered. "What's he been doing?"
+
+"Nothing. Except that he's the only one that hasn't caught the scurvy.
+And why hasn't he caught the scurvy? I'll tell you. No, I won't." The
+thin lips compressed so tightly that through the emaciated transparency
+of them Smoke was almost convinced he could see the teeth and the roots
+of the teeth. "And what would have been the use? Don't I know? I'm not a
+fool. Our caches are filled with every kind of fruit juice and preserved
+vegetables. We are better situated than any other camp in Alaska to
+fight scurvy. There is no prepared vegetable, fruit, and nut food we
+haven't, and in plenty."
+
+"She's got you there, Smoke," Shorty exulted. "And it's a condition, not
+a theory. You say vegetables cures. Here's the vegetables, and where's
+the cure?"
+
+"There's no explanation I can see," Smoke acknowledged. "Yet there is no
+camp in Alaska like this. I've seen scurvy--a sprinkling of cases here
+and there; but I never saw a whole camp with it, nor did I ever see such
+terrible cases. Which is neither here nor there, Shorty. We've got to do
+what we can for these people, but first we've got to make camp and take
+care of the dogs. We'll see you in the morning, er--Mrs. Sibley."
+
+"MISS Sibley," she bridled. "And now, young man, if you come fooling
+around this cabin with any doctor stuff I'll fill you full of birdshot."
+
+"This divine seeress is a sweet one," Smoke chuckled, as he and Shorty
+felt their way back through the darkness to the empty cabin next to the
+one they had first entered.
+
+It was evident that two men had lived until recently in the cabin, and
+the partners wondered if they weren't the two suicides down the
+trail. Together they overhauled the cache and found it filled with an
+undreamed-of variety of canned, powdered, dried, evaporated, condensed,
+and desiccated foods.
+
+"What in the name of reason do they want to go and get scurvy for?"
+Shorty demanded, brandishing to the light packages of egg-powder and
+Italian mushrooms. "And look at that! And that!" He tossed out cans
+of tomatoes and corn and bottles of stuffed olives. "And the divine
+steeress got the scurvy, too. What d'ye make of it?"
+
+"Seeress," Smoke corrected.
+
+"Steeress," Shorty reiterated. "Didn't she steer 'em here to this hole
+in the ground?"
+
+Next morning, after daylight, Smoke encountered a man carrying a heavy
+sled-load of firewood. He was a little man, clean-looking and spry, who
+walked briskly despite the load. Smoke experienced an immediate dislike.
+
+"What's the matter with you?" he asked.
+
+"Nothing," the little man answered.
+
+"I know that," Smoke said. "That's why I asked you. You're Amos
+Wentworth. Now why under the sun haven't you the scurvy like all the
+rest?"
+
+"Because I've exercised," came the quick reply. "There wasn't any need
+for any of them to get it if they'd only got out and done something.
+What did they do? Growled and kicked and grouched at the cold, the long
+nights, the hardships, the aches and pains and everything else. They
+loafed in their beds until they swelled up and couldn't leave them,
+that's all. Look at me. I've worked. Come into my cabin."
+
+Smoke followed him in.
+
+"Squint around. Clean as a whistle, eh? You bet. Everything shipshape.
+I wouldn't keep those chips and shavings on the floor except for the
+warmth, but they're clean chips and shavings. You ought to see the floor
+in some of the shacks. Pig-pens. As for me, I haven't eaten a meal off
+an unwashed dish. No, sir. It meant work, and I've worked, and I haven't
+the scurvy. You can put that in your pipe and smoke it."
+
+"You've hit the nail on the head," Smoke admitted. "But I see you've
+only one bunk. Why so unsociable?"
+
+"Because I like to be. It's easier to clean up for one than two, that's
+why. The lazy blanket-loafers! Do you think that I could have stood one
+around? No wonder they got scurvy."
+
+It was very convincing, but Smoke could not rid himself of his dislike
+of the man.
+
+"What's Laura Sibley got it in for you for?" he asked abruptly.
+
+Amos Wentworth shot a quick look at him. "She's a crank," was the reply.
+"So are we all cranks, for that matter. But Heaven save me from the
+crank that won't wash the dishes that he eats off of, and that's what
+this crowd of cranks are like."
+
+A few minutes later, Smoke was talking with Laura Sibley. Supported by a
+stick in either hand, she had paused in hobbling by his cabin.
+
+"What have you got it in for Wentworth for?" he asked, apropos of
+nothing in the conversation and with a suddenness that caught her off
+her guard.
+
+Her green eyes flashed bitterly, her emaciated face for the second
+was convulsed with rage, and her sore lips writhed on the verge of
+unconsidered speech. But only a splutter of gasping, unintelligible
+sounds issued forth, and then, by a terrible effort, she controlled
+herself.
+
+"Because he's healthy," she panted. "Because he hasn't the scurvy.
+Because he is supremely selfish. Because he won't lift a hand to help
+anybody else. Because he'd let us rot and die, as he is letting us rot
+and die, without lifting a finger to fetch us a pail of water or a
+load of firewood. That's the kind of a brute he is. But let him beware!
+That's all. Let him beware!"
+
+Still panting and gasping, she hobbled on her way, and five minutes
+afterward, coming out of the cabin to feed the dogs, Smoke saw her
+entering Amos Wentworth's cabin.
+
+"Something rotten here, Shorty, something rotten," he said, shaking
+his head ominously, as his partner came to the door to empty a pan of
+dish-water.
+
+"Sure," was the cheerful rejoinder. "An' you an' me'll be catchin' it
+yet. You'll see."
+
+"I don't mean the scurvy."
+
+"Oh, sure, if you mean the divine steeress. She'd rob a corpse. She's
+the hungriest-lookin' female I ever seen."
+
+"Exercise has kept you and me in condition, Shorty. It's kept Wentworth
+in condition. You see what lack of exercise has done for the rest. Now
+it's up to us to prescribe exercise for these hospital wrecks. It will
+be your job to see that they get it. I appoint you chief nurse."
+
+"What? Me?" Shorty shouted. "I resign."
+
+"No, you don't. I'll be able assistant, because it isn't going to be any
+soft snap. We've got to make them hustle. First thing, they'll have
+to bury their dead. The strongest for the burial squad; then the next
+strongest on the firewood squad (they've been lying in their blankets
+to save wood); and so on down the line. And spruce-tea. Mustn't forget
+that. All the sour-doughs swear by it. These people have never even
+heard of it."
+
+"We sure got ourn cut out for us," Shorty grinned. "First thing we know
+we'll be full of lead."
+
+"And that's our first job," Smoke said. "Come on."
+
+In the next hour, each of the twenty-odd cabins was raided. All
+ammunition and every rifle, shotgun, and revolver was confiscated.
+
+"Come on, you invalids," was Shorty's method. "Shootin'-irons--fork 'em
+over. We need 'em."
+
+"Who says so?" was the query at the first cabin.
+
+"Two doctors from Dawson," was Shorty's answer. "An' what they say goes.
+Come on. Shell out the ammunition, too."
+
+"What do you want them for?"
+
+"To stand off a war-party of canned beef comin' down the canyon. And I'm
+givin' you fair warnin' of a spruce-tea invasion. Come across."
+
+And this was only the beginning of the day. Men were persuaded, coaxed,
+bullied or dragged by main strength from their bunks and forced to
+dress. Smoke selected the mildest cases for the burial squad. Another
+squad was told off to supply the wood by which the graves were burned
+down into the frozen muck and gravel. Still another squad had to chop
+firewood and impartially supply every cabin. Those who were too weak for
+outdoor work were put to cleaning and scrubbing the cabins and washing
+clothes. One squad brought in many loads of spruce-boughs, and every
+stove was used for the brewing of spruce-tea.
+
+But no matter what face Smoke and Shorty put on it, the situation was
+grim and serious. At least thirty fearful and impossible cases could not
+be taken from the beds, as the two men, with nausea and horror, learned;
+while one, a woman, died in Laura Sibley's cabin. Yet strong measures
+were necessary.
+
+"I don't like to wallop a sick man," Shorty explained, his fist doubled
+menacingly. "But I'd wallop his block off if it'd make him well. And
+what all you lazy bums needs is a wallopin'. Come on! Out of that an'
+into them duds of yourn, double quick, or I'll sure muss up the front of
+your face."
+
+All the gangs groaned, and sighed, and wept, the tears streaming and
+freezing down their cheeks as they toiled; and it was patent that their
+agony was real. The situation was desperate, and Smoke's prescription
+was heroic.
+
+When the work-gangs came in at noon, they found decently cooked dinners
+awaiting them, prepared by the weaker members of their cabins under the
+tutelage and drive of Smoke and Shorty.
+
+"That'll do," Smoke said at three in the afternoon. "Knock off. Go to
+your bunks. You may be feeling rotten now, but you'll be the better for
+it to-morrow. Of course it hurts to get well, but I'm going to get you
+well."
+
+"Too late," Amos Wentworth sneered pallidly at Smoke's efforts. "They
+ought to have started in that way last fall."
+
+"Come along with me," Smoke answered. "Pick up those two pails. You're
+not ailing."
+
+From cabin to cabin the three men went, dosing every man and woman with
+a full pint of spruce-tea. Nor was it easy.
+
+"You might as well learn at the start that we mean business," Smoke
+stated to the first obdurate, who lay on his back, groaning through
+set teeth. "Stand by, Shorty." Smoke caught the patient by the nose and
+tapped the solar-plexus section so as to make the mouth gasp open. "Now,
+Shorty! Down she goes!"
+
+And down it went, accompanied with unavoidable splutterings and
+stranglings.
+
+"Next time you'll take it easier," Smoke assured the victim, reaching
+for the nose of the man in the adjoining bunk.
+
+"I'd sooner take castor oil," was Shorty's private confidence, ere he
+downed his own portion. "Great jumpin' Methuselem!" was his entirely
+public proclamation the moment after he had swallowed the bitter dose.
+"It's a pint long, but hogshead strong."
+
+"We're covering this spruce-tea route four times a day, and there are
+eighty of you to be dosed each time," Smoke informed Laura Sibley. "So
+we've no time to fool. Will you take it or must I hold your nose?" His
+thumb and forefinger hovered eloquently above her. "It's vegetable, so
+you needn't have any qualms."
+
+"Qualms!" Shorty snorted. "No, sure, certainly not. It's the
+deliciousest dope!"
+
+Laura Sibley hesitated. She gulped her apprehension.
+
+"Well?" Smoke demanded peremptorily.
+
+"I'll--I'll take it," she quavered. "Hurry up!"
+
+That night, exhausted as by no hard day of trail, Smoke and Shorty
+crawled into their blankets.
+
+"I'm fairly sick with it," Smoke confessed. "The way they suffer is
+awful. But exercise is the only remedy I can think of, and it must be
+given a thorough trial. I wish we had a sack of raw potatoes."
+
+"Sparkins he can't wash no more dishes," Shorty said. "It hurts him so
+he sweats his pain. I seen him sweat it. I had to put him back in the
+bunk, he was that helpless."
+
+"If only we had raw potatoes," Smoke went on. "The vital, essential
+something is missing from that prepared stuff. The life has been
+evaporated out of it."
+
+"An' if that young fellow Jones in the Brownlow cabin don't croak before
+morning I miss my guess."
+
+"For Heaven's sake be cheerful," Smoke chided.
+
+"We got to bury him, ain't we?" came the indignant snort. "I tell you
+that boy's something awful--"
+
+"Shut up," Smoke said.
+
+And after several more indignant snorts, the heavy breathing of sleep
+arose from Shorty's bunk.
+
+In the morning, not only was Jones dead, but one of the stronger men
+who had worked on the firewood squad was found to have hanged himself. A
+nightmare procession of days set in. For a week, steeling himself to the
+task, Smoke enforced the exercise and the spruce-tea. And one by one,
+and in twos and threes, he was compelled to knock off the workers. As
+he was learning, exercise was the last thing in the world for scurvy
+patients. The diminishing burial squad was kept steadily at work, and a
+surplus half-dozen graves were always burned down and waiting.
+
+"You couldn't have selected a worse place for a camp," Smoke told Laura
+Sibley. "Look at it--at the bottom of a narrow gorge, running east and
+west. The noon sun doesn't rise above the top of the wall. You can't
+have had sunlight for several months."
+
+"But how was I to know?"
+
+He shrugged his shoulders. "I don't see why not, if you could lead a
+hundred fools to a gold-mine."
+
+She glared malevolently at him and hobbled on. Several minutes
+afterward, coming back from a trip to where a squad of groaning patients
+was gathering spruce-boughs, Smoke saw the seeress entering Amos
+Wentworth's cabin and followed after her. At the door he could hear her
+voice, whimpering and pleading.
+
+"Just for me," she was begging, as Smoke entered. "I won't tell a soul."
+
+Both glanced guiltily at the intruder, and Smoke was certain that he was
+on the edge of something, he knew not what, and he cursed himself for
+not having eavesdropped.
+
+"Out with it," he commanded harshly. "What is it?"
+
+"What is what?" Amos Wentworth asked sullenly. And Smoke could not name
+what was what.
+
+Grimmer and grimmer grew the situation. In that dark hole of a canyon,
+where sunlight never penetrated, the horrible death list mounted up.
+Each day, in apprehension, Smoke and Shorty examined each other's mouths
+for the whitening of the gums and mucous membranes--the invariable first
+symptom of the disease.
+
+"I've quit," Shorty announced one evening. "I've been thinkin' it over,
+an' I quit. I can make a go at slave-drivin', but cripple-drivin's too
+much for my stomach. They go from bad to worse. They ain't twenty men
+I can drive to work. I told Jackson this afternoon he could take to his
+bunk. He was gettin' ready to suicide. I could see it stickin' out all
+over him. Exercise ain't no good."
+
+"I've made up my mind to the same thing," Smoke answered. "We'll knock
+off all but about a dozen. They'll have to lend a hand. We can relay
+them. And we'll keep up the spruce-tea."
+
+"It ain't no good."
+
+"I'm about ready to agree with that, too, but at any rate it doesn't
+hurt them."
+
+"Another suicide," was Shorty's news the following morning. "That
+Phillips is the one. I seen it comin' for days."
+
+"We're up against the real thing," Smoke groaned. "What would you
+suggest, Shorty?"
+
+"Who? Me? I ain't got no suggestions. The thing's got to run its
+course."
+
+"But that means they'll all die," Smoke protested.
+
+"Except Wentworth," Shorty snarled; for he had quickly come to share his
+partner's dislike for that individual.
+
+The everlasting miracle of Wentworth's immunity perplexed Smoke. Why
+should he alone not have developed scurvy? Why did Laura Sibley hate
+him, and at the same time whine and snivel and beg from him? What was it
+she begged from him and that he would not give?
+
+On several occasions Smoke made it a point to drop into Wentworth's
+cabin at meal-time. But one thing did he note that was suspicious, and
+that was Wentworth's suspicion of him. Next he tried sounding out Laura
+Sibley.
+
+"Raw potatoes would cure everybody here," he remarked to the seeress. "I
+know it. I've seen it work before."
+
+The flare of conviction in her eyes, followed by bitterness and hatred,
+told him the scent was warm.
+
+"Why didn't you bring in a supply of fresh potatoes on the steamer?" he
+asked.
+
+"We did. But coming up the river we sold them all out at a bargain at
+Fort Yukon. We had plenty of the evaporated kinds, and we knew they'd
+keep better. They wouldn't even freeze."
+
+Smoke groaned. "And you sold them all?" he asked.
+
+"Yes. How were we to know?"
+
+"Now mightn't there have been a couple of odd sacks left?--accidentally,
+you know, mislaid on the steamer?"
+
+She shook her head, as he thought, a trifle belatedly, then added, "We
+never found any."
+
+"But mightn't there?" he persisted.
+
+"How do I know?" she rasped angrily. "I didn't have charge of the
+commissary."
+
+"And Amos Wentworth did," he jumped to the conclusion. "Very good.
+Now what is your private opinion--just between us two. Do you think
+Wentworth has any raw potatoes stored away somewhere?"
+
+"No; certainly not. Why should he?"
+
+"Why shouldn't he?"
+
+She shrugged her shoulders.
+
+Struggle as he would with her, Smoke could not bring her to admit the
+possibility.
+
+"Wentworth's a swine," was Shorty's verdict, when Smoke told his
+suspicions.
+
+"And so is Laura Sibley," Smoke added. "She believes he has the
+potatoes, and is keeping it quiet, and trying to get him to share with
+her."
+
+"An' he won't come across, eh?" Shorty cursed frail human nature with
+one of his best flights, and caught his breath. "They both got their
+feet in the trough. May God rot them dead with scurvy for their reward,
+that's all I got to say, except I'm goin' right up now an' knock
+Wentworth's block off."
+
+But Smoke stood out for diplomacy. That night, when the camp groaned and
+slept, or groaned and did not sleep, he went to Wentworth's unlighted
+cabin.
+
+"Listen to me, Wentworth," he said. "I've got a thousand dollars in
+dust right here in this sack. I'm a rich man in this country, and I can
+afford it. I think I'm getting touched. Put a raw potato in my hand and
+the dust is yours. Here, heft it."
+
+And Smoke thrilled when Amos Wentworth put out his hand in the darkness
+and hefted the gold. Smoke heard him fumble in the blankets, and
+then felt pressed into his hand, not the heavy gold-sack, but the
+unmistakable potato, the size of a hen's egg, warm from contact with the
+other's body.
+
+Smoke did not wait till morning. He and Shorty were expecting at any
+time the deaths of their worst two cases, and to this cabin the partners
+went. Grated and mashed up in a cup, skin, and clinging specks of the
+earth, and all, was the thousand-dollar potato--a thick fluid, that they
+fed, several drops at a time, into the frightful orifices that had once
+been mouths. Shift by shift, through the long night, Smoke and Shorty
+relieved each other at administering the potato juice, rubbing it into
+the poor swollen gums where loose teeth rattled together and compelling
+the swallowing of every drop of the precious elixir.
+
+By evening of the next day the change for the better in the two patients
+was miraculous and almost unbelievable. They were no longer the worst
+cases. In forty-eight hours, with the exhaustion of the potato, they
+were temporarily out of danger, though far from being cured.
+
+"I'll tell you what I'll do," Smoke said to Wentworth. "I've got
+holdings in this country, and my paper is good anywhere. I'll give
+you five hundred dollars a potato up to fifty thousand dollars' worth.
+That's one hundred potatoes."
+
+"Was that all the dust you had?" Wentworth queried.
+
+"Shorty and I scraped up all we had. But, straight, he and I are worth
+several millions between us."
+
+"I haven't any potatoes," Wentworth said finally. "Wish I had. That
+potato I gave you was the only one. I'd been saving it all the winter
+for fear I'd get the scurvy. I only sold it so as to be able to buy a
+passage out of the country when the river opens."
+
+Despite the cessation of potato-juice, the two treated cases continued
+to improve through the third day. The untreated cases went from bad to
+worse. On the fourth morning, three horrible corpses were buried. Shorty
+went through the ordeal, then turned to Smoke.
+
+"You've tried your way. Now it's me for mine."
+
+He headed straight for Wentworth's cabin. What occurred there, Shorty
+never told. He emerged with knuckles skinned and bruised, and not only
+did Wentworth's face bear all the marks of a bad beating, but for a long
+time he carried his head, twisted and sidling, on a stiff neck. This
+phenomenon was accounted for by a row of four finger-marks, black and
+blue, on one side of the windpipe and by a single black-and-blue mark on
+the other side.
+
+Next, Smoke and Shorty together invaded Wentworth's cabin, throwing him
+out in the snow while they turned the interior upside down. Laura Sibley
+hobbled in and frantically joined them in the search.
+
+"You don't get none, old girl, not if we find a ton," Shorty assured
+her.
+
+But she was no more disappointed than they. Though the very floor was
+dug up, they discovered nothing.
+
+"I'm for roastin' him over a slow fire an' make 'm cough up," Shorty
+proposed earnestly.
+
+Smoke shook his head reluctantly.
+
+"It's murder," Shorty held on. "He's murderin' all them poor geezers
+just as much as if he knocked their brains out with an ax, only worse."
+
+Another day passed, during which they kept a steady watch on Wentworth's
+movements. Several times, when he started out, water-bucket in hand, for
+the creek, they casually approached the cabin, and each time he hurried
+back without the water.
+
+"They're cached right there in his cabin," Shorty said. "As sure as God
+made little apples, they are. But where? We sure overhauled it plenty."
+He stood up and pulled on his mittens. "I'm goin' to find 'em, if I have
+to pull the blame shack down a log at a time."
+
+He glanced at Smoke, who, with an intent, absent face, had not heard
+him.
+
+"What's eatin' you?" Shorty demanded wrathfully. "Don't tell me you've
+gone an' got the scurvy!"
+
+"Just trying to remember something, Shorty."
+
+"What?"
+
+"I don't know. That's the trouble. But it has a bearing, if only I could
+remember it."
+
+"Now you look here, Smoke; don't you go an' get bug-house," Shorty
+pleaded. "Think of me! Let your think-slats rip. Come on an' help me
+pull that shack down. I'd set her afire, if it wa'n't for roastin' them
+spuds."
+
+"That's it!" Smoke exploded, as he sprang to his feet. "Just what I was
+trying to remember. Where's that kerosene-can? I'm with you, Shorty. The
+potatoes are ours."
+
+"What's the game?"
+
+"Watch me, that's all," Smoke baffled. "I always told you, Shorty, that
+a deficient acquaintance with literature was a handicap, even in the
+Klondike. Now what we're going to do came out of a book. I read it when
+I was a kid, and it will work. Come on."
+
+Several minutes later, under a pale-gleaming, greenish aurora
+borealis, the two men crept up to Amos Wentworth's cabin. Carefully
+and noiselessly they poured kerosene over the logs, extra-drenching the
+door-frame and window-sash. Then the match was applied, and they watched
+the flaming oil gather headway. They drew back beyond the growing light
+and waited.
+
+They saw Wentworth rush out, stare wildly at the conflagration, and
+plunge back into the cabin. Scarcely a minute elapsed when he emerged,
+this time slowly, half doubled over, his shoulders burdened by a sack
+heavy and unmistakable. Smoke and Shorty sprang at him like a pair of
+famished wolves. They hit him right and left, at the same instant. He
+crumpled down under the weight of the sack, which Smoke pressed
+over with his hands to make sure. Then he felt his knees clasped by
+Wentworth's arms as the man turned a ghastly face upward.
+
+"Give me a dozen, only a dozen--half a dozen--and you can have the
+rest," he squalled. He bared his teeth and, with mad rage, half inclined
+his head to bite Smoke's leg, then he changed his mind and fell to
+pleading. "Just half a dozen," he wailed. "Just half a dozen. I was
+going to turn them over to you--to-morrow. Yes, to-morrow. That was my
+idea. They're life! They're life! Just half a dozen!"
+
+"Where's the other sack?" Smoke bluffed.
+
+"I ate it up," was the reply, unimpeachably honest. "That sack's all
+that's left. Give me a few. You can have the rest."
+
+"Ate 'em up!" Shorty screamed. "A whole sack! An' them geezers dyin' for
+want of 'em! This for you! An' this! An' this! An' this! You swine! You
+hog!"
+
+The first kick tore Wentworth away from his embrace of Smoke's knees.
+The second kick turned him over in the snow. But Shorty went on kicking.
+
+"Watch out for your toes," was Smoke's only interference.
+
+"Sure; I'm usin' the heel," Shorty answered. "Watch me. I'll cave his
+ribs in. I'll kick his jaw off. Take that! An' that! Wisht I could give
+you the boot instead of the moccasin. You swine!"
+
+There was no sleep in camp that night. Hour after hour Smoke and Shorty
+went the rounds, doling the life-renewing potato-juice, a quarter of a
+spoonful at a dose, into the poor ruined mouths of the population. And
+through the following day, while one slept the other kept up the work.
+
+There were no more deaths. The most awful cases began to mend with an
+immediacy that was startling. By the third day, men who had not been off
+their backs for weeks crawled out of their bunks and tottered around on
+crutches. And on that day, the sun, two months then on its journey into
+northern declination, peeped cheerfully over the crest of the canyon for
+the first time.
+
+"Nary a potato," Shorty told the whining, begging Wentworth. "You ain't
+even touched with scurvy. You got outside a whole sack, an' you're
+loaded against scurvy for twenty years. Knowin' you, I've come to
+understand God. I always wondered why he let Satan live. Now I know. He
+let him live just as I let you live. But it's a cryin' shame, just the
+same."
+
+"A word of advice," Smoke told Wentworth. "These men are getting well
+fast; Shorty and I are leaving in a week, and there will be nobody to
+protect you when these men go after you. There's the trail. Dawson's
+eighteen days' travel."
+
+"Pull your freight, Amos," Shorty supplemented, "or what I done to you
+won't be a circumstance to what them convalescents'll do to you."
+
+"Gentlemen, I beg of you, listen to me," Wentworth whined. "I'm a
+stranger in this country. I don't know its ways. I don't know the trail.
+Let me travel with you. I'll give you a thousand dollars if you'll let
+me travel with you."
+
+"Sure," Smoke grinned maliciously. "If Shorty agrees."
+
+"WHO? ME?" Shorty stiffened for a supreme effort. "I ain't nobody.
+Woodticks ain't got nothin' on me when it comes to humility. I'm a worm,
+a maggot, brother to the pollywog an' child of the blow-fly. I ain't
+afraid or ashamed of nothin' that creeps or crawls or stinks. But travel
+with that mistake of creation! Go 'way, man. I ain't proud, but you turn
+my stomach."
+
+And Amos Wentworth went away, alone, dragging a sled loaded with
+provisions sufficient to last him to Dawson. A mile down the trail
+Shorty overhauled him.
+
+"Come here to me," was Shorty's greeting. "Come across. Fork over. Cough
+up."
+
+"I don't understand," Wentworth quavered, shivering from recollection of
+the two beatings, hand and foot, he had already received from Shorty.
+
+"That thousand dollars, d' ye understand that? That thousand dollars
+gold Smoke bought that measly potato with. Come through."
+
+And Amos Wentworth passed the gold-sack over.
+
+"Hope a skunk bites you an' you get howlin' hydrophoby," were the terms
+of Shorty's farewell.
+
+
+
+
+X. A FLUTTER IN EGGS
+
+
+It was in the A. C. Company's big store at Dawson, on a morning of crisp
+frost, that Lucille Arral beckoned Smoke Bellew over to the dry-goods
+counter. The clerk had gone on an expedition into the storerooms, and,
+despite the huge, red-hot stoves, Lucille had drawn on her mittens
+again.
+
+Smoke obeyed her call with alacrity. The man did not exist in Dawson
+who would not have been flattered by the notice of Lucille Arral, the
+singing soubrette of the tiny stock company that performed nightly at
+the Palace Opera House.
+
+"Things are dead," she complained, with pretty petulance, as soon as
+they had shaken hands. "There hasn't been a stampede for a week. That
+masked ball Skiff Mitchell was going to give us has been postponed.
+There's no dust in circulation. There's always standing-room now at the
+Opera House. And there hasn't been a mail from the Outside for two whole
+weeks. In short, this burg has crawled into its cave and gone to sleep.
+We've got to do something. It needs livening--and you and I can do it.
+We can give it excitement if anybody can. I've broken with Wild Water,
+you know."
+
+Smoke caught two almost simultaneous visions. One was of Joy Gastell;
+the other was of himself, in the midst of a bleak snow-stretch, under
+a cold arctic moon, being pot-shotted with accurateness and dispatch by
+the aforesaid Wild Water. Smoke's reluctance at raising excitement with
+the aid of Lucille Arral was too patent for her to miss.
+
+"I'm not thinking what you are thinking at all, thank you," she chided,
+with a laugh and a pout. "When I throw myself at your head you'll have
+to have more eyes and better ones than you have now to see me."
+
+"Men have died of heart disease at the sudden announcement of good
+fortune," he murmured in the unveracious gladness of relief.
+
+"Liar," she retorted graciously. "You were more scared to death than
+anything else. Now take it from me, Mr. Smoke Bellew, I'm not going to
+make love to you, and if you dare to make love to me, Wild Water will
+take care of your case. You know HIM. Besides, I--I haven't really
+broken with him."
+
+"Go on with your puzzles," he jeered. "Maybe I can start guessing what
+you're driving at after a while."
+
+"There's no guessing, Smoke. I'll give it to you straight. Wild Water
+thinks I've broken with him, don't you see."
+
+"Well, have you, or haven't you?"
+
+"I haven't--there! But it's between you and me in confidence. He thinks
+I have. I made a noise like breaking with him, and he deserved it, too."
+
+"Where do I come in, stalking-horse or fall-guy?"
+
+"Neither. You make a pot of money, we put across the laugh on Wild Water
+and cheer Dawson up, and, best of all, and the reason for it all, he
+gets disciplined. He needs it. He's--well, the best way to put it is,
+he's too turbulent. Just because he's a big husky, because he owns more
+rich claims than he can keep count of--"
+
+"And because he's engaged to the prettiest little woman in Alaska,"
+Smoke interpolated.
+
+"Yes, and because of that, too, thank you, is no reason for him to get
+riotous. He broke out last night again. Sowed the floor of the M. &
+M. with gold-dust. All of a thousand dollars. Just opened his poke
+and scattered it under the feet of the dancers. You've heard of it, of
+course."
+
+"Yes; this morning. I'd like to be the sweeper in that establishment.
+But still I don't get you. Where do I come in?"
+
+"Listen. He was too turbulent. I broke our engagement, and he's going
+around making a noise like a broken heart. Now we come to it. I like
+eggs."
+
+"They're off!" Smoke cried in despair. "Which way? Which way?"
+
+"Wait."
+
+"But what have eggs and appetite got to do with it?" he demanded.
+
+"Everything, if you'll only listen."
+
+"Listening, listening," he chanted.
+
+"Then for Heaven's sake listen. I like eggs. There's only a limited
+supply of eggs in Dawson."
+
+"Sure. I know that, too. Slavovitch's restaurant has most of them. Ham
+and one egg, three dollars. Ham and two eggs, five dollars. That means
+two dollars an egg, retail. And only the swells and the Arrals and the
+Wild Waters can afford them."
+
+"He likes eggs, too," she continued. "But that's not the point. I like
+them. I have breakfast every morning at eleven o'clock at Slavovitch's.
+I invariably eat two eggs." She paused impressively. "Suppose, just
+suppose, somebody corners eggs."
+
+She waited, and Smoke regarded her with admiring eyes, while in his
+heart he backed with approval Wild Water's choice of her.
+
+"You're not following," she said.
+
+"Go on," he replied. "I give up. What's the answer?"
+
+"Stupid! You know Wild Water. When he sees I'm languishing for eggs, and
+I know his mind like a book, and I know how to languish, what will he
+do?"
+
+"You answer it. Go on."
+
+"Why, he'll just start stampeding for the man that's got the corner in
+eggs. He'll buy the corner, no matter what it costs. Picture: I come
+into Slavovitch's at eleven o'clock. Wild Water will be at the next
+table. He'll make it his business to be there. 'Two eggs, shirred,' I'll
+say to the waiter. 'Sorry, Miss Arral,' the waiter will say; 'they ain't
+no more eggs.' Then up speaks Wild Water, in that big bear voice of his,
+'Waiter, six eggs, soft boiled.' And the waiter says, 'Yes, sir,' and
+the eggs are brought. Picture: Wild Water looks sideways at me, and I
+look like a particularly indignant icicle and summon the waiter. 'Sorry,
+Miss Arral,' he says, 'but them eggs is Mr. Wild Water's. You see, Miss,
+he owns 'em.' Picture: Wild Water, triumphant, doing his best to look
+unconscious while he eats his six eggs.
+
+"Another picture: Slavovitch himself bringing two shirred eggs to me and
+saying, 'Compliments of Mr. Wild Water, Miss.' What can I do? What can I
+possibly do but smile at Wild Water, and then we make up, of course, and
+he'll consider it cheap if he has been compelled to pay ten dollars for
+each and every egg in the corner."
+
+"Go on, go on," Smoke urged. "At what station do I climb onto the
+choo-choo cars, or at what water-tank do I get thrown off?"
+
+"Ninny! You don't get thrown off. You ride the egg-train straight into
+the Union Depot. You make that corner in eggs. You start in immediately,
+to-day. You can buy every egg in Dawson for three dollars and sell out
+to Wild Water at almost any advance. And then, afterward, we'll let the
+inside history come out. The laugh will be on Wild Water. His turbulence
+will be some subdued. You and I share the glory of it. You make a pile
+of money. And Dawson wakes up with a grand ha! ha! Of course--if--if you
+think the speculation too risky, I'll put up the dust for the corner."
+
+This last was too much for Smoke. Being only a mere mortal Western man,
+with queer obsessions about money and women, he declined with scorn the
+proffer of her dust.
+
+"Hey! Shorty!" Smoke called across the main street to his partner, who
+was trudging along in his swift, slack-jointed way, a naked bottle with
+frozen contents conspicuously tucked under his arm. Smoke crossed over.
+
+"Where have you been all morning? Been looking for you everywhere."
+
+"Up to Doc's," Shorty answered, holding out the bottle. "Something's
+wrong with Sally. I seen last night, at feedin'-time, the hair on her
+tail an' flanks was fallin' out. The Doc says--"
+
+"Never mind that," Smoke broke in impatiently. "What I want--"
+
+"What's eatin' you?" Shorty demanded in indignant astonishment. "An'
+Sally gettin' naked bald in this crimpy weather! I tell you that dog's
+sick. Doc says--"
+
+"Let Sally wait. Listen to me--"
+
+"I tell you she can't wait. It's cruelty to animals. She'll be
+frost-bit. What are you in such a fever about anyway? Has that Monte
+Cristo strike proved up?"
+
+"I don't know, Shorty. But I want you to do me a favor."
+
+"Sure," Shorty said gallantly, immediately appeased and acquiescent.
+"What is it? Let her rip. Me for you."
+
+"I want you to buy eggs for me--"
+
+"Sure, an' Floridy water an' talcum powder, if you say the word. An'
+poor Sally sheddin' something scand'lous! Look here, Smoke, if you want
+to go in for high livin' you go an' buy your own eggs. Beans an' bacon's
+good enough for me."
+
+"I am going to buy, but I want you to help me to buy. Now, shut up,
+Shorty. I've got the floor. You go right straight to Slavovitch's. Pay
+as high as three dollars, but buy all he's got."
+
+"Three dollars!" Shorty groaned. "An' I heard tell only yesterday that
+he's got all of seven hundred in stock! Twenty-one hundred dollars for
+hen-fruit! Say, Smoke, I tell you what. You run right up and see the
+Doc. He'll tend to your case. An' he'll only charge you an ounce for the
+first prescription. So-long, I gotta to be pullin' my freight."
+
+He started off, but Smoke caught his partner by the shoulder, arresting
+his progress and whirling him around.
+
+"Smoke, I'd sure do anything for you," Shorty protested earnestly. "If
+you had a cold in the head an' was layin' with both arms broke, I'd set
+by your bedside, day an' night, an' wipe your nose for you. But I'll
+be everlastin'ly damned if I'll squander twenty-one hundred good iron
+dollars on hen-fruit for you or any other two-legged man."
+
+"They're not your dollars, but mine, Shorty. It's a deal I have on. What
+I'm after is to corner every blessed egg in Dawson, in the Klondike, on
+the Yukon. You've got to help me out. I haven't the time to tell you of
+the inwardness of the deal. I will afterward, and let you go half on
+it if you want to. But the thing right now is to get the eggs. Now you
+hustle up to Slavovitch's and buy all he's got."
+
+"But what'll I tell 'm? He'll sure know I ain't goin' to eat 'em."
+
+"Tell him nothing. Money talks. He sells them cooked for two dollars.
+Offer him up to three for them uncooked. If he gets curious, tell him
+you're starting a chicken ranch. What I want is the eggs. And then keep
+on; nose out every egg in Dawson and buy it. Understand? Buy it! That
+little joint across the street from Slavovitch's has a few. Buy them.
+I'm going over to Klondike City. There's an old man there, with a bad
+leg, who's broke and who has six dozen. He's held them all winter for
+the rise, intending to get enough out of them to pay his passage back
+to Seattle. I'll see he gets his passage, and I'll get the eggs. Now
+hustle. And they say that little woman down beyond the sawmill who makes
+moccasins has a couple of dozen."
+
+"All right, if you say so, Smoke. But Slavovitch seems the main squeeze.
+I'll just get an iron-bound option, black an' white, an' gather in the
+scatterin' first."
+
+"All right. Hustle. And I'll tell you the scheme tonight."
+
+But Shorty flourished the bottle. "I'm goin' to doctor up Sally first.
+The eggs can wait that long. If they ain't all eaten, they won't be
+eaten while I'm takin' care of a poor sick dog that's saved your life
+an' mine more 'n once."
+
+Never was a market cornered more quickly. In three days every known
+egg in Dawson, with the exception of several dozen, was in the hands
+of Smoke and Shorty. Smoke had been more liberal in purchasing. He
+unblushingly pleaded guilty to having given the old man in Klondike City
+five dollars apiece for his seventy-two eggs. Shorty had bought most of
+the eggs, and he had driven bargains. He had given only two dollars an
+egg to the woman who made moccasins, and he prided himself that he had
+come off fairly well with Slavovitch, whose seven hundred and fifteen
+eggs he had bought at a flat rate of two dollars and a half. On the
+other hand, he grumbled because the little restaurant across the street
+had held him up for two dollars and seventy-five cents for a paltry
+hundred and thirty-four eggs.
+
+The several dozen not yet gathered in were in the hands of two persons.
+One, with whom Shorty was dealing, was an Indian woman who lived in a
+cabin on the hill back of the hospital.
+
+"I'll get her to-day," Shorty announced next morning. "You wash the
+dishes, Smoke. I'll be back in a jiffy, if I don't bust myself
+a-shovin' dust at her. Gimme a man to deal with every time. These blamed
+women--it's something sad the way they can hold out on a buyer. The only
+way to get 'em is sellin'. Why, you'd think them eggs of hern was solid
+nuggets."
+
+In the afternoon, when Smoke returned to the cabin, he found Shorty
+squatted on the floor, rubbing ointment into Sally's tail, his
+countenance so expressionless that it was suspicious.
+
+"What luck?" Shorty asked carelessly, after several minutes had passed.
+
+"Nothing doing," Smoke answered. "How did you get on with the squaw?"
+
+Shorty cocked his head triumphantly toward a tin pail of eggs on the
+table. "Seven dollars a clatter, though," he confessed, after another
+minute of silent rubbing.
+
+"I offered ten dollars finally," Smoke said, "and then the fellow told
+me he'd already sold his eggs. Now that looks bad, Shorty. Somebody
+else is in the market. Those twenty-eight eggs are liable to cause us
+trouble. You see, the success of the corner consists in holding every
+last--"
+
+He broke off to stare at his partner. A pronounced change was coming
+over Shorty--one of agitation masked by extreme deliberation. He closed
+the salve-box, wiped his hands slowly and thoroughly on Sally's furry
+coat, stood up, went over to the corner and looked at the thermometer,
+and came back again. He spoke in a low, toneless, and super-polite
+voice.
+
+"Do you mind kindly just repeating over how many eggs you said the man
+didn't sell to you?" he asked.
+
+"Twenty-eight."
+
+"Hum," Shorty communed to himself, with a slight duck of the head of
+careless acknowledgment. Then he glanced with slumbering anger at the
+stove. "Smoke, we'll have to dig up a new stove. That fire-box is burned
+plumb into the oven so it blacks the biscuits."
+
+"Let the fire-box alone," Smoke commanded, "and tell me what's the
+matter."
+
+"Matter? An' you want to know what's the matter? Well, kindly please
+direct them handsome eyes of yourn at that there pail settin' on the
+table. See it?"
+
+Smoke nodded.
+
+"Well, I want to tell you one thing, just one thing. They's just
+exactly, preecisely, nor nothin' more or anythin' less'n twenty-eight
+eggs in the pail, an' they cost, every danged last one of 'em, just
+exactly seven great big round iron dollars a throw. If you stand in
+cryin' need of any further items of information, I'm willin' and free to
+impart."
+
+"Go on," Smoke requested.
+
+"Well, that geezer you was dickerin' with is a big buck Indian. Am I
+right?"
+
+Smoke nodded, and continued to nod to each question.
+
+"He's got one cheek half gone where a bald-face grizzly swatted him. Am
+I right? He's a dog-trader--right, eh? His name is Scar-Face Jim. That's
+so, ain't it? D'ye get my drift?"
+
+"You mean we've been bidding--?"
+
+"Against each other. Sure thing. That squaw's his wife, an' they keep
+house on the hill back of the hospital. I could 'a' got them eggs for
+two a throw if you hadn't butted in."
+
+"And so could I," Smoke laughed, "if you'd kept out, blame you! But it
+doesn't amount to anything. We know that we've got the corner. That's
+the big thing."
+
+Shorty spent the next hour wrestling with a stub of a pencil on the
+margin of a three-year-old newspaper, and the more interminable and
+hieroglyphic grew his figures the more cheerful he became.
+
+"There she stands," he said at last. "Pretty? I guess yes. Lemme give
+you the totals. You an' me has right now in our possession exactly nine
+hundred an' seventy-three eggs. They cost us exactly two thousand, seven
+hundred an' sixty dollars, reckonin' dust at sixteen an ounce an' not
+countin' time. An' now listen to me. If we stick up Wild Water for
+ten dollars a egg we stand to win, clean net an' all to the good, just
+exactly six thousand nine hundred and seventy dollars. Now that's a
+book-makin' what is, if anybody should ride up on a dog-sled an' ask
+you. An' I'm in half on it! Put her there, Smoke. I'm that thankful
+I'm sure droolin' gratitude. Book-makin'! Say, I'd sooner run with the
+chicks than the ponies any day."
+
+At eleven that night Smoke was routed from sound sleep by Shorty,
+whose fur parka exhaled an atmosphere of keen frost and whose hand was
+extremely cold in its contact with Smoke's cheek.
+
+"What is it now?" Smoke grumbled. "Rest of Sally's hair fallen out?"
+
+"Nope. But I just had to tell you the good news. I seen Slavovitch. Or
+Slavovitch seen me, I guess, because he started the seance. He says to
+me: 'Shorty, I want to speak to you about them eggs. I've kept it quiet.
+Nobody knows I sold 'em to you. But if you're speculatin', I can put you
+wise to a good thing.' An' he did, too, Smoke. Now what'd you guess that
+good thing is?"
+
+"Go on. Name it."
+
+"Well, maybe it sounds incredible, but that good thing was Wild Water
+Charley. He's lookin' to buy eggs. He goes around to Slavovitch an'
+offers him five dollars an egg, an' before he quits he's offerin'
+eight. An' Slavovitch ain't got no eggs. Last thing Wild Water says to
+Slavovitch is that he'll beat the head offen him if he ever finds out
+Slavovitch has eggs cached away somewheres. Slavovitch had to tell 'm
+he'd sold the eggs, but that the buyer was secret.
+
+"Slavovitch says to let him say the word to Wild Water who's got the
+eggs. 'Shorty,' he says to me, 'Wild Water'll come a-runnin'. You can
+hold him up for eight dollars.' 'Eight dollars, your grandmother,' I
+says. 'He'll fall for ten before I'm done with him.' Anyway, I told
+Slavovitch I'd think it over and let him know in the mornin'. Of course
+we'll let 'm pass the word on to Wild Water. Am I right?"
+
+"You certainly are, Shorty. First thing in the morning tip off
+Slavovitch. Have him tell Wild Water that you and I are partners in the
+deal."
+
+Five minutes later Smoke was again aroused by Shorty.
+
+"Say! Smoke! Oh, Smoke!"
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"Not a cent less than ten a throw. Do you get that?"
+
+"Sure thing--all right," Smoke returned sleepily.
+
+In the morning Smoke chanced upon Lucille Arral again at the dry-goods
+counter of the A. C. Store.
+
+"It's working," he jubilated. "It's working. Wild Water's been around
+to Slavovitch, trying to buy or bully eggs out of him. And by this time
+Slavovitch has told him that Shorty and I own the corner."
+
+Lucille Arral's eyes sparkled with delight. "I'm going to breakfast
+right now," she cried. "And I'll ask the waiter for eggs, and be so
+plaintive when there aren't any as to melt a heart of stone. And you
+know Wild Water's been around to Slavovitch, trying to buy the corner
+if it costs him one of his mines. I know him. And hold out for a stiff
+figure. Nothing less than ten dollars will satisfy me, and if you sell
+for anything less, Smoke, I'll never forgive you."
+
+That noon, up in their cabin, Shorty placed on the table a pot of beans,
+a pot of coffee, a pan of sourdough biscuits, a tin of butter and a tin
+of condensed cream, a smoking platter of moose-meat and bacon, a plate
+of stewed dried peaches, and called: "Grub's ready. Take a slant at
+Sally first."
+
+Smoke put aside the harness on which he was sewing, opened the door,
+and saw Sally and Bright spiritedly driving away a bunch of foraging
+sled-dogs that belonged to the next cabin. Also he saw something else
+that made him close the door hurriedly and dash to the stove. The
+frying-pan, still hot from the moose-meat and bacon, he put back on the
+front lid. Into the frying-pan he put a generous dab of butter, then
+reached for an egg, which he broke and dropped spluttering into the pan.
+As he reached for a second egg, Shorty gained his side and clutched his
+arm in an excited grip.
+
+"Hey! What you doin'?" he demanded.
+
+"Frying eggs," Smoke informed him, breaking the second one and throwing
+off Shorty's detaining hand. "What's the matter with your eyesight? Did
+you think I was combing my hair?"
+
+"Don't you feel well?" Shorty queried anxiously, as Smoke broke a third
+egg and dexterously thrust him back with a stiff-arm jolt on the breast.
+"Or are you just plain loco? That's thirty dollars' worth of eggs
+already."
+
+"And I'm going to make it sixty dollars' worth," was the answer, as
+Smoke broke the fourth. "Get out of the way, Shorty. Wild Water's coming
+up the hill, and he'll be here in five minutes."
+
+Shorty sighed vastly with commingled comprehension and relief, and sat
+down at the table. By the time the expected knock came at the door,
+Smoke was facing him across the table, and, before each, was a plate
+containing three hot, fried eggs.
+
+"Come in!" Smoke called.
+
+Wild Water Charley, a strapping young giant just a fraction of an inch
+under six feet in height and carrying a clean weight of one hundred and
+ninety pounds, entered and shook hands.
+
+"Set down an' have a bite, Wild Water," Shorty invited. "Smoke, fry him
+some eggs. I'll bet he ain't scoffed an egg in a coon's age."
+
+Smoke broke three more eggs into the hot pan, and in several minutes
+placed them before his guest, who looked at them with so strange and
+strained an expression that Shorty confessed afterward his fear that
+Wild Water would slip them into his pocket and carry them away.
+
+"Say, them swells down in the States ain't got nothin' over us in the
+matter of eats," Shorty gloated. "Here's you an' me an' Smoke gettin'
+outside ninety dollars' worth of eggs an' not battin' an eye."
+
+Wild Water stared at the rapidly disappearing eggs and seemed petrified.
+
+"Pitch in an' eat," Smoke encouraged.
+
+"They--they ain't worth no ten dollars," Wild Water said slowly.
+
+Shorty accepted the challenge. "A thing's worth what you can get for it,
+ain't it?" he demanded.
+
+"Yes, but--"
+
+"But nothin'. I'm tellin' you what we can get for 'em. Ten a throw, just
+like that. We're the egg trust, Smoke an' me, an' don't you forget it.
+When we say ten a throw, ten a throw goes." He mopped his plate with
+a biscuit. "I could almost eat a couple more," he sighed, then helped
+himself to the beans.
+
+"You can't eat eggs like that," Wild Water objected. "It--it ain't
+right."
+
+"We just dote on eggs, Smoke an' me," was Shorty's excuse.
+
+Wild Water finished his own plate in a half-hearted way and gazed
+dubiously at the two comrades. "Say, you fellows can do me a great
+favor," he began tentatively. "Sell me, or lend me, or give me, about a
+dozen of them eggs."
+
+"Sure," Smoke answered. "I know what a yearning for eggs is myself. But
+we're not so poor that we have to sell our hospitality. They'll cost you
+nothing--" Here a sharp kick under the table admonished him that Shorty
+was getting nervous. "A dozen, did you say, Wild Water?"
+
+Wild Water nodded.
+
+"Go ahead, Shorty," Smoke went on. "Cook them up for him. I can
+sympathize. I've seen the time myself when I could eat a dozen, straight
+off the bat."
+
+But Wild Water laid a restraining hand on the eager Shorty as he
+explained. "I don't mean cooked. I want them with the shells on."
+
+"So that you can carry 'em away?"
+
+"That's the idea."
+
+"But that ain't hospitality," Shorty objected. "It's--it's tradin'."
+
+Smoke nodded concurrence. "That's different, Wild Water. I thought you
+just wanted to eat them. You see, we went into this for a speculation."
+
+The dangerous blue of Wild Water's eyes began to grow more dangerous.
+"I'll pay you for them," he said sharply. "How much?"
+
+"Oh, not a dozen," Smoke replied. "We couldn't sell a dozen. We're not
+retailers; we're speculators. We can't break our own market. We've got
+a hard and fast corner, and when we sell out it's the whole corner or
+nothing."
+
+"How many have you got, and how much do you want for them?"
+
+"How many have we, Shorty?" Smoke inquired.
+
+Shorty cleared his throat and performed mental arithmetic aloud. "Lemme
+see. Nine hundred an' seventy-three minus nine, that leaves nine hundred
+an' sixty-two. An' the whole shootin'-match, at ten a throw, will tote
+up just about nine thousand six hundred an' twenty iron dollars. Of
+course, Wild Water, we're playin' fair, an' it's money back for bad
+ones, though they ain't none. That's one thing I never seen in the
+Klondike--a bad egg. No man's fool enough to bring in a bad egg."
+
+"That's fair," Smoke added. "Money back for the bad ones, Wild Water.
+And there's our proposition--nine thousand six hundred and twenty
+dollars for every egg in the Klondike."
+
+"You might play them up to twenty a throw an' double your money," Shorty
+suggested.
+
+Wild Water shook his head sadly and helped himself to the beans. "That
+would be too expensive, Shorty. I only want a few. I'll give you ten
+dollars for a couple of dozen. I'll give you twenty--but I can't buy 'em
+all."
+
+"All or none," was Smoke's ultimatum.
+
+"Look here, you two," Wild Water said in a burst of confidence. "I'll
+be perfectly honest with you, an' don't let it go any further. You know
+Miss Arral an' I was engaged. Well, she's broken everything off. You
+know it. Everybody knows it. It's for her I want them eggs."
+
+"Huh!" Shorty jeered. "It's clear an' plain why you want 'em with the
+shells on. But I never thought it of you."
+
+"Thought what?"
+
+"It's low-down mean, that's what it is," Shorty rushed on, virtuously
+indignant. "I wouldn't wonder somebody filled you full of lead for it,
+an' you'd deserve it, too."
+
+Wild Water began to flame toward the verge of one of his notorious
+Berserker rages. His hands clenched until the cheap fork in one of them
+began to bend, while his blue eyes flashed warning sparks. "Now
+look here, Shorty, just what do you mean? If you think anything
+underhanded--"
+
+"I mean what I mean," Shorty retorted doggedly, "an' you bet your sweet
+life I don't mean anything underhanded. Overhand's the only way to do
+it. You can't throw 'em any other way."
+
+"Throw what?"
+
+"Eggs, prunes, baseballs, anything. But Wild Water, you're makin' a
+mistake. They ain't no crowd ever sat at the Opery House that'll stand
+for it. Just because she's a actress is no reason you can publicly
+lambaste her with hen-fruit."
+
+For the moment it seemed that Wild Water was going to burst or have
+apoplexy. He gulped down a mouthful of scalding coffee and slowly
+recovered himself.
+
+"You're in wrong, Shorty," he said with cold deliberation. "I'm
+not going to throw eggs at her. Why, man," he cried, with growing
+excitement, "I want to give them eggs to her, on a platter,
+shirred--that's the way she likes 'em."
+
+"I knowed I was wrong," Shorty cried generously, "I knowed you couldn't
+do a low-down trick like that."
+
+"That's all right, Shorty," Wild Water forgave him. "But let's get down
+to business. You see why I want them eggs. I want 'em bad."
+
+"Do you want 'em ninety-six hundred an' twenty dollars' worth?" Shorty
+queried.
+
+"It's a hold-up, that's what it is," Wild Water declared irately.
+
+"It's business," Smoke retorted. "You don't think we're peddling eggs
+for our health, do you?"
+
+"Aw, listen to reason," Wild Water pleaded. "I only want a couple of
+dozen. I'll give you twenty apiece for 'em. What do I want with all the
+rest of them eggs? I've went years in this country without eggs, an' I
+guess I can keep on managin' without 'em somehow."
+
+"Don't get het up about it," Shorty counseled. "If you don't want 'em,
+that settles it. We ain't a-forcin' 'em on you."
+
+"But I do want 'em," Wild Water complained.
+
+"Then you know what they'll cost you--ninety-six hundred an' twenty
+dollars, an' if my figurin's wrong, I'll treat."
+
+"But maybe they won't turn the trick," Wild Water objected. "Maybe Miss
+Arral's lost her taste for eggs by this time."
+
+"I should say Miss Arral's worth the price of the eggs," Smoke put in
+quietly.
+
+"Worth it!" Wild Water stood up in the heat of his eloquence. "She's
+worth a million dollars. She's worth all I've got. She's worth all the
+dust in the Klondike." He sat down, and went on in a calmer voice. "But
+that ain't no call for me to gamble ten thousand dollars on a breakfast
+for her. Now I've got a proposition. Lend me a couple of dozen of them
+eggs. I'll turn 'em over to Slavovitch. He'll feed 'em to her with my
+compliments. She ain't smiled to me for a hundred years. If them eggs
+gets a smile for me, I'll take the whole boiling off your hands."
+
+"Will you sign a contract to that effect?" Smoke said quickly; for he
+knew that Lucille Arral had agreed to smile.
+
+Wild Water gasped. "You're almighty swift with business up here on the
+hill," he said, with a hint of a snarl.
+
+"We're only accepting your own proposition," Smoke answered.
+
+"All right--bring on the paper--make it out, hard and fast," Wild Water
+cried in the anger of surrender.
+
+Smoke immediately wrote out the document, wherein Wild Water agreed to
+take every egg delivered to him at ten dollars per egg, provided that
+the two dozen advanced to him brought about a reconciliation with
+Lucille Arral.
+
+Wild Water paused, with uplifted pen, as he was about to sign. "Hold
+on," he said. "When I buy eggs I buy good eggs."
+
+"They ain't a bad egg in the Klondike," Shorty snorted.
+
+"Just the same, if I find one bad egg you've got to come back with the
+ten I paid for it."
+
+"That's all right," Smoke placated. "It's only fair."
+
+"An' every bad egg you come back with I'll eat," Shorty declared.
+
+Smoke inserted the word "good" in the contract, and Wild Water sullenly
+signed, received the trial two dozen in a tin pail, pulled on his
+mittens, and opened the door.
+
+"Good-by, you robbers," he growled back at them, and slammed the door.
+
+Smoke was a witness to the play next morning in Slavovitch's. He sat,
+as Wild Water's guest, at the table adjoining Lucille Arral's. Almost to
+the letter, as she had forecast it, did the scene come off.
+
+"Haven't you found any eggs yet?" she murmured plaintively to the
+waiter.
+
+"No, ma'am," came the answer. "They say somebody's cornered every egg in
+Dawson. Mr. Slavovitch is trying to buy a few just especially for you.
+But the fellow that's got the corner won't let loose."
+
+It was at this juncture that Wild Water beckoned the proprietor to him,
+and, with one hand on his shoulder, drew his head down. "Look here,
+Slavovitch," Wild Water whispered hoarsely, "I turned over a couple of
+dozen eggs to you last night. Where are they?"
+
+"In the safe, all but that six I have all thawed and ready for you any
+time you sing out."
+
+"I don't want 'em for myself," Wild Water breathed in a still lower
+voice. "Shir 'em up and present 'em to Miss Arral there."
+
+"I'll attend to it personally myself," Slavovitch assured him.
+
+"An' don't forget--compliments of me," Wild Water concluded, relaxing
+his detaining clutch on the proprietor's shoulder.
+
+Pretty Lucille Arral was gazing forlornly at the strip of breakfast
+bacon and the tinned mashed potatoes on her plate when Slavovitch placed
+before her two shirred eggs.
+
+"Compliments of Mr. Wild Water," they at the next table heard him say.
+
+Smoke acknowledged to himself that it was a fine bit of acting--the
+quick, joyous flash in the face of her, the impulsive turn of the head,
+the spontaneous forerunner of a smile that was only checked by a superb
+self-control which resolutely drew her face back so that she could say
+something to the restaurant proprietor.
+
+Smoke felt the kick of Wild Water's moccasined foot under the table.
+
+"Will she eat 'em?--that's the question--will she eat 'em?" the latter
+whispered agonizingly.
+
+And with sidelong glances they saw Lucille Arral hesitate, almost push
+the dish from her, then surrender to its lure.
+
+"I'll take them eggs," Wild Water said to Smoke. "The contract holds.
+Did you see her? Did you see her! She almost smiled. I know her. It's
+all fixed. Two more eggs to-morrow an' she'll forgive an' make up. If
+she wasn't here I'd shake hands, Smoke, I'm that grateful. You ain't a
+robber; you're a philanthropist."
+
+Smoke returned jubilantly up the hill to the cabin, only to find Shorty
+playing solitaire in black despair. Smoke had long since learned that
+whenever his partner got out the cards for solitaire it was a warning
+signal that the bottom had dropped out of the world.
+
+"Go 'way, don't talk to me," was the first rebuff Smoke received.
+
+But Shorty soon thawed into a freshet of speech.
+
+"It's all off with the big Swede," he groaned. "The corner's busted.
+They'll be sellin' sherry an' egg in all the saloons to-morrow at a
+dollar a flip. They ain't no starvin' orphan child in Dawson that won't
+be wrappin' its tummy around eggs. What d'ye think I run into?--a
+geezer with three thousan' eggs--d'ye get me? Three thousan', an' just
+freighted in from Forty Mile."
+
+"Fairy stories," Smoke doubted.
+
+"Fairy hell! I seen them eggs. Gautereaux's his name--a whackin' big,
+blue-eyed French-Canadian husky. He asked for you first, then took me to
+the side and jabbed me straight to the heart. It was our cornerin' eggs
+that got him started. He knowed about them three thousan' at Forty Mile
+an' just went an' got 'em. 'Show 'em to me,' I says. An' he did. There
+was his dog-teams, an' a couple of Indian drivers, restin' down the
+bank where they'd just pulled in from Forty Mile. An' on the sleds was
+soap-boxes--teeny wooden soap-boxes.
+
+"We took one out behind a ice-jam in the middle of the river an' busted
+it open. Eggs!--full of 'em, all packed in sawdust. Smoke, you an' me
+lose. We've been gamblin'. D'ye know what he had the gall to say to
+me?--that they was all ourn at ten dollars a egg. D'ye know what he was
+doin' when I left his cabin?--drawin' a sign of eggs for sale. Said he'd
+give us first choice, at ten a throw, till 2 P. M., an' after that, if
+we didn't come across, he'd bust the market higher'n a kite. Said he
+wasn't no business man, but that he knowed a good thing when he seen
+it--meanin' you an' me, as I took it."
+
+"It's all right," Smoke said cheerfully. "Keep your shirt on an' let me
+think a moment. Quick action and team play is all that's needed. I'll
+get Wild Water here at two o'clock to take delivery of eggs. You buy
+that Gautereaux's eggs. Try and make a bargain. Even if you pay ten
+dollars apiece for them, Wild Water will take them off our hands at the
+same price. If you can get them cheaper, why, we make a profit as well.
+Now go to it. Have them here by not later than two o'clock. Borrow
+Colonel Bowie's dogs and take our team. Have them here by two sharp."
+
+"Say, Smoke," Shorty called, as his partner started down the hill.
+"Better take an umbrella. I wouldn't be none surprised to see the
+weather rainin' eggs before you get back."
+
+Smoke found Wild Water at the M. & M., and a stormy half-hour ensued.
+
+"I warn you we've picked up some more eggs," Smoke said, after Wild
+Water had agreed to bring his dust to the cabin at two o'clock and pay
+on delivery.
+
+"You're luckier at finding eggs than me," Wild Water admitted. "Now, how
+many eggs have you got now?--an' how much dust do I tote up the hill?"
+
+Smoke consulted his notebook. "As it stands now, according to Shorty's
+figures, we've three thousand nine hundred and sixty-two eggs. Multiply
+by ten--"
+
+"Forty thousand dollars!" Wild Water bellowed. "You said there was only
+something like nine hundred eggs. It's a stickup! I won't stand for it!"
+
+Smoke drew the contract from his pocket and pointed to the PAY ON
+DELIVERY. "No mention is made of the number of eggs to be delivered. You
+agreed to pay ten dollars for every egg we delivered to you. Well, we've
+got the eggs, and a signed contract is a signed contract. Honestly,
+though, Wild Water, we didn't know about those other eggs until
+afterward. Then we had to buy them in order to make our corner good."
+
+For five long minutes, in choking silence, Wild Water fought a battle
+with himself, then reluctantly gave in.
+
+"I'm in bad," he said brokenly. "The landscape's fair sproutin' eggs.
+An' the quicker I get out the better. There might come a landslide of
+'em. I'll be there at two o'clock. But forty thousand dollars!"
+
+"It's only thirty-nine thousand six hundred an' twenty," Smoke
+corrected. "It'll weigh two hundred pounds," Wild Water raved on. "I'll
+have to freight it up with a dog-team."
+
+"We'll lend you our teams to carry the eggs away," Smoke volunteered.
+
+"But where'll I cache 'em? Never mind. I'll be there. But as long as I
+live I'll never eat another egg. I'm full sick of 'em."
+
+At half-past one, doubling the dog-teams for the steep pitch of the
+hill, Shorty arrived with Gautereaux's eggs. "We dang near double our
+winnings," Shorty told Smoke, as they piled the soap-boxes inside the
+cabin. "I holds 'm down to eight dollars, an' after he cussed loco in
+French he falls for it. Now that's two dollars clear profit to us for
+each egg, an' they're three thousan' of 'em. I paid 'm in full. Here's
+the receipt."
+
+While Smoke got out the gold-scales and prepared for business, Shorty
+devoted himself to calculation.
+
+"There's the figgers," he announced triumphantly. "We win twelve
+thousan' nine hundred an' seventy dollars. An' we don't do Wild Water
+no harm. He wins Miss Arral. Besides, he gets all them eggs. It's sure a
+bargain-counter all around. Nobody loses."
+
+"Even Gautereaux's twenty-four thousand to the good," Smoke laughed,
+"minus, of course, what the eggs and the freighting cost him. And
+if Wild Water plays the corner, he may make a profit out of the eggs
+himself."
+
+Promptly at two o'clock, Shorty, peeping, saw Wild Water coming up the
+hill. When he entered he was brisk and businesslike. He took off his big
+bearskin coat, hung it on a nail, and sat down at the table.
+
+"Bring on them eggs, you pirates," he commenced. "An' after this day, if
+you know what's good for you, never mention eggs to me again."
+
+They began on the miscellaneous assortment of the original corner,
+all three men counting. When two hundred had been reached, Wild Water
+suddenly cracked an egg on the edge of the table and opened it deftly
+with his thumbs.
+
+"Hey! Hold on!" Shorty objected.
+
+"It's my egg, ain't it?" Wild Water snarled. "I'm paying ten dollars for
+it, ain't I? But I ain't buying no pig in a poke. When I cough up ten
+bucks an egg I want to know what I'm gettin'."
+
+"If you don't like it, I'll eat it," Shorty volunteered maliciously.
+
+Wild Water looked and smelled and shook his head. "No, you don't,
+Shorty. That's a good egg. Gimme a pail. I'm goin' to eat it myself for
+supper."
+
+Thrice again Wild Water cracked good eggs experimentally and put them in
+the pail beside him.
+
+"Two more than you figgered, Shorty," he said at the end of the count.
+"Nine hundred an' sixty-four, not sixty-two."
+
+"My mistake," Shorty acknowledged handsomely. "We'll throw 'em in for
+good measure."
+
+"Guess you can afford to," Wild Water accepted grimly. "Pass the batch.
+Nine thousan' six hundred an' twenty dollars. I'll pay for it now. Write
+a receipt, Smoke."
+
+"Why not count the rest," Smoke suggested, "and pay all at once?"
+
+Wild Water shook his head. "I'm no good at figgers. One batch at a time
+an' no mistakes."
+
+Going to his fur coat, from each of the side pockets he drew forth two
+sacks of dust, so rotund and long that they resembled bologna sausages.
+When the first batch had been paid for, there remained in the gold-sacks
+not more than several hundred dollars.
+
+A soap-box was carried to the table, and the count of the three thousand
+began. At the end of one hundred, Wild Water struck an egg sharply
+against the edge of the table. There was no crack. The resultant sound
+was like that of the striking of a sphere of solid marble.
+
+"Frozen solid," he remarked, striking more sharply.
+
+He held the egg up, and they could see the shell powdered to minute
+fragments along the line of impact.
+
+"Huh!" said Shorty. "It ought to be solid, seein' it has just been
+freighted up from Forty Mile. It'll take an ax to bust it."
+
+"Me for the ax," said Wild Water.
+
+Smoke brought the ax, and Wild Water, with the clever hand and eye of
+the woodsman, split the egg cleanly in half. The appearance of the egg's
+interior was anything but satisfactory. Smoke felt a premonitory chill.
+Shorty was more valiant. He held one of the halves to his nose.
+
+"Smells all right," he said.
+
+"But it looks all wrong," Wild Water contended. "An' how can it smell
+when the smell's frozen along with the rest of it? Wait a minute."
+
+He put the two halves into a frying-pan and placed the latter on the
+front lid of the hot stove. Then the three men, with distended, questing
+nostrils, waited in silence. Slowly an unmistakable odor began to drift
+through the room. Wild Water forbore to speak, and Shorty remained dumb
+despite conviction.
+
+"Throw it out," Smoke cried, gasping.
+
+"What's the good?" asked Wild Water. "We've got to sample the rest."
+
+"Not in this cabin." Smoke coughed and conquered a qualm. "Chop them
+open, and we can test by looking at them. Throw it out, Shorty--Throw it
+out! Phew! And leave the door open!"
+
+Box after box was opened; egg after egg, chosen at random, was chopped
+in two; and every egg carried the same message of hopeless, irremediable
+decay.
+
+"I won't ask you to eat 'em, Shorty," Wild Water jeered, "an' if you
+don't mind, I can't get outa here too quick. My contract called for GOOD
+eggs. If you'll loan me a sled an' team I'll haul them good ones away
+before they get contaminated."
+
+Smoke helped in loading the sled. Shorty sat at the table, the cards
+laid before him for solitaire.
+
+"Say, how long you been holdin' that corner?" was Wild Water's parting
+gibe.
+
+Smoke made no reply, and, with one glance at his absorbed partner,
+proceeded to fling the soap boxes out into the snow.
+
+"Say, Shorty, how much did you say you paid for that three thousand?"
+Smoke queried gently.
+
+"Eight dollars. Go 'way. Don't talk to me. I can figger as well as you.
+We lose seventeen thousan' on the flutter, if anybody should ride up on
+a dog-sled an' ask you. I figgered that out while waitin' for the first
+egg to smell."
+
+Smoke pondered a few minutes, then again broke silence. "Say, Shorty.
+Forty thousand dollars gold weighs two hundred pounds. Wild Water
+borrowed our sled and team to haul away his eggs. He came up the hill
+without a sled. Those two sacks of dust in his coat pockets weighed
+about twenty pounds each. The understanding was cash on delivery. He
+brought enough dust to pay for the good eggs. He never expected to pay
+for those three thousand. He knew they were bad. Now how did he know
+they were bad? What do you make of it, anyway?"
+
+Shorty gathered the cards, started to shuffle a new deal, then paused.
+"Huh! That ain't nothin'. A child could answer it. We lose seventeen
+thousan'. Wild Water wins seventeen thousan'. Them eggs of Gautereaux's
+was Wild Water's all the time. Anything else you're curious to know?"
+
+"Yes. Why in the name of common sense didn't you find out whether those
+eggs were good before you paid for them?"
+
+"Just as easy as the first question. Wild Water swung the bunco game
+timed to seconds. I hadn't no time to examine them eggs. I had to hustle
+to get 'em here for delivery. An' now, Smoke, lemme ask you one civil
+question. What did you say was the party's name that put this egg corner
+idea into your head?"
+
+Shorty had lost the sixteenth consecutive game of solitaire, and Smoke
+was casting about to begin the preparation of supper, when Colonel
+Bowie knocked at the door, handed Smoke a letter, and went on to his own
+cabin.
+
+"Did you see his face?" Shorty raved. "He was almost bustin' to keep
+it straight. It's the big ha! ha! for you an' me, Smoke. We won't never
+dast show our faces again in Dawson."
+
+The letter was from Wild Water, and Smoke read it aloud:
+
+Dear Smoke and Shorty: I write to ask, with compliments of the season,
+your presence at a supper to-night at Slavovitch's joint. Miss Arral
+will be there and so will Gautereaux. Him and me was pardners down at
+Circle five years ago. He is all right and is going to be best man.
+About them eggs. They come into the country four years back. They was
+bad when they come in. They was bad when they left California. They
+always was bad. They stopped at Carluk one winter, and one winter at
+Nutlik, and last winter at Forty Mile, where they was sold for storage.
+And this winter I guess they stop at Dawson. Don't keep them in a
+hot room. Lucille says to say you and her and me has sure made some
+excitement for Dawson. And I say the drinks is on you, and that goes.
+
+                                    Respectfully your friend,
+                                      W. W.
+
+"Well? What have you got to say?" Smoke queried. "We accept the
+invitation, of course?"
+
+"I got one thing to say," Shorty answered. "An' that is Wild Water won't
+never suffer if he goes broke. He's a good actor--a gosh-blamed good
+actor. An' I got another thing to say: my figgers is all wrong. Wild
+Water wins seventeen thousan' all right, but he wins more 'n that. You
+an' me has made him a present of every good egg in the Klondike--nine
+hundred an' sixty-four of 'em, two thrown in for good measure. An' he
+was that ornery, mean cussed that he packed off the three opened ones
+in the pail. An' I got a last thing to say. You an' me is legitimate
+prospectors an' practical gold-miners. But when it comes to fi-nance
+we're sure the fattest suckers that ever fell for the get-rich-quick
+bunco. After this it's you an' me for the high rocks an' tall timber,
+an' if you ever mention eggs to me we dissolve pardnership there an'
+then. Get me?"
+
+
+
+
+XI. THE TOWN-SITE OF TRA-LEE
+
+
+Smoke and Shorty encountered each other, going in opposite directions,
+at the corner where stood the Elkhorn saloon. The former's face wore
+a pleased expression, and he was walking briskly. Shorty, on the other
+hand, was slouching along in a depressed and indeterminate fashion.
+
+"Whither away?" Smoke challenged gaily.
+
+"Danged if I know," came the disconsolate answer. "Wisht I did. They
+ain't nothin' to take me anywheres. I've set two hours in the deadest
+game of draw--nothing excitin', no hands, an' broke even. Played a
+rubber of cribbage with Skiff Mitchell for the drinks, an' now I'm that
+languid for somethin' doin' that I'm perambulatin' the streets on the
+chance of seein' a dogfight, or a argument, or somethin'."
+
+"I've got something better on hand," Smoke answered. "That's why I was
+looking for you. Come on along."
+
+"Now?"
+
+"Sure."
+
+"Where to?"
+
+"Across the river to make a call on old Dwight Sanderson."
+
+"Never heard of him," Shorty said dejectedly. "An' never heard of no one
+living across the river anyway. What's he want to live there for? Ain't
+he got no sense?"
+
+"He's got something to sell," Smoke laughed.
+
+"Dogs? A gold-mine? Tobacco? Rubber boots?"
+
+Smoke shook his head to each question. "Come along on and find out,
+because I'm going to buy it from him on a spec, and if you want you can
+come in half."
+
+"Don't tell me it's eggs!" Shorty cried, his face twisted into an
+expression of facetious and sarcastic alarm.
+
+"Come on along," Smoke told him. "And I'll give you ten guesses while
+we're crossing the ice."
+
+They dipped down the high bank at the foot of the street and came out
+upon the ice-covered Yukon. Three-quarters of a mile away, directly
+opposite, the other bank of the stream uprose in precipitous bluffs
+hundreds of feet in height. Toward these bluffs, winding and twisting in
+and out among broken and upthrown blocks of ice, ran a slightly traveled
+trail. Shorty trudged at Smoke's heels, beguiling the time with guesses
+at what Dwight Sanderson had to sell.
+
+"Reindeer? Copper-mine or brick-yard? That's one guess. Bear-skins, or
+any kind of skins? Lottery tickets? A potato-ranch?"
+
+"Getting near it," Smoke encouraged. "And better than that."
+
+"Two potato-ranches? A cheese-factory? A moss-farm?"
+
+"That's not so bad, Shorty. It's not a thousand miles away."
+
+"A quarry?"
+
+"That's as near as the moss-farm and the potato-ranch."
+
+"Hold on. Let me think. I got one guess comin'." Ten silent minutes
+passed. "Say, Smoke, I ain't goin' to use that last guess. When this
+thing you're buyin' sounds like a potato-ranch, a moss-farm, and a
+stone-quarry, I quit. An' I don't go in on the deal till I see it an'
+size it up. What is it?"
+
+"Well, you'll see the cards on the table soon enough. Kindly cast your
+eyes up there. Do you see the smoke from that cabin? That's where Dwight
+Sanderson lives. He's holding down a town-site location."
+
+"What else is he holdin' down?"
+
+"That's all," Smoke laughed. "Except rheumatism. I hear he's been
+suffering from it."
+
+"Say!" Shorty's hand flashed out and with an abrupt shoulder grip
+brought his comrade to a halt. "You ain't telling me you're buyin' a
+town-site at this fallin'-off place?"
+
+"That's your tenth guess, and you win. Come on."
+
+"But wait a moment," Shorty pleaded. "Look at it--nothin' but bluffs an'
+slides, all up-and-down. Where could the town stand?"
+
+"Search me."
+
+"Then you ain't buyin' it for a town?"
+
+"But Dwight Sanderson's selling it for a town," Smoke baffled. "Come on.
+We've got to climb this slide."
+
+The slide was steep, and a narrow trail zigzagged up it on a formidable
+Jacob's ladder. Shorty moaned and groaned over the sharp corners and the
+steep pitches.
+
+"Think of a town-site here. They ain't a flat space big enough for a
+postage-stamp. An' it's the wrong side of the river. All the freightin'
+goes the other way. Look at Dawson there. Room to spread for forty
+thousand more people. Say, Smoke. You're a meat-eater. I know that. An'
+I know you ain't buyin' it for a town. Then what in Heaven's name are
+you buyin' it for?"
+
+"To sell, of course."
+
+"But other folks ain't as crazy as old man Sanderson an' you."
+
+"Maybe not in the same way, Shorty. Now I'm going to take this
+town-site, break it up in parcels, and sell it to a lot of sane people
+who live over in Dawson."
+
+"Huh! All Dawson's still laughing at you an' me an' them eggs. You want
+to make 'em laugh some more, hey?"
+
+"I certainly do."
+
+"But it's too danged expensive, Smoke. I helped you make 'em laugh
+on the eggs, an' my share of the laugh cost me nearly nine thousan'
+dollars."
+
+"All right. You don't have to come in on this. The profits will be all
+mine, but you've got to help me just the same."
+
+"Oh, I'll help all right. An' they can laugh at me some more. But nary a
+ounce do I drop this time.
+
+"What's old Sanderson holdin' it at? A couple of hundred?"
+
+"Ten thousand. I ought to get it for five."
+
+"Wisht I was a minister," Shorty breathed fervently.
+
+"What for?"
+
+"So I could preach the gosh-dangdest, eloquentest sermon on a text you
+may have hearn--to wit: a fool an' his money."
+
+"Come in," they heard Dwight Sanderson yell irritably, when they knocked
+at his door, and they entered to find him squatted by a stone fireplace
+and pounding coffee wrapped in a piece of flour-sacking.
+
+"What d'ye want?" he demanded harshly, emptying the pounded coffee into
+the coffee-pot that stood on the coals near the front of the fireplace.
+
+"To talk business," Smoke answered. "You've a town-site located here, I
+understand. What do you want for it?"
+
+"Ten thousand dollars," came the answer. "And now that I've told you,
+you can laugh, and get out. There's the door. Good-by."
+
+"But I don't want to laugh. I know plenty of funnier things to do than
+to climb up this cliff of yours. I want to buy your town-site."
+
+"You do, eh? Well, I'm glad to hear sense." Sanderson came over and sat
+down facing his visitors, his hands resting on the table and his eyes
+cocking apprehensively toward the coffee-pot. "I've told you my price,
+and I ain't ashamed to tell you again--ten thousand. And you can laugh
+or buy, it's all one to me."
+
+To show his indifference he drummed with his knobby knuckles on the
+table and stared at the coffee-pot. A minute later he began to hum a
+monotonous "Tra-la-loo, tra-la-lee, tra-la-lee, tra-la-loo."
+
+"Now look here, Mr. Sanderson," said Smoke. "This town-site isn't worth
+ten thousand. If it was worth that much it would be worth a hundred
+thousand just as easily. If it isn't worth a hundred thousand--and you
+know it isn't--then it isn't worth ten cents."
+
+Sanderson drummed with his knuckles and hummed, "Tra-la-loo,
+tra-la-lee," until the coffee-pot boiled over. Settling it with a part
+cup of cold water, and placing it to one side of the warm hearth, he
+resumed his seat. "How much will you offer?" he asked of Smoke.
+
+"Five thousand."
+
+Shorty groaned.
+
+Again came an interval of drumming and of tra-loo-ing and tra-lee-ing.
+
+"You ain't no fool," Sanderson announced to Smoke. "You said if it
+wasn't worth a hundred thousand it wasn't worth ten cents. Yet you offer
+five thousand for it. Then it IS worth a hundred thousand."
+
+"You can't make twenty cents out of it," Smoke replied heatedly. "Not if
+you stayed here till you rot."
+
+"I'll make it out of you."
+
+"No, you won't."
+
+"Then I reckon I'll stay an' rot," Sanderson answered with an air of
+finality.
+
+He took no further notice of his guests, and went about his culinary
+tasks as if he were alone. When he had warmed over a pot of beans and a
+slab of sour-dough bread, he set the table for one and proceeded to eat.
+
+"No, thank you," Shorty murmured. "We ain't a bit hungry. We et just
+before we come."
+
+"Let's see your papers," Smoke said at last. Sanderson fumbled under the
+head of his bunk and tossed out a package of documents. "It's all tight
+and right," he said. "That long one there, with the big seals, come
+all the way from Ottawa. Nothing territorial about that. The national
+Canadian government cinches me in the possession of this town-site."
+
+"How many lots you sold in the two years you've had it?" Shorty queried.
+
+"None of your business," Sanderson answered sourly. "There ain't no law
+against a man living alone on his town-site if he wants to."
+
+"I'll give you five thousand," Smoke said. Sanderson shook his head.
+
+"I don't know which is the craziest," Shorty lamented. "Come outside a
+minute, Smoke. I want to whisper to you."
+
+Reluctantly Smoke yielded to his partner's persuasions.
+
+"Ain't it never entered your head," Shorty said, as they stood in the
+snow outside the door, "that they's miles an' miles of cliffs on both
+sides of this fool town-site that don't belong to nobody an' that you
+can have for the locatin' and stakin'?"
+
+"They won't do," Smoke answered.
+
+"Why won't they?"
+
+"It makes you wonder, with all those miles and miles, why I'm buying
+this particular spot, doesn't it?"
+
+"It sure does," Shorty agreed.
+
+"And that's the very point," Smoke went on triumphantly. "If it makes
+you wonder, it will make others wonder. And when they wonder they'll
+come a-running. By your own wondering you prove it's sound psychology.
+Now, Shorty, listen to me; I'm going to hand Dawson a package that will
+knock the spots out of the egg-laugh. Come on inside."
+
+"Hello," said Sanderson, as they re-entered. "I thought I'd seen the
+last of you."
+
+"Now what is your lowest figure?" Smoke asked.
+
+"Twenty thousand."
+
+"I'll give you ten thousand."
+
+"All right, I'll sell at that figure. It's all I wanted in the first
+place. But when will you pay the dust over?"
+
+"To-morrow, at the Northwest Bank. But there are two other things I want
+for that ten thousand. In the first place, when you receive your money
+you pull down the river to Forty Mile and stay there the rest of the
+winter."
+
+"That's easy. What else?"
+
+"I'm going to pay you twenty-five thousand, and you rebate me fifteen of
+it."
+
+"I'm agreeable." Sanderson turned to Shorty. "Folks said I was a fool
+when I come over here an' town-sited," he jeered. "Well, I'm a ten
+thousand dollar fool, ain't I?"
+
+"The Klondike's sure full of fools," was all Shorty could retort, "an'
+when they's so many of 'em some has to be lucky, don't they?"
+
+Next morning the legal transfer of Dwight Sanderson's town-site was
+made--"henceforth to be known as the town-site of Tra-Lee," Smoke
+incorporated in the deed. Also, at the Northwest Bank, twenty-five
+thousand of Smoke's gold was weighed out by the cashier, while half
+a dozen casual onlookers noted the weighing, the amount, and the
+recipient.
+
+In a mining-camp all men are suspicious. Any untoward act of any man is
+likely to be the cue to a secret gold strike, whether the untoward
+act be no more than a hunting trip for moose or a stroll after dark to
+observe the aurora borealis. And when it became known that so prominent
+a figure as Smoke Bellew had paid twenty-five thousand dollars to old
+Dwight Sanderson, Dawson wanted to know what he had paid it for. What
+had Dwight Sanderson, starving on his abandoned town-site, ever owned
+that was worth twenty-five thousand? In lieu of an answer, Dawson was
+justified in keeping Smoke in feverish contemplation.
+
+By mid-afternoon it was common knowledge that several score of men had
+made up light stampeding-packs and cached them in the convenient saloons
+along Main Street. Wherever Smoke moved, he was the observed of many
+eyes. And as proof that he was taken seriously, not one man of the many
+of his acquaintance had the effrontery to ask him about his deal with
+Dwight Sanderson. On the other hand, no one mentioned eggs to Smoke.
+Shorty was under similar surveillance and delicacy of friendliness.
+
+"Makes me feel like I'd killed somebody, or had smallpox, the way they
+watch me an' seem afraid to speak," Shorty confessed, when he chanced to
+meet Smoke in front of the Elkhorn. "Look at Bill Saltman there acrost
+the way--just dyin' to look, an' keepin' his eyes down the street all
+the time. Wouldn't think he'd knowed you an' me existed, to look at him.
+But I bet you the drinks, Smoke, if you an' me flop around the corner
+quick, like we was goin' somewheres, an' then turn back from around the
+next corner, that we run into him a-hikin' hell-bent."
+
+They tried the trick, and, doubling back around the second corner,
+encountered Saltman swinging a long trail-stride in pursuit.
+
+"Hello, Bill," Smoke greeted. "Which way?"
+
+"Hello. Just a-strollin'," Saltman answered, "just a-strollin'.
+Weather's fine, ain't it?"
+
+"Huh!" Shorty jeered. "If you call that strollin', what might you walk
+real fast at?"
+
+When Shorty fed the dogs that evening, he was keenly conscious that from
+the encircling darkness a dozen pairs of eyes were boring in upon him.
+And when he stick-tied the dogs, instead of letting them forage free
+through the night, he knew that he had administered another jolt to the
+nervousness of Dawson.
+
+According to program, Smoke ate supper downtown and then proceeded to
+enjoy himself. Wherever he appeared, he was the center of interest, and
+he purposely made the rounds. Saloons filled up after his entrance and
+emptied following upon his departure. If he bought a stack of chips at
+a sleepy roulette-table, inside five minutes a dozen players were around
+him. He avenged himself, in a small way, on Lucille Arral, by getting
+up and sauntering out of the Opera House just as she came on to sing
+her most popular song. In three minutes two-thirds of her audience had
+vanished after him.
+
+At one in the morning he walked along an unusually populous Main Street
+and took the turning that led up the hill to his cabin. And when he
+paused on the ascent, he could hear behind him the crunch of moccasins
+in the snow.
+
+For an hour the cabin was in darkness, then he lighted a candle, and,
+after a delay sufficient for a man to dress in, he and Shorty opened the
+door and began harnessing the dogs. As the light from the cabin flared
+out upon them and their work, a soft whistle went up from not far away.
+This whistle was repeated down the hill.
+
+"Listen to it," Smoke chuckled. "They've relayed on us and are passing
+the word down to town. I'll bet you there are forty men right now
+rolling out of their blankets and climbing into their pants."
+
+"Ain't folks fools," Shorty giggled back. "Say, Smoke, they ain't
+nothin' in hard graft. A geezer that'd work his hands these days is
+a--well, a geezer. The world's sure bustin' full an' dribblin' over the
+edges with fools a-honin' to be separated from their dust. An' before we
+start down the hill I want to announce, if you're still agreeable, that
+I come in half on this deal."
+
+The sled was lightly loaded with a sleeping- and a grub-outfit. A
+small coil of steel cable protruded inconspicuously from underneath a
+grub-sack, while a crowbar lay half hidden along the bottom of the sled
+next to the lashings.
+
+Shorty fondled the cable with a swift-passing mitten, and gave a last
+affectionate touch to the crowbar. "Huh!" he whispered. "I'd sure do
+some tall thinking myself if I seen them objects on a sled on a dark
+night."
+
+They drove the dogs down the hill with cautious silence, and when,
+emerged on the flat, they turned the team north along Main Street toward
+the sawmill and directly away from the business part of town, they
+observed even greater caution. They had seen no one, yet when this
+change of direction was initiated, out of the dim starlit darkness
+behind arose a whistle. Past the sawmill and the hospital, at lively
+speed, they went for a quarter of a mile. Then they turned about and
+headed back over the ground they had just covered. At the end of the
+first hundred yards they barely missed colliding with five men racing
+along at a quick dog-trot. All were slightly stooped to the weight of
+stampeding-packs. One of them stopped Smoke's lead-dog, and the rest
+clustered around.
+
+"Seen a sled goin' the other way?" was asked.
+
+"Nope," Smoke answered. "Is that you, Bill?"
+
+"Well, I'll be danged!" Bill Saltman ejaculated in honest surprise. "If
+it ain't Smoke!"
+
+"What are you doing out this time of night?" Smoke inquired.
+"Strolling?"
+
+Before Bill Saltman could make reply, two running men joined the group.
+These were followed by several more, while the crunch of feet on the
+snow heralded the imminent arrival of many others.
+
+"Who are your friends?" Smoke asked. "Where's the stampede?"
+
+Saltman, lighting his pipe, which was impossible for him to enjoy with
+lungs panting from the run, did not reply. The ruse of the match was too
+obviously for the purpose of seeing the sled to be misunderstood,
+and Smoke noted every pair of eyes focus on the coil of cable and the
+crowbar. Then the match went out.
+
+"Just heard a rumor, that's all, just a rumor," Saltman mumbled with
+ponderous secretiveness.
+
+"You might let Shorty and me in on it," Smoke urged.
+
+Somebody snickered sarcastically in the background.
+
+"Where are YOU bound?" Saltman demanded.
+
+"And who are you?" Smoke countered. "Committee of safety?"
+
+"Just interested, just interested," Saltman said.
+
+"You bet your sweet life we're interested," another voice spoke up out
+of the darkness.
+
+"Say," Shorty put in, "I wonder who's feelin' the foolishest?"
+
+Everybody laughed nervously.
+
+"Come on, Shorty; we'll be getting along," Smoke said, mushing the dogs.
+
+The crowd formed in behind and followed.
+
+"Say, ain't you-all made a mistake?" Shorty gibed. "When we met you you
+was goin', an' now you're comin' without bein' anywheres. Have you lost
+your tag?"
+
+"You go to the devil," was Saltman's courtesy. "We go and come just as
+we danged feel like. We don't travel with tags."
+
+And the sled, with Smoke in the lead and Shorty at the pole, went on
+down Main Street escorted by three score men, each of whom, on his
+back, bore a stampeding-pack. It was three in the morning, and only the
+all-night rounders saw the procession and were able to tell Dawson about
+it next day.
+
+Half an hour later, the hill was climbed and the dogs unharnessed at the
+cabin door, the sixty stampeders grimly attendant.
+
+"Good-night, fellows," Smoke called, as he closed the door.
+
+In five minutes the candle was put out, but before half an hour had
+passed Smoke and Shorty emerged softly, and without lights began
+harnessing the dogs.
+
+"Hello, Smoke!" Saltman said, stepping near enough for them to see the
+loom of his form.
+
+"Can't shake you, Bill, I see," Smoke replied cheerfully. "Where're your
+friends?"
+
+"Gone to have a drink. They left me to keep an eye on you, and keep it I
+will. What's in the wind anyway, Smoke? You can't shake us, so you might
+as well let us in. We're all your friends. You know that."
+
+"There are times when you can let your friends in," Smoke evaded, "and
+times when you can't. And, Bill, this is one of the times when we can't.
+You'd better go to bed. Good-night."
+
+"Ain't goin' to be no good-night, Smoke. You don't know us. We're
+woodticks."
+
+Smoke sighed. "Well, Bill, if you WILL have your will, I guess you'll
+have to have it. Come on, Shorty, we can't fool around any longer."
+
+Saltman emitted a shrill whistle as the sled started, and swung in
+behind. From down the hill and across the flat came the answering
+whistles of the relays. Shorty was at the gee-pole, and Smoke and
+Saltman walked side by side.
+
+"Look here, Bill," Smoke said. "I'll make you a proposition. Do you want
+to come in alone on this?"
+
+Saltman did not hesitate. "An' throw the gang down? No, sir. We'll all
+come in."
+
+"You first, then," Smoke exclaimed, lurching into a clinch and tipping
+the other into deep snow beside the trail.
+
+Shorty hawed the dogs and swung the team to the south on the trail that
+led among the scattered cabins on the rolling slopes to the rear of
+Dawson. Smoke and Saltman, locked together, rolled in the snow. Smoke
+considered himself in gilt-edged condition, but Saltman outweighed him
+by fifty pounds of clean, trail-hardened muscle and repeatedly mastered
+him. Time and time again he got Smoke on his back, and Smoke lay
+complacently and rested. But each time Saltman attempted to get off him
+and get away, Smoke reached out a detaining, tripping hand that brought
+about a new clinch and wrestle.
+
+"You can go some," Saltman acknowledged, panting at the end of ten
+minutes, as he sat astride Smoke's chest. "But I down you every time."
+
+"And I hold you every time," Smoke panted back. "That's what I'm here
+for, just to hold you. Where do you think Shorty's getting to all this
+time?"
+
+Saltman made a wild effort to go clear, and all but succeeded. Smoke
+gripped his ankle and threw him in a headlong tumble. From down the hill
+came anxious questioning whistles. Saltman sat up and whistled a shrill
+answer, and was grappled by Smoke, who rolled him face upward and sat
+astride his chest, his knees resting on Saltman's biceps, his hands
+on Saltman's shoulders and holding him down. And in this position the
+stampeders found them. Smoke laughed and got up.
+
+"Well, good-night, fellows," he said, and started down the hill, with
+sixty exasperated and grimly determined stampeders at his heels.
+
+He turned north past the sawmill and the hospital and took the river
+trail along the precipitous bluffs at the base of Moosehide Mountain.
+Circling the Indian village, he held on to the mouth of Moose Creek,
+then turned and faced his pursuers.
+
+"You make me tired," he said, with a good imitation of a snarl.
+
+"Hope we ain't a-forcin' you," Saltman murmured politely.
+
+"Oh, no, not at all," Smoke snarled with an even better imitation, as
+he passed among them on the back-trail to Dawson. Twice he attempted to
+cross the trailless icejams of the river, still resolutely followed, and
+both times he gave up and returned to the Dawson shore. Straight down
+Main Street he trudged, crossing the ice of Klondike River to Klondike
+City and again retracing to Dawson. At eight o'clock, as gray dawn began
+to show, he led his weary gang to Slavovitch's restaurant, where tables
+were at a premium for breakfast.
+
+"Good-night fellows," he said, as he paid his reckoning.
+
+And again he said good-night, as he took the climb of the hill. In the
+clear light of day they did not follow him, contenting themselves with
+watching him up the hill to his cabin.
+
+For two days Smoke lingered about town, continually under vigilant
+espionage. Shorty, with the sled and dogs, had disappeared. Neither
+travelers up and down the Yukon, nor from Bonanza, Eldorado, nor the
+Klondike, had seen him. Remained only Smoke, who, soon or late, was
+certain to try to connect with his missing partner; and upon Smoke
+everybody's attention was centered. On the second night he did not leave
+his cabin, putting out the lamp at nine in the evening and setting the
+alarm for two next morning. The watch outside heard the alarm go off,
+so that when, half an hour later, he emerged from the cabin, he found
+waiting for him a band, not of sixty men, but of at least three hundred.
+A flaming aurora borealis lighted the scene, and, thus hugely
+escorted, he walked down to town and entered the Elkhorn. The place was
+immediately packed and jammed by an anxious and irritated multitude that
+bought drinks, and for four weary hours watched Smoke play cribbage
+with his old friend Breck. Shortly after six in the morning, with an
+expression on his face of commingled hatred and gloom, seeing no one,
+recognizing no one, Smoke left the Elkhorn and went up Main Street,
+behind him the three hundred, formed in disorderly ranks, chanting:
+"Hay-foot! Straw-foot! Hep! Hep! Hep!"
+
+"Good-night, fellows," he said bitterly, at the edge of the Yukon bank
+where the winter trail dipped down. "I'm going to get breakfast and then
+go to bed."
+
+The three hundred shouted that they were with him, and followed him out
+upon the frozen river on the direct path he took for Tra-Lee. At seven
+in the morning he led his stampeding cohort up the zigzag trail, across
+the face of the slide, that led to Dwight Sanderson's cabin. The light
+of a candle showed through the parchment-paper window, and smoke curled
+from the chimney. Shorty threw open the door.
+
+"Come on in, Smoke," he greeted. "Breakfast's ready. Who-all are your
+friends?"
+
+Smoke turned about on the threshold. "Well, good-night, you fellows.
+Hope you enjoyed your pasear!"
+
+"Hold on a moment, Smoke," Bill Saltman cried, his voice keen with
+disappointment. "Want to talk with you a moment."
+
+"Fire away," Smoke answered genially.
+
+"What'd you pay old Sanderson twenty-five thousan' for? Will you answer
+that?"
+
+"Bill, you give me a pain," was Smoke's reply. "I came over here for
+a country residence, so to say, and here are you and a gang trying to
+cross-examine me when I'm looking for peace an' quietness an' breakfast.
+What's a country residence good for, except for peace and quietness?"
+
+"You ain't answered the question," Bill Saltman came back with rigid
+logic.
+
+"And I'm not going to, Bill. That affair is peculiarly a personal affair
+between Dwight Sanderson and me. Any other question?"
+
+"How about that crowbar an' steel cable then, what you had on your sled
+the other night?"
+
+"It's none of your blessed and ruddy business, Bill. Though if Shorty
+here wants to tell you about it, he can."
+
+"Sure!" Shorty cried, springing eagerly into the breach. His
+mouth opened, then he faltered and turned to his partner. "Smoke,
+confidentially, just between you an' me, I don't think it IS any of
+their darn business. Come on in. The life's gettin' boiled outa that
+coffee."
+
+The door closed and the three hundred sagged into forlorn and grumbling
+groups.
+
+"Say, Saltman," one man said, "I thought you was goin' to lead us to
+it."
+
+"Not on your life," Saltman answered crustily. "I said Smoke would lead
+us to it."
+
+"An' this is it?"
+
+"You know as much about it as me, an' we all know Smoke's got something
+salted down somewheres. Or else for what did he pay Sanderson the
+twenty-five thousand? Not for this mangy town-site, that's sure an'
+certain."
+
+A chorus of cries affirmed Saltman's judgment.
+
+"Well, what are we goin' to do now?" someone queried dolefully.
+
+"Me for one for breakfast," Wild Water Charley said cheerfully. "You led
+us up a blind alley this time, Bill."
+
+"I tell you I didn't," Saltman objected. "Smoke led us. An' just the
+same, what about them twenty-five thousand?"
+
+At half-past eight, when daylight had grown strong, Shorty carefully
+opened the door and peered out. "Shucks," he exclaimed. "They-all's
+hiked back to Dawson. I thought they was goin' to camp here."
+
+"Don't worry; they'll come sneaking back," Smoke reassured him. "If I
+don't miss my guess you'll see half Dawson over here before we're done
+with it. Now jump in and lend me a hand. We've got work to do."
+
+"Aw, for Heaven's sake put me on," Shorty complained, when, at the end
+of an hour, he surveyed the result of their toil--a windlass in the
+corner of the cabin, with an endless rope that ran around double
+logrollers.
+
+Smoke turned it with a minimum of effort, and the rope slipped and
+creaked. "Now, Shorty, you go outside and tell me what it sounds like."
+
+Shorty, listening at the closed door, heard all the sounds of a windlass
+hoisting a load, and caught himself unconsciously attempting to estimate
+the depth of shaft out of which this load was being hoisted. Next came
+a pause, and in his mind's eye he saw the bucket swinging short to the
+windlass. Then he heard the quick lower-away and the dull sound as of
+the bucket coming to abrupt rest on the edge of the shaft. He threw open
+the door, beaming.
+
+"I got you," he cried. "I almost fell for it myself. What next?"
+
+The next was the dragging into the cabin of a dozen sled-loads of rock.
+And through an exceedingly busy day there were many other nexts.
+
+"Now you run the dogs over to Dawson this evening," Smoke instructed,
+when supper was finished. "Leave them with Breck. He'll take care of
+them. They'll be watching what you do, so get Breck to go to the A. C.
+Company and buy up all the blasting-powder--there's only several hundred
+pounds in stock. And have Breck order half a dozen hard-rock drills from
+the blacksmith. Breck's a quartz-man, and he'll give the blacksmith
+a rough idea of what he wants made. And give Breck these location
+descriptions, so that he can record them at the gold commissioner's
+to-morrow. And finally, at ten o'clock, you be on Main Street listening.
+Mind you, I don't want them to be too loud. Dawson must just hear them
+and no more than hear them. I'll let off three, of different quantities,
+and you note which is more nearly the right thing."
+
+At ten that night Shorty, strolling down Main Street, aware of many
+curious eyes, his ears keyed tensely, heard a faint and distant
+explosion. Thirty seconds later there was a second, sufficiently loud
+to attract the attention of others on the street. Then came a third, so
+violent that it rattled the windows and brought the inhabitants into the
+street.
+
+"Shook 'em up beautiful," Shorty proclaimed breathlessly, an hour
+afterward, when he arrived at the cabin on Tra-Lee. He gripped Smoke's
+hand. "You should a-saw 'em. Ever kick over a ant-hole? Dawson's
+just like that. Main Street was crawlin' an' hummin' when I pulled my
+freight. You won't see Tra-Lee to-morrow for folks. An' if they ain't
+some a-sneakin' acrost right now I don't know minin' nature, that's
+all."
+
+Smoke grinned, stepped to the fake windlass, and gave it a couple of
+creaking turns. Shorty pulled out the moss-chinking from between the
+logs so as to make peep-holes on every side of the cabin. Then he blew
+out the candle.
+
+"Now," he whispered at the end of half an hour.
+
+Smoke turned the windlass slowly, paused after several minutes, caught
+up a galvanized bucket filled with earth and struck it with slide and
+scrape and grind against the heap of rocks they had hauled in. Then he
+lighted a cigarette, shielding the flame of the match in his hands.
+
+"They's three of 'em," Shorty whispered. "You oughta saw 'em. Say, when
+you made that bucket-dump noise they was fair quiverin'. They's one at
+the window now tryin' to peek in."
+
+Smoke glowed his cigarette, and glanced at his watch.
+
+"We've got to do this thing regularly," he breathed. "We'll haul up a
+bucket every fifteen minutes. And in the meantime--"
+
+Through triple thicknesses of sacking, he struck a cold-chisel on the
+face of a rock.
+
+"Beautiful, beautiful," Shorty moaned with delight. He crept over
+noiselessly from the peep-hole. "They've got their heads together, an' I
+can almost see 'em talkin'."
+
+And from then until four in the morning, at fifteen-minute intervals,
+the seeming of a bucket was hoisted on the windlass that creaked and ran
+around on itself and hoisted nothing. Then their visitors departed, and
+Smoke and Shorty went to bed.
+
+After daylight, Shorty examined the moccasin-marks. "Big Bill Saltman
+was one of them," he concluded. "Look at the size of it."
+
+Smoke looked out over the river. "Get ready for visitors. There are two
+crossing the ice now."
+
+"Huh! Wait till Breck files that string of claims at nine o'clock.
+There'll be two thousand crossing over."
+
+"And every mother's son of them yammering 'mother-lode,'" Smoke laughed.
+"'The source of the Klondike placers found at last.'"
+
+Shorty, who had clambered to the top of a steep shoulder of rock, gazed
+with the eye of a connoisseur at the strip they had staked.
+
+"It sure looks like a true fissure vein," he said. "A expert could
+almost trace the lines of it under the snow. It'd fool anybody. The
+slide fills the front of it an' see them outcrops? Look like the real
+thing, only they ain't."
+
+When the two men, crossing the river, climbed the zigzag trail up the
+slide, they found a closed cabin. Bill Saltman, who led the way, went
+softly to the door, listened, then beckoned Wild Water Charley up to
+him. From inside came the creak and whine of a windlass bearing a heavy
+load. They waited at the final pause, then heard the lower-away and the
+impact of a bucket on rock. Four times, in the next hour, they heard the
+thing repeated. Then Wild Water knocked on the door. From inside came
+low furtive noises, then silences, and more furtive noises, and at the
+end of five minutes Smoke, breathing heavily, opened the door an inch
+and peered out. They saw on his face and shirt powdered rock-fragments.
+His greeting was suspiciously genial.
+
+"Wait a minute," he added, "and I'll be with you."
+
+Pulling on his mittens, he slipped through the door and confronted the
+visitors outside in the snow. Their quick eyes noted his shirt, across
+the shoulders, discolored and powdery, and the knees of his overalls
+that showed signs of dirt brushed hastily but not quite thoroughly away.
+
+"Rather early for a call," he observed. "What brings you across the
+river? Going hunting?"
+
+"We're on, Smoke," Wild Water said confidentially. "An' you'd just as
+well come through. You've got something here."
+
+"If you're looking for eggs--" Smoke began.
+
+"Aw, forget it. We mean business."
+
+"You mean you want to buy lots, eh?" Smoke rattled on swiftly. "There's
+some dandy building sites here. But, you see, we can't sell yet. We
+haven't had the town surveyed. Come around next week, Wild Water,
+and for peace and quietness, I'll show you something swell, if you're
+anxious to live over here. Next week, sure, it will be surveyed.
+Good-by. Sorry I can't ask you inside, but Shorty--well, you know him.
+He's peculiar. He says he came over for peace and quietness, and he's
+asleep now. I wouldn't wake him for the world."
+
+As Smoke talked he shook their hands warmly in farewell. Still talking
+and shaking their hands, he stepped inside and closed the door.
+
+They looked at each other and nodded significantly.
+
+"See the knees of his pants?" Saltman whispered hoarsely.
+
+"Sure. An' his shoulders. He's been bumpin' an' crawlin' around in a
+shaft." As Wild Water talked, his eyes wandered up the snow-covered
+ravine until they were halted by something that brought a whistle to his
+lips. "Just cast your eyes up there, Bill. See where I'm pointing? If
+that ain't a prospect-hole! An' follow it out to both sides--you can
+see where they tramped in the snow. If it ain't rim-rock on both sides I
+don't know what rim-rock is. It's a fissure vein, all right."
+
+"An' look at the size of it!" Saltman cried. "They've got something
+here, you bet."
+
+"An' run your eyes down the slide there--see them bluffs standin' out
+an' slopin' in. The whole slide's in the mouth of the vein as well."
+
+"And just keep a-lookin' on, out on the ice there, on the trail,"
+Saltman directed. "Looks like most of Dawson, don't it?"
+
+Wild Water took one glance and saw the trail black with men clear to the
+far Dawson bank, down which the same unbroken string of men was pouring.
+
+"Well, I'm goin' to get a look-in at that prospect-hole before they get
+here," he said, turning and starting swiftly up the ravine.
+
+But the cabin door opened, and the two occupants stepped out.
+
+"Hey!" Smoke called. "Where are you going?"
+
+"To pick out a lot," Wild Water called back. "Look at the river. All
+Dawson's stampeding to buy lots, an' we're going to beat 'em to it for
+the choice. That's right, ain't it, Bill?"
+
+"Sure thing," Saltman corroborated. "This has the makin's of a Jim-dandy
+suburb, an' it sure looks like it'll be some popular."
+
+"Well, we're not selling lots over in that section where you're
+heading," Smoke answered. "Over to the right there, and back on top of
+the bluffs are the lots. This section, running from the river and over
+the tops, is reserved. So come on back."
+
+"That's the spot we've gone and selected," Saltman argued.
+
+"But there's nothing doing, I tell you," Smoke said sharply.
+
+"Any objections to our strolling, then?" Saltman persisted.
+
+"Decidedly. Your strolling is getting monotonous. Come on back out of
+that."
+
+"I just reckon we'll stroll anyways," Saltman replied stubbornly. "Come
+on, Wild Water."
+
+"I warn you, you are trespassing," was Smoke's final word.
+
+"Nope, just strollin'," Saltman gaily retorted, turning his back and
+starting on.
+
+"Hey! Stop in your tracks, Bill, or I'll sure bore you!" Shorty
+thundered, drawing and leveling two Colt's forty-fours. "Step another
+step in your steps an' I let eleven holes through your danged ornery
+carcass. Get that?"
+
+Saltman stopped, perplexed.
+
+"He sure got me," Shorty mumbled to Smoke. "But if he goes on I'm up
+against it hard. I can't shoot. What'll I do?"
+
+"Look here, Shorty, listen to reason," Saltman begged.
+
+"Come here to me an' we'll talk reason," was Shorty's retort.
+
+And they were still talking reason when the head of the stampede emerged
+from the zigzag trail and came upon them.
+
+"You can't call a man a trespasser when he's on a town-site lookin' to
+buy lots," Wild Water was arguing, and Shorty was objecting: "But
+they's private property in town-sites, an' that there strip is private
+property, that's all. I tell you again, it ain't for sale."
+
+"Now we've got to swing this thing on the jump," Smoke muttered to
+Shorty. "If they ever get out of hand--"
+
+"You've sure got your nerve, if you think you can hold them," Shorty
+muttered back. "They's two thousan' of 'em an' more a-comin'. They'll
+break this line any minute."
+
+The line ran along the near rim of the ravine, and Shorty had formed it
+by halting the first arrivals when they got that far in their invasion.
+In the crowd were half a dozen Northwest policemen and a lieutenant.
+With the latter Smoke conferred in undertones.
+
+"They're still piling out of Dawson," he said, "and before long there
+will be five thousand here. The danger is if they start jumping claims.
+When you figure there are only five claims, it means a thousand men to
+a claim, and four thousand out of the five will try to jump the nearest
+claim. It can't be done, and if it ever starts, there'll be more dead
+men here than in the whole history of Alaska. Besides, those five claims
+were recorded this morning and can't be jumped. In short, claim-jumping
+mustn't start."
+
+"Right-o," said the lieutenant. "I'll get my men together and station
+them. We can't have any trouble here, and we won't have. But you'd
+better get up and talk to them."
+
+"There must be some mistake, fellows," Smoke began in a loud voice.
+"We're not ready to sell lots. The streets are not surveyed yet. But
+next week we shall have the grand opening sale."
+
+He was interrupted by an outburst of impatience and indignation.
+
+"We don't want lots," a young miner cried out. "We don't want what's on
+top of the ground. We've come for what's under the ground."
+
+"We don't know what we've got under the ground," Smoke answered. "But we
+do know we've got a fine town-site on top of it."
+
+"Sure," Shorty added. "Grand for scenery an' solitude. Folks lovin'
+solitude come a-flockin' here by thousands. Most popular solitude on the
+Yukon."
+
+Again the impatient cries arose, and Saltman, who had been talking with
+the later comers, came to the front.
+
+"We're here to stake claims," he opened. "We know what you've did--filed
+a string of five quartz claims on end, and there they are over there
+running across the town-site on the line of the slide and the canyon.
+Only you misplayed. Two of them entries is fake. Who is Seth Bierce? No
+one ever heard of him. You filed a claim this mornin' in his name. An'
+you filed a claim in the name of Harry Maxwell. Now Harry Maxwell ain't
+in the country. He's down in Seattle. Went out last fall. Them two
+claims is open to relocation."
+
+"Suppose I have his power of attorney?" Smoke queried.
+
+"You ain't," Saltman answered. "An' if you have you got to show it.
+Anyway, here's where we relocate. Come on, fellows."
+
+Saltman, stepping across the dead-line, had turned to encourage a
+following, when the police lieutenant's voice rang out and stopped the
+forward surge of the great mass.
+
+"Hold on there! You can't do that, you know!"
+
+"Can't, eh?" said Bill Saltman. "The law says a fake location can be
+relocated, don't it?"
+
+"Thet's right, Bill! Stay with it!" the crowd cheered from the safe side
+of the line.
+
+"It's the law, ain't it?" Saltman demanded truculently of the
+lieutenant.
+
+"It may be the law," came the steady answer. "But I can't and won't
+allow a mob of five thousand men to attempt to jump two claims. It would
+be a dangerous riot, and we're here to see there is no riot. Here, now,
+on this spot, the Northwest police constitute the law. The next man who
+crosses that line will be shot. You, Bill Saltman, step back across it."
+
+Saltman obeyed reluctantly. But an ominous restlessness became apparent
+in the mass of men, irregularly packed and scattered as it was over a
+landscape that was mostly up-and-down.
+
+"Heavens," the lieutenant whispered to Smoke. "Look at them like flies
+on the edge of the cliff there. Any disorder in that mass would force
+hundreds of them over."
+
+Smoke shuddered and got up. "I'm willing to play fair, fellows. If you
+insist on town lots, I'll sell them to you, one hundred apiece, and
+you can raffle locations when the survey is made." With raised hand
+he stilled the movement of disgust. "Don't move, anybody. If you do,
+there'll be hundreds of you shoved over the bluff. The situation is
+dangerous."
+
+"Just the same, you can't hog it," a voice went up. "We don't want lots.
+We want to relocate."
+
+"But there are only two disputed claims," Smoke argued. "When they're
+relocated where will the rest of you be?"
+
+He mopped his forehead with his shirt-sleeve, and another voice cried
+out:
+
+"Let us all in, share and share alike!"
+
+Nor did those who roared their approbation dream that the suggestion had
+been made by a man primed to make it when he saw Smoke mop his forehead.
+
+"Take your feet out of the trough an' pool the town-site," the man went
+on. "Pool the mineral rights with the town-site, too."
+
+"But there isn't anything in the mineral rights, I tell you," Smoke
+objected.
+
+"Then pool them with the rest. We'll take our chances on it."
+
+"Fellows, you're forcing me," Smoke said. "I wish you'd stayed on your
+side of the river."
+
+But wavering indecision was so manifest that with a mighty roar the
+crowd swept him on to agreement. Saltman and others in the front rank
+demurred.
+
+"Bill Saltman, here, and Wild Water don't want you all in," Smoke
+informed the crowd. "Who's hogging it now?"
+
+And thereat Saltman and Wild Water became profoundly unpopular.
+
+"Now how are we going to do it?" Smoke asked. "Shorty and I ought to
+keep control. We discovered this town-site."
+
+"That's right!" many cried. "A square deal!" "It's only fair!"
+
+"Three-fifths to us," Smoke suggested, "and you fellows come in for
+two-fifths. And you've got to pay for your shares."
+
+"Ten cents on the dollar!" was a cry. "And non-assessable!"
+
+"And the president of the company to come around personally and pay
+you your dividends on a silver platter," Smoke sneered. "No, sir. You
+fellows have got to be reasonable. Ten cents on the dollar will help
+start things. You buy two-fifths of the stock, hundred dollars par, at
+ten dollars. That's the best I can do. And if you don't like it, just
+start jumping the claims. I can't stand more than a two-fifths gouge."
+
+"No big capitalization!" a voice called, and it was this voice that
+crystallized the collective mind of the crowd into consent.
+
+"There's about five thousand of you, which will make five thousand
+shares," Smoke worked the problem aloud. "And five thousand is
+two-fifths of twelve thousand, five hundred. Therefore The Tra-Lee
+Town-Site Company is capitalized for one million two hundred and fifty
+thousand dollars, there being twelve thousand, five hundred shares,
+hundred par, you fellows buying five thousand of them at ten dollars
+apiece. And I don't care a whoop whether you accept it or not. And I
+call you all to witness that you're forcing me against my will."
+
+With the assurance of the crowd that they had caught him with the goods
+on him, in the shape of the two fake locations, a committee was formed
+and the rough organization of the Tra-Lee Town-Site Company effected.
+Scorning the proposal of delivering the shares next day in Dawson, and
+scorning it because of the objection that the portion of Dawson that had
+not engaged in the stampede would ring in for shares, the committee,
+by a fire on the ice at the foot of the slide, issued a receipt to each
+stampeder in return for ten dollars in dust duly weighed on two dozen
+gold-scales which were obtained from Dawson.
+
+By twilight the work was accomplished and Tra-Lee was deserted, save for
+Smoke and Shorty, who ate supper in the cabin and chuckled at the list
+of shareholders, four thousand eight hundred and seventy-four strong,
+and at the gold-sacks, which they knew contained approximately
+forty-eight thousand seven hundred and forty dollars.
+
+"But you ain't swung it yet," Shorty objected.
+
+"He'll be here," Smoke asserted with conviction. "He's a born gambler,
+and when Breck whispers the tip to him not even heart disease would stop
+him."
+
+Within the hour came a knock at the door, and Wild Water entered,
+followed by Bill Saltman. Their eyes swept the cabin eagerly, coming to
+rest on the windlass elaborately concealed by blankets.
+
+"But suppose I did want to vote twelve hundred shares," Wild Water was
+arguing half an hour later. "With the other five thousand sold to-day
+it'd make only sixty-two hundred shares. That'd leave you and Shorty
+with sixty-three hundred. You'd still control."
+
+"But what d' you want with all that of a town-site?" Shorty queried.
+
+"You can answer that better 'n me," Wild Water replied. "An' between
+you an' me," his gaze drifted over the blanket-draped windlass, "it's a
+pretty good-looking town-site."
+
+"But Bill wants some," Smoke said grudgingly, "and we simply won't part
+with more than five hundred shares."
+
+"How much you got to invest?" Wild Water asked Saltman.
+
+"Oh, say five thousand. It was all I could scare up."
+
+"Wild Water," Smoke went on, in the same grudging, complaining voice,
+"if I didn't know you so well, I wouldn't sell you a single besotted
+share. And, anyway, Shorty and I won't part with more than five hundred,
+and they'll cost you fifty dollars apiece. That's the last word, and if
+you don't like it, good-night. Bill can take a hundred and you can have
+the other four hundred."
+
+Next day Dawson began its laugh. It started early in the morning, just
+after daylight, when Smoke went to the bulletin-board outside the A. C.
+Company store and tacked up a notice. Men gathered and were reading and
+snickering over his shoulder ere he had driven the last tack. Soon the
+bulletin-board was crowded by hundreds who could not get near enough
+to read. Then a reader was appointed by acclamation, and thereafter,
+throughout the day, many men were acclaimed to read in loud voice the
+notice Smoke Bellew had nailed up. And there were numbers of men who
+stood in the snow and heard it read several times in order to memorize
+the succulent items that appeared in the following order:
+
+The Tra-Lee Town-Site Company keeps its accounts on the wall. This is
+its first account and its last.
+
+Any shareholder who objects to donating ten dollars to the Dawson
+General Hospital may obtain his ten dollars on personal application
+to Wild Water Charley, or, failing that, will absolutely obtain it on
+application to Smoke Bellew.
+
+                 MONEYS RECEIVED AND DISBURSED
+
+   From 4874 shares at $10.00...............................$48,740.00
+   To Dwight Sanderson for Town-Site of Tra-Lee..............10,000.00
+   To incidental expenses, to wit:  powder, drills,
+        windlass, gold commissioner's office, etc.............1,000.00
+   To Dawson General Hospital................................37,740.00
+                                                            ----------            Total..........................................$48,740.00
+
+   From Bill Saltman, for 100 shares privately
+        purchased at $50.00.................................$ 5,000.00
+   From Wild Water Charley, for 400 shares privately
+        purchased at $50.00..................................20,000.00
+   To Bill Saltman, in recognition of services as
+        volunteer stampede promoter...........................5,000.00
+   To Dawson General Hospital.................................3,000.00
+   To Smoke Bellew and Jack Short, balance in full on
+        egg deal and morally owing...........................17,000.00
+                                                            ----------            Total..........................................$25,000.00
+
+   Shares remaining to account for 7126.  These shares, held by Smoke
+   Bellew and Jack Short, value nil, may be obtained gratis, for the
+   asking, by any and all residents of Dawson desiring change of domicile
+   to the peace and solitude of the town of Tra-Lee.
+
+   (Note:  Peace and solitude always and perpetually guaranteed in town
+   of Tra-Lee)
+
+                                      (Signed) SMOKE BELLEW, President.
+                                      (Signed) JACK SHORT, Secretary.
+
+
+
+
+XII. WONDER OF WOMAN
+
+
+"Just the same, I notice you ain't tumbled over yourself to get
+married," Shorty remarked, continuing a conversation that had lapsed
+some few minutes before.
+
+Smoke, sitting on the edge of the sleeping-robe and examining the feet
+of a dog he had rolled snarling on its back in the snow, did not answer.
+And Shorty, turning a steaming moccasin propped on a stick before the
+fire, studied his partner's face keenly.
+
+"Cock your eye up at that there aurora borealis," Shorty went on. "Some
+frivolous, eh? Just like any shilly-shallyin', shirt-dancing woman. The
+best of them is frivolous, when they ain't foolish. And they's cats,
+all of 'em, the littlest an' the biggest, the nicest and the otherwise.
+They're sure devourin' lions an' roarin' hyenas when they get on the
+trail of a man they've cottoned to."
+
+Again the monologue languished. Smoke cuffed the dog when it attempted
+to snap his hand, and went on examining its bruised and bleeding pads.
+
+"Huh!" pursued Shorty. "Mebbe I couldn't 'a' married if I'd a mind to!
+An' mebbe I wouldn't 'a' been married without a mind to, if I hadn't
+hiked for tall timber. Smoke, d'you want to know what saved me? I'll
+tell you. My wind. I just kept a-runnin'. I'd like to see any skirt run
+me outa breath."
+
+Smoke released the animal and turned his own steaming, stick-propped
+moccasins. "We've got to rest over to-morrow and make moccasins," he
+vouchsafed. "That little crust is playing the devil with their feet."
+
+"We oughta keep goin' somehow," Shorty objected. "We ain't got grub
+enough to turn back with, and we gotta strike that run of caribou or
+them white Indians almighty soon or we'll be eatin' the dogs, sore
+feet an' all. Now who ever seen them white Indians anyway? Nothin'
+but hearsay. An' how can a Indian be white? A black white man'd be as
+natural. Smoke, we just oughta travel to-morrow. The country's plumb
+dead of game. We ain't seen even a rabbit-track in a week, you know
+that. An' we gotta get out of this dead streak into somewhere that
+meat's runnin'."
+
+"They'll travel all the better with a day's rest for their feet and
+moccasins all around," Smoke counseled. "If you get a chance at any low
+divide, take a peep over at the country beyond. We're likely to strike
+open rolling country any time now. That's what La Perle told us to look
+for."
+
+"Huh! By his own story, it was ten years ago that La Perle come through
+this section, an' he was that loco from hunger he couldn't know what he
+did see. Remember what he said of whoppin' big flags floatin' from the
+tops of the mountains? That shows how loco HE was. An' he said himself
+he never seen any white Indians--that was Anton's yarn. An', besides,
+Anton kicked the bucket two years before you an' me come to Alaska. But
+I'll take a look to-morrow. An' mebbe I might pick up a moose. What d'
+you say we turn in?"
+
+Smoke spent the morning in camp, sewing dog-moccasins and repairing
+harnesses. At noon he cooked a meal for two, ate his share, and began
+to look for Shorty's return. An hour later he strapped on his snow-shoes
+and went out on his partner's trail. The way led up the bed of
+the stream, through a narrow gorge that widened suddenly into a
+moose-pasture. But no moose had been there since the first snow of the
+preceding fall. The tracks of Shorty's snow-shoes crossed the pasture
+and went up the easy slope of a low divide. At the crest Smoke halted.
+The tracks continued down the other slope. The first spruce-trees, in
+the creek bed, were a mile away, and it was evident that Shorty had
+passed through them and gone on. Smoke looked at his watch, remembered
+the oncoming darkness, the dogs, and the camp, and reluctantly decided
+against going farther. But before he retraced his steps he paused for
+a long look. All the eastern sky-line was saw-toothed by the snowy
+backbone of the Rockies. The whole mountain system, range upon range,
+seemed to trend to the northwest, cutting athwart the course to the
+open country reported by La Perle. The effect was as if the mountains
+conspired to thrust back the traveler toward the west and the Yukon.
+Smoke wondered how many men in the past, approaching as he had
+approached, had been turned aside by that forbidding aspect. La Perle
+had not been turned aside, but, then, La Perle had crossed over from the
+eastern slope of the Rockies.
+
+Until midnight Smoke maintained a huge fire for the guidance of Shorty.
+And in the morning, waiting with camp broken and dogs harnessed for the
+first break of light, Smoke took up the pursuit. In the narrow pass of
+the canyon, his lead-dog pricked up its ears and whined. Then Smoke came
+upon the Indians, six of them, coming toward him. They were traveling
+light, without dogs, and on each man's back was the smallest of pack
+outfits. Surrounding Smoke, they immediately gave him several matters
+for surprise. That they were looking for him was clear. That they talked
+no Indian tongue of which he knew a word was also quickly made clear.
+They were not white Indians, though they were taller and heavier than
+the Indians of the Yukon basin. Five of them carried the old-fashioned,
+long-barreled Hudson Bay Company musket, and in the hands of the sixth
+was a Winchester rifle which Smoke knew to be Shorty's.
+
+Nor did they waste time in making him a prisoner. Unarmed himself, Smoke
+could only submit. The contents of the sled were distributed among
+their own packs, and he was given a pack composed of his and Shorty's
+sleeping-furs. The dogs were unharnessed, and when Smoke protested, one
+of the Indians, by signs, indicated a trail too rough for sled-travel.
+Smoke bowed to the inevitable, cached the sled end-on in the snow on the
+bank above the stream, and trudged on with his captors. Over the
+divide to the north they went, down to the spruce-trees which Smoke had
+glimpsed the preceding afternoon. They followed the stream for a dozen
+miles, abandoning it when it trended to the west and heading directly
+eastward up a narrow tributary.
+
+The first night was spent in a camp which had been occupied for several
+days. Here was cached a quantity of dried salmon and a sort of pemmican,
+which the Indians added to their packs. From this camp a trail of many
+snow-shoes led off--Shorty's captors, was Smoke's conclusion; and before
+darkness fell he succeeded in making out the tracks Shorty's narrower
+snow-shoes had left. On questioning the Indians by signs, they nodded
+affirmation and pointed to the north.
+
+Always, in the days that followed, they pointed north; and always
+the trail, turning and twisting through a jumble of upstanding peaks,
+trended north. Everywhere, in this bleak snow-solitude, the way seemed
+barred, yet ever the trail curved and coiled, finding low divides and
+avoiding the higher and untraversable chains. The snow-fall was deeper
+than in the lower valleys, and every step of the way was snow-shoe work.
+Furthermore, Smoke's captors, all young men, traveled light and fast;
+and he could not forbear the prick of pride in the knowledge that he
+easily kept up with them. They were travel-hardened and trained to
+snow-shoes from infancy; yet such was his condition that the traverse
+bore no more of ordinary hardship to him than to them.
+
+In six days they gained and crossed the central pass, low in comparison
+with the mountains it threaded, yet formidable in itself and not
+possible for loaded sleds. Five days more of tortuous winding, from
+lower altitude to lower altitude, brought them to the open, rolling, and
+merely hilly country La Perle had found ten years before. Smoke knew it
+with the first glimpse, on a sharp cold day, the thermometer forty below
+zero, the atmosphere so clear that he could see a hundred miles. Far as
+he could see rolled the open country. High in the east the Rockies still
+thrust their snowy ramparts heavenward. To the south and west extended
+the broken ranges of the projecting spur-system they had crossed. And in
+this vast pocket lay the country La Perle had traversed--snow-blanketed,
+but assuredly fat with game at some time in the year, and in the summer
+a smiling, forested, and flowered land.
+
+Before midday, traveling down a broad stream, past snow-buried willows
+and naked aspens, and across heavily timbered flats of spruce, they came
+upon the site of a large camp, recently abandoned. Glancing as he
+went by, Smoke estimated four or five hundred fires, and guessed the
+population to be in the thousands. So fresh was the trail, and so well
+packed by the multitude, that Smoke and his captors took off their
+snow-shoes and in their moccasins struck a swifter pace. Signs of game
+appeared and grew plentiful--tracks of wolves and lynxes that without
+meat could not be. Once, one of the Indians cried out with satisfaction
+and pointed to a large area of open snow, littered with fang-polished
+skulls of caribou, trampled and disrupted as if an army had fought upon
+it. And Smoke knew that a big killing had been made by the hunters since
+the last snow-flurry.
+
+In the long twilight no sign was manifested of making camp. They held
+steadily on through a deepening gloom that vanished under a sky of
+light--great, glittering stars half veiled by a greenish vapor of
+pulsing aurora borealis. His dogs first caught the noises of the camp,
+pricking their ears and whining in low eagerness. Then it came to the
+ears of the humans, a murmur, dim with distance, but not invested with
+the soothing grace that is common to distant murmurs. Instead, it was in
+a high, wild key, a beat of shrill sound broken by shriller sounds--the
+long wolf-howling of many wolf-dogs, a screaming of unrest and pain,
+mournful with hopelessness and rebellion. Smoke swung back the crystal
+of his watch and by the feel of finger-tips on the naked hands made out
+eleven o'clock. The men about him quickened. The legs that had lifted
+through a dozen strenuous hours lifted in a still swifter pace that was
+half a run and mostly a running jog. Through a dark spruce-flat they
+burst upon an abrupt glare of light from many fires and upon an abrupt
+increase of sound. The great camp lay before them.
+
+And as they entered and threaded the irregular runways of the
+hunting-camp, a vast tumult, as in a wave, rose to meet them and rolled
+on with them--cries, greetings, questions and answers, jests and jests
+thrust back again, the snapping snarl of wolf-dogs rushing in furry
+projectiles of wrath upon Smoke's stranger dogs, the scolding of squaws,
+laughter, the whimpering of children and wailing of infants, the moans
+of the sick aroused afresh to pain, all the pandemonium of a camp of
+nerveless, primitive wilderness folk.
+
+Striking with clubs and the butts of guns, Smoke's party drove back the
+attacking dogs, while his own dogs, snapping and snarling, awed by so
+many enemies, shrank in among the legs of their human protectors, and
+bristled along stiff-legged in menacing prance.
+
+They halted in the trampled snow by an open fire, where Shorty and two
+young Indians, squatted on their hams, were broiling strips of
+caribou meat. Three other young Indians, lying in furs on a mat of
+spruce-boughs, sat up. Shorty looked across the fire at his partner,
+but with a sternly impassive face, like those of his companions, made no
+sign and went on broiling the meat.
+
+"What's the matter?" Smoke demanded, half in irritation. "Lost your
+speech?"
+
+The old familiar grin twisted on Shorty's face. "Nope," he answered.
+"I'm a Indian. I'm learnin' not to show surprise. When did they catch
+you?"
+
+"Next day after you left."
+
+"Hum," Shorty said, the light of whimsy dancing in his eyes. "Well, I'm
+doin' fine, thank you most to death. This is the bachelors' camp." He
+waved his hand to embrace its magnificence, which consisted of a fire,
+beds of spruce-boughs laid on top of the snow, flies of caribou skin,
+and wind-shields of twisted spruce and willow withes. "An' these are the
+bachelors." This time his hand indicated the young men, and he spat a
+few spoken gutturals in their own language that brought the white flash
+of acknowledgment from eyes and teeth. "They're glad to meet you, Smoke.
+Set down an' dry your moccasins, an' I'll cook up some grub. I'm gettin'
+the hang of the lingo pretty well, ain't I? You'll have to come to it,
+for it looks as if we'll be with these folks a long time. They's another
+white man here. Got caught six years ago. He's a Irishman they picked up
+over Great Slave Lake way. Danny McCan is what he goes by. He's settled
+down with a squaw. Got two kids already, but he'll skin out if ever the
+chance opens up. See that low fire over there to the right? That's his
+camp."
+
+Apparently this was Smoke's appointed domicile, for his captors left him
+and his dogs, and went on deeper into the big camp. While he attended to
+his foot-gear and devoured strips of hot meat, Shorty cooked and talked.
+
+"This is a sure peach of a pickle, Smoke--you listen to me. An' we got
+to go some to get out. These is the real, blowed-in-the-glass, wild
+Indians. They ain't white, but their chief is. He talks like a mouthful
+of hot mush, an' if he ain't full-blood Scotch they ain't no such thing
+as Scotch in the world. He's the hi-yu, skookum top-chief of the whole
+caboodle. What he says goes. You want to get that from the start-off.
+Danny McCan's been tryin' to get away from him for six years. Danny's
+all right, but he ain't got go in him. He knows a way out--learned it on
+huntin' trips--to the west of the way you an' me came. He ain't had the
+nerve to tackle it by his lonely. But we can pull it off, the three of
+us. Whiskers is the real goods, but he's mostly loco just the same."
+
+"Who's Whiskers?" Smoke queried, pausing in the wolfing-down of a hot
+strip of meat.
+
+"Why, he's the top geezer. He's the Scotcher. He's gettin' old, an' he's
+sure asleep now, but he'll see you to-morrow an' show you clear as print
+what a measly shrimp you are on his stompin'-grounds. These grounds
+belong to him. You got to get that into your noodle. They ain't never
+been explored, nor nothin', an' they're hisn. An' he won't let you
+forget it. He's got about twenty thousand square miles of huntin'
+country here all his own. He's the white Indian, him an' the skirt. Huh!
+Don't look at me that way. Wait till you see her. Some looker, an' all
+white, like her dad--he's Whiskers. An' say, caribou! I've saw 'em.
+A hundred thousan' of good running meat in the herd, an' ten thousan'
+wolves an' cats a-followin' an' livin' off the stragglers an' the
+leavin's. We leave the leavin's. The herd's movin' to the east, an'
+we'll be followin' 'em any day now. We eat our dogs, an' what we don't
+eat we smoke 'n cure for the spring before the salmon-run gets its sting
+in. Say, what Whiskers don't know about salmon an' caribou nobody knows,
+take it from me."
+
+
+"Here comes Whiskers lookin' like he's goin' somewheres," Shorty
+whispered, reaching over and wiping greasy hands on the coat of one of
+the sled-dogs.
+
+It was morning, and the bachelors were squatting over a breakfast of
+caribou-meat, which they ate as they broiled. Smoke glanced up and saw
+a small and slender man, skin-clad like any savage, but unmistakably
+white, striding in advance of a sled team and a following of a dozen
+Indians. Smoke cracked a hot bone, and while he sucked out the steaming
+marrow gazed at his approaching host. Bushy whiskers and yellowish gray
+hair, stained by camp smoke, concealed most of the face, but failed
+wholly to hide the gaunt, almost cadaverous, cheeks. It was a healthy
+leanness, Smoke decided, as he noted the wide flare of the nostrils and
+the breadth and depth of chest that gave spaciousness to the guaranty of
+oxygen and life.
+
+"How do you do," the man said, slipping a mitten and holding out his
+bare hand. "My name is Snass," he added, as they shook hands.
+
+"Mine's Bellew," Smoke returned, feeling peculiarly disconcerted as he
+gazed into the keen-searching black eyes.
+
+"Getting plenty to eat, I see."
+
+Smoke nodded and resumed his marrow-bone, the purr of Scottish speech
+strangely pleasant in his ears.
+
+"Rough rations. But we don't starve often. And it's more natural than
+the hand-reared meat of the cities."
+
+"I see you don't like cities," Smoke laughed, in order to be saying
+something; and was immediately startled by the transformation Snass
+underwent.
+
+Quite like a sensitive plant, the man's entire form seemed to wilt and
+quiver. Then the recoil, tense and savage, concentered in the eyes, in
+which appeared a hatred that screamed of immeasurable pain. He turned
+abruptly away, and, recollecting himself, remarked casually over his
+shoulder:
+
+"I'll see you later, Mr. Bellew. The caribou are moving east, and I'm
+going ahead to pick out a location. You'll all come on to-morrow."
+
+"Some Whiskers, that, eh?" Shorty muttered, as Snass pulled on at the
+head of his outfit.
+
+Again Shorty wiped his hands on the wolf-dog, which seemed to like it as
+it licked off the delectable grease.
+
+Later on in the morning Smoke went for a stroll through the camp, busy
+with its primitive pursuits. A big body of hunters had just returned,
+and the men were scattering to their various fires. Women and children
+were departing with dogs harnessed to empty toboggan-sleds, and women
+and children and dogs were hauling sleds heavy with meat fresh from the
+killing and already frozen. An early spring cold-snap was on, and the
+wildness of the scene was painted in a temperature of thirty below zero.
+Woven cloth was not in evidence. Furs and soft-tanned leather clad all
+alike. Boys passed with bows in their hands, and quivers of bone-barbed
+arrows; and many a skinning-knife of bone or stone Smoke saw in belts or
+neck-hung sheaths. Women toiled over the fires, smoke-curing the meat,
+on their backs infants that stared round-eyed and sucked at lumps of
+tallow. Dogs, full-kin to wolves, bristled up to Smoke to endure the
+menace of the short club he carried and to whiff the odor of this
+newcomer whom they must accept by virtue of the club.
+
+Segregated in the heart of the camp, Smoke came upon what was evidently
+Snass's fire. Though temporary in every detail, it was solidly
+constructed and was on a large scale. A great heap of bales of skins and
+outfit was piled on a scaffold out of reach of the dogs. A large canvas
+fly, almost half-tent, sheltered the sleeping- and living-quarters.
+To one side was a silk tent--the sort favored by explorers and wealthy
+big-game hunters. Smoke had never seen such a tent, and stepped closer.
+As he stood looking, the flaps parted and a young woman came out. So
+quickly did she move, so abruptly did she appear, that the effect on
+Smoke was as that of an apparition. He seemed to have the same effect on
+her, and for a long moment they gazed at each other.
+
+She was dressed entirely in skins, but such skins and such magnificently
+beautiful fur-work Smoke had never dreamed of. Her parka, the hood
+thrown back, was of some strange fur of palest silver. The mukluks,
+with walrus-hide soles, were composed of the silver-padded feet of many
+lynxes. The long-gauntleted mittens, the tassels at the knees, all
+the varied furs of the costume, were pale silver that shimmered in the
+frosty light; and out of this shimmering silver, poised on slender,
+delicate neck, lifted her head, the rosy face blonde as the eyes were
+blue, the ears like two pink shells, the light chestnut hair touched
+with frost-dust and coruscating frost-glints.
+
+All this and more, as in a dream, Smoke saw; then, recollecting himself,
+his hand fumbled for his cap. At the same moment the wonder-stare in the
+girl's eyes passed into a smile, and, with movements quick and vital,
+she slipped a mitten and extended her hand.
+
+"How do you do," she murmured gravely, with a queer, delightful accent,
+her voice, silvery as the furs she wore, coming with a shock to Smoke's
+ears, attuned as they were to the harsh voices of the camp squaws.
+
+Smoke could only mumble phrases that were awkwardly reminiscent of his
+best society manner.
+
+"I am glad to see you," she went on slowly and gropingly, her face a
+ripple of smiles. "My English you will please excuse. It is not good. I
+am English like you," she gravely assured him. "My father he is Scotch.
+My mother she is dead. She is French, and English, and a little Indian,
+too. Her father was a great man in the Hudson Bay Company. Brrr! It is
+cold." She slipped on her mitten and rubbed her ears, the pink of which
+had already turned to white. "Let us go to the fire and talk. My name is
+Labiskwee. What is your name?"
+
+And so Smoke came to know Labiskwee, the daughter of Snass, whom Snass
+called Margaret.
+
+"Snass is not my father's name," she informed Smoke. "Snass is only an
+Indian name."
+
+Much Smoke learned that day, and in the days that followed, as the
+hunting-camp moved on in the trail of the caribou. These were real wild
+Indians--the ones Anton had encountered and escaped from long years
+before. This was nearly the western limit of their territory, and in
+the summer they ranged north to the tundra shores of the Arctic, and
+eastward as far as the Luskwa. What river the Luskwa was Smoke could
+not make out, nor could Labiskwee tell him, nor could McCan. On occasion
+Snass, with parties of strong hunters, pushed east across the Rockies,
+on past the lakes and the Mackenzie and into the Barrens. It was on the
+last traverse in that direction that the silk tent occupied by Labiskwee
+had been found.
+
+"It belonged to the Millicent-Adbury expedition," Snass told Smoke.
+
+"Oh! I remember. They went after musk-oxen. The rescue expedition never
+found a trace of them."
+
+"I found them," Snass said. "But both were dead."
+
+"The world still doesn't know. The word never got out."
+
+"The word never gets out," Snass assured him pleasantly.
+
+"You mean if they had been alive when you found them--?"
+
+Snass nodded. "They would have lived on with me and my people."
+
+"Anton got out," Smoke challenged.
+
+"I do not remember the name. How long ago?"
+
+"Fourteen or fifteen years," Smoke answered.
+
+"So he pulled through, after all. Do you know, I've wondered about him.
+We called him Long Tooth. He was a strong man, a strong man."
+
+"La Perle came through here ten years ago."
+
+Snass shook his head.
+
+"He found traces of your camps. It was summer time."
+
+"That explains it," Snass answered. "We are hundreds of miles to the
+north in the summer."
+
+But, strive as he would, Smoke could get no clew to Snass's history in
+the days before he came to live in the northern wilds. Educated he was,
+yet in all the intervening years he had read no books, no newspapers.
+What had happened in the world he knew not, nor did he show desire
+to know. He had heard of the miners on the Yukon, and of the Klondike
+strike. Gold-miners had never invaded his territory, for which he
+was glad. But the outside world to him did not exist. He tolerated no
+mention of it.
+
+Nor could Labiskwee help Smoke with earlier information. She had been
+born on the hunting-grounds. Her mother had lived for six years after.
+Her mother had been very beautiful--the only white woman Labiskwee had
+ever seen. She said this wistfully, and wistfully, in a thousand ways,
+she showed that she knew of the great outside world on which her father
+had closed the door. But this knowledge was secret. She had early
+learned that mention of it threw her father into a rage.
+
+Anton had told a squaw of her mother, and that her mother had been a
+daughter of a high official in the Hudson Bay Company. Later, the squaw
+had told Labiskwee. But her mother's name she had never learned.
+
+As a source of information, Danny McCan was impossible. He did not like
+adventure. Wild life was a horror, and he had had nine years of it.
+Shanghaied in San Francisco, he had deserted the whaleship at Point
+Barrow with three companions. Two had died, and the third had abandoned
+him on the terrible traverse south. Two years he had lived with the
+Eskimos before raising the courage to attempt the south traverse, and
+then, within several days of a Hudson Bay Company post, he had been
+gathered in by a party of Snass's young men. He was a small, stupid man,
+afflicted with sore eyes, and all he dreamed or could talk about was
+getting back to his beloved San Francisco and his blissful trade of
+bricklaying.
+
+"You're the first intelligent man we've had," Snass complimented Smoke
+one night by the fire. "Except old Four Eyes. The Indians named him so.
+He wore glasses and was short-sighted. He was a professor of zoology."
+(Smoke noted the correctness of the pronunciation of the word.) "He died
+a year ago. My young men picked him up strayed from an expedition on the
+upper Porcupine. He was intelligent, yes; but he was also a fool. That
+was his weakness--straying. He knew geology, though, and working
+in metals. Over on the Luskwa, where there's coal, we have several
+creditable hand-forges he made. He repaired our guns and taught
+the young men how. He died last year, and we really missed him.
+Strayed--that's how it happened--froze to death within a mile of camp."
+
+It was on the same night that Snass said to Smoke:
+
+"You'd better pick out a wife and have a fire of your own. You will be
+more comfortable than with those young bucks. The maidens' fires--a sort
+of feast of the virgins, you know--are not lighted until full summer and
+the salmon, but I can give orders earlier if you say the word."
+
+Smoke laughed and shook his head.
+
+"Remember," Snass concluded quietly, "Anton is the only one that ever
+got away. He was lucky, unusually lucky."
+
+Her father had a will of iron, Labiskwee told Smoke.
+
+"Four Eyes used to call him the Frozen Pirate--whatever that means--the
+Tyrant of the Frost, the Cave Bear, the Beast Primitive, the King of
+the Caribou, the Bearded Pard, and lots of such things. Four Eyes loved
+words like these. He taught me most of my English. He was always making
+fun. You could never tell. He called me his cheetah-chum after times
+when I was angry. What is cheetah? He always teased me with it."
+
+She chattered on with all the eager naivete of a child, which Smoke
+found hard to reconcile with the full womanhood of her form and face.
+
+Yes, her father was very firm. Everybody feared him. He was terrible
+when angry. There were the Porcupines. It was through them, and through
+the Luskwas, that Snass traded his skins at the posts and got his
+supplies of ammunition and tobacco. He was always fair, but the chief of
+the Porcupines began to cheat. And after Snass had warned him twice, he
+burned his log village, and over a dozen of the Porcupines were killed
+in the fight. But there was no more cheating. Once, when she was a
+little girl, there was one white man killed while trying to escape. No,
+her father did not do it, but he gave the order to the young men. No
+Indian ever disobeyed her father.
+
+And the more Smoke learned from her, the more the mystery of Snass
+deepened.
+
+"And tell me if it is true," the girl was saying, "that there was a man
+and a woman whose names were Paolo and Francesca and who greatly loved
+each other?"
+
+Smoke nodded.
+
+"Four Eyes told me all about it," she beamed happily. "And so he did not
+make it up, after all. You see, I was not sure. I asked father, but,
+oh, he was angry. The Indians told me he gave poor Four Eyes an awful
+talking to. Then there were Tristan and Iseult--two Iseults. It was very
+sad. But I should like to love that way. Do all the young men and women
+in the world do that? They do not here. They just get married. They
+do not seem to have time. I am English, and I will never marry an
+Indian--would you? That is why I have not lighted my maiden's fire. Some
+of the young men are bothering father to make me do it. Libash is one of
+them. He is a great hunter. And Mahkook comes around singing songs. He
+is funny. To-night, if you come by my tent after dark, you will hear him
+singing out in the cold. But father says I can do as I please, and so I
+shall not light my fire. You see, when a girl makes up her mind to get
+married, that is the way she lets young men know. Four Eyes always said
+it was a fine custom. But I noticed he never took a wife. Maybe he was
+too old. He did not have much hair, but I do not think he was really
+very old. And how do you know when you are in love?--like Paolo and
+Francesca, I mean."
+
+Smoke was disconcerted by the clear gaze of her blue eyes. "Why, they
+say," he stammered, "those who are in love say it, that love is dearer
+than life. When one finds out that he or she likes somebody better than
+everybody else in the world--why, then, they know they are in love.
+That's the way it goes, but it's awfully hard to explain. You just know
+it, that's all."
+
+She looked off across the camp-smoke, sighed, and resumed work on the
+fur mitten she was sewing. "Well," she announced with finality, "I shall
+never get married anyway."
+
+
+"Once we hit out we'll sure have some tall runnin'," Shorty said
+dismally.
+
+"The place is a big trap," Smoke agreed.
+
+From the crest of a bald knob they gazed out over Snass's snowy domain.
+East, west, and south they were hemmed in by the high peaks and jumbled
+ranges. Northward, the rolling country seemed interminable; yet they
+knew, even in that direction, that half a dozen transverse chains
+blocked the way.
+
+"At this time of the year I could give you three days' start," Snass
+told Smoke that evening. "You can't hide your trail, you see. Anton got
+away when the snow was gone. My young men can travel as fast as the best
+white man; and, besides, you would be breaking trail for them. And when
+the snow is off the ground, I'll see to it that you don't get the chance
+Anton had. It's a good life. And soon the world fades. I have never
+quite got over the surprise of finding how easy it is to get along
+without the world."
+
+"What's eatin' me is Danny McCan," Shorty confided to Smoke. "He's a
+weak brother on any trail. But he swears he knows the way out to the
+westward, an' so we got to put up with him, Smoke, or you sure get
+yours."
+
+"We're all in the same boat," Smoke answered.
+
+"Not on your life. It's a-comin' to you straight down the pike."
+
+"What is?"
+
+"You ain't heard the news?"
+
+Smoke shook his head.
+
+"The bachelors told me. They just got the word. To-night it comes off,
+though it's months ahead of the calendar."
+
+Smoke shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"Ain't interested in hearin'?" Shorty teased.
+
+"I'm waiting to hear."
+
+"Well, Danny's wife just told the bachelors," Shorty paused
+impressively. "An' the bachelors told me, of course, that the maidens'
+fires is due to be lighted to-night. That's all. Now how do you like
+it?"
+
+"I don't get your drift, Shorty."
+
+"Don't, eh? Why, it's plain open and shut. They's a skirt after you, an'
+that skirt is goin' to light a fire, an' that skirt's name is Labiskwee.
+Oh, I've been watchin' her watch you when you ain't lookin'. She ain't
+never lighted her fire. Said she wouldn't marry a Indian. An' now, when
+she lights her fire, it's a cinch it's my poor old friend Smoke."
+
+"It sounds like a syllogism," Smoke said, with a sinking heart reviewing
+Labiskwee's actions of the past several days.
+
+"Cinch is shorter to pronounce," Shorty returned. "An' that's always
+the way--just as we're workin' up our get-away, along comes a skirt
+to complicate everything. We ain't got no luck. Hey! Listen to that,
+Smoke!"
+
+Three ancient squaws had halted midway between the bachelors' camp and
+the camp of McCan, and the oldest was declaiming in shrill falsetto.
+
+Smoke recognized the names, but not all the words, and Shorty translated
+with melancholy glee.
+
+"Labiskwee, the daughter of Snass, the Rainmaker, the Great Chief,
+lights her first maiden's fire to-night. Maka, the daughter of Owits,
+the Wolf-Runner--"
+
+The recital ran through the names of a dozen maidens, and then the three
+heralds tottered on their way to make announcement at the next fires.
+
+The bachelors, who had sworn youthful oaths to speak to no maidens, were
+uninterested in the approaching ceremony, and to show their disdain they
+made preparations for immediate departure on a mission set them by Snass
+and upon which they had planned to start the following morning. Not
+satisfied with the old hunters' estimates of the caribou, Snass had
+decided that the run was split. The task set the bachelors was to scout
+to the north and west in quest of the second division of the great herd.
+
+Smoke, troubled by Labiskwee's fire-lighting, announced that he would
+accompany the bachelors. But first he talked with Shorty and with McCan.
+
+"You be there on the third day, Smoke," Shorty said. "We'll have the
+outfit an' the dogs."
+
+"But remember," Smoke cautioned, "if there is any slip-up in meeting me,
+you keep on going and get out to the Yukon. That's flat. If you make it,
+you can come back for me in the summer. If I get the chance, I'll make
+it, and come back for you."
+
+McCan, standing by his fire, indicated with his eyes a rugged mountain
+where the high western range out-jutted on the open country.
+
+"That's the one," he said. "A small stream on the south side. We go
+up it. On the third day you meet us. We'll pass by on the third day.
+Anywhere you tap that stream you'll meet us or our trail."
+
+But the chance did not come to Smoke on the third day. The bachelors had
+changed the direction of their scout, and while Shorty and McCan plodded
+up the stream with their dogs, Smoke and the bachelors were sixty
+miles to the northeast picking up the trail of the second caribou herd.
+Several days later, through a dim twilight of falling snow, they came
+back to the big camp. A squaw ceased from wailing by a fire and darted
+up to Smoke. Harsh tongued, with bitter, venomous eyes, she cursed him,
+waving her arms toward a silent, fur-wrapped form that still lay on the
+sled which had hauled it in.
+
+What had happened, Smoke could only guess, and as he came to McCan's
+fire he was prepared for a second cursing. Instead, he saw McCan himself
+industriously chewing a strip of caribou meat.
+
+"I'm not a fightin' man," he whiningly explained. "But Shorty got away,
+though they're still after him. He put up a hell of a fight. They'll get
+him, too. He ain't got a chance. He plugged two bucks that'll get around
+all right. An' he croaked one square through the chest."
+
+"Yes, I know," Smoke answered. "I just met the widow."
+
+"Old Snass'll be wantin' to see you," McCan added. "Them's his orders.
+Soon as you come in you was to go to his fire. I ain't squealed. You
+don't know nothing. Keep that in mind. Shorty went off on his own along
+with me."
+
+At Snass's fire Smoke found Labiskwee. She met him with eyes that shone
+with such softness and tenderness as to frighten him.
+
+"I'm glad you did not try to run away," she said. "You see, I--"
+She hesitated, but her eyes didn't drop. They swam with a light
+unmistakable. "I lighted my fire, and of course it was for you. It has
+happened. I like you better than everybody else in the world. Better
+than my father. Better than a thousand Libashes and Mahkooks. I love.
+It is very strange. I love as Francesca loved, as Iseult loved. Old Four
+Eyes spoke true. Indians do not love this way. But my eyes are blue, and
+I am white. We are white, you and I."
+
+Smoke had never been proposed to in his life, and he was unable to meet
+the situation. Worse, it was not even a proposal. His acceptance was
+taken for granted. So thoroughly was it all arranged in Labiskwee's
+mind, so warm was the light in her eyes, that he was amazed that she did
+not throw her arms around him and rest her head on his shoulder. Then he
+realized, despite her candor of love, that she did not know the pretty
+ways of love. Among the primitive savages such ways did not obtain. She
+had had no chance to learn.
+
+She prattled on, chanting the happy burden of her love, while he strove
+to grip himself in the effort, somehow, to wound her with the truth.
+This, at the very first, was the golden opportunity.
+
+"But, Labiskwee, listen," he began. "Are you sure you learned from Four
+Eyes all the story of the love of Paolo and Francesca?"
+
+She clasped her hands and laughed with an immense certitude of gladness.
+"Oh! There is more! I knew there must be more and more of love! I have
+thought much since I lighted my fire. I have--"
+
+And then Snass strode in to the fire through the falling snowflakes, and
+Smoke's opportunity was lost.
+
+"Good evening," Snass burred gruffly. "Your partner has made a mess of
+it. I am glad you had better sense."
+
+"You might tell me what's happened," Smoke urged.
+
+The flash of white teeth through the stained beard was not pleasant.
+"Certainly, I'll tell you. Your partner has killed one of my people.
+That sniveling shrimp, McCan, deserted at the first shot. He'll never
+run away again. But my hunters have got your partner in the mountains,
+and they'll get him. He'll never make the Yukon basin. As for you, from
+now on you sleep at my fire. And there'll be no more scouting with the
+young men. I shall have my eye on you."
+
+Smoke's new situation at Snass's fire was embarrassing. He saw more of
+Labiskwee than ever. In its sweetness and innocence, the frankness of
+her love was terrible. Her glances were love glances; every look was a
+caress. A score of times he nerved himself to tell her of Joy Gastell,
+and a score of times he discovered that he was a coward. The damnable
+part of it was that Labiskwee was so delightful. She was good to look
+upon. Despite the hurt to his self-esteem of every moment spent with
+her, he pleasured in every such moment. For the first time in his life
+he was really learning woman, and so clear was Labiskwee's soul, so
+appalling in its innocence and ignorance, that he could not misread a
+line of it. All the pristine goodness of her sex was in her, uncultured
+by the conventionality of knowledge or the deceit of self-protection. In
+memory he reread his Schopenhauer and knew beyond all cavil that the sad
+philosopher was wrong. To know woman, as Smoke came to know Labiskwee,
+was to know that all woman-haters were sick men.
+
+Labiskwee was wonderful, and yet, beside her face in the flesh burned
+the vision of the face of Joy Gastell. Joy had control, restraint, all
+the feminine inhibitions of civilization, yet, by the trick of his
+fancy and the living preachment of the woman before him, Joy Gastell was
+stripped to a goodness at par with Labiskwee's. The one but appreciated
+the other, and all women of all the world appreciated by what Smoke saw
+in the soul of Labiskwee at Snass's fire in the snow-land.
+
+And Smoke learned about himself. He remembered back to all he knew
+of Joy Gastell, and he knew that he loved her. Yet he delighted in
+Labiskwee. And what was this feeling of delight but love? He could
+demean it by no less a name. Love it was. Love it must be. And he was
+shocked to the roots of his soul by the discovery of this polygamous
+strain in his nature. He had heard it argued, in the San Francisco
+studios, that it was possible for a man to love two women, or even three
+women, at a time. But he had not believed it. How could he believe it
+when he had not had the experience? Now it was different. He did truly
+love two women, and though most of the time he was quite convinced that
+he loved Joy Gastell more, there were other moments when he felt with
+equal certainty that he loved Labiskwee more.
+
+"There must be many women in the world," she said one day. "And women
+like men. Many women must have liked you. Tell me."
+
+He did not reply.
+
+"Tell me," she insisted.
+
+"I have never married," he evaded.
+
+"And there is no one else? No other Iseult out there beyond the
+mountains?"
+
+Then it was that Smoke knew himself a coward. He lied. Reluctantly he
+did it, but he lied. He shook his head with a slow indulgent smile, and
+in his face was more of fondness than he dreamed as he noted Labiskwee's
+swift joy-transfiguration.
+
+He excused himself to himself. His reasoning was jesuitical beyond
+dispute, and yet he was not Spartan enough to strike this child-woman a
+quivering heart-stroke.
+
+Snass, too, was a perturbing factor in the problem. Little escaped his
+black eyes, and he spoke significantly.
+
+"No man cares to see his daughter married," he said to Smoke. "At least,
+no man of imagination. It hurts. The thought of it hurts, I tell you.
+Just the same, in the natural order of life, Margaret must marry some
+time."
+
+A pause fell; Smoke caught himself wondering for the thousandth time
+what Snass's history must be.
+
+"I am a harsh, cruel man," Snass went on. "Yet the law is the law, and
+I am just. Nay, here with this primitive people, I am the law and the
+justice. Beyond my will no man goes. Also, I am a father, and all my
+days I have been cursed with imagination."
+
+Whither his monologue tended, Smoke did not learn, for it was
+interrupted by a burst of chiding and silvery laughter from Labiskwee's
+tent, where she played with a new-caught wolf-cub. A spasm of pain
+twitched Snass's face.
+
+"I can stand it," he muttered grimly. "Margaret must be married, and it
+is my fortune, and hers, that you are here. I had little hopes of Four
+Eyes. McCan was so hopeless I turned him over to a squaw who had lighted
+her fire twenty seasons. If it hadn't been you, it would have been an
+Indian. Libash might have become the father of my grandchildren."
+
+And then Labiskwee came from her tent to the fire, the wolf-cub in her
+arms, drawn as by a magnet, to gaze upon the man, in her eyes the love
+that art had never taught to hide.
+
+         *         *         *         *         *         *
+
+"Listen to me," said McCan. "The spring thaw is here, an' the crust is
+comin' on the snow. It's the time to travel, exceptin' for the spring
+blizzards in the mountains. I know them. I would run with no less a man
+than you."
+
+"But you can't run," Smoke contradicted. "You can keep up with no man.
+Your backbone is limber as thawed marrow. If I run, I run alone. The
+world fades, and perhaps I shall never run. Caribou meat is very good,
+and soon will come summer and the salmon."
+
+Said Snass: "Your partner is dead. My hunters did not kill him.
+They found the body, frozen in the first of the spring storms in the
+mountains. No man can escape. When shall we celebrate your marriage?"
+
+And Labiskwee: "I watch you. There is trouble in your eyes, in your
+face. Oh, I do know all your face. There is a little scar on your neck,
+just under the ear. When you are happy, the corners of your mouth turn
+up. When you think sad thoughts they turn down. When you smile there
+are three and four wrinkles at the corners of your eyes. When you laugh
+there are six. Sometimes I have almost counted seven. But I cannot count
+them now. I have never read books. I do not know how to read. But Four
+Eyes taught me much. My grammar is good. He taught me. And in his own
+eyes I have seen the trouble of the hunger for the world. He was often
+hungry for the world. Yet here was good meat, and fish in plenty,
+and the berries and the roots, and often flour came back for the furs
+through the Porcupines and the Luskwas. Yet was he hungry for the world.
+Is the world so good that you, too, are hungry for it? Four Eyes had
+nothing. But you have me." She sighed and shook her head. "Four Eyes
+died still hungry for the world. And if you lived here always would you,
+too, die hungry for the world? I am afraid I do not know the world. Do
+you want to run away to the world?"
+
+Smoke could not speak, but by his mouth-corner lines was she convinced.
+
+Minutes of silence passed, in which she visibly struggled, while Smoke
+cursed himself for the unguessed weakness that enabled him to speak the
+truth about his hunger for the world while it kept his lips tight on the
+truth of the existence of the other woman.
+
+Again Labiskwee sighed.
+
+"Very well. I love you more than I fear my father's anger, and he is
+more terrible in anger than a mountain storm. You told me what love
+is. This is the test of love. I shall help you to run away back to the
+world."
+
+
+Smoke awakened softly and without movement. Warm small fingers touched
+his cheek and slid gently to a pressure on his lips. Fur, with the
+chill of frost clinging in it, next tingled his skin, and the one word,
+"Come," was breathed in his ear. He sat up carefully and listened. The
+hundreds of wolf-dogs in the camp had lifted their nocturnal song, but
+under the volume of it, close at hand, he could distinguish the light,
+regular breathing of Snass.
+
+Labiskwee tugged gently at Smoke's sleeve, and he knew she wished him to
+follow. He took his moccasins and German socks in his hand and crept out
+into the snow in his sleeping moccasins. Beyond the glow from the dying
+embers of the fire, she indicated to him to put on his outer foot-gear,
+and while he obeyed, she went back under the fly where Snass slept.
+
+Feeling the hands of his watch Smoke found it was one in the morning.
+Quite warm it was, he decided, not more than ten below zero. Labiskwee
+rejoined him and led him on through the dark runways of the sleeping
+camp. Walk lightly as they could, the frost crunched crisply under their
+moccasins, but the sound was drowned by the clamor of the dogs, too deep
+in their howling to snarl at the man and woman who passed.
+
+"Now we can talk," she said, when the last fire had been left half a
+mile behind.
+
+And now, in the starlight, facing him, Smoke noted for the first time
+that her arms were burdened, and, on feeling, discovered she carried his
+snowshoes, a rifle, two belts of ammunition, and his sleeping-robes.
+
+"I have everything fixed," she said, with a happy little laugh. "I have
+been two days making the cache. There is meat, even flour, matches, and
+skees, which go best on the hard crust and, when they break through,
+the webs will hold up longer. Oh, I do know snow-travel, and we shall go
+fast, my lover."
+
+Smoke checked his speech. That she had been arranging his escape was
+surprise enough, but that she had planned to go with him was more than
+he was prepared for. Unable to think immediate action, he gently, one
+by one, took her burdens from her. He put his arm around her and pressed
+her close, and still he could not think what to do.
+
+"God is good," she whispered. "He sent me a lover."
+
+Yet Smoke was brave enough not to suggest his going alone. And before he
+spoke again he saw all his memory of the bright world and the sun-lands
+reel and fade.
+
+"We will go back, Labiskwee," he said. "You will be my wife, and we
+shall live always with the Caribou People."
+
+"No! no!" She shook her head; and her body, in the circle of his arm,
+resented his proposal. "I know. I have thought much. The hunger for the
+world would come upon you, and in the long nights it would devour your
+heart. Four Eyes died of hunger for the world. So would you die. All men
+from the world hunger for it. And I will not have you die. We will go on
+across the snow mountains on the south traverse."
+
+"Dear, listen," he urged. "We must go back."
+
+She pressed her mitten against his lips to prevent further speech. "You
+love me. Say that you love me."
+
+"I do love you, Labiskwee. You are my wonderful sweetheart."
+
+Again the mitten was a caressing obstacle to utterance.
+
+"We shall go on to the cache," she said with decision. "It is three
+miles from here. Come."
+
+He held back, and her pull on his arm could not move him. Almost was he
+tempted to tell her of the other woman beyond the south traverse.
+
+"It would be a great wrong to you to go back," she said. "I--I am only
+a wild girl, and I am afraid of the world; but I am more afraid for you.
+You see, it is as you told me. I love you more than anybody else in the
+world. I love you more than myself. The Indian language is not a good
+language. The English language is not a good language. The thoughts
+in my heart for you, as bright and as many as the stars--there is no
+language for them. How can I tell you them? They are there--see?"
+
+As she spoke she slipped the mitten from his hand and thrust the hand
+inside the warmth of her parka until it rested against her heart.
+Tightly and steadily she pressed his hand in its position. And in the
+long silence he felt the beat, beat of her heart, and knew that every
+beat of it was love. And then, slowly, almost imperceptibly, still
+holding his hand, her body began to incline away from his and toward the
+direction of the cache. Nor could he resist. It was as if he were drawn
+by her heart itself that so nearly lay in the hollow of his hand.
+
+So firm was the crust, frozen during the night after the previous day's
+surface-thaw, that they slid along rapidly on their skees.
+
+"Just here, in the trees, is the cache," Labiskwee told Smoke.
+
+The next moment she caught his arm with a startle of surprise. The
+flames of a small fire were dancing merrily, and crouched by the fire
+was McCan. Labiskwee muttered something in Indian, and so lashlike was
+the sound that Smoke remembered she had been called "cheetah" by Four
+Eyes.
+
+"I was minded you'd run without me," McCan explained when they came up,
+his small peering eyes glimmering with cunning. "So I kept an eye on the
+girl, an' when I seen her caching skees an' grub, I was on. I've brought
+my own skees an' webs an' grub. The fire? Sure, an' it was no danger.
+The camp's asleep an' snorin', an' the waitin' was cold. Will we be
+startin' now?"
+
+Labiskwee looked swift consternation at Smoke, as swiftly achieved a
+judgement on the matter, and spoke. And in the speaking she showed,
+child-woman though she was in love, the quick decisiveness of one who in
+other affairs of life would be no clinging vine.
+
+"McCan, you are a dog," she hissed, and her eyes were savage with anger.
+"I know it is in your heart to raise the camp if we do not take you.
+Very well. We must take you. But you know my father. I am like my
+father. You will do your share of the work. You will obey. And if you
+play one dirty trick, it would be better for you if you had never run."
+
+McCan looked up at her, his small pig-eyes hating and cringing, while in
+her eyes, turned to Smoke, the anger melted into luminous softness.
+
+"Is it right, what I have said?" she queried.
+
+Daylight found them in the belt of foothills that lay between the
+rolling country and the mountains. McCan suggested breakfast, but they
+held on. Not until the afternoon thaw softened the crust and prevented
+travel would they eat.
+
+The foothills quickly grew rugged, and the stream, up whose frozen bed
+they journeyed, began to thread deeper and deeper canyons. The signs of
+spring were less frequent, though in one canyon they found foaming bits
+of open water, and twice they came upon clumps of dwarf willow upon
+which were the first hints of swelling buds.
+
+Labiskwee explained to Smoke her knowledge of the country and the way
+she planned to baffle pursuit. There were but two ways out, one west,
+the other south. Snass would immediately dispatch parties of young men
+to guard the two trails. But there was another way south. True, it did
+no more than penetrate half-way into the high mountains, then, twisting
+to the west and crossing three divides, it joined the regular trail.
+When the young men found no traces on the regular trail they would turn
+back in the belief that the escape had been made by the west traverse,
+never dreaming that the runaways had ventured the harder and longer way
+around.
+
+Glancing back at McCan, in the rear, Labiskwee spoke in an undertone to
+Smoke. "He is eating," she said. "It is not good."
+
+Smoke looked. The Irishman was secretly munching caribou suet from the
+pocketful he carried.
+
+"No eating between meals, McCan," he commanded. "There's no game in the
+country ahead, and the grub will have to be whacked in equal rations
+from the start. The only way you can travel with us is by playing fair."
+
+By one o'clock the crust had thawed so that the skees broke through, and
+before two o'clock the web-shoes were breaking through. Camp was made
+and the first meal eaten. Smoke took stock of the food. McCan's supply
+was a disappointment. So many silver fox-skins had he stuffed in the
+bottom of the meat bag that there was little space left for meat.
+
+"Sure an' I didn't know there was so many," he explained. "I done it
+in the dark. But they're worth good money. An' with all this ammunition
+we'll be gettin' game a-plenty."
+
+"The wolves will eat you a-plenty," was Smoke's hopeless comment, while
+Labiskwee's eyes flashed their anger.
+
+Enough food for a month, with careful husbanding and appetites that
+never blunted their edge, was Smoke's and Labiskwee's judgment. Smoke
+apportioned the weight and bulk of the packs, yielding in the end to
+Labiskwee's insistence that she, too, should carry a pack.
+
+Next day the stream shallowed out in a wide mountain valley, and they
+were already breaking through the crust on the flats when they gained
+the harder surface of the slope of the divide.
+
+"Ten minutes later and we wouldn't have got across the flats," Smoke
+said, when they paused for breath on the bald crest of the summit. "We
+must be a thousand feet higher here."
+
+But Labiskwee, without speaking, pointed down to an open flat among the
+trees. In the midst of it, scattered abreast, were five dark specks that
+scarcely moved.
+
+"The young men," said Labiskwee.
+
+"They are wallowing to their hips," Smoke said. "They will never gain
+the hard footing this day. We have hours the start of them. Come on,
+McCan. Buck up. We don't eat till we can't travel."
+
+McCan groaned, but there was no caribou suet in his pocket, and he
+doggedly brought up the rear.
+
+In the higher valley in which they now found themselves, the crust did
+not break till three in the afternoon, at which time they managed to
+gain the shadow of a mountain where the crust was already freezing
+again. Once only they paused to get out McCan's confiscated suet, which
+they ate as they walked. The meat was frozen solid, and could be eaten
+only after thawing over a fire. But the suet crumbled in their mouths
+and eased the palpitating faintness in their stomachs.
+
+Black darkness, with an overcast sky, came on after a long twilight at
+nine o'clock, when they made camp in a clump of dwarf spruce. McCan
+was whining and helpless. The day's march had been exhausting, but in
+addition, despite his nine years' experience in the arctic, he had been
+eating snow and was in agony with his parched and burning mouth. He
+crouched by the fire and groaned, while they made the camp.
+
+Labiskwee was tireless, and Smoke could not but marvel at the life in
+her body, at the endurance of mind and muscle. Nor was her cheerfulness
+forced. She had ever a laugh or a smile for him, and her hand lingered
+in caress whenever it chanced to touch his. Yet, always, when she looked
+at McCan, her face went hard and pitiless and her eyes flashed frostily.
+
+In the night came wind and snow, and through a day of blizzard they
+fought their way blindly, missing the turn of the way that led up a
+small stream and crossed a divide to the west. For two more days they
+wandered, crossing other and wrong divides, and in those two days they
+dropped spring behind and climbed up into the abode of winter.
+
+"The young men have lost our trail, an' what's to stop us restin' a
+day?" McCan begged.
+
+But no rest was accorded. Smoke and Labiskwee knew their danger. They
+were lost in the high mountains, and they had seen no game nor signs of
+game. Day after day they struggled on through an iron configuration of
+landscape that compelled them to labyrinthine canyons and valleys that
+led rarely to the west. Once in such a canyon, they could only follow
+it, no matter where it led, for the cold peaks and higher ranges on
+either side were unscalable and unendurable. The terrible toil and
+the cold ate up energy, yet they cut down the size of the ration they
+permitted themselves.
+
+One night Smoke was awakened by a sound of struggling. Distinctly he
+heard a gasping and strangling from where McCan slept. Kicking the fire
+into flame, by its light he saw Labiskwee, her hands at the Irishman's
+throat and forcing from his mouth a chunk of partly chewed meat. Even
+as Smoke saw this, her hand went to her hip and flashed with the
+sheath-knife in it.
+
+"Labiskwee!" Smoke cried, and his voice was peremptory.
+
+The hand hesitated.
+
+"Don't," he said, coming to her side.
+
+She was shaking with anger, but the hand, after hesitating a moment
+longer, descended reluctantly to the sheath. As if fearing she could not
+restrain herself, she crossed to the fire and threw on more wood. McCan
+sat up, whimpering and snarling, between fright and rage spluttering an
+inarticulate explanation.
+
+"Where did you get it?" Smoke demanded.
+
+"Feel around his body," Labiskwee said.
+
+It was the first word she had spoken, and her voice quivered with the
+anger she could not suppress.
+
+McCan strove to struggle, but Smoke gripped him cruelly and searched
+him, drawing forth from under his armpit, where it had been thawed by
+the heat of his body, a strip of caribou meat. A quick exclamation from
+Labiskwee drew Smoke's attention. She had sprung to McCan's pack and was
+opening it. Instead of meat, out poured moss, spruce-needles, chips--all
+the light refuse that had taken the place of the meat and given the pack
+its due proportion minus its weight.
+
+Again Labiskwee's hand went to her hip, and she flew at the culprit only
+to be caught in Smoke's arms, where she surrendered herself, sobbing
+with the futility of her rage.
+
+"Oh, lover, it is not the food," she panted. "It is you, your life. The
+dog! He is eating you, he is eating you!"
+
+"We will yet live," Smoke comforted her. "Hereafter he shall carry the
+flour. He can't eat that raw, and if he does I'll kill him myself,
+for he will be eating your life as well as mine." He held her closer.
+"Sweetheart, killing is men's work. Women do not kill."
+
+"You would not love me if I killed the dog?" she questioned in surprise.
+
+"Not so much," Smoke temporized.
+
+She sighed with resignation. "Very well," she said. "I shall not kill
+him."
+
+
+The pursuit by the young men was relentless. By miracles of luck, as
+well as by deduction from the topography of the way the runaways must
+take, the young men picked up the blizzard-blinded trail and clung to
+it. When the snow flew, Smoke and Labiskwee took the most improbable
+courses, turning east when the better way opened south or west,
+rejecting a low divide to climb a higher. Being lost, it did not matter.
+Yet they could not throw the young men off. Sometimes they gained days,
+but always the young men appeared again. After a storm, when all trace
+was lost, they would cast out like a pack of hounds, and he who caught
+the later trace made smoke signals to call his comrades on.
+
+Smoke lost count of time, of days and nights and storms and camps.
+Through a vast mad phantasmagoria of suffering and toil he and Labiskwee
+struggled on, with McCan somehow stumbling along in the rear, babbling
+of San Francisco, his everlasting dream. Great peaks, pitiless and
+serene in the chill blue, towered about them. They fled down black
+canyons with walls so precipitous that the rock frowned naked, or
+wallowed across glacial valleys where frozen lakes lay far beneath their
+feet. And one night, between two storms, a distant volcano glared the
+sky. They never saw it again, and wondered whether it had been a dream.
+
+Crusts were covered with yards of new snow, that crusted and were
+snow-covered again. There were places, in canyon- and pocket-drifts,
+where they crossed snow hundreds of feet deep, and they crossed tiny
+glaciers, in drafty rifts, wind-scurried and bare of any snow. They
+crept like silent wraiths across the faces of impending avalanches, or
+roused from exhausted sleep to the thunder of them. They made fireless
+camps above timber-line, thawing their meat-rations with the heat of
+their bodies ere they could eat. And through it all Labiskwee remained
+Labiskwee. Her cheer never vanished, save when she looked at McCan, and
+the greatest stupor of fatigue and cold never stilled the eloquence of
+her love for Smoke.
+
+Like a cat she watched the apportionment of the meager ration, and Smoke
+could see that she grudged McCan every munch of his jaws. Once, she
+distributed the ration. The first Smoke knew was a wild harangue of
+protest from McCan. Not to him alone, but to herself, had she given
+a smaller portion than to Smoke. After that, Smoke divided the meat
+himself. Caught in a small avalanche one morning after a night of snow,
+and swept a hundred yards down the mountain, they emerged half-stifled
+and unhurt, but McCan emerged without his pack in which was all the
+flour. A second and larger snow-slide buried it beyond hope of recovery.
+After that, though the disaster had been through no fault of his,
+Labiskwee never looked at McCan, and Smoke knew it was because she dared
+not.
+
+It was a morning, stark still, clear blue above, with white sun-dazzle
+on the snow. The way led up a long, wide slope of crust. They moved like
+weary ghosts in a dead world. No wind stirred in the stagnant, frigid
+calm. Far peaks, a hundred miles away, studding the backbone of the
+Rockies up and down, were as distinct as if no more than five miles
+away.
+
+"Something is going to happen," Labiskwee whispered. "Don't you feel
+it?--here, there, everywhere? Everything is strange."
+
+"I feel a chill that is not of cold," Smoke answered. "Nor is it of
+hunger."
+
+"It is in your head, your heart," she agreed excitedly. "That is the way
+I feel it."
+
+"It is not of my senses," Smoke diagnosed. "I sense something, from
+without, that is tingling me with ice; it is a chill of my nerves."
+
+A quarter of an hour later they paused for breath.
+
+"I can no longer see the far peaks," Smoke said.
+
+"The air is getting thick and heavy," said Labiskwee. "It is hard to
+breathe."
+
+"There be three suns," McCan muttered hoarsely, reeling as he clung to
+his staff for support.
+
+There was a mock sun on either side of the real sun.
+
+"There are five," said Labiskwee; and as they looked, new suns formed
+and flashed before their eyes.
+
+"By Heaven, the sky is filled with suns beyant all countin'," McCan
+cried in fear.
+
+Which was true, for look where they would, half the circle of the sky
+dazzled and blazed with new suns forming.
+
+McCan yelped sharply with surprise and pain. "I'm stung!" he cried out,
+then yelped again.
+
+Then Labiskwee cried out, and Smoke felt a prickling stab on his cheek
+so cold that it burned like acid. It reminded him of swimming in the
+salt sea and being stung by the poisonous filaments of Portuguese
+men-of-war. The sensations were so similar that he automatically brushed
+his cheek to rid it of the stinging substance that was not there.
+
+And then a shot rang out, strangely muffled. Down the slope were the
+young men, standing on their skees, and one after another opened fire.
+
+"Spread out!" Smoke commanded. "And climb for it! We're almost to the
+top. They're a quarter of a mile below, and that means a couple of miles
+the start of them on the down-going of the other side."
+
+With faces prickling and stinging from invisible atmospheric stabs,
+the three scattered widely on the snow surface and toiled upward. The
+muffled reports of the rifles were weird to their ears.
+
+"Thank the Lord," Smoke panted to Labiskwee, "that four of them are
+muskets, and only one a Winchester. Besides, all these suns spoil their
+aim. They are fooled. They haven't come within a hundred feet of us."
+
+"It shows my father's temper," she said. "They have orders to kill."
+
+"How strange you talk," Smoke said. "Your voice sounds far away."
+
+"Cover your mouth," Labiskwee cried suddenly. "And do not talk. I know
+what it is. Cover your mouth with your sleeve, thus, and do not talk."
+
+McCan fell first, and struggled wearily to his feet. And after that all
+fell repeatedly ere they reached the summit. Their wills exceeded their
+muscles, they knew not why, save that their bodies were oppressed by a
+numbness and heaviness of movement. From the crest, looking back, they
+saw the young men stumbling and falling on the upward climb.
+
+"They will never get here," Labiskwee said. "It is the white death. I
+know it, though I have never seen it. I have heard the old men talk.
+Soon will come a mist--unlike any mist or fog or frost-smoke you ever
+saw. Few have seen it and lived."
+
+McCan gasped and strangled.
+
+"Keep your mouth covered," Smoke commanded.
+
+A pervasive flashing of light from all about them drew Smoke's eyes
+upward to the many suns. They were shimmering and veiling. The air was
+filled with microscopic fire-glints. The near peaks were being blotted
+out by the weird mist; the young men, resolutely struggling nearer, were
+being engulfed in it. McCan had sunk down, squatting, on his skees, his
+mouth and eyes covered by his arms.
+
+"Come on, make a start," Smoke ordered.
+
+"I can't move," McCan moaned.
+
+His doubled body set up a swaying motion. Smoke went toward him slowly,
+scarcely able to will movement through the lethargy that weighed his
+flesh. He noted that his brain was clear. It was only the body that was
+afflicted.
+
+"Let him be," Labiskwee muttered harshly.
+
+But Smoke persisted, dragging the Irishman to his feet and facing him
+down the long slope they must go. Then he started him with a shove,
+and McCan, braking and steering with his staff, shot into the sheen of
+diamond-dust and disappeared.
+
+Smoke looked at Labiskwee, who smiled, though it was all she could do to
+keep from sinking down. He nodded for her to push off, but she came near
+to him, and side by side, a dozen feet apart, they flew down through the
+stinging thickness of cold fire.
+
+Brake as he would, Smoke's heavier body carried him past her, and he
+dashed on alone, a long way, at tremendous speed that did not slacken
+till he came out on a level, crusted plateau. Here he braked till
+Labiskwee overtook him, and they went on, again side by side, with
+diminishing speed which finally ceased. The lethargy had grown more
+pronounced. The wildest effort of will could move them no more than at
+a snail's pace. They passed McCan, again crouched down on his skees, and
+Smoke roused him with his staff in passing.
+
+"Now we must stop," Labiskwee whispered painfully, "or we will die. We
+must cover up--so the old men said."
+
+She did not delay to untie knots, but began cutting her pack-lashings.
+Smoke cut his, and, with a last look at the fiery death-mist and the
+mockery of suns, they covered themselves over with the sleeping-furs and
+crouched in each other's arms. They felt a body stumble over them and
+fall, then heard feeble whimpering and blaspheming drowned in a violent
+coughing fit, and knew it was McCan who huddled against them as he
+wrapped his robe about him.
+
+Their own lung-strangling began, and they were racked and torn by a dry
+cough, spasmodic and uncontrollable. Smoke noted his temperature rising
+in a fever, and Labiskwee suffered similarly. Hour after hour the
+coughing spells increased in frequency and violence, and not till late
+afternoon was the worst reached. After that the mend came slowly, and
+between spells they dozed in exhaustion.
+
+McCan, however, steadily coughed worse, and from his groans and howls
+they knew he was in delirium. Once, Smoke made as if to throw the robes
+back, but Labiskwee clung to him tightly.
+
+"No," she begged. "It is death to uncover now. Bury your face here,
+against my parka, and breathe gently and do no talking--see, the way I
+am doing."
+
+They dozed on through the darkness, though the decreasing fits of
+coughing of one invariably aroused the other. It was after midnight,
+Smoke judged, when McCan coughed his last. After that he emitted low and
+bestial moanings that never ceased.
+
+Smoke awoke with lips touching his lips. He lay partly in Labiskwee's
+arms, his head pillowed on her breast. Her voice was cheerful and usual.
+The muffled sound of it had vanished.
+
+"It is day," she said, lifting the edge of the robes a trifle. "See, O
+my lover. It is day; we have lived through; and we no longer cough. Let
+us look at the world, though I could stay here thus forever and always.
+This last hour has been sweet. I have been awake, and I have been loving
+you."
+
+"I do not hear McCan," Smoke said. "And what has become of the young men
+that they have not found us?"
+
+He threw back the robes and saw a normal and solitary sun in the sky. A
+gentle breeze was blowing, crisp with frost and hinting of warmer days
+to come. All the world was natural again. McCan lay on his back, his
+unwashed face, swarthy from camp-smoke, frozen hard as marble. The sight
+did not affect Labiskwee.
+
+"Look!" she cried. "A snow bird! It is a good sign."
+
+There was no evidence of the young men. Either they had died on the
+other side of the divide or they had turned back.
+
+There was so little food that they dared not eat a tithe of what they
+needed, nor a hundredth part of what they desired, and in the days that
+followed, wandering through the lone mountain-land, the sharp sting
+of life grew blunted and the wandering merged half into a dream.
+Smoke would become abruptly conscious, to find himself staring at the
+never-ending hated snow-peaks, his senseless babble still ringing in
+his ears. And the next he would know, after seeming centuries, was that
+again he was roused to the sound of his own maunderings. Labiskwee,
+too, was light-headed most of the time. In the main their efforts were
+unreasoned, automatic. And ever they worked toward the west, and ever
+they were baffled and thrust north or south by snow-peaks and impassable
+ranges.
+
+"There is no way south," Labiskwee said. "The old men know. West, only
+west, is the way."
+
+The young men no longer pursued, but famine crowded on the trail.
+
+Came a day when it turned cold, and a thick snow, that was not snow but
+frost crystals of the size of grains of sand, began to fall. All day and
+night it fell, and for three days and nights it continued to fall. It
+was impossible to travel until it crusted under the spring sun, so they
+lay in their furs and rested, and ate less because they rested. So small
+was the ration they permitted that it gave no appeasement to the hunger
+pang that was much of the stomach, but more of the brain. And Labiskwee,
+delirious, maddened by the taste of her tiny portion, sobbing and
+mumbling, yelping sharp little animal cries of joy, fell upon the next
+day's portion and crammed it into her mouth.
+
+Then it was given to Smoke to see a wonderful thing. The food between
+her teeth roused her to consciousness. She spat it out, and with a great
+anger struck herself with her clenched fist on the offending mouth.
+
+It was given to Smoke to see many wonderful things in the days yet to
+come. After the long snow-fall came on a great wind that drove the dry
+and tiny frost-particles as sand is driven in a sand-storm. All through
+the night the sand-frost drove by, and in the full light of a clear and
+wind-blown day, Smoke looked with swimming eyes and reeling brain upon
+what he took to be the vision of a dream. All about towered great peaks
+and small, lone sentinels and groups and councils of mighty Titans. And
+from the tip of every peak, swaying, undulating, flaring out broadly
+against the azure sky, streamed gigantic snow-banners, miles in length,
+milky and nebulous, ever waving lights and shadows and flashing silver
+from the sun.
+
+"Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord," Smoke
+chanted, as he gazed upon these dusts of snow wind-driven into
+sky-scarves of shimmering silken light.
+
+And still he gazed, and still the bannered peaks did not vanish, and
+still he considered that he dreamed, until Labiskwee sat up among the
+furs.
+
+"I dream, Labiskwee," he said. "Look. Do you, too, dream within my
+dream?"
+
+"It is no dream," she replied. "This have the old men told me. And after
+this will blow the warm winds, and we shall live and win west."
+
+Smoke shot a snow-bird, and they divided it. Once, in a valley where
+willows budded standing in the snow, he shot a snowshoe rabbit. Another
+time he got a lean, white weasel. This much of meat they encountered,
+and no more, though, once, half-mile high and veering toward the west
+and the Yukon, they saw a wild-duck wedge drive by.
+
+"It is summer in the lower valleys," said Labiskwee. "Soon it will be
+summer here."
+
+Labiskwee's face had grown thin, but the bright, large eyes were
+brighter and larger, and when she looked at him she was transfigured by
+a wild, unearthly beauty.
+
+The days lengthened, and the snow began to sink. Each day the crust
+thawed, each night it froze again; and they were afoot early and late,
+being compelled to camp and rest during the midday hours of thaw when
+the crust could not bear their weight. When Smoke grew snow-blind,
+Labiskwee towed him on a thong tied to her waist. And when she was
+so blinded, she towed behind a thong to his waist. And starving, in a
+deeper dream, they struggled on through an awakening land bare of any
+life save their own.
+
+Exhausted as he was, Smoke grew almost to fear sleep, so fearful and
+bitter were the visions of that mad, twilight land. Always were they of
+food, and always was the food, at his lips, snatched away by the malign
+deviser of dreams. He gave dinners to his comrades of the old San
+Francisco days, himself, with whetting appetite and jealous eye,
+directing the arrangements, decorating the table with crimson-leafed
+runners of the autumn grape. The guests were dilatory, and while he
+greeted them and all sparkled with their latest cleverness, he was
+frantic with desire for the table. He stole to it, unobserved, and
+clutched a handful of black ripe olives, and turned to meet still
+another guest. And others surrounded him, and the laugh and play of wit
+went on, while all the time, hidden in his closed hand, was this madness
+of ripe olives.
+
+He gave many such dinners, all with the same empty ending. He attended
+Gargantuan feasts, where multitudes fed on innumerable bullocks roasted
+whole, prying them out of smoldering pits and with sharp knives slicing
+great strips of meat from the steaming carcasses. He stood, with mouth
+agape, beneath long rows of turkeys which white-aproned shopmen sold.
+And everybody bought save Smoke, mouth still agape, chained by a
+leadenness of movement to the pavement. A boy again, he sat with spoon
+poised high above great bowls of bread and milk. He pursued shy heifers
+through upland pastures and centuries of torment in vain effort to steal
+from them their milk, and in noisome dungeons he fought with rats for
+scraps and refuse. There was no food that was not a madness to him, and
+he wandered through vast stables, where fat horses stood in mile-long
+rows of stalls, and sought but never found the bran-bins from which they
+fed.
+
+Once, only, he dreamed to advantage. Famishing, shipwrecked or marooned,
+he fought with the big Pacific surf for rock-clinging mussels, and
+carried them up the sands to the dry flotsam of the spring tides. Of
+this he built a fire, and among the coals he laid his precious trove.
+He watched the steam jet forth and the locked shells pop apart, exposing
+the salmon-colored meat. Cooked to a turn--he knew it; and this time
+there was no intruding presence to whisk the meal away. At last--so he
+dreamed within the dream--the dream would come true. This time he
+would eat. Yet in his certitude he doubted, and he was steeled for
+the inevitable shift of vision until the salmon-colored meat, hot and
+savory, was in his mouth. His teeth closed upon it. He ate! The miracle
+had happened! The shock aroused him. He awoke in the dark, lying on his
+back, and heard himself mumbling little piggish squeals and grunts of
+joy. His jaws were moving, and between his teeth meat was crunching. He
+did not move, and soon small fingers felt about his lips, and between
+them was inserted a tiny sliver of meat. And in that he would eat no
+more, rather than that he was angry, Labiskwee cried and in his arms
+sobbed herself to sleep. But he lay on awake, marveling at the love and
+the wonder of woman.
+
+
+The time came when the last food was gone. The high peaks receded, the
+divides became lower, and the way opened promisingly to the west.
+But their reserves of strength were gone, and, without food, the time
+quickly followed when they lay down at night and in the morning did not
+arise. Smoke weakly gained his feet, collapsed, and on hands and knees
+crawled about the building of a fire. But try as she would Labiskwee
+sank back each time in an extremity of weakness. And Smoke sank down
+beside her, a wan sneer on his face for the automatism that had made him
+struggle for an unneeded fire. There was nothing to cook, and the
+day was warm. A gentle breeze sighed in the spruce-trees, and from
+everywhere, under the disappearing snow, came the trickling music of
+unseen streamlets.
+
+Labiskwee lay in a stupor, her breathing so imperceptible that often
+Smoke thought her dead. In the afternoon the chattering of a squirrel
+aroused him. Dragging the heavy rifle, he wallowed through the crust
+that had become slush. He crept on hands and knees, or stood upright and
+fell forward in the direction of the squirrel that chattered its wrath
+and fled slowly and tantalizingly before him. He had not the strength
+for a quick shot, and the squirrel was never still. At times Smoke
+sprawled in the wet snow-melt and cried out of weakness. Other times the
+flame of his life flickered, and blackness smote him. How long he lay in
+the last faint he did not know, but he came to, shivering in the
+chill of evening, his wet clothing frozen to the re-forming crust. The
+squirrel was gone, and after a weary struggle he won back to the side
+of Labiskwee. So profound was his weakness that he lay like a dead man
+through the night, nor did dreams disturb him.
+
+The sun was in the sky, the same squirrel chattering through the trees,
+when Labiskwee's hand on Smoke's cheek awakened him.
+
+"Put your hand on my heart, lover," she said, her voice clear but faint
+and very far away. "My heart is my love, and you hold it in your hand."
+
+A long time seemed to go by, ere she spoke again.
+
+"Remember always, there is no way south. That is well known to the
+Caribou People. West--that is the way--and you are almost there--and you
+will make it."
+
+And Smoke drowsed in the numbness that is near to death, until once more
+she aroused him.
+
+"Put your lips on mine," she said. "I will die so."
+
+"We will die together, sweetheart," was his answer.
+
+"No." A feeble flutter of her hand checked him, and so thin was her
+voice that scarcely did he hear it, yet did he hear all of it. Her hand
+fumbled and groped in the hood of her parka, and she drew forth a pouch
+that she placed in his hand. "And now your lips, my lover. Your lips on
+my lips, and your hand on my heart."
+
+And in that long kiss darkness came upon him again, and when again he
+was conscious he knew that he was alone and he knew that he was to die.
+He was wearily glad that he was to die.
+
+He found his hand resting on the pouch. With an inward smile at the
+curiosity that made him pull the draw-string, he opened it. Out poured
+a tiny flood of food. There was no particle of it that he did not
+recognize, all stolen by Labiskwee from Labiskwee--bread-fragments saved
+far back in the days ere McCan lost the flour; strips and strings of
+caribou-meat, partly gnawed; crumbles of suet; the hind-leg of the
+snowshoe rabbit, untouched; the hind-leg and part of the fore-leg of the
+white weasel; the wing dented still by her reluctant teeth, and the leg
+of the snow-bird--pitiful remnants, tragic renunciations, crucifixions
+of life, morsels stolen from her terrible hunger by her incredible love.
+
+With maniacal laughter Smoke flung it all out on the hardening
+snow-crust and went back into the blackness.
+
+He dreamed. The Yukon ran dry. In its bed, among muddy pools of water
+and ice-scoured rocks, he wandered, picking up fat nugget-gold. The
+weight of it grew to be a burden to him, till he discovered that it was
+good to eat. And greedily he ate. After all, of what worth was gold that
+men should prize it so, save that it was good to eat?
+
+He awoke to another sun. His brain was strangely clear. No longer did
+his eyesight blur. The familiar palpitation that had vexed him through
+all his frame was gone. The juices of his body seemed to sing, as if the
+spring had entered in. Blessed well-being had come to him. He turned to
+awaken Labiskwee, and saw, and remembered. He looked for the food flung
+out on the snow. It was gone. And he knew that in delirium and dream it
+had been the Yukon nugget-gold. In delirium and dream he had taken heart
+of life from the life sacrifice of Labiskwee, who had put her heart in
+his hand and opened his eyes to woman and wonder.
+
+He was surprised at the ease of his movements, astounded that he was
+able to drag her fur-wrapped body to the exposed thawed gravel-bank,
+which he undermined with the ax and caved upon her.
+
+
+Three days, with no further food, he fought west. In the mid third day
+he fell beneath a lone spruce beside a wide stream that ran open and
+which he knew must be the Klondike. Ere blackness conquered him, he
+unlashed his pack, said good-by to the bright world, and rolled himself
+in the robes.
+
+Chirping, sleepy noises awoke him. The long twilight was on. Above him,
+among the spruce boughs, were ptarmigan. Hunger bit him into instant
+action, though the action was infinitely slow. Five minutes passed
+before he was able to get his rifle to his shoulder, and a second five
+minutes passed ere he dared, lying on his back and aiming straight
+upward, to pull the trigger. It was a clean miss. No bird fell, but no
+bird flew. They ruffled and rustled stupidly and drowsily. His shoulder
+pained him. A second shot was spoiled by the involuntary wince he made
+as he pulled trigger. Somewhere, in the last three days, though he had
+no recollection how, he must have fallen and injured it.
+
+The ptarmigan had not flown. He doubled and redoubled the robe that had
+covered him, and humped it in the hollow between his right arm and his
+side. Resting the butt of the rifle on the fur, he fired again, and a
+bird fell. He clutched it greedily and found that he had shot most of
+the meat out of it. The large-caliber bullet had left little else than
+a mess of mangled feathers. Still the ptarmigan did not fly, and
+he decided that it was heads or nothing. He fired only at heads. He
+reloaded and reloaded the magazine. He missed; he hit; and the
+stupid ptarmigan, that were loath to fly, fell upon him in a rain of
+food--lives disrupted that his life might feed and live. There had been
+nine of them, and in the end he clipped the head of the ninth, and lay
+and laughed and wept he knew not why.
+
+The first he ate raw. Then he rested and slept, while his life
+assimilated the life of it. In the darkness he awoke, hungry, with
+strength to build a fire. And until early dawn he cooked and ate,
+crunching the bones to powder between his long-idle teeth. He slept,
+awoke in the darkness of another night, and slept again to another sun.
+
+He noted with surprise that the fire crackled with fresh fuel and that a
+blackened coffee-pot steamed on the edge of the coals. Beside the fire,
+within arm's length, sat Shorty, smoking a brown-paper cigarette and
+intently watching him. Smoke's lips moved, but a throat paralysis seemed
+to come upon him, while his chest was suffused with the menace of tears.
+He reached out his hand for the cigarette and drew the smoke deep into
+his lungs again and again.
+
+"I have not smoked for a long time," he said at last, in a low calm
+voice. "For a very long time."
+
+"Nor eaten, from your looks," Shorty added gruffly.
+
+Smoke nodded and waved his hand at the ptarmigan feathers that lay all
+about.
+
+"Not until recently," he returned. "Do you know, I'd like a cup of
+coffee. It will taste strange. Also flapjacks and a strip of bacon."
+
+"And beans?" Shorty tempted.
+
+"They would taste heavenly. I find I am quite hungry again."
+
+While the one cooked and the other ate, they told briefly what had
+happened to them in the days since their separation.
+
+"The Klondike was breakin' up," Shorty concluded his recital, "an' we
+just had to wait for open water. Two polin' boats, six other men--you
+know 'em all, an' crackerjacks--an' all kinds of outfit. An' we've sure
+been a-comin'--polin', linin' up, and portagin'. But the falls'll stick
+'em a solid week. That's where I left 'em a-cuttin' a trail over the
+tops of the bluffs for the boats. I just had a sure natural hunch to
+keep a-comin'. So I fills a pack with grub an' starts. I knew I'd find
+you a-driftin' an' all in."
+
+Smoke nodded, and put forth his hand in a silent grip. "Well, let's get
+started," he said.
+
+"Started hell!" Shorty exploded. "We stay right here an' rest you up an'
+feed you up for a couple of days."
+
+Smoke shook his head.
+
+"If you could just see yourself," Shorty protested.
+
+And what he saw was not nice. Smoke's face, wherever the skin showed,
+was black and purple and scabbed from repeated frost-bite. The cheeks
+were fallen in, so that, despite the covering of beard, the upper rows
+of teeth ridged the shrunken flesh. Across the forehead and about the
+deep-sunk eyes, the skin was stretched drum-tight, while the scraggly
+beard, that should have been golden, was singed by fire and filthy with
+camp-smoke.
+
+"Better pack up," Smoke said. "I'm going on."
+
+"But you're feeble as a kid baby. You can't hike. What's the rush?"
+
+"Shorty, I am going after the biggest thing in the Klondike, and I can't
+wait. That's all. Start packing. It's the biggest thing in the world.
+It's bigger than lakes of gold and mountains of gold, bigger than
+adventure, and meat-eating, and bear-killing."
+
+Shorty sat with bulging eyes. "In the name of the Lord, what is it?" he
+queried huskily. "Or are you just simple loco?"
+
+"No, I'm all right. Perhaps a fellow has to stop eating in order to
+see things. At any rate, I have seen things I never dreamed were in the
+world. I know what a woman is,--now."
+
+Shorty's mouth opened, and about the lips and in the light of the eyes
+was the whimsical advertisement of the sneer forthcoming.
+
+"Don't, please," Smoke said gently. "You don't know. I do."
+
+Shorty gulped and changed his thought. "Huh! I don't need no hunch to
+guess HER name. The rest of 'em has gone up to the drainin' of Surprise
+Lake, but Joy Gastell allowed she wouldn't go. She's stickin' around
+Dawson, waitin' to see if I come back with you. An' she sure swears, if
+I don't, she'll sell her holdin's an' hire a army of gun-fighters, an'
+go into the Caribou Country an' knock the everlastin' stuffin' outa old
+Snass an' his whole gang. An' if you'll hold your horses a couple of
+shakes, I reckon I'll get packed up an' ready to hike along with you."
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Smoke Bellew, by Jack London
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