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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Smoke Bellew, by Jack London
+(#50 in our series by Jack London)
+
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+*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!*****
+
+
+Title: Smoke Bellew
+
+Author: Jack London
+
+Release Date: May, 2004  [EBook #5737]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on August 19, 2002]
+
+Edition: 10a
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, SMOKE BELLEW ***
+
+
+
+
+This etext was prepared by Les Bowler, St. Ives, Dorset, 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 arutenant 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 0lsen'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, SMOKE BELLEW ***
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