When Smoke entered the little cabin on the hillside back of Dawson, he
heard a heavy familiar breathing.
"Aw, go to bed," Shorty mumbled, as Smoke shook his shoulder. "I'm not
on the night shift," was his next remark, as the rousing hand became
more vigorous. "Tell your troubles to the bar-keeper."
"Kick into your clothes," Smoke said. "We've got to stake a couple of
claims."
Shorty sat up and started to explode, but Smoke's hand covered his
mouth.
"Ssh!" Smoke warned. "It's a big strike. Don't wake the
neighbourhood. Dawson's asleep."
"Huh! You got to show me. Nobody tells anybody about a strike, of
course not. But ain't it plum amazin' the way everybody hits the trail
just the same?"
"Squaw Creek," Smoke whispered. "It's right. Breck gave me the tip.
Shallow bedrock. Gold from the grass-roots down. Come on. We'll sling
a couple of light packs together and pull out."
Shorty's eyes closed as he lapsed back into sleep. The next moment his
blankets were swept off him.
"If you don't want them, I do," Smoke explained.
Shorty followed the blankets and began to dress.
"Goin' to take the dogs?" he asked.
"No. The trail up the creek is sure to be unbroken, and we can make
better time without them."
"Then I'll throw 'em a meal, which'll have to last 'em till we get
back. Be sure you take some birch-bark and a candle."
Shorty opened the door, felt the bite of the cold, and shrank back to
pull down his ear-flaps and mitten his hands.
Five minutes later he returned, sharply rubbing his nose.
"Smoke, I'm sure opposed to makin' this stampede. It's colder than the
hinges of hell a thousand years before the first fire was lighted.
Besides, it's Friday the thirteenth, an' we're goin' to trouble as the
sparks fly upward."
With small stampeding packs on their backs, they closed the door behind
them and started down the hill. The display of the aurora borealis had
ceased, and only the stars leaped in the great cold, and by their
uncertain light made traps for the feet. Shorty floundered off a turn
of the trail into deep snow, and raised his voice in blessing of the
date of the week and month and year.
"Can't you keep still?" Smoke chided. "Leave the almanac alone. You'll
have all Dawson awake and after us."
"Huh! See the light in that cabin? And in that one over there? An'
hear that door slam? Oh, sure Dawson's asleep. Them lights? Just
buryin' their dead. They ain't stampedin', betcher life they ain't."
By the time they reached the foot of the hill and were fairly in
Dawson, lights were springing up in the cabins, doors were slamming,
and from behind came the sound of many moccasins on the hard-packed
snow. Again Shorty delivered himself.
"But it beats hell the amount of mourners there is."
They passed a man who stood by the path and was calling anxiously in a
low voice: "Oh, Charley; get a move on."
"See that pack on his back, Smoke? The graveyard's sure a long ways
off when the mourners got to pack their blankets."
By the time they reached the main street a hundred men were in line
behind them, and while they sought in the deceptive starlight for the
trail that dipped down the bank to the river, more men could be heard
arriving. Shorty slipped and shot down the thirty-foot chute into the
soft snow. Smoke followed, knocking him over as he was rising to his
feet.
"I found it first," he gurgled, taking off his mittens to shake the
snow out of the gauntlets.
The next moment they were scrambling wildly out of the way of the
hurtling bodies of those that followed. At the time of the freeze-up,
a jam had occurred at this point, and cakes of ice were up-ended in
snow-covered confusion. After several hard falls, Smoke drew out his
candle and lighted it. Those in the rear hailed it with acclaim. In
the windless air it burned easily, and he led the way more quickly.
"It's a sure stampede," Shorty decided. "Or might all them be
sleep-walkers?"
"We're at the head of the procession at any rate," was Smoke's answer.
"Oh, I don't know. Mebbe that's a firefly ahead there. Mebbe they're
all fireflies--that one, an' that one. Look at 'em. Believe me, they
is whole strings of processions ahead."
It was a mile across the jams to the west bank of the Yukon, and
candles flickered the full length of the twisting trail. Behind them,
clear to the top of the bank they had descended, were more candles.
"Say, Smoke, this ain't no stampede. It's a exode-us. They must be a
thousand men ahead of us an' ten thousand behind. Now, you listen to
your uncle. My medicine's good. When I get a hunch it's sure right.
An' we're in wrong on this stampede. Let's turn back an' hit the
sleep."
"You'd better save your breath if you intend to keep up," Smoke
retorted gruffly.
"Huh! My legs is short, but I slog along slack at the knees an' don't
worry my muscles none, an' I can sure walk every piker here off the
ice."
And Smoke knew he was right, for he had long since learned his
comrade's phenomenal walking powers.
"I've been holding back to give you a chance," Smoke jeered.
"An' I'm plum troddin' on your heels. If you can't do better, let me
go ahead and set pace."
Smoke quickened, and was soon at the rear of the nearest bunch of
stampeders.
"Hike along, you, Smoke," the other urged. "Walk over them unburied
dead. This ain't no funeral. Hit the frost like you was goin'
somewheres."
Smoke counted eight men and two women in this party, and before the way
across the jam-ice was won, he and Shorty had passed another party
twenty strong. Within a few feet of the west bank, the trail swerved
to the south, emerging from the jam upon smooth ice. The ice, however,
was buried under several feet of fine snow. Through this the
sled-trail ran, a narrow ribbon of packed footing barely two feet in
width. On either side one sank to his knees and deeper in the snow.
The stampeders they overtook were reluctant to give way, and often
Smoke and Shorty had to plunge into the deep snow, and by supreme
efforts flounder past.
Shorty was irrepressible and pessimistic. When the stampeders resented
being passed, he retorted in kind.
"What's your hurry?" one of them asked.
"What's yours?" he answered. "A stampede come down from Indian River
yesterday afternoon an' beat you to it. They ain't no claims left."
"That being so, I repeat, what's your hurry?"
"WHO? Me? I ain't no stampeder. I'm workin' for the government. I'm
on official business. I'm just traipsin' along to take the census of
Squaw Creek."
To another, who hailed him with: "Where away, little one? Do you
really expect to stake a claim?" Shorty answered:
"Me? I'm the discoverer of Squaw Creek. I'm just comin' back from
recordin' so as to see no blamed chechaquo jumps my claim."
The average pace of the stampeders on the smooth going was three miles
and a half an hour. Smoke and Shorty were doing four and a half,
though sometimes they broke into short runs and went faster.
"I'm going to travel your feet clean off, Shorty," Smoke challenged.
"Huh! I can hike along on the stumps an' wear the heels off your
moccasins. Though it ain't no use. I've ben figgerin'. Creek claims
is five hundred feet. Call 'em ten to the mile. They's a thousand
stampeders ahead of us, an' that creek ain't no hundred miles long.
Somebody's goin' to get left, an' it makes a noise like you an' me."
Before replying, Smoke let out an unexpected link that threw Shorty
half a dozen feet in the rear.
"If you saved your breath and kept up, we'd cut down a few of that
thousand," he chided.
"Who? Me? If you's get outa the way I'd show you a pace what is."
Smoke laughed, and let out another link. The whole aspect of the
adventure had changed. Through his brain was running a phrase of the
mad philosopher--"the transvaluation of values." In truth, he was
less interested in staking a fortune than in beating Shorty. After all,
he concluded, it wasn't the reward of the game but the playing of it
that counted. Mind, and muscle, and stamina, and soul, were challenged
in a contest with this Shorty, a man who had never opened the books,
and who did not know grand opera from rag-time, nor an epic from a
chilblain.
"Shorty, I've got you skinned to death. I've reconstructed every cell
in my body since I hit the beach at Dyea. My flesh is as stringy as
whipcords, and as bitter and mean as the bite of a rattlesnake. A few
months ago I'd have patted myself on the back to write such words, but
I couldn't have written them. I had to live them first, and now that
I'm living them there's no need to write them. I'm the real, bitter,
stinging goods, and no scrub of a mountaineer can put anything over on
me without getting it back compound. Now, you go ahead and set pace
for half an hour. Do your worst, and when you're all in I'll go ahead
and give you half an hour of the real worst."
"Huh!" Shorty sneered genially. "An' him not dry behind the ears yet.
Get outa the way an' let your father show you some goin'."
Half-hour by half-hour they alternated in setting pace. Nor did they
talk much. Their exertions kept them warm, though their breath froze
on their faces from lips to chin. So intense was the cold that they
almost continually rubbed their noses and cheeks with their mittens. A
few minutes cessation from this allowed the flesh to grow numb, and
then most vigorous rubbing was required to produce the burning prickle
of returning circulation.
Often they thought they had reached the lead, but always they overtook
more stampeders who had started before them. Occasionally, groups of
men attempted to swing in behind to their pace, but invariably they
were discouraged after a mile or two, and disappeared in the darkness
to the rear.
"We've been out on trail all winter," was Shorty's comment. "An' them
geezers, soft from laying around their cabins, has the nerve to think
they can keep our stride. Now, if they was real sour-doughs it'd be
different. If there's one thing a sour-dough can do it's sure walk."
Once, Smoke lighted a match and glanced at his watch. He never
repeated it, for so quick was the bite of the frost on his bared hands,
that half an hour passed before they were again comfortable.
"Four o'clock," he said, as he pulled on his mittens, "and we've
already passed three hundred."
"Three hundred and thirty-eight," Shorty corrected. "I ben keepin'
count. Get outa the way, stranger. Let somebody stampede that knows
how to stampede."
The latter was addressed to a man, evidently exhausted, who could no
more than stumble along, and who blocked the trail. This, and one
other, were the only played-out men they encountered, for they were
very near to the head of the stampede. Nor did they learn till
afterwards the horrors of that night. Exhausted men sat down to rest
by the way, and failed to get up. Seven were frozen to death, while
scores of amputations of toes, feet, and fingers were performed in the
Dawson hospitals on the survivors. For of all nights for a stampede,
the one to Squaw Creek occurred on the coldest night of the year.
Before morning, the spirit thermometers at Dawson registered seventy
degrees below zero. The men composing the stampede, with few
exceptions, were new-comers in the country who did not know the way of
the cold.
The other played-out man they found a few minutes later, revealed by a
streamer of aurora borealis that shot like a searchlight from horizon
to zenith. He was sitting on a piece of ice beside the trail.
"Hop along, sister Mary," Shorty gaily greeted him. "Keep movin'. If
you sit there you'll freeze stiff."
The man made no response, and they stopped to investigate.
"Stiff as a poker," was Shorty's verdict. "If you tumbled him over
he'd break."
"See if he's breathing," Smoke said, as, with bared hands, he sought
through furs and woollens for the man's heart.
Shorty lifted one ear-flap and bent to the iced lips.
"Nary breathe," he reported.
"Nor heart-beat," said Smoke.
He mittened his hand and beat it violently for a minute before exposing
it to the frost to strike a match. It was an old man, incontestably
dead. In the moment of illumination, they saw a long grey beard,
massed with ice to the nose, cheeks that were white with frost, and
closed eyes with frost-rimmed lashes frozen together. Then the match
went out.
"Come on," Shorty said, rubbing his ear. "We can't do nothing for the
old geezer. An' I've sure frosted my ear. Now all the blamed skin'll
peel off and it'll be sore for a week."
A few minutes later, when a flaming ribbon spilled pulsating fire over
the heavens, they saw on the ice a quarter of a mile ahead two forms.
Beyond, for a mile, nothing moved.
"They're leading the procession," Smoke said, as darkness fell again.
"Come on, let's get them."
At the end of half an hour, not yet having overtaken the two in front,
Shorty broke into a run.
"If we catch 'em we'll never pass 'em," he panted. "Lord, what a pace
they're hittin'. Dollars to doughnuts they're no chechaquos. They're
the real sour-dough variety, you can stack on that."
Smoke was leading when they finally caught up, and he was glad to ease
to a walk at their heels. Almost immediately he got the impression
that the one nearer him was a woman. How this impression came, he
could not tell. Hooded and furred, the dark form was as any form; yet
there was a haunting sense of familiarity about it. He waited for the
next flame of the aurora, and by its light saw the smallness of the
moccasined feet. But he saw more--the walk; and knew it for the
unmistakable walk he had once resolved never to forget.
"She's a sure goer," Shorty confided hoarsely. "I'll bet it's an
Indian."
"How do you do, Miss Gastell," Smoke addressed.
"How do you do," she answered, with a turn of the head and a quick
glance. "It's too dark to see. Who are you?"
"Smoke,"
She laughed in the frost, and he was certain it was the prettiest
laughter he had ever heard.
"And have you married and raised all those children you were telling me
about?" Before he could retort, she went on. "How many chechaquos are
there behind?"
"Several thousand, I imagine. We passed over three hundred. And they
weren't wasting any time."
"It's the old story," she said bitterly. "The new-comers get in on the
rich creeks, and the old-timers who dared and suffered and made this
country, get nothing. Old-timers made this discovery on Squaw
Creek--how it leaked out is the mystery--and they sent word up to all
the old-timers on Sea Lion. But it's ten miles farther than Dawson,
and when they arrive they'll find the creek staked to the skyline by
the Dawson chechaquos. It isn't right, it isn't fair, such perversity
of luck."
"It is too bad," Smoke sympathized. "But I'm hanged if I know what
you're going to do about it. First come, first served, you know."
"I wish I could do something," she flashed back at him. "I'd like to
see them all freeze on the trail, or have everything terrible happen to
them, so long as the Sea Lion stampede arrived first."
"You've certainly got it in for us, hard," he laughed.
"It isn't that," she said quickly. "Man by man, I know the crowd from
Sea Lion, and they are men. They starved in this country in the old
days, and they worked like giants to develop it. I went through the
hard times on the Koyokuk with them when I was a little girl. And I
was with them in the Birch Creek famine, and in the Forty Mile famine.
They are heroes, and they deserve some reward, and yet here are
thousands of green softlings who haven't earned the right to stake
anything, miles and miles ahead of them. And now, if you'll forgive my
tirade, I'll save my breath, for I don't know when you and all the rest
may try to pass dad and me."
No further talk passed between Joy and Smoke for an hour or so, though
he noticed that for a time she and her father talked in low tones.
"I know'm now," Shorty told Smoke. "He's old Louis Gastell, an' the
real goods. That must be his kid. He come into this country so long
ago they ain't nobody can recollect, an' he brought the girl with him,
she only a baby. Him an' Beetles was tradin' partners an' they ran the
first dinkey little steamboat up the Koyokuk."
"I don't think we'll try to pass them," Smoke said. "We're at the head
of the stampede, and there are only four of us."
Shorty agreed, and another hour of silence followed, during which they
swung steadily along. At seven o'clock, the blackness was broken by a
last display of the aurora borealis, which showed to the west a broad
opening between snow-clad mountains.
"Squaw Creek!" Joy exclaimed.
"Goin' some," Shorty exulted. "We oughtn't to ben there for another
half hour to the least, accordin' to my reckonin'. I must a' ben
spreadin' my legs."
It was at this point that the Dyea trail, baffled by ice-jams, swerved
abruptly across the Yukon to the east bank. And here they must leave
the hard-packed, main-travelled trail, mount the jams, and follow a dim
trail, but slightly packed, that hovered the west bank.
Louis Gastell, leading, slipped in the darkness on the rough ice, and
sat up, holding his ankle in both his hands. He struggled to his feet
and went on, but at a slower pace and with a perceptible limp. After a
few minutes he abruptly halted.
"It's no use," he said to his daughter. "I've sprained a tendon. You
go ahead and stake for me as well as yourself."
"Can't we do something?" Smoke asked.
Louis Gastell shook his head.
"She can stake two claims as well as one. I'll crawl over to the bank,
start a fire, and bandage my ankle. I'll be all right. Go on, Joy.
Stake ours above the Discovery claim; it's richer higher up."
"Here's some birch bark," Smoke said, dividing his supply equally.
"We'll take care of your daughter."
Louis Gastell laughed harshly.
"Thank you just the same," he said. "But she can take care of herself.
Follow her and watch her."
"Do you mind if I lead?" she asked Smoke, as she headed on. "I know
this country better than you."
"Lead on," Smoke answered gallantly, "though I agree with you it's a
darned shame all us chechaquos are going to beat that Sea Lion bunch to
it. Isn't there some way to shake them?"
She shook her head.
"We can't hide our trail, and they'll follow it like sheep."
After a quarter of a mile, she turned sharply to the west. Smoke
noticed that they were going through unpacked snow, but neither he nor
Shorty observed that the dim trail they had been on still led south.
Had they witnessed the subsequent procedure of Louis Gastell, the
history of the Klondike would have been written differently; for they
would have seen that old-timer, no longer limping, running with his
nose to the trail like a hound, following them. Also, they would have
seen him trample and widen the turn they had made to the west. And,
finally, they would have seen him keep on the old dim trail that still
led south.
A trail did run up the creek, but so slight was it that they
continually lost it in the darkness. After a quarter of an hour, Joy
Gastell was willing to drop into the rear and let the two men take
turns in breaking a way through the snow. This slowness of the leaders
enabled the whole stampede to catch up, and when daylight came, at nine
o'clock, as far back as they could see was an unbroken line of men.
Joy's dark eyes sparkled at the sight.
"How long since we started up the creek?" she asked.
"Fully two hours," Smoke answered.
"And two hours back makes four," she laughed. "The stampede from Sea
Lion is saved."
A faint suspicion crossed Smoke's mind, and he stopped and confronted
her.
"I don't understand," he said.
"You don't. Then I'll tell you. This is Norway Creek. Squaw Creek is
the next to the south."
Smoke was for the moment, speechless.
"You did it on purpose?" Shorty demanded.
"I did it to give the old-timers a chance."
She laughed mockingly. The men grinned at each other and finally
joined her.
"I'd lay you across my knee an' give you a wallopin', if womenfolk
wasn't so scarce in this country," Shorty assured her.
"Your father didn't sprain a tendon, but waited till we were out of
sight and then went on?" Smoke asked.
She nodded.
"And you were the decoy."
Again she nodded, and this time Smoke's laughter rang out clear and
true. It was the spontaneous laughter of a frankly beaten man.
"Why don't you get angry with me?" she queried ruefully. "Or--or
wallop me?"
"Well, we might as well be starting back," Shorty urged. "My feet's
gettin' cold standin' here."
Smoke shook his head.
"That would mean four hours lost. We must be eight miles up this Creek
now, and from the look ahead Norway is making a long swing south.
We'll follow it, then cross over the divide somehow, and tap Squaw
Creek somewhere above Discovery." He looked at Joy. "Won't you come
along with us? I told your father we'd look after you."
"I--" She hesitated. "I think I shall, if you don't mind." She was
looking straight at him, and her face was no longer defiant and
mocking. "Really, Mr Smoke, you make me almost sorry for what I have
done. But somebody had to save the old-timers."
"It strikes me that stampeding is at best a sporting proposition."
"And it strikes me you two are very game about it," she went on, then
added with the shadow of a sigh: "What a pity you are not old-timers."
For two hours more they kept to the frozen creek-bed of Norway, then
turned into a narrow and rugged tributary that flowed from the south.
At midday they began the ascent of the divide itself. Behind them,
looking down and back, they could see the long line of stampeders
breaking up. Here and there, in scores of places, thin smoke-columns
advertised the making of camps.
As for themselves, the going was hard. They wallowed through snow to
their waists, and were compelled to stop every few yards to breathe.
Shorty was the first to call a halt.
"We ben hittin' the trail for over twelve hours," he said. "Smoke, I'm
plum willin' to say I'm good an' tired. An' so are you. An' I'm free
to shout that I can sure hang on to this here pascar like a starvin'
Indian to a hunk of bear-meat. But this poor girl here can't keep her
legs no time if she don't get something in her stomach. Here's where
we build a fire. What d'ye say?"
So quickly, so deftly and methodically, did they go about making a
temporary camp, that Joy, watching with jealous eyes, admitted to
herself that the old-timers could not do it better. Spruce boughs,
with a spread blanket on top, gave a foundation for rest and cooking
operations. But they kept away from the heat of the fire until noses
and cheeks had been rubbed cruelly.
Smoke spat in the air, and the resultant crackle was so immediate and
loud that he shook his head.
"I give it up," he said. "I've never seen cold like this."
"One winter on the Koyokuk it went to eighty-six below," Joy answered.
"It's at least seventy or seventy-five right now, and I know I've
frosted my cheeks. They're burning like fire."
On the steep slope of the divide there was no ice, while snow, as fine
and hard and crystalline as granulated sugar, was poured into the
gold-pan by the bushel until enough water was melted for the coffee.
Smoke fried bacon and thawed biscuits. Shorty kept the fuel supplied
and tended the fire, and Joy set the simple table composed of two
plates, two cups, two spoons, a tin of mixed salt and pepper, and a tin
of sugar. When it came to eating, she and Smoke shared one set between
them. They ate out of the same plate and drank from the same cup.
It was nearly two in the afternoon when they cleared the crest of the
divide and began dropping down a feeder of Squaw Creek. Earlier in the
winter some moose-hunter had made a trail up the canyon--that is, in
going up and down he had stepped always in his previous tracks. As a
result, in the midst of soft snow, and veiled under later snow falls,
was a line of irregular hummocks. If one's foot missed a hummock, he
plunged down through unpacked snow and usually to a fall. Also, the
moose-hunter had been an exceptionally long-legged individual. Joy,
who was eager now that the two men should stake, and fearing that they
were slackening pace on account of her evident weariness, insisted on
taking the lead. The speed and manner in which she negotiated the
precarious footing, called out Shorty's unqualified approval.
"Look at her!" he cried. "She's the real goods an' the red meat. Look
at them moccasins swing along. No high-heels there. She uses the legs
God gave her. She's the right squaw for any bear-hunter."
She flashed back a smile of acknowledgment that included Smoke. He
caught a feeling of chumminess, though at the same time he was bitingly
aware that it was very much of a woman who embraced him in that
comradely smile.
Looking back, as they came to the bank of Squaw Creek, they could see
the stampede, strung out irregularly, struggling along the descent of
the divide.
They slipped down the bank to the creek bed. The stream, frozen
solidly to bottom, was from twenty to thirty feet wide and ran between
six- and eight-foot earth banks of alluvial wash. No recent feet had
disturbed the snow that lay upon its ice, and they knew they were above
the Discovery claim and the last stakes of the Sea Lion stampeders.
"Look out for springs," Joy warned, as Smoke led the way down the
creek. "At seventy below you'll lose your feet if you break through."
These springs, common to most Klondike streams, never ceased at the
lowest temperatures. The water flowed out from the banks and lay in
pools which were cuddled from the cold by later surface-freezings and
snow falls. Thus, a man, stepping on dry snow, might break through
half an inch of ice-skin and find himself up to the knees in water. In
five minutes, unless able to remove the wet gear, the loss of one's
foot was the penalty.
Though only three in the afternoon, the long grey twilight of the
Arctic had settled down. They watched for a blazed tree on either
bank, which would show the centre-stake of the last claim located. Joy,
impulsively eager, was the first to find it. She darted ahead of
Smoke, crying: "Somebody's been here! See the snow! Look for the
blaze! There it is! See that spruce!"
She sank suddenly to her waist in the snow.
"Now I've done it," she said woefully. Then she cried: "Don't come
near me! I'll wade out."
Step by step, each time breaking through the thin skin of ice concealed
under the dry snow, she forced her way to solid footing. Smoke did not
wait, but sprang to the bank, where dry and seasoned twigs and sticks,
lodged amongst the brush by spring freshets, waited the match. By the
time she reached his side, the first flames and flickers of an assured
fire were rising.
"Sit down!" he commanded.
She obediently sat down in the snow. He slipped his pack from his
back, and spread a blanket for her feet.
From above came the voices of the stampeders who followed them.
"Let Shorty stake," she urged
"Go on, Shorty," Smoke said, as he attacked her moccasins, already
stiff with ice. "Pace off a thousand feet and place the two
centre-stakes. We can fix the corner-stakes afterwards."
With his knife Smoke cut away the lacings and leather of the moccasins.
So stiff were they with ice that they snapped and crackled under the
hacking and sawing. The Siwash socks and heavy woollen stockings were
sheaths of ice. It was as if her feet and calves were encased in
corrugated iron.
"How are your feet?" he asked, as he worked.
"Pretty numb. I can't move nor feel my toes. But it will be all
right. The fire is burning beautifully. Watch out you don't freeze
your own hands. They must be numb now from the way you're fumbling."
He slipped his mittens on, and for nearly a minute smashed the open
hands savagely against his sides. When he felt the blood-prickles, he
pulled off the mittens and ripped and tore and sawed and hacked at the
frozen garments. The white skin of one foot appeared, then that of the
other, to be exposed to the bite of seventy below zero, which is the
equivalent of one hundred and two below freezing.
Then came the rubbing with snow, carried on with an intensity of cruel
fierceness, till she squirmed and shrank and moved her toes, and
joyously complained of the hurt.
He half-dragged her, and she half-lifted herself, nearer to the fire.
He placed her feet on the blanket close to the flesh-saving flames.
"You'll have to take care of them for a while," he said.
She could now safely remove her mittens and manipulate her own feet,
with the wisdom of the initiated, being watchful that the heat of the
fire was absorbed slowly. While she did this, he attacked his hands.
The snow did not melt nor moisten. Its light crystals were like so
much sand. Slowly the stings and pangs of circulation came back into
the chilled flesh. Then he tended the fire, unstrapped the light pack
from her back, and got out a complete change of foot-gear.
Shorty returned along the creek-bed and climbed the bank to them.
"I sure staked a full thousan' feet," he proclaimed. "Number
twenty-seven and number twenty-eight, though I'd only got the upper
stake of twenty-seven, when I met the first geezer of the bunch behind.
He just straight declared I wasn't goin' to stake twenty-eight. An' I
told him . . . ."
"Yes, yes," Joy cried. "What did you tell him?"
"Well, I told him straight that if he didn't back up plum five hundred
feet I'd sure punch his frozen nose into ice-cream an' chocolate
eclaires. He backed up, an' I've got in the centre-stakes of two full
an' honest five-hundred-foot claims. He staked next, and I guess by
now the bunch has Squaw Creek located to head-waters an' down the other
side. Ourn is safe. It's too dark to see now, but we can put out the
corner-stakes in the mornin'."