It was before Smoke Bellew staked the farcical town-site of Tra-Lee,
made the historic corner of eggs that nearly broke Swiftwater Bill's
bank account, or won the dog-team race down the Yukon for an even
million dollars, that he and Shorty parted company on the Upper
Klondike. Shorty's task was to return down the Klondike to Dawson to
record some claims they had staked.
Smoke, with the dog-team, turned south. His quest was Surprise Lake
and the mythical Two Cabins. His traverse was to cut the headwaters of
the Indian River and cross the unknown region over the mountains to the
Stewart River. Here, somewhere, rumour persisted, was Surprise Lake,
surrounded by jagged mountains and glaciers, its bottom paved with raw
gold. Old-timers, it was said, whose very names were forgotten in the
forests of earlier years, had dived in the ice-waters of Surprise Lake
and fetched lump-gold to the surface in both hands. At different
times, parties of old-timers had penetrated the forbidding fastness and
sampled the lake's golden bottom. But the water was too cold. Some
died in the water, being pulled up dead. Others died of consumption.
And one who had gone down never did come up. All survivors had planned
to return and drain the lake, yet none had ever gone back. Disaster
always happened. One man fell into an air-hole below Forty Mile;
another was killed and eaten by his dogs; a third was crushed by a
falling tree. And so the tale ran. Surprise Lake was a hoodoo; its
location was unremembered; and the gold still paved its undrained
bottom.
Two Cabins, no less mythical, was more definitely located. 'Five
sleeps,' up the McQuestion River from the Stewart, stood two ancient
cabins. So ancient were they that they must have been built before
ever the first known gold-hunter had entered the Yukon Basin. Wandering
moose-hunters, whom even Smoke had met and talked with, claimed to have
found the two cabins in the old days, but to have sought vainly for the
mine which those early adventurers must have worked.
"I wish you was goin' with me," Shorty said wistfully, at parting.
"Just because you got the Indian bug ain't no reason for to go pokin'
into trouble. They's no gettin' away from it, that's loco country
you're bound for. The hoodoo's sure on it, from the first flip to the
last call, judgin' from all you an' me has hearn tell about it."
"It's all right, Shorty. I'll make the round trip and be back in
Dawson in six weeks. The Yukon trail is packed, and the first hundred
miles or so of the Stewart ought to be packed. Old-timers from
Henderson have told me a number of outfits went up last fall after the
freeze-up. When I strike their trail I ought to hit her up forty or
fifty miles a day. I'm likely to be back inside a month, once I get
across."
"Yes, once you get acrost. But it's the gettin' acrost that worries
me. Well, so long, Smoke. Keep your eyes open for that hoodoo, that's
all. An' don't be ashamed to turn back if you don't kill any meat."