“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.”
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.”