It was the gosh-dangdest stampede I ever seen. A thousand dog-

teams hittin' the ice. You couldn't see 'm fer smoke. Two white

men an' a Swede froze to death that night, an' there was a dozen

busted their lungs. But didn't I see with my own eyes the bottom

of the water-hole? It was yellow with gold like a mustard-plaster.

That's why I staked the Yukon for a minin' claim. That's what made

the stampede. An' then there was nothin' to it. That's what I

said - NOTHIN' to it. An' I ain't got over guessin' yet. -

NARRATIVE OF SHORTY.

JOHN MESSNER clung with mittened hand to the bucking gee-pole and

held the sled in the trail. With the other mittened hand he rubbed

his cheeks and nose. He rubbed his cheeks and nose every little

while. In point of fact, he rarely ceased from rubbing them, and

sometimes, as their numbness increased, he rubbed fiercely. His

forehead was covered by the visor of his fur cap, the flaps of

which went over his ears. The rest of his face was protected by a

thick beard, golden-brown under its coating of frost.

Behind him churned a heavily loaded Yukon sled, and before him

toiled a string of five dogs. The rope by which they dragged the

sled rubbed against the side of Messner's leg. When the dogs swung

on a bend in the trail, he stepped over the rope. There were many

bends, and he was compelled to step over it often. Sometimes he

tripped on the rope, or stumbled, and at all times he was awkward,

betraying a weariness so great that the sled now and again ran upon

his heels.

When he came to a straight piece of trail, where the sled could get

along for a moment without guidance, he let go the gee-pole and

batted his right hand sharply upon the hard wood. He found it

difficult to keep up the circulation in that hand. But while he

pounded the one hand, he never ceased from rubbing his nose and

cheeks with the other.

"It's too cold to travel, anyway," he said. He spoke aloud, after

the manner of men who are much by themselves. "Only a fool would

travel at such a temperature. If it isn't eighty below, it's

because it's seventy-nine."

He pulled out his watch, and after some fumbling got it back into

the breast pocket of his thick woollen jacket. Then he surveyed

the heavens and ran his eye along the white sky-line to the south.

"Twelve o'clock," he mumbled, "A clear sky, and no sun."

He plodded on silently for ten minutes, and then, as though there

had been no lapse in his speech, he added:

"And no ground covered, and it's too cold to travel."

Suddenly he yelled "Whoa!" at the dogs, and stopped. He seemed in

a wild panic over his right hand, and proceeded to hammer it

furiously against the gee-pole.

"You - poor - devils!" he addressed the dogs, which had dropped

down heavily on the ice to rest. His was a broken, jerky

utterance, caused by the violence with which he hammered his numb

hand upon the wood. "What have you done anyway that a two-legged

other animal should come along, break you to harness, curb all your

natural proclivities, and make slave-beasts out of you?"

He rubbed his nose, not reflectively, but savagely, in order to

drive the blood into it, and urged the dogs to their work again.

He travelled on the frozen surface of a great river. Behind him it

stretched away in a mighty curve of many miles, losing itself in a

fantastic jumble of mountains, snow-covered and silent. Ahead of

him the river split into many channels to accommodate the freight

of islands it carried on its breast. These islands were silent and

white. No animals nor humming insects broke the silence. No birds

flew in the chill air. There was no sound of man, no mark of the

handiwork of man. The world slept, and it was like the sleep of

death.

John Messner seemed succumbing to the apathy of it all. The frost

was benumbing his spirit. He plodded on with bowed head,

unobservant, mechanically rubbing nose and cheeks, and batting his

steering hand against the gee-pole in the straight trail-stretches.

But the dogs were observant, and suddenly they stopped, turning

their heads and looking back at their master out of eyes that were

wistful and questioning. Their eyelashes were frosted white, as

were their muzzles, and they had all the seeming of decrepit old

age, what of the frost-rime and exhaustion.

The man was about to urge them on, when he checked himself, roused

up with an effort, and looked around. The dogs had stopped beside

a water-hole, not a fissure, but a hole man-made, chopped

laboriously with an axe through three and a half feet of ice. A

thick skin of new ice showed that it had not been used for some

time. Messner glanced about him. The dogs were already pointing

the way, each wistful and hoary muzzle turned toward the dim snow-

path that left the main river trail and climbed the bank of the

island.

"All right, you sore-footed brutes," he said. "I'll investigate.

You're not a bit more anxious to quit than I am."

He climbed the bank and disappeared. The dogs did not lie down,

but on their feet eagerly waited his return. He came back to them,

took a hauling-rope from the front of the sled, and put it around

his shoulders. Then he GEE'D the dogs to the right and put them at

the bank on the run. It was a stiff pull, but their weariness fell

from them as they crouched low to the snow, whining with eagerness

and gladness as they struggled upward to the last ounce of effort

in their bodies. When a dog slipped or faltered, the one behind

nipped his hind quarters. The man shouted encouragement and

threats, and threw all his weight on the hauling-rope.

They cleared the bank with a rush, swung to the left, and dashed up

to a small log cabin. It was a deserted cabin of a single room,

eight feet by ten on the inside. Messner unharnessed the animals,

unloaded his sled and took possession. The last chance wayfarer

had left a supply of firewood. Messner set up his light sheet-iron

stove and starred a fire. He put five sun-cured salmon into the

oven to thaw out for the dogs, and from the water-hole filled his

coffee-pot and cooking-pail.

While waiting for the water to boil, he held his face over the

stove. The moisture from his breath had collected on his beard and

frozen into a great mass of ice, and this he proceeded to thaw out.

As it melted and dropped upon the stove it sizzled and rose about

him in steam. He helped the process with his fingers, working

loose small ice-chunks that fell rattling to the floor.

A wild outcry from the dogs without did not take him from his task.

He heard the wolfish snarling and yelping of strange dogs and the

sound of voices. A knock came on the door.

"Come in," Messner called, in a voice muffled because at the

moment he was sucking loose a fragment of ice from its anchorage on

his upper lip.

The door opened, and, gazing out of his cloud of steam, he saw a

man and a woman pausing on the threshold.

"Come in," he said peremptorily, "and shut the door!"

Peering through the steam, he could make out but little of their

personal appearance. The nose and cheek strap worn by the woman

and the trail-wrappings about her head allowed only a pair of black

eyes to be seen. The man was dark-eyed and smooth-shaven all

except his mustache, which was so iced up as to hide his mouth.

"We just wanted to know if there is any other cabin around here,"

he said, at the same time glancing over the unfurnished state of

the room. "We thought this cabin was empty."

"It isn't my cabin," Messner answered. "I just found it a few

minutes ago. Come right in and camp. Plenty of room, and you

won't need your stove. There's room for all."

At the sound of his voice the woman peered at him with quick

curiousness.

"Get your things off," her companion said to her. "I'll unhitch

and get the water so we can start cooking."

Messner took the thawed salmon outside and fed his dogs. He had to

guard them against the second team of dogs, and when he had

re塶tered the cabin the other man had unpacked the sled and fetched

water. Messner's pot was boiling. He threw in the coffee, settled

it with half a cup of cold water, and took the pot from the stove.

He thawed some sour-dough biscuits in the oven, at the same time

heating a pot of beans he had boiled the night before and that had

ridden frozen on the sled all morning.

Removing his utensils from the stove, so as to give the newcomers a

chance to cook, he proceeded to take his meal from the top of his

grub-box, himself sitting on his bed-roll. Between mouthfuls he

talked trail and dogs with the man, who, with head over the stove,

was thawing the ice from his mustache. There were two bunks in the

cabin, and into one of them, when he had cleared his lip, the

stranger tossed his bed-roll.

"We'll sleep here," he said, "unless you prefer this bunk. You're

the first comer and you have first choice, you know."

"That's all right," Messner answered. "One bunk's just as good as

the other."

He spread his own bedding in the second bunk, and sat down on the

edge. The stranger thrust a physician's small travelling case

under his blankets at one end to serve for a pillow.

"Doctor?" Messner asked.

"Yes," came the answer, "but I assure you I didn't come into the

Klondike to practise."

The woman busied herself with cooking, while the man sliced bacon

and fired the stove. The light in the cabin was dim, filtering

through in a small window made of onion-skin writing paper and

oiled with bacon grease, so that John Messner could not make out

very well what the woman looked like. Not that he tried. He

seemed to have no interest in her. But she glanced curiously from

time to time into the dark corner where he sat.

"Oh, it's a great life," the doctor proclaimed enthusiastically,

pausing from sharpening his knife on the stovepipe. "What I like

about it is the struggle, the endeavor with one's own hands, the

primitiveness of it, the realness."

"The temperature is real enough," Messner laughed.

"Do you know how cold it actually is?" the doctor demanded.

The other shook his head.

"Well, I'll tell you. Seventy-four below zero by spirit

thermometer on the sled."

"That's one hundred and six below freezing point - too cold for

travelling, eh?"

"Practically suicide," was the doctor's verdict. "One exerts

himself. He breathes heavily, taking into his lungs the frost

itself. It chills his lungs, freezes the edges of the tissues. He

gets a dry, hacking cough as the dead tissue sloughs away, and dies

the following summer of pneumonia, wondering what it's all about.

I'll stay in this cabin for a week, unless the thermometer rises at

least to fifty below."

"I say, Tess," he said, the next moment, "don't you think that

coffee's boiled long enough!"

At the sound of the woman's name, John Messner became suddenly

alert. He looked at her quickly, while across his face shot a

haunting expression, the ghost of some buried misery achieving

swift resurrection. But the next moment, and by an effort of will,

the ghost was laid again. His face was as placid as before, though

he was still alert, dissatisfied with what the feeble light had

shown him of the woman's face.

Automatically, her first act had been to set the coffee-pot back.

It was not until she had done this that she glanced at Messner.

But already he had composed himself. She saw only a man sitting on

the edge of the bunk and incuriously studying the toes of his

moccasins. But, as she turned casually to go about her cooking, he

shot another swift look at her, and she, glancing as swiftly back,

caught his look. He shifted on past her to the doctor, though the

slightest smile curled his lip in appreciation of the way she had

trapped him.

She drew a candle from the grub-box and lighted it. One look at

her illuminated face was enough for Messner. In the small cabin

the widest limit was only a matter of several steps, and the next

moment she was alongside of him. She deliberately held the candle

close to his face and stared at him out of eyes wide with fear and

recognition. He smiled quietly back at her.

"What are you looking for, Tess?" the doctor called.

"Hairpins," she replied, passing on and rummaging in a clothes-bag

on the bunk.

They served their meal on their grub-box, sitting on Messner's

grub-box and facing him. He had stretched out on his bunk to rest,

lying on his side, his head on his arm. In the close quarters it

was as though the three were together at table.

"What part of the States do you come from?" Messner asked.

"San Francisco," answered the doctor. "I've been in here two

years, though."

"I hail from California myself," was Messner's announcement.

The woman looked at him appealingly, but he smiled and went on:

"Berkeley, you know."

The other man was becoming interested.

"U. C.?" he asked.

"Yes, Class of '86."

"I meant faculty," the doctor explained. "You remind me of the

type."

"Sorry to hear you say so," Messner smiled back. "I'd prefer being

taken for a prospector or a dog-musher."

"I don't think he looks any more like a professor than you do a

doctor," the woman broke in.

"Thank you," said Messner. Then, turning to her companion, "By the

way, Doctor, what is your name, if I may ask?"

"Haythorne, if you'll take my word for it. I gave up cards with

civilization."

"And Mrs. Haythorne," Messner smiled and bowed.

She flashed a look at him that was more anger than appeal.

Haythorne was about to ask the other's name. His mouth had opened

to form the question when Messner cut him off.

"Come to think of it, Doctor, you may possibly be able to satisfy

my curiosity. There was a sort of scandal in faculty circles some

two or three years ago. The wife of one of the English professors

- er, if you will pardon me, Mrs. Haythorne - disappeared with some

San Francisco doctor, I understood, though his name does not just

now come to my lips. Do you remember the incident?"

Haythorne nodded his head. "Made quite a stir at the time. His

name was Womble - Graham Womble. He had a magnificent practice. I

knew him somewhat."

"Well, what I was trying to get at was what had become of them. I

was wondering if you had heard. They left no trace, hide nor

hair."

"He covered his tracks cunningly." Haythorne cleared his throat.

"There was rumor that they went to the South Seas - were lost on a

trading schooner in a typhoon, or something like that."

"I never heard that," Messner said. "You remember the case, Mrs.

Haythorne?"

"Perfectly," she answered, in a voice the control of which was in

amazing contrast to the anger that blazed in the face she turned

aside so that Haythorne might not see.

The latter was again on the verge of asking his name, when Messner

remarked:

"This Dr. Womble, I've heard he was very handsome, and - er - quite

a success, so to say, with the ladies."

"Well, if he was, he finished himself off by that affair,"

Haythorne grumbled.

"And the woman was a termagant - at least so I've been told. It

was generally accepted in Berkeley that she made life - er - not

exactly paradise for her husband."

"I never heard that," Haythorne rejoined. "In San Francisco the

talk was all the other way."

"Woman sort of a martyr, eh? - crucified on the cross of

matrimony?"

The doctor nodded. Messner's gray eyes were mildly curious as he

went on:

"That was to be expected - two sides to the shield. Living in

Berkeley I only got the one side. She was a great deal in San

Francisco, it seems."

"Some coffee, please," Haythorne said.

The woman refilled his mug, at the same time breaking into light

laughter.

"You're gossiping like a pair of beldames," she chided them.

"It's so interesting," Messner smiled at her, then returned to the

doctor. "The husband seems then to have had a not very savory

reputation in San Francisco?"

"On the contrary, he was a moral prig," Haythorne blurted out, with

apparently undue warmth. "He was a little scholastic shrimp

without a drop of red blood in his body."

"Did you know him?"

"Never laid eyes on him. I never knocked about in university

circles."

"One side of the shield again," Messner said, with an air of

weighing the matter judicially. While he did not amount to much,

it is true - that is, physically - I'd hardly say he was as bad as

all that. He did take an active interest in student athletics.

And he had some talent. He once wrote a Nativity play that brought

him quite a bit of local appreciation. I have heard, also, that he

was slated for the head of the English department, only the affair

happened and he resigned and went away. It quite broke his career,

or so it seemed. At any rate, on our side the shield, it was

considered a knock-out blow to him. It was thought he cared a

great deal for his wife."

Haythorne, finishing his mug of coffee, grunted uninterestedly and

lighted his pipe.

"It was fortunate they had no children," Messner continued.

But Haythorne, with a glance at the stove, pulled on his cap and

mittens.

"I'm going out to get some wood," he said. "Then I can take off my

moccasins and he comfortable."

The door slammed behind him. For a long minute there was silence.

The man continued in the same position on the bed. The woman sat

on the grub-box, facing him.

"What are you going to do?" she asked abruptly.

Messner looked at her with lazy indecision. "What do you think I

ought to do? Nothing scenic, I hope. You see I am stiff and

trail-sore, and this bunk is so restful."

She gnawed her lower lip and fumed dumbly.

"But - " she began vehemently, then clenched her hands and stopped.

"I hope you don't want me to kill Mr. -er - Haythorne," he said

gently, almost pleadingly. "It would be most distressing, and, I

assure you, really it is unnecessary."

"But you must do something," she cried.

"On the contrary, it is quite conceivable that I do not have to do

anything."

"You would stay here?"

He nodded.

She glanced desperately around the cabin and at the bed unrolled on

the other bunk. "Night is coming on. You can't stop here. You

can't! I tell you, you simply can't!"

"Of course I can. I might remind you that I found this cabin first

and that you are my guests."

Again her eyes travelled around the room, and the terror in them

leaped up at sight of the other bunk.

"Then we'll have to go," she announced decisively.

"Impossible. You have a dry, hacking cough - the sort Mr. - er -

Haythorne so aptly described. You've already slightly chilled your

lungs. Besides, he is a physician and knows. He would never

permit it."

"Then what are you going to do?" she demanded again, with a tense,

quiet utterance that boded an outbreak.

Messner regarded her in a way that was almost paternal, what of the

profundity of pity and patience with which he contrived to suffuse

it.

"My dear Theresa, as I told you before, I don't know. I really

haven't thought about it."

"Oh! You drive me mad!" She sprang to her feet, wringing her

hands in impotent wrath. "You never used to be this way."

"I used to be all softness and gentleness," he nodded concurrence.

"Was that why you left me?"

"You are so different, so dreadfully calm. You frighten me. I

feel you have something terrible planned all the while. But

whatever you do, don't do anything rash. Don't get excited - "

"I don't get excited any more," he interrupted. "Not since you

went away."

"You have improved - remarkably," she retorted.

He smiled acknowledgment. "While I am thinking about what I shall

do, I'll tell you what you will have to do - tell Mr. - er -

Haythorne who I am. It may make our stay in this cabin more - may

I say, sociable?"

"Why have you followed me into this frightful country?" she asked

irrelevantly.

"Don't think I came here looking for you, Theresa. Your vanity

shall not be tickled by any such misapprehension. Our meeting is

wholly fortuitous. I broke with the life academic and I had to go

somewhere. To be honest, I came into the Klondike because I

thought it the place you were least liable to be in."

There was a fumbling at the latch, then the door swung in and

Haythorne entered with an armful of firewood. At the first

warning, Theresa began casually to clear away the dishes.

Haythorne went out again after more wood.

"Why didn't you introduce us?" Messner queried.

"I'll tell him," she replied, with a toss of her head. "Don't

think I'm afraid."

"I never knew you to be afraid, very much, of anything."

"And I'm not afraid of confession, either," she said, with

softening face and voice.

"In your case, I fear, confession is exploitation by indirection,

profit-making by ruse, self-aggrandizement at the expense of God."

"Don't be literary," she pouted, with growing tenderness. "I never

did like epigrammatic discussion. Besides, I'm not afraid to ask

you to forgive me."

"There is nothing to forgive, Theresa. I really should thank you.

True, at first I suffered; and then, with all the graciousness of

spring, it dawned upon me that I was happy, very happy. It was a

most amazing discovery."

"But what if I should return to you?" she asked.

"I should" (he looked at her whimsically), "be greatly perturbed."

"I am your wife. You know you have never got a divorce."

"I see," he meditated. "I have been careless. It will be one of

the first things I attend to."

She came over to his side, resting her hand on his arm. "You don't

want me, John?" Her voice was soft and caressing, her hand rested

like a lure. "If I told you I had made a mistake? If I told you

that I was very unhappy? - and I am. And I did make a mistake."

Fear began to grow on Messner. He felt himself wilting under the

lightly laid hand. The situation was slipping away from him, all

his beautiful calmness was going. She looked at him with melting

eyes, and he, too, seemed all dew and melting. He felt himself on

the edge of an abyss, powerless to withstand the force that was

drawing him over.

"I am coming back to you, John. I am coming back to-day . . .

now."

As in a nightmare, he strove under the hand. While she talked, he

seemed to hear, rippling softly, the song of the Lorelei. It was

as though, somewhere, a piano were playing and the actual notes

were impinging on his ear-drums.

Suddenly he sprang to his feet, thrust her from him as her arms

attempted to clasp him, and retreated backward to the door. He was

in a panic.

"I'll do something desperate!" he cried.

"I warned you not to get excited." She laughed mockingly, and went

about washing the dishes. "Nobody wants you. I was just playing

with you. I am happier where I am."

But Messner did not believe. He remembered her facility in

changing front. She had changed front now. It was exploitation by

indirection. She was not happy with the other man. She had

discovered her mistake. The flame of his ego flared up at the

thought. She wanted to come back to him, which was the one thing

he did not want. Unwittingly, his hand rattled the door-latch.

"Don't run away," she laughed. "I won't bite you."

"I am not running away," he replied with child-like defiance, at

the same time pulling on his mittens. "I'm only going to get some

water."

He gathered the empty pails and cooking pots together and opened

the door. He looked back at her.

"Don't forget you're to tell Mr. - er - Haythorne who I am."

Messner broke the skin that had formed on the water-hole within the

hour, and filled his pails. But he did not return immediately to

the cabin. Leaving the pails standing in the trail, he walked up

and down, rapidly, to keep from freezing, for the frost bit into

the flesh like fire. His beard was white with his frozen breath

when the perplexed and frowning brows relaxed and decision came

into his face. He had made up his mind to his course of action,

and his frigid lips and cheeks crackled into a chuckle over it.

The pails were already skinned over with young ice when he picked

them up and made for the cabin.

When he entered he found the other man waiting, standing near the

stove, a certain stiff awkwardness and indecision in his manner.

Messner set down his water-pails.

"Glad to meet you, Graham Womble," he said in conventional tones,

as though acknowledging an introduction.

Messner did not offer his hand. Womble stirred uneasily, feeling

for the other the hatred one is prone to feel for one he has

wronged.

"And so you're the chap," Messner said in marvelling accents.

"Well, well. You see, I really am glad to meet you. I have been -

er - curious to know what Theresa found in you - where, I may say,

the attraction lay. Well, well."

And he looked the other up and down as a man would look a horse up

and down.

"I know how you must feel about me," Womble began.

"Don't mention it," Messner broke in with exaggerated cordiality of

voice and manner. "Never mind that. What I want to know is how do

you find her? Up to expectations? Has she worn well? Life been

all a happy dream ever since?"

"Don't be silly," Theresa interjected.

"I can't help being natural," Messner complained.

"You can be expedient at the same time, and practical," Womble said

sharply. "What we want to know is what are you going to do?"

Messner made a well-feigned gesture of helplessness. "I really

don't know. It is one of those impossible situations against which

there can be no provision."

"All three of us cannot remain the night in this cabin."

Messner nodded affirmation.

"Then somebody must get out."

"That also is incontrovertible," Messner agreed. "When three

bodies cannot occupy the same space at the same time, one must get

out."

"And you're that one," Womble announced grimly. "It's a ten-mile

pull to the next camp, but you can make it all right."

"And that's the first flaw in your reasoning," the other objected.

"Why, necessarily, should I be the one to get out? I found this

cabin first."

"But Tess can't get out," Womble explained. "Her lungs are already

slightly chilled."

"I agree with you. She can't venture ten miles of frost. By all

means she must remain."

"Then it is as I said," Womble announced with finality.

Messner cleared his throat. "Your lungs are all right, aren't

they?"

"Yes, but what of it?"

Again the other cleared his throat and spoke with painstaking and

judicial slowness. "Why, I may say, nothing of it, except, ah,

according to your own reasoning, there is nothing to prevent your

getting out, hitting the frost, so to speak, for a matter of ten

miles. You can make it all right."

Womble looked with quick suspicion at Theresa and caught in her

eyes a glint of pleased surprise.

"Well?" he demanded of her.

She hesitated, and a surge of anger darkened his face. He turned

upon Messner.

"Enough of this. You can't stop here."

"Yes, I can."

"I won't let you." Womble squared his shoulders. "I'm running

things."

"I'll stay anyway," the other persisted.

"I'll put you out."

"I'll come back."

Womble stopped a moment to steady his voice and control himself.

Then he spoke slowly, in a low, tense voice.

"Look here, Messner, if you refuse to get out, I'll thrash you.

This isn't California. I'll beat you to a jelly with my two

fists."

Messner shrugged his shoulders. "If you do, I'll call a miners'

meeting and see you strung up to the nearest tree. As you said,

this is not California. They're a simple folk, these miners, and

all I'll have to do will be to show them the marks of the beating,

tell them the truth about you, and present my claim for my wife."

The woman attempted to speak, but Womble turned upon her fiercely.

"You keep out of this," he cried.

In marked contrast was Messner's "Please don't intrude, Theresa."

What of her anger and pent feelings, her lungs were irritated into

the dry, hacking cough, and with blood-suffused face and one hand

clenched against her chest, she waited for the paroxysm to pass.

Womble looked gloomily at her, noting her cough.

"Something must be done," he said. "Yet her lungs can't stand the

exposure. She can't travel till the temperature rises. And I'm

not going to give her up."

Messner hemmed, cleared his throat, and hemmed again, semi-

apologetically, and said, "I need some money."

Contempt showed instantly in Womble's face. At last, beneath him

in vileness, had the other sunk himself.

"You've got a fat sack of dust," Messner went on. "I saw you

unload it from the sled."

"How much do you want?" Womble demanded, with a contempt in his

voice equal to that in his face.

"I made an estimate of the sack, and I - ah - should say it weighed

about twenty pounds. What do you say we call it four thousand?"

"But it's all I've got, man!" Womble cried out.

"You've got her," the other said soothingly. "She must be worth

it. Think what I'm giving up. Surely it is a reasonable price."

"All right." Womble rushed across the floor to the gold-sack.

"Can't put this deal through too quick for me, you - you little

worm!"

"Now, there you err," was the smiling rejoinder. "As a matter of

ethics isn't the man who gives a bribe as bad as the man who takes

a bribe? The receiver is as bad as the thief, you know; and you

needn't console yourself with any fictitious moral superiority

concerning this little deal."

"To hell with your ethics!" the other burst out. "Come here and

watch the weighing of this dust. I might cheat you."

And the woman, leaning against the bunk, raging and impotent,

watched herself weighed out in yellow dust and nuggets in the

scales erected on the grub-box. The scales were small, making

necessary many weighings, and Messner with precise care verified

each weighing.

"There's too much silver in it," he remarked as he tied up the

gold-sack. "I don't think it will run quite sixteen to the ounce.

You got a trifle the better of me, Womble."

He handled the sack lovingly, and with due appreciation of its

preciousness carried it out to his sled.

Returning, he gathered his pots and pans together, packed his grub-

box, and rolled up his bed. When the sled was lashed and the

complaining dogs harnessed, he returned into the cabin for his

mittens.

"Good-by, Tess," he said, standing at the open door.

She turned on him, struggling for speech but too frantic to word

the passion that burned in her.

"Good-by, Tess," he repeated gently.

"Beast!" she managed to articulate.

She turned and tottered to the bunk, flinging herself face down

upon it, sobbing: "You beasts! You beasts!"

John Messner closed the door softly behind him, and, as he started

the dogs, looked back at the cabin with a great relief in his face.

At the bottom of the bank, beside the water-hole, he halted the

sled. He worked the sack of gold out between the lashings and

carried it to the water-hole. Already a new skin of ice had

formed. This he broke with his fist. Untying the knotted mouth

with his teeth, he emptied the contents of the sack into the water.

The river was shallow at that point, and two feet beneath the

surface he could see the bottom dull-yellow in the fading light.

At the sight of it, he spat into the hole.

He started the dogs along the Yukon trail. Whining spiritlessly,

they were reluctant to work. Clinging to the gee-pole with his

right band and with his left rubbing cheeks and nose, he stumbled

over the rope as the dogs swung on a bend.

"Mush-on, you poor, sore-footed brutes!" he cried. "That's it,

mush-on!"