Welse's forehead.
"You are working for your own stomach. I am working for the stomachs
of twenty thousand."

"But you filled Tim McReady's thousand pounds yesterday all right."

"The scale-down did not go into effect until to-day."

"But why am I the one to get it in the neck hard?"

"Why didn't you come yesterday, and Tim McReady to-day?"

Melton's face went blank, and Jacob Welse answered his own question
with shrugging shoulders.

"That's the way it stands, Melton. No favoritism. If you hold me
responsible for Tim McReady, I shall hold you responsible for not
coming yesterday. Better we both throw it upon Providence. You went
through the Forty Mile Famine. You are a white man. A Bonanzo
property, or a block of Bonanzo properties, does not entitle you to a
pound more than the oldest penniless 'sour-dough' or the newest baby
born. Trust me. As long as I have a pound of grub you shall not
starve. Stiffen up. Shake hands. Get a smile on your face and make
the best of it."

Still savage of spirit, though rapidly toning down, the king shook
hands and flung out of the room. Before the door could close on his
heels, a loose-jointed Yankee shambled in, thrust a moccasined foot to
the side and hooked a chair under him, and sat down.

"Say," he opened up, confidentially, "people's gittin' scairt over the
grub proposition, I guess some."

"Hello, Dave. That you?"

"S'pose so. But ez I was saying there'll be a lively stampede fer the
Outside soon as the river freezes."

"Think so?"

"Unh huh."

"Then I'm glad to hear it. It's what the country needs. Going to join
them?"

"Not in a thousand years." Dave Harney threw his head back with smug
complacency. "Freighted my truck up to the mine yesterday. Wa'n't a
bit too soon about it, either. But say . . . Suthin' happened to the
sugar. Had it all on the last sled, an' jest where the trail turns off
the Klondike into Bonanzo, what does that sled do but break through the
ice! I never seen the beat of it--the last sled of all, an' all the
sugar! So I jest thought I'd drop in to-day an' git a hundred pounds
or so. White or brown, I ain't pertickler."

Jacob Welse shook his head and smiled, but Harney hitched his chair
closer.

"The clerk of yourn said he didn't know, an' ez there wa'n't no call to
pester him, I said I'd jest drop round an' see you. I don't care what
it's wuth. Make it a hundred even; that'll do me handy.

"Say," he went on