indeed be up against it, as you
say," replied the older man, seriously, as they were making their way
across the big "Divide" when the native had left them.

Snow was now beginning to fall in large flakes; a storm signal, and one
they liked little. The temperature was falling. It was quite dark at
three o'clock in the afternoon, and they were obliged to travel by
snow-light. When camp was finally made, after halting for the night in a
thicket of pine and spruce trees, the men were cold, tired and hungry.

Close under the branches of the pine trees they pitched their little
tent for shelter. A big fire of logs and branches was kindled in front.
The weary malamutes and their masters had eaten, and lay stretched upon
the ground, the men in sleeping bags, thrown upon boughs from the
thicket; the dogs upon the snow near the fire.

The latter was to be replenished during the night from the pile of
sticks just gathered, and the animals would act as sentinels in case a
wolf or bear happened to stray that way.

Oh, the loneliness of that winter's night; they were surrounded by a
sheeted wilderness, how far from human habitation they did not know. No
moon or stars gave light to cheer the wanderers, but instead, snow
falling heavily and noiselessly over all. No winds stirred among the
pines, causing them dead silence. The one solitary sound to be heard at
intervals was the snapping in the fire of some pine knot, long since
broken and dead upon the ground, or clipped from its parent stem by the
axe of the prospector.

When the storm had cleared and the two miners were able to look about
them sufficiently, they discovered the creek described by Kuiktuk.

It lay between high hills, locked in the icy grip of an Arctic winter.
On the southern exposure of these hills grew fir, pine and spruce trees
of no great size, but still invaluable to prospectors in this otherwise
inhospitable region. Had it been in summer time one could have seen a
narrow and sinuous creek flowing in a northeasterly direction, emptying
itself into a much larger and more sinuous stream which trended
easterly and united with the great Koyukuk.

There were but a few low-lying "benches" to be found. The hills were
everywhere. They sprang from the earth like mushrooms in a moist garden.
Their summits were rock-ribbed and sides boulder-strewn.

Worse than all else the rock was granite. No miner of experience in this
country hoped to find gold in a granite secti