s snowshoes, left the dogs curled in the snow and
Kama breathing heavily under his rabbit skins, and climbed up to the
big flat above the high earth-bank. But the spruce trees were too thick
for an outlook, and he threaded his way across the flat and up the
first steep slopes of the mountain at the back. Here, flowing in from
the east at right angles, he could see the Klondike, and, bending
grandly from the south, the Yukon. To the left, and downstream, toward
Moosehide Mountain, the huge splash of white, from which it took its
name, showing clearly in the starlight. Lieutenant Schwatka had given
it its name, but he, Daylight, had first seen it long before that
intrepid explorer had crossed the Chilcoot and rafted down the Yukon.

But the mountain received only passing notice. Daylight's interest was
centered in the big flat itself, with deep water all along its edge for
steamboat landings.

"A sure enough likely town site," he muttered. "Room for a camp of
forty thousand men. All that's needed is the gold-strike." He
meditated for a space. "Ten dollars to the pan'll do it, and it'd be
the all-firedest stampede Alaska ever seen. And if it don't come here,
it'll come somewhere hereabouts. It's a sure good idea to keep an eye
out for town sites all the way up."

He stood a while longer, gazing out over the lonely flat and visioning
with constructive imagination the scene if the stampede did come. In
fancy, he placed the sawmills, the big trading stores, the saloons, and
dance-halls, and the long streets of miners' cabins. And along those
streets he saw thousands of men passing up and down, while before the
stores were the heavy freighting-sleds, with long strings of dogs
attached. Also he saw the heavy freighters pulling down the main
street and heading up the frozen Klondike toward the imagined somewhere
where the diggings must be located.

He laughed and shook the vision from his eyes, descended to the level,
and crossed the flat to camp. Five minutes after he had rolled up in
his robe, he opened his eyes and sat up, amazed that he was not already
asleep. He glanced at the Indian sleeping beside him, at the embers of
the dying fire, at the five dogs beyond, with their wolf's brushes
curled over their noses, and at the four snowshoes standing upright in
the snow.

"It's sure hell the way that hunch works on me" he murmured. His mind
reverted to the poker game. "Four kings!" He grinned reminiscently.