ing one all night. Ain't forgot Bonanza, have you?"

Alan shook his head. "As long as there is an Alaska, we won't forget
Bonanza, Stampede."

"I took a million out of it, next to Carmack's Discovery--an' went
busted afterward, didn't I?"

Alan nodded without speaking.

"But that wasn't a circumstance to Gold Run Creek, over the Divide,"
Stampede continued ruminatively. "Ain't forgot old Aleck McDonald, the
Scotchman, have you, Alan? In the 'wash' of Ninety-eight we took up
seventy sacks to bring our gold back in and we lacked thirty of doin'
the job. Nine hundred thousand dollars in a single clean-up, and that
was only the beginning. Well, I went busted again. And old Aleck went
busted later on. But he had a pretty wife left. A girl from Seattle. I
had to grub-stake."

He was silent for a moment, caressing his damp whiskers, as he noted the
first rose-flush of the sun breaking through the mist between them and
the unseen mountain tops.

"Five times after that I made strikes and went busted," he said a little
proudly. "And I'm busted again!"

"I know it," sympathized Alan.

"They took every cent away from me down in Seattle an' Frisco," chuckled
Stampede, rubbing his hands together cheerfully, "an' then bought me a
ticket to Nome. Mighty fine of them, don't you think? Couldn't have been
more decent. I knew that fellow Kopf had a heart. That's why I trusted
him with my money. It wasn't his fault he lost it."

"Of course not," agreed Alan.

"And I'm sort of sorry I shot him up for it. I am, for a fact."

"You killed him?"

"Not quite. I clipped one ear off as a reminder, down in Chink
Holleran's place. Mighty sorry. Didn't think then how decent it was of
him to buy me a ticket to Nome. I just let go in the heat of the moment.
He did me a favor in cleanin' me, Alan. He did, so help me! You don't
realize how free an' easy an' beautiful everything is until
you're busted."

Smiling, his odd face almost boyish behind its ambush of hair, he saw
the grim look in Alan's eyes and about his jaws. He caught hold of the
other's arm and shook it.

"Alan, I mean it!" he declared. "That's why I think money is a fool
thing. It ain't _spendin'_ money that makes me happy. It's _findin'_
it--the gold in the mountains--that makes the blood run fast through my
gizzard. After I've found it, I can't find any use for it in particular.
I want to go broke. If I didn't, I'd get lazy and fat, an' some
newfangled doctor would opera