d eight-
foot tusks from the pay gravel of the Klondike creeks. "All fossils," I
concluded, "found in the midst of _debris_ deposited through countless
ages."

"I remember when I was a kid," Thomas Stevens sniffed (he had a most
confounded way of sniffing), "that I saw a petrified water-melon. Hence,
though mistaken persons sometimes delude themselves into thinking that
they are really raising or eating them, there are no such things as
extant water-melons?"

"But the question of food," I objected, ignoring his point, which was
puerile and without bearing. "The soil must bring forth vegetable life
in lavish abundance to support so monstrous creations. Nowhere in the
North is the soil so prolific. Ergo, the mammoth cannot exist."

"I pardon your ignorance concerning many matters of this Northland, for
you are a young man and have travelled little; but, at the same time, I
am inclined to agree with you on one thing. The mammoth no longer
exists. How do I know? I killed the last one with my own right arm."

Thus spake Nimrod, the mighty Hunter. I threw a stick of firewood at the
dogs and bade them quit their unholy howling, and waited. Undoubtedly
this liar of singular felicity would open his mouth and requite me for my
St. Elias bear.

"It was this way," he at last began, after the appropriate silence had
intervened. "I was in camp one day--"

"Where?" I interrupted.

He waved his hand vaguely in the direction of the north-east, where
stretched a _terra incognita_ into which vastness few men have strayed
and fewer emerged. "I was in camp one day with Klooch. Klooch was as
handsome a little _kamooks_ as ever whined betwixt the traces or shoved
nose into a camp kettle. Her father was a full-blood Malemute from
Russian Pastilik on Bering Sea, and I bred her, and with understanding,
out of a clean-legged bitch of the Hudson Bay stock. I tell you, O man,
she was a corker combination. And now, on this day I have in mind, she
was brought to pup through a pure wild wolf of the woods--grey, and long
of limb, with big lungs and no end of staying powers. Say! Was there
ever the like? It was a new breed of dog I had started, and I could look
forward to big things.

"As I have said, she was brought neatly to pup, and safely delivered. I
was squatting on my hams over the litter--seven sturdy, blind little
beggars--when from behind came a bray of trumpets and crash of brass.
There was a rush, like the wind-