k," he went on academically, "is all
out an' sweatin' hard over Birch Creek way. Not a genooine miner in this
whole crazy Dawson outfit, and I say right here, not a step do I budge
for any Carmack strike. I've got to see the colour of the dust first."

"Same here," Mitchell agreed. "Let's have another drink."

Having wet this resolution, they beached the canoe, transferred its
contents to their cabin, and cooked dinner. But as the afternoon wore
along they grew restive. They were men used to the silence of the great
wilderness, but this gravelike silence of a town worried them. They
caught themselves listening for familiar sounds--"waitin' for something
to make a noise which ain't goin' to make a noise," as Bill put it. They
strolled through the deserted streets to the Monte Carlo for more drinks,
and wandered along the river bank to the steamer landing, where only
water gurgled as the eddy filled and emptied, and an occasional salmon
leapt flashing into the sun.

They sat down in the shade in front of the store and talked with the
consumptive storekeeper, whose liability to hemorrhage accounted for his
presence. Bill and Kink told him how they intended loafing in their
cabin and resting up after the hard summer's work. They told him, with a
certain insistence, that was half appeal for belief, half challenge for
contradiction, how much they were going to enjoy their idleness. But the
storekeeper was uninterested. He switched the conversation back to the
strike on Klondike, and they could not keep him away from it. He could
think of nothing else, talk of nothing else, till Hootchinoo Bill rose up
in anger and disgust.

"Gosh darn Dawson, say I!" he cried.

"Same here," said Kink Mitchell, with a brightening face. "One'd think
something was doin' up there, 'stead of bein' a mere stampede of
greenhorns an' tinhorns."

But a boat came into view from down-stream. It was long and slim. It
hugged the bank closely, and its three occupants, standing upright,
propelled it against the stiff current by means of long poles.

"Circle City outfit," said the storekeeper. "I was lookin' for 'em along
by afternoon. Forty Mile had the start of them by a hundred and seventy
miles. But gee! they ain't losin' any time!"

"We'll just sit here quiet-like and watch 'em string by," Bill said
complacently.

As he spoke, another boat appeared in sight, followed after a brief
interval by two others. By this time the fir