swallowed, the price went up to forty-three.
Fifteen husky Indians put the straps on his packs at forty-five, but took
them off at an offer of forty-seven from a Skaguay Croesus in dirty shirt
and ragged overalls who had lost his horses on the White Pass trail and
was now making a last desperate drive at the country by way of Chilkoot.

But Rasmunsen was clean grit, and at fifty cents found takers, who, two
days later, set his eggs down intact at Linderman. But fifty cents a
pound is a thousand dollars a ton, and his fifteen hundred pounds had
exhausted his emergency fund and left him stranded at the Tantalus point
where each day he saw the fresh-whipsawed boats departing for Dawson.
Further, a great anxiety brooded over the camp where the boats were
built. Men worked frantically, early and late, at the height of their
endurance, caulking, nailing, and pitching in a frenzy of haste for which
adequate explanation was not far to seek. Each day the snow-line crept
farther down the bleak, rock-shouldered peaks, and gale followed gale,
with sleet and slush and snow, and in the eddies and quiet places young
ice formed and thickened through the fleeting hours. And each morn, toil-
stiffened men turned wan faces across the lake to see if the freeze-up
had come. For the freeze-up heralded the death of their hope--the hope
that they would be floating down the swift river ere navigation closed on
the chain of lakes.

To harrow Rasmunsen's soul further, he discovered three competitors in
the egg business. It was true that one, a little German, had gone broke
and was himself forlornly back-tripping the last pack of the portage; but
the other two had boats nearly completed, and were daily supplicating the
god of merchants and traders to stay the iron hand of winter for just
another day. But the iron hand closed down over the land. Men were
being frozen in the blizzard which swept Chilkoot, and Rasmunsen frosted
his toes ere he was aware. He found a chance to go passenger with his
freight in a boat just shoving off through the rubble, but two hundred
hard cash, was required, and he had no money.

"Ay tank you yust wait one leedle w'ile," said the Swedish boat-builder,
who had struck his Klondike right there and was wise enough to know
it--"one leedle w'ile und I make you a tam fine skiff boat, sure Pete."

With this unpledged word to go on, Rasmunsen hit the back trail to Crater
Lake, where he fell in with two press corres