ght-packed dirt and coal-dust. He spoke vaguely of eggs and ice-
packs, winds and tides; but when they declined to let him have more than
a second thousand, his talk became incoherent, concerning itself chiefly
with the price of dogs and dog-food, and such things as snowshoes and
moccasins and winter trails. They let him have fifteen hundred, which
was more than the cottage warranted, and breathed easier when he scrawled
his signature and passed out the door.

Two weeks later he went over Chilkoot with three dog sleds of five dogs
each. One team he drove, the two Indians with him driving the others. At
Lake Marsh they broke out the cache and loaded up. But there was no
trail. He was the first in over the ice, and to him fell the task of
packing the snow and hammering away through the rough river jams. Behind
him he often observed a camp-fire smoke trickling thinly up through the
quiet air, and he wondered why the people did not overtake him. For he
was a stranger to the land and did not understand. Nor could he
understand his Indians when they tried to explain. This they conceived
to be a hardship, but when they balked and refused to break camp of
mornings, he drove them to their work at pistol point.

When he slipped through an ice bridge near the White Horse and froze his
foot, tender yet and oversensitive from the previous freezing, the
Indians looked for him to lie up. But he sacrificed a blanket, and, with
his foot incased in an enormous moccasin, big as a water-bucket,
continued to take his regular turn with the front sled. Here was the
cruellest work, and they respected him, though on the side they rapped
their foreheads with their knuckles and significantly shook their heads.
One night they tried to run away, but the zip-zip of his bullets in the
snow brought them back, snarling but convinced. Whereupon, being only
savage Chilkat men, they put their heads together to kill him; but he
slept like a cat, and, waking or sleeping, the chance never came. Often
they tried to tell him the import of the smoke wreath in the rear, but he
could not comprehend and grew suspicious of them. And when they sulked
or shirked, he was quick to let drive at them between the eyes, and quick
to cool their heated souls with sight of his ready revolver.

And so it went--with mutinous men, wild dogs, and a trail that broke the
heart. He fought the men to stay with him, fought the dogs to keep them
away from the eggs, fou