broad grins and ribald laughter; and now, when he understood, he made no
answer. Nor did he cherish silent bitterness. It was immaterial. The
idea--the fact behind the idea--was not changed. Here he was and his
thousand dozen; there was Dawson; the problem was unaltered.

At the Little Salmon, being short of dog food, the dogs got into his
grub, and from there to Selkirk he lived on beans--coarse, brown beans,
big beans, grossly nutritive, which griped his stomach and doubled him up
at two-hour intervals. But the Factor at Selkirk had a notice on the
door of the Post to the effect that no steamer had been up the Yukon for
two years, and in consequence grub was beyond price. He offered to swap
flour, however, at the rate of a cupful of each egg, but Rasmunsen shook
his head and hit the trail. Below the Post he managed to buy frozen
horse hide for the dogs, the horses having been slain by the Chilkat
cattle men, and the scraps and offal preserved by the Indians. He
tackled the hide himself, but the hair worked into the bean sores of his
mouth, and was beyond endurance.

Here at Selkirk he met the forerunners of the hungry exodus of Dawson,
and from there on they crept over the trail, a dismal throng. "No grub!"
was the song they sang. "No grub, and had to go." "Everybody holding
candles for a rise in the spring." "Flour dollar 'n a half a pound, and
no sellers."

"Eggs?" one of them answered. "Dollar apiece, but there ain't none."

Rasmunsen made a rapid calculation. "Twelve thousand dollars," he said
aloud.

"Hey?" the man asked.

"Nothing," he answered, and _mushed_ the dogs along.

When he arrived at Stewart River, seventy from Dawson, five of his dogs
were gone, and the remainder were falling in the traces. He, also, was
in the traces, hauling with what little strength was left in him. Even
then he was barely crawling along ten miles a day. His cheek-bones and
nose, frost-bitten again and again, were turned bloody-black and hideous.
The thumb, which was separated from the fingers by the gee-pole, had
likewise been nipped and gave him great pain. The monstrous moccasin
still incased his foot, and strange pains were beginning to rack the leg.
At Sixty Mile, the last beans, which he had been rationing for some time,
were finished; yet he steadfastly refused to touch the eggs. He could
not reconcile his mind to the legitimacy of it, and staggered and fell
along the way to Indian River. Here a fr