esh-killed moose and an open-
handed old-timer gave him and his dogs new strength, and at Ainslie's he
felt repaid for it all when a stampede, ripe from Dawson in five hours,
was sure he could get a dollar and a quarter for every egg he possessed.

He came up the steep bank by the Dawson barracks with fluttering heart
and shaking knees. The dogs were so weak that he was forced to rest
them, and, waiting, he leaned limply against the gee-pole. A man, an
eminently decorous-looking man, came sauntering by in a great bearskin
coat. He glanced at Rasmunsen curiously, then stopped and ran a
speculative eye over the dogs and the three lashed sleds.

"What you got?" he asked.

"Eggs," Rasmunsen answered huskily, hardly able to pitch his voice above
a whisper.

"Eggs! Whoopee! Whoopee!" He sprang up into the air, gyrated madly,
and finished with half-a-dozen war steps. "You don't say--all of 'em?"

"All of 'em."

"Say, you must be the Egg Man." He walked around and viewed Rasmunsen
from the other side. "Come, now, ain't you the Egg Man?"

Rasmunsen didn't know, but supposed he was, and the man sobered down a
bit.

"What d'ye expect to get for 'em?" he asked cautiously.

Rasmunsen became audacious. "Dollar 'n a half," he said.

"Done!" the man came back promptly. "Gimme a dozen."

"I--I mean a dollar 'n a half apiece," Rasmunsen hesitatingly explained.

"Sure. I heard you. Make it two dozen. Here's the dust."

The man pulled out a healthy gold sack the size of a small sausage and
knocked it negligently against the gee-pole. Rasmunsen felt a strange
trembling in the pit of his stomach, a tickling of the nostrils, and an
almost overwhelming desire to sit down and cry. But a curious, wide-eyed
crowd was beginning to collect, and man after man was calling out for
eggs. He was without scales, but the man with the bearskin coat fetched
a pair and obligingly weighed in the dust while Rasmunsen passed out the
goods. Soon there was a pushing and shoving and shouldering, and a great
clamour. Everybody wanted to buy and to be served first. And as the
excitement grew, Rasmunsen cooled down. This would never do. There must
be something behind the fact of their buying so eagerly. It would be
wiser if he rested first and sized up the market. Perhaps eggs were
worth two dollars apiece. Anyway, whenever he wished to sell, he was
sure of a dollar and a half. "Stop!" he cried, when a couple of hundred
had bee