er eyes, chair tilted back, a man sat sunning himself. He was an old
man. Beard and hair were long and white and patriarchal.

"If it ain't ol' Jim Cummings, turned up like us, too late for
Resurrection!" said Kink Mitchell.

"Most like he didn't hear Gabriel tootin'," was Hootchinoo Bill's
suggestion.

"Hello, Jim! Wake up!" he shouted.

The old man unlimbered lamely, blinking his eyes and murmuring
automatically: "What'll ye have, gents? What'll ye have?"

They followed him inside and ranged up against the long bar where of yore
a half-dozen nimble bar-keepers found little time to loaf. The great
room, ordinarily aroar with life, was still and gloomy as a tomb. There
was no rattling of chips, no whirring of ivory balls. Roulette and faro
tables were like gravestones under their canvas covers. No women's
voices drifted merrily from the dance-room behind. Ol' Jim Cummings
wiped a glass with palsied hands, and Kink Mitchell scrawled his initials
on the dust-covered bar.

"Where's the girls?" Hootchinoo Bill shouted, with affected geniality.

"Gone," was the ancient bar-keeper's reply, in a voice thin and aged as
himself, and as unsteady as his hand.

"Where's Bidwell and Barlow?"

"Gone."

"And Sweetwater Charley?"

"Gone."

"And his sister?"

"Gone too."

"Your daughter Sally, then, and her little kid?"

"Gone, all gone." The old man shook his head sadly, rummaging in an
absent way among the dusty bottles.

"Great Sardanapolis! Where?" Kink Mitchell exploded, unable longer to
restrain himself. "You don't say you've had the plague?"

"Why, ain't you heerd?" The old man chuckled quietly. "They-all's gone
to Dawson."

"What-like is that?" Bill demanded. "A creek? or a bar? or a place?"

"Ain't never heered of Dawson, eh?" The old man chuckled exasperatingly.
"Why, Dawson's a town, a city, bigger'n Forty Mile. Yes, sir, bigger'n
Forty Mile."

"I've ben in this land seven year," Bill announced emphatically, "an' I
make free to say I never heard tell of the burg before. Hold on! Let's
have some more of that whisky. Your information's flabbergasted me, that
it has. Now just whereabouts is this Dawson-place you was a-mentionin'?"

"On the big flat jest below the mouth of Klondike," ol' Jim answered.
"But where has you-all ben this summer?"

"Never you mind where we-all's ben," was Kink Mitchell's testy reply. "We-
all's ben where the skeeters is that thick you've got to throw a