done that by the hour since you left and the daft gold-diggers went up
trail after you. The other fellas feel it, too. Don't know what we'd
have done without Kaviak. Think we ought to keep that kid, you know."

"I could get on without Kaviak if only we had some light. It's this
villainous twilight that gets into my head. All the same, you know"--he
stood up suddenly--"we came expecting to stand a lot, didn't we?"

The elder man nodded. "Big game, big stakes. It's all right."

Eventless enough after this, except for the passing of an Indian or
two, the days crawled by.

The Boy would get up first in the morning, rake out the dead ashes, put
on a couple of back-logs, bank them with ashes, and then build the fire
in front. He broke the ice in the water-bucket, and washed; filled
coffee-pot and mush-kettle with water (or ice), and swung them over the
fire; then he mixed the corn-bread, put it in the Dutch oven, covered
it with coals, and left it to get on with its baking. Sometimes this
part of the programme was varied by his mixing a hoe-cake on a board,
and setting it up "to do" in front of the fire. Then he would call the
Colonel--

"'Wake up Massa,
De day am breakin';
Peas in de pot, en de
Hoe-cake bakin''"--

for it was the Colonel's affair to take up proceedings at this
point--make the coffee and the mush and keep it from burning, fry the
bacon, and serve up breakfast.

Saturday brought a slight variation in the early morning routine. The
others came straggling in, as usual, but once a week Mac was sure to be
first, for he had to get Kaviak up. Mac's view of his whole duty to man
seemed to centre in the Saturday scrubbing of Kaviak. Vainly had the
Esquimer stood out against compliance with this most repulsive of
foreign customs. He seemed to be always ready with some deep-laid
scheme for turning the edge of Mac's iron resolution. He tried hiding
at the bottom of the bed. It didn't work. The next time he crouched far
back under the lower bunk. He was dragged out. Another Saturday he
embedded himself, like a moth, in a bundle of old clothes. Mac shook
him out. He had been very sanguine the day he hid in the library. This
was a wooden box nailed to the wall on the right of the door. Most of
the bigger books--Byron, Wordsworth, Dana's "Mineralogy," and two
Bibles--he had taken out and concealed in the lower bunk very
skilfully, far back behind the Colonel's feet. Copps's "Mining" and the
two works