"Travelin' depends on the weather." Dillon helped him out.

"Exactly. Depends on the weather," echoed the General. "You don't get
an old Sour-dough like Dillon to travel at forty degrees."

"How are you to know?" whispered Schiff.

"Tie a little bottle o' quick to your sled," answered Dillon.

"Bottle o' what?" asked the Boy.

"Quicksilver--mercury," interpreted the General.

"No dog-puncher who knows what he's about travels when his quick goes
dead."

"If the stuff's like lead in your bottle--" The General stopped to
sample the new brew. In the pause, from the far side of the cabin
Dillon spat straight and clean into the heart of the coals.

"Well, what do you do when the mercury freezes?" asked the Boy.

"Camp," said Dillon impassively, resuming his pipe.

"I suppose," the Boy went on wistfully--"I suppose you met men all the
way making straight for Minook?"

"Only on this last lap."

"They don't get far, most of 'em."

"But... but it's worth trying!" the Boy hurried to bridge the chasm.

The General lifted his right arm in the attitude of the orator about to
make a telling hit, but he was hampered by having a mug at his lips. In
the pause, as he stood commanding attention, at the same time that he
swallowed half a pint of liquor, he gave Dillon time leisurely to get
up, knock the ashes out of his pipe stick it in his belt, put a slow
hand behind him towards his pistol pocket, and bring out his buckskin
gold sack. Now, only Mac of the other men had ever seen a miner's purse
before, but every one of the four cheechalkos knew instinctively what
it was that Dillon held so carelessly. In that long, narrow bag, like
the leg of a child's stocking, was the stuff they had all come seeking.

The General smacked his lips, and set down the granite cup.

"_That's_ the argument," he said. "Got a noospaper?"

The Colonel looked about in a flustered way for the tattered San
Francisco _Examiner_; Potts and the Boy hustled the punch-bowl on to
the bucket board, recklessly spilling some of the precious contents.
O'Flynn and Salmon P. whisked the Christmas tree into the corner, and
not even the Boy remonstrated when a gingerbread man broke his neck,
and was trampled under foot.

"Quick! the candles are going out!" shouted the Boy, and in truth each
wick lay languishing in a little island of grease, now flaring bravely,
now flickering to dusk. It took some time to find in the San Francisco
_Examiner_ of August 7 a fo