w off their caps
now, and the sweat rolled down their faces. Not a countenance but wore
that immobile look, the fixed, unseeing eye of the spent runner, who is
overtaxing heart and lungs. Not only Maudie now, but everyone was
silent. Occasionally a man would rouse himself out of a walk, as if out
of sleep, and run a few yards, going the more weakly after. Several of
the men who had been behind caught up.

Where was Kentucky?

If Maudie wondered, she wasted no time over the speculation. For his
own good she had admonished him to keep up his lick, but of course the
main thing was that Maudie should keep up hers.

"What if this is the great day of my life!" thought the Boy. "Shall I
always look back to this? Why, it's Sunday. Wonder if Kentucky
remembers?" Never pausing, the Boy glanced back, vaguely amused, and
saw the Colonel plunging heavily along in front of half a dozen, who
were obviously out of condition for such an expedition--eyes bloodshot,
lumbering on with nervous "whisky gait," now whipped into a breathless
gallop, now half falling by the way. Another of the Gold Nugget women
with two groggy-looking men, and somewhere down the trail, the crippled
Swede swearing at his squaw. A dreamy feeling came over the Boy. Where
in the gold basins of the North was this kind of thing not
happening--finished yesterday, or planned for to-morrow? Yes, it was
typical. Between patches of ragged black spruce, wide stretches of
snow-covered moss, under a lowering sky, and a mob of men floundering
through the drifts to find a fortune. "See how they run!"--mad mice.
They'd been going on stampedes all winter, and would go year in, year
out, until they died. The prizes were not for such as they. As for
himself--ah, it was a great day for him! He was going at last to claim
that gold-mine he had come so far to find. This was the decisive moment
of his life. At the thought he straightened up, and passed Maudie. She
gave him a single sidelong look, unfriendly, even fierce. That was
because he could run like sixty, and keep it up. "When I'm a
millionaire I shall always remember that I'm rich because I won the
race." A dizzy feeling came over him. He seemed to be running through
some softly resisting medium like water--no, like wine jelly. His heart
was pounding up in his throat. "What if something's wrong, and I drop
dead on the way to my mine? Well, Kentucky'll look after things."

Maudie had caught up again, and here was Little Minoo