ut
o' yer bunks ye needn't blame me, fur I warned yer."

"You don't mean the flood'll come up here?"

"Mebbe you've arranged so she won't this year."

The cheechalkos consulted. In the end, four of them occupied the next
two hours (to the infinite but masked amusement of the town) in
floundering about in the mud, setting up tents in the boggy wood above
the settlement, and with much pains transporting thither as many of
their possessions as they did not lose in the bottomless pit of the
mire.

When the business was ended, Minook self-control gave way. The
cheechalkos found themselves the laughing-stock of the town. The
others, who had dared to build down on the bank, but who "hadn't scared
worth a cent," sauntered up to the Gold Nugget to enjoy the increased
esteem of the Sour-doughs, and the humiliation of the men who had
thought "the Yukon was goin' over the Ramparts this year--haw, haw!"

It surprises the average mind to discover that one of civilization's
most delicate weapons is in such use and is so potently dreaded among
the roughest frontier spirits. No fine gentleman in a drawing-room, no
sensitive girl, shrinks more from what Meredith calls "the comic
laugh," none feels irony more keenly than your ordinary American
pioneer. The men who had moved up into the soaking wood saw they had
run a risk as great to them as the fabled danger of the river--the risk
of the josher's irony, the dire humiliation of the laugh. If a man up
here does you an injury, and you kill him, you haven't after all taken
the ultimate revenge. You might have "got the laugh on him," and let
him live to hear it.

While all Minook was "jollying" the Woodworth men, Maudie made one of
her sudden raids out of the Gold Nugget. She stood nearly up to the
knees of her high rubber boots in the bog of "Main Street," talking
earnestly with the Colonel. Keith and the Boy, sitting on a store box
outside of the saloon, had looked on at the fun over the timid
cheechalkos, and looked on now at Maudie and the Colonel. It crossed
the Boy's mind that they'd be putting up a josh on his pardner pretty
soon, and at the thought he frowned.

Keith had been saying that the old miners had nearly all got "squawed."
He had spoken almost superstitiously of the queer, lasting effect of
the supposedly temporary arrangement.

"No, they don't leave their wives as often as you'd expect, but in most
cases it seems to kill the pride of the man. He gives up all idea o