while."

The Captain shook his head. It was true: the passengers of the Oklahoma
were crowded like cattle on a Kansas stock-car. He knew he ought to
unload and let a good portion wait at Minook for that unknown quantity
the next boat. He would issue the order, but that he knew it would mean
a mutiny.

"I'll get into trouble for overloading as it is."

"You probably won't; people are too busy up here. If you do, I'm
offerin' you a good many thousand dollars for the risk."

"God bless my soul! where'd I put you? There ain't a bunk."

"I've slept by the week on the ice."

"There ain't room to lie down."

"Then we'll stand up."

Lord, Lord! what could you do with such a man? Owner of Idaho Bar, too.
"Mechanics of erosion," "Concentrates," "a third interest"--it all rang
in his head. "I've got nine fellers sleepin' in here," he said
helplessly, "in my room."

"Can we come if we find our own place, and don't trouble you?"

"Well, I won't have any pardner--but perhaps you----"

"Oh, pardner's got to come too."

Whatever the Captain said the nerve-tearing shriek of the whistle
drowned. It was promptly replied to by the most horrible howls.

"Reckon that's Nig! He's got to come too," said this dreadful ragged
man.

"God bless me, this must be Minook!"

The harassed Captain hustled out.

"You must wait long enough here to get that deed drawn, Captain!"
called out the other, as he flew down the companionway.

Nearly six hundred people on the bank. Suddenly controlling his
eagerness, the Boy contented himself with standing back and staring
across strange shoulders at the place he knew so well. There was "the
worst-lookin' shack in the town," that had been his home, the A. C.
store looming importantly, the Gold Nugget, and hardly a face to which
he could not give a name and a history: Windy Jim and the crippled
Swede; Bonsor, cheek by jowl with his enemy, McGinty; Judge Corey
spitting straight and far; the gorgeous bartender, all checks and
diamonds, in front of a pitiful group of the scurvy-stricken (thirty of
them in the town waiting for rescue by the steamer); Butts, quite
bland, under the crooked cottonwood, with never a thought of how near
he had come, on that very spot, to missing the first boat of the year,
and all the boats of all the years to follow.

Maudie, Keith and the Colonel stood with the A. C. agent at the end of
the baggage-bordered plank-walk that led to the landing. Behind them,
at least