aph to the coast at Eagle, and I
simply desire to get there early enough to get off some dispatches to
Washington before the post telegraph office closes."

"W-w-hat's 'Forty-mile?' I've heard of 'Forty-rod,' but never of
'Forty-mile,'" remarked Pepper flippantly.

"Wa-al," drawled the miner, "they was pretty near synon'mous, as you say,
when I first knew the place. Forty-mile is the only civilized place of
habitation between Dawson and Eagle. It's on the Yukon side of the river,
and is a trading station for the Forty-mile mining district, the first
real gold mining region opened up in this region. It was the scene of my
early triumphs as a 'sourdough' after I left the whaling business, and I
'mushed' into it in the winter along with Dowling, the great mail carrier
of this region, who carried the mail up the Yukon on the ice, with a dog
team, nine hundred miles between Dawson and Fort Gibbon once a month.

"I got a good paying claim on Forty-mile Creek and took out so much rich
gravel that winter that after I cleaned up in the spring I got an idea
that I didn't need any more, and sold out and hiked for the States. It
didn't last long, and I had to come back, but not up here. I thought I'd
like to stop for an hour or so and see if any of my old partners were
here."

There was little of interest at Forty-mile, except the big warehouses of
the trading companies, but they had dinner ashore, and Swiftwater managed
to find among the scanty population one or two of his old comrades, who
had given up the search for gold and were content to work for the trading
companies. A rapid but uneventful run during the afternoon brought them to
Eagle, where they were greeted with delight by the three hundred or more
citizens, and the few army officers, who, after welcoming the party,
carried the Colonel off to the barracks, the boys being quartered in the
only hotel of the place, run by the postmistress of the town, who had
formerly been a school teacher in the States, and who made the boys' stay
delightfully homelike.

Desiring to make Circle the next day, a distance of nearly two hundred
miles by the river, they left Eagle at an early hour after taking on board
a supply of fuel of a rather questionable character, for which they had to
pay a heavy price. The trading companies said that this was the second
launch that had visited Eagle and the demand for high-grade fuel was not
great.

"Say, boys, what is 'mush'?" asked Jack, sudden