Some friend had brought Dave along to talk over town
sites on Mammon Creek. But little talking did he do, and what he did was
mostly gibberish. I tell you the sight of Flush of Gold had sent Dave
clean daffy. Old Victor Chauvet insisted after Dave left that he had
been drunk. And so he had. He was drunk, but Flush of Gold was the
strong drink that made him so.

"That settled it, that first glimpse he caught of her. He did not start
back down the Yukon in a week, as he had intended. He lingered on a
month, two months, all summer. And we who had suffered understood, and
wondered what the outcome would be. Undoubtedly, in our minds, it seemed
that Flush of Gold had met her master. And why not? There was romance
sprinkled all over Dave Walsh. He was a Mammon King, he had made the
Mammon Creek strike; he was an old sour dough, one of the oldest pioneers
in the land--men turned to look at him when he went by, and said to one
another in awed undertones, 'There goes Dave Walsh.' And why not? He
stood six feet four; he had yellow hair himself that curled on his neck;
and he was a bull--a yellow-maned bull just turned thirty-one.

"And Flush of Gold loved him, and, having danced him through a whole
summer's courtship, at the end their engagement was made known. The fall
of the year was at hand, Dave had to be back for the winter's work on
Mammon Creek, and Flush of Gold refused to be married right away. Dave
put Dusky Burns in charge of the Mammon Creek claim, and himself lingered
on in Dawson. Little use. She wanted her freedom a while longer; she
must have it, and she would not marry until next year. And so, on the
first ice, Dave Walsh went alone down the Yukon behind his dogs, with the
understanding that the marriage would take place when he arrived on the
first steamboat of the next year.

"Now Dave was as true as the Pole Star, and she was as false as a
magnetic needle in a cargo of loadstone. Dave was as steady and solid as
she was fickle and fly-away, and in some way Dave, who never doubted
anybody, doubted her. It was the jealousy of his love, perhaps, and
maybe it was the message ticked off from her soul to his; but at any rate
Dave was worried by fear of her inconstancy. He was afraid to trust her
till the next year, he had so to trust her, and he was pretty well beside
himself. Some of it I got from old Victor Chauvet afterwards, and from
all that I have pieced together I conclude that there