o hailed him with: "Where away, little one? Do you really
expect to stake a claim?" Shorty answered:

"Me? I'm the discoverer of Squaw Creek. I'm just comin' back from
recordin' so as to see no blamed chechako jumps my claim."

The average pace of the stampeders on the smooth going was three miles
and a half an hour. Smoke and Shorty were doing four and a half, though
sometimes they broke into short runs and went faster.

"I'm going to travel your feet clean off, Shorty," Smoke challenged.

"Huh! I can hike along on the stumps an' wear the heels off your
moccasins. Though it ain't no use. I've been figgerin'. Creek claims
is five hundred feet. Call 'em ten to the mile. They's a thousand
stampeders ahead of us, an' that creek ain't no hundred miles long.
Somebody's goin' to get left, an' it makes a noise like you an' me."

Before replying, Smoke let out an unexpected link that threw Shorty half
a dozen feet in the rear. "If you saved your breath and kept up, we'd
cut down a few of that thousand," he chided.

"Who? Me? If you'd get outa the way I'd show you a pace what is."

Smoke laughed, and let out another link. The whole aspect of the
adventure had changed. Through his brain was running a phrase of the
mad philosopher--"the transvaluation of values." In truth, he was less
interested in staking a fortune than in beating Shorty. After all, he
concluded, it wasn't the reward of the game but the playing of it that
counted. Mind, and muscle, and stamina, and soul, were challenged in a
contest with this Shorty, a man who had never opened the books, and who
did not know grand opera from rag-time, nor an epic from a chilblain.

"Shorty, I've got you skinned to death. I've reconstructed every cell
in my body since I hit the beach at Dyea. My flesh is as stringy as
whipcords, and as bitter and mean as the bite of a rattlesnake. A few
months ago I'd have patted myself on the back to write such words, but
I couldn't have written them. I had to live them first, and now that
I'm living them there's no need to write them. I'm the real, bitter,
stinging goods, and no scrub of a mountaineer can put anything over on
me without getting it back compound. Now, you go ahead and set pace for
half an hour. Do your worst, and when you're all in I'll go ahead and
give you half an hour of the real worst."

"Huh!" Shorty sneered genially. "An' him not dry behind the ears yet.
Get outa the way an' let your father show you some goin'."