ughter he had ever heard. "And have you married and raised all those
children you were telling me about?" Before he could retort, she went
on. "How many chechakos are there behind?"

"Several thousand, I imagine. We passed over three hundred. And they
weren't wasting any time."

"It's the old story," she said bitterly. "The new-comers get in on the
rich creeks, and the old-timers, who dared and suffered and made this
country, get nothing. Old-timers made this discovery on Squaw Creek--how
it leaked out is the mystery--and they sent word up to all the
old-timers on Sea Lion. But it's ten miles farther than Dawson, and when
they arrive they'll find the creek staked to the skyline by the Dawson
chechakos. It isn't right, it isn't fair, such perversity of luck."

"It is too bad," Smoke sympathized. "But I'm hanged if I know what
you're going to do about it. First come, first served, you know."

"I wish I could do something," she flashed back at him. "I'd like to
see them all freeze on the trail, or have everything terrible happen to
them, so long as the Sea Lion stampede arrived first."

"You've certainly got it in for us hard," he laughed.

"It isn't that," she said quickly. "Man by man, I know the crowd from
Sea Lion, and they are men. They starved in this country in the old
days, and they worked like giants to develop it. I went through the hard
times on the Koyukuk with them when I was a little girl. And I was with
them in the Birch Creek famine, and in the Forty Mile famine. They are
heroes, and they deserve some reward, and yet here are thousands of
green softlings who haven't earned the right to stake anything, miles
and miles ahead of them. And now, if you'll forgive my tirade, I'll save
my breath, for I don't know when you and all the rest may try to pass
dad and me."

No further talk passed between Joy and Smoke for an hour or so, though
he noticed that for a time she and her father talked in low tones.

"I know 'em now," Shorty told Smoke. "He's old Louis Gastell, an' the
real goods. That must be his kid. He come into this country so long ago
they ain't nobody can recollect, an' he brought the girl with him, she
only a baby. Him an' Beetles was tradin' partners an' they ran the first
dinkey little steamboat up the Koyukuk."

"I don't think we'll try to pass them," Smoke said. "We're at the head
of the stampede, and there are only four of us."

Shorty agreed, and another hour of silence followed, during