's it. That's right, stick to the moccasins. Gee! That coat
is sure wrinkled, an' it fits you a mite too swift. Just peck around at
your vittles. If you eat hearty you'll bust through. An' if them women
folks gets to droppin' handkerchiefs, just let 'em lay. Don't do any
pickin' up. Whatever you do, don't."

As became a high-salaried expert and the representative of the great
house of Guggenheim, Colonel Bowie lived in one of the most magnificent
cabins in Dawson. Of squared logs, hand-hewn, it was two stories high,
and of such extravagant proportions that it boasted a big living room
that was used for a living room and for nothing else.

Here were big bear-skins on the rough board floor, and on the walls
horns of moose and caribou. Here roared an open fireplace and a big
wood-burning stove. And here Smoke met the social elect of Dawson--not
the mere pick-handle millionaires, but the ultra-cream of a mining
city whose population had been recruited from all the world--men like
Warburton Jones, the explorer and writer; Captain Consadine of the
Mounted Police; Haskell, Gold Commissioner of the Northwest Territory;
and Baron Von Schroeder, an emperor's favourite with an international
duelling reputation.

And here, dazzling in evening gown, he met Joy Gastell, whom hitherto
he had encountered only on trail, befurred and moccasined. At dinner he
found himself beside her.

"I feel like a fish out of water," he confessed. "All you folks are
so real grand you know. Besides, I never dreamed such Oriental luxury
existed in the Klondike. Look at Von Schroeder there. He's actually got
a dinner jacket, and Consadine's got a starched shirt. I noticed he wore
moccasins just the same. How do you like MY outfit?"

He moved his shoulders about as if preening himself for Joy's approval.

"It looks as if you'd grown stout since you came over the Pass," she
laughed.

"Wrong. Guess again."

"It's somebody else's."

"You win. I bought it for a price from one of the clerks at the A. C.
Company."

"It's a shame clerks are so narrow-shouldered," she sympathized. "And
you haven't told me what you think of MY outfit."

"I can't," he said. "I'm out of breath. I've been living on trail too
long. This sort of thing comes to me with a shock, you know. I'd quite
forgotten that women have arms and shoulders. To-morrow morning, like
my friend Shorty, I'll wake up and know it's all a dream. Now, the last
time I saw you on Squaw Creek--"