e by side they hit the doorway, collided violently, and fell headlong
on the office floor.

They sat up, but were too exhausted to rise. Big Olaf, the sweat pouring
from him, breathing with tremendous, painful gasps, pawed the air and
vainly tried to speak. Then he reached out his hand with unmistakable
meaning; Smoke extended his, and they shook.

"It's a dead heat," Smoke could hear the Recorder saying, but it was as
if in a dream, and the voice was very thin and very far away. "And all
I can say is that you both win. You'll have to divide the claim between
you. You're partners."

Their two arms pumped up and down as they ratified the decision. Big
Olaf nodded his head with great emphasis, and spluttered. At last he got
it out.

"You damn chechako," was what he said, but in the saying of it was
admiration. "I don't know how you done it, but you did."

Outside, the great crowd was noisily massed, while the office was
packing and jamming. Smoke and Big Olaf essayed to rise, and each
helped the other to his feet. Smoke found his legs weak under him, and
staggered drunkenly. Big Olaf tottered toward him.

"I'm sorry my dogs jumped yours."

"It couldn't be helped," Smoke panted back. "I heard you yell."

"Say," Big Olaf went on with shining eyes. "That girl--one damn fine
girl, eh?"

"One damn fine girl," Smoke agreed.

VII. THE LITTLE MAN

"I wisht you wasn't so set in your ways," Shorty demurred. "I'm sure
scairt of that glacier. No man ought to tackle it by his lonely."

Smoke laughed cheerfully, and ran his eye up the glistening face of
the tiny glacier that filled the head of the valley. "Here it is August
already, and the days have been getting shorter for two months," he
epitomized the situation. "You know quartz, and I don't. But I can bring
up the grub, while you keep after that mother lode. So-long. I'll be
back by to-morrow evening."

He turned and started.

"I got a hunch something's goin' to happen," Shorty pleaded after him.

But Smoke's reply was a bantering laugh. He held on down the little
valley, occasionally wiping the sweat from his forehead, the while his
feet crushed through ripe mountain raspberries and delicate ferns that
grew beside patches of sun-sheltered ice.

In the early spring he and Shorty had come up the Stewart River and
launched out into the amazing chaos of the region where Surprise Lake
lay. And all of the spring and half of the summer had been consumed in
f