job! He's a gentleman's man! He's got a job at a hundred and fifty
per month and grub. He's going down to Dawson with a couple of dudes
and another gentleman's man--camp-cook, boatman, and general all-around
hustler. And O'Hara and The Billow can go to the devil. Good-bye."

But John Bellew was dazed, and could only mutter: "I don't understand."

"They say the baldface grizzlies are thick in the Yukon Basin," Kit
explained. "Well, I've got only one suit of underclothes, and I'm going
after the bear-meat, that's all."

II. THE MEAT

Half the time the wind blew a gale, and Smoke Bellew staggered against
it along the beach. In the gray of dawn a dozen boats were being loaded
with the precious outfits packed across Chilkoot. They were clumsy,
home-made boats, put together by men who were not boat-builders, out of
planks they had sawed by hand from green spruce-trees. One boat, already
loaded, was just starting, and Kit paused to watch.

The wind, which was fair down the lake, here blew in squarely on the
beach, kicking up a nasty sea in the shallows. The men of the departing
boat waded in high rubber boots as they shoved it out toward deeper
water. Twice they did this. Clambering aboard and failing to row clear,
the boat was swept back and grounded. Kit noticed that the spray on the
sides of the boat quickly turned to ice. The third attempt was a partial
success. The last two men to climb in were wet to their waists, but the
boat was afloat. They struggled awkwardly at the heavy oars, and slowly
worked off shore. Then they hoisted a sail made of blankets, had it
carry away in a gust, and were swept a third time back on the freezing
beach.

Kit grinned to himself and went on. This was what he must expect to
encounter, for he, too, in his new role of gentleman's man, was to start
from the beach in a similar boat that very day.

Everywhere men were at work, and at work desperately, for the closing
down of winter was so imminent that it was a gamble whether or not they
would get across the great chain of lakes before the freeze-up. Yet,
when Kit arrived at the tent of Messrs. Sprague and Stine, he did not
find them stirring.

By a fire, under the shelter of a tarpaulin, squatted a short, thick man
smoking a brown-paper cigarette.

"Hello," he said. "Are you Mister Sprague's new man?"

As Kit nodded, he thought he had noted a shade of emphasis on the MISTER
and the MAN, and he was sure of a hint of a twinkle i