n the corner of the
eye.

"Well, I'm Doc Stine's man," the other went on. "I'm five feet two
inches long, and my name's Shorty, Jack Short for short, and sometimes
known as Johnny-on-the-Spot."

Kit put out his hand and shook. "Were you raised on bear-meat?" he
queried.

"Sure," was the answer; "though my first feedin' was buffalo-milk as
near as I can remember. Sit down an' have some grub. The bosses ain't
turned out yet."

And despite the one breakfast, Kit sat down under the tarpaulin and ate
a second breakfast thrice as hearty. The heavy, purging toil of weeks
had given him the stomach and appetite of a wolf. He could eat anything,
in any quantity, and be unaware that he possessed a digestion. Shorty he
found voluble and pessimistic, and from him he received surprising tips
concerning their bosses and ominous forecasts of the expedition.
Thomas Stanley Sprague was a budding mining engineer and the son of a
millionaire. Doctor Adolph Stine was also the son of a wealthy father.
And, through their fathers, both had been backed by an investing
syndicate in the Klondike adventure.

"Oh, they're sure made of money," Shorty expounded. "When they hit the
beach at Dyea, freight was seventy cents, but no Indians. There was a
party from Eastern Oregon, real miners, that'd managed to get a team of
Indians together at seventy cents. Indians had the straps on the outfit,
three thousand pounds of it, when along comes Sprague and Stine. They
offered eighty cents and ninety, and at a dollar a pound the Indians
jumped the contract and took off their straps. Sprague and Stine came
through, though it cost them three thousand, and the Oregon bunch is
still on the beach. They won't get through till next year.

"Oh, they are real hummers, your boss and mine, when it comes to
sheddin' the mazuma an' never mindin' other folks' feelin's. What did
they do when they hit Linderman? The carpenters was just putting in
the last licks on a boat they'd contracted to a 'Frisco bunch for six
hundred. Sprague and Stine slipped 'em an even thousand, and they jumped
their contract. It's a good-lookin' boat, but it's jiggered the other
bunch. They've got their outfit right here, but no boat. And they're
stuck for next year.

"Have another cup of coffee, and take it from me that I wouldn't travel
with no such outfit if I didn't want to get to Klondike so blamed bad.
They ain't hearted right. They'd take the crape off the door of a
house in mourni