hell a thousand years before the first fire was lighted.
Besides, it's Friday the thirteenth, an' we're goin' to trouble as the
sparks fly upward."

With small stampeding-packs on their backs, they closed the door behind
them and started down the hill. The display of the aurora borealis
had ceased, and only the stars leaped in the great cold and by their
uncertain light made traps for the feet. Shorty floundered off a turn of
the trail into deep snow, and raised his voice in blessing of the date
of the week and month and year.

"Can't you keep still?" Smoke chided. "Leave the almanac alone. You'll
have all Dawson awake and after us."

"Huh! See the light in that cabin? An' in that one over there? An' hear
that door slam? Oh, sure Dawson's asleep. Them lights? Just buryin'
their dead. They ain't stampedin', betcher life they ain't."

By the time they reached the foot of the hill and were fairly in Dawson,
lights were springing up in the cabins, doors were slamming, and from
behind came the sound of many moccasins on the hard-packed snow. Again
Shorty delivered himself.

"But it beats hell the amount of mourners there is."

They passed a man who stood by the path and was calling anxiously in a
low voice: "Oh, Charley; get a move on."

"See that pack on his back, Smoke? The graveyard's sure a long ways off
when the mourners got to pack their blankets."

By the time they reached the main street a hundred men were in line
behind them, and while they sought in the deceptive starlight for the
trail that dipped down the bank to the river, more men could be heard
arriving. Shorty slipped and shot down the thirty-foot chute into the
soft snow. Smoke followed, knocking him over as he was rising to his
feet.

"I found it first," he gurgled, taking off his mittens to shake the snow
out of the gauntlets.

The next moment they were scrambling wildly out of the way of the
hurtling bodies of those that followed. At the time of the freeze-up,
a jam had occurred at this point, and cakes of ice were up-ended in
snow-covered confusion. After several hard falls, Smoke drew out his
candle and lighted it. Those in the rear hailed it with acclaim. In the
windless air it burned easily, and he led the way more quickly.

"It's a sure stampede," Shorty decided. "Or might all them be
sleep-walkers?"

"We're at the head of the procession at any rate," was Smoke's answer.

"Oh, I don't know. Mebbe that's a firefly ahead there. Mebbe th