uggenhammers bid highest, and the price they paid netted Daylight a
clean million. It was current rumor that he was worth anywhere from
twenty to thirty millions. But he alone knew just how he stood, and
that, with his last claim sold and the table swept clean of his
winnings, he had ridden his hunch to the tune of just a trifle over
eleven millions.

His departure was a thing that passed into the history of the Yukon
along with his other deeds. All the Yukon was his guest, Dawson the
seat of the festivity. On that one last night no man's dust save his
own was good. Drinks were not to be purchased. Every saloon ran open,
with extra relays of exhausted bartenders, and the drinks were given
away. A man who refused this hospitality, and persisted in paying,
found a dozen fights on his hands. The veriest chechaquos rose up to
defend the name of Daylight from such insult. And through it all, on
moccasined feet, moved Daylight, hell-roaring Burning Daylight,
over-spilling with good nature and camaraderie, howling his he-wolf
howl and claiming the night as his, bending men's arms down on the
bars, performing feats of strength, his bronzed face flushed with
drink, his black eyes flashing, clad in overalls and blanket coat, his
ear-flaps dangling and his gauntleted mittens swinging from the cord
across the shoulders. But this time it was neither an ante nor a stake
that he threw away, but a mere marker in the game that he who held so
many markers would not miss.

As a night, it eclipsed anything that Dawson had ever seen. It was
Daylight's desire to make it memorable, and his attempt was a success.
A goodly portion of Dawson got drunk that night. The fall weather was
on, and, though the freeze-up of the Yukon still delayed, the
thermometer was down to twenty-five below zero and falling. Wherefore,
it was necessary to organize gangs of life-savers, who patrolled the
streets to pick up drunken men from where they fell in the snow and
where an hour's sleep would be fatal. Daylight, whose whim it was to
make them drunk by hundreds and by thousands, was the one who initiated
this life saving. He wanted Dawson to have its night, but, in his
deeper processes never careless nor wanton, he saw to it that it was a
night without accident. And, like his olden nights, his ukase went
forth that there should be no quarrelling nor fighting, offenders to be
dealt with by him personally. Nor did he have to deal with any.
Hundre