ail ran over great
boulders covered with icy slush, through which the weary brutes sank to
their bellies. Struggling desperately, down they would come between two
boulders. Then their legs would snap like pipe-stems, and there usually
they were left to die.

One would see, jammed in the cleft of a rock, the stump of a hoof, or
sticking up sharply, the jagged splinter of a leg; while far down the
bluff lay the animal to which it belonged. One would see the poor dead
brutes lying head and tail for an hundred yards at a stretch. One would
see them deserted and desperate, wandering round foraging for food. They
would come to the camp at night whinnying pitifully, and with a look of
terrible entreaty on their starved faces. Then one would take pity on
them--and shoot them.

I remember stumbling across a big, heavy horse one night in the gloom.
It was swaying from side to side, and as I drew near I saw its throat
was hideously cut. It looked at me with such agony in its eyes that I
put my handkerchief over its face, and, with the blow of an axe, ended
its misery. The most spirited of the horses were the first to fall. They
broke their hearts in gallant effort. Goaded to desperation, sometimes
they would destroy themselves, throw themselves frantically over the
bluff. Oh, it was horrible! horrible!

Our own horse proved a ready victim. To tell the truth, no one but the
Jam-wagon was particularly sorry. If there was a sump-hole in sight,
that horse was sure to flounder into it. Sometimes twice in one day we
had to unhitch the ox and pull him out. There was a place dug out of the
snow alongside the trail, which was being used as a knacker's yard, and
here we took him with a broken leg and put a bullet in his brain. While
we waited there were six others brought in to be shot.

It was a Sunday and we were in the tent, indescribably glad of a day's
rest. The Jam-wagon was mending a bit of harness; the Prodigal was
playing solitaire. Salvation Jim had just returned from a trip to
Skagway, where he had hoped to find a letter from the outside regarding
one Jake Mosher. His usually hale and kindly face was drawn and
troubled. Wearily he removed his snow-sodden clothes.

"I always did say there was God's curse on this Klondike gold," he said;
"now I'm sure of it. There's a hoodoo on it. What it's a-goin' to cost,
what hearts it's goin' to break, what homes it's goin' to wreck no
man'll ever know. God only knows what it's cost alrea