er throat by the
wind, she was heading for the tent. On her shoulders a bulky pack caught
the full fury of the storm. She plucked feebly at the knotted flaps, but
it was Tommy and Dick who cast them loose. Then she set her soul for the
last effort, staggered in, and fell exhausted on the floor.

Tommy unbuckled the straps and took the pack from her. As he lifted it
there was a clanging of pots and pans. Dick, pouring out a mug of
whiskey, paused long enough to pass the wink across her body. Tommy
winked back. His lips pursed the monosyllable, "clothes," but Dick shook
his head reprovingly. "Here, little woman," he said, after she had drunk
the whiskey and straightened up a bit.

"Here's some dry togs. Climb into them. We're going out to extra-peg
the tent. After that, give us the call, and we'll come in and have
dinner. Sing out when you're ready."

"So help me, Dick, that's knocked the edge off her for the rest of this
trip," Tommy spluttered as they crouched to the lee of the tent.

"But it's the edge is her saving grace." Dick replied, ducking his head
to a volley of sleet that drove around a corner of the canvas. "The edge
that you and I've got, Tommy, and the edge of our mothers before us."

THE MAN WITH THE GASH

Jacob Kent had suffered from cupidity all the days of his life. This, in
turn, had engendered a chronic distrustfulness, and his mind and
character had become so warped that he was a very disagreeable man to
deal with. He was also a victim to somnambulic propensities, and very
set in his ideas. He had been a weaver of cloth from the cradle, until
the fever of Klondike had entered his blood and torn him away from his
loom. His cabin stood midway between Sixty Mile Post and the Stuart
River; and men who made it a custom to travel the trail to Dawson,
likened him to a robber baron, perched in his fortress and exacting toll
from the caravans that used his ill-kept roads. Since a certain amount
of history was required in the construction of this figure, the less
cultured wayfarers from Stuart River were prone to describe him after a
still more primordial fashion, in which a command of strong adjectives
was to be chiefly noted.

This cabin was not his, by the way, having been built several years
previously by a couple of miners who had got out a raft of logs at that
point for a grub-stake. They had been most hospitable lads, and, after
they abandoned it, travelers who knew the