was Devereaux? Oh, the courier! Shot by Indians on Lake Marsh.

So it went. The word was passed along. Men shouldered in to ask after
friends and partners, and in turn were shouldered out, too stunned for
blasphemy. By the time Montana Kid gained the bank he was surrounded by
several hundred fur-clad miners. When he passed the Barracks he was the
centre of a procession. At the Opera House he was the nucleus of an
excited mob, each member struggling for a chance to ask after some absent
comrade. On every side he was being invited to drink. Never before had
the Klondike thus opened its arms to a che-cha-qua. All Dawson was
humming. Such a series of catastrophes had never occurred in its
history. Every man of note who had gone south in the spring had been
wiped out. The cabins vomited forth their occupants. Wild-eyed men
hurried down from the creeks and gulches to seek out this man who had
told a tale of such disaster. The Russian half-breed wife of Bettles
sought the fireplace, inconsolable, and rocked back and forth, and ever
and anon flung white wood-ashes upon her raven hair. The flag at the
Barracks flopped dismally at half-mast. Dawson mourned its dead.

Why Montana Kid did this thing no man may know. Nor beyond the fact that
the truth was not in him, can explanation be hazarded. But for five
whole days he plunged the land in wailing and sorrow, and for five whole
days he was the only man in the Klondike. The country gave him its best
of bed and board. The saloons granted him the freedom of their bars. Men
sought him continuously. The high officials bowed down to him for
further information, and he was feasted at the Barracks by Constantine
and his brother officers. And then, one day, Devereaux, the government
courier, halted his tired dogs before the gold commissioner's office.
Dead? Who said so? Give him a moose steak and he'd show them how dead
he was. Why, Governor Walsh was in camp on the Little Salmon, and
O'Brien coming in on the first water. Dead? Give him a moose steak and
he'd show them.

And forthwith Dawson hummed. The Barracks' flag rose to the masthead,
and Bettles' wife washed herself and put on clean raiment. The community
subtly signified its desire that Montana Kid obliterate himself from the
landscape. And Montana Kid obliterated; as usual, at the tail-end of
some one else's dog team. Dawson rejoiced when he headed down the Yukon,
and wished him godspeed to the ul