He was a young bull. When he
was twenty-five he could lift clear of the ground thirteen fifty-pound
sacks of flour. At first, each fall of the year, famine drove him out.
It was a lone land in those days. No river steamboats, no grub, nothing
but salmon bellies and rabbit tracks. But after famine chased him out
three years, he said he'd had enough of being chased; and the next year
he stayed. He lived on straight meat when he was lucky enough to get it;
he ate eleven dogs that winter; but he stayed. And the next winter he
stayed, and the next. He never did leave the country again. He was a
bull, a great bull. He could kill the strongest man in the country with
hard work. He could outpack a Chilcat Indian, he could outpaddle a
Stick, and he could travel all day with wet feet when the thermometer
registered fifty below zero, and that's going some, I tell you, for
vitality. You'd freeze your feet at twenty-five below if you wet them
and tried to keep on.

"Dave Walsh was a bull for strength. And yet he was soft and
easy-natured. Anybody could do him, the latest short-horn in camp could
lie his last dollar out of him. 'But it doesn't worry me,' he had a way
of laughing off his softness; 'it doesn't keep me awake nights.' Now
don't get the idea that he had no backbone. You remember about the bear
he went after with the popgun. When it came to fighting Dave was the
blamedest ever. He was the limit, if by that I may describe his
unlimitedness when he got into action, he was easy and kind with the
weak, but the strong had to give trail when he went by. And he was a man
that men liked, which is the finest word of all, a man's man.

"Dave never took part in the big stampede to Dawson when Carmack made the
Bonanza strike. You see, Dave was just then over on Mammon Creek
strikin' it himself. He discovered Mammon Creek. Cleaned eighty-four
thousand up that winter, and opened up the claim so that it promised a
couple of hundred thousand for the next winter. Then, summer bein' on
and the ground sloshy, he took a trip up the Yukon to Dawson to see what
Carmack's strike looked like. And there he saw Flush of Gold. I
remember the night. I shall always remember. It was something sudden,
and it makes one shiver to think of a strong man with all the strength
withered out of him by one glance from the soft eyes of a weak, blond,
female creature like Flush of Gold. It was at her dad's cabin, old
Victor Chauvet's.