en so good to strangers as
you have, but I wish you'd cut out that cursing; it hurts my ears." He
sat silent a moment looking straight at me, and I was not sure how he
had taken it. Then he said: "Maybe you been kinder to me saying that,
than I been to you. That's the first time I ever been call down for
cursin'. I don't mean nothin' by it; it's just foolishness and I goin'
try to cut it out."

The dogs had done but ill on the dry fish, accustomed as they were to
cooked food, and they ate ravenously of their supper. Only the previous
night Lingo had betrayed his trust for the first and last time. Coming
out of the cabin just before turning in, to take a last look round, I
saw Lingo on top of the sled eating something, and I found that he had
dug a slab of bacon out of the unlashed load and had eaten most of it. I
knew he was hungry, missing the filling, satisfying mess he was used to,
and I did not thrash him, I simply said, "Oh, Lingo!" and the dog got
off the sled and slunk away, the very picture of conscious, shamefaced
guilt. That was the only time he did such a thing in all the six years I
drove him.

Council was past its prime at the time of this visit, but just as we
entered the town, at the end of the third day's run, it seemed in danger
of going through all the stages of decadence with a rush to total
destruction out of hand, for a fire had broken out in a laundry, and
with the high wind still blowing it looked as though every building was
doomed. Of two chemical engines possessed by the town one refused to
work, but the vigour and promptness of the people in forming two lines
down to the river, and passing buckets with the utmost rapidity, coped
with the outbreak just in time to prevent its spreading beyond all
control. Tired as we were, we all pitched in and passed buckets until
parkees and mitts and mukluks were incrusted with ice from water that
was spilled. Efficient protection is a matter of great difficulty and
expense in Alaskan towns, and there is not one of them that has escaped
being swept by fire. The buildings are almost necessarily all of wood,
the cost of brick and stone construction being prohibitive. No one can
guarantee ten years of life to a placer-mining town, and there would be
no warrant for the expenditure of the sums required for fireproof
building even were the capital available. But the rapidity with which
they are rebuilt, where rebuilding is justified, is even more remarkable
than