w,
seeing that he first heard it with the aid of the tree-telephone. So
let's go for it. We can afford to travel an hour or two in the dark for
the sake of meeting the white man who is swinging that axe."

"Of course we can," replied Serge.

"Ay, ay, sir!" answered Jalap Coombs.

"Mebbe catch um. Yaas," added Kurilla, sharing the general enthusiasm.

An hour later, as they rounded a projecting point, Phil uttered an
exulting shout. A cluster of twinkling lights shone dead ahead, and our
travellers' goal was won.

"Let's give them a volley," suggested Serge. "It's the custom of the
country, you know."

So the guns were taken from their deer-skin coverings, and at Phil's
word of command a roar from double-barrel, flintlock, and Winchester
woke glad echoes from both sides of the broad valley, and from the
rugged Yukon cliffs beyond. Then with cheers and frantic yelpings of
dogs, the sledge brigade dashed on toward the welcoming lights.

"Hello the camp!" yelled Phil, as they approached the dark cluster of
cabins.

"On deck!" roared Jalap Coombs, as though he were hailing a ship at sea.

"Hello yourself!" answered a gruff voice--the first hail in their own
tongue that the boys had heard in many a week. "Who are you? Where do
you come from? And what's all this racket about?"

"White men," replied Phil, "with dog-sledges, up from Yukon month."

"Great Scott! You don't say so! No wonder you're noisy! Hi, boys! Here's
the first winter outfit that ever came from Yukon mouth to Forty Mile.
What's the matter with giving them a salute?"

"Nothing at all!" cried a score of voices, and then volley after volley
rang forth, until it seemed as though every man there must have carried
a loaded gun and emptied it of all six shots in honor of the occasion.

Men came running from all directions, and before the shooting ceased the
entire population of the camp, some three hundred in number, were
eagerly crowding about the new-comers, plying them with questions, and
struggling for the honor of shaking hands with the first arrivals of the
year.

"Are we really the first to come up?" asked Phil.

"To be sure you are. Not only that, but the first ones to reach the
diggings from any direction since navigation closed. But how did you
come? Not by the river, I know, for when I heard your shooting 'twas
away up the creek."

"We came by the Tananah and across the Divide," answered Phil. "There is
another party coming by way of the