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When this thought came to him, he began to hope that he would not be selected; but a man who had made a name as captain of a college football eleven, as a president of an athletic club, as a dog- musher and a stampeder in the Yukon, and, moreover, who possessed such shoulders as he, had no right to avoid the honour. It was thrust upon him and upon a gigantic German, Nick Antonsen.
Returning to the road we passed Jock Ellis's cabin, in a similar state of ruin to that of McKinney. He was a Squaw Valley stampeder. Nearby we saw the largest tamarack I have yet found in the Sierras. It was fully five feet through and fluted in an interesting and peculiar fashion.
Shorty was irrepressible and pessimistic. When the stampeders resented being passed, he retorted in kind. "What's your hurry?" one of them asked. "What's yours?" he answered. "A stampede come down from Indian River yesterday afternoon an' beat you to it. They ain't no claims left." "That being so, I repeat, what's your hurry?" "WHO? Me? I ain't no stampeder. I'm workin' for the government.
There was an air of dignity about him as he said: "Dere's plenty t'ing in dis worl' we don' get pay' for. You didn't 'spect no pay yesterday when you run de W'ite 'Orse for save dis gal an' her papa, did you? No. Wal, I'm woodsman, river-man; I ain't dam' stampeder. Dis is my countree, we're frien's together long tam; I love it an' it loves me.
"Coppers is all alike; there's always a way to square 'em " "Lay off that 'squaring' stuff," cautioned a renegade crook, disguised by a suit of mackinaws and a week's growth of beard into the likeness of a stampeder. "A thousand bucks and a ton of grub, that's what the sign says, and that's what it means. They wouldn't let you over the Line with nine hundred and ninety-nine fifty."
He'd lift his muzzle and bay at the very idea until some stranger terminated him. Well, he's my cross; I s'pose I've got to bear him." "Who is Mr. Linton?" the Countess inquired, as she and Pierce left the village behind them. "Just an ordinary stampeder, like the rest of us. I think." "He's more than that. He's the kind who'll go through and make good. I dare say his partner is just like him."
He came in the early days of the rush, and as soon as the camp died down, located on the mouth of the creek that now bears his name. The next creek to the south Blackwood's, is named after still another Squaw Valley stampeder. For years he lived at the mouth of this creek and gained his livelihood as a fisherman. The same explanation accounts for Dick Madden Creek.
Scorning the proposal of delivering the shares next day in Dawson, and scorning it because of the objection that the portion of Dawson that had not engaged in the stampede would ring in for shares, the committee, by a fire on the ice at the foot of the slide, issued a receipt to each stampeder in return for ten dollars in dust duly weighed on two dozen gold-scales which were obtained from Dawson.
I will take it," said he; and I thanked him very cordially, and hastened to the Commissioner to have the paper drawn up. It did not take long, and the man has taken it, and gone. Being an old mail carrier and stampeder of experience in this country, he ought to know how to travel, and, being a Norwegian, he is well used to the snow and the cold.
He drove with the killing cruelty of a stampeder, and they loved him. "You say you have grub cached at the old Indian hut on the Good Hope?" questioned Willard. "Sure! Five poun' bacon, leetle flour and rice. I cache one gum-boot too, ha! Good thing for make fire queeck, eh?" "You bet; an old rubber boot comes handy when it's too cold to make shavings."
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