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We can fix the corner-stakes afterwards." With his knife Smoke cut away the lacings and leather of the moccasins. So stiff were they with ice that they snapped and crackled under the hacking and sawing. The Siwash socks and heavy woollen stockings were sheaths of ice. It was as if her feet and calves were encased in corrugated iron. "How are your feet?" he asked, as he worked. "Pretty numb.
He staked next, and I guess by now the bunch has Squaw Creek located to head-waters an' down the other side. Ourn is safe. It's too dark to see now, but we can put out the corner-stakes in the mornin'." When they awoke, they found a change had taken place during the night. So warm was it, that Shorty and Smoke, still in their mutual blankets, estimated the temperature at no more than twenty below.
He staked next, and I guess by now the bunch has Squaw Creek located to head-waters an' down the other side. Ourn is safe. It's too dark to see now, but we can put out the corner-stakes in the mornin'." When they awoke, they found a change had taken place during the night. So warm was it, that Shorty and Smoke, still in their mutual blankets, estimated the temperature at no more than twenty below.
They sought first to guess out the line of a railroad; they examined corner-stakes; they planned for a future county-seat; they selected a high-sounding name, regardless of etymologies and tautologies; they built shanties, "filed" according to law, laid off a town-site, put up a hotel, published a beautiful colored map, and began to give away lots to men who would build on them.
Each man had to re-locate the claim for himself, and this meant that he must place two centre-stakes and four corner-stakes and cross the creek twice, before he could start for Dawson with his dogs. Furthermore, there were to be no 'sooners. Not until the stroke of midnight of Friday night was the claim open for re-location, and not until the stroke of midnight could a man plant a stake.
"You go an' fix them corner-stakes, Smoke," Shorty said. "There's a gravel under where I chopped ice for the coffee, an' I'm goin' to melt water and wash a pan of that same gravel for luck." Smoke departed, axe in hand, to blaze the stakes. Starting from the down-stream centre-stake of 'twenty-seven, he headed at right angles across the narrow valley towards its rim.
They jeered and scoffed at everything, and insulted every chechaquo they met along the way. At No. 23 the stakes ceased. The remainder of the creek was open for location. "Moose pasture," sneered Kink Mitchell. But Bill gravely paced off five hundred feet up the creek and blazed the corner-stakes.
The boys clapped their hands: and Charles, feeling a glow at his heart, as if Marie and he were going to be happy at last, began to sing, as he drove his corner-stakes. "You will have a pleasant life of it here in the woods," said Robin, bringing as large a load of rushes as his two arms would hold. "I should like to live here, as you are going to do.
At Discovery little was to be learned of the upper creek. Cormack's Indian brother-in-law, Skookum Jim, had a hazy notion that the creek was staked as high as the 30's; but when Kink and Bill looked at the corner-stakes of 79 ABOVE, they threw their stampeding packs off their backs and sat down to smoke. All their efforts had been vain.
"You go an' fix them corner-stakes, Smoke," Shorty said. "There's gravel under where I chopped ice for the coffee, an' I'm goin' to melt water and wash a pan of that same gravel for luck." Smoke departed, axe in hand, to blaze the stakes. Starting from the down-stream center-stake of 'twenty-seven, he headed at right angles across the narrow valley towards its rim.
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