Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 8, 2025
We were abreast of the forlorn little shack of a dry-farmer, weathered and patched, set a dozen yards from the road and surrounded by hard-packed earth. Before the open door basked children and pigs and a few spiritless chickens. All the children ran to the door when we halted and called to someone within.
It was at this point that the Dyea trail, baffled by ice-jams, swerved abruptly across the Yukon to the east bank. And here they must leave the hard-packed, main-travelled trail, mount the jams, and follow a dim trail, but slightly packed, that hovered the west bank. Louis Gastell, leading, slipped in the darkness on the rough ice, and sat up, holding his ankle in both his hands.
By the time they reached the foot of the hill and were fairly in Dawson, lights were springing up in the cabins, doors were slamming, and from behind came the sound of many moccasins on the hard-packed snow. Again Shorty delivered himself. "But it beats hell the amount of mourners there is."
Charles Eugene pulled gallantly between the shafts; the cart was swallowed up in the barn, stopped beside the mow, and once again the forks were plunged into the hard-packed hay, raised a thick mat of it with strain of wrist and back, and unloaded it to one side.
Looking closer he saw that it was caused by the branding-iron, one corner of which rested on the end of a board where the rough flooring came in contact with the square of hard-packed earth beneath the stove. Bud Jessup saw it, too, and without comment he stepped over and moved the iron to a safer position. Still without words, the two left the bunk-house.
It was a fact that some deserts were sandy, but this one was composed of hard-packed earth and stones in which plants struggled for survival. It was more like smooth clay. Then, as the desert rose from smooth plain to mountains, the ground became simply broken rock, sparsely dotted with creosote bush and cholla. Once or twice he turned and looked back at the road over which they had come.
The dogs gave up, the sled was righted, and five minutes later they were flying along the hard-packed trail again. The lynx was the only sign of life they had seen in two days, and it, leaping velvet-footed and vanishing, had been more like an apparition. At twelve o'clock, when the sun peeped over the earth-bulge, they stopped and built a small fire on the ice.
Not all, for many skeletons have been found here and there through the city in the market place, in the streets, in the houses. And sometimes the excavators have found still stranger, sadder things. Often as a man has been digging in the hard-packed ashes, his spade has struck into a hole. Then he has called the chief excavator.
"Tomorrow," I said to myself, "I shall request a change of station." The stairway of hard-packed earth was already black. But a few gleams of light still seemed palely prowling in the office when I entered. A man was sitting at my desk, bending over the files of orders. His back was toward me. He did not hear me enter. "Really, Gourrut, my lad, I beg you not to disturb yourself.
On the left side of the room, and midway between the end bunk and the door was a sheet-iron tent stove, with a pipe dismantled and lying on top of it. An old pair of snowshoes, and steel traps, pieces of board shaped for stretching pelts of various sizes and some simple cooking utensils hung upon wooden pegs against the wall. The floor was of hard-packed earth. "Well, now!
Word Of The Day
Others Looking