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He was perhaps thirty-six, had been "in" ten years, and had mined before that in Idaho. Under his striped parki he was dressed in spotted deer-skin, wore white deer-skin mucklucks, Arctic cap, and moose mittens. Pinned on his inner shirt was the badge of the Yukon Order of Pioneers a footrule bent like the letter A above a scroll of leaves, and in the angle two linked O's over Y. P.
The morning after the ejection of Potts, and his unwilling reception at the Big Cabin, Mac and O'Flynn failed to appear for breakfast. "Guess they're huffy," says Potts, stretching out his feet, very comfortable in their straw-lined mucklucks, before the big blaze. "Bring on the coffee, Kaviak." "No," says the Colonel, "we won't begin without the other fellows."
The Colonel was on his legs in a flash, putting his head through his parki and drawing on his mucklucks. He didn't wait to cross and tie the thongs. A presentiment of evil was strong upon him. Outside in the faint star-light he thought a dim shape was passing down towards the river. "Who's that? Hi, there! Stop, or I'll shoot!" He hadn't brought his gun, but the ruse worked.
Thereafter, while the bacon was frying and the tea brewing, the Colonel stuck up in the snow behind the fire some sticks on which to dry their foot-gear. When he pulled off his mucklucks his stockinged feet smoked in the frosty air. The hint was all that was needed, that first night on the trail, for the Boy to follow suit and make the change into dry things.
"It don't sound like Nich'las, annyhow. May the divil burrn him in tarment and ile fur disappoyntin' th' kid." A rattle at the latch, and the Pymeut opened the door. "Lorrd love ye! ye're a jool, Nich'las!" screamed O'Flynn; and the mucklucks passed from one to the other so surreptitiously that for all Kaviak's wide-eyed watchfulness he detected nothing.
"What is it, anyway?" the Boy pursued. "His amulet, I suppose." As Father Wills proceeded to enforce his order, and pulled the leather string over the child's head, Kaviak rent the air with shrieks and coughs. He seemed to say as well as he could, "I can do without my parki and my mucklucks, but I'll take my death without my amulet."
The Colonel flung in the Boy's direction the usual change, two pairs of heavy socks, the "German knitted" and "the felt." "Not wet," repeated the Boy. "You know you are." "Could go through water in these mucklucks." "I'm not saying the wet has come in from outside; but you know as well as I do a man sweats like a horse on the trail."
He sat up late the last nights before the 25th, whittling, chipping, pegging in legs, sharpening beaks, and inking eyes, that the more important animals might be ready for the Deluge by Christmas. The Colonel made the ark, and O'Flynn took up a collection to defray the expense of the little new mucklucks he had ordered from Nicholas.
He turned to the Colonel: "You'll get over trying to wear cheechalko boots here nothing like mucklucks with a wisp of straw inside for this country." "I agree wid ye. I got me a pair in St. Michael's," says O'Flynn proudly, turning out his enormous feet. "Never wore anything so comf'table in me life." "You ought to have drill parkis too, like this of mine, to keep out the wind."
"Why, I thought you natives could find your way day or night?" "Yes. Find way." "Then what's the matter?" "Pymeut no like dark;" and it was not until Mac put on his own snow-shoes and offered to go part of the way with him that Nicholas was at last induced to return home. The moment Kaviak was ascertained to be asleep, O'Flynn displayed the mucklucks. No mistake, they were dandies!
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