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"Ay tank yes," he finally said, and the last Rasmunsen saw of him his vocabulary was going to wreck in a vain effort to explain the mistake to the other fellows. The German slipped and broke his ankle on the steep hogback above Deep Lake, sold out his stock for a dollar a dozen, and with the proceeds hired Indian packers to carry him back to Dyea.
He seemed to come in with determination, as though bound on some explicit errand, but as he looked at Rasmunsen an expression of perplexity came into his face. "I say now I say " he began, then halted. Rasmunsen wondered if he wanted the rent. "I say, damn it, you know, them eggs is bad." Rasmunsen staggered. He felt as though some one had struck him an astounding blow between the eyes.
The boat acknowledged it at once, taking less water and rising more buoyantly. "That'll do!" Rasmunsen called sternly, as they applied themselves to the top layer of eggs. "The h-hell it will!" answered the shivering one, savagely. With the exception of their notes, films, and cameras, they had sacrificed their outfit.
Bennett was a twenty-five-mile lake, narrow and deep, a funnel between the mountains through which storms ever romped. Rasmunsen camped on the sand-pit at its head, where were many men and boats bound north in the teeth of the Arctic winter.
The walls of the cabin reeled and tilted up. He put out his hand to steady himself and rested it on the stove. The sharp pain and the smell of the burning flesh brought him back to himself. "I see," he said slowly, fumbling in his pocket for the sack. "You want your money back." "It ain't the money," the man said, "but hain't you got any eggs good?" Rasmunsen shook his head.
Rasmunsen made a rapid calculation. "Twelve thousand dollars," he said aloud. "Hey?" the man asked. "Nothing," he answered, and MUSHED the dogs along. When he arrived at Stewart River, seventy from Dawson, five of his dogs were gone, and the remainder were falling in the traces. He, also, was in the traces, hauling with what little strength was left in him.
Rasmunsen mortgaged the little cottage for a thousand dollars, arranged for his wife to make a prolonged stay among her own people, threw up his job, and started North. To keep within his schedule he compromised on a second-class passage, which, because of the rush, was worse than steerage; and in the late summer, a pale and wabbly man, he disembarked with his eggs on the Dyea beach.
Dyea and Skaguay took an interest in his being, and questioned his progress from every man who came over the passes, while Dawson golden, omeletless Dawson fretted and worried, and way-laid every chance arrival for word of him. But of this Rasmunsen knew nothing. The day after the wreck he patched up the Alma and pulled out.
The man pulled out a healthy gold sack the size of a small sausage and knocked it negligently against the gee-pole. Rasmunsen felt a strange trembling in the pit of his stomach, a tickling of the nostrils, and an almost overwhelming desire to sit down and cry. But a curious, wide-eyed crowd was beginning to collect, and man after man was calling out for eggs.
"You go to hell," Rasmunsen repeated softly, "and get out of here." Murray gaped with a great awe, then went out carefully, backward, with his eyes fixed an the other's face. Rasmunsen followed him out and turned the dogs loose. He threw them all the salmon he had bought, and coiled a sled-lashing up in his hand. Then he re-entered the cabin and drew the latch in after him.
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