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Slapjack inhaled deeply, spat with disgust, and looked over his boss incredulously. "Well, of all the different kinds of damn fools," he snorted, "you are the kindest." He marched past the marshal and his deputies down to the cut, put on his coat, and vanished down the trail towards town, not deigning a backward glance either at the mine or at the man unfit to fight for.
"He ain't hurt none to speak of," said a bystander; then added, with enthusiasm: "But say! There's a MAN in this here camp!" "Who's your new shift boss?" Glenister inquired of his partner, a few days later, indicating a man in the cut below, busied in setting a line of sluices. "That's old 'Slapjack' Simms, friend of mine from up Dawson way."
As soon as they had learned to turn a slapjack, or to make a cup of coffee, they would, on returning to their homes in the evening, pass around among the young men, bragging of what good cooks they were; or if a whale ship was sighted, off would scamper the cooks, anxious to be the first on board, invariably hunting up the cooks' galley, where they introduced themselves as cooks, seeming to feel that there should be a professional bond of sympathy between them.
It's a privilege to be present. That's a GIFT, that is." "You'd better get some dry clothes," they suggested, and Slapjack proceeded a few paces towards the tents, hobbling as though treading on pounded glass. "Ow w!" he yelled. "These blasted boots is full of gravel."
Hank polluted the gulch with langwidge which no man had ought to keep in himself without it was fumigated. Disreppitableness oozed out through him like sweat through an ice-pitcher, an' since then he's been known as Slapjack Simms, an' has kept his head shingled smooth as a gun bar'l. He's a good miner, though; ain't none better an' square as a die." Sluicing had begun on the Midas.
Miss Lafarge had died of delirium tremens after a year's teaching, and so Jemina's education had stopped. Across the still stream, still another still was standing; It was that of the Doldrums. The Doldrums and the Tantrums never exchanged calls. They hated each other. Fifty years before old Jem Doldrum and old Jem Tantrum had quarrelled in the Tantrum cabin over a game of slapjack.
It entered his gaping waistband, bulging out his yellow trousers till they were fat and full and the seams were bursting, while his yawning boot-tops became as boiling springs. Meanwhile he chattered forth profanity in such volume that the ear ached under it as must have ached the heroic Slapjack under the chill of the melting snow.
About the time the last scrap of "slapjack" and the last spoonful of "slosh" are disposed of, the unhappy foragers return.
"All I want for myself," he said, "is the chance to run the big risk. It's mine by right." Dextry spoke, breathlessly, to Slapjack in the pause which ensued: "Ain't he a heller?" "We'll go you," the miners chimed to a man. And the chairman added: "Let's have Glenister lead this forlorn hope. I am willing to stand or fall on his judgment."
They made him recount his adventures to the tiniest detail, following his description of the fight with absorbed interest till Dextry broke into mournful complaint: "I'd have give my half of the Midas to see you bust him. Lord, I'd have screeched with soopreme delight at that." "Why didn't you gouge his eyes out when you had him crippled?" questioned Slapjack, vindictively. "I'd 'a' done it."
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