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The hood of her squirrel-skin parka was tossed back, revealing the cameo-like oval of her face outlined against her heavily-massed hair. Mittens had been discarded, and with bare hands she clung to whip and sled. "Jump!" she cried, as her leader snarled at Smoke's. Smoke struck the sled behind her.

And as they entered and threaded the irregular runways of the hunting-camp, a vast tumult, as in a wave, rose to meet them and rolled on with them cries, greetings, questions and answers, jests and jests thrust back again, the snapping snarl of wolf-dogs rushing in furry projectiles of wrath upon Smoke's stranger dogs, the scolding of squaws, laughter, the whimpering of children and wailing of infants, the moans of the sick aroused afresh to pain, all the pandemonium of a camp of nerveless, primitive wilderness folk.

When within a furlong he wheeled his horse in a wide circle, and made him describe various mystic figures upon the prairie; and Henry immediately compelled Five Hundred Dollar to execute similar evolutions. "It IS Old Smoke's village," said he, interpreting these signals; "didn't I say so?"

"That fire's mighty close, an' comin' on the jump," Piegan remarked, with an upward glance. "I wish she'd let up long enough for us t' finish this job. That smoke's as good as they want, once it begins t' settle in the gorge. What in thunder d'yuh s'pose Mac's doin' all this time. He ought t' show pretty quick, now." He showed, as Piegan put it, very shortly.

"You might let me tell what happened," Smoke objected. "You shut up," the man snarled at him. "I reckon your gun'll tell the story." All the men examined Smoke's rifle, ejecting and counting the cartridges, and examining the barrel at muzzle and breech. "One shot," Blackbeard concluded. Pierre, with nostrils that quivered and distended like a deer's, sniffed at the breech.

Each lay in a shallow niche, but Smoke's was so shallow that, tense with the strain of flattening and sticking, nevertheless he would have slid on had it not been for the slight assistance he took from the rope. He was on the verge of a bulge and could not see beneath him.

The door closed and the three hundred sagged into forlorn and grumbling groups. "Say, Saltman," one man said, "I thought you was goin' to lead us to it." "Not on your life," Saltman answered crustily. "I said Smoke would lead us to it." "An' this is it?" "You know as much about it as me, an' we all know Smoke's got something salted down somewheres.

The man's eyes and face were bright with a joyous smile, and his hand flashed eagerly out to Smoke's. "I've heard all about you." "Been reading police-court news, I see," Smoke sparred modestly. "Nope." The man laughed and shook his head. "Merely recent Klondike history. I might have recognized you if you'd been shaved.

Big Olaf tried to spurt ahead, and he lifted his dogs magnificently, but Smoke's leader still continued to jump beside Big Olaf's wheeler. For half a mile the three sleds tore and bounced along side by side. The smooth stretch was nearing its end when Big Olaf took the chance.

Smoke immediately placed twenty-five chips on the "double naught," and won. Moran wiped the sweat from his forehead. "Go on," he said. "We got ten thousand in this bank." At the end of an hour and a half, the ten thousand was Smoke's. "The bank's bust," the keeper announced. "Got enough?" Smoke asked. The game-owners looked at one another. They were awed.