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Updated: June 20, 2025
The "rush" was written in men's faces, in their actions, in their baggage, words, and rising temperature. A dozen stalwart stampeders pounced upon Van like wolves. They wanted to know what he thought of the reservation, where to go, whether or not there was any more ground like that of the "Laughing Water" claim, what he had heard from his Indian friends, and what he would take for his placer.
So when Steele arrived at the Rapids he gathered the stampeders together and said: "There are many of your countrymen who have said that the Mounted Police make the laws as they go along, and I am going to do so now for your own good, therefore the directions that I give shall be carried out strictly and they are these: Corporal Dixon, who thoroughly understands this work, will be in charge here and be responsible to me for the proper management of the passage of the Canyon and White Horse Rapids.
"Accordin' to covenant, you can't fire me; and I'm goin' to hold the job down as long as my sweet will'll let me. Savve?" On Friday morning, early, all interested parties appeared before the Gold Commissioner to record their claims. The news went abroad immediately. In five minutes the first stampeders were hitting the trail. At the end of half an hour the town was afoot.
"Sit down!" he commanded. She obediently sat down in the snow. He slipped his pack from his back, and spread a blanket for her feet. From above came the voices of the stampeders who followed them. "Let Shorty stake," she urged. "Go on, Shorty," Smoke said, as he attacked her moccasins, already stiff with ice. "Pace off a thousand feet and place the two center-stakes.
Then M. and the musician decided to put off going until midnight, when they would sneak quietly out of camp with their dogs and scamper away among the hills without the others knowing it, but it could not be done, and two or three sleds followed them at midnight in the moonlight, as is the custom with Alaska "stampeders."
Crazed with suffering, I thought, looking steadfastly at the man one of those wild stampeders, strayed far from his bearings and wandering like a lost soul through great vastnesses and unknown deeps. Oh, well, let his moods slip on, until, mayhap, he gathers his tangled wits together. Who knows? the mere sound of a fellow- creature's voice may bring all straight again.
I've ben figgerin'. Creek claims is five hundred feet. Call 'em ten to the mile. They's a thousand stampeders ahead of us, an' that creek ain't no hundred miles long. Somebody's goin' to get left, an' it makes a noise like you an' me." Before replying, Smoke let out an unexpected link that threw Shorty half a dozen feet in the rear.
When Foy had exhausted the English, Irish, and Alaskan languages in wishing the men luck in various degrees, he rounded up the remnant of his army and began again. In a day or two the stampeders began to limp back hungry and weary, and every one who brought a pick or a shovel was re-employed.
The "Hidden Ledge" was close at hand, but unknowingly he passed it by; its secret having been, for the present, buried with the two partners who were numbered among the strenuous stampeders on the White Pass Trail. Two miners sat smoking in a small log cabin in Dawson. They were hardy young fellows, and used the accent of born Canadians. They were brothers, and the elder was speaking.
The average pace of the stampeders on the smooth going was three miles and a half an hour. Smoke and Shorty were doing four and a half, though sometimes they broke into short runs and went faster. "I'm going to travel your feet clean off, Shorty," Smoke challenged. "Huh! I can hike along on the stumps an' wear the heels off your moccasins. Though it ain't no use.
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