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Updated: June 6, 2025
"And Smoke's and mine," was Shorty's retort. "I forbid you," Sprague said harshly. "Smoke, if you go another step I'll discharge you." "And you, too, Shorty," Stine added. "And a hell of a pickle you'll be in with us fired," Shorty replied. "How'll you get your blamed boat to Dawson? Who'll serve you coffee in your blankets and manicure your finger-nails? Come on, Smoke. They don't dast fire us.
"He's working for me, and I guess he obeys my orders," Stine retorted. "Shorty, take that bag ashore." Shorty obeyed, and Sprague shivered in the boat. Kit, having received no orders, remained inactive, glad of the rest. "A boat divided against itself won't float," he soliloquized. "What's that?" Sprague snarled at him. "Talking to myself habit of mine," he answered.
Indians had the straps on the outfit, three thousand pounds of it, when along comes Sprague and Stine. They offered eighty cents and ninety, and at a dollar a pound the Indians jumped the contract and took off their straps. Sprague and Stine came through, though it cost them three thousand, and the Oregon bunch is still on the beach. They won't get through till next year.
Often, afterwards, when Kit tried to remember that night and failed to bring up aught but nightmare recollections, he wondered what must have been the sufferings of Stine and Sprague. His one impression of himself was that he struggled through biting frost and intolerable exertion for a thousand years more or less. Morning found them stationary.
"But here it is in full. I wish you luck." "How about the agreement?" Kit asked. "You know there's a famine here. A man can't get work in the mines even, unless he has his own grub. You agreed " "I know of no agreement," Sprague interrupted. "Do you, Stine? We engaged you by the month. There's your pay. Will you sign the receipt?" Kit's hands clenched, and for the moment he saw red.
They offered eighty cents and ninety, and at a dollar a pound the Indians jumped the contract and took off their straps. Sprague and Stine came through, though it cost them three thousand, and the Oregon bunch is still on the beach. They won't get through till next year. "Oh, they are real hummers, your boss and mine, when it comes to sheddin' the mazuma an' never mindin' other folks' feelin's.
At Windy Arm, Stine arbitrarily dispossessed Kit of the steering-sweep and within the hour wrecked the boat on a wave-beaten lee shore. Two days were lost here in making repairs, and the morning of the fresh start, as they came down to embark, on stern and bow, in large letters, was charcoaled 'The Chechaquo. Kit grinned at the appropriateness of the invidious word.
But Sprague refused to give over the oar; Stine had ceased rowing, and the boat was drifting backward. "Turn around, Smoke," Sprague ordered. And Kit, who never in his life had cursed any man, astonished himself. "I'll see you in hell, first," he replied. "Take hold of that oar and pull." It is in moments of exhaustion that men lose all their reserves of civilization, and such a moment had come.
Simple as the idea was, he had been the first to evolve it; the first time it was applied it worked, and they hoisted a blanket to the mast and sped down the lake. Stine and Sprague immediately became cheerful. Shorty, despite his chronic pessimism, was always cheerful, and Kit was too interested to be otherwise.
The other two awoke, groaning with the pain of stiffened muscles and the pain of rousing from the sleep of exhaustion. "What time is it?" Stine asked. "Half-past eight." "It's dark yet," was the objection. Shorty jerked out a couple of guy-ropes, and the tent began to sag. "It's not morning," he said. "It's evening. Come on. The lake's freezin'. We got to get acrost."
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