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Updated: June 4, 2025
The wheels grated ominously against great submerged boulders; the surging waves rose almost to the wagon-bed; the wind struck aslant the immense, cumbrous cover, threatening to capsize it; and, suddenly, in the midst of the transit, a sound, as clear as a bugle in the rare icy air, as searchingly sweet!
There was not so much cleanliness and care in preparing this as a farmer shows in cooking food for stock. A deep wagon-bed would be shoveled full of the smoking paste, which was then hailed inside and issued out to the detachments, the latter receiving it on blankets, pieces of shelter tents, or, lacking even these, upon the bare sand.
"I'm not afeared of rain," said Higgins. "What are you goin' over there this time o' night for?" asked the other. "You ain't got much of a load." "I'm I'm takin' some meat over to Mr. Talbert." "Hams?" "No; jest bacon," answered Scott, and his two hearers in the wagon-bed laughed silently. "Not many people out a night like this," volunteered the deputy. "Nope."
He took the quid of tobacco from his mouth, carefully selected a place for it on the edge of the wagon-bed, laid it there on a piece of corn-husk, and walked toward the teamster, rolling up his sleeves. The effect upon the monarch of the mules was immediate and marked. He stopped prancing around, and began to look alarmed. "Now, don't you hit me," he yelled.
The wagon-bed was a candle-box nailed to the axles, and that kept the front axle tight, so that it took the whole width of a street to turn a very little wagon in without upsetting. When the wagon was all done, the boy who owned it started off with his brothers, or some other boys who had no wagon, to gather walnuts.
The Mexican was as clever as he was unscrupulous. Necessity being the mother of invention, he soon devised a plan to avoid the long and perilous excursion across the barren hills. Under his direction, the wagon-bed was taken off the running-gear, and the tarpaulin cover so adjusted as to make it water-tight.
In making preparations to ford the river, Captain Wadsworth, as a precaution of safety, placed his wife in the bottom of their wagon-bed, and piled sacks of flour around her as a protection in case of a fight. Being one of the skirmish line, I remember how cold and blue the water was, and that it was so deep as to come into our vest pockets.
All the world was at peace; there was no sign of war in the night nor in those snowy solitudes. Before them stretched the road, indicated by a long line of wheel tracks in the snow, and behind them was nothing. Prescott, by and by, let the lines drop on the edge of the wagon-bed, and the horses chose their own way, following with mere instinct the better path.
It was a rough ride, over water-washed boulders down the Dyea Valley; but he roused only when the wagon hit the highest places. Any altitude of his body above the wagon-bed of less than a foot did not faze him. The last mile was smooth going, and he slept soundly. He came to in the gray dawn, the driver shaking him savagely and howling into his ear that the Athenian was gone.
He was beginning to feel the weariness of the morning return, and the load that cleaned out the wagon-bed left him so exhausted that he fell down on the ground beside the crevice, having thrown in his booty. Here, with his gull at his side and a pistol in his hand, he fell fast asleep.
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