![]() ![]() “He was so plumb in earnest it scared me up, ’cause Mexico ain’t a gabby man. Don’t never leave ’em get a grip on it or you’re down an’ out.’ “ ‘Bill,’ says he, ‘there’s hell a-poppin’ an’ you’ve got to watch that ground like you’d watch a rattle-snake. “ ‘ ’Bout four hundred thousand, with luck.’ “ ‘How much ’ll you clean up this summer?’ ‘If she holds out like she run last fall, there’d ought to be a million clear in her.’ “ ‘How much do you value that claim o’ yourn at?’ “ ‘Listen here,’ says he, an’, seein’ he was in earnest, I let him run on. He claws me into a corner an’ says, ‘Bill, I’m goin’ to pay you back for that Moralez deal.’ “ ‘Prosperity, politics, an’ the Waldorf-Astorier,’ says he. “Says I, lookin’ at his side elevation, ‘What’s accented your middle syllable so strong, Mexico?’ Also he wore di’mon’s fit to handle with ice-tongs. “Yep! Well, I noticed first off that he’s gettin’ fat high-livin’ fat, too, all in one spot, like he was playin’ both ends ag’in the centre. “Identical! Remember me tellin’ you about a good turn I done him once down Guadalupe way?” “You don’t mean that ‘tin-horn’ the boys were going to lynch for claim-jumping?” You mind old Mexico, don’t you? The feller that relocated Discovery Claim on Anvil Creek last summer?” I feel the old primitive passions-the fret for fighting.” “This air whets every animal instinct in me,” Glenister broke out again. Glenister and Dextry had left Nome the autumn previous, the young man raving with fever. ![]() The mossy hills back of the village were ridged with graves of those who had died on the out-trip the fall before, when a plague had gripped the land-but what of that? Gold glittered in the sands, so said the survivors therefore men came in armies. They had come like a locust cloud, thousands strong, settling on the edge of the Smoky Sea, waiting the going of the ice that barred them from their Golden Fleece-from Nome the new, where men found fortune in a night. Where, a week before, mild-eyed natives had dried their cod among the old bronze cannon, now a frenzied horde of gold-seekers paused in their rush to the new El Dorado. Behind slept Unalaska, quaint, antique, and Russian, rusting amid the fogs of Bering Sea. ![]() They were lounging upon the dock, while before them lay the Santa Maria ready for her midnight sailing. In the gloom he stretched his muscles restlessly, as though an excess of vigor filled him. The other laughed, inflating his deep chest. You desecrate the hour of meditation with rhapsodies on nature when your æsthetics ain’t honed up to the beauties of good tobacco.” “I’d ruther smell like a man than talk like a kid. “Gad! What a smudge!” sniffed the younger man. Don’t expand too strong in one spot.” He went back abruptly to his pipe, its villanous fumes promptly averting any danger of the air’s too tonic quality. “I’ve seen men get plumb drunk on mountain air. It’s in my veins, this hunger for the North. “Oh, it’s fine-fine,” he murmured, “and this is my country-my country, after all, Dex. He drank the cool air burdened with its taints of the sea, while the blood of his boyhood leaped within him. Glenister gazed out over the harbor, agleam with the lights of anchored ships, then up at the crenelated mountains, black against the sky. In Which Three Go to the Sign of the Sled and but Two ReturnĬhapter 22. The Drip of Water in the DarkĬhapter 20. In Which the Truth Begins to Bare ItselfĬhapter 17. In Which a Man is Possessed of a DevilĬhapter 16. Wherein a Writ and a Riot FailĬhapter 13. The “Bronco Kid’s” EavesdroppingĬhapter 11. GO TO Project Gutenberg Australia HOME PAGE Of the Project Gutenberg Australia Licence which may be viewed online. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms This eBook is made available at no cost and with almost no restrictions Be sure to check theĬopyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing this We do NOT keep any eBooks in compliance with a particularĬopyright laws are changing all over the world. Which are in the public domain in Australia, unless a copyright notice Project Gutenberg of Australia eBooks are created from printed editions * A Project Gutenberg of Australia eBook * BROWSE the site for other works by this author ![]()
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