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“Well, two weeks after Windy left we worked out of that rich spot and drifted into barren ground. Instead of a fortune, we’d sunk onto the only yellow spot in the whole claim. We cross-cut in three places, and never raised a colour, but we kept gophering around till March, in hopes.

“‘Why did I write that letter?’ he asked one day. ‘I’d give anything to stop it before it gets out. Think of her disappointment when she hears I’m broke!’

“‘Nobody can’t look into the ground,’ says I. ‘I don’t mind losin’ out myself, for I’ve done it for twenty years and I sort of like it now, but I’m sorry for the girl.’

“‘It means another whole season,’ he says. ‘I wanted to see them this summer, or bring them in next fall.’

“‘Sufferin’ sluice-boxes! Are you plumb daffy? Bring a woman into the Yukon–and a little baby.’

“‘She’d follow me anywhere. She’s awful proud; proud as a Kentucky girl can be, and those people would make your uncle Lucifer look like a cringing cripple, but she’d live in an Indian hut with me.’

“‘Sure! And follerin’ out the simile, nobody but a Siwash would let her. If she don’t like some other feller better while you’re gone, what’re you scared about?’

“He never answered; just looked at me pityfyin’, as much as to say, ‘Well, you poor, drivelin, old polyp!’

“One day Denny, the squaw-man, drove up the creek:

“‘Windy Jim is back with the mail,’ says he, and we hit for camp on the run. Only fifteen mile, she is, but I was all in when we got there, keepin’ up with Justus. His eyes outshone the snow-glitter and he sang–all the time he wasn’t roasting me for being so slow–claimed I was active as a toad-stool. A man ain’t got no license to excite hisself unless he’s struck pay dirt–or got a divorce.

“‘Gi’me my mail, quick!’ he says to Windy, who had tinkered up a one-night stand post-office and dealt out letters, at five dollars per let.’

“‘Nothing doing,’ says Windy.

“‘Oh, yes there is,’ he replies, still smiling; ‘she writes me every week.’

“‘I got all there was at Dawson,’ Windy give back, ‘and there ain’t a thing for you!’

“I consider the tragedy of this north country lies in its mail service. Uncle Sam institutes rural deliveries, so the bolomen can register poisoned arrowheads to the Igorrotes in exchange for recipes to make roulade of naval officer, but his American miners in Alaska go shy on home news for eight months every year.

“That was the last mail we had till June.

“When the river broke we cleaned up one hundred and eighty-seven dollars’ worth of lovely, yellow dust, and seven hundred and thirty-five dollars in beautiful yellow bills from the post.

“The first boat down from Dawson brought mail, and I stood beside him when he got his. He shook so he held on to the purser’s window. Instead of a stack of squares overrun with female chiropody, there was only one for him–a long, hungry sport, with indications of a law firm in the northwest corner. It charmed him like a rattler. He seemed scared to open it. Two or three times he tried and stopped.

“‘They’re dead,’ thinks I; and, sure enough, when he’d looked, I knew it was so, and felt for his hand. Sympathy don’t travel by word of mouth between pardners. It’s the grip of the hand or the look of the eye.

“‘What cause?’ says I.

“He turned, and s’help me, I never want to see the like again. His face was plumb grey and dead, like wet ashes, while his eyes scorched through, all dry and hot. Lines was sinkin’ into it as I looked.

“‘It’s worse,’ says he, ‘unless it’s a joke.’ He handed me the dope: ‘In re Olive Troop Morrow vs. Justus Morrow,’ and a letter stating that out of regard for her feelings, and bein’ a gentleman, he wasn’t expected to cause a scandal, but to let her get the divorce by default. No explanation; no word from her; nothing.