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The Stampede
by
“You don’t want dogs,” Maynard answered. “It’s too soft. You’ll have to make a quick run with packs or the spring break-up will catch you. I wish I could go. It’s big, I tell you. Lord! How I wish I could go!”
They were huddled together, their eyes feverish, their fingers tracing the pencil-markings. A smell of burning food filled the room, but there is no obsession more absolute than the gold-lust.
“Get the packs together while me and Buck eats a bite. We’ll take the fox-robe and the Navajo. Glad I’ve got a new pair of mukluks, ’cause we need light footgear; but what will you wear, boy? Them hip-boots is too heavy–you’d never make it.”
“Here,” said Maynard, “try these.” He slipped off his light gossamer sporting-boots, and Buck succeeded in stamping his feet into them.
“Little tight, but they’ll go.”
They snatched bites of food, meanwhile collecting their paraphernalia, Maynard helping as he could.
Each selected a change of socks and mittens. Then the grub was divided evenly–tea, flour, bacon, baking-powder, salt, sugar. There was nothing else, for spring on the Yukon finds only the heel of the grub-stake. Each rolled his portion in his blanket and lashed it with light rope. Then an end of the bundle was thrust into the waist of a pair of overalls and the garment closely cinched to it. The legs were brought forward and fastened, forming two loops, through which they slipped their arms, balancing the packs, or shifting a knot here and there. A light ax, a coffee-pot, frying-pan, and pail were tied on the outside, and they stood ready for the run. They stored carefully wrapped bundles of matches in pockets, packs, and in the lining of their caps. The preparations had not taken twenty minutes.
“Too bad we ain’t got some cooked grub, like chocolate or dog-biscuits,” said Crowley, “but seeing as we’ve got five hours’ start over everybody we won’t have to kill ourselves.”
Maynard spoke hesitatingly. “Say, I told Sully about it as I came along.”
“What!” Crowley interrupted him sharply.
“Yes! I told him to get ready, and I promised to give him the location an hour after you left. You see, he did me a good turn once and I had to get back at him somehow. He and Knute are getting fixed now. Why, what’s up?”
He caught a queer, quick glance between his partners and noted a hardness settle into the lined face of the elder.
“Nothing much,” Buck took up. “I guess you didn’t know about the trouble, eh? Crowley knocked him down day before yesterday and Sully swears he’ll kill him on sight. It came up over that fraction on Buster Creek.”
“Well, well,” said Maynard, “that’s bad, isn’t it? I promised, though, so I’ll have to tell him.”
“Sure! That’s all right,” Crowley agreed, quietly, though his lip curled, showing the strong, close-shut, ivory teeth. His nostrils dilated, also, giving his face a passing wolfish hint. “There’s neither white man nor Swede that can gain an hour on us, and if he should happen to–he wouldn’t pass.”
Be it known that many great placer fortunes have been won by those who stepped in the warm tracks of the discoverers, while rarely does the goddess smile on the tardy; in consequence, no frenzy approaches that of the gold stampede.
Passing Sully’s place, they found him and his partner ready and waiting, their packs on the saw-buck. Crowley glared at his enemy in silence while the other sneered wickedly back, and Big Knute laughed in his yellow beard.
Buck’s heart sank. Could he outlast these two? He was a boy; they were reckless giants with thews and legs of iron. Knute was a gaunt-framed Viking; Sully a violent, florid man with the quarters of an ox. Through the quixotism of Maynard this trip bade fair to combine the killing grind of a long, fierce stampede with the bitter struggle of man and man, and too well he knew the temper of his red-headed partner to doubt that before the last stake was driven either he or Sully would be down. From the glare in their eyes at passing it came over him that either he or Knute would recross the mountains partnerless. The trail was too narrow for these other men. He shrank from the toil and agony he felt was coming to him through this; then, with it, there came the burning gold-hunger; the lust that drives starving, broken wrecks onward unremittingly, over misty hills, across the beds of lava and the forbidden tundra; on, into the new diggings.