The Magnetic North

kner, mens

ys som i S

bleven Jor

et Julens

ate Christmas, not so much by a feast of reason as by a flow of soul and a bang

entertainment," said the Boy, with painf

Potts's cake was a beauty, evidently very rich and fruity, and fitted by Nature to play the noble part of plum-pudding. But, in making out the bill of fare, facts had to

... restricted, there's nothin' to prevent our programme of toasts,

re"-the Colonel was looking at Kaviak

tle tree, but you can't get the smalles

Boy, "it must

squimer who mourned his playthings as gone for ever. Of an evening now, after sleep had settled on Kaviak's watchful eyes, the Boy worked at a pair of little snow-shoes, helped out by a ball of sinew he had got from Nicholas. Mac bethought him of the valuable combination of zo

wore towards night, and never a sign of the one-eyed Pymeut. Half a dozen times O'Flynn had gone beyond the stockade to find out if he wasn't in sight, and finally came back looking intensely disgusted, bringing a couple of white travellers who had arrived from the op

y of these strangers' obvious inability to travel for a day or two, and of the Christ

ho shouted when he talked at all, "but how's

absent-mindedly, "Misther MacCann

ice down below," and they'd mined side by side back in the States at Cripple Creek. "Yes, sir, and sailed for the Klondyke from Seattle last July." And now at Christmas they were hoping

quare nois

down yer chimbly," says

ow. May the divil burrn him in tarme

tch, and the Pymeu

the mucklucks passed from one to the other so surreptitiously t

o be bribed with tobacco and a new half-dollar to go home and keep Christmas in the bosom of his

It ni

sn't real

soon hea

natives could find y

Find

at's the

his own snow-shoes and offered to go part of the way wi

. No mistake, they were dandies! The Boy hung one of them up, by its long leg,

nd o' sweet-cake things for the tr

kindly, but furr mesilf I'm thi

it with rapture. Where everybody was in such need of vegetable food, nobody under-estimated th

, begorra!" and they all went to bed save Mac, who had not returned, and the Boy, who put on his

s, brought it down to the cabin,

hiff were waked, bright and early Christmas m

skin looked up, and they all saw Kaviak sitting in bed, holding in one ha

roast, anyhow, or O'Flyn

wed fragment, and consoled him by

ame in to breakfast, "Hello! what

h and three f

's in the

" echoes

f, I s'pose you know what's in

cabins eyed each other wi

oy, "but we're not taki

oor," advise

o jolly you, but just go

ve waked the w

d Potts, and subsided into his

dogs had not appropriated the presents. Half-way up to the cotton-wood, he glanced back to make sure Kaviak wasn't following, and there, sure enough, just as the

s, he would climb up very softly and lightly, and nobody but himself would be the wiser even if it was a josh. He brushed away the snow, touching the thing with a mittened hand and a creepy feeling at his spine. It was precious heavy, and hard as iron. He tugged at t

on the roof till the others had come out, and then he hurled the moose-meat down over t

he Si

, I s

Boy, you're n

been for me it might have s

viak, or you'll

pulled up his hood

the name o' the nation?" asked

't I tell you, Kaviak, he drove

any dogs go by

nd was told to cache it up there. Maybe tha

dy from the mission came by in the night and d

P. Hardy, who had been trying his jack-knife on

take a mont

y chop a bolt of linen sheeting. The axe laborio

l lose a lo

racket, and were answered by some others. Benham was coming along at a rattling p

ys Potts, when Benham arrived on

t. Where's yo

at saw-dust and ate it with grave satisfaction. With a huge steak in each hand, the Colonel, beaming, led

aid Salmon P. Hardy to the trader

t m

ey

going t

the country? G

the trader quietly, and acknowledged the introduct

and called out some

" he said to the Colonel when he came in again, "so I got a couple

t did not, however, prevent O'F

now, think of bring

Benham a li

t like's if ye w

it no good to drink

P. with interest,

Benham, "I

ow! look

fine and reviving for a few min

solemnity-"it's the wan thing on the top o' Go

and you're safe to tak

n' us Mr. Schiff got his toes froze

u go on the trail without an

I keep it on the outside of m

gs and a native servant, and the finest furs he'd ever seen-here was either

in l

Chilcoot in

welve ye

am n

ou've been in

the gold

hat 'n outside, and no

ss n

nation was possible: he'd found a mine without going e

ded bill of fare, lit the Christmas candles-one at the top, one at the bottom of the board-and the

ersation. The moose-steaks had vanished like the "snaw-

matter with

et your

h cut-up bird swam in vain for their lives. But the high flat rim of the dish was plent

pangs of hunger, returned to

o say you came into thi

-What and prospected a wh

er did yo

call it the Never-Know-What, and the more you fi

any good at

ad, so I tried the Koyuku

This gen'l'man's been at it twelve years-tried more 'n one camp, but

and pulled har

to roast half a petaty in wood ashes; but he was listening to

out a cloud

laims'll be potted. Minóok's the camp o' t

t the two strangers looked hard a

watched preparations

might give us a tip. Ho

e for three years, and no galley

for a couple o' years and then l

o into the Lord business I had just forty-

ou done wit

r left me, and I'd cleaned up just forty-two

nt fell chill

and I had no cre

ed himself-"yo

embered Caribou-"get used to this kind

ys Salmon P., impat

s time," whi

y must end. The popular ta

the high water in June. Prospected as long as my stuff lasted, and

s was no climax;

rading with the Indians in furs, fish, and cord-wood, than

allen on the

luck," the Boy suggested,

hat kept body and soul together,

e he added,

to bury so

usual, or why do men co

hear of a thin

ly chins with perplexed, uncertain fingers, and they all g

d up here as men think, but there'

; give me certaint

the five-cent limit. You'll play one last big game,

, ain't he?" w

l, sir, the biggest game we play is the g

matter with

you it's love of gambling brings men here, and it's the splendid stiff ga

nthusiasm dec

have excited you

ame, and not bad fun either." He sat up straight and shot his hands down deep in the

looked at

k after the fur trade; give me a mo

a flaming stick and turned about. "Shall I tell you fellows a little secret about the Klondyke?" He held up the burn

of the Klondyke in gold-dust wi

for whom heroism was foolhardy, and hope insane. Where was a pioneer so bold he could get up now and toast the Klondyke? Who, n

l," said the Boy like one who

f reach. Potts saw his girl, tired of waiting, taking up with another fellow. The Boy's Orange Grove was farther off than Florida. Schiff and Hardy wonde

though no one had taken more interest in the programme than O'Flynn. Benham talked about the Anvik saw-mill, and the money m

tree. It had been intended as a climax to wind up the entertainment, but to

e." But he was g

ogramme, staring them in the face, unabashed, covertly ironic-nay, openly jeering. They actually hadn't noticed the fact before, but every bless

ed a programme, interspersed, as it promised to be, with songs, dances, and "tr

s face. He stood there with his nose to the crack exactly as a dog does. Suddenly he ran back to Ma

from some enemy, advancing or at bay. It was often li

trouble," said Salmon P. anxiously

wash dog of any spirit is always trail

. He was standing now looking up at the latch, high, and made for white men, eager, breathing fast, listening to that dismal sound that is like nothing else in nature-listening as

der, the air was rent with

ur front stoop," says Schiff, knowing there must be

shed him down on his stool. "Mr

es the Boy, powdered with snow, laughing and balancing carefully in his mittened hands a little Yukon spruce, every needle diamond-pointed, every sturdy branch white with frost crystals and soft woolly snow, and bearing its little harvest of curious fruit-sweet-cake rings an

excitement that shot light out of his eyes and brought scarlet into his cheeks. "Here, take it!" He dashed the tree down in front of Kaviak, and a sudden storm agitated its sturdy branches; it snowed about the floor, an

ntrance, had appeared two faces-weather-beaten men, crowding in the narrow space, craning

r. They've just done the six hundred and twenty-five miles from Minóok with dogs over the ice! They've been forty days

an they did that Christmas Day, in the Big Chimney Cabin, on the bleak hillside,

ed, "peeled," set down by the fire, given punch, asked ten thousand questions all in a breath,

pressing refreshment, O'Flynn slapping his thigh and reiterating, "Be the Siven!" Potts not only widened his mouth from ear to ear, but, as O'Flynn said after, "stretched it clane

a miner or herdsman all through the Far West; you see him cutting lumber along the Columbia, or throwing the diamond hitch as he

a frown fixed between thick eyebrows, and few words in his firm, rather grim-looking mouth. He was perhaps thirty-six, had been "in" ten years, and had mined before that in Idaho. Under his striped parki he was dressed in spotted deer-sk

e, he had come up in the July rush with very little but boundless assurance, fell in with an old miner who had b

; "we've worked separate, but we're going home two by two like animals into t

on n

p as Dawson, and the gold's of

's ri

ace on the river where they've struck pay dirt." says the General. "And

ge is that?"

ing all your hard earnings tak

his fella's

see! The minute they hear of gold across the line there'll be a stampede out of Dawson. I can put you in the way of getting a claim for eight thousand dolla

t that eighty thousand yo

le," answered the General. "R

backed

n provisions that takes y

t m

hat's the name o' the town where t

-craze prices

he same they quot

when it's been carried

June a lot of stuff will have come in by the short route through the lakes, and the town will be overstocked. So there

men exchanged si

rt Yukon and at Circle City," the General went on.

and as he tossed it off he would say, "Minóok's the camp for me!" When he had given vent t

away from it as ha

urned moist e

man of fa

N

d." His eyes brimmed at some thought t

food! In the inner vision of every eye was a ship-load of provisions "froz

aining at a leash. Then, with an obvious effort to throw off the magic of Minóok, he turned suddenly

me with reverent finger he touched silver boat and red-foil top, and watched, fascinated, how they swung. A white child in a tenth of the time would have eaten

put an empty bucket on the table, and with Mac's help, wedged the s

k retired to his old seat on Elephas beyond the bunks, where he still had a goo

to eat, you know," sa

bread man and gave it

asked the General, squinting up his snow-bl

e camp who didn't resent

ellas helping themselves to his cricket and his high chair-too polite to object-just goes and sits like a philosopher on the bone

held out, but Mac

llon slyly-"don't think this

d himself to his feet, saying there was a little good Old Rye left

oy off from a dthrop o' the craythu

ut on his furs; his dog-driver, squatting by the doo

s Christmas, you know"; and he picked his way

ning up. The General halted, depressed at the remind

you hear me sayin

yesterday mornin." But the General had gone out to unpack the whisky. "He knocked up the missio

did th

y we pushed on. We'd heard about your camp, and the General felt

andin' the racket as we

e found him wantin' to hang round afte

the fire; the crowded

back, that it was for illuminating purposes-those two candles burning down low, each between three

fire, Benham, putting on his cap

r cover of the talk about candles,

im a moment, and then took hi

an

fun,

restored the pipe

hear the Gen

ty o' grit, th

e got

ded. "Or w

of Mi

of Mi

ink I understand." Benham wagged hi

on s

a boom, and sell his

t the table, where the Christmas-tree was seasonably cheek by jowl with the punch-bowl between the

I'll give you a lay on my best claim for

ck out

a look at the coun

here. When

ot no

d Salmon P. and Scr

an offer y

les did you

id the Gene

Benham, and hurriedly

th you?" demanded the

hear Minóok's twenty-fo

hundred," say

, and you cover sixty miles a day-

he General

on the weather." Di

the General. "You don't get an old Sour-do

to know?" whi

o' quick to your sl

what?" as

rcury," interpr

what he's about travels

to sample the new brew. In the pause, from the far side of the

when the mercury fre

on impassively, r

ully-"I suppose you met men all th

this la

get far, m

trying!" the Boy hurr

of liquor, he gave Dillon time leisurely to get up, knock the ashes out of his pipe stick it in his belt, put a slow hand behind him towards his pistol pocket, and bring out his buckskin gold sack. Now, only Mac of the other men had e

his lips, and set

ment," he said.

owl on to the bucket board, recklessly spilling some of the precious contents. O'Flynn and Salmon P. whisked the Christmas

ok some time to find in the San Francisco Examiner of August 7 a foot square space that was whole. But as quickly as possible the best bit was spread in the middle of the t

at me-gran'-mother's weddin'-when the divvle-called the chune!" Even the swimming wicks flared up, and seemed to reach out, each a hungry tongue of flame to

itement in his own breast, how in secret he had been brought to doubt its being

n, blowing with impatience like a walrus,

strained and dazzled eyes still ben

ed the Colonel, and f

shouted the Boy, catching up a sti

bitch?" said

it

with some bacon grease in it, and a

g lights and shadows. Besides that, the Boy was holding a resino

wid a windy full o' that stuff tha

ut that winder brou

on the smallest grain in the hoard. An electrical shock flashed through the company when the General picke

k up a

th about six

forty," s

earts, or shells, or polished discs like rude, defaced coins. One was a perfect staple, another the letter "L," another like an axe-head, and one like a peasant's sab

s"; and the Boy pointed a shaking finger, long

after all, the hillock of gold was an illusion, and his o

ur dust?" a

on s

, he

l nuggets a

t more do

enough for me, b

at we ca

arse a

nodded, and L

Colonel at the bottom of the tabl

it a minute,"

und," whisp

fingers tingled under the first

ruce's expensive education became a simple certainty. In Potts's hand the nugget gave b

of having just bought back the Orange Grove; and Salmon

we didn't get co

; "it looks like we goi

low treasure was trying even

laying the nugget on the paper-"put it

pped the nuggets, with an absent-minded

ess of an old rag and the thinness of tissue. Under Dillo

than one voice, as

outh, and lazily pulled at the buckskin draw-string, everybody sat wondering how much, if any, of the precious metal had escaped through the tear, and how soon Dillon would come out of his brown study, remember, and recover t

he explosiveness of a fi

all," whispered

x-face for luck," Dillo

bent forward and scrutinised the table. O'Flynn impulsively ran one lone hand over the place where the gold-heap had lain, his other hand held ready at the table's edge to catch a

re!

what you

not-hole, too, that slyly

, t

nearest the crack and the knot-hole fell to digging out the re

illon; "you always reckon to lose a little ea

hat came from," said

of Minóok than all the General's blowing; they forgot that what was lost would amount to less than f

onel, as the two millionaires

ian guide there to Nushagak, and from there

y the lette

South of Kadiak Island the sea is said to be open as early as the first of March.

ng, Dillon; the sooner you get to Seattle, and blow in a coup

s, asleep in the snow, with their bus

you l

'out

No, sir!

g string of curses and crack

ou comi

your

face of the Yukon pioneer cou

r-skelter. A tipsy Christmas tree leaned in drunken fashion against the wall, and under its boughs lay a forgotten child asleep. On the other side of the cabin an empty whisky bottle caught a ray of light from the

from what we planned," observed the Colon

s interminable legs; "ye can't say we ha

rowing the Programme in the fire,

He was busy digging the remaining gold-