Now if you will look at a map of Alaska you will see that the Porcupine River is like the letter U laid over on its side; that is to say, its head waters are in Alaska and the stream then flows east over the International boundary into the Yukon Territory, thence north by northeast across the Arctic Circle and when it reaches latitude 137 degrees and longitude about 67-1/2 degrees, it makes a sharp bend and flows back west by southwest for a couple of hundred miles, when it empties into the Yukon River, between the towns of Beaver and Fort Yukon.

The boys had followed Jack’s scheme of going out in every direction like spokes from the hub of a wheel, in which case, as has been previously explained, the hub was the base of their supplies on the Big Black River. And it will also be seen by a reference to the map that this river is a tributary of the Porcupine River and empties into it near Fort Yukon. In fact, Alaska is a country of rivers and nearly all of them, except those along the coast, are feeders for the Yukon River.

By the middle of March the boys had completed about half of the spokes of the wheel and on this particular trip they had found greater evidences of gold in larger quantities than on any one they had previously made. It was their sixth trip, which took them due south of their base, and at the end of it they came to the head waters of the Porcupine River. Then they traveled down it, or perhaps it would be better to say up it, for in its inception it flows northwest. They met more miners on, and in the vicinity of, the Porcupine River than in all of the rest of their trips put together.

Every little way they would come across a handful of miners who were engaged in the irksome but albeit pleasant task of picking out the pay-streak in a mine, hauling it to the surface and piling it up on the dump. At these camps the boys always lost a lot of time for they would have to stop and give, or get, the latest news from down under which in most instances was from three to five months old. All of the men they met were in the most cheerful and sanguine frame of mind, which of itself was enough to show that the claims they had staked out were rich in the yellow metal.

At every camp the boys received a most hearty welcome from these rough and hardy men who were wresting treasure from old Mother Earth here in the high, high North. Often they felt that they must push on but they simply could not withstand the temptation of accepting an invite to stay for dinner, supper or breakfast, or as long as they had a mind to, for the men were making their piles and under such auspicious circumstances they craved the company of their fellow kind.

Thus it was that when the boys went into the rough log cabins, which were often no better and sometimes a great deal worse than their own, they saw glittering things lying around loose the like of which their cabin could not boast, and these were nuggets of gold in abundance. In one cabin they saw an old molasses can with the cover melted off and it was filled to overflowing with nuggets; in another cabin there was a bucket heaped high with nuggets, while in still another, nuggets were piled up in the corner like coal.

And this treasure was only a small part, an incidental part, of the winnings of these men, for the nuggets were picked up from the pay-streak as it was picked out and shoveled into the buckets, while the gold dust which had a far greater worth was still out in the dumps waiting to be washed in the final clean-up which would take place in the spring.

Bill allowed that the men in Alaska must all be white except for that rotter, Black Pete, for no one watched the gold to keep it from being stolen, nor would there be any need to watch it until they started back on their long journey toward civilization. The boys were at last on the trail of gold!

“Here in this district is gold a-plenty, Jack, if we want to do like the rest of ’em and work for it,” said Bill as a feeler, for he had begun to think that, after all, it might be a better paying deal to do a little digging on their own account and get a few thousand out of a place where they knew it was, than to keep on looking for millions laced up in moosehide sacks, when they hadn’t the faintest notion of where it was hidden. In other words it was the outcropping of the old cabbage—adage I mean—which says that a canary in the cage is worth a couple of them flying around the room with the windows open.

But Jack vetoed the idea, for since they were on the richest claims that had yet been staked by mortal, it stood to reason that right in this district must be the great store of gold they were after. Again, and by the same token, when various miners offered them ten, fifteen, yes, even as high as twenty-five dollars a day to work for them, these generous wages made not the slightest appeal to the boys. If they had to work to get the gold out of the earth, the boys allowed it would be better to do a little prospecting the coming summer, stake out their claims and then go to it the next winter.

“It’s the same old game I’m tellin’ you, pards,” said one of the miners to his companions as the boys drove away after he had made them a particularly alluring offer to go to work. “These young scalawags are after them moosehide sacks o’ gold as sure as I’m born, and twenty dog-teams couldn’t pull them away from the crazy idee.”

Then the three men laughed a long, loud, and hearty laugh which showed what they thought of the scheme.

CHAPTER XI
GOLD, GOLD, NOTHING BUT GOLD

The boys had made a much longer stay on the end of this last trip out than they had figured on, for now that they were in the heart of the real gold fields they were reluctant to go back until they had explored every part of it.

While gold dust and gold nuggets were to be found in every miner’s cabin in amounts ranging up to hundreds of thousands of dollars, still the boys were as poor as ever, for nowhere had they found the slightest signs of gold packed in moosehide sacks and corded up like stovewood.

They had gone through valleys, up and down streams, over tundras, into forests and across lakes and they had combed these districts pretty well, but the only visible effect of their efforts was the exeunt of their good grub and they were fast running short of their reserve rations for both themselves and their dogs.

Both Jack and Bill were growing discouraged but the difference between them was that while the latter never hesitated to voice his innermost thoughts, the former applied the brakes so that his never got to the surface of audible speech.

“This prospectin’ business is beginnin’ to clog on me phy-si-que,” announced Bill, as he was hitching up the dogs preparatory to starting back to their base.

“Suppose you’d been prospecting here for twenty odd years like old ‘I Blazes’ we met down at Juneau, or for fifteen, ten, or five years like hundreds of others up here,” plugged in Jack.

“That’s a hawse of an entirely different breed for they haven’t anything else to do, while I have me business, me mother and me goil to look after in little ole Noo York,” Bill replied, his eyes snapping with the pure joy of the thought.

New York! how good those two words sounded to Jack, for while Montclair, New Jersey, is where he lived, everybody north of New York as far as Albany, east as far as Coney Island, south as far as the Atlantic Ocean and west as far as Trenton always think of New York as his home town when he gets a respectable distance away from it.

But to get back to Earth and Alaska. The dwindling condition of their food supplies led the boys to go into close caucus as the best means of supporting their party, so they decided to go back to their base at once and bring down a larger store of provisions.

This settled, they repacked their sleds and hitched up the dogs for the trip northward again. They started off with whips a-cracking, bells a-jingling and the dogs in the best of spirits even if their masters were not in such good humor.

“My only regret in leaving Alaska will be that we can’t take all of these huskies along with us. I’m going to take ’Frisco and maybe Skookum too,” said Jack.

“An’ I’m goin’ to take old Sate home,” said Bill, and when Sate heard this he gave two merry little howls for all the world as if he had understood and, on second thought, there’s no doubt but that he did.

“Wouldn’t it be great if we could take back both dog teams an’ the sleds an’ drive them up Fifth Avenoo—wouldn’t it be great, Jack?”

His partner gave him the laugh.

“There you go dreaming that same stuff again. It would be a great show for the New Yorkers who don’t know how to travel except on trolleys, and trains and in motor cars and hearses. But by the time we get back it will be well along toward the middle of summer so I guess we’ll have to call that little day dream of yours off.”

“Can’t youse even let a fellow dream out loud onct in a while?” Bill inquired petulantly. “It don’t cost nothin’.”

“Go on and rave then, I don’t care,” said Jack.

“Well then, just imagine it was winter in Noo York an’ us a-drivin’ our dog teams up the Avenoo with moosehide sacks o’ gold piled on our sleds like cordwood.”

“Why, we wouldn’t get from Thirty-third Street to Forty-second before there’d be Wild West doings and a dozen gangs of gunmen, any one of which would be as bad or worse than Soapy Smith’s, would be holding us up and taking our sacks of gold away from us,” Jack told him.

“An’ what would the perlice be doin’ all this time?” asked Bill innocently.

“Oh, they’d be directing the traffic and showing the hold-up men which way to go to keep from being run over by the many motor cars,” Jack replied with all seriousness.

Bill blinked his eyes.

“An’ I suppose we’d be standin’ by with our hands in our pockets lookin’ on. Mush, you huskies, mush!” yelled Bill gruffly and with that the conversation lagged.

All that day they traveled leisurely along and when night came on they had only done some twenty miles. As usual the boys looked after the dogs’ feet and fed them a stinting portion of fish, when they at once dug into the snow with the openings on the south side. Jack and Bill had no intention of making a snow igloo for, like their dogs, they had grown fat upon the good things of the land and in consequence they were not as alert and spry as they had been.

“See them huskies Jack? See the way they’ve crawled in on the south side? That means a high wind from the north to-night and I prognosticates a blizzard comin’. I hates to think o’ it but I guess we’d better build a igloo,” was Bill’s advice.

“Not so bad when you can use a dog for a barometer, what say Bill?” remarked his partner.

“Sure, they’re great animules all right. You can use ’em for Christmas presents, a pair o’ suspenders or eat ’em, accordin’ to your needs,” added Bill to his partner’s eulogy on the wide range of usefulness of the husky as an all round convenience.

Now the dogs of the Arctic and sub-Arctic regions are the greatest weather forecasters in the world for when they want to go to sleep they dig a hole out of the snow so that the opening will be to the leeside, that is, to the side opposite that which the wind strikes when it blows up in the night.

The dogs forecasted the direction the wind would blow that night with their usual accuracy and Bill’s acumen of mind in foreseeing the necessity of an igloo was justified, for a blizzard hurled itself down on them from the north, the thermometer dropped to seventy below, the wind raged and tore around like mad, while the sleet beat down upon and around them with mighty fury for four whole days and nights without a let-up.

In the meantime the boys stood it, or rather laid down to it, uncomfortably in their igloo, for it was altogether too small for such a prolonged stay. At that they would have gotten along all right but for their short rations, which, if the blizzard had kept up much longer, would have starved them to death. During all this time the dogs had stayed in their holes without so much as a bite of fish to eat.

When on the morning of the fifth day the boys pulled away the block of snow that closed the opening to their igloo they found they were snowed under, and after a couple of hours of hard work they succeeded in digging their way out through ten feet of snow. Then they called their dogs who were likewise sewed up in the blanket of snow. One by one they dug their way out but they were so hungry they were in a mean humor.

Since they had not had anything to eat for so long a time the boys generously gave them half of their fish rations for the time they were entombed, when they became something like their old selves again. It didn’t take the boys long to hitch up and get started but the going was painfully slow and tedious, though they hoped for better sledding when they struck the tundra that lay beyond.

“All I’m asking is that we run into an Indian village, for as our grub-boxes now stand, we’ll soon be without anything to eat,” said Jack half to himself, as they moved along.

“Funny as how this blizzard couldn’t have held off for a couple of days and given us a chanst to get back to our base,” groused Bill just as though the weather cared anything for them; “but what’s that I spies down yonder in the valley.”

The boys stopped their teams so that they could see to better advantage and took a look at the object in the distance.

“Looks like the top of some miner’s cabin,” was Jack’s opinion. “As it is about noon let’s go over, invite ourselves in, eat and be miserable.”

“Mush!” they bawled out and made for the cabin which was nearly a mile away.

As they came up to it the only sign of life they saw was a couple of gaunt huskies that looked more like starved timber wolves than animals of the domesticated canine breed. They snarled and snapped at the boys, which ill manners made the team dogs furiously mad and had they not been in the traces they would have made short work of them. Bill threw each of the starved dogs a piece of fish and in the hopes of getting more they curbed their tempers a bit. In the meantime Jack hallooed time and again outside the door but there was no response from the cabin.

“Whoever lives here can’t be very far away or his dogs wouldn’t stick around,” said Jack. Then he pounded vigorously on the door and hallooed again.

He was about to give it up for a bad job when the door opened a little, but instead of a miner to greet him he was astonished almost out of his wits when he saw before him the frail, wasted form of a young half-breed girl. Then Bill stepped up and he got the shock of his life too.

The girl, who was not more than fifteen years old, said never a word but stared appealingly at them with her big, dark hollow eyes, and then fell suddenly to the floor. The boys were inside the cabin in an instant and it was easy to guess that hers was a case of pure and simple starvation. Bill picked her up as though she were a baby and he was going to lay her on a bunk near by when he saw a white man stretched out motionless on it. Hastily laying the girl on another bunk he went to the man, listened to his heart and found that he was still alive.

Jack had not been idle in the meantime but had made some tea and prepared some bouillon and these he gave to both the girl and the man. The tea acted as a stimulant, the bouillon as a food and together they had an almost immediate effect on the girl, for now she opened her wan, lusterless eyes and looked at her benefactors. Then she feebly smiled her appreciation of the kindness of these two strange white boys whom she felt had been sent in this hour of her extreme need by the Great Spirit.

Having got the girl well on the mend, both Jack and Bill gave their undivided attention to the man; but he did not recover so rapidly for with him starvation was an after effect, the primary cause having its origin in a cancer of the stomach which was of several years’ standing. But with all of Jack’s medical lore and Bill’s skill in making new men out of broken down ones; in spite of the strengthening food and careful nursing, Michael Carscadden, better known as Moosehide Mike, steadily grow worse; for he was sorely in need of an operation.

In the early morning hours he always seemed to be better and on the fifth day after the boys reached the cabin they believed he had a fighting chance; it was on this basis that they held out the hope of his recovery to the girl Eileen. But Michael knew his condition better than did the boys and that same evening, just as the red Arctic sun was slipping down behind the White Mountains, this mighty hunter of moose and of gold knew that he was slipping with it to his last rest. Death had staked out its claim on him. Knowing that the end was not far off he took Eileen in his arms and called the boys to his bedside.

“This little girl is my daughter. Her mother was a full-blooded Athapascan and as good a woman as the great God ever put a heart in. A year ago she died and I did not have the strength to get back to civilization with my sacks of gold and as I would not leave without them Eileen and I have lived here alone these last twelve months. My wife was a direct descendant of Yakintat, a Yeehat chief.

“The Yeehats once lived in this district and they had in their possession a great store of gold which they had taken from three white men, of whom a prospector named John Thornton was the leader. In the fight which followed Thornton and his companions were killed. The Chief of the Yeehats cached the gold which Thornton and his men had packed in moosehide sacks and its hiding place remained a secret with the tribe.

“A few years after, a plague broke out among the Yeehats and when that ended there was only a handful of them left and these joined other and less fierce tribes. When I reached Alaska I heard, like yourselves and all the others who came here, the story of this great treasure of gold and, like yourselves and many others, I set my heart on finding it.

“I lived with different Indian tribes and, finally, when I was pretty nearly killed by a moose a young Indian woman nursed me back to life and then I married her. She told me many legends and folk-lore tales about the Indians and one of these had to do with a mighty store of gold, the location of which had been handed down to her. She thought of it as nothing more than a mere story but I took it seriously and me and my Marie set out to find it and find it we did.”

The dying gold seeker raised himself on his arm a little and clutched at the collar of his shirt. His eyes brightened with a kind of preternatural light as he continued:

“Yes, there we found it in a cave deep in the side of a hill, bright and yellow nuggets ranging in size from bits as large as a pea to chunks as large as my fist. The moosehide sacks that held it had long since rotted away and the metal had burst through them and lay in heaps on the ground.

“Then it was I became a hunter of moose, not for the love of hunting, not for the meat to eat, but for their hides to make new sacks of. And I killed more moose than any other man hereabouts, unless it be Bull-Moose Joe who lives over there around Mount Burgess in the Yukon. The difference ’twixt him and me is that he hunted the moose a-fore he found the gold whilst I found the gold and then hunted the moose. My Marie and little Eileen and me made new sacks of the hides, packed them full of gold, brought them and here they be.”

The boys looked at each other knowingly and shook their heads. They understood perfectly, or thought they did.

“He’s got a high fever and is as delirious as they make them,” said Jack.

“Bats in his belfry for fair,” added Bill.

“No, good friends. My poor daddy is not out of his head. Every word he says is truly so,” Eileen told them.

The dying man smiled feebly.

“When I am gone I want you two boys to take my little Eileen with you down under and see that she is brought up like a white lady and given everything that gold can buy. And I want you to watch over and protect her as if she was your own sister. Promise me you will do all this and I will give to each of you one-third of all my gold and Eileen is to have the other third. She will tell you where it is when I am gone and there I want you to bury me.”

He stretched out his hands unsteadily toward the boys and they grasped them warmly.

“Do you promise?” he asked almost inaudibly.

“We most solemnly do,” answered the boys deep from their hearts.

“Then I shall die in peace.”

Her father took Eileen’s thin, pale hand in his and kissed it.

“Good-by, little daughter. I hear your mother calling and I must go. I thought that I would live to take you down under but it is not to be. Instead your mother and me will meet you in the sweet bye and bye. And may the great, good God above us bless you.”

Her hand fell out of his and she threw her arms around his neck.

“Good-by, dear, dear Daddy; good-by,” she sobbed, and then fell prostrate across the inert body of her father from which his spirit had just taken flight.

Jack lifted her gently back to her own bunk, while Bill drew a blanket over the dead man’s face and turned away with something mighty like tears in his blue eyes.

That night was the most solemn and heart-rending one any of these young folks had ever experienced, for to the young, death is ever gloomy. The boys built a good fire, lit half-a-dozen candles and did all they could to soften the weight of the blow which had fallen on Eileen, but their efforts were in vain.

To add to the melancholy of the occasion the dogs, instead of crawling into their holes after they had eaten their half-rations of fish, sat in a semi-circle outside of the cabin door and in the ghostly light of the streaming aurora borealis, with their noses pointed skyward, they spent the greater part of the night howling mournfully a last requiem for the departed soul.

The next morning the boys set to work to fashion a casket to hold the remains of Michael Carscadden, and it took them the best part of three days to finish it. Then they put his body in his sleeping bag and laid it in the rough hewn box.

Eileen was so weak and dazed she seemed hardly to realize what it was all about. As she lay on her bunk she only stared with wide-open, pathetic eyes at these last sad arrangements. It was merciful that she did not understand to the full.

The boys gave her all the food they could scrape together and did without themselves for they had to get her strong enough to travel. Starvation was close on their heels. Bill’s solution for the shortage of food was that they kill one of the sled-dogs but Jack would not listen to such a thing.

“I’m no cannibal Bill, and I’d as leave eat my grandmother as I would one of our dogs,” was the way he disposed of this brash idea of his partner.

Jack figured that they could last just three days longer and by the end of that time they would have to be back at their base of supplies, or they would never get there.

“We must leave your father now, Eileen, and will you tell us where it is he wished to sleep his last sleep?” Jack was finally forced to ask her.

He had waited as long as he could for he greatly feared that in her weakened condition she might not survive this last sad ordeal. But in Eileen’s veins flowed the blood of Irish stoics and Indian chiefs and she accepted the inevitable with great courage and fortitude.

“Under the floor,” she replied as bravely as she could.

“He chose well,” Bill whispered, “for here the wolves can’t get him.”

“The cabin will be the tomb of a true Alaskan gold seeker here in the heart of the wild northland,” said Jack reverently.

The boys commenced to tear up the heavy timbers that formed the floor of the cabin and when they had a couple of them up what they saw underneath almost caused their senses to leave them, for there in a big pit lay sack upon sack made of moosehide piled up like cordwood!

Bill lowered himself into the pit and lifted out the sacks to Jack who piled them up against the wall. The rawhide thongs had come loose from some of them and the shining yellow metal poured out in a golden stream about the floor.

When hardships and starvation overtook the boys they knew them for stern realities but having stumbled upon the great store of gold in this wholly unexpected manner and under such surprising conditions they didn’t know whether it was truly so or merely a wild and woolly dream. They really didn’t. To them it was all too wonderful for any human explanation.

While they were hard at work getting up the sacks, the gold seeker who slept on yonder bunk and the half-breed girl who lay weak and helpless on the other bunk were well nigh forgotten for they were the masters of gold that made them as rich as the ancient Crœsus or the modern Rockefeller.

“Gold! gold!! Nothing but gold!!! I tell you Bill,” ejaculated Jack in the wild frenzy of the gold seeker who has made his strike.

“Yes, old pard, and we’ve got it in our clutches where it won’t get away,” returned Bill, just as excitedly. “Jack I’ve got to take my hat offen to you for bein’ the only, original man with the hunch that always makes good.”

CHAPTER XII
BACK TO THE HAUNTS OF MEN

After the boys had taken the sacks of gold out of the pit they lowered the rude box that held all that was mortal of Michael Carscadden into it; stood with Eileen by the open grave with bowed heads and made their silent prayers for him. Then Bill played Nearer My God To Thee on his mouth-organ and never before had he played the toy musical instrument so sweetly and with such feeling.

This done the boys filled in the space around and above the box with snow which they packed down tight; then they came to rigid attention, gave the military salute and Bill sounded taps on his mouth-organ when the simple but sincere service was over. So ended the life of adventure and romance of one of Alaska’s greatest hunters of moose and seekers of gold—Michael Carscadden.

After the boys had put back the heavy hewn timbers, which formed the floor, they fell to discussing the best way to get Eileen and the gold over to their permanent camp, for it was about as hard a puzzle as getting the fox, the geese and corn across the river.

There were three ways of doing it but as two of them necessitated leaving Eileen alone at one or the other of the cabins they did not think well of either of these and hence eliminated them. The matter resolved itself down to the conclusion that the only feasible plan was for them all to go together and take along the gold at the same time.

“You can hitch up my dogs, boys,” spoke up Eileen, “then you will have seven dogs in each team and they can haul these heavy loads.”

“But your dogs are nothing but skin and bones, Eileen,” Jack explained to her, “and I doubt very much if they will be able to drag themselves back to our camp, let alone do any team-work.”

“Here we are millionaires in our own right an’ only half-a-pound of tea, a dozen biscuits and two cans of pemmican left and our dogs a-starvin’ to death. I’ll give a hundred dollars for a beefsteak as big as my hand,” said Bill, and he meant it, but there were no takers, for here in the frozen wilderness gold had lost its purchasing power.

That night while Eileen slept, the boys loaded the heavy sacks on their sleds and on one of them they made a comfortable bed for her of bear-skins. Then Jack prepared a pot of tea, doled out a single biscuit and a spoonful of pemmican for each hand and called Eileen to “breakfast.” While she was getting ready for the long journey the boys went out and whistled for the dogs but they were in no great hurry to leave their warm holes.

Less than half a ration of fish apiece was their share but they are long suffering beasts and actually seemed thankful for the little that they got. As Bill was hitching up his team, Sate, his lead dog, caught his eye and his master’s heart went out to him.

“Sate, you poor dum animule, you’ll get your fill o’ rations, I’m thinkin’, when we hits our camp,” he told him as he gave him a couple of love pats on the head.

“You’re all right, pard. You’re the goodest driver in all Alaska and I know it isn’t your fault that we’re starved out,” Sate said good-naturedly. At any rate he howled a couple of times cheerfully which was his way of saying it in short-hand dog-language.

When Jack went into the cabin Eileen had taken her last leave of her sleeping father whose burial place she might never see again.

“We’re all ready to go, Eileen,” he called cheerily.

“I am ready to go too, Jack,” she said simply; “there is nothing for me to stay for now.”

Jack picked her up and carried her out to his sled where he put her in her sleeping bag and tucked a lot of big fur robes around her.

It was an hour or more before the night would fade into day, yet so bright gleamed the aurora borealis that it was easily light enough to see to travel. Their whips cracked, the commands to mush were given to the teams, the bells jingled, but there was lacking the great vibrant joy that comes of living in the open which usually marked their going. The sleds were heavy with gold, but Eileen’s daddy had been left behind and they were on the ragged edge of starvation.

Even when they reached the tundra the sleds did not pull easily for they were overloaded and the dogs were weak from hunger so that instead of enjoying themselves racing along in the traces, gold had made them work-dogs with all that this hard term implies.

Nor were the boys more kind to them because of the gold and hardship that had been thrust upon them. Rather they gave their orders in harsher tones and plied their whips harder and more often. The dogs well knew that there had been a great and sudden change in their lives and they laid it all to the girl who rode, when, according to their canine way of thinking, she by rights ought to and should have walked.

And Eileen thought so too and she often asked the boys to let her walk with them that the loads might be made the lighter but they would not hear of it. Her little added weight made no difference, according to Jack, and besides, alleged Bill, the dogs could stand it for once, for never had huskies been taken care of better, done so little real work, or had suffered less from hunger.

It took them two days and the best part of another one before they reached their camp and it was lucky for them that the time was not prolonged for that noon they had drunk their last drop of tea, eaten the last crumb of biscuit and particle of pemmican, and given their dogs the last bite of fish. So hungry had Bill become that he had marked out the dog he was going to kill to provide provender for them all, but fate was kind to the dog, and to Bill, for he was not called on to do this act of sabotage.

When they at last got to their camp Bill was as good as his word and fed the dogs a dozen rations of fish and moosemeat and having downed this in as many gulps they began to show signs of life and decency again. Jack threw together a real meal, the first that Eileen had eaten in weeks, nay months, and oh, how good those Alaska strawberries tasted! They were indeed a delicious fruit.

After the boys had gorged themselves they counted up their sacks of gold to make sure that none had escaped either by way of the door or up the chimney, and in their youthful ardor they were on the very verge of giving vent to their repressed feelings in true western style, and whoop things up. But somehow they simply couldn’t do it with that frail, slip of a girl, weakened by months of misery and starvation, and all of her own people gone out of her life forever, lying there on the bunk following their every movement. Once she smiled, ever so faintly, and the light of a new life was in her eyes and the peace of contentment was on her face.

After policing up the cooking utensils and setting things to rights a bit they turned the cabin over to Eileen and built a snow igloo of goodly size just outside the door, for their own quarters. Now that the precious metal they had sought for so long and hard was theirs they were keen to start back to the haunts of men, but Eileen did not grow strong as rapidly as they had hoped for and there was naught else for them to do but stay.

Then the question came up as to the safest way to get their winnings from their cabin in the Alaskan wilds back to the Atlantic seaboard and into the Empire Safe Deposit Company’s vault. Convoying a cargo of gold nuggets, to say nothing of chaperoning a little Irish-Indian maid, from the almost unknown heart of this great sub-Arctic country, over rivers, sea and land and into the most thickly inhabited part of the world was, they realized, no small undertaking.

“There are two trails we can take to get to Seattle,” began Jack.

“One is the way we came up,” interrupted Bill, “and the other—”

“Is for us to sled down the Big Black and Porcupine Rivers to Fort Yukon, then take a Yukon River steamer to St. Michaels, over on Norton Sound, and from that place sail on a regular steamer that goes direct to Seattle.”

“But that way is longer by a thousand miles,” protested Bill.

“I know it is but if we go to Circle City and then up the Yukon River to White Horse we’ll have to cross over into Yukon Territory and the chances are we’ll have to hand over a ten per cent tax on our hard-earned winnings to the Canadian Government; besides they’ll be liable to make us do a lot of explaining as to where we got it from, and I hold it’s nobody’s business. Get me?”

Bill batted his eyes.

“Afore I’d pay a nickel tax on our dust I’d drive over to the North Pole and go around by the way of Greenland,” was his emphatic rejoinder.

Now there are a lot of terse phrases such as “nothing succeeds like success,” “a fool and his money are soon parted,” et cetera, and another might be to say that nothing makes most fellows so stingy as coming into possession of a fortune, for it was evident that these usually over-generous boys had “tightened up” since this golden manna had risen from the pit where it was cached in such a strange manner. They were, as Bill expressed it, “fools for luck.”

Eileen was not progressing as fast as they thought she would though she improved slowly and surely. Good food, the best care, cheerful companionship and strong arms to look after her every want had made a wondrous change in this frail little girl who had dropped to the floor from exhaustion only a fortnight before. One thing was sure, however miserly the boys had grown in their minds, they took a tremendous interest in this silent half-breed child whose father had been the means of making them as rich as the richest caliph and that, you will allow, is pretty rich.

Eileen in turn recognized in them messengers sent by the Great Spirit who had saved her life, and as she watched them go about their work, heard them talk of their plans, and what they would do with and for her when they got home, she knew they were, like the nuggets in the sacks, twenty-four carats fine.

At first she couldn’t quite make Bill out, especially when he smiled, for the very emotion that nature intended a smile to represent, that terrible scar across his cheek gave the opposite appearance. Sometimes Eileen would look at him so curiously that Jack thought perhaps, she might be a little afraid of him, so one day while Bill was out getting some wood Jack told her how he came by that scar and the kind of a fellow he was as a friend and a fighter.

Came that day when all agreed that Eileen could safely make the sled trip down to Fort Yukon and, indeed, it was high time, for spring was fast coming on and this meant that the snow would melt, the ice grow thin and rotten and the bottom drop out of the trail at any moment.

So again the gold and the girl were loaded on the sleds and the long awaited start back home was made—a journey of some six thousand miles. Many things can happen in making a trip of even less length, aye, and did happen as you shall presently see.

It was not often that the dogs got into any very serious fights but there had been bad blood between Eileen’s Indian dogs and Jack’s and Bill’s dogs from the time they first met and they would have discarded the Indian dogs long before but as each team was short a dog and the two scrubs, as Bill called them, could haul their full share, they kept them.

At the first camp they made, going down the Big Black River, Link, one of the Indian dogs and Dave, of Jack’s team, got into a fight over so small a thing as a piece of fish that neither of them had, and before the boys could separate them Link lay very close to the edge of the world next to come. It was a calamity that this fight should have happened a day after instead of a week before they started for it proved to be the most costly dog-fight that was ever pulled off anywhere, bar none.

Bill was for leaving the dog and going on but Jack said it was best to stay in camp for a few days and let Link’s wound’s heal, for they had great need of him as both sleds were loaded to the guards and it was all that a full team of seven dogs each could haul. Then again Jack had conscientious scruples against shooting the dog or turning him loose in the wilds. (Perhaps because Link belonged to Eileen). But before Link was whole again another seven days had slipped by and spring was pressing winter hard for first place.

The days were getting longer and so warm that their thick fur clothing was quite uncomfortable and they must needs change into their mackinaws. The melting snow and running water everywhere made sledding overland out of the question but the trail was still holding on the river though here and there holes appeared and cracks separated the more solid stretches of ice. Time was up and they must push on.

Jack took the lead as he had Eileen on his sled and Bill’s outfit came on a little ways behind. Another day’s march and they came to some rapids where the air holes were larger and the ice bent under the weight of their treasure. Jack was ahead of his team picking the way across the treacherous trail when all of a sudden Bill let out a blood-curdling yell of the Apache variety, and on looking back he and Eileen saw that he and his sled and Jinx, the wheel dog had gone through the ice while Sate and the rest of the team were straining every muscle to the breaking limit to keep from being dragged down into the icy waters behind them. The pole that Bill had taken the precaution to carry saved him from going under but try as he would he could not get out.

Running back at top speed Jack had the situation sized up long before he reached the scene of disaster. When he was within a dozen feet of the team he made a mighty slide, as a man sliding for home with three on bases, and drawing his hunting knife from its sheath at the same time, the instant he came alongside the last dog he cut the traces. Relieved of the mighty weight so suddenly the team fell headlong forward and sprawled about on the ice; at the same moment the sled, with over half of the moosehide sacks of gold on it, and Jinx, the wheel dog, dropped to the bottom of the river. Jack then helped Bill out and on getting back to the former’s team they made an air line for the shore.

It would add nothing to the gayety of the world to relate what Jack said to Bill and Bill said to Jack and what both of them said about the loss of their vast fortune so soon after they had found it. Eileen was the peace maker and she told them they still had enough gold to keep them forever and ever (she had never lived in New York) and that the loss of the gold mattered not a whit as long as Bill had been saved. And both of the boys came to think that she had the right view of it at that.

The result of the dreadful mishap was a pow-wow in which it was resolved first, that they couldn’t afford to take any further chances on the last ice with either Eileen or the remainder of their treasure, second, that spring was altogether too far advanced to make any further attempt to get to Fort Yukon with their remaining sled, and third, that they must mark the spot where the gold went down so that they could recover it when conditions were more favorable.

“The only thing for us to do now,” declared Jack, “is to camp right here until the first water and then build a boat or a raft and float on down to Fort Yukon, which is some seventy miles from here. In the meantime we’ll build up a cairn of rocks on each side of the river and in a line with the sunken yellow stuff so that when we do come back we’ll know right where it is.”

“An’ one good thing no one else ’ull ever guess out where it is,” philosophized Bill.

The boys made a fairly comfortable camp and set about building a raft of spruce logs which they lashed together with rawhide thongs. When this was done and they could get across the river they built up a great pile of rocks on either side of it but well back from the shore. Before another moon rolled round they were ready to make a fresh start down the river.

“What about these huskies here,” asked Bill, who always kept his weather-eye open for the welfare of their dogs even though they didn’t have any more use for them.

“We’ll turn them loose and they’ll follow us along the shore all right,” replied Jack, and so that little matter was settled.

They loaded the remaining sacks of gold, their outfit and provisions, of which precious little was left, onto the raft. In the middle they had built up a platform of saplings for Eileen to sit on to the thoughtful end that when the raft struck the rapids and took a notion to dive, like a submarine, the water would not wash over and wet her.

Then Eileen took her seat on the platform, Jack stood on the front end and Bill on the diagonal corner of the rear end and with their long poles they pushed their treasure float off shore. As Jack had said, the huskies followed them and they kept as close to the edge of the river as they could, barking and howling furiously as they ran along.

It took very little effort on the part of the boys to steer the raft and none at all to keep it moving as the current was augmented all along by rivulets and streams from the melting snows. Where the river was wide and the water shallow the raft sailed gently along but where the channel was narrow the boys had to do some tall maneuvering to keep it from getting swamped.

The rapids, of which there were many, were their despair. When the ungainly craft struck these eddying currents it pitched and rolled about like a piece of cork and the little crew had to hang on to it for dear life. In this exciting fashion they covered the rest of the distance down the Big Black River. Just before they came to the mouth where it empties into the Porcupine River the bed made a sharp descent and the water rushed down it in a mighty torrent.

There was a bend in the river ahead of them and this too they successfully navigated, but a rock, that projected out of the water, and which was directly in their course, proved their undoing. Jack managed to get his pole on it and brought all of his strength to bear to keep the raft clear of it, but the weight and the momentum were too great and a corner struck it with such force that Eileen and the boys were thrown bodily into the water.

It was well for them that they were good swimmers and after a struggle with the swift current all of them landed on the shore like bags of wet rags. Then the huskies covered with mud and rending the air with their vocal organs swarmed round them.

Never in all his life had Jack felt more like crying. He could stand any kind of bodily pain but with all of their gold gone he suffered exquisite mental torture. Many a prospector in the early days had killed himself for less bad luck. Bill seemed to be not all there for he acted queerly and talked about the little “boidies” that were singing in the trees, the “bloomin’” flowers that bloomed in the spring, and other like idiotic fancies that hadn’t anything to do with the case, tra, la.