seven,' he headed at right angles across the narrow valley towards its rim. He proceeded methodically, almost automatically, for his mind was alive with recollections of the night before. He felt, somehow, that he had won to empery over the delicate lines and firm muscles of those feet and ankles he had rubbed with snow, and this empery seemed to extend to all women. In dim and fiery ways a feeling of possession mastered him. It seemed that all that was necessary was for him to walk up to this Joy Gastell, take her hand in his, and say 'Come.'
It was in this mood that he discovered something that made him forget empery over the white feet of woman. At the valley rim he blazed no corner-stake. He did not reach the valley rim, but, instead, he found himself confronted by another stream. He lined up with his eye a blasted willow tree and a big and recognizable spruce. He returned to the stream where were the centre stakes. He followed the bed of the creek around a wide horseshoe bend through the flat, and found that the two creeks were the same creek. Next, he floundered twice through the snow from valley rim to valley rim, running the first line from the lower stake of 'twenty-seven,' the second from the upper stake of 'twenty-eight,' and he found that THE UPPER STAKE OF THE LATTER WAS LOWER THAN THE LOWER STAKE OF THE FORMER. In the gray twilight and half-darkness Shorty had located their two claims on the horseshoe.
Smoke plodded back to the little camp. Shorty, at the end of washing a pan of gravel, exploded at sight of him.
'We got it!' Shorty cried, holding out the pan. 'Look at it! A nasty mess of gold. Two hundred right there if it's a cent. She runs rich from the top of the wash-gravel. I've churned around placers some, but I never got butter like what's in this pan.'
Smoke cast an incurious glance at the coarse gold, poured himself a cup of coffee at the fire, and sat down. Joy sensed something wrong and looked at him with eagerly solicitous eyes. Shorty, however, was disgruntled by his partner's lack of delight in the discovery.
'Why don't you kick in an' get excited?' he demanded. 'We got our pile right here, unless you're stickin' up your nose at two-hundred– dollar pans.'
Smoke took a swallow of coffee before replying.
'Shorty, why are our two claims here like the Panama Canal ?'
'What's the answer?'
'Well, the eastern entrance of the Panama Canal is west of the western entrance, that's all.'
'Go on,' Shorty said. 'I ain't seen the joke yet.'
'In short, Shorty, you staked our two claims on a big horseshoe bend.'
Shorty set the gold pan down in the snow and stood up.
'Go on,' he repeated.
'The upper stake of twenty-eight is ten feet below the lower stake of twenty-seven.'
'You mean we ain't got nothin', Smoke?'
'Worse than that; we've got ten feet less than nothing.'
Shorty departed down the bank on the run. Five minutes later he returned. In response to Joy's look, he nodded. Without speech, he went over to a log and sat down to gaze steadily at the snow in front of his moccasins.
'We might as well break camp and start back for Dawson ,' Smoke said, beginning to fold the blankets.
'I am sorry, Smoke,' Joy said. 'It's all my fault.'
'It's all right,' he answered. 'All in the day's work, you know.'
'But it's my fault, wholly mine,' she persisted. 'Dad's staked for me down near Discovery, I know. I'll give you my claim.'
He shook his head.
'Shorty,' she pleaded.
Shorty shook his head and began to laugh. It was a colossal laugh. Chuckles and muffled explosions yielded to hearty roars.
'It ain't hysterics,' he explained, 'I sure get powerful amused at times, an' this is one of them.'
His gaze chanced to fall on the gold pan. He walked over and gravely kicked it, scattering the gold over the landscape.
'It ain't ourn,' he said. 'It belongs to the geezer I backed up five hundred feet last night. An' what gets me is four hundred an' ninety of them feet was to the good . . . his good. Come on, Smoke. Let's start the hike to Dawson . Though if you're hankerin' to kill me I won't lift a finger to prevent.'
SHORTY DREAMS.
I.
'Funny you don't gamble none,' Shorty said to Smoke one night in the Elkhorn . 'Ain't it in your blood?'
'It is,' Smoke answered. 'But the statistics are in my head. I like an even break for my money.'
All about them, in the huge bar-room, arose the click and rattle and rumble of a dozen games, at which fur- clad, moccasined men tried their luck. Smoke waved his hand to include them all.
'Look at them,' he said. 'It's cold mathematics that they will lose more than they win to-night, that the big proportion is losing right now.'
'You're sure strong on figgers,' Shorty murmured admiringly. 'An' in the main you're right. But they's such a thing as facts. An' one fact is streaks of luck. They's times when every geezer playin' wins, as I know, for I've sat in in such games an' saw more'n one bank busted. The only way to win at gamblin' is wait for a hunch that you've got a lucky streak comin' and then to play it to the roof.'
'It sounds simple,' Smoke criticized. 'So simple I can't see how men can lose.'
'The trouble is,' Shorty admitted, 'that most men gets fooled on their hunches. On occasion I sure get fooled on mine. The thing is to try, an' find out.'
Smoke shook his head.
'That's a statistic, too, Shorty. Most men prove wrong on their hunches.'
'But don't you ever get one of them streaky feelin's that all you got to do is put your money down an' pick a winner?'
Smoke laughed.
'I'm too scared of the percentage against me. But I'll tell you what, Shorty. I'll throw a dollar on the 'high card' right now and see if it will buy us a drink.'
Smoke was edging his way in to the faro table, when Shorty caught his arm.
'Hold on. I'm gettin' one of them hunches now. You put that dollar on roulette.'
They went over to a roulette table near the bar.
'Wait till I give the word,' Shorty counselled.
'What number?' Smoke asked.
'Pick it yourself. But wait till I say let her go.'
'You don't mean to say I've got an even chance on that table?' Smoke argued.
'As good as the next geezers.'
'But not as good as the bank's.'
'Wait and see,' Shorty urged. 'Now! Let her go!'
The game-keeper had just sent the little ivory ball whirling around the smooth rim above the revolving, many-slotted wheel. Smoke, at the lower end of the table, reached over a player, and blindly tossed the dollar. It slid along the smooth, green cloth and stopped fairly in the centre of '34.'
The ball came to rest, and the game-keeper announced, 'Thirty-four wins!' He swept the table, and alongside of Smoke's dollar, stacked thirty-five dollars. Smoke drew the money in, and Shorty slapped him on the shoulder.
