"
"Dot iss goot," Olaf Henderson muttered, regarding the gambler
with profound admiration.
"Ver' good," affirmed French Louis. "I t'ink we take a drink on
dat one time, eh?"
CHAPTER II
It was two in the morning when the dancers, bent on getting
something to eat, adjourned the dancing for half an hour. And it
was at this moment that Jack Kearns suggested poker. Jack Kearns
was a big, bluff-featured man, who, along with Bettles, had made
the disastrous attempt to found a post on the head-reaches of the
Koyokuk, far inside the Arctic Circle. After that, Kearns had
fallen back on his posts at Forty Mile and Sixty Mile and changed
the direction of his ventures by sending out to the States for a
small sawmill and a river steamer. The former was even then
being sledded across Chilcoot Pass by Indians and dogs, and would
come down the Yukon in the early summer after the ice-run. Later
in the summer, when Bering Sea and the mouth of the Yukon cleared
of ice, the steamer, put together at St. Michaels, was to be
expected up the river loaded to the guards with supplies.
Jack Kearns suggested poker. French Louis, Dan MacDonald, and
Hal Campbell (who had make a strike on Moosehide), all three of
whom were not dancing because there were not girls enough to go
around, inclined to the suggestion.
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