The play would be
big, bigger than any Yukoner had ever imagined, and he, Burning
Daylight, would see that he got in on that play.
In the meantime there was naught to show for it but the hunch.
But it was coming. As he would stake his last ounce on a good
poker hand, so he staked his life and effort on the hunch that
the future held in store a big strike on the Upper River. So he
and his three companions, with dogs, and sleds, and snowshoes,
toiled up the frozen breast of the Stewart, toiled on and on
through the white wilderness where the unending stillness was
never broken by the voices of men, the stroke of an ax, or the
distant crack of a rifle. They alone moved through the vast and
frozen quiet, little mites of earth-men, crawling their score of
miles a day, melting the ice that they might have water to drink,
camping in the snow at night, their wolf-dogs curled in
frost-rimed, hairy bunches, their eight snowshoes stuck on end in
the snow beside the sleds.
No signs of other men did they see, though once they passed a
rude poling-boat, cached on a platform by the river bank.
Whoever had cached it had never come back for it; and they
wondered and mushed on.
Pages:
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117