"'Oh, yes there is,' he replies, still smiling; 'she writes me every
week.'

"'I got all there was at Dawson,' Windy give back, 'and there ain't a
thing for you!'

"I consider the tragedy of this north country lies in its mail
service. Uncle Sam institutes rural deliveries, so the bolomen can
register poisoned arrowheads to the Igorrotes in exchange for recipes
to make roulade of naval officer, but his American miners in Alaska
go shy on home news for eight months every year.

"That was the last mail we had till June.

"When the river broke we cleaned up one hundred and eighty-seven
dollars' worth of lovely, yellow dust, and seven hundred and
thirty-five dollars in beautiful yellow bills from the post.

"The first boat down from Dawson brought mail, and I stood beside him
when he got his. He shook so he held on to the purser's window.
Instead of a stack of squares overrun with female chiropody, there
was only one for him--a long, hungry sport, with indications of a law
firm in the northwest corner. It charmed him like a rattler. He
seemed scared to open it. Two or three times he tried and stopped.

"'They're dead,' thinks I; and, sure enough, when he'd looked, I knew
it was so, and felt for his hand. Sympathy don't travel by word of
mouth between pardners. It's the grip of the hand or the look of the
eye.