her voice echoing from glacier to glacier, ten thousand men tramped
ceaselessly up and down, grinding the tender herbage into the soil and
mocking the stony silence. And just up the trail were ten thousand men
who had passed by, and over the Chilcoot were ten thousand more. And
behind, all down the island-studded Alaskan coast, even to the Horn,
were yet ten thousand more, harnessers of wind and steam, hasteners
from the ends of the earth. The Dyea River as of old roared
turbulently down to the sea; but its ancient banks were gored by the
feet of many men, and these men labored in surging rows at the dripping
tow-lines, and the deep-laden boats followed them as they fought their
upward way. And the will of man strove with the will of the water, and
the men laughed at the old Dyea River and gored its banks deeper for
the men who were to follow.

The doorway of the store, through which she had once run out and in,
and where she had looked with awe at the unusual sight of a stray
trapper or fur-trader, was now packed with a clamorous throng of men.
Where of old one letter waiting a claimant was a thing of wonder, she
now saw, by peering through the window, the mail heaped up from floor
to ceiling. And it was for this mail the men were clamoring so
insistently. Before the store, by the scales, was another crowd. An
Indian threw his pack upon the scales, the white owner jotted down the
weight in a note-book, and another pack was thrown on. Each pack was
in the straps, ready for the packer's back and the precarious journey
over the Chilcoot. Frona edged in closer. She was interested in
freights. She remembered in her day when the solitary prospector or
trader had his outfit packed over for six cents,--one hundred and
twenty dollars a ton.

The tenderfoot who was weighing up consulted his guide-book. "Eight