mocking. "Really, Mr Smoke, you make me almost sorry for what I
have done. But somebody had to save the old-timers."

"It strikes me that stampeding is at best a sporting proposition."

"And it strikes me you two are very game about it," she went on,
then added with the shadow of a sigh: "What a pity you are not old-
timers."

For two hours more they kept to the frozen creek-bed of Norway, then
turned into a narrow and rugged tributary that flowed from the
south. At midday they began the ascent of the divide itself.
Behind them, looking down and back, they could see the long line of
stampeders breaking up. Here and there, in scores of places, thin
smoke-columns advertised the making of camps.

As for themselves, the going was hard. They wallowed through snow
to their waists, and were compelled to stop every few yards to
breathe. Shorty was the first to call a halt.

"We ben hittin' the trail for over twelve hours," he said. "Smoke,
I'm plum willin' to say I'm good an' tired. An' so are you. An'
I'm free to shout that I can sure hang on to this here pascar like a
starvin' Indian to a hunk of bear-meat. But this poor girl here
can't keep her legs no time if she don't get something in her
stomach. Here's where we build a fire. What d'ye say?"

So quickly, so deftly and methodically, did they go about making a
temporary camp, that Joy, watching with jealous eyes, admitted to
herself that the old-timers could not do it better. Spruce boughs,