we have lived and worked like beasts, have we not been paid like kings?
Twenty dollars to the pan the streak is running, and we know it to be
eight feet thick. It is another Klondike--and we know it--Jim Hawes
there, by your elbow, knows it and complains not. And there's Hitchcock!
He sews moccasins like an old woman, and waits against the time. Only
you can't wait and work until the wash-up in the spring. Then we shall
all be rich, rich as kings, only you cannot wait. You want to go back to
the States. So do I, and I was born there, but I can wait, when each day
the gold in the pan shows up yellow as butter in the churning. But you
want your good time, and, like a child, you cry for it now. Bah! Why
shall I not sing:

"In a year, in a year, when the grapes are ripe,
I shall stay no more away.
Then if you still are true, my love,
It will be our wedding day.
In a year, in a year, when my time is past,
Then I'll live in your love for aye.
Then if you still are true, my love,
It will be our wedding day."

The dogs, bristling and growling, drew in closer to the firelight. There
was a monotonous crunch-crunch of webbed shoes, and between each crunch
the dragging forward of the heel of the shoe like the sound of sifting
sugar. Sigmund broke off from his song to hurl oaths and firewood at the
animals. Then the light was parted by a fur-clad figure, and an Indian
girl slipped out of the webs, threw back the hood of her squirrel-skin
_parka_, and stood in their midst. Sigmund and the men on the bearskin
greeted her as "Sipsu," with the customary "Hello," but Hitchcock made
room on the sled that she might sit beside him.