from the caravans that used his ill-kept roads. Since a certain amount
of history was required in the construction of this figure, the less
cultured wayfarers from Stuart River were prone to describe him after a
still more primordial fashion, in which a command of strong adjectives
was to be chiefly noted.

This cabin was not his, by the way, having been built several years
previously by a couple of miners who had got out a raft of logs at that
point for a grub-stake. They had been most hospitable lads, and, after
they abandoned it, travelers who knew the route made it an object to
arrive there at nightfall. It was very handy, saving them all the time
and toil of pitching camp; and it was an unwritten rule that the last man
left a neat pile of firewood for the next comer. Rarely a night passed
but from half a dozen to a score of men crowded into its shelter. Jacob
Kent noted these things, exercised squatter sovereignty, and moved in.
Thenceforth, the weary travelers were mulcted a dollar per head for the
privilege of sleeping on the floor, Jacob Kent weighing the dust and
never failing to steal the down-weight. Besides, he so contrived that
his transient guests chopped his wood for him and carried his water. This
was rank piracy, but his victims were an easy-going breed, and while they
detested him, they yet permitted him to flourish in his sins.

One afternoon in April he sat by his door,--for all the world like a
predatory spider,--marvelling at the heat of the returning sun, and
keeping an eye on the trail for prospective flies. The Yukon lay at his
feet, a sea of ice, disappearing around two great bends to the north and
south, and stretching an honest two miles from bank to bank. Over its
rough breast ran the sled-trail, a slender sunken line, eighteen inches
wide and two thousand miles in length, with more curses distributed to
the linear foot than any other road in or out of all Christendom.