simplest rudiments of manhood!" He hunched up to the fire and rolled a
cigarette. "Oh, I'm not whining. I can take my medicine all right, all
right; but I'm just decently ashamed of myself, that's all. Here I am,
on top of a dirty thirty miles, as knocked up and stiff and sore as a
pink-tea degenerate after a five-mile walk on a country turn-pike. Bah!
It makes me sick! Got a match?" "Don't git the tantrums, youngster."
Bettles passed over the required fire-stick and waxed patriarchal. "Ye've
gotter 'low some for the breakin'-in. Sufferin' cracky! don't I
recollect the first time I hit the trail! Stiff? I've seen the time
it'd take me ten minutes to git my mouth from the water-hole an' come to
my feet--every jint crackin' an' kickin' fit to kill. Cramp? In sech
knots it'd take the camp half a day to untangle me. You're all right,
for a cub, any ye've the true sperrit. Come this day year, you'll walk
all us old bucks into the ground any time. An' best in your favor, you
hain't got that streak of fat in your make-up which has sent many a husky
man to the bosom of Abraham afore his right and proper time."

"Streak of fat?"

"Yep. Comes along of bulk. 'T ain't the big men as is the best when it
comes to the trail."

"Never heard of it."

"Never heered of it, eh? Well, it's a dead straight, open-an'-shut fact,
an' no gittin' round. Bulk's all well enough for a mighty big effort,
but 'thout stayin' powers it ain't worth a continental whoop; an' stayin'
powers an' bulk ain't runnin' mates. Takes the small, wiry fellows when
it comes to gittin' right down an' hangin' on like a lean-jowled dog to a
bone. Why, hell's fire, the big men they ain't in it!"