第28章

When they awoke, they found a change had taken place during the night.So warm was it, that Shorty and Smoke, still in their mutual blankets, estimated the temperature at no more than twenty below.The cold snap had broken.On top their blankets lay six inches of frost crystals.

"Good morning! how's your feet?" was Smoke's greeting across the ashes of the fire to where Joy Gastell, carefully shaking aside the snow, was sitting up in her sleeping furs.

Shorty built the fire and quarried ice from the creek, while Smoke cooked breakfast.Daylight came on as they finished the meal.

"You go an' fix them corner-stakes, Smoke," Shorty said."There's a gravel under where I chopped ice for the coffee, an' I'm goin' to melt water and wash a pan of that same gravel for luck."Smoke departed, axe in hand, to blaze the stakes.Starting from the down-stream centre-stake of 'twenty-seven,' he headed at right angles across the narrow valley towards its rim.He proceeded methodically, almost automatically, for his mind was alive with recollections of the night before.He felt, somehow, that he had won to empery over the delicate lines and firm muscles of those feet and ankles he had rubbed with snow, and this empery seemed to extend to all women.In dim and fiery ways a feeling of possession mastered him.It seemed that all that was necessary was for him to walk up to this Joy Gastell, take her hand in his, and say "Come."It was in this mood that he discovered something that made him forget empery over the white feet of woman.At the valley rim he blazed no corner-stake.He did not reach the valley rim, but, instead, he found himself confronted by another stream.He lined up with his eye a blasted willow tree and a big and recognizable spruce.He returned to the stream where were the centre stakes.He followed the bed of the creek around awide horseshoe bend through the flat, and found that the two creeks were the same creek.Next, he floundered twice through the snow from valley rim to valley rim, running the first line from the lower stake of 'twenty- seven,' the second from the upper stake of 'twenty-eight,' and he found that THE UPPER STAKE OF THE LATTER WAS LOWER THAN THELOWER STAKE OF THE FORMER.In the gray twilight and half- darkness Shorty had located their two claims on the horseshoe.

Smoke plodded back to the little camp.Shorty, at the end of washing a pan of gravel, exploded at sight of him.

"We got it!" Shorty cried, holding out the pan."Look at it! A nasty mess of gold.Two hundred right there if it's a cent.She runs rich from the top of the wash-gravel.I've churned around placers some, but I never got butter like what's in this pan."Smoke cast an incurious glance at the coarse gold, poured himself a cup of coffee at the fire, and sat down.Joy sensed something wrong and looked at him with eagerly solicitous eyes.Shorty, however, was disgruntled by his partner's lack of delight in the discovery.

"Why don't you kick in an' get excited?" he demanded."We got our pile right here, unless you're stickin' up your nose at two-hundred- dollar pans."Smoke took a swallow of coffee before replying.

"Shorty, why are our two claims here like the Panama Canal?" "What's the answer?""Well, the eastern entrance of the Panama Canal is west of the western entrance, that's all.""Go on," Shorty said."I ain't seen the joke yet.""In short, Shorty, you staked our two claims on a big horseshoe bend." Shorty set the gold pan down in the snow and stood up.

"Go on," he repeated.

"The upper stake of twenty-eight is ten feet below the lower stake of twenty-seven.""You mean we ain't got nothin', Smoke?"

"Worse than that; we've got ten feet less than nothing."Shorty departed down the bank on the run.Five minutes later hereturned.In response to Joy's look, he nodded.Without speech, he went over to a log and sat down to gaze steadily at the snow in front of his moccasins.

"We might as well break camp and start back for Dawson," Smoke said, beginning to fold the blankets.

"I am sorry, Smoke," Joy said."It's all my fault.""It's all right," he answered."All in the day's work, you know.""But it's my fault, wholly mine," she persisted."Dad's staked for me down near Discovery, I know.I'll give you my claim."He shook his head."Shorty," she pleaded.

Shorty shook his head and began to laugh.It was a colossal laugh.Chuckles and muffled explosions yielded to hearty roars.

"It ain't hysterics," he explained, "I sure get powerful amused at times, an' this is one of them."His gaze chanced to fall on the gold pan.He walked over and gravely kicked it, scattering the gold over the landscape.

"It ain't ourn," he said."It belongs to the geezer I backed up five hundred feet last night.An' what gets me is four hundred an' ninety of them feet was to the good...his good.Come on, Smoke.Let's start the hike to Dawson.Though if you're hankerin' to kill me I won't lift a finger to prevent."