Trust me. As long as I have a pound of grub you shall not
starve. Stiffen up. Shake hands. Get a smile on your face and make
the best of it."
Still savage of spirit, though rapidly toning down, the king shook
hands and flung out of the room. Before the door could close on his
heels, a loose-jointed Yankee shambled in, thrust a moccasined foot to
the side and hooked a chair under him, and sat down.
"Say," he opened up, confidentially, "people's gittin' scairt over the
grub proposition, I guess some."
"Hello, Dave. That you?"
"S'pose so. But ez I was saying there'll be a lively stampede fer the
Outside soon as the river freezes."
"Think so?"
"Unh huh."
"Then I'm glad to hear it. It's what the country needs. Going to join
them?"
"Not in a thousand years." Dave Harney threw his head back with smug
complacency. "Freighted my truck up to the mine yesterday. Wa'n't a
bit too soon about it, either. But say . . . Suthin' happened to the
sugar. Had it all on the last sled, an' jest where the trail turns off
the Klondike into Bonanzo, what does that sled do but break through the
ice! I never seen the beat of it--the last sled of all, an' all the
sugar! So I jest thought I'd drop in to-day an' git a hundred pounds
or so. White or brown, I ain't pertickler."
Jacob Welse shook his head and smiled, but Harney hitched his chair
closer.
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