David Rasmunsen was a hustler,
and, like many a greater man,
a man of the one idea. Wherefore,
when the clarion call of the
North rang on his ear, he conceived
an adventure in eggs and bent
all his energy to its achievement.
He figured briefly and to the
point, and the adventure became
iridescent-hued, splendid. That
eggs would sell at Dawson for
five dollars a dozen was a safe
working premise. Whence it was
incontrovertible that one thousand
dozen would bring, in the Golden
Metropolis, five thousand dollars.
On the other hand, expense
was to be considered, and he
considered it well, for he was
a careful man, keenly practical,
with a hard head and a heart
that imagination never warmed.
At fifteen cents a dozen, the
initial cost of his thousand
dozen would be one hundred and
fifty dollars, a mere bagatelle
in face of the enormous profit.
And suppose, just suppose, to
be wildly extravagant for once,
that transportation for himself
and eggs should run up eight
hundred and fifty more; he would
still have four thousand clear
cash and clean when the last
egg was disposed of and the last
dust had rippled into his sack
"You see, Alma,"--he figured
it over with his wife, the cosy
dining-room submerged in a sea
of maps, government surveys,
guide- books, and Alaskan itineraries,--"you
see, expenses don't really begin
till you make Dyea--fifty dollars'll
cover it with a first- class
passage thrown in. Now from Dyea
to Lake Linderman, Indian packers
take your goods over for twelve
cents a pound, twelve dollars
a hundred, or one hundred and
twenty dollars a thousand. Say
I have fifteen hundred pounds,
it'll cost one hundred and eighty
dollars--call it two hundred
and be safe. I am creditably
informed by a Klondiker just
come out that I can buy a boat
for three hundred. But the same
man says I'm sure to get a couple
of passengers for one hundred
and fifty each, which will give
me the boat for nothing, and,
further, they can help me manage
it. And . . . that's all; I put
my eggs ashore from the boat
at Dawson. Now let me see how
much is that?"
"Fifty dollars from San Francisco
to Dyea, two hundred from Dyea
to Linderman, passengers pay
for the boat--two hundred and
fifty all told," she summed up
swiftly.
"And a hundred for my clothes
and personal outfit," he went
on happily; "that leaves a margin
of five hundred for emergencies.
And what possible emergencies
can arise?"
Alma shrugged her shoulders
and elevated her brows. If that
vast Northland was capable of
swallowing up a man and a thousand
dozen eggs, surely there was
room and to spare for whatever
else he might happen to possess.
So she thought, but she said
nothing. She knew David Rasmunsen
too well to say anything.
"Doubling the
time because of chance delays,
I should make
the trip in two months. Think
of it, Alma! Four thousand in
two months! Beats the paltry
hundred a month I'm getting now.
Why, we'll build further out
where we'll have more space,
gas in every room, and a view,
and the rent of the cottage'll
pay taxes, insurance, and water,
and leave something over. And
then there's always the chance
of my striking it and coming
out a millionaire. Now tell me,
Alma, don't you think I'm very
moderate?"
And Alma could hardly think
otherwise. Besides, had not her
own cousin,--though a remote
and distant one to be sure, the
black sheep, the harum-scarum,
the ne'er-do-well,--had not he
come down out of that weird North
country with a hundred thousand
in yellow dust, to say nothing
of a half-ownership in the hole
from which it came?
David Rasmunsen's
grocer was surprised when he
found him weighing
eggs in the scales at the end
of the counter, and Rasmunsen
himself was more surprised when
he found that a dozen eggs weighed
a pound and a half--fifteen hundred
pounds for his thousand dozen!
There would be no weight left
for his clothes, blankets, and
cooking utensils, to say nothing
of the grub he must necessarily
consume by the way. His calculations
were all thrown out, and he was
just proceeding to recast them
when he hit upon the idea of
weighing small eggs. "For whether
they be large or small, a dozen
eggs is a dozen eggs," he observed
sagely to himself; and a dozen
small ones he found to weigh
but a pound and a quarter. Thereat
the city of San Francisco was
overrun by anxious-eyed emissaries,
and commission houses and dairy
associations were startled by
a sudden demand for eggs running
not more than twenty ounces to
the dozen.
Rasmunsen mortgaged the little
cottage for a thousand dollars,
arranged for his wife to make
a prolonged stay among her own
people, threw up his job, and
started North. To keep within
his schedule he compromised on
a second-class passage, which,
because of the rush, was worse
than steerage; and in the late
summer, a pale and wabbly man,
he disembarked with his eggs
on the Dyea beach. But it did
not take him long to recover
his land legs and appetite. His
first interview with the Chilkoot
packers straightened him up and
stiffened his backbone. Forty
cents a pound they demanded for
the twenty-eight-mile portage,
and while he caught his breath
and swallowed, the price went
up to forty-three. Fifteen husky
Indians put the straps on his
packs at forty-five, but took
them off at an offer of forty-seven
from a Skaguay Croesus in dirty
shirt and ragged overalls who
had lost his horses on the White
Pass trail and was now making
a last desperate drive at the
country by way of Chilkoot.
But Rasmunsen was clean grit,
and at fifty cents found takers,
who, two days later, set his
eggs down intact at Linderman.
But fifty cents a pound is a
thousand dollars a ton, and his
fifteen hundred pounds had exhausted
his emergency fund and left him
stranded at the Tantalus point
where each day he saw the fresh-whipsawed
boats departing for Dawson. Further,
a great anxiety brooded over
the camp where the boats were
built. Men worked frantically,
early and late, at the height
of their endurance, caulking,
nailing, and pitching in a frenzy
of haste for which adequate explanation
was not far to seek. Each day
the snow-line crept farther down
the bleak, rock-shouldered peaks,
and gale followed gale, with
sleet and slush and snow, and
in the eddies and quiet places
young ice formed and thickened
through the fleeting hours. And
each morn, toil-stiffened men
turned wan faces across the lake
to see if the freeze-up had come.
For the freeze-up heralded the
death of their hope--the hope
that they would be floating down
the swift river ere navigation
closed on the chain of lakes.
To harrow Rasmunsen's soul
further, he discovered three
competitors in the egg business.
It was true that one, a little
German, had gone broke and was
himself forlornly back-tripping
the last pack of the portage;
but the other two had boats nearly
completed, and were daily supplicating
the god of merchants and traders
to stay the iron hand of winter
for just another day. But the
iron hand closed down over the
land. Men were being frozen in
the blizzard which swept Chilkoot,
and Rasmunsen frosted his toes
ere he was aware. He found a
chance to go passenger with his
freight in a boat just shoving
off through the rubble, but two
hundred hard cash, was required,
and he had no money.
"Ay tank you yust wait one
leedle w'ile," said the Swedish
boat- builder, who had struck
his Klondike right there and
was wise enough to know it--"one
leedle w'ile und I make you a
tam fine skiff boat, sure Pete."
With this unpledged word to
go on, Rasmunsen hit the back
trail to Crater Lake, where he
fell in with two press correspondents
whose tangled baggage was strewn
from Stone House, over across
the Pass, and as far as Happy
Camp.
"Yes," he said with consequence. "I've
a thousand dozen eggs at Linderman,
and my boat's just about got
the last seam caulked. Consider
myself in luck to get it. Boats
are at a premium, you know, and
none to be had."
Whereupon and almost with bodily
violence the correspondents clamoured
to go with him, fluttered greenbacks
before his eyes, and spilled
yellow twenties from hand to
hand. He could not hear of it,
but they over-persuaded him,
and he reluctantly consented
to take them at three hundred
apiece. Also they pressed upon
him the passage money in advance.
And while they wrote to their
respective journals concerning
the Good Samaritan with the thousand
dozen eggs, the Good Samaritan
was hurrying back to the Swede
at Linderman.
"Here, you! Gimme that boat!" was
his salutation, his hand jingling
the correspondents' gold pieces
and his eyes hungrily bent upon
the finished craft.
The Swede regarded him stolidly
and shook his head.
"How much is
the other fellow paying? Three
hundred? Well,
here's four. Take it."
He tried to press it upon him,
but the man backed away.
"Ay tank not.
Ay say him get der skiff boat.
You yust wait--"
'Here's six hundred. Last call.
Take it or leave it. Tell 'm
it's a mistake.'
The Swede wavered. "Ay tank
yes," he finally said, and the
last Rasmunsen saw of him his
vocabulary was going to wreck
in a vain effort to explain the
mistake to the other fellows.
The German slipped and broke
his ankle on the steep hogback
above Deep Lake, sold out his
stock for a dollar a dozen, and
with the proceeds hired Indian
packers to carry him back to
Dyea. But on the morning Rasmunsen
shoved off with his correspondents,
his two rivals followed suit.
'How many you
got?" one of
them, a lean little New Englander,
called out.
"One thousand dozen," Rasmunsen
answered proudly.
"Huh! I'll
go you even stakes I beat you
in with my eight hundred."
The correspondents offered
to lend him the money; but Rasmunsen
declined, and the Yankee closed
with the remaining rival, a brawny
son of the sea and sailor of
ships and things, who promised
to show them all a wrinkle or
two when it came to cracking
on. And crack on he did, with
a large tarpaulin square-sail
which pressed the bow half under
at every jump. He was the first
to run out of Linderman, but,
disdaining the portage, piled
his loaded boat on the rocks
in the boiling rapids. Rasmunsen
and the Yankee, who likewise
had two passengers, portaged
across on their backs and then
lined their empty boats down
through the bad water to Bennett.
Bennett was a twenty-five-mile
lake, narrow and deep, a funnel
between the mountains through
which storms ever romped. Rasmunsen
camped on the sand-pit at its
head, where were many men and
boats bound north in the teeth
of the Arctic winter. He awoke
in the morning to find a piping
gale from the south, which caught
the chill from the whited peaks
and glacial valleys and blew
as cold as north wind ever blew.
But it was fair, and he also
found the Yankee staggering past
the first bold headland with
all sail set. Boat after boat
was getting under way, and the
correspondents fell to with enthusiasm.
"We'll catch him before Cariboo
Crossing," they assured Rasmunsen,
as they ran up the sail and the
Alma took the first icy spray
over her bow.
Now Rasmunsen all his life
had been prone to cowardice on
water, but he clung to the kicking
steering-oar with set face and
determined jaw. His thousand
dozen were there in the boat
before his eyes, safely secured
beneath the correspondents' baggage,
and somehow, before his eyes
were the little cottage and the
mortgage for a thousand dollars.
It was bitter cold. Now and
again he hauled in the steering-sweep
and put out a fresh one while
his passengers chopped the ice
from the blade. Wherever the
spray struck, it turned instantly
to frost, and the dipping boom
of the spritsail was quickly
fringed with icicles. The Alma
strained and hammered through
the big seas till the seams and
butts began to spread, but in
lieu of bailing the correspondents
chopped ice and flung it overboard.
There was no let-up. The mad
race with winter was on, and
the boats tore along in a desperate
string.
"W-w-we can't stop to save
our souls!" one of the correspondents
chattered, from cold, not fright.
"That's right! Keep her down
the middle, old man!" the other
encouraged.
Rasmunsen replied with an idiotic
grin. The iron-bound shores were
in a lather of foam, and even
down the middle the only hope
was to keep running away from
the big seas. To lower sail was
to be overtaken and swamped.
Time and again they passed boats
pounding among the rocks, and
once they saw one on the edge
of the breakers about to strike.
A little craft behind them, with
two men, jibed over and turned
bottom up.
"W-w-watch out, old man," cried
he of the chattering teeth.
Rasmunsen grinned and tightened
his aching grip on the sweep.
Scores of times had the send
of the sea caught the big square
stern of the Alma and thrown
her off from dead before it till
the after leach of the spritsail
fluttered hollowly, and each
time, and only with all his strength,
had he forced her back. His grin
by then had become fixed, and
it disturbed the correspondents
to look at him.
They roared down past an isolated
rock a hundred yards from shore.
From its wave-drenched top a
man shrieked wildly, for the
instant cutting the storm with
his voice. But the next instant
the Alma was by, and the rock
growing a black speck in the
troubled froth.
"That settles the Yankee! Where's
the sailor?" shouted one of his
passengers.
Rasmunsen shot a glance over
his shoulder at a black square-sail.
He had seen it leap up out of
the grey to windward, and for
an hour, off and on, had been
watching it grow. The sailor
had evidently repaired damages
and was making up for lost time.
"Look at him
come!"
Both passengers stopped chopping
ice to watch. Twenty miles of
Bennett were behind them--room
and to spare for the sea to toss
up its mountains toward the sky.
Sinking and soaring like a storm-
god, the sailor drove by them.
The huge sail seemed to grip
the boat from the crests of the
waves, to tear it bodily out
of the water, and fling it crashing
and smothering down into the
yawning troughs.
"The sea'll
never catch him!"
"But he'll
r-r-run her nose under!"
Even as they spoke, the black
tarpaulin swooped from sight
behind a big comber. The next
wave rolled over the spot, and
the next, but the boat did not
reappear. The Alma rushed by
the place. A little riffraff
of oats and boxes was seen. An
arm thrust up and a shaggy head
broke surface a score of yards
away.
For a time there was silence.
As the end of the lake came in
sight, the waves began to leap
aboard with such steady recurrence
that the correspondents no longer
chopped ice but flung the water
out with buckets. Even this would
not do, and, after a shouted
conference with Rasmunsen, they
attacked the baggage. Flour,
bacon, beans, blankets, cooking-stove,
ropes, odds and ends, everything
they could get hands on, flew
overboard. The boat acknowledged
it at once, taking less water
and rising more buoyantly.
"That'll do!" Rasmunsen
called sternly, as they applied
themselves
to the top layer of eggs.
"The h-hell it will!" answered
the shivering one, savagely.
With the exception of their notes,
films, and cameras, they had
sacrificed their outfit. He bent
over, laid hold of an egg-box,
and began to worry it out from
under the lashing.
"Drop it! Drop
it, I say!"
Rasmunsen had managed to draw
his revolver, and with the crook
of his arm over the sweep head,
was taking aim. The correspondent
stood up on the thwart, balancing
back and forth, his face twisted
with menace and speechless anger.
"My God!"
So cried his brother correspondent,
hurling himself, face downward,
into the bottom of the boat.
The Alma, under the divided attention
of Rasmunsen, had been caught
by a great mass of water and
whirled around. The after leach
hollowed, the sail emptied and
jibed, and the boom, sweeping
with terrific force across the
boat, carried the angry correspondent
overboard with a broken back.
Mast and sail had gone over the
side as well. A drenching sea
followed, as the boat lost headway,
and Rasmunsen sprang to the bailing
bucket
Several boats hurtled past
them in the next half-hour,--small
boats, boats of their own size,
boats afraid, unable to do aught
but run madly on. Then a ten-ton
barge, at imminent risk of destruction,
lowered sail to windward and
lumbered down upon them.
"Keep off! Keep off!" Rasmunsen
screamed.
But his low gunwale ground
against the heavy craft, and
the remaining correspondent clambered
aboard. Rasmunsen was over the
eggs like a cat and in the bow
of the Alma, striving with numb
fingers to bend the hauling-lines
together.
"Come on!" a
red-whiskered man yelled at
him.
"I've a thousand dozen eggs
here," he shouted back. "Gimme
a tow! I'll pay you!"
"Come on!" they
howled in chorus.
A big whitecap broke just beyond,
washing over the barge and leaving
the Alma half swamped. The men
cast off, cursing him as they
ran up their sail. Rasmunsen
cursed back and fell to bailing.
The mast and sail, like a sea
anchor, still fast by the halyards,
held the boat head on to wind
and sea and gave him a chance
to fight the water out.
Three hours later, numbed,
exhausted, blathering like a
lunatic, but still bailing, he
went ashore on an ice-strewn
beach near Cariboo Crossing.
Two men, a government courier
and a half-breed voyageur, dragged
him out of the surf, saved his
cargo, and beached the Alma.
They were paddling out of the
country in a Peterborough, and
gave him shelter for the night
in their storm-bound camp. Next
morning they departed, but he
elected to stay by his eggs.
And thereafter the name and fame
of the man with the thousand
dozen eggs began to spread through
the land. Gold-seekers who made
in before the freeze-up carried
the news of his coming. Grizzled
old- timers of Forty Mile and
Circle City, sour doughs with
leathern jaws and bean-calloused
stomachs, called up dream memories
of chickens and green things
at mention of his name. Dyea
and Skaguay took an interest
in his being, and questioned
his progress from every man who
came over the passes, while Dawson--golden,
omeletless Dawson--fretted and
worried, and way-laid every chance
arrival for word of him.
But of this Rasmunsen knew
nothing. The day after the wreck
he patched up the Alma and pulled
out. A cruel east wind blew in
his teeth from Tagish, but he
got the oars over the side and
bucked manfully into it, though
half the time he was drifting
backward and chopping ice from
the blades. According to the
custom of the country, he was
driven ashore at Windy Arm; three
times on Tagish saw him swamped
and beached; and Lake Marsh held
him at the freeze- up. The Alma
was crushed in the jamming of
the floes, but the eggs were
intact. These he back-tripped
two miles across the ice to the
shore, where he built a cache,
which stood for years after and
was pointed out by men who knew.
Half a thousand frozen miles
stretched between him and Dawson,
and the waterway was closed.
But Rasmunsen, with a peculiar
tense look in his face, struck
back up the lakes on foot. What
he suffered on that lone trip,
with nought but a single blanket,
an axe, and a handful of beans,
is not given to ordinary mortals
to know. Only the Arctic adventurer
may understand. Suffice that
he was caught in a blizzard on
Chilkoot and left two of his
toes with the surgeon at Sheep
Camp. Yet he stood on his feet
and washed dishes in the scullery
of the PAWONA to the Puget Sound,
and from there passed coal on
a P. S. boat to San Francisco.
It was a haggard, unkempt man
who limped across the shining
office floor to raise a second
mortgage from the bank people.
His hollow cheeks betrayed themselves
through the scraggy beard, and
his eyes seemed to have retired
into deep caverns where they
burned with cold fires. His hands
were grained from exposure and
hard work, and the nails were
rimmed with tight-packed dirt
and coal-dust. He spoke vaguely
of eggs and ice-packs, winds
and tides; but when they declined
to let him have more than a second
thousand, his talk became incoherent,
concerning itself chiefly with
the price of dogs and dog-food,
and such things as snowshoes
and moccasins and winter trails.
They let him have fifteen hundred,
which was more than the cottage
warranted, and breathed easier
when he scrawled his signature
and passed out the door.
Two weeks later he went over
Chilkoot with three dog sleds
of five dogs each. One team he
drove, the two Indians with him
driving the others. At Lake Marsh
they broke out the cache and
loaded up. But there was no trail.
He was the first in over the
ice, and to him fell the task
of packing the snow and hammering
away through the rough river
jams. Behind him he often observed
a camp-fire smoke trickling thinly
up through the quiet air, and
he wondered why the people did
not overtake him. For he was
a stranger to the land and did
not understand. Nor could he
understand his Indians when they
tried to explain. This they conceived
to be a hardship, but when they
balked and refused to break camp
of mornings, he drove them to
their work at pistol point.
When he slipped through an
ice bridge near the White Horse
and froze his foot, tender yet
and oversensitive from the previous
freezing, the Indians looked
for him to lie up. But he sacrificed
a blanket, and, with his foot
incased in an enormous moccasin,
big as a water-bucket, continued
to take his regular turn with
the front sled. Here was the
cruellest work, and they respected
him, though on the side they
rapped their foreheads with their
knuckles and significantly shook
their heads. One night they tried
to run away, but the zip-zip
of his bullets in the snow brought
them back, snarling but convinced.
Whereupon, being only savage
Chilkat men, they put their heads
together to kill him; but he
slept like a cat, and, waking
or sleeping, the chance never
came. Often they tried to tell
him the import of the smoke wreath
in the rear, but he could not
comprehend and grew suspicious
of them. And when they sulked
or shirked, he was quick to let
drive at them between the eyes,
and quick to cool their heated
souls with sight of his ready
revolver.
And so it went--with mutinous
men, wild dogs, and a trail that
broke the heart. He fought the
men to stay with him, fought
the dogs to keep them away from
the eggs, fought the ice, the
cold, and the pain of his foot,
which would not heal. As fast
as the young tissue renewed,
it was bitten and scared by the
frost, so that a running sore
developed, into which he could
almost shove his fist. In the
mornings, when he first put his
weight upon it, his head went
dizzy, and he was near to fainting
from the pain; but later on in
the day it usually grew numb,
to recommence when he crawled
into his blankets and tried to
sleep. Yet he, who had been a
clerk and sat at a desk all his
days, toiled till the Indians
were exhausted, and even out-worked
the dogs. How hard he worked,
how much he suffered, he did
not know. Being a man of the
one idea, now that the idea had
come, it mastered him. In the
foreground of his consciousness
was Dawson, in the background
his thousand dozen eggs, and
midway between the two his ego
fluttered, striving always to
draw them together to a glittering
golden point. This golden point
was the five thousand dollars,
the consummation of the idea
and the point of departure for
whatever new idea might present
itself. For the rest, he was
a mere automaton. He was unaware
of other things, seeing them
as through a glass darkly, and
giving them no thought. The work
of his hands he did with machine-like
wisdom; likewise the work of
his head. So the look on his
face grew very tense, till even
the Indians were afraid of it,
and marvelled at the strange
white man who had made them slaves
and forced them to toil with
such foolishness.
Then came a snap on Lake Le
Barge, when the cold of outer
space smote the tip of the planet,
and the force ranged sixty and
odd degrees below zero. Here,
labouring with open mouth that
he might breathe more freely,
he chilled his lungs, and for
the rest of the trip he was troubled
with a dry, hacking cough, especially
irritable in smoke of camp or
under stress of undue exertion.
On the Thirty Mile river he found
much open water, spanned by precarious
ice bridges and fringed with
narrow rim ice, tricky and uncertain.
The rim ice was impossible to
reckon on, and he dared it without
reckoning, falling back on his
revolver when his drivers demurred.
But on the ice bridges, covered
with snow though they were, precautions
could be taken. These they crossed
on their snowshoes, with long
poles, held crosswise in their
hands, to which to cling in case
of accident. Once over, the dogs
were called to follow. And on
such a bridge, where the absence
of the centre ice was masked
by the snow, one of the Indians
met his end. He went through
as quickly and neatly as a knife
through thin cream, and the current
swept him from view down under
the stream ice.
That night his mate fled away
through the pale moonlight, Rasmunsen
futilely puncturing the silence
with his revolver--a thing that
he handled with more celerity
than cleverness. Thirty-six hours
later the Indian made a police
camp on the Big Salmon.
"Um--um--um funny mans--what
you call?--top um head all loose," the
interpreter explained to the
puzzled captain. "Eh? Yep, clazy,
much clazy mans. Eggs, eggs,
all a time eggs--savvy? Come
bime- by."
It was several days before
Rasmunsen arrived, the three
sleds lashed together, and all
the dogs in a single team. It
was awkward, and where the going
was bad he was compelled to back-trip
it sled by sled, though he managed
most of the time, through herculean
efforts, to bring all along on
the one haul. He did not seem
moved when the captain of police
told him his man was hitting
the high places for Dawson, and
was by that time, probably, half-
way between Selkirk and Stewart.
Nor did he appear interested
when informed that the police
had broken the trail as far as
Pelly; for he had attained to
a fatalistic acceptance of all
natural dispensations, good or
ill. But when they told him that
Dawson was in the bitter clutch
of famine, he smiled, threw the
harness on his dogs, and pulled
out.
But it was at his next halt
that the mystery of the smoke
was explained. With the word
at Big Salmon that the trail
was broken to Pelly, there was
no longer any need for the smoke
wreath to linger in his wake;
and Rasmunsen, crouching over
lonely fire, saw a motley string
of sleds go by. First came the
courier and the half-breed who
had hauled him out from Bennett;
then mail-carriers for Circle
City, two sleds of them, and
a mixed following of ingoing
Klondikers. Dogs and men were
fresh and fat, while Rasmunsen
and his brutes were jaded and
worn down to the skin and bone.
They of the smoke wreath had
travelled one day in three, resting
and reserving their strength
for the dash to come when broken
trail was met with; while each
day he had plunged and floundered
forward, breaking the spirit
of his dogs and robbing them
of their mettle.
As for himself, he was unbreakable.
They thanked him kindly for his
efforts in their behalf, those
fat, fresh men,--thanked him
kindly, with broad grins and
ribald laughter; and now, when
he understood, he made no answer.
Nor did he cherish silent bitterness.
It was immaterial. The idea--the
fact behind the idea--was not
changed. Here he was and his
thousand dozen; there was Dawson;
the problem was unaltered.
At the Little Salmon, being
short of dog food, the dogs got
into his grub, and from there
to Selkirk he lived on beans--coarse,
brown beans, big beans, grossly
nutritive, which griped his stomach
and doubled him up at two-hour
intervals. But the Factor at
Selkirk had a notice on the door
of the Post to the effect that
no steamer had been up the Yukon
for two years, and in consequence
grub was beyond price. He offered
to swap flour, however, at the
rate of a cupful of each egg,
but Rasmunsen shook his head
and hit the trail. Below the
Post he managed to buy frozen
horse hide for the dogs, the
horses having been slain by the
Chilkat cattle men, and the scraps
and offal preserved by the Indians.
He tackled the hide himself,
but the hair worked into the
bean sores of his mouth, and
was beyond endurance.
Here at Selkirk
he met the forerunners of the
hungry exodus
of Dawson, and from there on
they crept over the trail, a
dismal throng. "No grub!" was
the song they sang. "No grub,
and had to go." "Everybody holding
candles for a rise in the spring." "Flour
dollar 'n a half a pound, and
no sellers."
"Eggs?" one of them answered. "Dollar
apiece, but there ain't none."
Rasmunsen made
a rapid calculation. "Twelve
thousand dollars," he said aloud.
"Hey?" the
man asked.
"Nothing," he
answered, and MUSHED the dogs
along.
When he arrived at Stewart
River, seventy from Dawson, five
of his dogs were gone, and the
remainder were falling in the
traces. He, also, was in the
traces, hauling with what little
strength was left in him. Even
then he was barely crawling along
ten miles a day. His cheek-bones
and nose, frost-bitten again
and again, were turned bloody-black
and hideous. The thumb, which
was separated from the fingers
by the gee-pole, had likewise
been nipped and gave him great
pain. The monstrous moccasin
still incased his foot, and strange
pains were beginning to rack
the leg. At Sixty Mile, the last
beans, which he had been rationing
for some time, were finished;
yet he steadfastly refused to
touch the eggs. He could not
reconcile his mind to the legitimacy
of it, and staggered and fell
along the way to Indian River.
Here a fresh-killed moose and
an open-handed old-timer gave
him and his dogs new strength,
and at Ainslie's he felt repaid
for it all when a stampede, ripe
from Dawson in five hours, was
sure he could get a dollar and
a quarter for every egg he possessed.
He came up the steep bank by
the Dawson barracks with fluttering
heart and shaking knees. The
dogs were so weak that he was
forced to rest them, and, waiting,
he leaned limply against the
gee-pole. A man, an eminently
decorous-looking man, came sauntering
by in a great bearskin coat.
He glanced at Rasmunsen curiously,
then stopped and ran a speculative
eye over the dogs and the three
lashed sleds.
"What you got?" he
asked.
"Eggs," Rasmunsen
answered huskily, hardly able
to pitch
his voice above a whisper.
"Eggs! Whoopee! Whoopee!" He
sprang up into the air, gyrated
madly, and finished with half-a-dozen
war steps. "You don't say-- all
of 'em?"
"All of 'em."
"Say, you must be the Egg Man." He
walked around and viewed Rasmunsen
from the other side. "Come, now,
ain't you the Egg Man?"
Rasmunsen didn't know, but
supposed he was, and the man
sobered down a bit.
"What d'ye expect to get for
'em?" he asked cautiously.
Rasmunsen became
audacious. "Dollar
'n a half," he said.
"Done!" the man came back promptly. "Gimme
a dozen."
"I--I mean a dollar 'n a half
apiece," Rasmunsen hesitatingly
explained.
"Sure. I heard
you. Make it two dozen. Here's
the dust."
The man pulled
out a healthy gold sack the
size of a small
sausage and knocked it negligently
against the gee-pole. Rasmunsen
felt a strange trembling in the
pit of his stomach, a tickling
of the nostrils, and an almost
overwhelming desire to sit down
and cry. But a curious, wide-eyed
crowd was beginning to collect,
and man after man was calling
out for eggs. He was without
scales, but the man with the
bearskin coat fetched a pair
and obligingly weighed in the
dust while Rasmunsen passed out
the goods. Soon there was a pushing
and shoving and shouldering,
and a great clamour. Everybody
wanted to buy and to be served
first. And as the excitement
grew, Rasmunsen cooled down.
This would never do. There must
be something behind the fact
of their buying so eagerly. It
would be wiser if he rested first
and sized up the market. Perhaps
eggs were worth two dollars apiece.
Anyway, whenever he wished to
sell, he was sure of a dollar
and a half. "Stop!" he cried,
when a couple of hundred had
been sold. "No more now. I'm
played out. I've got to get a
cabin, and then you can come
and see me."
A groan went up at this, but
the man with the bearskin coat
approved. Twenty-four of the
frozen eggs went rattling in
his capacious pockets, and he
didn't care whether the rest
of the town ate or not. Besides,
he could see Rasmunsen was on
his last legs.
"There's a cabin right around
the second corner from the Monte
Carlo," he told him--"the one
with the sody-bottle window.
It ain't mine, but I've got charge
of it. Rents for ten a day and
cheap for the money. You move
right in, and I'll see you later.
Don't forget the sody-bottle
window."
"Tra-la-loo!" he called back
a moment later. "I'm goin' up
the hill to eat eggs and dream
of home."
On his way
to the cabin, Rasmunsen recollected
he was hungry and
bought a small supply of provisions
at the N. A. T. & T. store--
also a beefsteak at the butcher
shop and dried salmon for the
dogs. He found the cabin without
difficulty, and left the dogs
in the harness while he started
the fire and got the coffee under
way.
A dollar 'n
a half apiece--one thousand
dozen--eighteen thousand
dollars!" he kept muttering it
to himself, over and over, as
he went about his work.
As he flopped the steak into
the frying-pan the door opened.
He turned. It was the man with
the bearskin coat. He seemed
to come in with determination,
as though bound on some explicit
errand, but as he looked at Rasmunsen
an expression of perplexity came
into his face.
"I say--now I say--" he
began, then halted.
Rasmunsen wondered if he wanted
the rent.
"I say, damn
it, you know, them eggs is
bad."
Rasmunsen staggered. He felt
as though some one had struck
him an astounding blow between
the eyes. The walls of the cabin
reeled and tilted up. He put
out his hand to steady himself
and rested it on the stove. The
sharp pain and the smell of the
burning flesh brought him back
to himself.
"I see," he said slowly, fumbling
in his pocket for the sack. "You
want your money back."
"It ain't the money," the man
said, "but hain't you got any
eggs-- good?"
Rasmunsen shook
his head. "You'd
better take the money."
But the man
refused and backed away. "I'll come back," he said, "when
you've taken stock, and get what's
comin'."
Rasmunsen rolled the chopping-block
into the cabin and carried in
the eggs. He went about it quite
calmly. He took up the hand-axe,
and, one by one, chopped the
eggs in half. These halves he
examined carefully and let fall
to the floor. At first he sampled
from the different cases, then
deliberately emptied one case
at a time. The heap on the floor
grew larger. The coffee boiled
over and the smoke of the burning
beefsteak filled the cabin. He
chopped steadfastly and monotonously
till the last case was finished.
Somebody knocked at the door,
knocked again, and let himself
in.
"What a mess!" he
remarked, as he paused and
surveyed the
scene.
The severed eggs were beginning
to thaw in the heat of the stove,
and a miserable odour was growing
stronger.
"Must a-happened on the steamer," he
suggested.
Rasmunsen looked at him long
and blankly.
"I'm Murray, Big Jim Murray,
everybody knows me," the man
volunteered. "I'm just hearin'
your eggs is rotten, and I'm
offerin' you two hundred for
the batch. They ain't good as
salmon, but still they're fair
scoffin's for dogs."
Rasmunsen seemed
turned to stone. He did not
move. "You
go to hell," he said passionlessly.
"Now just consider.
I pride myself it's a decent
price for
a mess like that, and it's better
'n nothin'. Two hundred. What
you say?"
"You go to hell," Rasmunsen
repeated softly, "and get out
of here."
Murray gaped with a great awe,
then went out carefully, backward,
with his eyes fixed an the other's
face.
Rasmunsen followed him out
and turned the dogs loose. He
threw them all the salmon he
had bought, and coiled a sled-lashing
up in his hand. Then he re-entered
the cabin and drew the latch
in after him. The smoke from
the cindered steak made his eyes
smart. He stood on the bunk,
passed the lashing over the ridge-pole,
and measured the swing-off with
his eye. It did not seem to satisfy,
for he put the stool on the bunk
and climbed upon the stool. He
drove a noose in the end of the
lashing and slipped his head
through. The other end he made
fast. Then he kicked the stool
out from under.
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