Only two of them knew anything about roughing it.  Jimmie O’Flynn of ’Frisco, the Irish-American lawyer, had seen something of frontier life, and fled it, and MacCann, the Nova Scotian schoolmaster, had spent a month in one of the Caribou camps, and on the strength of that, proudly accepted the nickname of “the Miner.”

Colonel George Warren and Morris Burnet, the Boy, had the best outfits; but this fact was held to be more than counter-balanced by the value of the schoolmaster’s experience at Caribou, and by the extraordinary handiness of Potts, the Denver clerk, who had helped to build the shelter on deck for the disabled sick on the voyage up.  This young man with the big mouth and lazy air had been in the office of a bank ever since he left school, and yet, under pressure, he discovered a natural neat-handedness and a manual dexterity justly envied by some of his fellow-pioneers.  His outfit was not more conspicuously meagre than O’Flynn’s, yet the Irishman was held to be the moneyed man of his party.  Just why was never fully developed, but it was always said, “O’Flynn represents capital”; and O’Flynn, whether on that account, or for a subtler and more efficient reason, always got the best of everything that was going without money and without price.

On board ship O’Flynn, with his ready tongue and his golden background—­“representing capital”—­was a leading spirit.  Potts the handy-man was a talker, too, and a good second.  But, once in camp, Mac the Miner was cock of the walk, in those first days, quoted “Caribou,” and ordered everybody about to everybody’s satisfaction.

In a situation like this, the strongest lean on the man who has ever seen “anything like it” before.  It was a comfort that anybody even thought he knew what to do under such new conditions.  So the others looked on with admiration and a pleasant confidence, while Mac boldly cut a hole in the brand-new tent, and instructed Potts how to make a flange out of a tin plate, with which to protect the canvas from the heat of the stove-pipe.  No more cooking now in the bitter open.  Everyone admired Mac’s foresight when he said: 

“We must build rock fireplaces in our cabins, or we’ll find our one little Yukon stove burnt out before the winter is over—­before we have a chance to use it out prospecting.”  And when Mac said they must pool their stores, the Colonel and the Boy agreed as readily as O’Flynn, whose stores consisted of a little bacon, some navy beans, and a demijohn of whisky.  O’Flynn, however, urged that probably every man had a little “mite o’ somethin’” that he had brought specially for himself—­somethin’ his friends had given him, for instance.  There was Potts, now.  They all knew how the future Mrs. Potts had brought a plum-cake down to the steamer, when she came to say good-bye, and made Potts promise he wouldn’t unseal the packet till Christmas.  It wouldn’t do to pool Potts’ cake—­never!  There was the Colonel, the only man that had a sack of coffee.  He wouldn’t listen when they had told him tea was the stuff up here, and—­well, perhaps other fellows didn’t miss coffee as much as a Kentuckian, though he had heard—­Never mind; they wouldn’t pool the coffee.  The Boy had some preserved fruit that he seemed inclined to be a hog about—­