“Soon as ever the ground froze we began to sink.  In those days steam thawers wasn’t dreamed of, so we slid wood down from the hills, and burned the ground with fires.  It’s slow work, and we didn’t catch bed-rock till December, but when we did we struck it right.  Four feet of ten-cent dirt was what she averaged.  Big?  Well, I wonder!  It near drove Morrow crazy.

“‘Billy, old boy, this means I’ll see her next summer!’

“Whenever he mentioned her name, he spoke like a man in church or out of breath.  Somehow it made me feel like takin’ off my cap—­forty below at that, and my ears freeze terrible willing since that winter on the Porcupine.

“That evening, when I wasn’t looking, he sneaked the locket out of his shirt and stared at it, famished.  Then he kissed it, if you might rehabilitate such a scandalous, hold-fast-for-the-corner performance by that name.

“‘I must let her know right away,’ says he.  ‘How can I do it?’

“‘We can hire a messenger, and send him to Dawson,’ says I.  ’Everybody in camp will pay five dollars a letter, and he can bring back the outside mail.  They have monthly service from there to the coast.  He’ll make the trip in ninety days, so you’ll get news from home by the first of March.  Windy Jim will go.  He’d leave a good job and a warm camp any time to hit the trail.  Just hitch up the dogs, crack a whip, and yell ‘Mush on!’ and he’ll get the snow-shoe itch, and water at the mouth for hardship.’

“Not being house-broke and tame myself, I ain’t authority on the joys of getting mail from home, but, next to it, I judge, comes writing to your family.  Anyhow, the boy shined up like new money, and there was from one to four million pages in his hurried note.  I don’t mean to say that he was grouchy at any time.  No, sir!  He was the nickel-plated sunbeam of the whole creek.  Why, I’ve knowed him to do the cooking for two weeks at a stretch, and never kick—­and wash the dishes, too,—­which last, as anybody knows, is crucifyin’er than that smelter test of the three Jews in the Scripture.  Underneath all of his sunshine, though, I saw hints of an awful, aching, devilish, starvation.  It made me near hate the woman that caused it.

“He was a wise one, too.  I’ve seen him stirring dog-feed with one hand and spouting ‘Gray’s Elegy’ with the other.  I picked up a heap of knowledge from him, for he had American history pat.  One story I liked particular was concerning the origin of placer mining in this country, about a Greaser, Jason Somebody, who got the gold fever and grub-staked a mob he called the Augerknots—­carpenters, I judge, from the mess they made of it.  They chartered a schooner and prospected along Asy Miner, wherever that is.  I never seen any boys from there, but the formation was wrong, like Texas, probably, ’cause they sort of drifted into the sheep business.  Of course, that was a long ways back, before the ’49 rush, but the way he told it was great.