With the assurance of the crowd that they had caught him with the goods on him, in the shape of the two fake locations, a committee was formed and the rough organization of the Tra-Lee Town-Site Company effected.  Scorning the proposal of delivering the shares next day in Dawson, and scorning it because of the objection that the portion of Dawson that had not engaged in the stampede would ring in for shares, the committee, by a fire on the ice at the foot of the slide, issued a receipt to each stampeder in return for ten dollars in dust duly weighed on two dozen gold-scales which were obtained from Dawson.

By twilight the work was accomplished and Tra-Lee was deserted, save for Smoke and Shorty, who ate supper in the cabin and chuckled at the list of shareholders, four thousand eight hundred and seventy-four strong, and at the gold-sacks, which they knew contained approximately forty-eight thousand seven hundred and forty dollars.

“But you ain’t swung it yet,” Shorty objected.

“He’ll be here,” Smoke asserted with conviction.  “He’s a born gambler, and when Breck whispers the tip to him not even heart disease would stop him.”

Within the hour came a knock at the door, and Wild Water entered, followed by Bill Saltman.  Their eyes swept the cabin eagerly, coming to rest on the windlass elaborately concealed by blankets.

“But suppose I did want to vote twelve hundred shares,” Wild Water was arguing half an hour later.  “With the other five thousand sold to-day it’d make only sixty-two hundred shares.  That’d leave you and Shorty with sixty-three hundred.  You’d still control.”

“But what d’ you want with all that of a town-site?” Shorty queried.

“You can answer that better ‘n me,” Wild Water replied.  “An’ between you an’ me,” his gaze drifted over the blanket-draped windlass, “it’s a pretty good-looking town-site.”

“But Bill wants some,” Smoke said grudgingly, “and we simply won’t part with more than five hundred shares.”

“How much you got to invest?” Wild Water asked Saltman.

“Oh, say five thousand.  It was all I could scare up.”

“Wild Water,” Smoke went on, in the same grudging, complaining voice, “if I didn’t know you so well, I wouldn’t sell you a single besotted share.  And, anyway, Shorty and I won’t part with more than five hundred, and they’ll cost you fifty dollars apiece.  That’s the last word, and if you don’t like it, good-night.  Bill can take a hundred and you can have the other four hundred.”

Next day Dawson began its laugh.  It started early in the morning, just after daylight, when Smoke went to the bulletin-board outside the A. C. Company store and tacked up a notice.  Men gathered and were reading and snickering over his shoulder ere he had driven the last tack.  Soon the bulletin-board was crowded by hundreds who could not get near enough to read.  Then a reader was appointed by acclamation, and thereafter, throughout the day, many men were acclaimed to read in loud voice the notice Smoke Bellew had nailed up.  And there were numbers of men who stood in the snow and heard it read several times in order to memorize the succulent items that appeared in the following order: