But a few days sufficed to wear the novelty off the new wood camp for most of the party. Potts and O'Flynn set out in the opposite direction one morning with a hand-sled, and provisions to last several days. They were sick of bacon and beans, and were "goin' huntin'." No one could deny that a moose or even a grouse—anything in the shape of fresh meat—was sufficiently needed. But Potts and O'Flynn were really sick and sore from their recent slight attack of wood-felling. They were after bigger game, too, as well as grouse, and a few days "off." It had turned just enough colder to glaze the trail and put it in fine condition. They went down the river to the Oklahoma, were generously entertained by Captain Rainey, and learned that, with earlier contracts on his hands, he did not want more wood from them than they had already corded. They returned to the camp without game, but with plenty of whisky, and information that freed them from the yoke of labour, and from the lash of ironic comment. In vain the Colonel urged that the Oklahoma was not the only steamer plying the Yukon, that with the big rush of the coming season the traffic would be enormous, and a wood-pile as good as a gold mine. The cause was lost.
"You won't get us to make galley-slaves of ourselves on the off-chance of selling. Rainey says that wood camps have sprung up like mushrooms all along the river. The price of wood will go down to—"
"All along the river! There isn't one between us and Andreievsky, nor between here and Holy Cross."
But it was no use. The travellers pledged each other in Oklahoma whisky, and making a common cause once more, the original Trio put in a night of it. The Boy and the Colonel turned into their bunks at eleven o'clock. They were roused in the small hours, by Kaviak's frightened crying, and the noise of angry voices.
"You let the kid alone."
"Well, it's mesilf that'll take the liberty o' mintionin' that I ain't goin' to stand furr another minyit an Esquimer's cuttin' down my rations. Sure it's a fool I've been!"
"You can't help that," Mac chopped out.
"Say Mac," said Potts in a drunken voice, "I'm talkin' to you like a friend. You want to get a move on that kid."
"Kaviak's goin' won't make any more difference than a fly's."