He opened a safe, already crammed with gold dust and bills, added the contents of the poke, entered the name and times in a large book and filed the letter away.
Men were already working on the ice. In the center of the river a tripod had been erected. Just below it a wire had been strung across the river. On the town side the wire was connected to a clock as well as a siren. When the ice moved the tripod was carried against the wire. The clock registered the exact time and the scream of the siren proclaimed the ice was going. Then the camp went mad.
The last of the entries arrived that day. The contest was now in the lap of Mother Nature.
Con Welch’s safe was closed and locked until the great day when the winner appeared to collect. Robbery? The thought never occurred to any one in camp. There hadn’t been a theft in years. Escape was too difficult in a land where all movements of humanity must of necessity converge at the neck of the bottle—the steamers connecting the country with the outside world.
No telegraph line reached the camp, and yet, by a curiously circuitous method the miners learned that the ice was beginning to break far up the river. White Horse sent word to Vancouver and a Vancouver radio station broadcasted the news. A local set picked it up. The camp waited. A day or two; perhaps only a matter of hours, and the question would be settled.
A low boom startled Con Welch. He opened his eyes and listened.
“There goes the ice!” he cried, and rushed to the window. The tripod had not moved. He rubbed his eyes and waited. “Must have been dreaming. That sure sounded like ice breaking!”
He returned to the warmth of his blankets and dozed off. At six o’clock his telephone rang. A voice came crisply over the wire:
“Con, this is Kenmore speaking. How much money did you have in that safe?”
“Roughly, twenty-five thousand dollars. Why?”