“Well, Mr. Kid,” he said, as he took his place at the table. “How did you leave Mr. and Mrs. Morton and the Bonnie Annie Laurie?”
The red mounted to the Kid’s face as he answered enthusiastically: “Fine and dandy. Those three innocents hit the right idea after all. There was plenty of eating places in Dawson but they didn’t set out the kind of grub that mother used to make, and that’s where the old lady shined. Then the old gentleman was a pretty shrewd buyer and he laid in his supplies before prices reached clean up to the sky, although he had to pay a pretty stiff price at that.
The old lady’s cooking, and the reasonable prices, and the very sight of that little girl tripping in and out amongst the tables, caught the crowd. The chekakos went pretty nigh broke buying grub that tasted like home, and many an old sour-dough is in a fair way of getting gout after all his years of eating just pork and beans. When the scurvy broke out they had about all the potatoes in town. They could have got anywhere from $1.00 to $10.00 apiece for them, but the old lady wouldn’t listen to anything like that. ‘They only cost us 10c apiece,’ she argued, ‘and it ain’t Christian-like to ask more in the time of sickness and suffering, and the poor can have ’em for nothing.’ So the old-timers formed a sort of bread line, as you might call it, and every day every man, woman and child in Dawson was free to march down that line and get his or her bit of potato whether they had ten cents or not. I reckon, pretty near the whole of Dawson would have been wiped out by the scurvy this winter but for the Mortons—and Dawson knows it. Those old people will make a fortune if they keep at the business.” The Kid paused and the red again mounted into his face. “I might as well tell you now, because you little cusses will pry it out of me sooner or later,” he said, in happy embarrassment. “That little girl and I are going to be married as soon as I make my stake, and I’ve got a hunch that that time is not far off.”
Clay grinned. “Why, we knew that long ago,” he said.
They congratulated the Kid until his face shone with happiness.
“I’ve got a favor to ask of you,” he said, when at last they were through. “It’s comin’ on cold tonight or I’m no judge of Alaska weather. There’s no special reason for my getting down to St. Michael’s before the first steamer comes in, and it’s a long trail back to Dawson, so, if you boys don’t mind, I’ll camp with you until it’s time to start for St. Michael’s.”
The boys greeted this announcement with shouts of delight, for they could think of no more welcome visitor than the Yukon Kid.
It was as the Kid had prophesied, the morning showed the thermometer at 70 degrees below zero, where it hung steadily for a full week, before the end of which time the Kid had difficulty in keeping the now active invalids indoors. They wanted to be out in the open air after their long, close confinement, and with their growing strength, came the desire for activity.
“Don’t try it outside yet,” he advised. “If you do you’ll regret it. Seventy degrees below zero isn’t to be fooled with even by old timers. With kids weak as you are yet, it would mean death. That degree of cold would frost your lungs in ten minutes. Why, even the Indians rarely travel when it gets below 40 degrees. Be patient, boys, this cold weather is not going to last forever. It will get milder soon. In fact, boys, it’s not going to be long before spring comes. I’ll bet you boys have lost all track of the days.”
“I guess we have,” agreed Clay. “I can’t be sure of what month it is even. We kept so busy before we were taken sick that we kept no account of days, and then we have been sick a long, long time.”