CHAPTER X
THE YUKON
The boys were delighted with the way their visitor ate. “I am ashamed of myself,” he said as he passed his plate a third time, “but everything tastes so good. Especially after a man has been eating his own poorly-cooked grub for a year. We do not do much cooking on the trail. One cannot carry great quantities of food on sleds and make much progress. It’s the curse of the North that one is always possessed of a gnawing hunger without the means of satisfying it. Men seem to thrive under it, though. Few of them carry an extra ounce of flesh on them, but they are as hard as iron. One of them can do as much hard labor in a day as three well-fed chekakos. And while I am talking, son,” addressing Alex, “let me warn you not to pull your gun in this region unless you mean to kill or be killed. Mere bluff does not go in this country without a bad reputation to back it, and sometimes not even then. You’re a pretty fair shot, boy, I noticed that today, but lad, there are old timers who can give a good hair cut at twenty paces without breaking the skin. Better not draw your gun unless you have to. Pluckiness is all right, but it’s suicide to try to stack up against too heavy odds. Don’t think I am trying to lecture,” he added apologetically. “It’s just good advice I got hammered into me when I first hit this country. If you’ll excuse me, I’ll take a look at that pile of magazines and books I see over there. They stack up like a heap of gold dust to me.”
The five of them clustered around, while the Kid handled the books with reverent fingers. He laid a few books and a couple of magazines one side. The boys looked at them with surprise. They consisted of a book on surgery and two law books, which belonged to Clay, whose private ambition was to be a lawyer. Clay glanced at the titles, “Chitty on Pleadings” and “Bishop on Contracts.”
“Gee!” he said. “You’ve chosen some heavy stuff. Why, it took me a year to get all of ‘Chitty on Pleadings’ through my head.”
“Light reading is all right for summer,” said the Kid, “but for winter give me the heavy books like these that keep your mind so busy that you do not think of the long darkness, the great silence, and the everlasting whiteness. Besides, I need that book on surgery. I meet so many injured men on the trail and there isn’t a doctor between Nome and Dawson. As to the law books, well, this is going to be a great country some day, I guess, and the man on the ground who knows the miners as well as the laws will stand a good chance of making good—anyway it will beat traveling the long trail, and I’m for it.”
Case brought out some cigars which they had brought along with them for just some like occasion.
“Take a handful,” he said, hospitably, but the Kid only took one. “I have sorter got used to my old pipe and cut plug,” he apologized. “Say, don’t none of you boys smoke?”
“No,” said Clay, but don’t stop for that. Light up.”
“No,” said the Kid decidedly. “I am not going to stink up this dainty little cabin of yours with stale tobacco fumes. Let’s go up on deck if you don’t mind. It’s the finest hour in the twenty-four, according to my notion.”