Returning, he gathered his pots and pans together, packed his grub-box, and rolled up his bed. When the sled was lashed and the complaining dogs harnessed, he returned into the cabin for his mittens.
“Good-by, Tess,” he said, standing at the open door.
She turned on him, struggling for speech but too frantic to word the passion that burned in her.
“Good-by, Tess,” he repeated gently.
“Beast!” she managed to articulate.
She turned and tottered to the bunk, flinging herself face down upon it, sobbing: “You beasts! You beasts!”
John Messner closed the door softly behind him, and, as he started the dogs, looked back at the cabin with a great relief in his face. At the bottom of the bank, beside the water-hole, he halted the sled. He worked the sack of gold out between the lashings and carried it to the water-hole. Already a new skin of ice had formed. This he broke with his fist. Untying the knotted mouth with his teeth, he emptied the contents of the sack into the water. The river was shallow at that point, and two feet beneath the surface he could see the bottom dull-yellow in the fading light. At the sight of it, he spat into the hole.
He started the dogs along the Yukon trail. Whining spiritlessly, they were reluctant to work. Clinging to the gee-pole with his right band and with his left rubbing cheeks and nose, he stumbled over the rope as the dogs swung on a bend.
“Mush-on, you poor, sore-footed brutes!” he cried. “That’s it, mush-on!”