“An' I'm plum troddin' on your heels. If you can't do better, let me go ahead and set pace.”
Smoke quickened, and was soon at the rear of the nearest bunch of stampeders.
“Hike along, you, Smoke,” the other urged. “Walk over them unburied dead. This ain't no funeral. Hit the frost like you was goin' somewheres.”
Smoke counted eight men and two women in this party, and before the way across the jam-ice was won, he and Shorty had passed another party twenty strong. Within a few feet of the west bank, the trail swerved to the south, emerging from the jam upon smooth ice. The ice, however, was buried under several feet of fine snow. Through this the sled-trail ran, a narrow ribbon of packed footing barely two feet in width. On either side one sank to his knees and deeper in the snow. The stampeders they overtook were reluctant to give way, and often Smoke and Shorty had to plunge into the deep snow and by supreme efforts flounder past.
Shorty was irrepressible and pessimistic. When the stampeders resented being passed, he retorted in kind.
“What's your hurry?” one of them asked.
“What's yours?” he answered. “A stampede come down from Indian River yesterday afternoon an' beat you to it. They ain't no claims left.”
“That being so, I repeat, what's your hurry?”
“WHO? Me? I ain't no stampeder. I'm workin' for the government. I'm on official business. I'm just traipsin' along to take the census of Squaw Creek.”
To another, who hailed him with: “Where away, little one? Do you really expect to stake a claim?” Shorty answered: