"We've a yarn worth the tellin' ourself!" exclaimed the man called Joe—the man who tried to dissuade Waseche Bill and prevent Connie Morgan from venturing into the unknown. "Ye sh'd o' seen 'em come! Flat on his belly a-top the sled—an' the dogs runnin' low an' true! A bunch of us was watchin' the trail f'r Black Jack Demaree an' the Ragged Falls mail: 'Here he comes!' someone yells, an' way down the river we seen a speck—a speck that grow'd until it was a dog team an' a man. Jeerushelam, but he was a-comin'! 'Twornt no time till he was clost enough to see 'twornt Black Jack. A cold day, it was—reg'lar bitin', nippin' cold—with the wind, an' the sweep o' the river. An' here come the team on the high lope, an' a-whippin' along behind 'em, the lightest loaded outfit man ever seen hauled—jest a man, an' a blanket, an' two tomater cans. Flat, he laid—low to the sweep o' the wind, one arm around the cans, an' the other a-holdin' onto the sled f'r all he was worth. The man was O'Brien, yonder; an' up the bank he shot, fair burnin' the snow, whirled amongst us, an' piled the outfit up ag'in' Big Jim's stockade. The nex' we know'd was a yell from Fiddle Face, here:
"'It's McDougall's dogs!' An' before the Irishman c'd get onto his feet, Fiddle Face was a-top him with a hand at his throat. 'Where's the kid?' he howls in O'Brien's ear, 'Where's Sam Morgan's boy?' Fiddle Face's voice ain't no gentle murmur—when he yells. But the rest of us didn't hear it—us that was ontanglin' the dogs. F'r, in the mix-up, the cover had come off one of them tomater cans, an' there on the snow was nuggets o' gold—jest a-layin' there dull an' yaller, in a heap on the top o' the snow." Joe paused, held a sputtering sulphur match to the bowl of his pipe, and, after a few deep puffs, continued: "Ye know how the sight o' raw gold, that-a-way, gets to ye—when ye've put in the best an' the hardest years o' yer life a-grubbin' an' a-gougin' f'r it? Ye know the feelin' that comes all to onct about yer belt line, an' how yer head feels sort o' light, an' yer face burns, an' ye want to holler, an' laugh, an' cry all to onct? Well, that was us, a-standin' there by the stockade—all but Fiddle Face. Him an' O'Brien was a-wallerin' grip-locked in the snow, an' Fiddle Face was a-hollerin' over an' over ag'in: 'Where's that kid? Where's that kid?' an' all the while a-chokin' of O'Brien so's he couldn't answer. Presen'ly we noticed 'em an' drug 'em apart. An' right then every man jack o' us forgot the gold. F'r, on a sudden, we remembered that little kid—the gameness of him—an' how he'd give us the slip an' took off alone into a country we didn't none o' us dast to go to—way long in the fore part o' the winter. We jerked O'Brien to his feet an' hustled him into the hotel, an' by that time he'd got back his wind, an' he was a-tellin', an' a-beggin' us not to lose no time, but to pack a outfit an' hit f'r a little cabin on the Kandik. 'He's there!' he hollers. 'An' his pardner, too! They're starvin'. I've got the gold to pay f'r the grub—take it! Take it all! Only git back to 'em! I know'd we all couldn't make it, travellin' heavy an' slow with the outfit an' a crippled man to boot.'
"Big Jim Sontag goes out an' scoops up the gold where it laid forgot—an' then he comes back into the room an' walks straight over to where O'Brien was a-standin': 'We'll go!' says Jim, 'an' you'll go, too! An', if there's a cabin, like you say, an' they're there, why you can't spend no gold in Eagle!' Jim steps closter—so clost that his nose stops within two inches of O'Brien's, an' his eyes a-borin' clean through to the back of O'Brien's head: 'But if they ain't there,' he says, low an' quiet like, 'then you don't spend no gold in Eagle, neither—see?' An' then Jim turns to us: 'Who'll go 'long?' he hollers. 'That there boy is Sam Morgan's boy—we all know'd Sam Morgan!' We sure did—an' we like to tore Jim's roof off a-signifyin'. Then, we slung our outfits together an' hit the trail. An' now, boys," Joe rose to his feet and crossed to the bunk where the Irishman sat between Connie and Waseche Bill, "it's up to us to signify onct more." And, for the first time in his life, O'Brien, whose lot in the world had always been an obscure and a lowly one, came to know something of what it meant to have earned the regard of men!
The journey down the Kandik was uneventful, and four days later the reinforced outfit camped at the junction of the lesser river with the mighty Yukon. Late that night the men of the North sat about the camp fire and their talk was of rich strikes, and stampedes, and the unsung deeds of men.
Connie Morgan listened with bated breath to tales of his father. Waseche Bill learned from the lips of the men of Eagle of the boy's escape from the hotel, and of his dash for the Lillimuit that ended, so far as the men who followed were concerned, at the foot of the snow-piled Tatonduk divide. And the men of Eagle learned of the Lillimuit, and the white Indians, and of the death of Carlson, and lastly, of the Ignatook, the steaming creek with its floor of gold.
"An' we-all ah goin' back theah, sometime," concluded Waseche. "Me an' the kid, heah, an' O'Brien, if he'll go—" To their surprise, O'Brien leaped to his feet:
"Ye c'n count me in!" he cried. "Foive days agone no power on earth c'd av dhrug me back into that land av th' cheerless cowld. But, now, 'tis dif'runt, an' if th' sun shoines war-rum enough f'r th' loikes av ye—an' th' b'y, here—phy, ut shoines war-rum enough f'r Pathrick O'Brien—av ut river shoines at all."
"That's what I call a man!" yelled Fiddle Face, and subsided instantly, for Waseche Bill was speaking.
"As I was goin' on to say: with us will be some of the boys from Ten Bow—McDougall, an' Dutch Henery, an' Dick Colton, an' Scotty McCollough, an' Black Jack Demaree from Ragged Falls, an'—well, how about it, boys? The gold is theah, an' me an' the kid, we aim to let ouh frien's in on this heah strike. We'll sho' be proud to have yo'-all jine us." With a loud cheer, the men accepted Waseche's invitation—they had seen O'Brien's gold.
"Jes' keep it undeh yo' hats till the time comes," cautioned Waseche. "We-all will slip yo'-all the wehd, an' we don't want no tinhawns, noah chechakos, noah pikehs along, 'cause the Ignatook stampede is goin' to be a stampede of tillicums!"