"Damned if it ain't Ace-In-The-Hole!" cried the man, in well simulated surprise. "They'll be rollin' 'em high in Dawson tonight!"
Brent laughed, and hurried on. And behind him upon the trail Zinn quickened his pace.
At the outskirts of town the three removed their snowshoes and, ordering Joe Pete to take the outfit to his own shack, Brent and Snowdrift hurried toward the Reeves'.
As they passed up the street Brent noticed that the dark eyes of the girl were busily drinking in the details of the rows upon rows of low frame houses. "At last you are in Dawson," he said, including with
a sweep of the arm the mushroom city that had sprung up in the shadow of Moosehide Mountain, "Does it look like you expected it would? Are you going to like it?"
The girl smiled at the eagerness in his voice: "Yes, dear, I shall love it, because it will be our home. It isn't quite as I expected it to look. The houses all placed side by side, with the streets running between are as I thought they would be, but the houses themselves are different. They are not of logs, or of the thin iron like the warehouse of the new trading company on the Mackenzie, and they are not made of bricks and stones and very tall like the pictures of cities in the books."
Brent laughed: "No, Dawson is just half way between. Since the sawmills came the town has rapidly outgrown the log cabin stage, although there are still plenty of them here, but it has not yet risen to the dignity of brick and stone."
"But the houses of brick and stone will come!" cried the girl, enthusiastically, "And take the place of the houses of wood, and we shall be here to see the building of another great city."
Brent shook his head: "I don't know," he replied, doubtfully, "It all depends on the gravel. I wouldn't care to do much speculating in Dawson real estate right now. The time for that has passed. The next two or three years will tell the story. If I were to do any predicting, I'd say that instead of the birth of a great city, we are going to witness
the lingering death of an overgrown town." He paused and pointed to a small cabin of logs that stood deserted, half buried in snow. "Do you see that shack over there? That's mine. It don't look like much, now. But, I gave five thousand in dust for it when I made my first strike."