"If you knew more you would kick less. It takes a lot more money to open up quartz mines than we've got or ever may have. But I see what you're after. You want to stay near Skagway and its well warmed barrooms, don't you?" laughed Roberts.
"You go to blazes!"
"No, no, I'm going to Dawson. But first I think we'd better drop this business and pack our supplies from Skagway, don't you?" asked the more sensible man of the two.
"Yes, yes," said Smithson, who was thinking of his whiskey and tobacco in that place, and of his chronic thirst which water from the mountain could not allay.
Before leaving, the new prospect hole was hidden from the view of stragglers. A few tall saplings were felled, which, with foliage still upon them, were pushed over the edge of the cliff with stems downward in order that their leafy tops might rest against the prospected rock and temporarily hide the new discovery. In case anyone happened that way it would appear to them that the saplings had been felled and dropped over the cliff for firewood.
By this time the White Pass trail had grown to be a veritable horror. Men were ill and suffering from hard work and exposure. Animals lay dead at the foot of cliffs, over the edges of which they had slipped or been crowded with packs still strapped upon their sore and bleeding backs. Others lay, stripped of all accoutrements, in the hot sunshine among the buzzing flies, after a broken leg had necessitated a bullet in the head, thus causing stenches to fill the nostrils of the already suffering and oppressed passersby. No one had time to bury animals. If a man fell it was, of course, obligatory to halt from their "packing" long enough to dig a shallow bed among the rocks; but this done, and a handful of granite fragments heaped above his head, the procession moved on as before. No time could be spared for headstone marking; and long after these strugglers of the argonauts on the White Pass Trail were forgotten by all but the participants (who will never to their dying day forget them) these lonely mounds of the fallen men could at intervals have been seen flanked by bleaching bones of defunct animals.
Lonely indeed were these dreary resting places. The scream of the eagle as he easily swung on powerful pinions from cliff to cliff on family errands or to drink at the foot of some rushing cascade was the only dirge that was sung. Ferns swayed gently in shaded nooks, and wild flowers nodded familiarly to each other. Filmy winged bees flitted with bustling movement head foremost into the cups of bluebells beneath skies as azure as they, and in atmosphere as pure as God could make it.
In winter all this was changed. Snow covered the little mounds as well as the whole surrounding region; and intermittently the falling flakes whirled and drifted into ravines and canyons, making them level with the steep mountain-sides; presently melting under the sunshine and beginning a race to the sea.
However, the argonauts hurried on. They were not here to moralize—they had something else to do.
As the two men proceeded, making numerous trips with the freight laden mules between camps, they found, much to their disappointment, that, without assistance, they would not be able to reach Lake Bennett in time to build a boat and make their way into the Klondyke before being overtaken by winter.