Rouletta studied the speaker silently for a moment. "I know." She nodded her complete understanding of his type. "Well, I'm not going to let you do that any more."
"I don' hurt nobody," he protested. "I sing plenty song an' fight li'l bit. A man mus' got some fun."
"Won't you promise—for my sake?"
'Poleon gave in after some hesitation; reluctantly he agreed. "Eh bien! Mos' anyt'ing I promise for you, ma soeur. But—she's goin' be mighty poor trip for me. S'pose mebbe I forget dose promise?"
"I sha'n't let you. I've seen too much drinking—gambling. I'll hold you to your pledge."
Again the man smiled; there was a light of warm affection in his eyes. "By Gar! It's nice t'ing to have sister w'at care for you. When we goin' start for Dawson, eh?"
"To-morrow."
CHAPTER XIX
Every new and prosperous mining-camp has an Arabian Nights atmosphere, characteristic, peculiar, indescribable. Especially noticeable was this atmosphere in the early Arctic camps, made up as they were of men who knew little about mining, rather less about frontier ways, and next to nothing about the country in which they found themselves. These men had built fabulous hopes, they dwelt in illusion, they put faith in the thinnest of shadows. Now the most practical miner is not a conservative person; he is erratic, credulous, and extravagant; reasonless optimism is at once his blessing and his curse. Nevertheless, the "old-timers" of the Yukon were moderate indeed as compared with the adventurous holiday-seekers who swarmed in upon their tracks. Being none too well balanced themselves, it was only natural that the exuberance of these new arrivals should prove infectious and that a sort of general auto-intoxication should result. That is precisely what happened at Dawson. Men lost all caution, all common sense; they lived in a land of rosy imaginings; hard-bought lessons of experience were forgotten; reality disappeared; fancy took wing and left fact behind; expectations were capitalized and no exaggeration was too wild to challenge acceptance. It became a City of Frenzy.
It was all very fine for an ardent youth like Pierce Phillips; it set him ablaze, stirring a fever in his blood. Having won thus far, he made the natural mistake of believing that the race was his; so he wasted little time in the town, but very soon took to the hills, there to make his fortune and be done with it.