Though hope was lessened in immense proportion, still Britton staked with his fellows, only to have his ardor dampened still more. The bedrock of his claim was as clean of yellow grains as a well-swept floor, and while his neighbors struck pay-gravel of moderate richness, a curse of bad luck blanked his own efforts.
Twice more he did the same thing, once on Admiralty Island and again at Glacier Bay below Mount Crillon. Each time he reported his ill-success to Jim Laurance by letters which he sent with in-going steamers to Dyea, whence they were borne onward over Chilcoot by the Dawson mail-carriers. And Laurance, deprived of the satisfaction of replying on account of Britton's itinerancy, sat in his road-house at Indian River and waited for the Englishman to come to him. He held as a truism his own saying that the Dawson Trail knew every leg in the Yukon at some time or other, and he did not doubt for an instant that Britton's legs would presently appear, straining through the weary miles like the countless pairs of limbs he had seen stamping over the route which led to the Mecca of the gold-lands.
Having wasted the summer months and a great part of his money in three futile stampedes, Britton found himself upon the Dyea beach at the approach of winter, with another ignis fatuus luring him on the inward trail. A tremendous rush was on to Forty Forks, east of Lake Marsh, where, it was said, a prospector had kicked over glistening nuggets with the soles of his hobnailed cruisers. The wildest reports of wealth were circulating, as usual, and men went forward in mad haste to locate on the creek before the white breath of winter should blot out the face of the land.
Britton, grown wary through bitter experience, cut the reports down to a sounder basis of common sense, sifted out apparent exaggerations and discrepancies, and decided that Forty Forks was at least worth trying for, although, when he remembered three successive defeats, he misdoubted the issue.
Dyea was in a ferment. Boat-loads of passengers and baggage crowded the beach and camp, and this tangled rabble resolved itself into a perpetual stream of in-going Klondikers heading over the pass to take advantage of the yet open waterway from Linderman.
The tang of first frost was in the gray morning air as Britton pushed along the rough, bouldered wagon-road which runs up the Dyea Valley. Hundreds went, like him, on foot, while those blessed with a full money-belt procured what teamsters' wagons were to be had and lashed ahead in frantic haste that soon brought Canyon City in sight. From there to Sheep Camp the travel was more congested; the weaker men already began to lag; the first strain of the race told on the physically unfit.
All the way on to the Scales Britton passed faltering fellows, singly or in groups of twos and threes. They cursed him in a despairing way for his stalwart legs and sturdy back, and he came to recognize that here at last was a country where they measured a man according to his manliness, uninfluenced by extraneous attributes.
Where the trail ascended Chilcoot, the footing grew worse, and a mighty climb confronted those who would cross the pass. Britton's strength here stood him in good stead, for in addition to the arduous toil of the ascent there arose the handicap of a bitterly cold wind which began to filter through the mountains, carrying ominous snow-flurries. The icy blast numbed the climbers' muscles and sapped their energies, and as if conscious of its power, the northland loosed its lungs and blew a brawling storm down from the higher plateaus.
Minute by minute the shrieking wind increased in velocity, whirling sleet and snow in the faces of the toiling men, till their persons were encrusted, and the mountain path grew white and obscure. A gold-seeker slipped upon a rock ahead of Britton and rolled back against his legs. Rex pulled him up and turned him round. "Say, old friend, what do you call this?" he gasped.
"Holy road to Nome!" blasphemed the other, rubbing his bruised limbs. "Don't you know a blizzard when you meet one? Keep your mouth shut in this cold, or you won't make the pass."