Over on the west where the mountains bulked up so huge and taciturn, the ruby sunset was coloring the summits. Dull, spotless snow-cornices and shining ice-fields gleamed with rosy hues that gradually deepened to rich crimson, as if some Titan hand had poured over them a flood of ancient wine. The glacier tips scintillated like the steel sabre-wall of a cavalry column, and the scraggy hemlocks on the peaks quickened with sapphire glints against their sober green.
Britton watched the magnificent panorama hold its glory for some moments; then all turned shaded and blue in a trice as a sheer rock precipice capped the lens of the sun.
He turned away, dejectedly, toward the north branch, remembering the hint of Franco Lessari, the courier. He crossed South Samson, intercepting scores of men who mushed dog-teams, dragged Yukon sleighs, or bore great loads on their wet backs. They strained in single file up the beaten river-path–low-browed, cruel-looking fellows who might have been thugs and who cursed those that delayed them; eager-faced, unbroken fools who had come in by steamer in the heat of summer, housed themselves warmly in Dawson when the frost fell, and had yet to learn the smiting wrath of a Klondike blizzard; luckless gamesters whom a winning turn never blessed; and shrewd old pioneers, suspicious of everyone, noting everything with keen, wilderness-trained eyes, and pushing on indefatigably to conserve their fall stakings. Along the sinuous river course heaps of boxes and sacks and caches of food marked the journey; overweighting baggage, thrown down to await more convenient handling, blotched the ice with unsightly disorder; discarded trifles, pack rubbish, and the snarl of sleigh and tent ropes littered all the route.
By dark Britton camped on North Samson, four miles away. There, for three days, he burned holes in doubtful-looking gravel, enduring uncomplainingly the manifold discomforts of tent life with the mercury fifty below.
Meanwhile, the influx to the south continued, and, all the explored stream being taken, the overflow reached the northerly branch. Rex watched them come, more motley and dishevelled than ever, unwilling to back-trail to Dawson and yet with a secret dread gnawing at their hearts, the fear of winter's lash whose torment the ache of hunger might assist. He saw them arrive, as bitter and despairing as himself, and with them staggered Franco Lessari, dragging the most meagre of meagre outfits.
Lessari had no sleeping-bag, only blankets. and thin ones at that; he did not carry a tent, depending upon the snow hut dug in the river drifts, and his food was a bag of coarse beans and dried salmon.
"Ah," he cried delightedly, on seeing Britton, sitting between his tent flaps, "you listened at me? But come to-morrow after me. Where I say, you dig!"
He was moving farther up-stream, but Rex called him back.
"Look here," he began, full of commiseration for the pathetic figure plainly in worse circumstances than himself, "you might as well bunk in beside me. There's plenty of room in the tent, and we'll prospect together wherever you say. If you're going to share a good thing with me, I must make some return. Come along! Throw in your packs."
Gratitude showed in the Corsican's brown, harrowed face as he wrestled with his limited English vocabulary in the attempt to thank Britton for the generous offer, of which he reluctantly took advantage.