CHAPTER XXVII
THE WOOD-PILE
The Wood-pile was an institution almost as famous with the underworld as Dawson itself. From St. Michael's to Frisco, and up and down the Yukon River, its reputation held. At the mention of its name the pale and sickly faces of the vicious became still paler and more sickly, when they did not flush with angry hatred.
The Wood-pile was the prison, called so because the inmates, given hard labour, worked out their debt to society by sawing wood. In cold winter-weather—the winter of the sub-Arctic, with the thermometer forty degrees below zero!—the process was no joke.
The great majority of the prisoners were United States citizens, in the souls of whom many fourths of July had engendered a contempt for the British uniform. To be herded by a yellow-leg with a rifle, and made to saw wood to keep the oppressor warm, was a circumstance that rankled.
Five Ace Dan—called, for brevity's sake, Five Ace—was on the Wood-pile.
One day Five Ace was taking a hand in a Poker game, and by some mischance one of the other players detected him extracting a card from his sleeve, and charged him with the offence. There was, of course, a row, whereupon Five Ace drew a revolver, and pointed it at his adversary, with the words—adorned with some special expletives,
"If I had you across the line I'd fill you full of holes."
Whereat the man addressed came back with the words, uttered with a leer and a hiss,