"Yes, that's what they say back East; but when you get up town you'll find every second place a saloon with all the hootch you want to drink, or have money to pay for."
"But how do they get the whisky?"
"Oh, that's easy enough. The hootch is consigned through to the Canadian side in bond; but when it is landed here they drill a hole in the barrel and take out the whisky. They refill the barrel with water, and it is packed over the summit."
"But it costs thirty cents a pound to put the water over the summit!"
"That don't matter—with whisky fifty cents a glass over the bar."
"Don't the officers know this is going on?"
"Sure thing they do; but they 'stand in. There is no graft like a whisky graft."
"Stand in" and "graft"!—the two Australians felt they knew the meaning of the terms, but they had yet to grasp how deep the meaning of "standing in" and "grafting," as understood by officialdom in Alaska and the Yukon, could be.
Berwick and his friend ate their pie, and departed to see the sights.
The main street of the town ran due north and south, and was lined with tents and buildings, finished and under construction. The street was devoid of snow, except in patches here and there; the ever-persistent wind from the north having generally swept the gravel clean. Sleighs, drawn by dogs or horses, passed smoothly over the ice, but shrieked in protest against the stone. Dogs and horses seemed everywhere in that rush of fifty thousand men. No man could enter the Yukon without a year's provisions, which meant that he must transport at least a thousand pounds in every case.