THE HUNT-PACK
In hilarious Happy Camp, on the north side of Chilkoot Pass, inboundstampeders traveling laden and outbound packers traveling light,rested by night from the toil of the trail. Foregathered in the SaxonSaloon they relaxed their muscles, their throats and theirpoke-strings.
Motley crowds haunted the bar on one side of the huge canvas room,surrounded the gaming-tables on the other side, clogged the centralspace where, within a circle of chairs, a red-hot stove throbbed likea giant engine and overflowed upon the dancing-floor at the rear.
A haze of smoke invested everything, blurring the oil-lamps swungfrom the ridgepole, and softening the uncouth garments and roughfaces of the men.
In all quarters, except in the immediate vicinity of the tables,where a businesslike quiet reigned, was laughter, song and badinage;was clamor, jest and camaraderie; was open hand, open heart and adevil-take-tomorrow’s-worry atmosphere. Old-timers, hailing fromopposite ends of the earth, called one another friend and swappedharsh experiences, vile tobacco and colossal lies; while chechakos,to whom these seared adventurers were little less than gods,worshiped meekly at their feet, imbibing among other thingsinstruction in the ways and wiles of the land.
And with the noise of the main room of the Saxon at its height, intoit swept like a flood the babel of the dance-hall. Blended music ofviolin and piano stopped. Two-score couples circling the floorwhirled about and made a concentrated rush for refreshments. In ashrieking, giggling, shoving mass they surged forth, the women insatins and pumps, the men in moccasins and mukluks and fur ormackinaw coats, shaking the oil-lamps on the ridge-pole with theirraucous laughter, swirling the haze of the place into strange eddieswith the violence of their charge.
For this was a night of rejoicing. This was Happy Camp! The Titanicclimb of storm-harried Chilkoot was past, and the trend of thegold-trail now led down the mountain and onward by ice-bound lake andriver to desired Dawson. That many who had started up the Pass fromDyea had never crossed the Summit, had drowned in Dyea River, brokentheir necks in the Cañon, got caught near the Scales by shovingglacier or thundering avalanche, or fallen to frost and blizzard uponthe Palisades, was not a thing to be remembered at this hour. Therest were here, the survivors, the fit, the strong, in whom lifeflowed fiercely with its primordial pulse, and they were reveling intriumph and shouting toasts to the trough roof, when the door of theSaxon opened and the frost puffed in a fog-bank into the superheatedroom.
Out of the fog-bank stepped two figures, a man and a woman, freshfrom the trail. Their parkas where they clung tightly over theirbacks and sagged on their hips were rimmed with hoarfrost,advertising body-sweat congealed, and about the close-drawn puckersof their hoods icicles hung like tusks.
Upon the two were the unmistakable signs of the Chilkoot climb. Newrecruits to the ranks of the strong they seemed, and the triumphantarmy in the Saxon acclaimed them with a thunderous cheer.
The man and the woman held their heads over the heat. The icy tusksthawed and fell to sizzle and steam upon the glowing stove-top. Thetwo shoved back the parka hoods and nodded genially to theirwelcomers.
But the moment the newcomers’ faces w