it is.  He takes that di’mon’ watch out of his pocket, glances at it, and goes off smooth as cream, sayin’ ‘Good-night.’  Then he come a grinnin’ over to us.  ‘Jest you go an’ ask the Father o’ the Yukon Pioneers what time it is, will yer?’ An’ I done it.  Well, sir, when he put his hand in his pocket, by Gawd!  I wish y’ could a’ saw McQuestion’s face.  Yes, sir, Butts is brains to his boots.”

“How far out are the diggin’s?”

“What diggin’s?”

“Yours.”

“Oh—­a—­my gulch ain’t fur.”

There was a noise about the door.  Someone bustled in with a torrent of talk, and the pianola was drowned in a pandemonium of shouts and laughter.

“Windy Jim’s reely got back!”

Everybody crowded forward.  Maudie was at the Colonel’s elbow explaining that the little yellow-bearded man with the red nose was the letter-carrier.  He had made a contract early in the winter to go to Dawson and bring down the mail for Minook.  His agreement was to make the round trip and be back by the middle of February.  Since early March the standing gag in the camp had been:  “Well, Windy Jim got in last night.”

The mild jest had grown stale, and the denizens of Minook had given up the hope of ever laying eyes on Windy again, when lo! here he was with twenty-two hundred letters in his sack.  The patrons of the Gold Nugget crowded round him like flies round a lump of sugar, glad to pay a dollar apiece on each letter he handed out.  “And you take all that’s addressed to yer at that price or you get none.”  Every letter there had come over the terrible Pass.  Every one had travelled twelve hundred miles by dog-team, and some had been on the trail seven months.

“Here, Maudie, me dear.”  The postman handed her two letters.  “See how he dotes on yer.”

“Got anything fur—­what’s yer names?” says the mackinaw man, who seemed to have adopted the Colonel and the Boy.

He presented them without embarrassment to “Windy Jim Wilson, of Hog’em Junction, the best trail mail-carrier in the ’nited States.”

Those who had already got letters were gathered in groups under the bracket-lights reading eagerly.  In the midst of the lull of satisfaction or expectancy someone cried out in disgust, and another threw down a letter with a shower of objurgation.

“Guess you got the mate to mine, Bonsor,” said a bystander with a laugh, slowly tearing up the communication he had opened with fingers so eager that they shook.

“You pay a dollar apiece for letters from folks you never heard of, asking you what you think of the country, and whether you’d advise ’em to come out.”

“Huh! don’t I wish they would!”

“It’s all right. They will.”

“And then trust Bonsor to git even.”

Salaman, “the luckiest man in camp,” who had come in from his valuable Little Minook property for the night only, had to pay fifteen dollars for his mail.  When he opened it, he found he had one home letter, written seven months before, eight notes of inquiry, and six advertisements.