The Wheel of Fortune, in the Gold Nugget, was in special demand.  It was a means of trying your luck with satisfactory despatch “between drinks” or between long bouts of staring at the river.  Men stood in shirt-sleeves at their cabin doors in the unwinking sunshine, looking up the valley or down, betting that the “first boat in” would be one of those nearest neighbours, May West or Muckluck, coming up from Woodworth; others as ready to back heavily their opinion that the first blast of the steam whistle would come down on the flood from Circle or from Dawson.

The Colonel had bought and donned a new suit of “store clothes,” and urged on his companion the necessity of at least a whole pair of breeches in honour of his entrance into the Klondyke.  But the Boy’s funds were low and his vanity chastened.  Besides, he had other business on his mind.

After sending several requests for the immediate return of his dog, requests that received no attention, the Boy went out to the gulch to recover him.  Nig’s new master paid up all arrears of wages readily enough, but declined to surrender the dog.  “Oh, no, the ice wasn’t thinkin’ o’ goin’ out yit.”

“I want my dog.”

“You’ll git him sure.”

“I’m glad you understand that much.”

“I’ll bring him up to Rampart in time for the first boat.”

“Where’s my dog?”

No answer.  The Boy whistled.  No Nig.  Dread masked itself in choler.  He jumped on the fellow, forced him down, and hammered him till he cried for mercy.

“Where’s my dog, then?”

“He—­he’s up to Idyho Bar,” whimpered the prostrate one.  And there the
Boy found him, staggering under a pair of saddle-bags, hired out to
Mike O’Reilly for a dollar and a half a day.  Together they returned to
Rampart to watch for the boat.

Certainly the ice was very late breaking up this year.  The men of Rampart stood about in groups in the small hours of the morning of the 16th of May; as usual, smoking, yarning, speculating, inventing elaborate joshes.  Somebody remembered that certain cheechalkos had gone to bed at midnight.  Now this was unprecedented, even impertinent.  If the river is not open by the middle of May, your Sour-dough may go to bed—­only he doesn’t.  Still, he may do as he lists.  But your cheechalko—­why, this is the hour of his initiation.  It was as if a man should yawn at his marriage or refuse to sleep at his funeral.  The offenders were some of those Woodworth fellows, who, with a dozen or so others, had built shacks below “the street” yet well above the river.  At two in the morning Sour-dough Saunders knocked them up.

“The ice is goin’ out!”

In a flash the sleepers stood at the door.

“Only a josh.”  One showed fight.

“Well, it’s true what I’m tellin’ yer,” persisted Saunders seriously:  “the ice is goin’ out, and it’s goin’ soon, and when you’re washed out o’ yer bunks ye needn’t blame me, fur I warned yer.”