“Why hadn’t he thought o’ gettin’ off a josh like that?”

To those who listened to the Montana Kid, to the fretted spirits of men eight months imprisoned, the States and her foreign affairs were far away indeed, and as for the other party to the rumoured war—­Spain?  They clutched at school memories of Columbus, Americans finding through him the way to Spain, as through him Spaniards had found the way to America.  So Spain was not merely a State historic!  She was still in the active world.  But what did these things matter?  Boats mattered:  the place where the Klondykers were caught, this Minook, mattered.  And so did the place they wanted to reach—­Dawson mattered most of all.  By the narrowed habit of long months, Dawson was the centre of the universe.

More little boats going down, and still nothing going up.  Men said gloomily: 

“We’re done for!  The fellows who go by the Canadian route will get everything.  The Dawson season will be half over before we’re in the field—­if we ever are!”

The 28th of May!  Still no steamer had come, but the mosquitoes had—­bloodthirsty beyond any the temperate climates know.  It was clear that some catastrophe had befallen the Woodworth boats.  And Nig had been lured away by his quondam master!  No, they had not gone back to the gulch—­that was too easy.  The man had a mind to keep the dog, and, since he was not allowed to buy him, he would do the other thing.

He had not been gone an hour, rumour said—­had taken a scow and provisions, and dropped down the river.  Utterly desperate, the Boy seized his new Nulato gun and somebody else’s canoe.  Without so much as inquiring whose, he shot down the swift current after the dog-thief.  He roared back to the remonstrating Colonel that he didn’t care if an up-river steamer did come while he was gone—­he was goin’ gunnin’.

At the same time he shared the now general opinion that a Lower River boat would reach them first, and he was only going to meet her, meting justice by the way.

He had gone safely more than ten miles down, when suddenly, as he was passing an island, he stood up in his boat, balanced himself, and cocked his gun.

Down there, on the left, a man was standing knee-deep in the water, trying to free his boat from a fallen tree; a Siwash dog watched him from the bank.

The Boy whistled.  The dog threw up his nose, yapped and whined.  The man had turned sharply, saw his enemy and the levelled gun.  He jumped into the boat, but she was filling while he bailed; the dog ran along the island, howling fit to raise the dead.  When he was a little above the Boy’s boat he plunged into the river.  Nig was a good swimmer, but the current here would tax the best.  The Boy found himself so occupied with saving Nig from a watery grave, while he kept the canoe from capsizing, that he forgot all about the thief till a turn in the river shut him out of sight.