“Damn the trail,” he muttered softly, as he threw off the robes and sat up.  “I’ve run across country, played quarter three seasons hand-running, and hardened myself in all manner of ways; and then I pilgrim it into this God-forsaken land and find myself an effeminate Athenian without the simplest rudiments of manhood!” He hunched up to the fire and rolled a cigarette.  “Oh, I’m not whining.  I can take my medicine all right, all right; but I’m just decently ashamed of myself, that’s all.  Here I am, on top of a dirty thirty miles, as knocked up and stiff and sore as a pink-tea degenerate after a five-mile walk on a country turn-pike.  Bah!  It makes me sick!  Got a match?” “Don’t git the tantrums, youngster.”  Bettles passed over the required fire-stick and waxed patriarchal.  “Ye’ve gotter ‘low some for the breakin’-in.  Sufferin’ cracky! don’t I recollect the first time I hit the trail!  Stiff?  I’ve seen the time it’d take me ten minutes to git my mouth from the water-hole an’ come to my feet—­every jint crackin’ an’ kickin’ fit to kill.  Cramp?  In sech knots it’d take the camp half a day to untangle me.  You’re all right, for a cub, any ye’ve the true sperrit.  Come this day year, you’ll walk all us old bucks into the ground any time.  An’ best in your favor, you hain’t got that streak of fat in your make-up which has sent many a husky man to the bosom of Abraham afore his right and proper time.”

“Streak of fat?”

“Yep.  Comes along of bulk.  ’T ain’t the big men as is the best when it comes to the trail.”

“Never heard of it.”

“Never heered of it, eh?  Well, it’s a dead straight, open-an’-shut fact, an’ no gittin’ round.  Bulk’s all well enough for a mighty big effort, but ‘thout stayin’ powers it ain’t worth a continental whoop; an’ stayin’ powers an’ bulk ain’t runnin’ mates.  Takes the small, wiry fellows when it comes to gittin’ right down an’ hangin’ on like a lean-jowled dog to a bone.  Why, hell’s fire, the big men they ain’t in it!”

“By gar!” broke in Louis Savoy, “dat is no, vot you call, josh!  I know one mans, so vaire beeg like ze buffalo.  Wit him, on ze Sulphur Creek stampede, go one small mans, Lon McFane.  You know dat Lon McFane, dat leetle Irisher wit ze red hair and ze grin.  An’ dey walk an’ walk an’ walk, all ze day long an’ ze night long.  And beeg mans, him become vaire tired, an’ lay down mooch in ze snow.  And leetle mans keek beeg mans, an’ him cry like, vot you call—­ah! vot you call ze kid.  And leetle mans keek an’ keek an’ keek, an’ bime by, long time, long way, keek beeg mans into my cabin.  Tree days ’fore him crawl out my blankets.  Nevaire I see beeg squaw like him.  No nevaire.  Him haf vot you call ze streak of fat.  You bet.”

“But there was Axel Gunderson,” Prince spoke up.  The great Scandinavian, with the tragic events which shadowed his passing, had made a deep mark on the mining engineer.  “He lies up there, somewhere.”  He swept his hand in the vague direction of the mysterious east.