“But to be getting along.  She was plighted to Dave, and Dave was coming up on the first steamboat to get her—­that was the summer of ’98, and the first steamboat was to be expected the middle of June.  And Flush of Gold was afraid to throw Dave down and face him afterwards.  It was all planned suddenly.  The Russian music-player, the Count, was her obedient slave.  She planned it, I know.  I learned as much from old Victor afterwards.  The Count took his orders from her, and caught that first steamboat down.  It was the Golden Rocket.  And so did Flush of Gold catch it.  And so did I. I was going to Circle City, and I was flabbergasted when I found Flush of Gold on board.  I didn’t see her name down on the passenger list.  She was with the Count fellow all the time, happy and smiling, and I noticed that the Count fellow was down on the list as having his wife along.  There it was, state-room, number, and all.  The first I knew that he was married, only I didn’t see anything of the wife . . . unless Flush of Gold was so counted.  I wondered if they’d got married ashore before starting.  There’d been talk about them in Dawson, you see, and bets had been laid that the Count fellow had cut Dave out.

“I talked with the purser.  He didn’t know anything more about it than I did; he didn’t know Flush of Gold, anyway, and besides, he was almost rushed to death.  You know what a Yukon steamboat is, but you can’t guess what the Golden Rocket was when it left Dawson that June of 1898.  She was a hummer.  Being the first steamer out, she carried all the scurvy patients and hospital wrecks.  Then she must have carried a couple of millions of Klondike dust and nuggets, to say nothing of a packed and jammed passenger list, deck passengers galore, and bucks and squaws and dogs without end.  And she was loaded down to the guards with freight and baggage.  There was a mountain of the same on the fore-lower-deck, and each little stop along the way added to it.  I saw the box come aboard at Teelee Portage, and I knew it for what it was, though I little guessed the joker that was in it.  And they piled it on top of everything else on the fore-lower-deck, and they didn’t pile it any too securely either.  The mate expected to come back to it again, and then forgot about it.  I thought at the time that there was something familiar about the big husky dog that climbed over the baggage and freight and lay down next to the box.  And then we passed the Glendale, bound up for Dawson.  As she saluted us, I thought of Dave on board of her and hurrying to Dawson to Flush of Gold.  I turned and looked at her where she stood by the rail.  Her eyes were bright, but she looked a bit frightened by the sight of the other steamer, and she was leaning closely to the Count fellow as for protection.  She needn’t have leaned so safely against him, and I needn’t have been so sure of a disappointed Dave Walsh arriving at Dawson.  For Dave Walsh wasn’t on the