ran his chanson.

Phillips had seen the fellow several times, and the circumstances of their first encounter had been sufficiently unusual to impress themselves upon his mind.  Pierce had been resting here, at this very spot, when the Canuck had come up into sight, bearing a hundred-pound pack without apparent effort.  Two flour-sacks upon a man’s back was a rare sight on the roof of the Chilkoot.  There were not many who could master that slope with more than one, but this fellow had borne his burden without apparent effort; and what was even more remarkable, what had caused Pierce Phillips to open his eyes in genuine astonishment, was the fact that the man climbed with a pipe in his teeth and smoked it with relish.  On that occasion the Frenchman had not stopped at the crest to breathe, but had merely paused long enough to admire the scene outspread beneath him; then he had swung onward.  Of all the sights young Phillips had beheld in this new land, the vision of that huge, unhurried Canadian, smoking, had impressed him deepest.  It had awakened his keen envy, too, for Pierce was beginning to glory in his own strength.  A few days later they had rested near each other on the Long Lake portage.  That is, Phillips had rested; the Canadian, it seemed, had a habit of pausing when and where the fancy struck him.  His reason for stopping there had been the antics of a peculiarly fearless and impertinent “camp-robber.”  With a crust of bread he had tolled the bird almost within his reach and was accepting its scolding with intense amusement.  Having both teased and made friends with the creature, he finally gave it the crust and resumed his journey.

This was a land where brawn was glorified; the tales told oftenest around the stoves at Sheep Camp had to do with feats of strength or endurance, they were stories of mighty men and mighty packs, of long marches and of grim staying powers.  Already the names of certain “old-timers” like Dinsmore and McDonald and Peterson and Stick Jim had become famous because of some conspicuous exploit.  Dinsmore, according to the legend, had once lugged a hundred and sixty pounds to the Summit; McDonald had bent a horseshoe in his hands; Peterson had lifted the stem-piece out of a poling-boat lodged on the rocks below White Horse; Stick Jim had run down a moose and killed it with his knife.

From what Phillips had seen of this French Canadian it was plain that he, too, was an “old-timer,” one of that Jovian band of supermen who had dared the dark interior and robbed the bars of Forty Mile in the hard days before the El Dorado discovery.  Since this was their first opportunity of exchanging speech, Phillips ventured to address the man.

“I thought I had a load this morning, but I’d hate to swap packs with you,” he said.

The Frenchman flashed him a smile which exposed a row of teeth snow-white against his tan.  “Ho!  You’re stronger as me.  I see you plenty tams biffore.”