“Makes me feel like I’d killed somebody, or had smallpox, the way they watch me an’ seem afraid to speak,” Shorty confessed, when he chanced to meet Smoke in front of the Elkhorn.  “Look at Bill Saltman there acrost the way—­just dyin’ to look, an’ keepin’ his eyes down the street all the time.  Wouldn’t think he’d knowed you an’ me existed, to look at him.  But I bet you the drinks, Smoke, if you an’ me flop around the corner quick, like we was goin’ somewheres, an’ then turn back from around the next corner, that we run into him a-hikin’ hell-bent.”

They tried the trick, and, doubling back around the second corner, encountered Saltman swinging a long trail-stride in pursuit.

“Hello, Bill,” Smoke greeted.  “Which way?”

“Hello.  Just a-strollin’,” Saltman answered, “just a-strollin’.  Weather’s fine, ain’t it?”

“Huh!” Shorty jeered.  “If you call that strollin’, what might you walk real fast at?”

When Shorty fed the dogs that evening, he was keenly conscious that from the encircling darkness a dozen pairs of eyes were boring in upon him.  And when he stick-tied the dogs, instead of letting them forage free through the night, he knew that he had administered another jolt to the nervousness of Dawson.

According to program, Smoke ate supper downtown and then proceeded to enjoy himself.  Wherever he appeared, he was the center of interest, and he purposely made the rounds.  Saloons filled up after his entrance and emptied following upon his departure.  If he bought a stack of chips at a sleepy roulette-table, inside five minutes a dozen players were around him.  He avenged himself, in a small way, on Lucille Arral, by getting up and sauntering out of the Opera House just as she came on to sing her most popular song.  In three minutes two-thirds of her audience had vanished after him.

At one in the morning he walked along an unusually populous Main Street and took the turning that led up the hill to his cabin.  And when he paused on the ascent, he could hear behind him the crunch of moccasins in the snow.

For an hour the cabin was in darkness, then he lighted a candle, and, after a delay sufficient for a man to dress in, he and Shorty opened the door and began harnessing the dogs.  As the light from the cabin flared out upon them and their work, a soft whistle went up from not far away.  This whistle was repeated down the hill.

“Listen to it,” Smoke chuckled.  “They’ve relayed on us and are passing the word down to town.  I’ll bet you there are forty men right now rolling out of their blankets and climbing into their pants.”

“Ain’t folks fools,” Shorty giggled back.  “Say, Smoke, they ain’t nothin’ in hard graft.  A geezer that’d work his hands these days is a—­well, a geezer.  The world’s sure bustin’ full an’ dribblin’ over the edges with fools a-honin’ to be separated from their dust.  An’ before we start down the hill I want to announce, if you’re still agreeable, that I come in half on this deal.”