“And I hold you every time,” Smoke panted back.  “That’s what I’m here for, just to hold you.  Where do you think Shorty’s getting to all this time?”

Saltman made a wild effort to go clear, and all but succeeded.  Smoke gripped his ankle and threw him in a headlong tumble.  From down the hill came anxious questioning whistles.  Saltman sat up and whistled a shrill answer, and was grappled by Smoke, who rolled him face upward and sat astride his chest, his knees resting on Saltman’s biceps, his hands on Saltman’s shoulders and holding him down.  And in this position the stampeders found them.  Smoke laughed and got up.

“Well, good-night, fellows,” he said, and started down the hill, with sixty exasperated and grimly determined stampeders at his heels.

He turned north past the sawmill and the hospital and took the river trail along the precipitous bluffs at the base of Moosehide Mountain.  Circling the Indian village, he held on to the mouth of Moose Creek, then turned and faced his pursuers.

“You make me tired,” he said, with a good imitation of a snarl.

“Hope we ain’t a-forcin’ you,” Saltman murmured politely.

“Oh, no, not at all,” Smoke snarled with an even better imitation, as he passed among them on the back-trail to Dawson.  Twice he attempted to cross the trailless icejams of the river, still resolutely followed, and both times he gave up and returned to the Dawson shore.  Straight down Main Street he trudged, crossing the ice of Klondike River to Klondike City and again retracing to Dawson.  At eight o’clock, as gray dawn began to show, he led his weary gang to Slavovitch’s restaurant, where tables were at a premium for breakfast.

“Good-night fellows,” he said, as he paid his reckoning.

And again he said good-night, as he took the climb of the hill.  In the clear light of day they did not follow him, contenting themselves with watching him up the hill to his cabin.

For two days Smoke lingered about town, continually under vigilant espionage.  Shorty, with the sled and dogs, had disappeared.  Neither travelers up and down the Yukon, nor from Bonanza, Eldorado, nor the Klondike, had seen him.  Remained only Smoke, who, soon or late, was certain to try to connect with his missing partner; and upon Smoke everybody’s attention was centered.  On the second night he did not leave his cabin, putting out the lamp at nine in the evening and setting the alarm for two next morning.  The watch outside heard the alarm go off, so that when, half an hour later, he emerged from the cabin, he found waiting for him a band, not of sixty men, but of at least three hundred.  A flaming aurora borealis lighted the scene, and, thus hugely escorted, he walked down to town and entered the Elkhorn.  The place was immediately packed and jammed by an anxious and irritated multitude that bought drinks, and for four weary hours watched Smoke play cribbage with his old friend Breck.  Shortly after six in the morning, with an expression on his face of commingled hatred and gloom, seeing no one, recognizing no one, Smoke left the Elkhorn and went up Main Street, behind him the three hundred, formed in disorderly ranks, chanting:  “Hay-foot!  Straw-foot!  Hep!  Hep!  Hep!”