“Good-night, fellows,” he said bitterly, at the edge of the Yukon bank where the winter trail dipped down.  “I’m going to get breakfast and then go to bed.”

The three hundred shouted that they were with him, and followed him out upon the frozen river on the direct path he took for Tra-Lee.  At seven in the morning he led his stampeding cohort up the zigzag trail, across the face of the slide, that led to Dwight Sanderson’s cabin.  The light of a candle showed through the parchment-paper window, and smoke curled from the chimney.  Shorty threw open the door.

“Come on in, Smoke,” he greeted.  “Breakfast’s ready.  Who-all are your friends?”

Smoke turned about on the threshold.  “Well, good-night, you fellows.  Hope you enjoyed your pasear!”

“Hold on a moment, Smoke,” Bill Saltman cried, his voice keen with disappointment.  “Want to talk with you a moment.”

“Fire away,” Smoke answered genially.

“What’d you pay old Sanderson twenty-five thousan’ for?  Will you answer that?”

“Bill, you give me a pain,” was Smoke’s reply.  “I came over here for a country residence, so to say, and here are you and a gang trying to cross-examine me when I’m looking for peace an’ quietness an’ breakfast.  What’s a country residence good for, except for peace and quietness?”

“You ain’t answered the question,” Bill Saltman came back with rigid logic.

“And I’m not going to, Bill.  That affair is peculiarly a personal affair between Dwight Sanderson and me.  Any other question?”

“How about that crowbar an’ steel cable then, what you had on your sled the other night?”

“It’s none of your blessed and ruddy business, Bill.  Though if Shorty here wants to tell you about it, he can.”

“Sure!” Shorty cried, springing eagerly into the breach.  His mouth opened, then he faltered and turned to his partner.  “Smoke, confidentially, just between you an’ me, I don’t think it is any of their darn business.  Come on in.  The life’s gettin’ boiled outa that coffee.”

The door closed and the three hundred sagged into forlorn and grumbling groups.

“Say, Saltman,” one man said, “I thought you was goin’ to lead us to it.”

“Not on your life,” Saltman answered crustily.  “I said Smoke would lead us to it.”

“An’ this is it?”

“You know as much about it as me, an’ we all know Smoke’s got something salted down somewheres.  Or else for what did he pay Sanderson the twenty-five thousand?  Not for this mangy town-site, that’s sure an’ certain.”

A chorus of cries affirmed Saltman’s judgment.

“Well, what are we goin’ to do now?” someone queried dolefully.

“Me for one for breakfast,” Wild Water Charley said cheerfully.  “You led us up a blind alley this time, Bill.”

“I tell you I didn’t,” Saltman objected.  “Smoke led us.  An’ just the same, what about them twenty-five thousand?”