At half-past eight, when daylight had grown strong, Shorty carefully opened the door and peered out.  “Shucks,” he exclaimed.  “They-all’s hiked back to Dawson.  I thought they was goin’ to camp here.”

“Don’t worry; they’ll come sneaking back,” Smoke reassured him.  “If I don’t miss my guess you’ll see half Dawson over here before we’re done with it.  Now jump in and lend me a hand.  We’ve got work to do.”

“Aw, for Heaven’s sake put me on,” Shorty complained, when, at the end of an hour, he surveyed the result of their toil—­a windlass in the corner of the cabin, with an endless rope that ran around double logrollers.

Smoke turned it with a minimum of effort, and the rope slipped and creaked.  “Now, Shorty, you go outside and tell me what it sounds like.”

Shorty, listening at the closed door, heard all the sounds of a windlass hoisting a load, and caught himself unconsciously attempting to estimate the depth of shaft out of which this load was being hoisted.  Next came a pause, and in his mind’s eye he saw the bucket swinging short to the windlass.  Then he heard the quick lower-away and the dull sound as of the bucket coming to abrupt rest on the edge of the shaft.  He threw open the door, beaming.

“I got you,” he cried.  “I almost fell for it myself.  What next?”

The next was the dragging into the cabin of a dozen sled-loads of rock.  And through an exceedingly busy day there were many other nexts.

“Now you run the dogs over to Dawson this evening,” Smoke instructed, when supper was finished.  “Leave them with Breck.  He’ll take care of them.  They’ll be watching what you do, so get Breck to go to the A. C. Company and buy up all the blasting-powder—­there’s only several hundred pounds in stock.  And have Breck order half a dozen hard-rock drills from the blacksmith.  Breck’s a quartz-man, and he’ll give the blacksmith a rough idea of what he wants made.  And give Breck these location descriptions, so that he can record them at the gold commissioner’s to-morrow.  And finally, at ten o’clock, you be on Main Street listening.  Mind you, I don’t want them to be too loud.  Dawson must just hear them and no more than hear them.  I’ll let off three, of different quantities, and you note which is more nearly the right thing.”

At ten that night Shorty, strolling down Main Street, aware of many curious eyes, his ears keyed tensely, heard a faint and distant explosion.  Thirty seconds later there was a second, sufficiently loud to attract the attention of others on the street.  Then came a third, so violent that it rattled the windows and brought the inhabitants into the street.

“Shook ’em up beautiful,” Shorty proclaimed breathlessly, an hour afterward, when he arrived at the cabin on Tra-Lee.  He gripped Smoke’s hand.  “You should a-saw ’em.  Ever kick over a ant-hole?  Dawson’s just like that.  Main Street was crawlin’ an’ hummin’ when I pulled my freight.  You won’t see Tra-Lee to-morrow for folks.  An’ if they ain’t some a-sneakin’ acrost right now I don’t know minin’ nature, that’s all.”