And despite the one breakfast, Kit sat down under the tarpaulin and ate a second breakfast thrice as hearty.  The heavy, purging toil of weeks had given him the stomach and appetite of a wolf.  He could eat anything, in any quantity, and be unaware that he possessed a digestion.  Shorty he found voluble and pessimistic, and from him he received surprising tips concerning their bosses and ominous forecasts of the expedition.  Thomas Stanley Sprague was a budding mining engineer and the son of a millionaire.  Doctor Adolph Stine was also the son of a wealthy father.  And, through their fathers, both had been backed by an investing syndicate in the Klondike adventure.

“Oh, they’re sure made of money,” Shorty expounded.  “When they hit the beach at Dyea, freight was seventy cents, but no Indians.  There was a party from Eastern Oregon, real miners, that’d managed to get a team of Indians together at seventy cents.  Indians had the straps on the outfit, three thousand pounds of it, when along comes Sprague and Stine.  They offered eighty cents and ninety, and at a dollar a pound the Indians jumped the contract and took off their straps.  Sprague and Stine came through, though it cost them three thousand, and the Oregon bunch is still on the beach.  They won’t get through till next year.

“Oh, they are real hummers, your boss and mine, when it comes to sheddin’ the mazuma an’ never mindin’ other folks’ feelin’s.  What did they do when they hit Linderman?  The carpenters was just putting in the last licks on a boat they’d contracted to a ’Frisco bunch for six hundred.  Sprague and Stine slipped ’em an even thousand, and they jumped their contract.  It’s a good-lookin’ boat, but it’s jiggered the other bunch.  They’ve got their outfit right here, but no boat.  And they’re stuck for next year.

“Have another cup of coffee, and take it from me that I wouldn’t travel with no such outfit if I didn’t want to get to Klondike so blamed bad.  They ain’t hearted right.  They’d take the crape off the door of a house in mourning if they needed it in their business.  Did you sign a contract?”

Kit shook his head.

“Then I’m sorry for you, pardner.  They ain’t no grub in the country, and they’ll drop you cold as soon as they hit Dawson.  Men are going to starve there this winter.”

“They agreed—­” Kit began.

“Verbal,” Shorty snapped him short.  “It’s your say-so against theirs, that’s all.  Well, anyway, what’s your name, pardner?”

“Call me Smoke,” said Kit.

“Well, Smoke, you’ll have a run for your verbal contract just the same.  This is a plain sample of what to expect.  They can sure shed mazuma, but they can’t work, or turn out of bed in the morning.  We should have been loaded and started an hour ago.  It’s you an’ me for the big work.  Pretty soon you’ll hear ’em shoutin’ for their coffee—­in bed, mind you, and them grown men.  What d’ye know about boatin’ on the water?  I’m a cowman and a prospector, but I’m sure tenderfooted on water, an’ they don’t know punkins.  What d’ye know?”