The problem of the two men now was to turn their gold-dust into food.  The current price for flour and beans was a dollar and a half a pound, but the difficulty was to find a seller.  Dawson was in the throes of famine.  Hundreds of men, with money but no food, had been compelled to leave the country.  Many had gone down the river on the last water, and many more, with barely enough food to last, had walked the six hundred miles over the ice to Dyea.

Smoke met Shorty in the warm saloon, and found the latter jubilant.

“Life ain’t no punkins without whiskey an’ sweetenin’,” was Shorty’s greeting, as he pulled lumps of ice from his thawing moustache and flung them rattling on the floor.  “An’ I sure just got eighteen pounds of that same sweetenin’.  The geezer only charged three dollars a pound for it.  What luck did you have?”

“I, too, have not been idle,” Smoke answered with pride.  “I bought fifty pounds of flour.  And there’s a man up on Adam Creek who says he’ll let me have fifty pounds more to-morrow.”

“Great!  We’ll sure live till the river opens.  Say, Smoke, them dogs of ourn is the goods.  A dog-buyer offered me two hundred apiece for the five of them.  I told him nothin’ doin’.  They sure took on class when they got meat to get outside of; but it goes against the grain, feedin’ dog-critters on grub that’s worth two an’ a half a pound.  Come on an’ have a drink.  I just got to celebrate them eighteen pounds of sweetenin’.”

Several minutes later, as he weighed in on the gold-scales for the drinks, he gave a start of recollection.

“I plum forgot that man I was to meet in the Tivoli.  He’s got some spoiled bacon he’ll sell for a dollar an’ a half a pound.  We can feed it to the dogs an’ save a dollar a day on each’s board-bill.  So long.”

“So long,” said Smoke.  “I’m goin’ to the cabin an’ turn in.”

Hardly had Shorty left the place, when a fur-clad man entered through the double storm-doors.  His face lighted at sight of Smoke, who recognized him as Breck, the man whose boat they had run through the Box Canyon and White Horse Rapids.

“I heard you were in town,” Breck said hurriedly, as they shook hands.  “Been looking for you for half an hour.  Come outside, I want to talk with you.”

Smoke looked regretfully at the roaring, red-hot stove.

“Won’t this do?”

“No; it’s important.  Come outside.”

As they emerged, Smoke drew off one mitten, lighted a match, and glanced at the thermometer that hung beside the door.  He remittened his naked hand hastily as if the frost had burned him.  Overhead arched the flaming aurora borealis, while from all Dawson arose the mournful howling of thousands of wolf-dogs.

“What did it say?” Breck asked.

“Sixty below.”  Kit spat experimentally, and the spittle crackled in the air.  “And the thermometer is certainly working.  It’s falling all the time.  An hour ago it was only fifty-two.  Don’t tell me it’s a stampede.”