Harvey Moran gave a great sigh of relief and wiped his forehead.  “Well, anyway,” he said, “it’s cheap at the price just to find out that it wasn’t a system.”  His face began to work, and then he broke into laughter and slapped Smoke on the shoulder.  “Smoke, you had us going for a while, and we patting ourselves on the back because you were letting our tables alone!  Say, I’ve got some real fizz I’ll open if you’ll all come over to the Tivoli with me.”

Later, back in the cabin, Shorty silently overhauled and hefted the various bulging gold-sacks.  He finally piled them on the table, sat down on the edge of his bunk, and began taking off his moccasins.

“Seventy thousan’,” he calculated.  “It weighs three hundred and fifty pounds.  And all out of a warped wheel an’ a quick eye.  Smoke, you eat’m raw, you eat’m alive, you work under water, you’ve given me the jim-jams; but just the same I know it’s a dream.  It’s only in dreams that the good things comes true.  I’m almighty unanxious to wake up.  I hope I never wake up.”

“Cheer up,” Smoke answered.  “You won’t.  There are a lot of philosophy sharps that think men are sleep-walkers.  You’re in good company.”

Shorty got up, went to the table, selected the heaviest sack, and cuddled it in his arms as if it were a baby.  “I may be sleep-walkin’,” he said, “but as you say, I’m sure in mighty good company.”

V. THE MAN ON THE OTHER BANK.

It was before Smoke Bellew staked the farcical town-site of Tra-Lee, made the historic corner of eggs that nearly broke Swiftwater Bill’s bank account, or won the dog-team race down the Yukon for an even million dollars, that he and Shorty parted company on the Upper Klondike.  Shorty’s task was to return down the Klondike to Dawson to record some claims they had staked.

Smoke, with the dog-team, turned south.  His quest was Surprise Lake and the mythical Two Cabins.  His traverse was to cut the headwaters of the Indian River and cross the unknown region over the mountains to the Stewart River.  Here, somewhere, rumour persisted, was Surprise Lake, surrounded by jagged mountains and glaciers, its bottom paved with raw gold.  Old-timers, it was said, whose very names were forgotten in the frosts of earlier years, had dived into the icy waters of Surprise Lake and fetched lump-gold to the surface in both hands.  At different times, parties of old-timers had penetrated the forbidding fastness and sampled the lake’s golden bottom.  But the water was too cold.  Some died in the water, being pulled up dead.  Others died later of consumption.  And one who had gone down never did come up.  All survivors had planned to return and drain the lake, yet none had ever gone back.  Disaster always smote them.  One man fell into an air-hole below Forty Mile; another was killed and eaten by his dogs; a third was crushed by a falling tree.  And so the tale ran.  Surprise Lake was a hoodoo; its location was unremembered; and the gold still paved its undrained bottom.