The Magnetic North | Page 4

on that account, or
for a subtler and more efficient reason, always got the best of
everything that was going without money and without price.
On board ship O'Flynn, with his ready tongue and his golden
background--"representing capital"--was a leading spirit. Potts the
handy-man was a talker, too, and a good second. But, once in camp,
Mac the Miner was cock of the walk, in those first days, quoted
"Caribou," and ordered everybody about to everybody's satisfaction.
In a situation like this, the strongest lean on the man who has ever seen
"anything like it" before. It was a comfort that anybody even thought he
knew what to do under such new conditions. So the others looked on
with admiration and a pleasant confidence, while Mac boldly cut a hole
in the brand-new tent, and instructed Potts how to make a flange out of
a tin plate, with which to protect the canvas from the heat of the
stove-pipe. No more cooking now in the bitter open. Everyone admired
Mac's foresight when he said:
"We must build rock fireplaces in our cabins, or we'll find our one little
Yukon stove burnt out before the winter is over--before we have a
chance to use it out prospecting." And when Mac said they must pool
their stores, the Colonel and the Boy agreed as readily as O'Flynn,
whose stores consisted of a little bacon, some navy beans, and a
demijohn of whisky. O'Flynn, however, urged that probably every man
had a little "mite o' somethin'" that he had brought specially for
himself--somethin' his friends had given him, for instance. There was
Potts, now. They all knew how the future Mrs. Potts had brought a

plum-cake down to the steamer, when she came to say good-bye, and
made Potts promise he wouldn't unseal the packet till Christmas. It
wouldn't do to pool Potts' cake--never! There was the Colonel, the only
man that had a sack of coffee. He wouldn't listen when they had told
him tea was the stuff up here, and--well, perhaps other fellows didn't
miss coffee as much as a Kentuckian, though he had heard--Never
mind; they wouldn't pool the coffee. The Boy had some preserved fruit
that he seemed inclined to be a hog about--
"Oh, look here. I haven't touched it!" "Just what I'm sayin'. You're
hoardin' that fruit."
It was known that Mac had a very dacint little medicine-chest. Of
course, if any fellow was ill, Mac wasn't the man to refuse him a little
cold pizen; but he must be allowed to keep his own medicine
chest--and that little pot o' Dundee marmalade. As for O'Flynn, he
would look after the "dimmi-john."
But Mac was dead against the whisky clause. Alcohol had been the
curse of Caribou, and in this camp spirits were to be for medicinal
purposes only. Whereon a cloud descended on Mr. O'Flynn, and his
health began to suffer; but the precious demi-john was put away "in
stock" along with the single bottles belonging to the others. Mac had
taken an inventory, and no one in those early days dared touch anything
without his permission.
They had cut into the mountain-side for a level foundation, and were
hard at it now hauling logs.
"I wonder," said the Boy, stopping a moment in his work, and looking
at the bleak prospect round him--"I wonder if we're going to see
anybody all winter."
"Oh, sure to," Mac thought; "Indians, anyhow."
"Well, I begin to wish they'd mosy along," said Potts; and the sociable
O'Flynn backed him up.

It was towards noon on the sixth day after landing (they had come to
speak of this now as a voluntary affair), when they were electrified by
hearing strange voices; looked up from their work, and saw two white
men seated on a big cake of ice going down the river with the current.
When they recovered sufficiently from their astonishment at the
spectacle, they ran down the hillside, and proposed to help the
"castaways" to land. Not a bit of it.
"Land in that place! What you take us for? Not much! We're going to
St. Michael's."
They had a small boat drawn up by them on the ice, and one man was
dressed in magnificent furs, a long sable overcoat and cap, and wearing
quite the air of a North Pole Nabob.
"Got any grub?" Mac called out.
"Yes; want some?"
"Oh no; I thought you--"
"You're not going to try to live through the winter there?"
"Yes."
"Lord! you are in a fix!"
"That's we thought about you."
But the travellers on the ice-raft went by laughing and joking at the
men safe on shore with their tents and provisions. It made some of
them visibly uneasy. Would they win through? Were they crazy to try it?
They