The Winds of Chance | Page 3

corner of Broad and Wall, I'd own
the Stock Exchange in a week. Madison and State is another good stand;
so's Market and Kearney, or Pioneer Square, down by the totem pole.
New York, Chicago, 'Frisco, Seattle, they're all hick towns. For every
city guy that's been stung by a bee there's a hundred that still thinks
honey comes from a fruit. This rush is just starting, and the bigger it
grows the better we'll do. Say, Kid, if you mush over to Tagish with
that load of timothy on your spine, the police will put you on the
wood-pile for the winter."
While Mr. Lucky Broad and his business associates were thus busied in
discussing the latest decree of the Northwest Mounted Police, other
townsmen of theirs were similarly engaged. Details of this
proclamation--the most arbitrary of any, hitherto--had just arrived from
the International Boundary, and had caused a halt, an eddy, in the
stream of gold-seekers which flowed inland toward the Chilkoot Pass.
A human tide was setting northward from the States, a tide which
swelled and quickened daily as the news of George Carmack's
discovery spread across the world, but at Healy & Wilson's log-store,
where the notice above referred to had been posted, the stream slowed.
A crowd of new-comers from the barges and steamers in the roadstead

had assembled there, and now gave voice to hoarse indignation and
bitter resentment. Late arrivals from Skagway, farther down the coast,
brought word of similar scenes at that point and a similar feeling of
dismay; they reported a similar increase in the general excitement, too.
There, as here, a tent city was springing up, the wooded hills were
awakening to echoes of unaccustomed life, a thrill and a stir were
running through the wilderness and the odor of spruce fires was
growing heavier with every ship that came.
Pierce Phillips emerged from the trading-post and, drawn by the force
of gravitation, joined the largest and the most excited group of
Argonauts. He was still somewhat dazed by his perusal of that Police
edict; the blow to his hopes was still too stunning, his disappointment
was still too keen, to permit of clear thought.
"A ton of provisions and a thousand dollars!" he repeated, blankly.
Why, that was absurd, out of all possible reason! It would bar the way
to fully half this rushing army; it would turn men back at the very
threshold of the golden North. Nevertheless, there stood the notice in
black and white, a clear and unequivocal warning from the Canadian
authorities, evidently designed to forestall famine on the foodless
Yukon. From the loud arguments round about him Phillips gathered
that opinion on the justice of the measure was about evenly divided;
those fortunate men who had come well provided commended it
heartily, those less fortunate fellows who were sailing close-hauled
were equally noisy in their denunciation of it. The latter could see in
this precautionary ruling nothing except the exercise of a tyrannical
power aimed at their ruin, and in consequence they voiced threats, and
promises of violence the which Phillips put down as mere resentful
mouthings of no actual significance. As for himself, he had never
possessed anything like a thousand dollars at one time, therefore the
problem of acquiring such a prodigious sum in the immediate future
presented appalling difficulties. He had come north to get rich, only to
find that it was necessary to be rich in order to get north. A fine
situation, truly! A ton of provisions would cost at least five hundred
dollars and the expense of transporting it across summer swamps and
tundras, then up and over that mysterious and forbidding Chilkoot of

which he had heard so much, would bring the total capital required up
to impossible proportions. The prospect was indeed dismaying. Phillips
had been ashore less than an hour, but already he had gained some faint
idea of the country that lay ahead of him; already he had noted the
almost absolute lack of transportation; already he had learned the price
of packers, and as a result he found himself at an impasse.
One thousand dollars and two hundred pounds! It was enough to dash
high hopes. And yet, strangely enough, Phillips was not discouraged.
He was rather surprised at his own rebound after the first shock; his
reasonless optimism vaguely amazed him, until, in contemplating the
matter, he discovered that his thoughts were running somewhat after
this fashion:
"They told me I couldn't make it; they said something was sure to
happen. Well, it has. I'm up against it--hard. Most fellows would quit
and go home, but I sha'n't. I'm going to win out, somehow, for this is
the real thing. This is Life, Adventure. It will be wonderful to look back
and say: 'I