The Winds of Chance | Page 4

did it. Nothing stopped me. I landed at Dyea with one
hundred and thirty-five dollars, but look at me now!'"
Thoughts such as these were in his mind, and their resolute nature must
have been reflected in his face, for a voice aroused him from his
meditations.
"It don't seem to faze you much, partner. I s'pose you came heeled?"
Phillips looked up and into a sullen, angry face.
"It nearly kills me," he smiled. "I'm the worst-heeled man in the
crowd."
"Well, it's a darned outrage. A ton of grub? Why, have you seen the
trail? Take a look; it's a man-killer, and the rate is forty cents a pound
to Linderman. It'll go to fifty now--maybe a dollar- -and there aren't
enough packers to handle half the stuff."
"Things are worse at Skagway," another man volunteered. "I came up
yesterday, and they're losing a hundred head of horses a day-- bogging

'em down and breaking their legs. You can walk on dead carcasses
from the Porcupine to the Summit."
A third stranger, evidently one of the well-provided few, laughed
carelessly. "If you boys can't stand the strain you'd better stay where
you are," said he. "Grub's sky-high in Dawson, and mighty short. I
knew what I was up against, so I came prepared. Better go home and
try it next summer."
The first speaker, he of the sullen visage, turned his back, muttering,
resentfully: "Another wise guy! They make me sick! I've a notion to go
through anyhow."
"Don't try that," cautioned the man from Skagway. "If you got past the
Police they'd follow you to hell but what they'd bring you back. They
ain't like our police."
Still meditating his plight, Pierce Phillips edged out of the crowd and
walked slowly down the street. It was not a street at all, except by
courtesy, for it was no more than an open waterfront faced by a few log
buildings and a meandering line of new white tents. Tents were going
up everywhere and all of them bore painful evidence of their newness.
So did the clothes of their owners for that matter--men's garments still
bore their price-tags. The beach was crowded with piles of merchandise
over which there was much wrangling, barges plying regularly back
and forth from the anchored ships added hourly to the confusion. As
outfits were dumped upon the sand their owners assembled them and
bore them away to their temporary camp sites. In this occupation every
man faced his own responsibilities single-handed, for there were
neither drays nor carts nor vehicles of any sort.
As Phillips looked on at the disorder along the water's edge, as he
stared up the fir-flanked Dyea valley, whither a steady stream of traffic
flowed, he began to feel a fretful eagerness to join in it, to be up and
going. 'Way yonder through those hills towered the Chilkoot, and
beyond that was the mighty river rushing toward Dawson City, toward
Life and Adventure, for that was what the gold-fields signified to
Phillips. Yes, Life! Adventure! He had set out to seek them, to taste the

flavor of the world, and there it lay--his world, at least--just out of
reach. A fierce impatience, a hot resentment at that senseless restriction
which chained him in his tracks, ran through the boy. What right had
any one to stop him here at the very door, when just inside great things
were happening? Past that white-and-purple barrier which he could see
against the sky a new land lay, a radiant land of promise, of mystery,
and of fascination; Pierce vowed that he would not, could not, wait.
Fortunes would reward the first arrivals; how, then, could he permit
these other men to precede him? The world was a good place--it would
not let a person starve.
To the young and the foot-free Adventure lurks just over the hill; Life
opens from the crest of the very next divide. It matters not that we
never quite come up with either, that we never quite attain the summit
whence our promises are realized; the ever- present expectation, the
eager straining forward, is the breath of youth. It was that breath which
Phillips now felt in his nostrils. It was pungent, salty.
He noted a group of people gathered about some center of attraction
whence issued a high-pitched intonation.
"Oh, look at the cute little pea! Klondike croquet, the packer's pastime.
Who'll risk a dollar to win a dollar? It's a healthy sport. It's good for
young and old--a cheeild can understand it. Three Eskimo igloos and an
educated pill!"
"A shell-game!" Pierce Phillips halted in his tracks and stared
incredulously, then he smiled. "A shell-game, running wide open on the
main street of the town!" This WAS the frontier, the very edge of
things. With