Samuel Alexander White

“ By the time this was finished Thorpe Calgour arrived with Trudis, the workmen, and the cargo from Dawson City, and Hess, putting by the cargo till fall, straightway sent Thorpe and the men forth into the northerly swamps and sloughs, to the head streamlets of other waterways to lay trails of oat hay and of apple and carrot fragments to the ranch, while he, Gayle, and Trudis looked after the ranch itself.
"You from Texas still, Gayle?" Hess grinned as he disclosed his methods. "Just watch me draw them. They're exactly like human beings in regard to their stomachs. ”

“ It was evident that Rooney had been taking no chances of being ambushed on the trail. Halfway down the line he saw, even as Trudis, Gayle, and Thorpe had seen from the hill, the glow of red uniforms against the snow, and he ran forward to Marlin and Simons at the head.
"They're going to arrest us, but don't you resist," he warned. "Don't you raise an eyebrow, and don't you let them Indians do anything to prejudice our stand. I see Strickland and Gunderhein confabbing together, but let them do as they please. We got a stand here that all the Mounted Men in the country can't touch. ”

“ The bunk house was swept clean of furs, and a mile up the Tatonduk echoed the shrill whine of steel sled runners on the ice.
"Dog teams, Thorpe," reminded Hess as the former made a race for the river. "On the dead run, too. It's no good chasing them." ”

“ WHILE Gayle and Cronin armed themselves with their heavy sporting rifles and each workman took one of the light .22-caliber weapons which had been used on muskrats, Thorpe, making use of the searchlight flash of the aurora, examined the tracks on the bank.
"It isn't Ryan," he announced as the others came up. "No white man at all. They were all Indians."
"You sure?" asked the ex-marshal.
"Of course. Look at their toes." Thorpe pointed to the turned-in toe on each snowshoe imprint. "Maybe fifty or sixty Indians—likely Nahoni country Indians. ”

“ They were to come back on the young ice as soon as it would bear, and while waiting for them through nights that grew longer, frosts that bit harder and snow that fell deeper the three partners and the rest of the men dried and removed the last lot of pelts from the shingles and turned and aired the catch of already dried skins hanging on all the walls and all the beams of the immense bunk house. ”

“ BY SAMUEL ALEXANDER WHITE
"WHAT you men poling so hard for?"
At the hail from the Tatonduk's bank Cronin Hess and Gayle Outremont looked up from their boat to see Rooney Ryan in company with Monte Marlin and Seattle Simons grinning at them off the top of a bluff which jutted out as a headland into the river a few miles over the Alaskan boundary.
"Oh, for exercise, sure!" replied ex-Marshal Hess. "We do it every other month in the dark of the moon. It speeds up the circulation, you know, and pries open the pores. ”

“ Them five hundred form only the nucleus of the ranch. When it comes to fur time, it's not hundreds but thousands we'll be skinning."
"Like thunder we will! I'm the man from Texas, Cronin, and you've got to put those thousands in my lap before I believe."
"Oh, I'll do it, Gayle! Don't you fluster yourself. We'll hit Eagle City ourselves, get what stuff we need for the ranch and hustle back. And, listen here, partner, I'll put rats in your lap so fast that you'll be a walking dispensary of pungent musk!"
And forthwith the ex-marshal proceeded to make good his boast. ”

“ Don't you lift a finger."
"Heavens, Cronin," snarled Outremont, "I never took you for such a quitter! You're going to let him keep those furs?"
"What else can he do?" cut in Ryan, grinning ogrelike in his triumph. "I've got your goat staked fast."
"No, you haven't, Rooney," contradicted the ex-marshal, as he forcibly backed Thorpe and Gayle up the divide. "We're going up to Dawson to speak to the Mounted Police ourselves. You think you're going strong, but in the golden city you'll sure strike a snag."
"Go on then," jeered Ryan. "Get as many police as you like. ”

“ Gayle besought. "I'm staggered now. Give me something to steady me. I've kicked muskrats out of my way all my life. I never saw money in them. They're just vermin anyway, Cronin, overrunning the rivers as the house rats overrun houses. They're no good for anything."
"Ain't they? In the fur centers their pelts sell for as much as eighty cents. We can't strike eighty so far up here, but we can sure get fifty cents in Dawson. It's a fine, warm day, and the rats on the Tatonduk are all out. I counted them all along, and the seven just where we talked to Ryan decided me. ”

“ Ryan refused. "On the ranch of any men so mean as to pick my pocket to the tune of nineteen thousand seven hundred and fifty dollars I'll never set foot. And that's straight."
"Now there's a riddle for you, Cronin," laughed Trudis, who had slipped down from the cabin in time to hear the fag end of the controversy and see Ryan go off in a rage. "What can he do to the ranch if he doesn't set foot on the ranch?" ”

“ We drew the rats off their hunting ground, and they came and took them back."
"Heavens!" blurted Hess. "That's one contingency I sure overlooked, boys—those bucks in the Nahoni District. Of course when they came back off the posts for their fall hunting they found the ground clean bare of fur, and here's the result. It ain't Ryan after all. I wish it was. I'd sooner handle a white man with injured feelings any minute than an Indian in the same mood. We'll meet trouble when we trail them down. But that doesn't matter. We still got to go on and trail." ”

“ They can't all burrow in the bank."
"You'll have an awful haul in the autumn," Gunderhein observed. "And not a soul in the Yukon, except maybe a few Indians, ever saw coin in muskrats. They aren't even mentioned in the game laws."
"With the five hundred we started on and the four thousand we lured here, we'll have on a basis of twenty descendants to each pair just forty-nine thousand five hundred rats this fall," calculated Trudis, whose brain was quick at figures, "and they'll be worth at half a dollar apiece just twenty-four thousand seven hundred and fifty dollars. ”

“ Gayle announced, consulting his tally book as the last relay went up on the first of October, "and thirty-eight thousand one hundred and twenty-four already off the shingles. That's forty-eight thousand one hundred and twenty-four altogether. And now, Tru, is your chance to help out in a pinch. You have charge of the dozen men that'll hike up to Dawson to bring down dog teams to move all this fur, and they'd better start at once. It's going to be an early freeze-up this year. There's ice in the river already, and she's closing fast." ”

“ ITS exploitation brought the crowds from the river camps, and even Inspector Strickland and Gunderhein, who was a member of the Yukon Council, spared the time to come down and spend a day looking over the ranch. Strickland and Gunderhein, besides being the greatest fixtures in Dawson City were close friends of Hess and Outremont, and their visit was duly appreciated. "I never would have imagined it, Cronin," confessed Gunderhein, as he and Strickland left that night to catch an upbound steamer at the Tatonduk's mouth. "Why, your ten miles of river are teeming with rats." ”