Rabbit tracks and salmon bellies were
his diet with a vengeance, for he depended largely on his rifle and
fishing-tackle. His endurance equalled his courage. On a wager he
lifted thirteen fifty-pound sacks of flour and walked off with them.
Winding up a seven-hundred-mile trip on the ice with a forty-mile
run, he came into camp at six o'clock in the evening and found a
"squaw dance" under way. He should have been exhausted. Anyway, his
muclucs were frozen stiff. But he kicked them off and danced all
night in stocking-feet.
At the last fortune came to him. The quest was ended, and he
gathered up his gold and pulled for the outside. And his own end was
as fitting as that of his quest. Illness came upon him down in San
Francisco, and his splendid life ebbed slowly out as he sat in his
big easy-chair, in the Commercial Hotel, the "Yukoner's home." The
doctors came, discussed, consulted, the while he matured more plans
of Northland adventure; for the North still gripped him and would not
let him go.
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