He grew weaker day by day, but each day he said, "To-
morrow I'll be all right." Other old-timers, "out on furlough,",
came to see him. They wiped their eyes and swore under their
breaths, then entered and talked largely and jovially about going in
with him over the trail when spring came. But there in the big easy-
chair it was that his Long Trail ended, and the life passed out of
him still fixed on "farther north."
From the time of the first white man, famine loomed black and gloomy
over the land. It was chronic with the Indians and Eskimos; it
became chronic with the gold hunters. It was ever present, and so it
came about that life was commonly expressed in terms of "grub"--was
measured by cups of flour. Each winter, eight months long, the
heroes of the frost faced starvation. It became the custom, as fall
drew on, for partners to cut the cards or draw straws to determine
which should hit the hazardous trail for salt water, and which should
remain and endure the hazardous darkness of the Arctic night.
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