Rarely a night passed
but from half a dozen to a score of men crowded into its shelter. Jacob
Kent noted these things, exercised squatter sovereignty, and moved in.
Thenceforth, the weary travelers were mulcted a dollar per head for the
privilege of sleeping on the floor, Jacob Kent weighing the dust and
never failing to steal the down-weight. Besides, he so contrived that
his transient guests chopped his wood for him and carried his water. This
was rank piracy, but his victims were an easy-going breed, and while they
detested him, they yet permitted him to flourish in his sins.
One afternoon in April he sat by his door,--for all the world like a
predatory spider,--marvelling at the heat of the returning sun, and
keeping an eye on the trail for prospective flies. The Yukon lay at his
feet, a sea of ice, disappearing around two great bends to the north and
south, and stretching an honest two miles from bank to bank. Over its
rough breast ran the sled-trail, a slender sunken line, eighteen inches
wide and two thousand miles in length, with more curses distributed to
the linear foot than any other road in or out of all Christendom.
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