Yes, the stuff was
fairly good. He sighed with the contentment of the just, and
literally absorbed the smoke from the crisping yellow flakes, and
it did my smoker's heart good to behold him.
Hunter? Trapper? Prospector? He shrugged his shoulders No; just
sort of knocking round a bit. Had come up from the Great Slave
some time since, and was thinking of trapsing over into the Yukon
country. The factor of Koshim had spoken about the discoveries on
the Klondike, and he was of a mind to run over for a peep. I
noticed that he spoke of the Klondike in the archaic vernacular,
calling it the Reindeer River--a conceited custom that the Old
Timers employ against the CHECHAQUAS and all tenderfeet in general.
But he did it so naively and as such a matter of course, that there
was no sting, and I forgave him. He also had it in view, he said,
before he crossed the divide into the Yukon, to make a little run
up Fort o' Good Hope way.
Now Fort o' Good Hope is a far journey to the north, over and
beyond the Circle, in a place where the feet of few men have trod;
and when a nondescript ragamuffin comes in out of the night, from
nowhere in particular, to sit by one's fire and discourse on such
in terms of "trapsing" and "a little run," it is fair time to rouse
up and shake off the dream.
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