But the iron hand closed
down over the land. Men were being frozen in the blizzard which
swept Chilkoot, and Rasmunsen frosted his toes ere he was aware.
He found a chance to go passenger with his freight in a boat just
shoving off through the rubble, but two hundred hard cash, was
required, and he had no money.
"Ay tank you yust wait one leedle w'ile," said the Swedish boat-
builder, who had struck his Klondike right there and was wise
enough to know it--"one leedle w'ile und I make you a tam fine
skiff boat, sure Pete."
With this unpledged word to go on, Rasmunsen hit the back trail to
Crater Lake, where he fell in with two press correspondents whose
tangled baggage was strewn from Stone House, over across the Pass,
and as far as Happy Camp.
"Yes," he said with consequence. "I've a thousand dozen eggs at
Linderman, and my boat's just about got the last seam caulked.
Consider myself in luck to get it. Boats are at a premium, you
know, and none to be had."
Whereupon and almost with bodily violence the correspondents
clamoured to go with him, fluttered greenbacks before his eyes, and
spilled yellow twenties from hand to hand. He could not hear of
it, but they over-persuaded him, and he reluctantly consented to
take them at three hundred apiece.
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