McAdams seized a small-caliber rifle and went after ptarmigan, a sparse few of which they had seen the day before in the bushlike willows of the divide. Their plight for food was desperate. A bird or two would make soup for the old man. But Enoch Whipple was nearly beyond all help from food when the middle-aged, “unsentimental” McAdams returned belatedly, the early dark of the northern fall upon them. A couple of birds--already turning white to meet the coming winter--were slung over the barrel of his gun. Old Whipple was raving. “Don’t none o’ you guys think this old Injun tracker was slow in gittin’ to the strikes up here?” he shouted to the solemn-faced engineer. “I was gen’rally before the first stakin’s was done. And, gentlemen, I allus pulled a blank. Nome? Say, in Nome, the gold was all around me, first on the beach and then out on old Dexter--a fraction, that was, all around me, boys--an’ mine, both of ’em, didn’t have a color!” He seemed to doze for a while; but when McAdams roused him to take the ptarmigan broth, he glared crazily into the battered tin bowl and wagged his head refusingly. “Looks yaller,” he muttered. “B’iled-up gold, I reckon. Not fer me. I git mine in a pan or a sluice box. That ain’t nothin’ but tundra water. Yaller. All over Alaska. Some folks think it’s gold--dissolved out by the grass roots. Gold at the grass roots! That’s it. That’s what they promised us when we come North. ‘Land o’ wealth untold--grave that’s decked with gold--’” It was impossible to quiet him. Turner’s dignified gentleness, when old Whipple’s ravings disturbed his reading, was as unavailing as McAdams’ rough admonishings, which turned, finally, into severity. “Shut up and go to sleep, you!” It was the only way he knew of impressing the wandering mind of the old frontiersman, but it was inexpressibly shocking to Alfred Turner, of finer mold. He glared at McAdams balefully. McAdams only laughed. “Always been knockin’ the country, sence I’ve known him,” he remarked to the engineer, as they sprawled on their blankets, a single fluttering candle between them. “Baptized Enoch, he was; and you kin figger what a grand chance that name gave the boys up here to nickname him. They jest left off the ‘e,’ that’s all. Oh, well, everybody knocks things and places when the luck is all agin’ ’em. But old Whipple’s always had it wuss than anybody I ever seen up here. Hey there!” he bawled, when the sick man began singing again. “I’ll tie you down, you old rascal, if you don’t lay quiet!” “You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Mac,” protested Turner hotly. “It doesn’t do any good. Let him die happy!” “_Does_ do good,” insisted McAdams. “Slinks down, more or less, whenever I holler at him. You got an easy way of killin’ him off? Why ain’t he got a chance? Fever’s passin’, mebbe. He’s a tough old bird. Keep him quiet, _I_ say!”