On the trail of red gold MacShane forgot civilization. What was it he had told Camillo Bill--maybe a year from now I will be taking out a thousand dollars to the pan? More than a year had passed--many years. But the storehouse was there. What difference did it make? He would find it--sometime. And so with the utmost patience he rode his hunch--the hunch that had driven him into the North. Wandering Eskimos knew him and brought his supplies from Shungnak on the Kobuk, two hundred miles to the southward. Early in March of his eighth year on the Colville, he located a spot on a tributary that flowed in from the westward, where indications showed that the course of the river had been changed by an enormous slide of rock. Powder! Powder, he must have to blast his way into the towering mass of stone. And, as he studied the mass, he knew that all the powder in the camps of the Koyukuk, and the Kobuk would not even scratch the mighty pile. Nome was his only hope--Nome, the city that had sprung up near the mouth of the Salmon River; where years before, he himself, had struck color in the beach sands, but decided it wasn’t pay. He had heard of Nome at Coldfoot, and of the fabulous wealth that those same beach sands were yielding--and he had grinned. For that was in the past. But, on the Colville, there is gold in the gravel _today_! “Guess I’ll just hit down there an’ have a look at this city that’s got rich off what I couldn’t find,” he said to himself that night in his igloo-like hut. “It’s a hunch. I feel it workin’. I’m right now knockin’ at the door of a big strike. ‘Go to Nome,’ it says. That means get powder an’ blow this hill to hell.” For a long time he sat and stared at the red squares that glowed at the draft of his stove. “Maybe it means that I’m just naturally plumb homesick to talk to someone. It’s--why, hell! It’s four years since I’ve seen a white man, or spoke a white man’s word to anyone but myself an’ the dogs. An’ I ain’t seen a white woman in God knows when! I wonder if they’ve got regular saloons, with mahogany bars, an’ foot-rails, an’ dance halls. I wonder if they’ve got anyone there that can make the old piano talk like Horse Face Joe could? There’s one way to find out for sure,” he grinned, and put a huge batch of dog feed to cook. Morning found him on the trail. Four days later he pulled into Shungnak to find everyone in the isolated little mining camp talking dog race. “Where is this race? An’ when is it comin’ off?” asked MacShane. “Over to Nome. An’ she starts the thirteenth of April,” informed the saloon keeper, “How you bettin’? Me--I’m bettin’ even money John Johnson’s team wins agin the field. Or, I’m bettin’ two-to-one on him to beat out any team you kin name.” “How many teams are racin’?” asked MacShane, indifferently. “I don’t know. Four or five--mebbe more. It don’t make no difference. They can’t none of ’em beat Johnson’s wolves.”