They carried him to his room, and one of the girls took his place. Hours later he awoke, and with his bulging pouch made a beeline for the bar. As it had been Horse Face Joe’s inspired night, so also was it his swan song. Never again did his fingers sweep the keys of a piano for with the proceeds of his bulging Christmas sack, he stuck steadfastly at the bar. Night and day for six days he remained gloriously drunk, and upon New Year’s night, which was Dawson’s coldest night that winter, he was picked up half buried in the snow on Front Street--a rigid corpse of ice. Christmas night the same group of cronies foregathered at the forward end of the bar, Bettles, Camillo Bill, Moosehide Charlie, Ace-In-The-Hole, and Old Man Gordon, and with them was MacShane. “What was it you started in to say last night, MacShane?” asked Camillo Bill, “About a man’s bein’ able to make his everlastin’ stake right here without ever puttin’ a pick into the gravel?” “Sure he could,” answered MacShane, with conviction. “I could clean up a million here in this camp within the next two years, an’ never touch a pick or a pan, or chop a stick of cordwood. Anyone of us could do it, but I doubt if anyone of us will--I know I won’t. It’s simple as A B C spells cat. Take town lots, for instance, right here on the flat. Have you stopped to figure what’s goin’ to happen next spring, an’ next fall? The news of this strike has already hit the outside, and in the spring there’ll be the doggondest stampede into the Yukon that anyone ever saw. Fifty thousand men will come boilin’ in here crazy for gold. They’ve got to be fed an’ housed. Lots that you can buy now for a few dollars will go to thousands. Buy lots, that’s one way. Buy flour an’ sugar, an’ bacon. Ship a sawmill in here an’ go to loggin’. Lumber will bring anything a man’s mind to ask for it next summer. Buy a steamboat an’ run between here an’ White Horse. This stampede’s comin’ down the river. Go up to Lindermann an’ build polin’ boats, an’ buy up all the canoes in sight. An’ when you get that done, buy claims an’ sell ’em to the _chechakos_. “I’m tellin’ you a man can clean up ten dollars for every dollar he puts in, an’ turn his money over a dozen times in a year. The chances are here, plenty of ’em, an’ someone is goin’ to cash ’em in, but I doubt if it will be any of us. Trouble with us fellows, we ain’t business men--we’re gamblers, or we wouldn’t be here. I know how it is with me, always wantin’ to see what’s just beyond. I’d rather make a new strike on some crick that no one had ever prospected than stay here an’ work the richest claim on Bonanza, or Gold Bottom, or Eldorado. Go to it, now! I’ve told you how. An’ likewise I’ve told you that there ain’t a man here that will turn real estater, or storekeeper, or logger, or steamboat man. We’re prospectors, that’s what we are--gamblers. An’ speakin’ of gamblin’ how about a game of stud?”