“You don’t mean he’s gone--outside! MacShane quit the North?” Questions and exclamations hurled themselves at Camillo Bill from half a hundred throats, so that it was some moments before he could make himself heard; “No, he ain’t gone outside. MacShane won’t never go outside. He just naturally got homesick for to hit the trail, an’ he pulled. It’s gettin’ too crowded for MacShane down here. He hit North.” “But his claim?” cried Bettles, “What about his claim?” “We pooled our claims before he left,” said Camillo. “I’m workin’ ’em both. We’re pardners.” CHAPTER VII THE GORDONS HIT THE TRAIL With the spring break-up the men of the creeks abandoned their shafts and turned their attention to sluicing their dumps. The Northland knows no gradual merging of Winter into Spring. One day it is Winter, and the next day it is Spring--unequivocally, and undeniably Spring. Here is no half-hearted surrender of the Frost King after weeks of dawdling effort to maintain his sway. For here he fights in his own fastness--fights with unabated fury to maintain his iron grip on the frozen land--fights to the last gasp with no sign of weakening. For only at the point of utter annihilation does he yield up his sceptre to Spring. Water from melting snows trickles down the sides of the mountains, pours from the mouths of “dry washes,” and rushes in leaping torrents over the surface of ice-locked creeks. The thick creek ice, loosened by the torrent, lets go in places and allows the surface water to get beneath it. Scattered cakes float down on the flood. More cakes, and more, until the whole surface becomes a mass of grinding, whirling cakes. Jams form at bends and upon the shallows, ice cakes up-end, leap clear of the water to be forced higher and higher by the grinding, battering impact of other cakes. Behind these jams the water rises, bursting from the creek beds in a hundred places, overflooding lowlands, cutting new channels, but rising always until at last the high-flung mass of cakes can no longer withstand its weight, and with a mighty roar the jam lets go, the whole mass of grinding, crashing cakes rides the crest of the suddenly released flood to crash into the next jam.