"No. The trail up the creek is sure to be unbroken, and we can make better time without them." "Then I'll throw 'em a meal, which'll have to last 'em till we get back. Be sure you take some birch-bark and a candle." Shorty opened the door, felt the bite of the cold, and shrank back to pull down his ear-flaps and mitten his hands. Five minutes later he returned, sharply rubbing his nose. "Smoke, I'm sure opposed to makin' this stampede. It's colder than the hinges of hell a thousand years before the first fire was lighted. Besides, it's Friday the thirteenth, an' we're goin' to trouble as the sparks fly upward." With small stampeding packs on their backs, they closed the door behind them and started down the hill. The display of the aurora borealis had ceased, and only the stars leaped in the great cold, and by their uncertain light made traps for the feet. Shorty floundered off a turn of the trail into deep snow, and raised his voice in blessing of the date of the week and month and year. "Can't you keep still?" Smoke chided. "Leave the almanac alone. You'll have all Dawson awake and after us." "Huh! See the light in that cabin? And in that one over there? An' hear that door slam? Oh, sure Dawson's asleep. Them lights? Just buryin' their dead. They ain't stampedin', betcher life they ain't." By the time they reached the foot of the hill and were fairly in Dawson, lights were springing up in the cabins, doors were slamming, and from behind came the sound of many moccasins on the hard-packed snow. Again Shorty delivered himself. "But it beats hell the amount of mourners there is." They passed a man who stood by the path and was calling anxiously in a low voice: "Oh, Charley; get a move on." "See that pack on his back, Smoke? The graveyard's sure a long ways off when the mourners got to pack their blankets." By the time they reached the main street a hundred men were in line behind them, and while they sought in the deceptive starlight for the trail that dipped down the bank to the river, more men could be heard arriving. Shorty slipped and shot down the thirty-foot chute into the soft snow. Smoke followed, knocking him over as he was rising to his feet. "I found it first," he gurgled, taking off his mittens to shake the snow out of the gauntlets. The next moment they were scrambling wildly out of the way of the hurtling bodies of those that followed. At the time of the freeze-up, a jam had occurred at this point, and cakes of ice were up-ended in snow-covered confusion. After several hard falls, Smoke drew out his candle and lighted it. Those in the rear hailed it with acclaim. In the windless air it burned easily, and he led the way more quickly. "It's a sure stampede," Shorty decided. "Or might all them be sleep-walkers?" "We're at the head of the procession at any rate," was Smoke's answer.