Quite an exodus¹ took place in Dawson in the spring. Men, because they had made stakes, and other men, because they had made none, bought up the available dogs and rushed out for Dyea over the last ice. Incidentally, it was discovered that Dave Harney possessed² most of these dogs.  
"Going out?" Jacob Welse asked him on a day when the meridian³ sun for the first time felt faintly warm to the naked skin.
 
"Well, I calkilate not. I'm clearin' three dollars a pair on the moccasins I cornered, to say nothing but saw wood on the boots. Say, Welse, not that my nose is out of joint⁵, but you jest cinched me everlastin' on sugar, didn't you?"
 
Jacob Welse smiled.
 
"And by the Jimcracky I'm squared! Got any rubber boots?"
 
"No; went out of stock early in the winter." Dave snickered slowly.
"And I'm the pertickler party that hocus-pocused 'em."
"Not you. I gave special orders to the clerks. They weren't sold in lots."
 
"No more they wa'n't. One man to the pair and one pair to the man, and a couple of hundred of them; but it was my dust they chucked into the scales an nobody else's. Drink? Don't mind. Easy! Put up your sack. Call it rebate⁶, for I kin⁴ afford it. . . Goin' out? Not this year, I guess. Wash-up's comin'."
 
A strike on Henderson the middle of April, which promised to be sensational⁷, drew St. Vincent to Stewart River. And a little later, Jacob Welse, interested on Gallagher Gulch⁸ and with an eye riveted⁹ on the copper¹⁰ mines of White River, went up into the same district, and with him went Frona, for it was more vacation than business. In the mean time, Corliss and Bishop¹¹, who had been on trail for a month or more running over the Mayo and McQuestion Country, rounded up on the left fork of Henderson, where a block of claims waited to be surveyed.
 
But by May, spring was so far advanced that travel on the creeks¹² became perilous¹³, and on the last of the thawing¹⁴ ice the miners travelled down to the bunch of islands below the mouth of the Stewart, where they went into temporary quarters or crowded the hospitality of those who possessed cabins. Corliss and Bishop located on Split-up Island (so called through the habit parties from the Outside had of dividing there and going several ways), where Tommy McPherson was comfortably situated¹⁵. A couple of days later, Jacob Welse and Frona arrived from a hazardous¹⁶ trip out of White River, and pitched tent on the high ground at the upper end of Split-up. A few chechaquos, the first of the spring rush, strung in exhausted¹⁷ and went into camp against the breaking of the river. Also, there were still men going out who, barred by the rotten ice, came ashore¹⁸ to build poling-boats and await the break-up or to negotiate with the residents for canoes. Notably¹⁹ among these was the Baron²⁰ Courbertin.
 
"Ah! Excruciating! Magnificent! Is it not?"
 
So Frona first ran across him on the following day. "What?" she asked, giving him her hand.
 
"You! You!" doffing²¹ his cap. "It is a delight!"
 
"I am sure—" she began.
 
"No! No!" He shook his curly mop warmly. "It is not you. See!" He turned to a Peterborough, for which McPherson had just mulcted him of thrice its value. "The canoe! Is it not—not—what you Yankees call—a bute?"
 
"Oh, the canoe," she repeated, with a falling inflection of chagrin²².
 
"No! No! Pardon!" He stamped angrily upon the ground. "It is not so. It is not you. It is not the canoe. It is—ah! I have it now! It is your promise. One day, do you not remember, at Madame Schoville's, we talked of the canoe, and of my ignorance, which was sad, and you promised, you said—"
 
"I would give you your first lesson?"
 
"And is it not delightful²³? Listen! Do you not hear? The rippling²⁴—ah! the rippling!—deep down at the heart of things! Soon will the water run free. Here is the canoe! Here we meet! The first lesson! Delightful! Delightful!"
 
The next island below Split-up was known as Roubeau's Island, and was separated from the former by a narrow back-channel. Here, when the bottom had about dropped out of the trail, and with the dogs swimming as often as not, arrived St. Vincent—the last man to travel the winter trail. He went into the cabin of John Borg, a taciturn, gloomy individual, prone²⁵ to segregate²⁶ himself from his kind. It was the mischance of St. Vincent's life that of all cabins he chose Borg's for an abiding-place against the break-up.
 
"All right," the man said, when questioned by him. "Throw your blankets into the corner. Bella'll clear the litter out of the spare bunk²⁷."
 
Not till evening did he speak again, and then, "You're big enough to do your own cooking. When the woman's done with the stove you can fire away."
 
The woman, or Bella, was a comely²⁸ Indian girl, young, and the prettiest St. Vincent had run across. Instead of the customary greased swarthiness of the race, her skin was clear and of a light-bronze tone, and her features less harsh, more felicitously²⁹ curved, than those common to the blood.
 
After supper, Borg, both elbows on table and huge misshapen hands supporting chin and jaws³⁰, sat puffing³¹ stinking³² Siwash tobacco and staring straight before him. It would have seemed ruminative³³, the stare, had his eyes been softer or had he blinked; as it was, his face was set and trance-like.
 
"Have you been in the country long?" St. Vincent asked, endeavoring to make conversation.
 
Borg turned his sullen-black eyes upon him, and seemed to look into him and through him and beyond him, and, still regarding h............