HE river steamer Voyageur, one of the Arctic Circle Line which ex-Marshal Cronin Hess, Gayle Outremont, and Thorpe Calgour established on the Upper Yukon what time they made their pile on Davidson Creek, broke into view above the trading post of Selkirk at the Pelly's mouth. Her sides were white with blizzard-driven snow and sheathed in frozen spray. On her bow tossed a gargoyle figurehead of foam-pale mush ice. She drove at top speed, and her engines hammered incessantly in their feverish race with the frost. So fast she flew that the Selkirk inhabitants on the watch by the shore felt a pang of fear that she was going to ignore them and rush on down river. And no worse calamity than that could befall, for a famine threatened on the Yukon, and, like the men of golden Dawson, those of lonely Selkirk were counting the holes in their belts and concentrating their hopes upon the relief ship Voyageur to bring them supplies enough to tide them over the freeze-up till such time as the river ice would bear freight and freighting dog trains.
Twice before earlier in the fall had their hopes been dashed down, once when the C.D.C. boat Canadian sank in Five Finger Rapids and again as the N.C. steamer Hannah grounded fast below Tantalus Butte. The Voyageur was now their only salvation, and they gesticulated frantically upon the beach and bellowed lest they lose it till they saw her suddenly slow and buckle up the shore ice like glass as she swerved in to the post.
At the direction of Severil, the Selkirk trader, three French half-breeds and a Stick Indian in his employ ran forward to catch the Voyageur's lines, but no frozen hemp came snaking into their outstretched hands.
"No time to make fast!" yelled Cronin, grinning at Severil over the rail. "She'll hang a minute while we dump what you want. How many are you feeding?"
Severil took a swift glance about the group on the icy shore. He knew by heart their exact number, but in this emergency, when he had to assume full responsibility for their keep, he felt it necessary to make a final count. Besides himself there were his English clerk, the three French half-breeds and the Stick Indian aforementioned, two trappers and a prospector going up the Pelly to the Glenlyon Mountains and stayed by lack of supplies which they had figured on purchasing at the post, and a Government courier, coastward bound, whose canoe had been smashed to pieces by ice in an early winter gale at the Selwyn's mouth.
"Ten!" he answered. "And I've always a few stray bucks in the fall for a little debt. Call it twelve for margin. Twelve stomachs for thirty days. Can you stand it?"
Hess whistled speculatively. "Twelve stomachs for thirty days is eating some. We didn't count on more than half a dozen."
"Neither did I," confessed Severil, "but you see how the chances of the river have loaded me up with extras. I got to take care of them just the same as I would of myself. That's my need right now, and I hope you boys can stand it."
"What do you think, eh?" Hess asked his partner Gayle. "Can we stand it?"
"It's a large order under the present circumstances," declared Gayle. "There's Stewart City to provision yet before, we even start on Dawson and Klondike cities. We better cut it some. But we can't cut the mouths, so we'll have to cut the days. Three weeks is your limit, Severil. You can get stuff through from Whitehorse in that time."
"I don't know," brooded Severil, "but I'll try."
E was glad of even three weeks' grace, and he knew there was no use in arguing with the partners. Lords of the moment were they, and at their spoken word men ate or starved. Swiftly they, with the assistance of Thorpe and one of the crew, detached Selkirk's portion of the provisions from a mountainous pile, the overflow of the hold, lashed under a tarpaulin on deck. The boxes, bundles, and bags were tossed overside in a heap upon the river bank, and the steamer veered out again into the middle of the ice-thickened current.
A cry of farewell went up from those on shore. She was the last boat they would see that year, and their first hour of eight months' wintry isolation was upon them. Forlorn they looked, standing on the desolate shore, the rude post buildings behind them and behind the post buildings the outer fringe of a thousand miles of wilderness. They cheered with a gloom in their eyes, but suddenly as those eyes, gazing past the Voyageur's stern, encountered a canoe in mid river, the gloom was usurped by a flash of joy, the joy of a farewell unexpectedly delayed. Severil darted forward, running a few paces along the bank, waving his hands excitedly and yelling for the steamer to stop.