464 LIFE ON A YUKON TRAIL 



axman. In the heart of such a man a good dog supplies much 

 of the place of family, church, and state. Such men are not so 

 much immoral as unmoral. They are not introspective and 

 harbor no unavailing regrets for the past nor morbid anticipa- 

 tions for the future. " Have pleasure while you live," say they, 

 ' : for you will be a long time dead." During the drudgery of work 

 in the wilderness the mind dwells in complacent reminiscence 

 on some wild bit of revelry when last in town or fondly antici- 

 pates the next opportunity of squandering a month's wages in 

 one night of boisterous bedevilment. The generosity of these 

 men is something larger than any formal rule of moral obliga- 

 tion. It extends to the last crust and freely puts life in pawn. 

 After the day's work on the line, the men would usually gather 

 in the largest of our tents for conversation. The talk generally 

 ran to such subjects as gains and losses at poker or faro, the 

 grievances of the Cceur d'Alene miners, the scale of wages at 

 Butte, or personal vicissitudes when " dead broke." Occasion- 

 ally talk drifted to higher themes, as when Charlie Collins, who 

 had played a bass horn in a fireman's band, ventured on musical 

 discussion, or Jim Coyle on literary criticism. Collins remarked 

 one evening that he had not been to church since he had picked 

 up his knowledge of music. " When a man gets to know music 

 right," he observed, "he can't sit under the bum alto singing of 

 a church choir." " The sweetest music I ever heard," added 

 " Calgary," the teamster, " was the bell on the neck of my old 

 lead mare on the Edmonton trail." 



One Sunday evening Coyle, the litterateur, reviewed Quo Vadis 

 in the cook tent. He brought out very prominently the deca- 

 dent institutions of the Eternal City under Nero. At the close 

 of the recital, Collins, who had listened attentively, remarked 

 "ttfat Rome under "that tough mayor must have been run as 

 wide open as Wrangell." 



We were working one warm June day about four miles from 

 camp on a surface of wet moss and heather in a heavy spruce 

 thicket. The mosquitoes had been active for a week, and that 

 day the}^ were particularly exasperating. We had no mosquito 

 netting, but every one had swathed neck and face in a cheese- 

 cloth fabric that had been wound about the bacon. The back 

 flagman and the transitman had just kindled for the twentieth 

 time that day " smudges " to enjoy in the smoke thereof a few 

 minutes' respite from the tormenting insects. At this conjunc- 

 ture a messenger from Glenora appeared with a proclamation of 



