The Bungalow Boys Along the Yukon Part 31

Then one morning the end came. Rufus went to the pit to beg the men, who had been working for twenty hours on a stretch, to leave off for a time and get a little rest. He found them lying in the excavation side by side, each with a shovel in his hand, just as he had dropped. Rufus gave them as fitting a burial as he could, and then, as many a man has done before, he uttered a deep curse against gold, the love of which was the infernal cause of all the trouble. Then making up his few possessions into a bundle, he made his way out to the settlements with his strange story. And so ended two careers which might have been useful and dignified had it not been for the lure of gold that ensnares so many men and breaks so many promising lives. Jim Stapleton and Seth Ingalls were not the first men to yield up their lives at the behest of the demon of gold-seeking, and the most pathetic part of their story is that it is exactly true as related in this volume. The author heard it while in the Yukon some years ago, along with many other tales of the same sort.

As for the boys, they endured many hards.h.i.+ps and not a few perils on their way back to the _Yukon Rover_. But in due course, thin, half-famished and footsore they reached the craft. With what a warm welcome they were received may be readily imagined. They found Mr.

Dacre quite recovered and Sandy as chipper as ever.

The days that ensued were filled with hunting, fis.h.i.+ng and long tramps along the trap-line, till every one of the lads was muscled like an athlete and brown as a berry.

One late August morning the first breath of the northern winter came down upon them. The boys hailed it with delight, for they knew then that the real business of their strange voyage on the Yukon was about to begin. With winter would come the trapping season and the long-awaited silver foxes. The boys looked forward eagerly to the time when they could glide with snowshoes through the frozen woods on their visits to the traps.

But they little knew what the winter held in store for them. It was not to be all sport and jollity. When the iron hand of the frost king closes on the far northland, the time has arrived when men and boys are tried on no common anvil to see of what metal they be. Ahead of the lads lay many strange experiences and perils in the frozen wilds.

Those who care to read of their adventurous winter in the Yukon country may do so in the next volume of this series, ent.i.tled THE BUNGALOW BOYS "NORTH OF FIFTY-THREE."

THE END.