The Rim of the Desert

another stir along the table, then Foster said: "That was a great voice of Weatherbee's. I've seen it hearten a whole crowd on a mean trail, like the bugle and fife of a regiment."

"So have I." It was Lucky Banks who spoke. "So have I. And Weatherbee was always ready to stand by a poor devil in a tight place. When the frost got me"--he held up a crippled and withered hand--"it was Dave Weatherbee who pulled me through. We were mushing it on the same stampede from Fairbanks to Ruby Creek, and he never had seen me before. It had come to the last day, and we were fighting it out in the teeth of a blizzard. You all know what that means. In the end we just kept the trail, following the hummocks. Sometimes it was a pack under a drift, or maybe a sled; and sometimes it was a hand reaching up through the snow, frozen stiff. Then it came my turn, and I lay down in my tracks. But Weatherbee stopped to work over me. He wouldn't go on. He said if I was determined to stay in that cemet'ry, I could count on his comp