"Stark asked me to let Runnion come 'long, bein' as he had grub-staked him, and he seemed so set on it that I ackeressed.

You see, it's the first chance I ever had to pay him back for a favor he done me in the Cassiar country.
There's plenty of land to go around." It was Lee's affair, thought the trader, and he might tell whom he liked, so he said no more, but fell to studying the back of the man next in front, who happened to be Stark, observing every move and trick of him, and, during the frequent pauses, making a point of listening and watching him guardedly.
All through the afternoon the five men wound up the valley, following one another's footsteps, emerging from sombre thickets of fir to flounder across wide pastures of "nigger-heads," that wobbled and wriggled and bowed beneath their feet, until at cost of much effort and profanity they gained the firmer footing of the forest.

Occasionally they came upon the stream, and found easier going along its gravel bars, till a bend threw them again into the meadows and mesas on either hand.

Their course led them far up the big valley to another stream that entered from the right, bearing backward in a great bow towards the Yukon, and always there were dense clouds of mosquitoes above their heads.

At one point Stark, hot and irritable, remarked: "There must be a shorter cut than this, Lee ?" "I reckon there is," the miner replied, "but I've always had a pack to carry, so I chose the level ground ruther than climb the divides." "S'pose dose people at camp hear 'bout dis strike an' beat us in ?" suggested Poleon.
"It wouldn't be easy going for them after they got there," Stark said, sourly.