The gamblers took heart of life, and soon the tables were filled, the click of chips and whir of the roulette-ball rising monotonously and imperiously above the hoarse rumble of men's voices and their oaths and heavy laughs.
Few men knew Elam Harnish by any other name than Burning Daylight, the name which had been given him in the early days in the land because of his habit of routing his comrades out of their blankets with the complaint that daylight was burning.

Of the pioneers in that far Arctic wilderness, where all men were pioneers, he was reckoned among the oldest.

Men like Al Mayo and Jack McQuestion antedated him; but they had entered the land by crossing the Rockies from the Hudson Bay country to the east.

He, however, had been the pioneer over the Chilcoot and Chilcat passes.

In the spring of 1883, twelve years before, a stripling of eighteen, he had crossed over the Chilcoot with five comrades.
In the fall he had crossed back with one.