The Avails of the Fraction
Author of “The Berg Battlers,” “Clinging,” Etc.
Lederer's brains had availed against many men of cunning in their time. But this time the honest stupidity of a yokel set them at naught.
DOCTOR FERDINAND LEDERER had a beastly headache. He pressed a clean, wet handkerchief to his forehead as he lay in his tent on Gold Hill in the Klondike. He had just returned from an unsuccessful stampede. His pack lay flung in a corner. Dick Kibble, who was his “pardner,” but whom he always thought of as his man Friday, was outside, getting him something to eat and drink.
He was an ungallant figure, sprawled on the low bunk, his blue eyes dull with pain and despair. But, seen on the dank trail an hour before, the impression of him would have been different. Erect, his lithe, athletic figure bristling with energy, chin up, eyes frowning fiercely, he had run and won a long, hard race with fatigue, making it from Eureka Creek in ten hours where sturdy mushers would have taken fifteen or fallen by the wayside. Now he paid the penalty. But he never learned!
There had been no reason thus to overtax himself. A stampede to a rumored new gold strike is an intensive affair in the going, not in the returning. Whether you have staked a claim or have not you may take your time about getting back to your starting point. Doctor Lederer had staked a claim on a side gulch off Eureka more to be doing something than because he was at all impressed with the forlorn-looking place. He did not intend to pay fifteen dollars to the Canadian government to record the claim. Every river, creek and gulch for miles and miles around Dawson was being staked, the near-by ones long ago. Nothing came of it. Doctor Lederer, a newcomer and tenderfoot—with forty thousand others—knew this already. Still, there was always a chance—a bare chance. And he must strike it! He was under a strange imperative, always. He had to do what he wished; have what he wished. And his impatience in accomplishment extended to the unimportant. Hence he could not return to his fraction on Gold Hill at a sensible pace, but must needs suffer self-flagellation. Now he was paying—as he always paid!
Dick brought him strong coffee, baking-powder bread baked as only Dick knew how to bake it, ham and stewed dried apricots. The doctor frowned and gestured Dick to
