"Well, boys," Tarwater summed up, "I set out for Californy and I got there.And I'm going to get to Klondike.Ain't a thing can stop me, ain't a thing.I'm going to get three hundred thousand outa the ground, too.Ain't a thing can stop me, ain't a thing, because I just naturally need the money.I don't mind a bad temper so long's the boy is square.I'll take my chance, an' I'll work along with you till we catch up with him.Then, if he says no to the proposition, I reckon I'll lose.But somehow I just can't see 'm sayin' no, because that'd mean too close up to freeze-up and too late for me to find another chance like this.And, as I'm sure going to get to Klondike, it's just plumb impossible for him to say no."Old John Tarwater became a striking figure on a trail unusually replete with striking figures.With thousands of men, each back- tripping half a ton of outfit, retracing every mile of the trail twenty times, all came to know him and to hail him as "Father Christmas." And, as he worked, ever he raised his chant with his age-falsetto voice.None of the three men he had joined could complain about his work.True, his joints were stiff - he admitted to a trifle of rheumatism.He moved slowly, and seemed to creak and crackle when he moved; but he kept on moving.Last into the blankets at night, he was first out in the morning, so that the other three had hot coffee before their one before-breakfast pack.And, between breakfast and dinner and between dinner and supper, he always managed to back-trip for several packs himself.Sixty pounds was the limit of his burden, however.He could manage seventy-five, but hecould not keep it up.Once, he tried ninety, but collapsed on the trail and was seriously shaky for a couple of days afterward.
Work! On a trail where hard-working men learned for the first time what work was, no man worked harder in proportion to his strength than Old Tarwater.Driven desperately on by the near-thrust of winter, and lured madly on by the dream of gold, they worked to their last ounce of strength and fell by the way.Others, when failure made certain, blew out their brains.Some went mad, and still others, under the irk of the man- destroying strain, broke partnerships and dissolved life-time friendships with fellows just as good as themselves and just as strained and mad.
Work! Old Tarwater could shame them all, despite his creaking and crackling and the nasty hacking cough he had developed.Early and late, on trail or in camp beside the trail he was ever in evidence, ever busy at something, ever responsive to the hail of "Father Christmas." Weary back-trippers would rest their packs on a log or rock alongside of where he rested his, and would say: "Sing us that song of yourn, dad, about Forty- Nine." And, when he had wheezingly complied, they would arise under their loads, remark that it was real heartening, and hit the forward trail again.
"If ever a man worked his passage and earned it," Big Bill confided to his two partners, "that man's our old Skeezicks.""You bet," Anson confirmed."He's a valuable addition to the party, and I, for one, ain't at all disagreeable to the notion of making him a regular partner - ""None of that!" Charles Crayton cut in."When we get to Dawson we're quit of him - that's the agreement.We'd only have to bury him if we let him stay on with us.Besides, there's going to be a famine, and every ounce of grub'll count.Remember, we're feeding him out of our own supply all the way in.And if we run short in the pinch next year, you'll know the reason.Steamboats can't get up grub to Dawson till the middle of June, and that's nine months away.""Well, you put as much money and outfit in as the rest of us," Big Bill conceded, "and you've a say according.""And I'm going to have my say," Charles asserted with increasingirritability."And it's lucky for you with your fool sentiments that you've got somebody to think ahead for you, else you'd all starve to death.I tell you that famine's coming.I've been studying the situation.Flour will be two dollars a pound, or ten, and no sellers.You mark my words."Across the rubble-covered flats, up the dark canyon to Sheep Camp, past the over-hanging and ever-threatening glaciers to the Scales, and from the Scales up the steep pitches of ice-scoured rock where packers climbed with hands and feet, Old Tarwater camp-cooked and packed and sang.He blew across Chilcoot Pass, above timberline, in the first swirl of autumn snow.Those below, without firewood, on the bitter rim of Crater Lake, heard from the driving obscurity above them a weird voice chanting: "Like Argus of the ancient times, We leave this modern Greece, Tum-tum, tum-tum, tum, tum, tum-tum, To shear the Golden Fleece."And out of the snow flurries they saw appear a tall, gaunt form, with whiskers of flying white that blended with the storm, bending under a sixty-pound pack of camp dunnage.
