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The Stampede To Squaw Creek | Jack London | |
Chapter III. |
Page 1 of 2 |
When they awoke, they found a change had taken place during the night. So warm was it, that Shorty and Smoke, still in their mutual blankets, estimated the temperature at no more than twenty below. The cold snap had broken. On top their blankets lay six inches of frost crystals. "Good morning! how's your feet?" was Smoke's greeting across the ashes of the fire to where Joy Gastell, carefully shaking aside the snow, was sitting up in her sleeping furs. Shorty built the fire and quarried ice from the creek, while Smoke cooked breakfast. Daylight came on as they finished the meal. "You go an' fix them corner-stakes, Smoke," Shorty said. "There's a gravel under where I chopped ice for the coffee, an' I'm goin' to melt water and wash a pan of that same gravel for luck." Smoke departed, axe in hand, to blaze the stakes. Starting from the down-stream centre-stake of 'twenty-seven,' he headed at right angles across the narrow valley towards its rim. He proceeded methodically, almost automatically, for his mind was alive with recollections of the night before. He felt, somehow, that he had won to empery over the delicate lines and firm muscles of those feet and ankles he had rubbed with snow, and this empery seemed to extend to all women. In dim and fiery ways a feeling of possession mastered him. It seemed that all that was necessary was for him to walk up to this Joy Gastell, take her hand in his, and say "Come." |
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Smoke Bellew Jack London |
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