{"product_id":"2940014866309","title":"SMOKE AND SHORTY","description":"An excerpt from the beginning of the first chapter:\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eTHE STORY OF THE LITTLE MAN\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\" I Wish you weren't so set in your ways,\" Shorty demurred. \" I'm scairt of that glacier. No man ought to tackle it by himself.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSmoke laughed cheerfully, and ran his eye up the glistening face of the tiny glacier that filled the head of the valley. \" Here it is August, and the days have been getting shorter for two months,\" he epitomised the situation. \" You know quartz, and I don't. But I can bring up the grub, while you keep after that mother lode. So-long. I'll be back by to-morrow evening.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHe turned and started.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\" I feel something's goin' to happen,\" Shorty pleaded after him.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBut Smoke's reply was a bantering laugh, u\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHe held on down the little valley, occasionally wiping the sweat from his forehead, the while his feet crushed through ripe mountain raspberries and delicate ferns that grew beside patches of sun-sheltered ice.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn the early spring he and Shorty had come up the Stewart River and launched out into the amazing chaos of the region where Surprise Lake lay. And all of the spring and half of the summer had been consumed in futile wanderings, when, on the verge of turning back, they caught their first glimpse of the baffling gold-bottomed sheet of water which had lured and fooled a generation of miners. Making their camp in the old cabin which Smoke had discovered on his previous visit, they had learned three things ; first, heavy nugget gold was carpeted thickly on the lake bottom ; next, the gold could be dived for in the shallower portions, but the temperature of the water was man-killing; and, finally, the draining of the lake was too stupendous a task for two men in the shorter half of a short summer. Undeterred, reasoning from the coarseness of the gold that it had not travelled far, they had set out in search of the mother lode. They had crossed the big glacier that frowned on the southern rim and devoted themselves to the puzzling maze of small valleys and canyons beyond, which, by most unmountain-like methods, drained, or Lad at one time drained, into the lake.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe valley Smoke was descending gradually widened after the fashion of any normal valley; but, at the lower end, it pinched narrowly between high precipitous walls and abruptly stopped in a cross wall. At the base of this, in a welter of broken rock, the streamlet disappeared, evidently finding its way out underground. Climbing the cross wall, from the top Smoke saw the lake beneath him. Unlike any mountain lake he had ever seen, it was not blue. Instead, its intense peacock green tokened its shallowness. It was this shallowness that made its draining feasible. All about arose jumbled mountains, with ice-scarred peaks and crags, grotesquely shaped and grouped. All was topsy-turvy and unsystematic—a Dore nightmare. So fantastic and impossible was it that it affected Smoke as more like a cosmic landscape joke than a rational portion of earth's surface. There were many glaciers in the canyons, most of them tiny, and, as he looked, one of the larger ones, on the north shore, caved amid thunders and splashings. Across the lake, seemingly not more than half a mile, but, as he well knew, five miles away, he could see the clump of spruce-trees and the cabin. He looked again to make sure, and saw smoke clearly rising from the chimney. Somebody else had surprised themselves into finding Surprise Lake, was his conclusion, as he turned to climb the southern wall.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFrom the top of this he came down into a little valley, flower-floored and lazy with the hum of bees, that behaved quite as a reasonable valley should, in so far as it made legitimate entry on the lake. What was wrong with it was its length—scarcely a hundred yards; its head a straight up-and-down cliff of a thousand feet, over which a stream pitched itself in descending veils of mist.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAnd here he encountered more smoke, floating lazily upward in the warm sunshine beyond an outjut of rock. As he came round the corner he heard a light metallic tap-tapping and a merry whistling that kept the beat. Then he saw the man, an upturned boot between his knees, into the sole of which he was driving hob-spikes.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\" Hallo! \" was the stranger's greeting, and Smoke's heart went out to the man in ready liking. \" Just in time for a snack. There's coffee in the pot, a couple of cold flapjacks, and some jerky.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\" I'll go you if I lose,\" was Smoke's acceptance, as he sat down. \"I've been rather skimped on the last several meals, but there's oodles of grub over in the cabin.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\" Across the lake ? That's what I was heading for.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Seem's Surprise Lake is becoming populous,\" Smoke complained, emptying the coffee-pot.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\" Go on, you're joking, aren't you ? \" the man said, surprise painted on his face.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSmoke laughed. \" That's the way it takes everybody....","brand":"OGB","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47146264068336,"sku":"2940014866309","price":0.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/2940014866309_p0.jpg?v=1763616403","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/2940014866309","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}