Whiskers could be funny.

And they were undoubtedly funny on Stampede Smith.

But Alan neither smiled nor laughed, for in his heart was something very near to the missing love of brotherhood for this little man who had written his name across so many pages of Alaskan history.
This morning, as Alan saw him, Stampede Smith was no longer the swiftest gunman between White Horse and Dawson City.

He was a pathetic reminder of the old days when, single-handed, he had run down Soapy Smith and his gang--days when the going of Stampede Smith to new fields meant a stampede behind him, and when his name was mentioned in the same breath with those of George Carmack, and Alex McDonald, and Jerome Chute, and a hundred men like Curley Monroe and Joe Barret set their compasses by his.

To Alan there was tragedy in his aloneness as he stood in the gray of the morning.