The son of the wolf Author:Jack London Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: THE MEN OF FORTY-MILE When Big Jim Belden ventured the apparently innocuous proposition that mush-ice was " rather pecooliar," he little dreamed of what it wo... more »uld lead to. Neither did Lon Mc- Fane, when he affirmed that anchor-ice was even more so; nor did Bettles, as he instantly disagreed, declaring the very existence of such a form to be a bugaboo. " An' ye 'd be tellin' me this," cried Lon, " after the years ye 've spint in the land ! An' we atin' out the same pot this many's the day!" " But the thing's agin reason," insisted Bettles. " Look you, water 's warmer than ice " "An' little the difference, once ye break through." " Still it's warmer, because it ain't froze. An' you say it freezes on the bottom ? " " Only the anchor-ice, David, only the anchor-ice. An' have ye niver drifted along, the water clear as glass, whin suddin, belikea cloud over the sun, the mushy ice comes bubblin' up an' up, till from bank to bank an' bind to bind it's drapin' the river like a first snowfall ? " " Unh hunh ! more 'n once when I took a doze at the steering-oar. But it allus come out the nighest side-channel, an' not bubblin' up an' up." " But with niver a wink at the helm ? " " No ; nor you. It's agin reason. I 'll leave it to any man ! " Bettles appealed to the circle about the stove, but the fight was on between himself and Lon McFane. " Reason or no reason, it's the truth I 'm tellin' ye. Last fall, a year gone, 't was Sitka Charley and meself saw the sight, drop- pin' down the riffle ye 'll remember below Fort Reliance. An' regular fall weather it was, — the glint o' the sun on the golden larch an' the quakin' aspens; an' the glister of light on ivery ripple; an' beyand, the winter an' the blue haze of the North comin' down hand in hand. It's well ye k...« less