NORTHWARD HO!Matthew Blunt awakened and lay for a long time conscious only of a terrible nausea and of the fact that his head ached as though it would split. He had the feeling of being borne up, up, up—and then down, down, down—only to begin the upward motion again. It reminded him of the long swell of the Pacific that had so sickened him on the voyage up from the Isthmus. But there was no clanking of machinery, no steady throbbing of engines. And, anyway, he and Jake had left the ship at San Francisco. He remembered the mushroom city of shanties and tents and mud—of Jake fighting with a teamster—of the saloon, and bullets coming up through the floor, of Modoc Billings, and the Gold Ledge Mining Company, of Sam Sprowl’s shack down on the waterfront. They were going to have a supper or som
