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Solution Manual for Concepts in Enterprise


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Concepts in Enterprise Resource Planning, Fourth Edition 1-2

airplane weight, developing technologies to improve cabin


comfort, as well as improving airplane production flow.
American Semiconductor Provides pure-play, low-cost semiconductor foundry services
Inc. (ASI) for all aspects of wafer fabrication and process development.
Omega Precision Manufactures complex, close-tolerance machined parts for
the aerospace and defense industries.
Woodland Trade Company Provides production parts tooling and assemblies for Boeing
Commercial Airplanes programs.
Harris Environmental Group Helps Boeing to identify environmental risks and understand
rural site regulatory and construction constraints. They also
provide flexible staffing deployment to meet emerging
requirements.
Source: http://www.boeing.com/news/releases/2008/q2/080417b_nr_supplier.html

With a new integrated ERP system, Boeing would be able to react more quickly to
demand increases and would also be able to produce more accurate forecasts.

Exercises
1. Distinguish between a business function and a business process. Describe how a
business process cuts across functional lines in an organization. How might a
manager organize his or her staff in terms of business processes rather than
functional departments? What benefits would there be with this type of
organization? What challenges would it pose?

A business function is a business "activity,” such as sales order processing,


production scheduling, cash-flow management, and recruiting personnel. A business
process is a collection of activities that takes one or more kinds of input and creates
an output that is of value to the customer.

A business process occurs when a series of activities are performed in more than one
functional area. Making and selling a product to a customer is a process that involves
sales, production, and accounting activities. The people who work in each activity
must work together to make the sale go smoothly - taking the order, scheduling
production, shipping the product, recording data about production and sales and the
ultimate collection of the customer's payment.

Today, business managers try to think in terms of business processes that integrate the
functional areas, thus promoting efficiency and competitiveness. An important aspect
of this integration is the need to share information between functional areas, and with
business partners. ERP software provides this capability by means of a single
common database.

The better a company can integrate the activities of each functional area, the more
successful it will be in today’s highly competitive environment. Integration also
Concepts in Enterprise Resource Planning, Fourth Edition 1-3

contributes to improvements in communication and workflow. Each area’s


information system depends on data from other functional areas.

2. How could a university organize its business education around business


processes rather than business functions? What would be the benefits to
students?

Responses will vary. Students could focus on integrating the process involved
designing the following courses: Finance, Marketing, Technology, and
Organizational Behavior.

3. Assume your uncle raises bees for honey on his farm. You help him package the
honey and sell it on the Internet. Reproduce Figure 1-1 for this small business
example. Add a one-sentence description for each function as it relates to selling
this artisan honey online.

Marketing and Supply Chain Accounting and Human


Sales Management Finance Resources
Marketing the Purchasing Financial Recruiting and
product goods and raw accounting of hiring
materials payments from
customers and
suppliers
Taking sales orders Receiving Cost allocation and Training
goods and raw control
materials
Customer support Shipping Planning and Payroll
budgeting
Customer Scheduling Cash-flow Free honey
relationship production runs management
management
Sales Harvesting the Government
forecasting honey compliance
Advertising Hive maintenance

4. Go to the Amazon Web site (http://www.amazon.com), and step through the


process of buying an item without actually purchasing the item. Based on this
experience, describe the flows of information between Marketing and Sales,
Accounting and Finance, and Supply Chain Management at Amazon. How easy
is it to buy that item?

Amazon’s order process:


1. Marketing and Sales: Customers chooses an item and adds it to her shopping cart.
2. Accounting and Finance: Receives information from Marketing and Sales that
customer wants to checkout.
Concepts in Enterprise Resource Planning, Fourth Edition 1-4

3. Accounting and Finance: Processes payment.


4. Supply Chain Management: Ships order after receiving information from
Accounting and Finance that payment process is complete.

5. Using the Internet, research your state’s regulations for employing teenagers -
such as minimum age of employment. Do the same for a neighboring state. Are
the two state regulations the same? Why would it be important for Human
Resources to communicate this information to a hiring department?

Responses will vary.

New York

During weeks when school is in session, minors 14- and 15-years-old are limited to
the following hours in most occupations:
 More than 3 hours on any school day
 More than 8 hours on a Saturday or a non-school day
 More than 18 hours in any week
 More than 6 days in any week

The law makes exceptions for:


 Babysitters
 Bridge caddies at bridge tournaments
 Farm laborers
 Newspaper carriers
 Performers
 Models

When school is not in session, and during vacations (school must close for the entire
calendar week):
 Minors under 18 may not work more than 8 hours a day, 6 days a week
 Minors 14 and 15 may not work more than 40 hours a week
 16 and 17 year-olds may not work more than 48 hours a week

Source:
http://www.labor.ny.gov/workerprotection/laborstandards/workprot/hrswork.shtm

New Jersey

34:2-21.2. Minors under 16 not to be employed; exceptions; nonresidents

No minor under 16 years of age shall be employed, permitted, or suffered to work in,
about, or in connection with any gainful occupation at any time; provided, that
minors between 14 and 16 years of age may be employed, permitted or suffered to
work outside school hours and during school vacations but not in or for a factory or
in any occupation otherwise prohibited by law or by order or regulation made in
Concepts in Enterprise Resource Planning, Fourth Edition 1-5

pursuance of law; and provided, further, that minors under 16 years of age may
engage in professional employment in theatrical productions upon the obtaining of a
permit and may engage outside school hours and during school vacations in
agricultural pursuits or in street trades and as newspaper boys as defined in this act,
in accordance with the provisions of section 15 of this act. Minors may also engage in
employment in domestic service performed outside of school hours or during school
vacations with the permission of the minor's parents or legal guardian, in a residence
other than the minor's own home. Nothing in this act shall be construed to apply to
the work of a minor engaged in domestic service or agricultural pursuits performed
outside of school hours or during school vacations in connection with the minor's
own home and directly for his parents or legal guardian.

Source: http://lwd.dol.state.nj.us/labor/wagehour/lawregs/child_labor_law.html

6. Think of the last time you bought a high-tech electronic item. How does the
process of buying that item cut across the store’s various functional lines? What
information from your receipt would need to be available to the business
functions? Which business functions would need that information? How could
your receipt help in the process of returning that item?

1. A receipt has information about the customer. That information is important for
sales and marketing
2. A receipt has information about what was purchased. This information is
important for the stocking of future items (supply chain management)
3. A receipt also most likely has a bar code for future reference to that sales
transaction. For example, if the item was returned to the store, that bar code could
be scanned, the item put back into inventory, and the customer’s account credited
4. A receipt would also have information important to accounting and finance, that
is the sale and the movement of the goods from inventory out of the door
5. A receipt would have information on who the sales person was who did the sale.
This is information important to human resources for performance reviews, raises,
and bonuses.

7. Assume you own and run a small ice cream shop located on the grounds of a
private pool. You want to maximize sales and decide that allowing customers to
buy on credit could be a big driver of sales since most people come to the pool
without cash. What information do you need to keep track of to make sure a
given customer doesn’t go over their $20 credit limit. What problems might
occur?

Responses will vary. Information to keep track of includes:


 Customer’s name , address, and phone number
 Number of orders
 Total cost of orders
 Amount owed
Concepts in Enterprise Resource Planning, Fourth Edition 1-6
Exploring the Variety of Random
Documents with Different Content
The steamboat Selkirk, which was to carry the boys from White
Horse to Circle City, was of the old time kind that was used on the
Mississippi and other rivers half a century ago; that is, it was of the
wood-burning, stern paddle-wheel type.
As they stood out on deck the next morning Jack tried to lose
sight of the big issue for the moment and he imagined himself to be
the first explorer who had traced the Yukon River in this region. If he
had not had gold on the brain it would have been an easy thing to do
for here were the same virgin meadows, primeval forests and silent
fastnesses just as they were when the Russians laid claim to Alaska.
And the gold, he reasoned, that was here then is, for the greater
part, here now.
Not once since they had left Seattle had Bill compared anything
with his Noo York, at least not out loud, but when they were passing
through the headwaters of the Yukon he said as though he was
talking to himself, “It hasn’t got anything on the Spuyten Duyvil,”
which, let me elucidate, is a tidal channel that connects the Harlem
River with the Hudson River and so forms the northern boundary of
Manhattan Island on which New York City proper is built. But in the
eight hundred and sixty odd mile trip down the Yukon to Circle City
Bill had ample opportunity to amend his snap comparison and even
then he was fifteen hundred miles from its many channeled delta
where it flows into the Bering Sea.
“Doesn’t look much like the naked north or frozen regions that the
folks back home think it is,” remarked Bill, as they passed a tundra
(pronounced toon´-dra) which was thick with grass and shrubs and
sprinkled with various plants in flower.
“I’ll say it doesn’t,” replied Jack, “but wait, we haven’t run into
winter weather yet.”
As the boat plied its way softly and swiftly down the Yukon they
saw occasional Indian villages, the men taking life easy, the children
playing and the squaws busy drying the golden salmon on poles set
in the sun. Then to the great delight of both boys they saw a caribou
swim out from the shore intending, probably, to cross to the other
side, but frightened by the modernity of the throbbing, smoking
monster he swam back faster than he came, and on gaining the
shore he disappeared from view.
Another time Bill went over to Jack, who was talking with some
passengers, and saluting as to an officer he said, “I have to report,
sir, a bear on the starboard bow.” And sure enough there stood a
huge bear high on the ledge of a rock and so motionless was he that
he seemed carved out of the rock itself; but inwardly he was fully
alive to this mechanical invasion of his eminent domain.
Never was a river trip of such wild beauty, so full of interest and
yet such soothing quiet as this one the boys were now making and it
would have proved doubly delightful if they had been pleasure
seekers instead of gold seekers. The only breaks in the continuity of
the run were made when the boat nosed its way along a bank and,
finding an anchorage, she wooded up, that is she took on wood to be
burned under her boilers.
Now the river widened and the boat ran into the more placid
waters of Lake LeBarge which Jack pointed out to Bill as having
been the scene of action in The Cremation of Sam McGee, a poem
by Robert Service. On reaching the lower end of the lake the boat
shot down the Thirty Mile River where the swift current winds forth
and back like a tangled rope and it takes a pilot who knows his trade
to hold her to the channel.
But the most exciting piece of navigation is at Five Finger Rapids,
for here the river narrows down into a neck and almost closing the
latter are five ugly finger-like rocks projecting above the surface with
the water swirling swiftly round them in mighty eddies. It looked to
Jack and Bill as if there was not enough room for the boat to pass
between any two of them but this didn’t seem to worry the pilot any
who held her nose hard toward the middle finger.
The boys thought that he must be tired of life. But hold there
matey, just as they had timed her to strike the rock he bore down
hard on his wheel to port and the boat missed the rock by the skin of
its teeth, Their hearts dropped back from their throats to their
thoraxes again and they believed they still stood a fair chance of
finding the gold they were after.
And now comes Dawson into view—Dawson in the heart of the
Klondike—the Dawson of tradition, adventure, romance and—of
gold! This is the identical town where that great army of pioneer gold
seekers, who braved the rigors of the winters, the dangers of the
rapids, the stresses of starvation and the robbers of Soapy Smith’s
gang, found themselves if they were unfortunate enough to be so
fortunate.
As the steamboat ties up here for half a day to load and unload its
cargo the boys went on a hike over to an Indian village called
Moosehide, a little way down the trail from Dawson. On returning to
town they got the borry, as Bill called it, of a couple of horses and
rode out eight or ten miles where some great dredges were at work
bringing up the sand and gravel from the streams and hydraulicking
equipments were washing the gold out of it.
“This kind of mining,” Jack said to his partner, “is simply panning
out gold on a big scale by machinery, and gold fields that are not rich
enough to be worked profitably by a prospector will yield gold on a
paying basis where hydraulicking can be taken advantage of.”
“It’s too slow a game for me,” was Bill’s idea of the scheme, “I
wants to pick it up in chunks.”
“That’s what we’re here for,” Jack made answer.
They left Dawson that evening and the next morning still found
them in the Yukon Territory, but shortly after breakfast the boat
crossed the International boundary line and they were on good old
U. S. soil again. The boat soon made a landing at Eagle City where
Fort Egbert is located and the first thing Jack spied was a big
wireless station which he knew belonged to the U. S. Army.
From Eagle to Circle City, or just Circle as it is called for short, is a
sail of a hundred and ninety miles. Both Jack and Bill were dead
tired of traveling and they hailed Circle as heartily as they would
have hailed their own home town. But they didn’t know what they
were hailing. The only outstanding fact with them was that they had
arrived, or at any rate they had gone as far as trains and boats could
carry them toward the goal of their desires. The bridge was swung
ashore and they got off without delay. The whistle blew a couple of
sonorous blasts, and the boat backed off and went on her way down
stream.
In the days of the gold rush Circle had been the great outfitting
town in these parts. It was built up entirely of log cabins and it had
more log cabins than any town had ever gathered together before or
since. Why Circle City? Whence the name? Because when the town
was started it was believed to be located right on the Arctic Circle but
later it was learned that it was a good eighty miles below the Circle.
As the boys stepped ashore they were greeted by a few white
men, some Indians and the ear-splitting howls of the huskies.
“I tell you Bill, we’re on the very edge of things.”
“You said a mouthful, pard,” was that worthy’s sober reply.
CHAPTER IV
WHEN BILL AND BLACK PETE MET
The boys wore sorely disappointed in Circle for while it had been,
as they had heard, “the largest log house town in the world,” and as
far as log houses go it was yet, for that matter, still that essential
moving principle that makes up a town, namely the inhabitants, was
lacking.
But times have changed since the early ’90’s and now all that
remain of its population are a few men who look after the stores and
a handful of prospectors, miners, hunters and trappers who come
into town to buy their supplies, and these hearten it up a bit. As for
the empty log houses they serve only as so many monuments to
commemorate the time when the town was alive and full of action.
You ask why the town died out? I’ll tell you. Gold was discovered
there in 1894 and for the next four years its growth was phenomenal
—the wonder of all Alaska; but when the Klondike was opened up
the inhabitants left everything behind them and made a mad rush for
the new gold fields, and so at the present time there is little left to tell
of the glory that was Circle’s.
The way Jack had figured it out coming up on the boat was that
they would get their clothes, grub, sleds and dogs at Circle, which
prospectors and others he had talked with said they could do, and
then when they were all fixed and winter had set in they would push
on over to the land of the Yeehats and there establish a base from
which they could work.
This base of supplies was to be like the hub of a great wheel the
circumference of which would include all of the territory to be
prospected and their local expeditions would be like the spokes, that
is they would strike out with their dog teams, traveling light, taking a
new line of direction each trip they made. In this way they could, he
said, make a thorough search for the hidden gold that those before
them had struck so rich but which for divers reasons best known to
those who had sought it had never been gotten out of the country.
His best thought, as he had previously explained in answer to an
objection of Bill’s, was to make this search during the winter months
instead of doing it in summer-time in virtue of the fact that they could
then use dog sleds and this would enable them to cover the ground
without working themselves to death and do it at a goodly clip
besides.
Now, when Bill had set his eyes on the deserted City of Circle he
instantly took a violent dislike to it. Having become fairly well posted
on the geography of Ilasker, as he still persisted in calling it, he
concocted the notion that what they should have done was to come
up in the early spring and go on by boat to Fort Yukon, which is
about eighty-five miles farther on down the river.
From there, he contended, they could have gotten a couple of
canoes and paddled up the Porcupine and Big Black Rivers until
they were close to where the International boundary line crosses the
Arctic Circle. This done, (according to Jack’s own reasoning he
said), they would be about as near the place where they wanted to
make their winter quarters as they could get. But there was no
getting away from it, they were now in Circle with winter fast coming
on and it was too late to change the work sheet as previously laid
out.
By the time this argument was over, the boys had reached the
Grand Palace Hotel, an enormous log building of two stories of the
regulation kind to be found in all frontier and mining towns.
Running nearly the length of one side of the hall as they entered
it, was a bar with a hotel register on the end nearest the door. At the
extreme farther end of the hall a platform had been built up about as
high as a man’s head, while any number of small round tables
covered with worn-out and faded green cloth were strewn about the
room.
The owner of the Grand Palace in the days antedating the
Klondike rush was Sam Hastings, or Silent Sam as he was called,
because he never spoke unless he was spoken to and his replies
were always pithy and to the point. His face was smooth shaven; he
wore a low crowned, narrow brimmed Stetson hat, a rolling collar
with a flowing tie, silk shirt with diamond set gold buttons in the cuffs,
a Prince Albert coat with a six gun conveniently within reach under it,
doeskin3 breeches and kid button shoes. Unlike Soapy Smith he was
honest, as men of his type went in those days, but like Soapy he
died with his button shoes on.
3 Doeskin is a kind of fine twilled cloth much used in those days for making breeches.
Now let this close-up of Silent Sam fade away and take a look at a
snap-shot of Doc Marling, the present owner of the Grand Palace
and you will observe a further change that time and circumstances
have wrought in Circle.
Doc is a big-headed man and bearded like a couple of pards. He
wears a woolen shirt, under which beats a fair to middling heart; his
breeches are also woolen tied around his ankles and he has on a
pair of deerskin moccasins.
He is no shooter—you could see that the moment you look at him
—but it is history up yonder that he once choked a bear to death with
his hands alone.
He was the only animated object in the great bare room when the
boys walked in and they felt like a couple of mavericks that had been
cut out from the herd. No more lonesome place had either of them
ever been in this side of Nyack-on-the-Hudson.
But Doc Marling didn’t seem to feel that way, since after being
there for twenty odd years perhaps he’d gotten used to it. He invited
them to inscribe their names on the hotel register, after which he led
the march down the hall—it seemed to the boys as if it was a block
long—thence up the stair-way whose well-worn steps showed clearly
that Circle had been very much alive in the days of her youth, and
then to their room which was altogether too big.
“One thing sure, we’ll get in practice here for the long winter that is
ahead of us,” reflected Jack philosophically.
“It wouldn’t be half-bad if we had a ’phone connection with the
American Consolidated Oil Company back in Noo York, but where
are we? Five thousand miles away and not even a wireless station
nearer than Eagle. ‘I blazes!’ as Grizzly Hank down at Juneau says,”
groused Bill. His indisposition was curious in that no matter how
strenuous the tide of battle might be he had never a word to say, but
inaction always behaved as an irritant to his nervous system.
Came soon the loud jangling of a bell and they knew it for a call to
supper. They followed where it led and sat down to their first meal in
Circle, and it was good. There were ten or a dozen men at the table
with them and up here at the very outpost of civilization, where men
are what they are, they all fell into loud and easy conversation.
“We’re in the hands of white men, as I said we’d be, back there in
New York,” Jack told his partner when they were again in their room.
Just as they were about to turn in they thought they heard a
phonograph going, and as “music hath charms to soothe the savage
breast” they went down into the big hall to be soothed.
While in pre-Klondike days it was of nightly occurrence to find four
or five hundred people gathered in the hall, there were now
congregated perhaps some twenty-five or thirty men, and these were
made up of Americans, French-Canadians, Indians, half-breeds, and
a Chinaman or two, to say nothing of the bear.
A few of those who composed this agglomeration of humanity,
were the scum of the earth but most of them were men of strong
character and sterling worth. Considering that they were on the very
edge of things they were bound to be a rough and ready lot but
taken all in all they were well behaved and peaceably inclined—all
except one and he was Black Pete.
While the crowd by no means filled the void of the big hall, still it
breathed enough of life into the stagnated atmosphere to take off the
sharp edges of their lonesomeness.
Now instead of a phonograph they discovered that the source of
the music originated in a tall, rangy miner with a big bushy
mustache, who was sitting on the platform and sawing away on a
fiddle as if his whole soul was in it. Near the platform some kind of a
disturbance was going on around which the onlookers had formed
themselves into a ring. Whatever it was they were greatly interested
and from the roars of laughter they were evidently enjoying it hugely.
Jack and Bill elbowed their way deep enough into the ring to see
what the frolic was and what they saw they concluded was about as
good as an act in a side-show. In a word it was a team of dancers
executing with great precision and solemnity the “bear-trot”, or “bear-
hug”, or “bear-something-or-other”, for a young French-Canadian
and a big brown bear, who stood erect on his hind legs, when he
was as tall as his keeper, were executing a most ludicrous, albeit, a
lumbering sort of dance.
“IT WAS A TEAM OF DANCERS.”

After a spell Rip Stoneback, the fiddler, ceased scraping the


catgut strings with his horse-hair bow and the trainer and his bear
wound up their exhibition with a wrestling bout that tickled the
everlasting daylights out of these simple northmen, from which it
could be fairly deduced that, after all, they were really only boys
“growed” up.
The boys mingled freely with the knots of men taking in what they
had to say about everything in general and little things in particular,
for it was all brand-new and novel to them. Jack struck up a
conversation with a young fellow named Jim Wendle from ’Frisco
who had staked a claim over on Preacher Creek.
“The boys here are all right,” he was saying to Jack, “there’s only
one fellow who is really hard boiled and that’s Black Pete over there.
He’s laid out every man he’s ever tackled, either with his fists, or his
knife and I’ve heard that he shot a man once. He’s meaner than all
get out when he’s had a few drinks so don’t get into any argument
with him. Agree to anything he says if he talks to you.”
Black Pete did not look the part of a “bad man” though his face
was hard and his complexion was swarthy. He was not very tall, had
tremendous shoulders and having lived in the open Northland all his
life he knew the run of men who gathered here. He was thoroughly
disliked in Circle because of this disposition on his part to always
want to pick a fight and there were men thereabouts who were
actually afraid of him.
At about the same time that Jack was getting his information
concerning Black Pete another prospector was tipping off his history
to Bill and it was lucky for both of the boys that they were “let in” on
his past performances when they were.
Black Pete and a boon companion were leaning against the bar
when the latter made some passing remark about that young
stripling and his partner who had just landed in Circle.
“Sleem keed heem all right,” returned Pete, “but I no got use for
heem pardner—zat fellow weez da cut cross hees cheek. I give
heem beeg leeking sometime. Maybe theese night. Watch a
meenute. I have som’ fun with sleem keed.” Black Pete called to
Jack and motioned him to come over, but as the latter had not been
introduced he paid no attention and this aroused Black Pete’s ire.
Then he and his companion started over toward Jack and Jim
Wendle.
“Be careful now,” his friend cautioned him.
Black Pete laid his hand on Jack’s shoulder in a perfectly friendly
like manner and said:
“You and Jeem com’ heeva dreenk weeth me?”
At that Jack got up from the table and looked Black Pete square in
the eye.
“I don’t drink,” he said shortly.
Black Pete was mad clear through, that much was plain.
Bill who had been taking a hand in a world-old game called poker,
happened to see Jack and Black Pete facing each other and he
divined trouble. He laid down his cards and went over where his
pardner and the bad un were, to listen in on the conversation.
“Heeve a seegar, then,” the Canuk insisted catching hold of Jack’s
arm and pulling him toward the bar.
Taking a firm hold on Black Pete’s wrist Jack removed his hand
from his arm and said, without the slightest inflexion in his voice, “I
don’t smoke.”
Then the unexpected happened—that which had not happened in
Circle in perhaps a dozen or twenty years before.
“You don’t eh?” growled Black Pete, infuriated at Jack’s cold
refusal to join him in either one or the other, “then deem you, heeve
a bullet!”
At the same time he whipped out his six-shooter and pulled the
trigger, but his marksmanship was bad, for Bill had caught him by his
throat from the side and pulled his body over so that the bullet
crashed through the roof, instead of boring a hole through Jack’s
body.
Expecting that the remaining chambers would be emptied in the
struggle which took place between Bill and Black Pete the crowd
dropped to the floor, jumped behind the bar, crawled under tables—
all except René and he kept his trained bear between himself and
the business end of the gun the bad man of Circle and the Harlem
boy were struggling for.
These latter two were well matched though there was no doubt
but that Black Pete who was the larger was also the stronger, but
sheer brute strength could not gain the mastery where the tricks of
the wrestler’s art are brought to bear and Bill had a little the best of
it.
As the crowd rightly guessed when the first shot was fired, Black
Pete did pull the trigger every chance he got until all of his cartridges
were shot off but each time the bullet that was intended for Bill went
wild and neither he nor the others were scratched. One bullet,
though, shivered the big plate glass mirror over the bar into a
thousand pieces and Doc Marling, the proprietor, knew that he was
having bad luck just then to the jig-time of three hundred dollars,
even if it didn’t keep on for the next seven years.
All the time the struggle was under way Jack stood by as though
he was watching a friendly bout in Prof. William Adam’s Academy on
Manhattan Street in the good old days. More than one of the
onlookers wondered why he didn’t crack a bottle on Black Pete’s
head and so help out his partner, but this was not the way the boys
did team work. In a set-to of any kind whether it was with bare
knuckles, with knives or with pistols neither one would take a hand in
the affair the other was engaged in unless, as Jack had once
explained to me, it was “absolutely imperative.”
And this status of the fray was far from having come to pass, at
least that was the way Jack sized it up. The crowd must have kept
count of the shots fired for when the last one took place they quickly
picked themselves up from the floor, or crawled out from their safety-
first hiding places, and gathered around Bill and Black Pete who
were still at it.
Whether it was due to the final breaking down of his courage,
failing strength, too much hootch or the superior tactics of the trained
athlete, was not apparent, but slowly Bill overpowered his opponent,
threw him over his shoulder, when he struck the floor on his back,
and pinned him down so that he could not move. After all had seen
that Black Pete was helpless Bill let him up.
There was wild cheering for the victor and some one brought Bill a
big glass of forty-rod.
“You have well earned it boy and you need it,” he said as he
offered the glass to him.
“I never drink,” said Bill and it was given instead to Black Pete to
revive him again.
“BLACK PETE DID PULL THE TRIGGER EVERY CHANCE HE GOT.”

When the latter had regained his feet, and recovered from the
shock a little, he offered no explanation for his defeat, but in his deep
humiliation he moved over toward the door to make as dignified an
exit as he could in the quickest possible time.
“Hey, where are youse goin’,” Bill called out after him. “Come back
here and sit down at this table and let’s be friends, for I never holds a
grudge after I have downed me man. Sit down here, I wants to tell
youse something.”
Black Pete reluctantly did as Bill requested and the crowd surged
round them to hear what it was this boy from down under had to say
to him.
“I takes it you’re a bit loaded with licker to-night and perhaps I had
the ’vantage of youse for I never lets any of that hootch stuff interfere
with me phys-e-que, see? Now you think you’re some scrapper don’t
you? Well maybe you are, and I’ll give you a fair chanst. Tomorrer
youse keep away from the bug-juice, see? and come ’round in de
evenin’ and I’ll spar’ a few rounds with youse—tree rounds ull be
about enough—just a friendly bout for the sport it will give these
gents here. Marquis Queensbury rules or sluggers rules, I don’t care
which. Youse can go now,” and Black Pete promptly sneaked off
wishing that an earthquake would open a gulch through Circle and
swallow up him, Bill, Jack and everybody else, but it didn’t.
All the next day Black Pete wondered how he could get out of the
‘friendly bout’ that Bill was so willing to pull off for the mere fun of the
thing. He didn’t know what the Marquis of Queensbury rules were
but he finally came to the conclusion that he was a better man than
his opponent and that the only way he could retrieve his standing in
Circle was to give the Keed the beating of his life.
Curiously enough he did ‘cut out the booze’ just as though he had
paid Bill for the advice and then he proceeded to get into his best
fighting trim.
“I knock heem face een eef I ever heet heem,” he said talking to
himself, and then to prove to his own satisfaction that he could do it
he made four well defined dents in the pine board wall with a
smashing blow of his fist.
“An’ you said these folks up here was all of the peace-lovin’
garden variety, and never use a gun,” Bill said soberly when they
were in their room after the fracas.
“I thought they were,” replied Jack.
“You thought they were?” and Bill looked at him as though he had
caught him breaking the nth commandment. “Well don’t youse think
again, Buddy, or youse might hurt yourself, see?”
CHAPTER V
OUTFITTING AT CIRCLE
In the great hall everything was as quiet as the faces on the totem
poles that reared their ugliness into the air on either side of the
Grand Palace Hotel. While the night before had been the most
exciting of any that the oldest pioneers of Circle could remember
since the days of ’94, in the broad light of the morning after, it
seemed as though “the makin’s of it had just melted away,” as Bill
expressed it.
The boys found Doc Marling in the ‘office’ of his hotel which meant
that he was standing back of the register and ink-bottle. He greeted
his paying guests mournfully and when Jack inquired what he had on
his young mind that grieved him he pointed to the frame-work which
had held the largest mirror north of Dawson so short a time before as
yesterday. It only went to prove how fragile are mirrors and the
mutability of things in general.
“My lookin’-glass is busted,” he said funeral-like, “and I’m out just
three hundred cold dollars in gold.”
“I don’t see how you could blame us because a patron of yours
thought he’d let daylight through me. Black Pete started it and it’s up
to you to make him settle for it,” suggested Jack.
“He hasn’t got anything to settle with; that’s the worst part of it,” he
replied, fishing.
“Then you orter take it gentle-like outen his hide.” This from Bill.
“Well, I kinda allowed that you about did that thing last night,” said
Doc, “and bein’ somewhat of a philosopher I allowed too that while
the glass was worth three hundred dollars it was worth well nigh that
amount in gold dust to see him take his medicine.”
“That’s a pleasant way to look at it, Mr. Marling, and now,” said
Jack, “we want you to tell us which of these stores here is the best
place to buy our outfit.”
“They’re all all right. But you ought to go and make the
acquaintance of Jack McQuesten over there at the N. C. (Northern
Commercial Company’s) store. He is the daddy of Circle for he set
up a tradin’ post here as soon as the pioneer prospectors begin to
come in. Jack’s a man that seventeen dog-sleds loaded with
moosehide sacks of gold couldn’t budge from the straight and
unerrin’ path of rectitude, is Jack, and he’ll fix you lads up bully and
O. K.,” he told them.
So the boys went over to the N. C., and while Jack McQuesten’s
fame had reached them down as far as Skagway, Bill Adams’ fame
had preceded them that morning from the hotel. The old trader was
sitting on a box when they came in and they saw right away that he
was a pioneer of the old school. A low, broad brimmed hat, without a
dent or crease in it, set squarely on his head, and a pair of keen gray
eyes, about half closed as if he didn’t want to see too much at a
time, was boring holes through them.
He was full-faced, his nose was broad and his mustache gray; it
was plain to be seen why he had been entrusted with hundreds of
thousands of dollars by the various companies whose trading posts
were famous all over Alaska. He was, as Doc Marling had said, as
straight as a die and he knew character, even as characters knew
him. He was dressed like a miner and the only outstanding feature of
his rig that the boys caught sight of was a magnificent gold watch
chain and charm—and he had a watch to match them in his pocket
—which had been presented to him by the Order of Pioneers, for of
the first of the hardy pioneers of Alaska, he was the very first.
“Mr. McQuesten,” began Jack, “we came over to get a winter’s
supply of grub and an outfit fit for an arctic expedition.”
Jack McQuesten took a good look at Bill and said with a twinkle in
his eye, “so you are the young chap that whipped Black Pete—well
I’ll be dog-goned. But let me give you a pointer, be careful how you
handle him for his ways are not our ways—and we can’t be
responsible for them. It’s the first time in the history of Circle he has
not done up his man and he isn’t any too particular how he does it,
so watch out he doesn’t knife you.”
“We’ll be careful all right, from now on, Mr. McQuesten, believe
me,” returned Bill.
“He’s out of his latitude,” put in Jack—that is Jack Heaton; “he
ought to be ashamed of himself living up here on the Arctic Circle
with white people instead of being down there on the Tropic of
Cancer with the rest of the greasers.”
“If he pulls any of that Chilili Mex stuff on me to-night I’ll send him
so far he’ll need a weegie board to get back to earth on, but I’m
thankin’ you Mister McQuesten for tellin’ me as how I should be
careful, sir,” Bill said in an apologetic voice, perhaps because he had
let Black Pete off so easily the night before.
“Now to get down to business, Mr. McQuesten,” began Jack who
was anxious to get things a-moving. “What we want is an outfit of
clothes, mess-gear and grub that will carry us through the winter.
We’re not going so far away but what we expect to get back before
the last ice and first water but we might want to keep on going and
we must have an outfit so that we can pull through if needs be.”
“What you want is an outfit for about eight months but you couldn’t
begin to pack it on your backs or haul it on sleds,” the old outfitter
explained; “such an outfit would weigh in the neighborhood of eight
hundred or a thousand pounds, and a man can’t carry more than fifty
pounds or haul more than one hundred pounds on a stretch. What
you ought to have is a couple of dog-sleds.”
“Perzactly!” agreed Bill, “and the question now is can we get the
dogs.”
“There are some very likely dogs in and around Circle that I might
be able to pick up for you and I’ll see the men who own them over at
the Palace to-night. I’ll go ahead and outfit you on the strength of
your being able to get the dogs.”
“Good!” ejaculated Jack.
“First of all the things you’ll wear,” the old trader struck out genially
and his eyes twinkled more merrily than ever for here was big
business staring him in the face—a volume of it such as he had not
transacted since the palmy days of Circle these many years agone.
The boys were all attention.
“You’ll want a couple of suits of waterproof underwear, a
Mackinaw coat and breeches for early winter and spring; a caribou
skin coat with the fur on which has a hood fixed to it; a pair of
moosehide or bearskin breeches, a couple of pairs of moccasins and
muk-luks apiece and about a dozen pairs of German sox.”
“Whoa, Buddy,” sang out Bill, “I wouldn’t wear a pair o’ them
Boche socks if I had to go barefoot, see?”
“That’s only the name of them, boy; why they make them down
there in Dawson,” explained Mr. Jack, the storekeeper.
“Well, I might wear ’em in a pinch then,” said Bill.
“Then you must have fur mittens that are lined with wool; several
pairs of woolen mittens to wear when you are building your log
cabin, heavy fur caps and fur lined sleeping bags. Of course there
will be towels and handkerchiefs and all of that sort of small stuff.”
As the storekeeper enumerated the various items of clothing, he
brought them forth and laid out two piles, one for each of the boys.
“Now let me tell you something about taking care of these fur
clothes; if you expect them to last you for more than a month take
my advice and keep them dry, or if they do get wet, don’t wait but
stop where you are, build a fire and dry them then and there. I don’t
care how low the quick falls you can’t get cold in one of these suits.
“Oh, yes; I almost forgot your eye shades but they are absolutely
necessary in traveling over the snow on bright days,” and he
produced a queer looking pair of goggles without any glasses in
them. “These are Esquimo shades and I wouldn’t give a cent for any
other kind,” he said as he handed the boys a pair.
They examined them closely and found that they were made of
wood and where the lenses were supposed to be in a pair of goggles
there were thin pieces of wood instead with a couple of slits in them
to let the light through. Jack and Bill put them on and made puns and
had fun over and out of them. Jack pretended he was a college prof
and then gave an imitation of Teddy Roosevelt. Not to be outdone,
Bill gave an imitation of Jack giving an imitation of him, and then he
wound up by pretending he was Judge Gilhooley of the Harlem
Police Court and promptly sentenced himself to pay a fine of seven

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