The God of His Fathers

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Transcribed from the 1906 Sir Isaac Pitman & Sons edition byDavid Price,kids learning tablets for 12 year olds under 30 dollars email [email protected]

THE GOD OF HIS FATHERS: TALES OF THE KLONDYKE

Contents:

The God of His Fathers
The Great Interrogation
Which Make Men Remember
Siwash
The Man with the Gash
Jan, the Unrepentant
Grit of Women
Where the Trail Forks
A Daughter of the Aurora
At the Rainbow’s End
The Scorn of Women

These tales have appeared in “McClure’s,” “Ainslee’s,”“Outing,” the “Overland Monthly,” the “Wave,”the “National,” and the San Francisco “Examiner.” To the kindness of the various editors is due their reappearance inmore permanent form.

TO THE DAUGHTERS OF THE WOLF WHO HAVE BRED AND SUCKLED A RACE OFMEN

THE GOD OF HIS FATHERS

I

On every hand stretched the forest primeval,—the home of noisycomedy and silent tragedy.  Here the struggle for survival continuedto wage with all its ancient brutality.  Briton and Russian werestill to overlap in the Land of the Rainbow’s End—and thiswas the very heart of it—nor had Yankee gold yet purchased itsvast domain.  The wolf-pack still clung to the flank of the cariboo-herd,singling out the weak and the big with calf, and pulling them down asremorselessly as were it a thousand, thousand generations into the past. The sparse aborigines still acknowledged the rule of their chiefs andmedicine men, drove out bad spirits, burned their witches, fought theirneighbors, and ate their enemies with a relish which spoke well of theirbellies.  But it was at the moment when the stone age was drawingto a close.  Already, over unknown trails and chartless wildernesses,were the harbingers of the steel arriving,—fair-faced, blue-eyed,indomitable men, incarnations of the unrest of their race.  Byaccident or design, single-handed and in twos and threes, they camefrom no one knew whither, and fought, or died, or passed on, no oneknew whence.  The priests raged against them, the chiefs calledforth their fighting men, and stone clashed with steel; but to littlepurpose.  Like water seeping from some mighty reservoir, they trickledthrough the dark forests and mountain passes, threading the highwaysin bark canoes, or with their moccasined feet breaking trail for thewolf-dogs.  They came of a great breed, and their mothers weremany; but the fur-clad denizens of the Northland had this yet to learn. So many an unsung wanderer fought his last and died under the cold fireof the aurora, as did his brothers in burning sands and reeking jungles,and as they shall continue to do till in the fulness of time the destinyof their race be achieved.

It was near twelve.  Along the northern horizon a rosy glow,fading to the west and deepening to the east, marked the unseen dipof the midnight sun.  The gloaming and the dawn were so commingledthat there was no night,—simply a wedding of day with day, a scarcelyperceptible blending of two circles of the sun.  A kildee timidlychirped good-night; the full, rich throat of a robin proclaimed good-morrow. From an island on the breast of the Yukon a colony of wild fowl voicedits interminable wrongs, while a loon laughed mockingly back acrossa still stretch of river.

In the foreground, against the bank of a lazy eddy, birch-bark canoeswere lined two and three deep.  Ivory-bladed spears, bone-barbedarrows, buckskin-thonged bows, and simple basket-woven traps bespokethe fact that in the muddy current of the river the salmon-run was on. In the background, from the tangle of skin tents and drying frames,rose the voices of the fisher folk.  Bucks skylarked with bucksor flirted with the maidens, while the older squaws, shut out from thisby virtue of having fulfilled the end of their existence in reproduction,gossiped as they braided rope from the green roots of trailing vines. At their feet their naked progeny played and squabbled, or rolled inthe muck with the tawny wolf-dogs.

To one side of the encampment, and conspicuously apart from it, stooda second camp of two tents.  But it was a white man’s camp. If nothing else, the choice of position at least bore convincing evidenceof this.  In case of offence, it commanded the Indian quartersa hundred yards away; of defence, a rise to the ground and the clearedintervening space; and last, of defeat, the swift slope of a score ofyards to the canoes below.  From one of the tents came the petulantcry of a sick child and the crooning song of a mother.  In theopen, over the smouldering embers of a fire, two men held talk.

“Eh?  I love the church like a good son.  Bien! So great a love that my days have been spent in fleeing away from her,and my nights in dreaming dreams of reckoning.  Look you!” The half-breed’s voice rose to an angry snarl.  “Iam Red River born.  My father was white—as white as you. But you are Yankee, and he was British bred, and a gentleman’sson.  And my mother was the daughter of a chief, and I was a man. Ay, and one had to look the second time to see what manner of bloodran in my veins; for I lived with the whites, and was one of them, andmy father’s heart beat in me.  It happened there was a maiden—white—wholooked on me with kind eyes.  Her father had much land and manyhorses; also he was a big man among his people, and his blood was theblood of the French.  He said the girl knew not her own mind, andtalked overmuch with her, and became wroth that such things should be.

“But she knew her mind, for we came quick before the priest. And quicker had come her father, with lying words, false promises, Iknow not what; so that the priest stiffened his neck and would not makeus that we might live one with the other.  As at the beginningit was the church which would not bless my birth, so now it was thechurch which refused me marriage and put the blood of men upon my hands. Bien!  Thus have I cause to love the church.  So Istruck the priest on his woman’s mouth, and we took swift horses,the girl and I, to Fort Pierre, where was a minister of good heart. But hot on our trail was her father, and brothers, and other men hehad gathered to him.  And we fought, our horses on the run, tillI emptied three saddles and the rest drew off and went on to Fort Pierre. Then we took east, the girl and I, to the hills and forests, and welived one with the other, and we were not married,—the work ofthe good church which I love like a son.

“But mark you, for this is the strangeness of woman, the wayof which no man may understand.  One of the saddles I emptied wasthat of her father’s, and the hoofs of those who came behind hadpounded him into the earth.  This we saw, the girl and I, and thisI had forgot had she not remembered.  And in the quiet of the evening,after the day’s hunt were done, it came between us, and in thesilence of the night when we lay beneath the stars and should have beenone.  It was there always.  She never spoke, but it sat byour fire and held us ever apart.  She tried to put it aside, butat such times it would rise up till I could read it in the look of hereyes, in the very intake of her breath.

“So in the end she bore me a child, a woman-child, and died. Then I went among my mother’s people, that it might nurse at awarm breast and live.  But my hands were wet with the blood ofmen, look you, because of the church, wet with the blood of men. And the Riders of the North came for me, but my mother’s brother,who was then chief in his own right, hid me and gave me horses and food. And we went away, my woman-child and I, even to the Hudson Bay Country,where white men were few and the questions they asked not many. And I worked for the company a hunter, as a guide, as a driver of dogs,till my woman-child was become a woman, tall, and slender, and fairto the eye.

“You know the winter, long and lonely, breeding evil thoughtsand bad deeds.  The Chief Factor was a hard man, and bold. And he was not such that a woman would delight in looking upon. But he cast eyes upon my woman-child who was become a woman.  Motherof God! he sent me away on a long trip with the dogs, that he might—youunderstand, he was a hard man and without heart.  She was mostwhite, and her soul was white, and a good woman, and—well, shedied.

“It was bitter cold the night of my return, and I had beenaway months, and the dogs were limping sore when I came to the fort. The Indians and breeds looked on me in silence, and I felt the fearof I knew not what, but I said nothing till the dogs were fed and Ihad eaten as a man with work before him should.  Then I spoke up,demanding the word, and they shrank from me, afraid of my anger andwhat I should do; but the story came out, the pitiful story, word forword and act for act, and they marvelled that I should be so quiet.

“When they had done I went to the Factor’s house, calmerthan now in the telling of it.  He had been afraid and called uponthe breeds to help him; but they were not pleased with the deed, andhad left him to lie on the bed he had made.  So he had fled tothe house of the priest.  Thither I followed.  But when Iwas come to that place, the priest stood in my way, and spoke soft words,and said a man in anger should go neither to the right nor left, butstraight to God.  I asked by the right of a father’s wraththat he give me past, but he said only over his body, and besought withme to pray.  Look you, it was the church, always the church; forI passed over his body and sent the Factor to meet my woman-child beforehis god, which is a bad god, and the god of the white men.

“Then was there hue and cry, for word was sent to the stationbelow, and I came away.  Through the Land of the Great Slave, downthe Valley of the Mackenzie to the never-opening ice, over the WhiteRockies, past the Great Curve of the Yukon, even to this place did Icome.  And from that day to this, yours is the first face of myfather’s people I have looked upon.  May it be the last! These people, which are my people, are a simple folk, and I have beenraised to honor among them.  My word is their law, and their priestsbut do my bidding, else would I not suffer them.  When I speakfor them I speak for myself.  We ask to be let alone.  Wedo not want your kind.  If we permit you to sit by our fires, afteryou will come your church, your priests, and your gods.  And knowthis, for each white man who comes to my village, him will I make denyhis god.  You are the first, and I give you grace.  So itwere well you go, and go quickly.”

“I am not responsible for my brothers,” the second manspoke up, filling his pipe in a meditative manner.  Hay Stockardwas at times as thoughtful of speech as he was wanton of action; butonly at times.

“But I know your breed,” responded the other.  “Yourbrothers are many, and it is you and yours who break the trail for themto follow.  In time they shall come to possess the land, but notin my time.  Already, have I heard, are they on the head-reachesof the Great River, and far away below are the Russians.”

Hay Stockard lifted his head with a quick start.  This was startlinggeographical information.  The Hudson Bay post at Fort Yukon hadother notions concerning the course of the river, believing it to flowinto the Arctic.

“Then the Yukon empties into Bering Sea?” he asked.

“I do not know, but below there are Russians, many Russians. Which is neither here nor there.  You may go on and see for yourself;you may go back to your brothers; but up the Koyukuk you shall not gowhile the priests and fighting men do my bidding.  Thus do I command,I, Baptiste the Red, whose word is law and who am head man over thispeople.”

“And should I not go down to the Russians, or back to my brothers?”

“Then shall you go swift-footed before your god, which is abad god, and the god of the white men.”

The red sun shot up above the northern sky-line, dripping and bloody. Baptiste the Red came to his feet, nodded curtly, and went back to hiscamp amid the crimson shadows and the singing of the robins.

Hay Stockard finished his pipe by the fire, picturing in smoke andcoal the unknown upper reaches of the Koyukuk, the strange stream whichended here its arctic travels and merged its waters with the muddy Yukonflood.  Somewhere up there, if the dying words of a ship-wreckedsailorman who had made the fearful overland journey were to be believed,and if the vial of golden grains in his pouch attested anything,—somewhereup there, in that home of winter, stood the Treasure House of the North. And as keeper of the gate, Baptiste the Red, English half-breed andrenegade, barred the way.

“Bah!”  He kicked the embers apart and rose to hisfull height, arms lazily outstretched, facing the flushing north withcareless soul.

II

Hay Stockard swore, harshly, in the rugged monosyllables of his mothertongue.  His wife lifted her gaze from the pots and pans, and followedhis in a keen scrutiny of the river.  She was a woman of the TeslinCountry, wise in the ways of her husband’s vernacular when itgrew intensive.  From the slipping of a snow-shoe thong to theforefront of sudden death, she could gauge occasion by the pitch andvolume of his blasphemy.  So she knew the present occasion meritedattention.  A long canoe, with paddles flashing back the rays ofthe westering sun, was crossing the current from above and urging infor the eddy.  Hay Stockard watched it intently.  Three menrose and dipped, rose and dipped, in rhythmical precision; but a redbandanna, wrapped about the head of one, caught and held his eye.

“Bill!” he called.  “Oh, Bill!”

A shambling, loose-jointed giant rolled out of one of the tents,yawning and rubbing the sleep from his eyes.  Then he sighted thestrange canoe and was wide awake on the instant.

“By the jumping Methuselah!  That damned sky-pilot!”

Hay Stockard nodded his head bitterly, half-reached for his rifle,then shrugged his shoulders.

“Pot-shot him,” Bill suggested, “and settle thething out of hand.  He’ll spoil us sure if we don’t.” But the other declined this drastic measure and turned away, at thesame time bidding the woman return to her work, and calling Bill backfrom the bank.  The two Indians in the canoe moored it on the edgeof the eddy, while its white occupant, conspicuous by his gorgeous head-gear,came up the bank.

“Like Paul of Tarsus, I give you greeting.  Peace be untoyou and grace before the Lord.”

His advances were met sullenly, and without speech.

“To you, Hay Stockard, blasphemer and Philistine, greeting. In your heart is the lust of Mammon, in your mind cunning devils, inyour tent this woman whom you live with in adultery; yet of these diverssins, even here in the wilderness, I, Sturges Owen, apostle to the Lord,bid you to repent and cast from you your iniquities.”

“Save your cant!  Save your cant!” Hay Stockardbroke in testily.  “You’ll need all you’ve got,and more, for Red Baptiste over yonder.”

He waved his hand toward the Indian camp, where the half-breed waslooking steadily across, striving to make out the newcomers.  SturgesOwen, disseminator of light and apostle to the Lord, stepped to theedge of the steep and commanded his men to bring up the camp outfit. Stockard followed him.

“Look here,” he demanded, plucking the missionary bythe shoulder and twirling him about.  “Do you value yourhide?”

“My life is in the Lord’s keeping, and I do but workin His vineyard,” he replied solemnly.

“Oh, stow that!  Are you looking for a job of martyrship?”

“If He so wills.”

“Well, you’ll find it right here, but I’m goingto give you some advice first.  Take it or leave it.  If youstop here, you’ll be cut off in the midst of your labors. And not you alone, but your men, Bill, my wife—”

“Who is a daughter of Belial and hearkeneth not to the trueGospel.”

“And myself.  Not only do you bring trouble upon yourself,but upon us.  I was frozen in with you last winter, as you willwell recollect, and I know you for a good man and a fool.  If youthink it your duty to strive with the heathen, well and good; but, doexercise some wit in the way you go about it.  This man, Red Baptiste,is no Indian.  He comes of our common stock, is as bull-neckedas I ever dared be, and as wild a fanatic the one way as you are theother.  When you two come together, hell’ll be to pay, andI don’t care to be mixed up in it.  Understand?  Sotake my advice and go away.  If you go down-stream, you’llfall in with the Russians.  There’s bound to be Greek priestsamong them, and they’ll see you safe through to Bering Sea,—that’swhere the Yukon empties,—and from there it won’t be hardto get back to civilization.  Take my word for it and get out ofhere as fast as God’ll let you.”

“He who carries the Lord in his heart and the Gospel in hishand hath no fear of the machinations of man or devil,” the missionaryanswered stoutly.  “I will see this man and wrestle withhim.  One backslider returned to the fold is a greater victorythan a thousand heathen.  He who is strong for evil can be as mightyfor good, witness Saul when he journeyed up to Damascus to bring Christiancaptives to Jerusalem.  And the voice of the Saviour came to him,crying, ‘Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?’  Andtherewith Paul arrayed himself on the side of the Lord, and thereafterwas most mighty in the saving of souls.  And even as thou, Paulof Tarsus, even so do I work in the vineyard of the Lord, bearing trialsand tribulations, scoffs and sneers, stripes and punishments, for Hisdear sake.”

“Bring up the little bag with the tea and a kettle of water,”he called the next instant to his boatmen; “not forgetting thehaunch of cariboo and the mixing-pan.”

When his men, converts by his own hand, had gained the bank, thetrio fell to their knees, hands and backs burdened with camp equipage,and offered up thanks for their passage through the wilderness and theirsafe arrival.  Hay Stockard looked upon the function with sneeringdisapproval, the romance and solemnity of it lost to his matter-of-factsoul.  Baptiste the Red, still gazing across, recognized the familiarpostures, and remembered the girl who had shared his star-roofed couchin the hills and forests, and the woman-child who lay somewhere by bleakHudson’s Bay.

III

“Confound it, Baptiste, couldn’t think of it.  Notfor a moment.  Grant that this man is a fool and of small use inthe nature of things, but still, you know, I can’t give him up.”

Hay Stockard paused, striving to put into speech the rude ethicsof his heart.

“He’s worried me, Baptiste, in the past and now, andcaused me all manner of troubles; but can’t you see, he’smy own breed—white—and—and—why, I couldn’tbuy my life with his, not if he was a nigger.”

“So be it,” Baptiste the Red made answer.  “Ihave given you grace and choice.  I shall come presently, withmy priests and fighting men, and either shall I kill you, or you denyyour god.  Give up the priest to my pleasure, and you shall departin peace.  Otherwise your trail ends here.  My people areagainst you to the babies.  Even now have the children stolen awayyour canoes.”  He pointed down to the river.  Nakedboys had slipped down the water from the point above, cast loose thecanoes, and by then had worked them into the current.  When theyhad drifted out of rifle-shot they clambered over the sides and paddledashore.

“Give me the priest, and you may have them back again. Come!  Speak your mind, but without haste.”

Stockard shook his head.  His glance dropped to the woman ofthe Teslin Country with his boy at her breast, and he would have waveredhad he not lifted his eyes to the men before him.

“I am not afraid,” Sturges Owen spoke up.  “TheLord bears me in his right hand, and alone am I ready to go into thecamp of the unbeliever.  It is not too late.  Faith may movemountains.  Even in the eleventh hour may I win his soul to thetrue righteousness.”

“Trip the beggar up and make him fast,” Bill whisperedhoarsely in the ear of his leader, while the missionary kept the floorand wrestled with the heathen.  “Make him hostage, and borehim if they get ugly.”

“No,” Stockard answered.  “I gave him my wordthat he could speak with us unmolested.  Rules of warfare, Bill;rules of warfare.  He’s been on the square, given us warning,and all that, and—why, damn it, man, I can’t break my word!”

“He’ll keep his, never fear.”

“Don’t doubt it, but I won’t let a half-breed outdome in fair dealing.  Why not do what he wants,—give him themissionary and be done with it?”

“N-no,” Bill hesitated doubtfully.

“Shoe pinches, eh?”

Bill flushed a little and dropped the discussion.  Baptistethe Red was still waiting the final decision.  Stockard went upto him.

“It’s this way, Baptiste.  I came to your villageminded to go up the Koyukuk.  I intended no wrong.  My heartwas clean of evil.  It is still clean.  Along comes this priest,as you call him.  I didn’t bring him here.  He’dhave come whether I was here or not.  But now that he is here,being of my people, I’ve got to stand by him.  And I’mgoing to.  Further, it will be no child’s play.  Whenyou have done, your village will be silent and empty, your people wastedas after a famine.  True, we will he gone; likewise the pick ofyour fighting men—”

“But those who remain shall be in peace, nor shall the wordof strange gods and the tongues of strange priests be buzzing in theirears.”

Both men shrugged their shoulder and turned away, the half-breedgoing back to his own camp.  The missionary called his two mento him, and they fell into prayer.  Stockard and Bill attackedthe few standing pines with their axes, felling them into convenientbreastworks.  The child had fallen asleep, so the woman placedit on a heap of furs and lent a hand in fortifying the camp.  Threesides were thus defended, the steep declivity at the rear precludingattack from that direction.  When these arrangements had been completed,the two men stalked into the open, clearing away, here and there, thescattered underbrush.  From the opposing camp came the boomingof war-drums and the voices of the priests stirring the people to anger.

“Worst of it is they’ll come in rushes,” Bill complainedas they walked back with shouldered axes.

“And wait till midnight, when the light gets dim for shooting.”

“Can’t start the ball a-rolling too early, then.” Bill exchanged the axe for a rifle, and took a careful rest.  Oneof the medicine-men, towering above his tribesmen, stood out distinctly. Bill drew a bead on him.

“All ready?” he asked.

Stockard opened the ammunition box, placed the woman where she couldreload in safety, and gave the word.  The medicine-man dropped. For a moment there was silence, then a wild howl went up and a flightof bone arrows fell short.

“I’d like to take a look at the beggar,” Bill remarked,throwing a fresh shell into place.  “I’ll swear I drilledhim clean between the eyes.”

“Didn’t work.”  Stockard shook his head gloomily. Baptiste had evidently quelled the more warlike of his followers, andinstead of precipitating an attack in the bright light of day, the shothad caused a hasty exodus, the Indians drawing out of the village beyondthe zone of fire.

In the full tide of his proselyting fervor, borne along by the handof God, Sturges Owen would have ventured alone into the camp of theunbeliever, equally prepared for miracle or martyrdom; but in the waitingwhich ensued, the fever of conviction died away gradually, as the naturalman asserted itself.  Physical fear replaced spiritual hope; thelove of life, the love of God.  It was no new experience. He could feel his weakness coming on, and knew it of old time. He had struggled against it and been overcome by it before.  Heremembered when the other men had driven their paddles like mad in thevan of a roaring ice-flood, how, at the critical moment, in a panicof worldly terror, he had dropped his paddle and besought wildly withhis God for pity.  And there were other times.  The recollectionwas not pleasant.  It brought shame to him that his spirit shouldbe so weak and his flesh so strong.  But the love of life! thelove of life!  He could not strip it from him.  Because ofit had his dim ancestors perpetuated their line; because of it was hedestined to perpetuate his.  His courage, if courage it might becalled, was bred of fanaticism.  The courage of Stockard and Billwas the adherence to deep-rooted ideals.  Not that the love oflife was less, but the love of race tradition more; not that they wereunafraid to die, but that they were brave enough not to live at theprice of shame.

The missionary rose, for the moment swayed by the mood of sacrifice. He half crawled over the barricade to proceed to the other camp, butsank back, a trembling mass, wailing: “As the spirit moves! As the spirit moves!  Who am I that I should set aside the judgmentsof God?  Before the foundations of the world were all things writtenin the book of life.  Worm that I am, shall I erase the page orany portion thereof?  As God wills, so shall the spirit move!”

Bill reached over, plucked him to his feet, and shook him, fiercely,silently.  Then he dropped the bundle of quivering nerves and turnedhis attention to the two converts.  But they showed little frightand a cheerful alacrity in preparing for the coming passage at arms.

Stockard, who had been talking in undertones with the Teslin woman,now turned to the missionary.

“Fetch him over here,” he commanded of Bill.

“Now,” he ordered, when Sturges Owen had been duly depositedbefore him, “make us man and wife, and be lively about it.” Then he added apologetically to Bill: “No telling how it’sto end, so I just thought I’d get my affairs straightened up.”

The woman obeyed the behest of her white lord.  To her the ceremonywas meaningless.  By her lights she was his wife, and had beenfrom the day they first foregathered.  The converts served as witnesses. Bill stood over the missionary, prompting him when he stumbled. Stockard put the responses in the woman’s mouth, and when thetime came, for want of better, ringed her finger with thumb and forefingerof his own.

“Kiss the bride!” Bill thundered, and Sturges Owen wastoo weak to disobey.

“Now baptize the child!”

“Neat and tidy,” Bill commented.

“Gathering the proper outfit for a new trail,” the fatherexplained, taking the boy from the mother’s arms.  “Iwas grub-staked, once, into the Cascades, and had everything in thekit except salt.  Never shall forget it.  And if the womanand the kid cross the divide to-night they might as well be preparedfor pot-luck.  A long shot, Bill, between ourselves, but nothinglost if it misses.”

A cup of water served the purpose, and the child was laid away ina secure corner of the barricade.  The men built the fire, andthe evening meal was cooked.

The sun hurried round to the north, sinking closer to the horizon. The heavens in that quarter grew red and bloody.  The shadows lengthened,the light dimmed, and in the sombre recesses of the forest life slowlydied away.  Even the wild fowl in the river softened their raucouschatter and feigned the nightly farce of going to bed.  Only thetribesmen increased their clamor, war-drums booming and voices raisedin savage folk songs.  But as the sun dipped they ceased theirtumult.  The rounded hush of midnight was complete.  Stockardrose to his knees and peered over the logs.  Once the child wailedin pain and disconcerted him.  The mother bent over it, but itslept again.  The silence was interminable, profound.  Then,of a sudden, the robins burst into full-throated song.  The nighthad passed.

A flood of dark figures boiled across the open.  Arrows whistledand bow-thongs sang.  The shrill-tongued rifles answered back. A spear, and a mighty cast, transfixed the Teslin woman as she hoveredabove the child.  A spent arrow, diving between the logs, lodgedin the missionary’s arm.

There was no stopping the rush.  The middle distance was cumberedwith bodies, but the rest surged on, breaking against and over the barricadelike an ocean wave.  Sturges Owen fled to the tent, while the menwere swept from their feet, buried beneath the human tide.  HayStockard alone regained the surface, flinging the tribesmen aside likeyelping curs.  He had managed to seize an axe.  A dark handgrasped the child by a naked foot, and drew it from beneath its mother. At arm’s length its puny body circled through the air, dashingto death against the logs.  Stockard clove the man to the chinand fell to clearing space.  The ring of savage faces closed in,raining upon him spear-thrusts and bone-barbed arrows.  The sunshot up, and they swayed back and forth in the crimson shadows. Twice, with his axe blocked by too deep a blow, they rushed him; buteach time he flung them clear.  They fell underfoot and he trampleddead and dying, the way slippery with blood.  And still the daybrightened and the robins sang.  Then they drew back from him inawe, and he leaned breathless upon his axe.

“Blood of my soul!” cried Baptiste the Red.  “Butthou art a man.  Deny thy god, and thou shalt yet live.”

Stockard swore his refusal, feebly but with grace.

“Behold!  A woman!”  Sturges Owen had beenbrought before the half-breed.

Beyond a scratch on the arm, he was uninjured, but his eyes rovedabout him in an ecstasy of fear.  The heroic figure of the blasphemer,bristling with wounds and arrows, leaning defiantly upon his axe, indifferent,indomitable, superb, caught his wavering vision.  And he felt agreat envy of the man who could go down serenely to the dark gates ofdeath.  Surely Christ, and not he, Sturges Owen, had been mouldedin such manner.  And why not he?  He felt dimly the curseof ancestry, the feebleness of spirit which had come down to him outof the past, and he felt an anger at the creative force, symbolize itas he would, which had formed him, its servant, so weakly.  Foreven a stronger man, this anger and the stress of circumstance weresufficient to breed apostasy, and for Sturges Owen it was inevitable. In the fear of man’s anger he would dare the wrath of God. He had been raised up to serve the Lord only that he might be cast down. He had been given faith without the strength of faith; he had been givenspirit without the power of spirit.  It was unjust.

“Where now is thy god?” the half-breed demanded.

“I do not know.”  He stood straight and rigid, likea child repeating a catechism.

“Hast thou then a god at all?”

“I had.”

“And now?”

“No.”

Hay Stockard swept the blood from his eyes and laughed.  Themissionary looked at him curiously, as in a dream.  A feeling ofinfinite distance came over him, as though of a great remove. In that which had transpired, and which was to transpire, he had nopart.  He was a spectator—at a distance, yes, at a distance. The words of Baptiste came to him faintly:-

“Very good.  See that this man go free, and that no harmbefall him.  Let him depart in peace.  Give him a canoe andfood.  Set his face toward the Russians, that he may tell theirpriests of Baptiste the Red, in whose country there is no god.”

They led him to the edge of the steep, where they paused to witnessthe final tragedy.  The half-breed turned to Hay Stockard.

“There is no god,” he prompted.

The man laughed in reply.  One of the young men poised a war-spearfor the cast.

“Hast thou a god?”

“Ay, the God of my fathers.”

He shifted the axe for a better grip.  Baptiste the Red gavethe sign, and the spear hurtled full against his breast.  SturgesOwen saw the ivory head stand out beyond his back, saw the man sway,laughing, and snap the shaft short as he fell upon it.  Then hewent down to the river, that he might carry to the Russians the messageof Baptiste the Red, in whose country there was no god.

THE GREAT INTERROGATION

I

To say the least, Mrs. Sayther’s career in Dawson was meteoric. She arrived in the spring, with dog sleds and French-Canadian voyageurs,blazed gloriously for a brief month, and departed up the river as soonas it was free of ice.  Now womanless Dawson never quite understoodthis hurried departure, and the local Four Hundred felt aggrieved andlonely till the Nome strike was made and old sensations gave way tonew.  For it had delighted in Mrs. Sayther, and received her wide-armed. She was pretty, charming, and, moreover, a widow.  And becauseof this she at once had at heel any number of Eldorado Kings, officials,and adventuring younger sons, whose ears were yearning for the frou-frouof a woman’s skirts.

The mining engineers revered the memory of her husband, the lateColonel Sayther, while the syndicate and promoter representatives spokeawesomely of his deals and manipulations; for he was known down in theStates as a great mining man, and as even a greater one in London. Why his widow, of all women, should have come into the country, wasthe great interrogation.  But they were a practical breed, themen of the Northland, with a wholesome disregard for theories and afirm grip on facts.  And to not a few of them Karen Sayther wasa most essential fact.  That she did not regard the matter in thislight, is evidenced by the neatness and celerity with which refusaland proposal tallied off during her four weeks’ stay.  Andwith her vanished the fact, and only the interrogation remained.

To the solution, Chance vouchsafed one clew.  Her last victim,Jack Coughran, having fruitlessly laid at her feet both his heart anda five-hundred-foot creek claim on Bonanza, celebrated the misfortuneby walking all of a night with the gods.  In the midwatch of thisnight he happened to rub shoulders with Pierre Fontaine, none otherthan head man of Karen Sayther’s voyageurs.  Thisrubbing of shoulders led to recognition and drinks, and ultimately involvedboth men in a common muddle of inebriety.

“Heh?” Pierre Fontaine later on gurgled thickly. “Vot for Madame Sayther mak visitation to thees country? More better you spik wit her.  I know no t’ing ’tall,only all de tam her ask one man’s name.  ‘Pierre,’her spik wit me; ‘Pierre, you moos’ find thees mans, andI gif you mooch—one thousand dollar you find thees mans.’ Thees mans?  Ah, oui.  Thees man’s name—votyou call—Daveed Payne.  Oui, m’sieu, DaveedPayne.  All de tam her spik das name.  And all de tam I lookrount vaire mooch, work lak hell, but no can find das dam mans, andno get one thousand dollar ’tall.  By dam!

“Heh?  Ah, oui.  One tam dose mens vot comefrom Circle City, dose mens know thees mans.  Him Birch Creek,dey spik.  And madame?  Her say ‘Bon!’and look happy lak anyt’ing.  And her spik wit me. ‘Pierre,’ her spik, ‘harness de dogs.  We goqueek.  We find thees mans I gif you one thousand dollar more.’ And I say, ‘Oui, queek!  Allons, madame!’

“For sure, I t’ink, das two thousand dollar mine. Bully boy!  Den more mens come from Circle City, and dey say no,das thees mans, Daveed Payne, come Dawson leel tam back.  So madameand I go not ’tall.

“Oui, m’sieu.  Thees day madame spik. ‘Pierre,’ her spik, and gif me five hundred dollar, ‘gobuy poling-boat.  To-morrow we go up de river.’  Ah,oui, to-morrow, up de river, and das dam Sitka Charley mak mepay for de poling-boat five hundred dollar.  Dam!”

Thus it was, when Jack Coughran unburdened himself next day, thatDawson fell to wondering who was this David Payne, and in what way hisexistence bore upon Karen Sayther’s.  But that very day,as Pierre Fontaine had said, Mrs. Sayther and her barbaric crew of voyageurstowed up the east bank to Klondike City, shot across to the west bankto escape the bluffs, and disappeared amid the maze of islands to thesouth.

II

“Oui, madame, thees is de place.  One, two, t’reeisland below Stuart River.  Thees is t’ree island.”

As he spoke, Pierre Fontaine drove his pole against the bank andheld the stern of the boat against the current.  This thrust thebow in, till a nimble breed climbed ashore with the painter and madefast.

“One leel tam, madame, I go look see.”

A chorus of dogs marked his disappearance over the edge of the bank,but a minute later he was back again.

“Oui, madame, thees is de cabin.  I mak investigation. No can find mans at home.  But him no go vaire far, vaire long,or him no leave dogs.  Him come queek, you bet!”

“Help me out, Pierre.  I’m tired all over from theboat.  You might have made it softer, you know.”

From a nest of furs amidships, Karen Sayther rose to her full heightof slender fairness.  But if she looked lily-frail in her elementalenvironment, she was belied by the grip she put upon Pierre’shand, by the knotting of her woman’s biceps as it took the weightof her body, by the splendid effort of her limbs as they held her outfrom the perpendicular bank while she made the ascent.  Thoughshapely flesh clothed delicate frame, her body was a seat of strength.

Still, for all the careless ease with which she had made the landing,there was a warmer color than usual to her face, and a perceptibly extrabeat to her heart.  But then, also, it was with a certain reverentcuriousness that she approached the cabin, while the Hush on her cheekshowed a yet riper mellowness.

“Look, see!”  Pierre pointed to the scattered chipsby the woodpile.  “Him fresh—two, t’ree day,no more.”

Mrs. Sayther nodded.  She tried to peer through the small window,but it was made of greased parchment which admitted light while it blockedvision.  Failing this, she went round to the door, half liftedthe rude latch to enter, but changed her mind and let it fall back intoplace.  Then she suddenly dropped on one knee and kissed the rough-hewnthreshold.  If Pierre Fontaine saw, he gave no sign, and the memoryin the time to come was never shared.  But the next instant, oneof the boatmen, placidly lighting his pipe, was startled by an unwontedharshness in his captain’s voice.

“Hey!  You!  Le Goire! You mak’m soft morebetter,” Pierre commanded.  “Plenty bearskin; plentyblanket.  Dam!”

But the nest was soon after disrupted, and the major portion tossedup to the crest of the shore, where Mrs. Sayther lay down to wait incomfort.

Reclining on her side, she looked out and over the wide-stretchingYukon.  Above the mountains which lay beyond the further shore,the sky was murky with the smoke of unseen forest fires, and throughthis the afternoon sun broke feebly, throwing a vague radiance to earth,and unreal shadows.  To the sky-line of the four quarters—spruce-shroudedislands, dark waters, and ice-scarred rocky ridges—stretched theimmaculate wilderness.  No sign of human existence broke the solitude;no sound the stillness.  The land seemed bound under the unrealityof the unknown, wrapped in the brooding mystery of great spaces.

Perhaps it was this which made Mrs. Sayther nervous; for she changedher position constantly, now to look up the river, now down, or to scanthe gloomy shores for the half-hidden mouths of back channels. After an hour or so the boatmen were sent ashore to pitch camp for thenight, but Pierre remained with his mistress to watch.

“Ah! him come thees tam,” he whispered, after a longsilence, his gaze bent up the river to the head of the island.

A canoe, with a paddle flashing on either side, was slipping downthe current.  In the stern a man’s form, and in the bow awoman’s, swung rhythmically to the work.  Mrs. Sayther hadno eyes for the woman till the canoe drove in closer and her bizarrebeauty peremptorily demanded notice.  A close-fitting blouse ofmoose-skin, fantastically beaded, outlined faithfully the well-roundedlines of her body, while a silken kerchief, gay of color and picturesquelydraped, partly covered great masses of blue-black hair.  But itwas the face, cast belike in copper bronze, which caught and held Mrs.Sayther’s fleeting glance.  Eyes, piercing and black andlarge, with a traditionary hint of obliqueness, looked forth from underclear-stencilled, clean-arching brows.  Without suggesting cadaverousness,though high-boned and prominent, the cheeks fell away and met in a mouth,thin-lipped and softly strong.  It was a face which advertisedthe dimmest trace of ancient Mongol blood, a reversion, after long centuriesof wandering, to the parent stem.  This effect was heightened bythe delicately aquiline nose with its thin trembling nostrils, and bythe general air of eagle wildness which seemed to characterize not onlythe face but the creature herself.  She was, in fact, the Tartartype modified to idealization, and the tribe of Red Indian is luckythat breeds such a unique body once in a score of generations.

Dipping long strokes and strong, the girl, in concert with the man,suddenly whirled the tiny craft about against the current and broughtit gently to the shore.  Another instant and she stood at the topof the bank, heaving up by rope, hand under hand, a quarter of fresh-killedmoose.  Then the man followed her, and together, with a swift rush,they drew up the canoe.  The dogs were in a whining mass aboutthem, and as the girl stooped among them caressingly, the man’sgaze fell upon Mrs. Sayther, who had arisen.  He looked, brushedhis eyes unconsciously as though his sight were deceiving him, and lookedagain.

“Karen,” he said simply, coming forward and extendinghis hand, “I thought for the moment I was dreaming.  I wentsnow-blind for a time, this spring, and since then my eyes have beenplaying tricks with me.”

Mrs. Sayther, whose flush had deepened and whose heart was urgingpainfully, had been prepared for almost anything save this coolly extendedhand; but she tactfully curbed herself and grasped it heartily withher own.

“You know, Dave, I threatened often to come, and I would have,too, only—only—”

“Only I didn’t give the word.”  David Paynelaughed and watched the Indian girl disappearing into the cabin.

“Oh, I understand, Dave, and had I been in your place I’dmost probably have done the same.  But I have come—now.”

“Then come a little bit farther, into the cabin and get somethingto eat,” he said genially, ignoring or missing the feminine suggestionof appeal in her voice.  “And you must be tired too. Which way are you travelling?  Up?  Then you wintered in Dawson,or came in on the last ice.  Your camp?”  He glancedat the voyageurscircled about the fire in the open, and heldback the door for her to enter.

“I came up on the ice from Circle City last winter,”he continued, “and settled down here for a while.  Am prospectingsome on Henderson Creek, and if that fails, have been thinking of tryingmy hand this fall up the Stuart River.”

“You aren’t changed much, are you?” she asked irrelevantly,striving to throw the conversation upon a more personal basis.

“A little less flesh, perhaps, and a little more muscle. How did youmean?”

But she shrugged her shoulders and peered I through the dim lightat the Indian girl, who had lighted the fire and was frying great chunksof moose meat, alternated with thin ribbons of bacon.

“Did you stop in Dawson long?”  The man was whittlinga stave of birchwood into a rude axe-handle, and asked the questionwithout raising his head.

“Oh, a few days,” she answered, following the girl withher eyes, and hardly hearing.  “What were you saying? In Dawson?  A month, in fact, and glad to get away.  The arcticmale is elemental, you know, and somewhat strenuous in his feelings.”

“Bound to be when he gets right down to the soil.  Heleaves convention with the spring bed at borne.  But you were wisein your choice of time for leaving.  You’ll be out of thecountry before mosquito season, which is a blessing your lack of experiencewill not permit you to appreciate.”

“I suppose not.  But tell me about yourself, about yourlife.  What kind of neighbors have you?  Or have you any?”

While she queried she watched the girl grinding coffee in the cornerof a flower sack upon the hearthstone.  With a steadiness and skillwhich predicated nerves as primitive as the method, she crushed theimprisoned berries with a heavy fragment of quartz.  David Paynenoted his visitor’s gaze, and the shadow of a smile drifted overhis lips.

“I did have some,” he replied.  “Missourianchaps, and a couple of Cornishmen, but they went down to Eldorado towork at wages for a grubstake.”

Mrs. Sayther cast a look of speculative regard upon the girl. “But of course there are plenty of Indians about?”

“Every mother’s son of them down to Dawson long ago. Not a native in the whole country, barring Winapie here, and she’sa Koyokuk lass,—comes from a thousand miles or so down the river.”

Mrs. Sayther felt suddenly faint; and though the smile of interestin no wise waned, the face of the man seemed to draw away to a telescopicdistance, and the tiered logs of the cabin to whirl drunkenly about. But she was bidden draw up to the table, and during the meal discoveredtime and space in which to find herself.  She talked little, andthat principally about the land and weather, while the man wanderedoff into a long description of the difference between the shallow summerdiggings of the Lower Country and the deep winter diggings of the UpperCountry.

“You do not ask why I came north?” she asked.  “Surelyyou know.”  They had moved back from the table, and DavidPayne had returned to his axe-handle.  “Did you get my letter?”

“A last one?  No, I don’t think so.  Most probablyit’s trailing around the Birch Creek Country or lying in sometrader’s shack on the Lower River.  The way they run themails in here is shameful.  No order, no system, no—”

“Don’t be wooden, Dave!  Help me!”  Shespoke sharply now, with an assumption of authority which rested uponthe past.  “Why don’t you ask me about myself? About those we knew in the old times?  Have you no longer any interestin the world?  Do you know that my husband is dead?”

“Indeed, I am sorry.  How long—”

“David!”  She was ready to cry with vexation, butthe reproach she threw into her voice eased her.

“Did you get any of my letters?  You must have got someof them, though you never answered.”

“Well, I didn’t get the last one, announcing, evidently,the death of your husband, and most likely others went astray; but Idid get some.  I—er—read them aloud to Winapie as awarning—that is, you know, to impress upon her the wickednessof her white sisters.  And I—er—think she profitedby it.  Don’t you?”

She disregarded the sting, and went on.  “In the lastletter, which you did not receive, I told, as you have guessed, of ColonelSayther’s death.  That was a year ago.  I also saidthat if you did not come out to me, I would go in to you.  Andas I had often promised, I came.”

“I know of no promise.”

“In the earlier letters?”

“Yes, you promised, but as I neither asked nor answered, itwas unratified.  So I do not know of any such promise.  ButI do know of another, which you, too, may remember.  It was verylong ago.”  He dropped the axe-handle to the floor and raisedhis head.  “It was so very long ago, yet I remember it distinctly,the day, the time, every detail.  We were in a rose garden, youand I,—your mother’s rose garden.  All things werebudding, blossoming, and the sap of spring was in our blood.  AndI drew you over—it was the first—and kissed you full onthe lips.  Don’t you remember?”

“Don’t go over it, Dave, don’t!  I know everyshameful line of it.  How often have I wept!  If you onlyknew how I have suffered—”

“You promised me then—ay, and a thousand times in thesweet days that followed.  Each look of your eyes, each touch ofyour hand, each syllable that fell from your lips, was a promise. And then—how shall I say?—there came a man.  He wasold—old enough to have begotten you—and not nice to lookupon, but as the world goes, clean.  He had done no wrong, followedthe letter of the law, was respectable.  Further, and to the point,he possessed some several paltry mines,—a score; it does not matter:and he owned a few miles of lands, and engineered deals, and clippedcoupons.  He—”

“But there were other things,” she interrupted, “Itold you.  Pressure—money matters—want—my people—trouble. You understood the whole sordid situation.  I could not help it. It was not my will.  I was sacrificed, or I sacrificed, have itas you wish.  But, my God!  Dave, I gave you up!  Younever did mejustice.  Think what I have gone through!”

“It was not your will?  Pressure?  Under high heaventhere was no thing to will you to this man’s bed or that.”

“But I cared for you all the time,” she pleaded.

“I was unused to your way of measuring love.  I am stillunused.  I do not understand.”

“But now! now!”

“We were speaking of this man you saw fit to marry.  Whatmanner of man was he?  Wherein did he charm your soul?  Whatpotent virtues were his?  True, he had a golden grip,—analmighty golden grip.  He knew the odds.  He was versed incent per cent.  He had a narrow wit and excellent judgment of theviler parts, whereby he transferred this man’s money to his pockets,and that man’s money, and the next man’s.  And thelaw smiled.  In that it did not condemn, our Christian ethics approved. By social measure he was not a bad man.  But by your measure, Karen,by mine, by ours of the rose garden, what was he?”

“Remember, he is dead.”

“The fact is not altered thereby.  What was he? A great, gross, material creature, deaf to song, blind to beauty, deadto the spirit.  He was fat with laziness, and flabby-cheeked, andthe round of his belly witnessed his gluttony—”

“But he is dead.  It is we who are now—now! now! Don’t you hear?  As you say, I have been inconstant. I have sinned.  Good.  But should not you, too, cry peccavi? If I have broken promises, have not you?  Your love of the rosegarden was of all time, or so you said.  Where is it now?”

“It is here! now!” he cried, striking his breast passionatelywith clenched hand.  “It has always been.”

“And your love was a great love; there was none greater,”she continued; “or so you said in the rose garden.  Yet itis not fine enough, large enough, to forgive me here, crying now atyour feet?”

The man hesitated.  His mouth opened; words shaped vainly onhis lips.  She had forced him to bare his heart and speak truthswhich he had hidden from himself.  And she was good to look upon,standing there in a glory of passion, calling back old associationsand warmer life.  He turned away his head that he might not see,but she passed around and fronted him.

“Look at me, Dave!  Look at me!  I am the same, afterall.  And so are you, if you would but see.  We are not changed.”

Her hand rested on his shoulder, and his had half-passed, roughly,about her, when the sharp crackle of a match startled him to himself. Winapie, alien to the scene, was lighting the slow wick of the slushlamp.  She appeared to start out against a background of utterblack, and the flame, flaring suddenly up, lighted her bronze beautyto royal gold.

“You see, it is impossible,” he groaned, thrusting thefair-haired woman gently from him.  “It is impossible,”he repeated.  “It is impossible.”

“I am not a girl, Dave, with a girl’s illusions,”she said softly, though not daring to come back to him.  “Itis as a woman that I understand.  Men are men.  A common customof the country.  I am not shocked.  I divined it from thefirst.  But—ah!—it is only a marriage of the country—nota real marriage?”

“We do not ask such questions in Alaska,” he interposedfeebly.

“I know, but—”

“Well, then, it is only a marriage of the country—nothingelse.”

“And there are no children?”

“No.”

“Nor—”

“No, no; nothing—but it is impossible.”

“But it is not.”  She was at his side again, herhand touching lightly, caressingly, the sunburned back of his. “I know the custom of the land too well.  Men do it everyday.  They do not care to remain here, shut out from the world,for all their days; so they give an order on the P. C. C. Company fora year’s provisions, some money in hand, and the girl is content. By the end of that time, a man—”  She shrugged hershoulders.  “And so with the girl here.  We will giveher an order upon the company, not for a year, but for life.  Whatwas she when you found her?  A raw, meat-eating savage; fish insummer, moose in winter, feasting in plenty, starving in famine. But for you that is what she would have remained.  For your comingshe was happier; for your going, surely, with a life of comparativesplendor assured, she will be happier than if you had never been.”

“No, no,” he protested.  “It is not right.”

“Come, Dave, you must see.  She is not your kind. There is no race affinity.  She is an aborigine, sprung from thesoil, yet close to the soil, and impossible to lift from the soil. Born savage, savage she will die.  But we—you and I—thedominant, evolved race—the salt of the earth and the masters thereof! We are made for each other.  The supreme call is of kind, and weare of kind.  Reason and feeling dictate it.  Your very instinctdemands it.  That you cannot deny.  You cannot escape thegenerations behind you.  Yours is an ancestry which has survivedfor a thousand centuries, and for a hundred thousand centuries, andyour line must not stop here.  It cannot.  Your ancestry willnot permit it.  Instinct is stronger than the will.  The raceis mightier than you.  Come, Dave, let us go.  We are youngyet, and life is good.  Come.”

Winapie, passing out of the cabin to feed the dogs, caught his attentionand caused him to shake his head and weakly to reiterate.  Butthe woman’s hand slipped about his neck, and her cheek pressedto his.  His bleak life rose up and smote him,—the vain strugglewith pitiless forces; the dreary years of frost and famine; the harshand jarring contact with elemental life; the aching void which mereanimal existence could not fill.  And there, seduction by his side,whispering of brighter, warmer lands, of music, light, and joy, calledthe old times back again.  He visioned it unconsciously. Faces rushed in upon him; glimpses of forgotten scenes, memories ofmerry hours; strains of song and trills of laughter—

“Come, Dave, Come.  I have for both.  The way issoft.”  She looked about her at the bare furnishings of thecabin.  “I have for both.  The world is at our feet,and all joy is ours.  Come! come!”

She was in his arms, trembling, and he held her tightly.  Herose to his feet . . . But the snarling of hungry dogs, and the shrillcries of Winapie bringing about peace between the combatants, came muffledto his ear through the heavy logs.  And another scene flashed beforehim.  A struggle in the forest,—a bald-face grizzly, broken-legged,terrible; the snarling of the dogs and the shrill cries of Winapie asshe urged them to the attack; himself in the midst of the crush, breathless,panting, striving to hold off red death; broken-backed, entrail-rippeddogs howling in impotent anguish and desecrating the snow; the virginwhite running scarlet with the blood of man and beast; the bear, ferocious,irresistible, crunching, crunching down to the core of his life; andWinapie, at the last, in the thick of the frightful muddle, hair flying,eyes flashing, fury incarnate, passing the long hunting knife againand again—Sweat started to his forehead.  He shook off theclinging woman and staggered back to the wall.  And she, knowingthat the moment had come, but unable to divine what was passing withinhim, felt all she had gained slipping away.

“Dave!  Dave!” she cried.  “I will notgive you up!  I will not give you up!  If you do not wishto come, we will stay.  I will stay with you.  The world isless to me than are you.  I will be a Northland wife to you. I will cook your food, feed your dogs, break trail for you, lift a paddlewith you.  I can do it.  Believe me, I am strong.”

Nor did he doubt it, looking upon her and holding her off from him;but his face had grown stern and gray, and the warmth had died out ofhis eyes.

“I will pay off Pierre and the boatmen, and let them go. And I will stay with you, priest or no priest, minister or no minister;go with you, now, anywhere!  Dave!  Dave!  Listen tome!  You say I did you wrong in the past—and I did—letme make up for it, let me atone.  If I did not rightly measurelove before, let me show that I can now.”

She sank to the floor and threw her arms about his knees, sobbing. “And you docare for me.  You docare for me. Think!  The long years I have waited, suffered!  You can neverknow!”  He stooped and raised her to her feet.

“Listen,” he commanded, opening the door and liftingher bodily outside.  “It cannot be.  We are not aloneto be considered.  You must go.  I wish you a safe journey. You will find it tougher work when you get up by the Sixty Mile, butyou have the best boatmen in the world, and will get through all right. Will you say good-by?”

Though she already had herself in hand, she looked at him hopelessly. “If—if—if Winapie should—”  She quaveredand stopped.

But he grasped the unspoken thought, and answered, “Yes.” Then struck with the enormity of it, “It cannot be conceived. There is no likelihood.  It must not be entertained.”

“Kiss me,” she whispered, her face lighting.  Thenshe turned and went away.

* * * *

“Break camp, Pierre,” she said to the boatman, who alonehad remained awake against her return.  “We must be going.”

By the firelight his sharp eyes scanned the woe in her face, buthe received the extraordinary command as though it were the most usualthing in the world.  “Oui, madame,” he assented. “Which way?  Dawson?”

“No,” she answered, lightly enough; “up; out; Dyea.”

Whereat he fell upon the sleeping voyageurs, kicking them,grunting, from their blankets, and buckling them down to the work, thewhile his voice, vibrant with action, shrilling through all the camp. In a trice Mrs. Sayther’s tiny tent had been struck, pots andpans were being gathered up, blankets rolled, and the men staggeringunder the loads to the boat.  Here, on the banks, Mrs. Saytherwaited till the luggage was made ship-shape and her nest prepared.

“We line up to de head of de island,” Pierre explainedto her while running out the long tow rope.  “Den we takto das back channel, where de water not queek, and I t’ink wemak good tam.”

A scuffling and pattering of feet in the last year’s dry grasscaught his quick ear, and he turned his head.  The Indian girl,circled by a bristling ring of wolf dogs, was coming toward them. Mrs. Sayther noted that the girl’s face, which had been apatheticthroughout the scene in the cabin, had now quickened into blazing andwrathful life.

“What you do my man?” she demanded abruptly of Mrs. Sayther. “Him lay on bunk, and him look bad all the time.  I say,‘What the matter, Dave?  You sick?’  But him nosay nothing.  After that him say, ‘Good girl Winapie, goway.  I be all right bimeby.’  What you do my man, eh? I think you bad woman.”

Mrs. Sayther looked curiously at the barbarian woman who shared thelife of this man, while she departed alone in the darkness of night.

“I think you bad woman,” Winapie repeated in the slow,methodical way of one who gropes for strange words in an alien tongue. “I think better you go way, no come no more.  Eh?  Whatyou think?  I have one man.  I Indian girl.  You ‘Mericanwoman.  You good to see.  You find plenty men.  Youreyes blue like the sky.  Your skin so white, so soft.”

Coolly she thrust out a brown forefinger and pressed the soft cheekof the other woman.  And to the eternal credit of Karen Sayther,she never flinched.  Pierre hesitated and half stepped forward;but she motioned him away, though her heart welled to him with secretgratitude.  “It’s all right, Pierre,” she said. “Please go away.”

He stepped back respectfully out of earshot, where he stood grumblingto himself and measuring the distance in springs.

“Um white, um soft, like baby.”  Winapie touchedthe other cheek and withdrew her hand.  “Bimeby mosquitocome.  Skin get sore in spot; um swell, oh, so big; um hurt, oh,so much.  Plenty mosquito; plenty spot.  I think better yougo now before mosquito come.  This way,” pointing down thestream, “you go St. Michael’s; that way,” pointingup, “you go Dyea.  Better you go Dyea.  Good-by.”

And that which Mrs. Sayther then did, caused Pierre to marvel greatly. For she threw her arms around the Indian girl, kissed her, and burstinto tears.

“Be good to him,” she cried.  “Be good tohim.”

Then she slipped half down the face of the bank, called back “Good-by,”and dropped into the boat amidships.  Pierre followed her and castoff.  He shoved the steering oar into place and gave the signal. Le Goire lifted an old French chanson; the men, like a row ofghosts in the dim starlight, bent their backs to the tow line; the steeringoar cut the black current sharply, and the boat swept out into the night.

WHICH MAKE MEN REMEMBER

Fortune La Pearle crushed his way through the snow, sobbing, straining,cursing his luck, Alaska, Nome, the cards, and the man who had felthis knife.  The hot blood was freezing on his hands, and the sceneyet bright in his eyes,—the man, clutching the table and sinkingslowly to the floor; the rolling counters and the scattered deck; theswift shiver throughout the room, and the pause; the game-keepers nolonger calling, and the clatter of the chips dying away; the startledfaces; the infinite instant of silence; and then the great blood-roarand the tide of vengeance which lapped his heels and turned the townmad behind him.

“All hell’s broke loose,” he sneered, turning asidein the darkness and heading for the beach.  Lights were flashingfrom open doors, and tent, cabin, and dance-hall let slip their denizensupon the chase.  The clamor of men and howling of dogs smote hisears and quickened his feet.  He ran on and on.  The soundsgrew dim, and the pursuit dissipated itself in vain rage and aimlessgroping.  But a flitting shadow clung to him.  Head thrustover shoulder, he caught glimpses of it, now taking vague shape on anopen expanse of snow, how merging into the deeper shadows of some darkenedcabin or beach-listed craft.

Fortune La Pearle swore like a woman, weakly, with the hint of tearsthat comes of exhaustion, and plunged deeper into the maze of heapedice, tents, and prospect holes.  He stumbled over taut hawsersand piles of dunnage, tripped on crazy guy-ropes and insanely plantedpegs, and fell again and again upon frozen dumps and mounds of hoardeddriftwood.  At times, when he deemed he had drawn clear, his headdizzy with the painful pounding of his heart and the suffocating intakeof his breath, he slackened down; and ever the shadow leaped out ofthe gloom and forced him on in heart-breaking flight.  A swiftintuition lashed upon him, leaving in its trail the cold chill of superstition. The persistence of the shadow he invested with his gambler’s symbolism. Silent, inexorable, not to be shaken off, he took it as the fate whichwaited at the last turn when chips were cashed in and gains and lossescounted up.  Fortune La Pearle believed in those rare, illuminatingmoments, when the intelligence flung from it time and space, to risenaked through eternity and read the facts of life from the open bookof chance.  That this was such a moment he had no doubt; and whenhe turned inland and sped across the snow-covered tundra he was notstartled because the shadow took upon it greater definiteness and drewin closer.  Oppressed with his own impotence, he halted in themidst of the white waste and whirled about.  His right hand slippedfrom its mitten, and a revolver, at level, glistened in the pale lightof the stars.

“Don’t shoot.  I haven’t a gun.”

The shadow had assumed tangible shape, and at the sound of its humanvoice a trepidation affected Fortune La Pearle’s knees, and hisstomach was stricken with the qualms of sudden relief.

Perhaps things fell out differently because Uri Bram had no gun thatnight when he sat on the hard benches of the El Dorado and saw murderdone.  To that fact also might be attributed the trip on the LongTrail which he took subsequently with a most unlikely comrade. But be it as it may, he repeated a second time, “Don’t shoot. Can’t you see I haven’t a gun?”

“Then what the flaming hell did you take after me for?”demanded the gambler, lowering his revolver.

Uri Bram shrugged his shoulders.  “It don’t mattermuch, anyhow.  I want you to come with me.”

“Where?”

“To my shack, over on the edge of the camp.”

But Fortune La Pearle drove the heel of his moccasin into the snowand attested by his various deities to the madness of Uri Bram. “Who are you,” he perorated, “and what am I, thatI should put my neck into the rope at your bidding?”

“I am Uri Bram,” the other said simply, “and myshack is over there on the edge of camp.  I don’t know whoyou are, but you’ve thrust the soul from a living man’sbody,—there’s the blood red on your sleeve,—and, likea second Cain, the hand of all mankind is against you, and there isno place you may lay your head.  Now, I have a shack—”

“For the love of your mother, hold your say, man,” interruptedFortune La Pearle, “or I’ll make you a second Abel for thejoy of it.  So help me, I will!  With a thousand men to layme by the heels, looking high and low, what do I want with your shack? I want to get out of here—away! away! away!  Cursed swine! I’ve half a mind to go back and run amuck, and settle for a fewof them, the pigs!  One gorgeous, glorious fight, and end the wholedamn business!  It’s a skin game, that’s what lifeis, and I’m sick of it!”

He stopped, appalled, crushed by his great desolation, and Uri Bramseized the moment.  He was not given to speech, this man, and thatwhich followed was the longest in his life, save one long afterwardin another place.

“That’s why I told you about my shack.  I can stowyou there so they’ll never find you, and I’ve got grub inplenty.  Elsewise you can’t get away.  No dogs, no nothing,the sea closed, St. Michael the nearest post, runners to carry the newsbefore you, the same over the portage to Anvik—not a chance inthe world for you!  Now wait with me till it blows over. They’ll forget all about you in a month or less, what of stampedingto York and what not, and you can hit the trail under their noses andthey won’t bother.  I’ve got my own ideas of justice. When I ran after you, out of the El Dorado and along the beach, it wasn’tto catch you or give you up.  My ideas are my own, and that’snot one of them.”

He ceased as the murderer drew a prayer-book from his pocket. With the aurora borealis glimmering yellow in the northeast, heads baredto the frost and naked hands grasping the sacred book, Fortune La Pearleswore him to the words he had spoken—an oath which Uri Bram neverintended breaking, and never broke.

At the door of the shack the gambler hesitated for an instant, marvellingat the strangeness of this man who had befriended him, and doubting. But by the candlelight he found the cabin comfortable and without occupants,and he was quickly rolling a cigarette while the other man made coffee. His muscles relaxed in the warmth and he lay back with half-assumedindolence, intently studying Uri’s face through the curling wispsof smoke.  It was a powerful face, but its strength was of thatpeculiar sort which stands girt in and unrelated.  The seams weredeep-graven, more like scars, while the stern features were in no waysoftened by hints of sympathy or humor.  Under prominent bushybrows the eyes shone cold and gray.  The cheekbones, high and forbidding,were undermined by deep hollows.  The chin and jaw displayed asteadiness of purpose which the narrow forehead advertised as single,and, if needs be, pitiless.  Everything was harsh, the nose, thelips, the voice, the lines about the mouth.  It was the face ofone who communed much with himself, unused to seeking counsel from theworld; the face of one who wrestled oft of nights with angels, and roseto face the day with shut lips that no man might know.  He wasnarrow but deep; and Fortune, his own humanity broad and shallow, couldmake nothing of him.  Did Uri sing when merry and sigh when sad,he could have understood; but as it was, the cryptic features were undecipherable;he could not measure the soul they concealed.

“Lend a hand, Mister Man,” Uri ordered when the cupshad been emptied.  “We’ve got to fix up for visitors.”

Fortune purred his name for the other’s benefit, and assistedunderstandingly.  The bunk was built against a side and end ofthe cabin.  It was a rude affair, the bottom being composed ofdrift-wood logs overlaid with moss.  At the foot the rough endsof these timbers projected in an uneven row.  From the side nextthe wall Uri ripped back the moss and removed three of the logs. The jagged ends he sawed off and replaced so that the projecting rowremained unbroken.  Fortune carried in sacks of flour from thecache and piled them on the floor beneath the aperture.  On theseUri laid a pair of long sea-bags, and over all spread several thicknessesof moss and blankets.  Upon this Fortune could lie, with the sleepingfurs stretching over him from one side of the bunk to the other, andall men could look upon it and declare it empty.

In the weeks which followed, several domiciliary visits were paid,not a shack or tent in Nome escaping, but Fortune lay in his crannyundisturbed.  In fact, little attention was given to Uri Bram’scabin; for it was the last place under the sun to expect to find themurderer of John Randolph.  Except during such interruptions, Fortunelolled about the cabin, playing long games of solitaire and smokingendless cigarettes.  Though his volatile nature loved genialityand play of words and laughter, he quickly accommodated himself to Uri’staciturnity.  Beyond the actions and plans of his pursuers, thestate of the trails, and the price of dogs, they never talked; and thesethings were only discussed at rare intervals and briefly.  ButFortune fell to working out a system, and hour after hour, and day afterday, he shuffled and dealt, shuffled and dealt, noted the combinationsof the cards in long columns, and shuffled and dealt again.  Towardthe end even this absorption failed him, and, head bowed upon the table,he visioned the lively all-night houses of Nome, where the gamekeepersand lookouts worked in shifts and the clattering roulette ball neverslept.  At such times his loneliness and bankruptcy stunned himtill he sat for hours in the same unblinking, unchanging position. At other times, his long-pent bitterness found voice in passionate outbursts;for he had rubbed the world the wrong way and did not like the feelof it.

“Life’s a skin-game,” he was fond of repeating,and on this one note he rang the changes.  “I never had halfa chance,” he complained.  “I was faked in my birthand flim-flammed with my mother’s milk.  The dice were loadedwhen she tossed the box, and I was born to prove the loss.  Butthat was no reason she should blame me for it, and look on me as a colddeck; but she did—ay, she did.  Why didn’t she giveme a show?  Why didn’t the world?  Why did I go brokein Seattle?  Why did I take the steerage, and live like a hog toNome?  Why did I go to the El Dorado?  I was heading for BigPete’s and only went for matches.  Why didn’t I havematches?  Why did I want to smoke?  Don’t you see? All worked out, every bit of it, all parts fitting snug.  BeforeI was born, like as not.  I’ll put the sack I never hopeto get on it, before I was born.  That’s why!  That’swhy John Randolph passed the word and his checks in at the same time. Damn him!  It served him well right!  Why didn’t hekeep his tongue between his teeth and give me a chance?  He knewI was next to broke.  Why didn’t I hold my hand?  Oh,why?  Why?  Why?”

And Fortune La Pearle would roll upon the floor, vainly interrogatingthe scheme of things.  At such outbreaks Uri said no word, gaveno sign, save that his grey eyes seemed to turn dull and muddy, as thoughfrom lack of interest.  There was nothing in common between thesetwo men, and this fact Fortune grasped sufficiently to wonder sometimeswhy Uri had stood by him.

But the time of waiting came to an end.  Even a community’sblood lust cannot stand before its gold lust.  The murder of JohnRandolph had already passed into the annals of the camp, and there itrested.  Had the murderer appeared, the men of Nome would certainlyhave stopped stampeding long enough to see justice done, whereas thewhereabouts of Fortune La Pearle was no longer an insistent problem. There was gold in the creek beds and ruby beaches, and when the seaopened, the men with healthy sacks would sail away to where the goodthings of life were sold absurdly cheap.

So, one night, Fortune helped Uri Bram harness the dogs and lashthe sled, and the twain took the winter trail south on the ice. But it was not all south; for they left the sea east from St. Michael’s,crossed the divide, and struck the Yukon at Anvik, many hundred milesfrom its mouth.  Then on, into the northeast, past Koyokuk, Tanana,and Minook, till they rounded the Great Curve at Fort Yukon, crossedand recrossed the Arctic Circle, and headed south through the Flats. It was a weary journey, and Fortune would have wondered why the manwent with him, had not Uri told him that he owned claims and had menworking at Eagle.  Eagle lay on the edge of the line; a few milesfarther on, the British flag waved over the barracks at Fort Cudahy. Then came Dawson, Pelly, the Five Fingers, Windy Arm, Caribou Crossing,Linderman, the Chilcoot and Dyea.

On the morning after passing Eagle, they rose early.  This wastheir last camp, and they were now to part.  Fortune’s heartwas light.  There was a promise of spring in the land, and thedays were growing longer.  The way was passing into Canadian territory. Liberty was at hand, the sun was returning, and each day saw him nearerto the Great Outside.  The world was big, and he could once againpaint his future in royal red.  He whistled about the breakfastand hummed snatches of light song while Uri put the dogs in harnessand packed up.  But when all was ready, Fortune’s feet itchingto be off, Uri pulled an unused back-log to the fire and sat down.

“Ever hear of the Dead Horse Trail?”

He glanced up meditatively and Fortune shook his head, inwardly chafingat the delay.

“Sometimes there are meetings under circumstances which makemen remember,” Uri continued, speaking in a low voice and veryslowly, “and I met a man under such circumstances on the DeadHorse Trail.  Freighting an outfit over the White Pass in ’97broke many a man’s heart, for there was a world of reason whenthey gave that trail its name.  The horses died like mosquitoesin the first frost, and from Skaguay to Bennett they rotted in heaps. They died at the Rocks, they were poisoned at the Summit, and they starvedat the Lakes; they fell off the trail, what there was of it, or theywent through it; in the river they drowned under their loads, or weresmashed to pieces against the boulders; they snapped their legs in thecrevices and broke their backs falling backwards with their packs; inthe sloughs they sank from sight or smothered in the slime, and theywere disembowelled in the bogs where the corduroy logs turned end upin the mud; men shot them, worked them to death, and when they weregone, went back to the beach and bought more.  Some did not botherto shoot them,—stripping the saddles off and the shoes and leavingthem where they fell.  Their hearts turned to stone—thosewhich did not break—and they became beasts, the men on Dead HorseTrail.

“It was there I met a man with the heart of a Christ and thepatience.  And he was honest.  When he rested at midday hetook the packs from the horses so that they, too, might rest. He paid $50 a hundred-weight for their fodder, and more.  He usedhis own bed to blanket their backs when they rubbed raw.  Othermen let the saddles eat holes the size of water-buckets.  Othermen, when the shoes gave out, let them wear their hoofs down to thebleeding stumps.  He spent his last dollar for horseshoe nails. I know this because we slept in the one bed and ate from the one pot,and became blood brothers where men lost their grip of things and diedblaspheming God.  He was never too tired to ease a strap or tightena cinch, and often there were tears in his eyes when he looked on allthat waste of misery.  At a passage in the rocks, where the brutesupreared hindlegged and stretched their forelegs upward like cats toclear the wall, the way was piled with carcasses where they had toppledback.  And here he stood, in the stench of hell, with a cheeryword and a hand on the rump at the right time, till the string passedby.  And when one bogged he blocked the trail till it was clearagain; nor did the man live who crowded him at such time.

“At the end of the trail a man who had killed fifty horseswanted to buy, but we looked at him and at our own,—mountain cayusesfrom eastern Oregon.  Five thousand he offered, and we were broke,but we remembered the poison grass of the Summit and the passage inthe Rocks, and the man who was my brother spoke no word, but dividedthe cayuses into two bunches,—his in the one and mine in the other,—andhe looked at me and we understood each other.  So he drove mineto the one side and I drove his to the other, and we took with us ourrifles and shot them to the last one, while the man who had killed fiftyhorses cursed us till his throat cracked.  But that man, with whomI welded blood-brothership on the Dead Horse Trail—”

“Why, that man was John Randolph,” Fortune, sneeringthe while, completed the climax for him.

Uri nodded, and said, “I am glad you understand.”

“I am ready,” Fortune answered, the old weary bitternessstrong in his face again.  “Go ahead, but hurry.”

Uri Bram rose to his feet.

“I have had faith in God all the days of my life.  I believeHe loves justice.  I believe He is looking down upon us now, choosingbetween us.  I believe He waits to work His will through my ownright arm.  And such is my belief, that we will take equal chanceand let Him speak His own judgment.”

Fortune’s heart leaped at the words.  He did not knowmuch concerning Uri’s God, but he believed in Chance, and Chancehad been coming his way ever since the night he ran down the beach andacross the snow.  “But there is only one gun,” he objected.

“We will fire turn about,” Uri replied, at the same timethrowing out the cylinder of the other man’s Colt and examiningit.

“And the cards to decide!  One hand of seven up!”

Fortune’s blood was warming to the game, and he drew the deckfrom his pocket as Uri nodded.  Surely Chance would not deserthim now!  He thought of the returning sun as he cut for deal, andhe thrilled when he found the deal was his.  He shuffled and dealt,and Uri cut him the Jack of Spades.  They laid down their hands. Uri’s was bare of trumps, while he held ace, deuce.  Theoutside seemed very near to him as they stepped off the fifty paces.

“If God withholds His hand and you drop me, the dogs and outfitare yours.  You’ll find a bill of sale, already made out,in my pocket,” Uri explained, facing the path of the bullet, straightand broad-breasted.

Fortune shook a vision of the sun shining on the ocean from his eyesand took aim.  He was very careful.  Twice he lowered as thespring breeze shook the pines.  But the third time he dropped onone knee, gripped the revolver steadily in both hands, and fired. Uri whirled half about, threw up his arms, swayed wildly for a moment,and sank into the snow.  But Fortune knew he had fired too farto one side, else the man would not have whirled.

When Uri, mastering the flesh and struggling to his feet, beckonedfor the weapon, Fortune was minded to fire again.  But he thrustthe idea from him.  Chance had been very good to him already, hefelt, and if he tricked now he would have to pay for it afterward. No, he would play fair.  Besides Uri was hard hit and could notpossibly hold the heavy Colt long enough to draw a bead.

“And where is your God now?” he taunted, as he gave thewounded man the revolver.

And Uri answered: “God has not yet spoken.  Prepare thatHe may speak.”

Fortune faced him, but twisted his chest sideways in order to presentless surface.  Uri tottered about drunkenly, but waited, too, forthe moment’s calm between the catspaws.  The revolver wasvery heavy, and he doubted, like Fortune, because of its weight. But he held it, arm extended, above his head, and then let it slowlydrop forward and down.  At the instant Fortune’s left breastand the sight flashed into line with his eye, he pulled the trigger. Fortune did not whirl, but gay San Francisco dimmed and faded, and asthe sun-bright snow turned black and blacker, he breathed his last maledictionon the Chance he had misplayed.

SIWASH

“If I was a man—”  Her words were in themselvesindecisive, but the withering contempt which flashed from her blackeyes was not lost upon the men-folk in the tent.

Tommy, the English sailor, squirmed, but chivalrous old Dick Humphries,Cornish fisherman and erstwhile American salmon capitalist, beamed uponher benevolently as ever.  He bore women too large a portion ofhis rough heart to mind them, as he said, when they were in the doldrums,or when their limited vision would not permit them to see all arounda thing.  So they said nothing, these two men who had taken thehalf-frozen woman into their tent three days back, and who had warmedher, and fed her, and rescued her goods from the Indian packers. This latter had necessitated the payment of numerous dollars, to saynothing of a demonstration in force—Dick Humphries squinting alongthe sights of a Winchester while Tommy apportioned their wages amongthem at his own appraisement.  It had been a little thing in itself,but it meant much to a woman playing a desperate single-hand in theequally desperate Klondike rush of ’97.  Men were occupiedwith their own pressing needs, nor did they approve of women playing,single-handed, the odds of the arctic winter.  “If I wasa man, I know what I would do.”  Thus reiterated Molly, sheof the flashing eyes, and therein spoke the cumulative grit of fiveAmerican-born generations.

In the succeeding silence, Tommy thrust a pan of biscuits into theYukon stove and piled on fresh fuel.  A reddish flood pounded alongunder his sun-tanned skin, and as he stooped, the skin of his neck wasscarlet.  Dick palmed a three-cornered sail needle through a setof broken pack straps, his good nature in nowise disturbed by the femininecataclysm which was threatening to burst in the storm-beaten tent.

“And if you was a man?” he asked, his voice vibrant withkindness.  The three-cornered needle jammed in the damp leather,and he suspended work for the moment.

“I’d be a man.  I’d put the straps on my backand light out.  I wouldn’t lay in camp here, with the Yukonlike to freeze most any day, and the goods not half over the portage. And you—you are men, and you sit here, holding your hands, afraidof a little wind and wet.  I tell you straight, Yankee-men aremade of different stuff.  They’d be hitting the trail forDawson if they had to wade through hell-fire.  And you, you—Iwish I was a man.”

“I’m very glad, my dear, that you’re not.” Dick Humphries threw the bight of the sail twine over the point of theneedle and drew it clear with a couple of deft turns and a jerk.

A snort of the gale dealt the tent a broad-handed slap as it hurtledpast, and the sleet rat-tat-tatted with snappy spite against the thincanvas.  The smoke, smothered in its exit, drove back through thefire-box door, carrying with it the pungent odor of green spruce.

“Good Gawd!  Why can’t a woman listen to reason?” Tommy lifted his head from the denser depths and turned upon her a pairof smoke-outraged eyes.

“And why can’t a man show his manhood?”

Tommy sprang to his feet with an oath which would have shocked awoman of lesser heart, ripped loose the sturdy reef-knots and flungback the flaps of the tent.

The trio peered out.  It was not a heartening spectacle. A few water-soaked tents formed the miserable foreground, from whichthe streaming ground sloped to a foaming gorge.  Down this rampeda mountain torrent.  Here and there, dwarf spruce, rooting andgrovelling in the shallow alluvium, marked the proximity of the timberline.  Beyond, on the opposing slope, the vague outlines of a glacierloomed dead-white through the driving rain.  Even as they looked,its massive front crumbled into the valley, on the breast of some subterraneanvomit, and it lifted its hoarse thunder above the screeching voice ofthe storm.  Involuntarily, Molly shrank back.

“Look, woman!  Look with all your eyes!  Three milesin the teeth of the gale to Crater Lake, across two glaciers, alongthe slippery rim-rock, knee-deep in a howling river!  Look, I say,you Yankee woman!  Look!  There’s your Yankee-men!” Tommy pointed a passionate hand in the direction of the struggling tents. “Yankees, the last mother’s son of them.  Are theyon trail?  Is there one of them with the straps to his back? And you would teach us men our work?  Look, I say!”

Another tremendous section of the glacier rumbled earthward. The wind whipped in at the open doorway, bulging out the sides of thetent till it swayed like a huge bladder at its guy ropes.  Thesmoke swirled about them, and the sleet drove sharply into their flesh. Tommy pulled the flaps together hastily, and returned to his tearfultask at the fire-box.  Dick Humphries threw the mended pack strapsinto a corner and lighted his pipe.  Even Molly was for the momentpersuaded.

“There’s my clothes,” she half-whimpered, the femininefor the moment prevailing.  “They’re right at the topof the cache, and they’ll be ruined!  I tell you, ruined!”

“There, there,” Dick interposed, when the last quaveringsyllable had wailed itself out.  “Don’t let that worryyou, little woman.  I’m old enough to be your father’sbrother, and I’ve a daughter older than you, and I’ll togyou out in fripperies when we get to Dawson if it takes my last dollar.”

“When we get to Dawson!”  The scorn had come backto her throat with a sudden surge.  “You’ll rot onthe way, first.  You’ll drown in a mudhole.  You—you—Britishers!”

The last word, explosive, intensive, had strained the limits of hervituperation.  If that would not stir these men, what could? Tommy’s neck ran red again, but he kept his tongue between histeeth.  Dick’s eyes mellowed.  He had the advantageover Tommy, for he had once had a white woman for a wife.

The blood of five American-born generations is, under certain circumstances,an uncomfortable heritage; and among these circumstances might be enumeratedthat of being quartered with next of kin.  These men were Britons. On sea and land her ancestry and the generations thereof had thrashedthem and theirs.  On sea and land they would continue to do so. The traditions of her race clamored for vindication.  She was buta woman of the present, but in her bubbled the whole mighty past. It was not alone Molly Travis who pulled on gum boots, mackintosh, andstraps; for the phantom hands of ten thousand forbears drew tight thebuckles, just so as they squared her jaw and set her eyes with determination. She, Molly Travis, intended to shame these Britishers; they, the innumerableshades, were asserting the dominance of the common race.

The men-folk did not interfere.  Once Dick suggested that shetake his oilskins, as her mackintosh was worth no more than paper insuch a storm.  But she sniffed her independence so sharply thathe communed with his pipe till she tied the flaps on the outside andslushed away on the flooded trail.

“Think she’ll make it?”  Dick’s facebelied the indifference of his voice.

“Make it?  If she stands the pressure till she gets tothe cache, what of the cold and misery, she’ll be stark, ravingmad.  Stand it?  She’ll be dumb-crazed.  You knowit yourself, Dick.  You’ve wind-jammed round the Horn. You know what it is to lay out on a topsail yard in the thick of it,bucking sleet and snow and frozen canvas till you’re ready tojust let go and cry like a baby.  Clothes?  She won’tbe able to tell a bundle of skirts from a gold pan or a tea-kettle.”

“Kind of think we were wrong in letting her go, then?”

“Not a bit of it.  So help me, Dick, she’d ’a’made this tent a hell for the rest of the trip if we hadn’t. Trouble with her she’s got too much spirit.  This’lltone it down a bit.”

“Yes,” Dick admitted, “she’s too ambitious. But then Molly’s all right.  A cussed little fool to tacklea trip like this, but a plucky sight better than those pick-me-up-and-carry-mekind of women.  She’s the stock that carried you and me,Tommy, and you’ve got to make allowance for the spirit. Takes a woman to breed a man.  You can’t suck manhood fromthe dugs of a creature whose only claim to womanhood is her petticoats. Takes a she-cat, not a cow, to mother a tiger.”

“And when they’re unreasonable we’ve got to putup with it, eh?”

“The proposition.  A sharp sheath-knife cuts deeper ona slip than a dull one; but that’s no reason for to hack the edgeoff over a capstan bar.”

“All right, if you say so, but when it comes to woman, I guessI’ll take mine with a little less edge.”

“What do you know about it?” Dick demanded.

“Some.”  Tommy reached over for a pair of Molly’swet stockings and stretched them across his knees to dry.

Dick, eying him querulously, went fishing in her hand satchel, thenhitched up to the front of the stove with divers articles of damp clothingspread likewise to the heat.

“Thought you said you never were married?” he asked.

“Did I?  No more was I—that is—yes, by Gawd!I was.  And as good a woman as ever cooked grub for a man.”

“Slipped her moorings?” Dick symbolized infinity witha wave of his hand.

“Ay.”

“Childbirth,” he added, after a moment’s pause.

The beans bubbled rowdily on the front lid, and he pushed the potback to a cooler surface.  After that he investigated the biscuits,tested them with a splinter of wood, and placed them aside under coverof a damp cloth.  Dick, after the manner of his kind, stifled hisinterest and waited silently.  “A different woman to Molly. Siwash.”

Dick nodded his understanding.

“Not so proud and wilful, but stick by a fellow through thickand thin.  Sling a paddle with the next and starve as contentedlyas Job.  Go for’ard when the sloop’s nose was moreoften under than not, and take in sail like a man.  Went prospectingonce, up Teslin way, past Surprise Lake and the Little Yellow-Head. Grub gave out, and we ate the dogs.  Dogs gave out, and we ateharnesses, moccasins, and furs.  Never a whimper; never a pick-me-up-and-carry-me. Before we went she said look out for grub, but when it happened, nevera I-told-you-so.  ‘Never mind, Tommy,’ she’dsay, day after day, that weak she could bare lift a snow-shoe and herfeet raw with the work.  ‘Never mind.  I’d soonerbe flat-bellied of hunger and be your woman, Tommy, than have a potlachevery day and be Chief George’s klooch.’  Georgewas chief of the Chilcoots, you know, and wanted her bad.

“Great days, those.  Was a likely chap myself when I struckthe coast.  Jumped a whaler, the Pole Star, at Unalaska,and worked my way down to Sitka on an otter hunter.  Picked upwith Happy Jack there—know him?”

“Had charge of my traps for me,” Dick answered, “downon the Columbia.  Pretty wild, wasn’t he, with a warm placein his heart for whiskey and women?”

“The very chap.  Went trading with him for a couple ofseasons—hooch, and blankets, and such stuff.  Thengot a sloop of my own, and not to cut him out, came down Juneau way. That’s where I met Killisnoo; I called her Tilly for short. Met her at a squaw dance down on the beach.  Chief George had finishedthe year’s trade with the Sticks over the Passes, and was downfrom Dyea with half his tribe.  No end of Siwashes at the dance,and I the only white.  No one knew me, barring a few of the bucksI’d met over Sitka way, but I’d got most of their historiesfrom Happy Jack.

“Everybody talking Chinook, not guessing that I could spitit better than most; and principally two girls who’d run awayfrom Haine’s Mission up the Lynn Canal.  They were trim creatures,good to the eye, and I kind of thought of casting that way; but theywere fresh as fresh-caught cod.  Too much edge, you see. Being a new-comer, they started to twist me, not knowing I gatheredin every word of Chinook they uttered.

“I never let on, but set to dancing with Tilly, and the morewe danced the more our hearts warmed to each other.  ‘Lookingfor a woman,’ one of the girls says, and the other tosses herhead and answers, ‘Small chance he’ll get one when the womenare looking for men.’  And the bucks and squaws standingaround began to grin and giggle and repeat what had been said. ‘Quite a pretty boy,’ says the first one.  I’llnot deny I was rather smooth-faced and youngish, but I’d beena man amongst men many’s the day, and it rankled me.  ‘Dancingwith Chief George’s girl,’ pipes the second.  ‘Firstthing George’ll give him the flat of a paddle and send him abouthis business.’  Chief George had been looking pretty blackup to now, but at this he laughed and slapped his knees.  He wasa husky beggar and would have used the paddle too.

“‘Who’s the girls?’ I asked Tilly, as wewent ripping down the centre in a reel.  And as soon as she toldme their names I remembered all about them from Happy Jack.  Hadtheir pedigree down fine—several things he’d told me thatnot even their own tribe knew.  But I held my hush, and went oncourting Tilly, they a-casting sharp remarks and everybody roaring. ‘Bide a wee, Tommy,’ I says to myself; ‘bide a wee.’

“And bide I did, till the dance was ripe to break up, and ChiefGeorge had brought a paddle all ready for me.  Everybody was onthe lookout for mischief when we stopped; but I marched, easy as youplease, slap into the thick of them.  The Mission girls cut meup something clever, and for all I was angry I had to set my teeth tokeep from laughing.  I turned upon them suddenly.

“‘Are you done?’ I asked.

“You should have seen them when they heard me spitting Chinook. Then I broke loose.  I told them all about themselves, and theirpeople before them; their fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers—everybody,everything.  Each mean trick they’d played; every scrapethey’d got into; every shame that’d fallen them.  AndI burned them without fear or favor.  All hands crowded round. Never had they heard a white man sling their lingo as I did.  Everybodywas laughing save the Mission girls.  Even Chief George forgotthe paddle, or at least he was swallowing too much respect to dare touse it.

“But the girls.  ‘Oh, don’t, Tommy,’they cried, the tears running down their cheeks.  ‘Pleasedon’t.  We’ll be good.  Sure, Tommy, sure.’ But I knew them well, and I scorched them on every tender spot. Nor did I slack away till they came down on their knees, begging andpleading with me to keep quiet.  Then I shot a glance at ChiefGeorge; but he did not know whether to have at me or not, and passedit off by laughing hollowly.

“So be.  When I passed the parting with Tilly that nightI gave her the word that I was going to be around for a week or so,and that I wanted to see more of her.  Not thick-skinned, her kind,when it came to showing like and dislike, and she looked her pleasurefor the honest girl she was.  Ay, a striking lass, and I didn’twonder that Chief George was taken with her.

“Everything my way.  Took the wind from his sails on thefirst leg.  I was for getting her aboard and sailing down Wrangelway till it blew over, leaving him to whistle; but I wasn’t toget her that easy.  Seems she was living with an uncle of hers—guardian,the way such things go—and seems he was nigh to shuffling offwith consumption or some sort of lung trouble.  He was good andbad by turns, and she wouldn’t leave him till it was over with. Went up to the tepee just before I left, to speculate on how long it’dbe; but the old beggar had promised her to Chief George, and when heclapped eyes on me his anger brought on a hemorrhage.

“‘Come and take me, Tommy,’ she says when we bidgood-by on the beach.  ‘Ay,’ I answers; ‘whenyou give the word.’  And I kissed her, white-man-fashionand lover-fashion, till she was all of a tremble like a quaking aspen,and I was so beside myself I’d half a mind to go up and give theuncle a lift over the divide.

“So I went down Wrangel way, past St. Mary’s and evento the Queen Charlottes, trading, running whiskey, turning the sloopto most anything.  Winter was on, stiff and crisp, and I was backto Juneau, when the word came.  ‘Come,’ the beggarsays who brought the news.  ‘Killisnoo say, “Come now.”’ ‘What’s the row?’ I asks.  ‘Chief George,’says he.  ‘Potlach.  Killisnoo, makum klooch.’

“Ay, it was bitter—the Taku howling down out of the north,the salt water freezing quick as it struck the deck, and the old sloopand I hammering into the teeth of it for a hundred miles to Dyea. Had a Douglass Islander for crew when I started, but midway up he waswashed over from the bows.  Jibed all over and crossed the coursethree times, but never a sign of him.”

“Doubled up with the cold most likely,” Dick suggested,putting a pause into the narrative while he hung one of Molly’sskirts up to dry, “and went down like a pot of lead.”

“My idea.  So I finished the course alone, half-dead whenI made Dyea in the dark of the evening.  The tide favored, andI ran the sloop plump to the bank, in the shelter of the river. Couldn’t go an inch further, for the fresh water was frozen solid. Halyards and blocks were that iced up I didn’t dare lower mainsailor jib.  First I broached a pint of the cargo raw, and then, leavingall standing, ready for the start, and with a blanket around me, headedacross the flat to the camp.  No mistaking, it was a grand layout. The Chilcats had come in a body—dogs, babies, and canoes—tosay nothing of the Dog-Ears, the Little Salmons, and the Missions. Full half a thousand of them to celebrate Tilly’s wedding, andnever a white man in a score of miles.

“Nobody took note of me, the blanket over my head and hidingmy face, and I waded knee deep through the dogs and youngsters tillI was well up to the front.  The show was being pulled off in abig open place among the trees, with great fires burning and the snowmoccasin-packed as hard as Portland cement.  Next me was Tilly,beaded and scarlet-clothed galore, and against her Chief George andhis head men.  The shaman was being helped out by the big medicinesfrom the other tribes, and it shivered my spine up and down, the deviltriesthey cut.  I caught myself wondering if the folks in Liverpoolcould only see me now; and I thought of yellow-haired Gussie, whosebrother I licked after my first voyage, just because he was not forhaving a sailorman courting his sister.  And with Gussie in myeyes I looked at Tilly.  A rum old world, thinks I, with man a-steppingin trails the mother little dreamed of when he lay at suck.

“So be.  When the noise was loudest, walrus hides boomingand priests a-singing, I says, ‘Are you ready?’  Gawd! Not a start, not a shot of the eyes my way, not the twitch of a muscle. ‘I knew,’ she answers, slow and steady as a calm springtide.  ‘Where?’  ‘The high bank at the edgeof the ice,’ I whispers back.  ‘Jump out when I givethe word.’

“Did I say there was no end of huskies?  Well, there wasno end.  Here, there, everywhere, they were scattered about,—tamewolves and nothing less.  When the strain runs thin they breedthem in the bush with the wild, and they’re bitter fighters. Right at the toe of my moccasin lay a big brute, and by the heel another. I doubled the first one’s tail, quick, till it snapped in my grip. As his jaws clipped together where my hand should have been, I threwthe second one by the scruff straight into his mouth.  ‘Go!’I cried to Tilly.

“You know how they fight.  In the wink of an eye therewas a raging hundred of them, top and bottom, ripping and tearing eachother, kids and squaws tumbling which way, and the camp gone wild. Tilly’d slipped away, so I followed.  But when I looked overmy shoulder at the skirt of the crowd, the devil laid me by the heart,and I dropped the blanket and went back.

“By then the dogs’d been knocked apart and the crowdwas untangling itself.  Nobody was in proper place, so they didn’tnote that Tilly’d gone.  ‘Hello,’ I says, grippingChief George by the hand.  ‘May your potlach-smoke rise often,and the Sticks bring many furs with the spring.’

“Lord love me, Dick, but he was joyed to see me,—himwith the upper hand and wedding Tilly.  Chance to puff big overme.  The tale that I was hot after her had spread through the camps,and my presence did him proud.  All hands knew me, without my blanket,and set to grinning and giggling.  It was rich, but I made it richerby playing unbeknowing.

“‘What’s the row?’ I asks.  ‘Who’sgetting married now?’

“‘Chief George,’ the shaman says, ducking his reverenceto him.

“‘Thought he had two klooches.’

“‘Him takum more,—three,’ with another duck.

“‘Oh!’  And I turned away as though it didn’tinterest me.

“But this wouldn’t do, and everybody begins singing out,‘Killisnoo!  Killisnoo!’

“‘Killisnoo what?’ I asked.

“‘Killisnoo, klooch, Chief George,’ theyblathered.  ‘Killisnoo, klooch.’

“I jumped and looked at Chief George.  He nodded his headand threw out his chest.

“She’ll be no kloochof yours,’ I says solemnly. ‘No kloochof yours,’ I repeats, while his face wentblack and his hand began dropping to his hunting-knife.

“‘Look!’ I cries, striking an attitude.  ‘BigMedicine.  You watch my smoke.’

“I pulled off my mittens, rolled back my sleeves, and madehalf-a-dozen passes in the air.

“‘Killisnoo!’ I shouts.  ‘Killisnoo! Killisnoo!’

“I was making medicine, and they began to scare.  Everyeye was on me; no time to find out that Tilly wasn’t there. Then I called Killisnoo three times again, and waited; and three timesmore.  All for mystery and to make them nervous.  Chief Georgecouldn’t guess what I was up to, and wanted to put a stop to thefoolery; but the shamans said to wait, and that they’d see meand go me one better, or words to that effect.  Besides, he wasa superstitious cuss, and I fancy a bit afraid of the white man’smagic.

“Then I called Killisnoo, long and soft like the howl of awolf, till the women were all a-tremble and the bucks looking serious.

“‘Look!’ I sprang for’ard, pointing my fingerinto a bunch of squaws—easier to deceive women than men, you know. ‘Look!’  And I raised it aloft as though followingthe flight of a bird.  Up, up, straight overhead, making to followit with my eyes till it disappeared in the sky.

“‘Killisnoo,’ I said, looking at Chief George andpointing upward again.  ‘Killisnoo.’

“So help me, Dick, the gammon worked.  Half of them, atleast, saw Tilly disappear in the air.  They’d drunk my whiskeyat Juneau and seen stranger sights, I’ll warrant.  Why shouldI not do this thing, I, who sold bad spirits corked in bottles? Some of the women shrieked.  Everybody fell to whispering in bunches. I folded my arms and held my head high, and they drew further away fromme.  The time was ripe to go.  ‘Grab him,’ ChiefGeorge cries.  Three or four of them came at me, but I whirled,quick, made a couple of passes like to send them after Tilly, and pointedup.  Touch me?  Not for the kingdoms of the earth.  ChiefGeorge harangued them, but he couldn’t get them to lift a leg. Then he made to take me himself; but I repeated the mummery and hisgrit went out through his fingers.

“‘Let your shamans work wonders the like of which I havedone this night,’ I says.  ‘Let them call Killisnoodown out of the sky whither I have sent her.’  But the priestsknew their limits.  ‘May your kloochesbear you sonsas the spawn of the salmon,’ I says, turning to go; ‘andmay your totem pole stand long in the land, and the smoke of your camprise always.’

“But if the beggars could have seen me hitting the high placesfor the sloop as soon as I was clear of them, they’d thought myown medicine had got after me.  Tilly’d kept warm by choppingthe ice away, and was all ready to cast off.  Gawd! how we ranbefore it, the Taku howling after us and the freezing seas sweepingover at every clip.  With everything battened down, me a-steeringand Tilly chopping ice, we held on half the night, till I plumped thesloop ashore on Porcupine Island, and we shivered it out on the beach;blankets wet, and Tilly drying the matches on her breast.

“So I think I know something about it.  Seven years, Dick,man and wife, in rough sailing and smooth.  And then she died,in the heart of the winter, died in childbirth, up there on the ChilcatStation.  She held my hand to the last, the ice creeping up insidethe door and spreading thick on the gut of the window.  Outside,the lone howl of the wolf and the Silence; inside, death and the Silence. You’ve never heard the Silence yet, Dick, and Gawd grant you don’tever have to hear it when you sit by the side of death.  Hear it? Ay, till the breath whistles like a siren, and the heart booms, booms,booms, like the surf on the shore.

“Siwash, Dick, but a woman.  White, Dick, white, clearthrough.  Towards the last she says, ‘Keep my feather bed,Tommy, keep it always.’  And I agreed.  Then she openedher eyes, full with the pain.  ‘I’ve been a good womanto you, Tommy, and because of that I want you to promise—to promise’—thewords seemed to stick in her throat—‘that when you marry,the woman be white.  No more Siwash, Tommy.  I know. Plenty white women down to Juneau now.  I know.  Your peoplecall you “squaw-man,” your women turn their heads to theone side on the street, and you do not go to their cabins like othermen.  Why?  Your wife Siwash.  Is it not so?  Andthis is not good.  Wherefore I die.  Promise me.  Kissme in token of your promise.’

“I kissed her, and she dozed off, whispering, ‘It isgood.’  At the end, that near gone my ear was at her lips,she roused for the last time.  ‘Remember, Tommy; remembermy feather bed.’  Then she died, in childbirth, up thereon the Chilcat Station.”

The tent heeled over and half flattened before the gale.  Dickrefilled his pipe, while Tommy drew the tea and set it aside againstMolly’s return.

And she of the flashing eyes and Yankee blood?  Blinded, falling,crawling on hand and knee, the wind thrust back in her throat by thewind, she was heading for the tent.  On her shoulders a bulky packcaught the full fury of the storm.  She plucked feebly at the knottedflaps, but it was Tommy and Dick who cast them loose.  Then sheset her soul for the last effort, staggered in, and fell exhausted onthe floor.

Tommy unbuckled the straps and took the pack from her.  As helifted it there was a clanging of pots and pans.  Dick, pouringout a mug of whiskey, paused long enough to pass the wink across herbody.  Tommy winked back.  His lips pursed the monosyllable,“clothes,” but Dick shook his head reprovingly.  “Here,little woman,” he said, after she had drunk the whiskey and straightenedup a bit.

“Here’s some dry togs.  Climb into them.  We’regoing out to extra-peg the tent.  After that, give us the call,and we’ll come in and have dinner.  Sing out when you’reready.”

“So help me, Dick, that’s knocked the edge off her forthe rest of this trip,” Tommy spluttered as they crouched to thelee of the tent.

“But it’s the edge is her saving grace.” Dick replied,ducking his head to a volley of sleet that drove around a corner ofthe canvas.  “The edge that you and I’ve got, Tommy,and the edge of our mothers before us.”

THE MAN WITH THE GASH

Jacob Kent had suffered from cupidity all the days of his life. This, in turn, had engendered a chronic distrustfulness, and his mindand character had become so warped that he was a very disagreeable manto deal with.  He was also a victim to somnambulic propensities,and very set in his ideas.  He had been a weaver of cloth fromthe cradle, until the fever of Klondike had entered his blood and tornhim away from his loom.  His cabin stood midway between Sixty MilePost and the Stuart River; and men who made it a custom to travel thetrail to Dawson, likened him to a robber baron, perched in his fortressand exacting toll from the caravans that used his ill-kept roads. Since a certain amount of history was required in the construction ofthis figure, the less cultured wayfarers from Stuart River were proneto describe him after a still more primordial fashion, in which a commandof strong adjectives was to be chiefly noted.

This cabin was not his, by the way, having been built several yearspreviously by a couple of miners who had got out a raft of logs at thatpoint for a grub-stake.  They had been most hospitable lads, and,after they abandoned it, travelers who knew the route made it an objectto arrive there at nightfall.  It was very handy, saving them allthe time and toil of pitching camp; and it was an unwritten rule thatthe last man left a neat pile of firewood for the next comer. Rarely a night passed but from half a dozen to a score of men crowdedinto its shelter.  Jacob Kent noted these things, exercised squattersovereignty, and moved in.  Thenceforth, the weary travelers weremulcted a dollar per head for the privilege of sleeping on the floor,Jacob Kent weighing the dust and never failing to steal the down-weight. Besides, he so contrived that his transient guests chopped his woodfor him and carried his water.  This was rank piracy, but his victimswere an easy-going breed, and while they detested him, they yet permittedhim to flourish in his sins.

One afternoon in April he sat by his door,—for all the worldlike a predatory spider,—marvelling at the heat of the returningsun, and keeping an eye on the trail for prospective flies.  TheYukon lay at his feet, a sea of ice, disappearing around two great bendsto the north and south, and stretching an honest two miles from bankto bank.  Over its rough breast ran the sled-trail, a slender sunkenline, eighteen inches wide and two thousand miles in length, with morecurses distributed to the linear foot than any other road in or outof all Christendom.

Jacob Kent was feeling particularly good that afternoon.  Therecord had been broken the previous night, and he had sold his hospitalityto no less than twenty-eight visitors.  True, it had been quiteuncomfortable, and four had snored beneath his bunk all night; but thenit had added appreciable weight to the sack in which he kept his golddust.  That sack, with its glittering yellow treasure, was at oncethe chief delight and the chief bane of his existence.  Heavenand hell lay within its slender mouth.  In the nature of things,there being no privacy to his one-roomed dwelling, he was tortured bya constant fear of theft.  It would be very easy for these bearded,desperate-looking strangers to make away with it.  Often he dreamedthat such was the case, and awoke in the grip of nightmare.  Aselect number of these robbers haunted him through his dreams, and hecame to know them quite well, especially the bronzed leader with thegash on his right cheek.  This fellow was the most persistent ofthe lot, and, because of him, he had, in his waking moments, constructedseveral score of hiding-places in and about the cabin.  After aconcealment he would breathe freely again, perhaps for several nights,only to collar the Man with the Gash in the very act of unearthing thesack.  Then, on awakening in the midst of the usual struggle, hewould at once get up and transfer the bag to a new and more ingeniouscrypt.  It was not that he was the direct victim of these phantasms;but he believed in omens and thought-transference, and he deemed thesedream-robbers to be the astral projection of real personages who happenedat those particular moments, no matter where they were in the flesh,to be harboring designs, in the spirit, upon his wealth.  So hecontinued to bleed the unfortunates who crossed his threshold, and atthe same time to add to his trouble with every ounce that went intothe sack.

As he sat sunning himself, a thought came to Jacob Kent that broughthim to his feet with a jerk.  The pleasures of life had culminatedin the continual weighing and reweighing of his dust; but a shadow hadbeen thrown upon this pleasant avocation, which he had hitherto failedto brush aside.  His gold-scales were quite small; in fact, theirmaximum was a pound and a half,—eighteen ounces,—while hishoard mounted up to something like three and a third times that. He had never been able to weigh it all at one operation, and hence consideredhimself to have been shut out from a new and most edifying coign ofcontemplation.  Being denied this, half the pleasure of possessionhad been lost; nay, he felt that this miserable obstacle actually minimizedthe fact, as it did the strength, of possession.  It was the solutionof this problem flashing across his mind that had just brought him tohis feet.  He searched the trail carefully in either direction. There was nothing in sight, so he went inside.

In a few seconds he had the table cleared away and the scales setup.  On one side he placed the stamped disks to the equivalentof fifteen ounces, and balanced it with dust on the other.  Replacingthe weights with dust, he then had thirty ounces precisely balanced. These, in turn, he placed together on one side and again balanced withmore dust.  By this time the gold was exhausted, and he was sweatingliberally.  He trembled with ecstasy, ravished beyond measure. Nevertheless he dusted the sack thoroughly, to the last least grain,till the balance was overcome and one side of the scales sank to thetable.  Equilibrium, however, was restored by the addition of apennyweight and five grains to the opposite side.  He stood, headthrown back, transfixed.  The sack was empty, but the potentialityof the scales had become immeasurable.  Upon them he could weighany amount, from the tiniest grain to pounds upon pounds.  Mammonlaid hot fingers on his heart.  The sun swung on its westeringway till it flashed through the open doorway, full upon the yellow-burdenedscales.  The precious heaps, like the golden breasts of a bronzeCleopatra, flung back the light in a mellow glow.  Time and spacewere not.

“Gawd blime me! but you ’ave the makin’ of severalquid there, ’aven’t you?”

Jacob Kent wheeled about, at the same time reaching for his double-barrelledshotgun, which stood handy.  But when his eyes lit on the intruder’sface, he staggered back dizzily.  It was the face of the Manwith the Gash!

The man looked at him curiously.

“Oh, that’s all right,” he said, waving his handdeprecatingly.  “You needn’t think as I’ll ’armyou or your blasted dust.

“You’re a rum ’un, you are,” he added reflectively,as he watched the sweat pouring from off Kent’s face and the quaveringof his knees.

“W’y don’t you pipe up an’ say somethin’?”he went on, as the other struggled for breath.  “Wot’sgone wrong o’ your gaff?  Anythink the matter?”

“W—w—where’d you get it?” Kent at lastmanaged to articulate, raising a shaking forefinger to the ghastly scarwhich seamed the other’s cheek.

“Shipmate stove me down with a marlin-spike from the main-royal. An’ now as you ’ave your figger’ead in trim, wot Iwant to know is, wot’s it to you?  That’s wot I wantto know—wot’s it to you?  Gawd blime me! do it ’urtyou?  Ain’t it smug enough for the likes o’ you? That’s wot I want to know!”

“No, no,” Kent answered, sinking upon a stool with asickly grin.  “I was just wondering.”

“Did you ever see the like?” the other went on truculently.

“No.”

“Ain’t it a beute?”

“Yes.”  Kent nodded his head approvingly, intenton humoring this strange visitor, but wholly unprepared for the outburstwhich was to follow his effort to be agreeable.

“You blasted, bloomin’, burgoo-eatin’ son-of-a-sea-swab! Wot do you mean, a sayin’ the most onsightly thing Gawd Almightyever put on the face o’ man is a beute?  Wot do you mean,you—”

And thereat this fiery son of the sea broke off into a string ofOriental profanity, mingling gods and devils, lineages and men, metaphorsand monsters, with so savage a virility that Jacob Kent was paralyzed. He shrank back, his arms lifted as though to ward off physical violence. So utterly unnerved was he that the other paused in the mid-swing ofa gorgeous peroration and burst into thunderous laughter.

“The sun’s knocked the bottom out o’ the trail,”said the Man with the Gash, between departing paroxysms of mirth. “An’ I only ’ope as you’ll appreciate the hoppertunityof consortin’ with a man o’ my mug.  Get steam up inthat fire-box o’ your’n.  I’m goin’ tounrig the dogs an’ grub ’em.  An’ don’tbe shy o’ the wood, my lad; there’s plenty more where thatcome from, and it’s you’ve got the time to sling an axe. An’ tote up a bucket o’ water while you’re about it. Lively! or I’ll run you down, so ’elp me!”

Such a thing was unheard of.  Jacob Kent was making the fire,chopping wood, packing water—doing menial tasks for a guest! When Jim Cardegee left Dawson, it was with his head filled with theiniquities of this roadside Shylock; and all along the trail his numerousvictims had added to the sum of his crimes.  Now, Jim Cardegee,with the sailor’s love for a sailor’s joke, had determined,when he pulled into the cabin, to bring its inmate down a peg or so. That he had succeeded beyond expectation he could not help but remark,though he was in the dark as to the part the gash on his cheek had playedin it.  But while he could not understand, he saw the terror itcreated, and resolved to exploit it as remorselessly as would any moderntrader a choice bit of merchandise.

“Strike me blind, but you’re a ’ustler,”he said admiringly, his head cocked to one side, as his host bustledabout.  “You never ’ort to ’ave gone Klondiking. It’s the keeper of a pub’ you was laid out for.  An’it’s often as I ’ave ’eard the lads up an’ downthe river speak o’ you, but I ’adn’t no idea you wasso jolly nice.”

Jacob Kent experienced a tremendous yearning to try his shotgun onhim, but the fascination of the gash was too potent.  This wasthe real Man with the Gash, the man who had so often robbed him in thespirit.  This, then, was the embodied entity of the being whoseastral form had been projected into his dreams, the man who had so frequentlyharbored designs against his hoard; hence—there could be no otherconclusion—this Man with the Gash had now come in the flesh todispossess him.  And that gash!  He could no more keep hiseyes from it than stop the beating of his heart.  Try as he would,they wandered back to that one point as inevitably as the needle tothe pole.

“Do it ’urt you?” Jim Cardegee thundered suddenly,looking up from the spreading of his blankets and encountering the raptgaze of the other.  “It strikes me as ’ow it ’udbe the proper thing for you to draw your jib, douse the glim, an’turn in, seein’ as ’ow it worrits you.  Jes’lay to that, you swab, or so ’elp me I’ll take a pull onyour peak-purchases!”

Kent was so nervous that it took three puffs to blow out the slush-lamp,and he crawled into his blankets without even removing his moccasins. The sailor was soon snoring lustily from his hard bed on the floor,but Kent lay staring up into the blackness, one hand on the shotgun,resolved not to close his eyes the whole night.  He had not hadan opportunity to secrete his five pounds of gold, and it lay in theammunition box at the head of his bunk.  But, try as he would,he at last dozed off with the weight of his dust heavy on his soul. Had he not inadvertently fallen asleep with his mind in such condition,the somnambulic demon would not have been invoked, nor would Jim Cardegeehave gone mining next day with a dish-pan.

The fire fought a losing battle, and at last died away, while thefrost penetrated the mossy chinks between the logs and chilled the inneratmosphere.  The dogs outside ceased their howling, and, curledup in the snow, dreamed of salmon-stocked heavens where dog-driversand kindred task-masters were not.  Within, the sailor lay likea log, while his host tossed restlessly about, the victim of strangefantasies.  As midnight drew near he suddenly threw off the blanketsand got up.  It was remarkable that he could do what he then didwithout ever striking a light.  Perhaps it was because of the darknessthat he kept his eyes shut, and perhaps it was for fear he would seethe terrible gash on the cheek of his visitor; but, be this as it may,it is a fact that, unseeing, he opened his ammunition box, put a heavycharge into the muzzle of the shotgun without spilling a particle, rammedit down with double wads, and then put everything away and got backinto bed.

Just as daylight laid its steel-gray fingers on the parchment window,Jacob Kent awoke.  Turning on his elbow, he raised the lid andpeered into the ammunition box.  Whatever he saw, or whatever hedid not see, exercised a very peculiar effect upon him, consideringhis neurotic temperament.  He glanced at the sleeping man on thefloor, let the lid down gently, and rolled over on his back.  Itwas an unwonted calm that rested on his face.  Not a muscle quivered. There was not the least sign of excitement or perturbation.  Helay there a long while, thinking, and when he got up and began to moveabout, it was in a cool, collected manner, without noise and withouthurry.

It happened that a heavy wooden peg had been driven into the ridge-polejust above Jim Cardegee’s head.  Jacob Kent, working softly,ran a piece of half-inch manila over it, bringing both ends to the ground. One end he tied about his waist, and in the other he rove a runningnoose.  Then he cocked his shotgun and laid it within reach, bythe side of numerous moose-hide thongs.  By an effort of will hebore the sight of the scar, slipped the noose over the sleeper’shead, and drew it taut by throwing back on his weight, at the same timeseizing the gun and bringing it to bear.

Jim Cardegee awoke, choking, bewildered, staring down the twin wellsof steel.

“Where is it?” Kent asked, at the same time slackingon the rope.

“You blasted—ugh—”

Kent merely threw back his weight, shutting off the other’swind.

“Bloomin’—Bur—ugh—”

“Where is it?” Kent repeated.

“Wot?”  Cardegee asked, as soon as he had caughthis breath.

“The gold-dust.”

“Wot gold-dust?” the perplexed sailor demanded.

“You know well enough,—mine.”

“Ain’t seen nothink of it.  Wot do ye take me for? A safe-deposit?  Wot ’ave I got to do with it, any’ow?”

“Mebbe you know, and mebbe you don’t know, but anyway,I’m going to stop your breath till you do know.  And if youlift a hand, I’ll blow your head off!”

“Vast heavin’!” Cardegee roared, as the rope tightened.

Kent eased away a moment, and the sailor, wriggling his neck as thoughfrom the pressure, managed to loosen the noose a bit and work it upso the point of contact was just under the chin.

“Well?” Kent questioned, expecting the disclosure.

But Cardegee grinned.  “Go ahead with your ’angin’,you bloomin’ old pot-wolloper!”

Then, as the sailor had anticipated, the tragedy became a farce. Cardegee being the heavier of the two, Kent, throwing his body backwardand down, could not lift him clear of the ground.  Strain and striveto the uttermost, the sailor’s feet still stuck to the floor andsustained a part of his weight.  The remaining portion was supportedby the point of contact just under his chin.  Failing to swinghim clear, Kent clung on, resolved to slowly throttle him or force himto tell what he had done with the hoard.  But the Man with theGash would not throttle.  Five, ten, fifteen minutes passed, andat the end of that time, in despair, Kent let his prisoner down.

“Well,” he remarked, wiping away the sweat, “ifyou won’t hang you’ll shoot.  Some men wasn’tborn to be hanged, anyway.”

“An’ it’s a pretty mess as you’ll make o’this ’ere cabin floor.”  Cardegee was fighting fortime.  “Now, look ’ere, I’ll tell you wot wedo; we’ll lay our ’eads ’longside an’ reasontogether.  You’ve lost some dust.  You say as ’owI know, an’ I say as ’ow I don’t.  Let’sget a hobservation an’ shape a course—”

“Vast heavin’!”  Kent dashed in, maliciouslyimitating the other’s enunciation.  “I’m goingto shape all the courses of this shebang, and you observe; and if youdo anything more, I’ll bore you as sure as Moses!”

“For the sake of my mother—”

“Whom God have mercy upon if she loves you.  Ah! Would you?”  He frustrated a hostile move on the part ofthe other by pressing the cold muzzle against his forehead.  “Layquiet, now!  If you lift as much as a hair, you’ll get it.”

It was rather an awkward task, with the trigger of the gun alwayswithin pulling distance of the finger; but Kent was a weaver, and ina few minutes had the sailor tied hand and foot.  Then he draggedhim without and laid him by the side of the cabin, where he could overlookthe river and watch the sun climb to the meridian.

“Now I’ll give you till noon, and then—”

“Wot?”

“You’ll be hitting the brimstone trail.  But ifyou speak up, I’ll keep you till the next bunch of mounted policecome by.”

“Well, Gawd blime me, if this ain’t a go!  ’EreI be, innercent as a lamb, an’ ’ere you be, lost all o’your top ’amper an’ out o’ your reckonin’, runme foul an’ goin’ to rake me into ’ell-fire. You bloomin’ old pirut!  You—”

Jim Cardegee loosed the strings of his profanity and fairly outdidhimself.  Jacob Kent brought out a stool that he might enjoy itin comfort.  Having exhausted all the possible combinations ofhis vocabulary, the sailor quieted down to hard thinking, his eyes constantlygauging the progress of the sun, which tore up the eastern slope ofthe heavens with unseemly haste.  His dogs, surprised that theyhad not long since been put to harness, crowded around him.  Hishelplessness appealed to the brutes.  They felt that somethingwas wrong, though they knew not what, and they crowded about, howlingtheir mournful sympathy.

“Chook!  Mush-on! you Siwashes!” he cried, attempting,in a vermicular way, to kick at them, and discovering himself to betottering on the edge of a declivity.  As soon as the animals hadscattered, he devoted himself to the significance of that declivitywhich he felt to be there but could not see.  Nor was he long inarriving at a correct conclusion.  In the nature of things, hefigured, man is lazy.  He does no more than he has to.  Whenhe builds a cabin he must put dirt on the roof.  From these premisesit was logical that he should carry that dirt no further than was absolutelynecessary.  Therefore, he lay upon the edge of the hole from whichthe dirt had been taken to roof Jacob Kent’s cabin.  Thisknowledge, properly utilized, might prolong things, he thought; andhe then turned his attention to the moose-hide thongs which bound him. His hands were tied behind him, and pressing against the snow, theywere wet with the contact.  This moistening of the raw-hide heknew would tend to make it stretch, and, without apparent effort, heendeavored to stretch it more and more.

He watched the trail hungrily, and when in the direction of SixtyMile a dark speck appeared for a moment against the white backgroundof an ice-jam, he cast an anxious eye at the sun.  It had climbednearly to the zenith.  Now and again he caught the black speckclearing the hills of ice and sinking into the intervening hollows;but he dared not permit himself more than the most cursory glances forfear of rousing his enemy’s suspicion.  Once, when JacobKent rose to his feet and searched the trail with care, Cardegee wasfrightened, but the dog-sled had struck a piece of trail running parallelwith a jam, and remained out of sight till the danger was past.

“I’ll see you ’ung for this,” Cardegee threatened,attempting to draw the other’s attention.  “An’you’ll rot in ’ell, jes’ you see if you don’t.

“I say,” he cried, after another pause; “d’yeb’lieve in ghosts?”  Kent’s sudden start madehim sure of his ground, and he went on: “Now a ghost ’asthe right to ’aunt a man wot don’t do wot he says; and youcan’t shuffle me off till eight bells—wot I mean is twelveo’clock—can you?  ’Cos if you do, it’ll’appen as ’ow I’ll ’aunt you.  D’ye’ear?  A minute, a second too quick, an’ I’ll’aunt you, so ’elp me, I will!”

Jacob Kent looked dubious, but declined to talk.

“’Ow’s your chronometer?  Wot’s yourlongitude?  ’Ow do you know as your time’s correct?”Cardegee persisted, vainly hoping to beat his executioner out of a fewminutes.  “Is it Barrack’s time you ’ave, oris it the Company time?  ’Cos if you do it before the strokeo’ the bell, I’ll not rest.  I give you fair warnin’. I’ll come back.  An’ if you ’aven’t thetime, ’ow will you know?  That’s wot I want—’owwill you tell?”

“I’ll send you off all right,” Kent replied. “Got a sun-dial here.”

“No good.  Thirty-two degrees variation o’ the needle.”

“Stakes are all set.”

“’Ow did you set ’em?  Compass?”

“No; lined them up with the North Star.”

“Sure?”

“Sure.”

Cardegee groaned, then stole a glance at the trail.  The sledwas just clearing a rise, barely a mile away, and the dogs were in fulllope, running lightly.

“’Ow close is the shadows to the line?”

Kent walked to the primitive timepiece and studied it.  “Threeinches,” he announced, after a careful survey.

“Say, jes’ sing out ‘eight bells’ afore youpull the gun, will you?”

Kent agreed, and they lapsed into silence.  The thongs aboutCardegee’s wrists were slowly stretching, and he had begun towork them over his hands.

“Say, ’ow close is the shadows?”

“One inch.”

The sailor wriggled slightly to assure himself that he would toppleover at the right moment, and slipped the first turn over his hands.

“’Ow close?”

“Half an inch.”  Just then Kent heard the jarringchurn of the runners and turned his eyes to the trail.  The driverwas lying flat on the sled and the dogs swinging down the straight stretchto the cabin.  Kent whirled back, bringing his rifle to shoulder.

“It ain’t eight bells yet!” Cardegee expostulated. “I’ll ’aunt you, sure!”

Jacob Kent faltered.  He was standing by the sun-dial, perhapsten paces from his victim.  The man on the sled must have seenthat something unusual was taking place, for he had risen to his knees,his whip singing viciously among the dogs.

The shadows swept into line.  Kent looked along the sights.

“Make ready!” he commanded solemnly.  “Eightb—”

But just a fraction of a second too soon, Cardegee rolled backwardinto the hole.  Kent held his fire and ran to the edge.  Bang! The gun exploded full in the sailor’s face as he rose to his feet. But no smoke came from the muzzle; instead, a sheet of flame burst fromthe side of the barrel near its butt, and Jacob Kent went down. The dogs dashed up the bank, dragging the sled over his body, and thedriver sprang off as Jim Cardegee freed his hands and drew himself fromthe hole.

“Jim!”  The new-comer recognized him.  “What’sthe matter?”

“Wot’s the matter?  Oh, nothink at all.  Itjest ’appens as I do little things like this for my ’ealth. Wot’s the matter, you bloomin’ idjit?  Wot’sthe matter, eh?  Cast me loose or I’ll show you wot! ’Urry up, or I’ll ’olystone the decks with you!”

“Huh!” he added, as the other went to work with his sheath-knife. “Wot’s the matter?  I want to know.  Jes’tell me that, will you, wot’s the matter?  Hey?”

Kent was quite dead when they rolled him over.  The gun, anold-fashioned, heavy-weighted muzzle-loader, lay near him.  Steeland wood had parted company.  Near the butt of the right-hand barrel,with lips pressed outward, gaped a fissure several inches in length. The sailor picked it up, curiously.  A glittering stream of yellowdust ran out through the crack.  The facts of the case dawned uponJim Cardegee.

“Strike me standin’!” he roared; “’ere’sa go!  ’Ere’s ’is bloomin’ dust! Gawd blime me, an’ you, too, Charley, if you don’t run an’get the dish-pan!”

JAN, THE UNREPENTANT

“For there’s never a law of God or man
Runs north of Fifty-three.”

Jan rolled over, clawing and kicking.  He was fighting handand foot now, and he fought grimly, silently.  Two of the threemen who hung upon him, shouted directions to each other, and stroveto curb the short, hairy devil who would not curb.  The third manhowled.  His finger was between Jan’s teeth.

“Quit yer tantrums, Jan, an’ ease up!” panted RedBill, getting a strangle-hold on Jan’s neck.  “Whyon earth can’t yeh hang decent and peaceable?”

But Jan kept his grip on the third man’s finger, and squirmedover the floor of the tent, into the pots and pans.

“Youah no gentleman, suh,” reproved Mr. Taylor, his bodyfollowing his finger, and endeavoring to accommodate itself to everyjerk of Jan’s head.  “You hev killed Mistah Gordon,as brave and honorable a gentleman as ever hit the trail aftah the dogs. Youah a murderah, suh, and without honah.”

“An’ yer no comrade,” broke in Red Bill. “If you was, you’d hang ‘thout rampin’ aroundan’ roarin’.  Come on, Jan, there’s a good fellow. Don’t give us no more trouble.  Jes’ quit, an’we’ll hang yeh neat and handy, an’ be done with it.”

“Steady, all!” Lawson, the sailorman, bawled.  “Jamhis head into the bean pot and batten down.”

“But my fingah, suh,” Mr. Taylor protested.

“Leggo with y’r finger, then!  Always in the way!”

“But I can’t, Mistah Lawson.  It’s in thecritter’s gullet, and nigh chewed off as ’t is.”

“Stand by for stays!”  As Lawson gave the warning,Jan half lifted himself, and the struggling quartet floundered acrossthe tent into a muddle of furs and blankets.  In its passage itcleared the body of a man, who lay motionless, bleeding from a bullet-woundin the neck.

All this was because of the madness which had come upon Jan—themadness which comes upon a man who has stripped off the raw skin ofearth and grovelled long in primal nakedness, and before whose eyesrises the fat vales of the homeland, and into whose nostrils stealsthe whiff of bay, and grass, and flower, and new-turned soil. Through five frigid years Jan had sown the seed.  Stuart River,Forty Mile, Circle City, Koyokuk, Kotzebue, had marked his bleak andstrenuous agriculture, and now it was Nome that bore the harvest,—notthe Nome of golden beaches and ruby sands, but the Nome of ’97,before Anvil City was located, or Eldorado District organized. John Gordon was a Yankee, and should have known better.  But hepassed the sharp word at a time when Jan’s blood-shot eyes blazedand his teeth gritted in torment.  And because of this, there wasa smell of saltpetre in the tent, and one lay quietly, while the otherfought like a cornered rat, and refused to hang in the decent and peacablemanner suggested by his comrades.

“If you will allow me, Mistah Lawson, befoah we go furtherin this rumpus, I would say it wah a good idea to pry this hyer varmint’steeth apart.  Neither will he bite off, nor will he let go. He has the wisdom of the sarpint, suh, the wisdom of the sarpint.”

“Lemme get the hatchet to him!” vociferated the sailor. “Lemme get the hatchet!”  He shoved the steel edgeclose to Mr. Taylor’s finger and used the man’s teeth asa fulcrum.  Jan held on and breathed through his nose, snortinglike a grampus.  “Steady, all!  Now she takes it!”

“Thank you, suh; it is a powerful relief.”  AndMr. Taylor proceeded to gather into his arms the victim’s wildlywaving legs.

But Jan upreared in his Berserker rage; bleeding, frothing, cursing;five frozen years thawing into sudden hell.  They swayed backwardand forward, panted, sweated, like some cyclopean, many-legged monsterrising from the lower deeps.  The slush-lamp went over, drownedin its own fat, while the midday twilight scarce percolated throughthe dirty canvas of the tent.

“For the love of Gawd, Jan, get yer senses back!” pleadedRed Bill.  “We ain’t goin’ to hurt yeh, ’rkill yeh, ’r anythin’ of that sort.  Jes’ wantto hang yeh, that’s all, an’ you a-messin’ round an’rampagin’ somethin’ terrible.  To think of travellin’trail together an’ then bein’ treated this-a way. Wouldn’t ’bleeved it of yeh, Jan!”

“He’s got too much steerage-way.  Grab holt hislegs, Taylor, and heave’m over!”

“Yes, suh, Mistah Lawson.  Do you press youah weight above,after I give the word.”  The Kentuckian groped about himin the murky darkness.  “Now, suh, now is the accepted time!”

There was a great surge, and a quarter of a ton of human flesh totteredand crashed to its fall against the side-wall.  Pegs drew and guy-ropesparted, and the tent, collapsing, wrapped the battle in its greasy folds.

“Yer only makin’ it harder fer yerself,” Red Billcontinued, at the same time driving both his thumbs into a hairy throat,the possessor of which he had pinned down.  “You’vemade nuisance enough a’ ready, an’ it’ll take halfthe day to get things straightened when we’ve strung yeh up.”

“I’ll thank you to leave go, suh,” spluttered Mr.Taylor.

Red Bill grunted and loosed his grip, and the twain crawled out intothe open.  At the same instant Jan kicked clear of the sailor,and took to his heels across the snow.

“Hi! you lazy devils!  Buck!  Bright!  Sic’m! Pull ’m down!” sang out Lawson, lunging through the snowafter the fleeing man.  Buck and Bright, followed by the rest ofthe dogs, outstripped him and rapidly overhauled the murderer.

There was no reason that these men should do this; no reason forJan to run away; no reason for them to attempt to prevent him. On the one hand stretched the barren snow-land; on the other, the frozensea.  With neither food nor shelter, he could not run far. All they had to do was to wait till he wandered back to the tent, ashe inevitably must, when the frost and hunger laid hold of him. But these men did not stop to think.  There was a certain taintof madness running in the veins of all of them.  Besides, bloodhad been spilled, and upon them was the blood-lust, thick and hot. “Vengeance is mine,” saith the Lord, and He saith it intemperate climes where the warm sun steals away the energies of men. But in the Northland they have discovered that prayer is only efficaciouswhen backed by muscle, and they are accustomed to doing things for themselves. God is everywhere, they have heard, but he flings a shadow over theland for half the year that they may not find him; so they grope indarkness, and it is not to be wondered that they often doubt, and deemthe Decalogue out of gear.

Jan ran blindly, reckoning not of the way of his feet, for he wasmastered by the verb “to live.”  To live!  Toexist!  Buck flashed gray through the air, but missed.  Theman struck madly at him, and stumbled.  Then the white teeth ofBright closed on his mackinaw jacket, and he pitched into the snow. To live!  To exist!  He fought wildly as ever,the centre of a tossing heap of men and dogs.  His left hand grippeda wolf-dog by the scruff of the back, while the arm was passed aroundthe neck of Lawson.  Every struggle of the dog helped to throttlethe hapless sailor.  Jan’s right hand was buried deep inthe curling tendrils of Red Bill’s shaggy head, and beneath all,Mr. Taylor lay pinned and helpless.  It was a deadlock, for thestrength of his madness was prodigious; but suddenly, without apparentreason, Jan loosed his various grips and rolled over quietly on hisback.  His adversaries drew away a little, dubious and disconcerted. Jan grinned viciously.

“Mine friends,” he said, still grinning, “you hafasked me to be politeful, und now I am politeful.  Vot pizinessvood you do mit me?”

“That’s right, Jan.  Be ca’m,” soothedRed Bill.  “I knowed you’d come to yer senses aforelong.  Jes’ be ca’m now, an’ we’ll do thetrick with neatness and despatch.”

“Vot piziness?  Vot trick?”

“The hangin’.  An’ yeh oughter thank yer luckystars for havin’ a man what knows his business.  I’vedid it afore now, more’n once, down in the States, an’ Ican do it to a T.”

“Hang who?  Me?”

“Yep.”

“Ha! ha!  Shust hear der man speak foolishness! Gif me a hand, Bill, und I vill get up und be hung.”  Hecrawled stiffly to his feet and looked about him.  “HerrGott! listen to der man!  He vood hang me!  Ho! ho! ho! I tank not!  Yes, I tank not!”

“And I tank yes, you swab,” Lawson spoke up mockingly,at the same time cutting a sled-lashing and coiling it up with ominouscare.  “Judge Lynch holds court this day.”

“Von liddle while.”  Jan stepped back from the profferednoose.  “I haf somedings to ask und to make der great proposition. Kentucky, you know about der Shudge Lynch?”

“Yes, suh.  It is an institution of free men and of gentlemen,and it is an ole one and time-honored.  Corruption may wear therobe of magistracy, suh, but Judge Lynch can always be relied upon togive justice without court fees.  I repeat, suh, without courtfees.  Law may be bought and sold, but in this enlightened landjustice is free as the air we breathe, strong as the licker we drink,prompt as—”

“Cut it short!  Find out what the beggar wants,”interrupted Lawson, spoiling the peroration.

“Vell, Kentucky, tell me dis: von man kill von odder man, ShudgeLynch hang dot man?”

“If the evidence is strong enough—yes, suh.”

“An’ the evidence in this here case is strong enoughto hang a dozen men, Jan,” broke in Red Bill.

“Nefer you mind, Bill.  I talk mit you next.  Nowvon anodder ding I ask Kentucky.  If Shudge Lynch hang not derman, vot den?”

“If Judge Lynch does not hang the man, then the man goes free,and his hands are washed clean of blood.  And further, suh, ourgreat and glorious constitution has said, to wit: that no man may twicebe placed in jeopardy of his life for one and the same crime, or wordsto that effect.”

“Unt dey can’t shoot him, or hit him mit a club overder head alongside, or do nodings more mit him?”

“No, suh.”

“Goot!  You hear vot Kentucky speaks, all you noddleheads? Now I talk mit Bill.  You know der piziness, Bill, und you hangme up brown, eh?  Vot you say?”

“’Betcher life, an’, Jan, if yeh don’t giveno more trouble ye’ll be almighty proud of the job.  I’ma connesoor.”

“You haf der great head, Bill, und know somedings or two. Und you know two und one makes tree—ain’t it?”

Bill nodded.

“Und when you haf two dings, you haf not tree dings—ain’tit?  Now you follow mit me close und I show you.  It takestree dings to hang.  First ding, you haf to haf der man. Goot!  I am der man.  Second ding, you haf to haf der rope. Lawson haf der rope.  Goot!  Und tird ding, you haf to hafsomeding to tie der rope to.  Sling your eyes over der landscapeund find der tird ding to tie der rope to?  Eh?  Vot you say?”

Mechanically they swept the ice and snow with their eyes.  Itwas a homogeneous scene, devoid of contrasts or bold contours, dreary,desolate, and monotonous,—the ice-packed sea, the slow slope ofthe beach, the background of low-lying hills, and over all thrown theendless mantle of snow.  “No trees, no bluffs, no cabins,no telegraph poles, nothin’,” moaned Red Bill; “nothin’respectable enough nor big enough to swing the toes of a five-foot manclear o’ the ground.  I give it up.”  He lookedyearningly at that portion of Jan’s anatomy which joins the headand shoulders.  “Give it up,” he repeated sadly toLawson.  “Throw the rope down.  Gawd never intendedthis here country for livin’ purposes, an’ that’sa cold frozen fact.”

Jan grinned triumphantly.  “I tank I go mit der tent undhaf a smoke.”

“Ostensiblee y’r correct, Bill, me son,” spokeup Lawson; “but y’r a dummy, and you can lay to that foranother cold frozen fact.  Takes a sea farmer to learn you landsmenthings.  Ever hear of a pair of shears?  Then clap y’reyes to this.”

The sailor worked rapidly.  From the pile of dunnage where theyhad pulled up the boat the preceding fall, he unearthed a pair of longoars.  These he lashed together, at nearly right angles, closeto the ends of the blades.  Where the handles rested he kickedholes through the snow to the sand.  At the point of intersectionhe attached two guy-ropes, making the end of one fast to a cake of beach-ice. The other guy he passed over to Red Bill.  “Here, me son,lay holt o’ that and run it out.”

And to his horror, Jan saw his gallows rise in the air.  “No!no!” he cried, recoiling and putting up his fists.  “Itis not goot!  I vill not hang!  Come, you noddleheads! I vill lick you, all together, von after der odder!  I vill blayhell!  I vill do eferydings!  Und I vill die pefore I hang!”

The sailor permitted the two other men to clinch with the mad creature. They rolled and tossed about furiously, tearing up snow and tundra,their fierce struggle writing a tragedy of human passion on the whitesheet spread by nature.  And ever and anon a hand or foot of Janemerged from the tangle, to be gripped by Lawson and lashed fast withrope-yarns.  Pawing, clawing, blaspheming, he was conquered andbound, inch by inch, and drawn to where the inexorable shears lay likea pair of gigantic dividers on the snow.  Red Bill adjusted thenoose, placing the hangman’s knot properly under the left ear. Mr. Taylor and Lawson tailed onto the running-guy, ready at the wordto elevate the gallows.  Bill lingered, contemplating his workwith artistic appreciation.

“Herr Gott!  Vood you look at it!”

The horror in Jan’s voice caused the rest to desist. The fallen tent had uprisen, and in the gathering twilight it flappedghostly arms about and titubated toward them drunkenly.  But thenext instant John Gordon found the opening and crawled forth.

“What the flaming—!”  For the moment his voicedied away in his throat as his eyes took in the tableau.  “Holdon!  I’m not dead!” he cried out, coming up to thegroup with stormy countenance.

“Allow me, Mistah Gordon, to congratulate you upon youah escape,”Mr. Taylor ventured.  “A close shave, suh, a powahful closeshave.”

“ Congratulate hell!  I might have been dead and rottenand no thanks to you, you—!”  And thereat John Gordondelivered himself of a vigorous flood of English, terse, intensive,denunciative, and composed solely of expletives and adjectives.

“Simply creased me,” he went on when he had eased himselfsufficiently.  “Ever crease cattle, Taylor?”

“Yes, suh, many a time down in God’s country.”

“Just so.  That’s what happened to me.  Bulletjust grazed the base of my skull at the top of the neck.  Stunnedme but no harm done.”  He turned to the bound man. “Get up, Jan.  I’m going to lick you to a standstillor you’re going to apologize.  The rest of you lads standclear.”

“I tank not.  Shust tie me loose und you see,” repliedJan, the Unrepentant, the devil within him still unconquered. “Und after as I lick you, I take der rest of der noddleheads,von after der odder, altogedder!”

GRIT OF WOMEN

A wolfish head, wistful-eyed and frost-rimed, thrust aside the tent-flaps.

“Hi!  Chook!  Siwash!  Chook, you limb of Satan!”chorused the protesting inmates.  Bettles rapped the dog sharplywith a tin plate, and it withdrew hastily.  Louis Savoy refastenedthe flaps, kicked a frying-pan over against the bottom, and warmed hishands.  It was very cold without.  Forty-eight hours gone,the spirit thermometer had burst at sixty-eight below, and since thattime it had grown steadily and bitterly colder.  There was no tellingwhen the snap would end.  And it is poor policy, unless the godswill it, to venture far from a stove at such times, or to increase thequantity of cold atmosphere one must breathe.  Men sometimes doit, and sometimes they chill their lungs.  This leads up to a dry,hacking cough, noticeably irritable when bacon is being fried. After that, somewhere along in the spring or summer, a hole is burnedin the frozen muck.  Into this a man’s carcass is dumped,covered over with moss, and left with the assurance that it will riseon the crack of Doom, wholly and frigidly intact.  For those oflittle faith, sceptical of material integration on that fateful day,no fitter country than the Klondike can be recommended to die in. But it is not to be inferred from this that it is a fit country forliving purposes.

It was very cold without, but it was not over-warm within. The only article which might be designated furniture was the stove,and for this the men were frank in displaying their preference. Upon half of the floor pine boughs had been cast; above this were spreadthe sleeping-furs, beneath lay the winter’s snowfall.  Theremainder of the floor was moccasin-packed snow, littered with potsand pans and the general impedimentaof an Arctic camp. The stove was red and roaring hot, but only a bare three feet away laya block of ice, as sharp-edged and dry as when first quarried from thecreek bottom.  The pressure of the outside cold forced the innerheat upward.  Just above the stove, where the pipe penetrated theroof, was a tiny circle of dry canvas; next, with the pipe always ascentre, a circle of steaming canvas; next a damp and moisture-exudingring; and finally, the rest of the tent, sidewalls and top, coated witha half-inch of dry, white, crystal-encrusted frost.

“Oh!  OH!  OH!”  A young fellow,lying asleep in the furs, bearded and wan and weary, raised a moan ofpain, and without waking increased the pitch and intensity of his anguish. His body half-lifted from the blankets, and quivered and shrank spasmodically,as though drawing away from a bed of nettles.

“Roll’m over!” ordered Bettles.  “He’scrampin’.”

And thereat, with pitiless good-will, he was pitched upon and rolledand thumped and pounded by half-a-dozen willing comrades.

“Damn the trail,” he muttered softly, as he threw offthe robes and sat up.  “I’ve run across country, playedquarter three seasons hand-running, and hardened myself in all mannerof ways; and then I pilgrim it into this God-forsaken land and findmyself an effeminate Athenian without the simplest rudiments of manhood!” He hunched up to the fire and rolled a cigarette.  “Oh, I’mnot whining.  I can take my medicine all right, all right; butI’m just decently ashamed of myself, that’s all.  HereI am, on top of a dirty thirty miles, as knocked up and stiff and soreas a pink-tea degenerate after a five-mile walk on a country turn-pike. Bah!  It makes me sick!  Got a match?”  “Don’tgit the tantrums, youngster.”  Bettles passed over the requiredfire-stick and waxed patriarchal.  “Ye’ve gotter ’lowsome for the breakin’-in.  Sufferin’ cracky! don’tI recollect the first time I hit the trail!  Stiff?  I’veseen the time it’d take me ten minutes to git my mouth from thewater-hole an’ come to my feet—every jint crackin’an’ kickin’ fit to kill.  Cramp?  In sech knotsit’d take the camp half a day to untangle me.  You’reall right, for a cub, any ye’ve the true sperrit.  Come thisday year, you’ll walk all us old bucks into the ground any time. An’ best in your favor, you hain’t got that streak of fatin your make-up which has sent many a husky man to the bosom of Abrahamafore his right and proper time.”

“Streak of fat?”

“Yep.  Comes along of bulk.  ’T ain’tthe big men as is the best when it comes to the trail.”

“Never heard of it.”

“Never heered of it, eh?  Well, it’s a dead straight,open-an’-shut fact, an’ no gittin’ round.  Bulk’sall well enough for a mighty big effort, but ’thout stayin’powers it ain’t worth a continental whoop; an’ stayin’powers an’ bulk ain’t runnin’ mates.  Takes thesmall, wiry fellows when it comes to gittin’ right down an’hangin’ on like a lean-jowled dog to a bone.  Why, hell’sfire, the big men they ain’t in it!”

“By gar!” broke in Louis Savoy, “dat is no, votyou call, josh!  I know one mans, so vaire beeg like ze buffalo. Wit him, on ze Sulphur Creek stampede, go one small mans, Lon McFane. You know dat Lon McFane, dat leetle Irisher wit ze red hair and ze grin. An’ dey walk an’ walk an’ walk, all ze day long an’ze night long.  And beeg mans, him become vaire tired, an’lay down mooch in ze snow.  And leetle mans keek beeg mans, an’him cry like, vot you call—ah! vot you call ze kid.  Andleetle mans keek an’ keek an’ keek, an’ bime by, longtime, long way, keek beeg mans into my cabin.  Tree days ’forehim crawl out my blankets.  Nevaire I see beeg squaw like him. No nevaire.  Him haf vot you call ze streak of fat.  You bet.”

“But there was Axel Gunderson,” Prince spoke up. The great Scandinavian, with the tragic events which shadowed his passing,had made a deep mark on the mining engineer.  “He lies upthere, somewhere.”  He swept his hand in the vague directionof the mysterious east.

“Biggest man that ever turned his heels to Salt Water, or runa moose down with sheer grit,” supplemented Bettles; “buthe’s the prove-the-rule exception.  Look at his woman, Unga,—tipthe scales at a hundred an’ ten, clean meat an’ nary ounceto spare.  She’d bank grit ’gainst his for all therewas in him, an’ see him, an’ go him better if it was possible. Nothing over the earth, or in it, or under it, she wouldn’t ’a’done.”

“But she loved him,” objected the engineer.

“’T ain’t that.  It—”

“Look you, brothers,” broke in Sitka Charley from hisseat on the grub-box.  “Ye have spoken of the streak of fatthat runs in big men’s muscles, of the grit of women and the love,and ye have spoken fair; but I have in mind things which happened whenthe land was young and the fires of men apart as the stars.  Itwas then I had concern with a big man, and a streak of fat, and a woman. And the woman was small; but her heart was greater than the beef-heartof the man, and she had grit.  And we traveled a weary trail, evento the Salt Water, and the cold was bitter, the snow deep, the hungergreat.  And the woman’s love was a mighty love—no morecan man say than this.”

He paused, and with the hatchet broke pieces of ice from the largechunk beside him.  These he threw into the gold pan on the stove,where the drinking-water thawed.  The men drew up closer, and heof the cramps sought greater comfort vainly for his stiffened body.

“Brothers, my blood is red with Siwash, but my heart is white. To the faults of my fathers I owe the one, to the virtues of my friendsthe other.  A great truth came to me when I was yet a boy. I learned that to your kind and you was given the earth; that the Siwashcould not withstand you, and like the caribou and the bear, must perishin the cold.  So I came into the warm and sat among you, by yourfires, and behold, I became one of you, I have seen much in my time. I have known strange things, and bucked big, on big trails, with menof many breeds.  And because of these things, I measure deeds afteryour manner, and judge men, and think thoughts.  Wherefore, whenI speak harshly of one of your own kind, I know you will not take itamiss; and when I speak high of one of my father’s people, youwill not take it upon you to say, ‘Sitka Charley is Siwash, andthere is a crooked light in his eyes and small honor to his tongue.’ Is it not so?”

Deep down in throat, the circle vouchsafed its assent.

“The woman was Passuk.  I got her in fair trade from herpeople, who were of the Coast and whose Chilcat totem stood at the headof a salt arm of the sea.  My heart did not go out to the woman,nor did I take stock of her looks.  For she scarce took her eyesfrom the ground, and she was timid and afraid, as girls will be whencast into a stranger’s arms whom they have never seen before. As I say, there was no place in my heart for her to creep, for I hada great journey in mind, and stood in need of one to feed my dogs andto lift a paddle with me through the long river days.  One blanketwould cover the twain; so I chose Passuk.

“Have I not said I was a servant to the Government?  Ifnot, it is well that ye know.  So I was taken on a warship, sledsand dogs and evaporated foods, and with me came Passuk.  And wewent north, to the winter ice-rim of Bering Sea, where we were landed,—myself,and Passuk, and the dogs.  I was also given moneys of the Government,for I was its servant, and charts of lands which the eyes of man hadnever dwelt upon, and messages.  These messages were sealed, andprotected shrewdly from the weather, and I was to deliver them to thewhale-ships of the Arctic, ice-bound by the great Mackenzie.  Neverwas there so great a river, forgetting only our own Yukon, the Motherof all Rivers.

“All of which is neither here nor there, for my story dealsnot with the whale-ships, nor the berg-bound winter I spent by the Mackenzie. Afterward, in the spring, when the days lengthened and there was a crustto the snow, we came south, Passuk and I, to the Country of the Yukon. A weary journey, but the sun pointed out the way of our feet. It was a naked land then, as I have said, and we worked up the current,with pole and paddle, till we came to Forty Mile.  Good it wasto see white faces once again, so we put into the bank.  And thatwinter was a hard winter.  The darkness and the cold drew downupon us, and with them the famine.  To each man the agent of theCompany gave forty pounds of flour and twenty of bacon.  Therewere no beans.  And, the dogs howled always, and there were flatbellies and deep-lined faces, and strong men became weak, and weak mendied.  There was also much scurvy.

“Then came we together in the store one night, and the emptyshelves made us feel our own emptiness the more.  We talked low,by the light of the fire, for the candles had been set aside for thosewho might yet gasp in the spring.  Discussion was held, and itwas said that a man must go forth to the Salt Water and tell to theworld our misery.  At this all eyes turned to me, for it was understoodthat I was a great traveler.  ‘It is seven hundred miles,’said I, ‘to Haines Mission by the sea, and every inch of it snowshoework.  Give me the pick of your dogs and the best of your grub,and I will go.  And with me shall go Passuk.’

“To this they were agreed.  But there arose one, LongJeff, a Yankee-man, big-boned and big-muscled.  Also his talk wasbig.  He, too, was a mighty traveler, he said, born to the snowshoeand bred up on buffalo milk.  He would go with me, in case I fellby the trail, that he might carry the word on to the Mission. I was young, and I knew not Yankee-men.  How was I to know thatbig talk betokened the streak of fat, or that Yankee-men who did greatthings kept their teeth together?  So we took the pick of the dogsand the best of the grub, and struck the trail, we three,—Passuk,Long Jeff, and I.

“Well, ye have broken virgin snow, labored at the gee-pole,and are not unused to the packed river-jams; so I will talk little ofthe toil, save that on some days we made ten miles, and on others thirty,but more often ten.  And the best of the grub was not good, whilewe went on stint from the start.  Likewise the pick of the dogswas poor, and we were hard put to keep them on their legs.  Atthe White River our three sleds became two sleds, and we had only cometwo hundred miles.  But we lost nothing; the dogs that left thetraces went into the bellies of those that remained.

“Not a greeting, not a curl of smoke, till we made Pelly. Here I had counted on grub; and here I had counted on leaving Long Jeff,who was whining and trail-sore.  But the factor’s lungs werewheezing, his eyes bright, his cache nigh empty; and he showed us theempty cache of the missionary, also his grave with the rocks piled highto keep off the dogs.  There was a bunch of Indians there, butbabies and old men there were none, and it was clear that few wouldsee the spring.

“So we pulled on, light-stomached and heavy-hearted, with halfa thousand miles of snow and silence between us and Haines Mission bythe sea.  The darkness was at its worst, and at midday the suncould not clear the sky-line to the south.  But the ice-jams weresmaller, the going better; so I pushed the dogs hard and traveled lateand early.  As I said at Forty Mile, every inch of it was snow-shoework.  And the shoes made great sores on our feet, which crackedand scabbed but would not heal.  And every day these sores grewmore grievous, till in the morning, when we girded on the shoes, LongJeff cried like a child.  I put him at the fore of the light sledto break trail, but he slipped off the shoes for comfort.  Becauseof this the trail was not packed, his moccasins made great holes, andinto these holes the dogs wallowed.  The bones of the dogs wereready to break through their hides, and this was not good for them. So I spoke hard words to the man, and he promised, and broke his word. Then I beat him with the dog-whip, and after that the dogs wallowedno more.  He was a child, what of the pain and the streak of fat.

“But Passuk.  While the man lay by the fire and wept,she cooked, and in the morning helped lash the sleds, and in the eveningto unlash them.  And she saved the dogs.  Ever was she tothe fore, lifting the webbed shoes and making the way easy.  Passuk—howshall I say?—I took it for granted that she should do these things,and thought no more about it.  For my mind was busy with othermatters, and besides, I was young in years and knew little of woman. It was only on looking back that I came to understand.

“And the man became worthless.  The dogs had little strengthin them, but he stole rides on the sled when he lagged behind. Passuk said she would take the one sled, so the man had nothing to do. In the morning I gave him his fair share of grub and started him onthe trail alone.  Then the woman and I broke camp, packed the sleds,and harnessed the dogs.  By midday, when the sun mocked us, wewould overtake the man, with the tears frozen on his cheeks, and passhim.  In the night we made camp, set aside his fair share of grub,and spread his furs.  Also we made a big fire, that he might see. And hours afterward he would come limping in, and eat his grub withmoans and groans, and sleep.  He was not sick, this man. He was only trail-sore and tired, and weak with hunger.  But Passukand I were trail-sore and tired, and weak with hunger; and we did allthe work and he did none.  But he had the streak of fat of whichour brother Bettles has spoken.  Further, we gave the man alwayshis fair share of grub.

“Then one day we met two ghosts journeying through the Silence. They were a man and a boy, and they were white.  The ice had openedon Lake Le Barge, and through it had gone their main outfit.  Oneblanket each carried about his shoulders.  At night they builta fire and crouched over it till morning.  They had a little flour. This they stirred in warm water and drank.  The man showed me eightcups of flour—all they had, and Pelly, stricken with famine, twohundred miles away.  They said, also, that there was an Indianbehind; that they had whacked fair, but that he could not keep up. I did not believe they had whacked fair, else would the Indian havekept up.  But I could give them no grub.  They strove to steala dog—the fattest, which was very thin—but I shoved my pistolin their faces and told them begone.  And they went away, likedrunken men, through the Silence toward Pelly.

“I had three dogs now, and one sled, and the dogs were onlybones and hair.  When there is little wood, the fire burns lowand the cabin grows cold.  So with us.  With little grub thefrost bites sharp, and our faces were black and frozen till our ownmothers would not have known us.  And our feet were very sore. In the morning, when I hit the trail, I sweated to keep down the crywhen the pain of the snowshoes smote me.  Passuk never opened herlips, but stepped to the fore to break the way.  The man howled.

“The Thirty Mile was swift, and the current ate away the icefrom beneath, and there were many air-holes and cracks, and much openwater.  One day we came upon the man, resting, for he had goneahead, as was his wont, in the morning.  But between us was openwater.  This he had passed around by taking to the rim-ice whereit was too narrow for a sled.  So we found an ice-bridge. Passuk weighed little, and went first, with a long pole crosswise inher hands in chance she broke through.  But she was light, andher shoes large, and she passed over.  Then she called the dogs. But they had neither poles nor shoes, and they broke through and wereswept under by the water.  I held tight to the sled from behind,till the traces broke and the dogs went on down under the ice. There was little meat to them, but I had counted on them for a week’sgrub, and they were gone.

“The next morning I divided all the grub, which was little,into three portions.  And I told Long Jeff that he could keep upwith us, or not, as he saw fit; for we were going to travel light andfast.  But he raised his voice and cried over his sore feet andhis troubles, and said harsh things against comradeship.  Passuk’sfeet were sore, and my feet were sore—ay, sorer than his, forwe had worked with the dogs; also, we looked to see.  Long Jeffswore he would die before he hit the trail again; so Passuk took a furrobe, and I a cooking pot and an axe, and we made ready to go. But she looked on the man’s portion, and said, ‘It is wrongto waste good food on a baby.  He is better dead.’ I shook my head and said no—that a comrade once was a comradealways.  Then she spoke of the men of Forty Mile; that they weremany men and good; and that they looked to me for grub in the spring. But when I still said no, she snatched the pistol from my belt, quick,and as our brother Bettles has spoken, Long Jeff went to the bosom ofAbraham before his time.  I chided Passuk for this; but she showedno sorrow, nor was she sorrowful.  And in my heart I knew she wasright.”

Sitka Charley paused and threw pieces of ice into the gold pan onthe stove.  The men were silent, and their backs chilled to thesobbing cries of the dogs as they gave tongue to their misery in theouter cold.

“And day by day we passed in the snow the sleeping-places ofthe two ghosts—Passuk and I—and we knew we would be gladfor such ere we made Salt Water.  Then we came to the Indian, likeanother ghost, with his face set toward Pelly.  They had not whackedup fair, the man and the boy, he said, and he had had no flour for threedays.  Each night he boiled pieces of his moccasins in a cup, andate them.  He did not have much moccasins left.  And he wasa Coast Indian, and told us these things through Passuk, who talkedhis tongue.  He was a stranger in the Yukon, and he knew not theway, but his face was set to Pelly.  How far was it?  Twosleeps? ten? a hundred—he did not know, but he was going to Pelly. It was too far to turn back; he could only keep on.

“He did not ask for grub, for he could see we, too, were hardput.  Passuk looked at the man, and at me, as though she were oftwo minds, like a mother partridge whose young are in trouble. So I turned to her and said, ‘This man has been dealt unfair. Shall I give him of our grub a portion?’  I saw her eyeslight, as with quick pleasure; but she looked long at the man and atme, and her mouth drew close and hard, and she said, ‘No. The Salt Water is afar off, and Death lies in wait.  Better itis that he take this stranger man and let my man Charley pass.’ So the man went away in the Silence toward Pelly.  That night shewept.  Never had I seen her weep before.  Nor was it the smokeof the fire, for the wood was dry wood.  So I marveled at her sorrow,and thought her woman’s heart had grown soft at the darkness ofthe trail and the pain.

“Life is a strange thing.  Much have I thought on it,and pondered long, yet daily the strangeness of it grows not less, butmore.  Why this longing for Life?  It is a game which no manwins.  To live is to toil hard, and to suffer sore, till Old Agecreeps heavily upon us and we throw down our hands on the cold ashesof dead fires.  It is hard to live.  In pain the babe suckshis first breath, in pain the old man gasps his last, and all his daysare full of trouble and sorrow; yet he goes down to the open arms ofDeath, stumbling, falling, with head turned backward, fighting to thelast.  And Death is kind.  It is only Life, and the thingsof Life that hurt.  Yet we love Life, and we hate Death. It is very strange.

“We spoke little, Passuk and I, in the days which came. In the night we lay in the snow like dead people, and in the morningwe went on our way, walking like dead people.  And all things weredead.  There were no ptarmigan, no squirrels, no snowshoe rabbits,—nothing. The river made no sound beneath its white robes.  The sap was frozenin the forest.  And it became cold, as now; and in the night thestars drew near and large, and leaped and danced; and in the day thesun-dogs mocked us till we saw many suns, and all the air flashed andsparkled, and the snow was diamond dust.  And there was no heat,no sound, only the bitter cold and the Silence.  As I say, we walkedlike dead people, as in a dream, and we kept no count of time. Only our faces were set to Salt Water, our souls strained for Salt Water,and our feet carried us toward Salt Water.  We camped by the Tahkeena,and knew it not.  Our eyes looked upon the White Horse, but wesaw it not.  Our feet trod the portage of the Canyon, but theyfelt it not.  We felt nothing.  And we fell often by the way,but we fell, always, with our faces toward Salt Water.

“Our last grub went, and we had shared fair, Passuk and I,but she fell more often, and at Caribou Crossing her strength left her. And in the morning we lay beneath the one robe and did not take thetrail.  It was in my mind to stay there and meet Death hand-in-handwith Passuk; for I had grown old, and had learned the love of woman. Also, it was eighty miles to Haines Mission, and the great Chilcoot,far above the timber-line, reared his storm-swept head between. But Passuk spoke to me, low, with my ear against her lips that I mighthear.  And now, because she need not fear my anger, she spoke herheart, and told me of her love, and of many things which I did not understand.

“And she said: ‘You are my man, Charley, and I have beena good woman to you.  And in all the days I have made your fire,and cooked your food, and fed your dogs, and lifted paddle or brokentrail, I have not complained.  Nor did I say that there was morewarmth in the lodge of my father, or that there was more grub on theChilcat.  When you have spoken, I have listened.  When youhave ordered, I have obeyed.  Is it not so, Charley?’

“And I said: ‘Ay, it is so.’

“And she said: ‘When first you came to the Chilcat, norlooked upon me, but bought me as a man buys a dog, and took me away,my heart was hard against you and filled with bitterness and fear. But that was long ago.  For you were kind to me, Charley, as agood man is kind to his dog.  Your heart was cold, and there wasno room for me; yet you dealt me fair and your ways were just. And I was with you when you did bold deeds and led great ventures, andI measured you against the men of other breeds, and I saw you stoodamong them full of honor, and your word was wise, your tongue true. And I grew proud of you, till it came that you filled all my heart,and all my thought was of you.  You were as the midsummer sun,when its golden trail runs in a circle and never leaves the sky. And whatever way I cast my eyes I beheld the sun.  But your heartwas ever cold, Charley, and there was no room.’

“And I said: ‘It is so.  It was cold, and therewas no room.  But that is past.  Now my heart is like thesnowfall in the spring, when the sun has come back.  There is agreat thaw and a bending, a sound of running waters, and a budding andsprouting of green things.  And there is drumming of partridges,and songs of robins, and great music, for the winter is broken, Passuk,and I have learned the love of woman.’

“She smiled and moved for me to draw her closer.  Andshe said, ‘I am glad.’  After that she lay quiet fora long time, breathing softly, her head upon my breast.  Then shewhispered: ‘The trail ends here, and I am tired.  But firstI would speak of other things.  In the long ago, when I was a girlon the Chilcat, I played alone among the skin bales of my father’slodge; for the men were away on the hunt, and the women and boys weredragging in the meat.  It was in the spring, and I was alone. A great brown bear, just awake from his winter’s sleep, hungry,his fur hanging to the bones in flaps of leanness, shoved his head withinthe lodge and said, “Oof!”  My brother came runningback with the first sled of meat.  And he fought the bear withburning sticks from the fire, and the dogs in their harnesses, withthe sled behind them, fell upon the bear.  There was a great battleand much noise.  They rolled in the fire, the skin bales were scattered,the lodge overthrown.  But in the end the bear lay dead, with thefingers of my brother in his mouth and the marks of his claws upon mybrother’s face.  Did you mark the Indian by the Pelly trail,his mitten which had no thumb, his hand which he warmed by our fire? He was my brother.  And I said he should have no grub.  Andhe went away in the Silence without grub.’

“This, my brothers, was the love of Passuk, who died in thesnow, by the Caribou Crossing.  It was a mighty love, for she deniedher brother for the man who led her away on weary trails to a bitterend.  And, further, such was this woman’s love, she deniedherself.  Ere her eyes closed for the last time she took my handand slipped it under her squirrel-skin parkato her waist. I felt there a well-filled pouch, and learned the secret of her loststrength.  Day by day we had shared fair, to the last least bit;and day by day but half her share had she eaten.  The other halfhad gone into the well-filled pouch.

“And she said: ‘This is the end of the trail for Passuk;but your trail, Charley, leads on and on, over the great Chilcoot, downto Haines Mission and the sea.  And it leads on and on, by thelight of many suns, over unknown lands and strange waters, and it isfull of years and honors and great glories.  It leads you to thelodges of many women, and good women, but it will never lead you toa greater love than the love of Passuk.’

“And I knew the woman spoke true.  But a madness cameupon me, and I threw the well-filled pouch from me, and swore that mytrail had reached an end, till her tired eyes grew soft with tears,and she said: ‘Among men has Sitka Charley walked in honor, andever has his word been true.  Does he forget that honor now, andtalk vain words by the Caribou Crossing?  Does he remember no morethe men of Forty Mile, who gave him of their grub the best, of theirdogs the pick?  Ever has Passuk been proud of her man.  Lethim lift himself up, gird on his snowshoes, and begone, that she maystill keep her pride.’

“And when she grew cold in my arms I arose, and sought outthe well-filled pouch, and girt on my snowshoes, and staggered alongthe trail; for there was a weakness in my knees, and my head was dizzy,and in my ears there was a roaring, and a flashing of fire upon my eyes. The forgotten trails of boyhood came back to me.  I sat by thefull pots of the potlachfeast, and raised my voice in song,and danced to the chanting of the men and maidens and the booming ofthe walrus drums.  And Passuk held my hand and walked by my side. When I laid down to sleep, she waked me.  When I stumbled and fell,she raised me.  When I wandered in the deep snow, she led me backto the trail.  And in this wise, like a man bereft of reason, whosees strange visions and whose thoughts are light with wine, I cameto Haines Mission by the sea.”

Sitka Charley threw back the tent-flaps.  It was midday. To the south, just clearing the bleak Henderson Divide, poised the cold-diskedsun.  On either hand the sun-dogs blazed.  The air was a gossamerof glittering frost.  In the foreground, beside the trail, a wolf-dog,bristling with frost, thrust a long snout heavenward and mourned.

WHERE THE TRAIL FORKS

“Must I, then, must I, then, now leave this town—
And you, my love, stay here?”—Schwabian Folk-song.

The singer, clean-faced and cheery-eyed, bent over and added waterto a pot of simmering beans, and then, rising, a stick of firewood inhand, drove back the circling dogs from the grub-box and cooking-gear. He was blue of eye, and his long hair was golden, and it was a pleasureto look upon his lusty freshness.  A new moon was thrusting a dimhorn above the white line of close-packed snow-capped pines which ringedthe camp and segregated it from all the world.  Overhead, so clearit was and cold, the stars danced with quick, pulsating movements. To the southeast an evanescent greenish glow heralded the opening revelsof the aurora borealis.  Two men, in the immediate foreground,lay upon the bearskin which was their bed.  Between the skin andnaked snow was a six-inch layer of pine boughs.  The blankets wererolled back.  For shelter, there was a fly at their backs,—asheet of canvas stretched between two trees and angling at forty-fivedegrees.  This caught the radiating heat from the fire and flungit down upon the skin.  Another man sat on a sled, drawn closeto the blaze, mending moccasins.  To the right, a heap of frozengravel and a rude windlass denoted where they toiled each day in dismalgroping for the pay-streak.  To the left, four pairs of snowshoesstood erect, showing the mode of travel which obtained when the stampedsnow of the camp was left behind.

That Schwabian folk-song sounded strangely pathetic under the coldnorthern stars, and did not do the men good who lounged about the fireafter the toil of the day.  It put a dull ache into their hearts,and a yearning which was akin to belly-hunger, and sent their soulsquesting southward across the divides to the sun-lands.

“For the love of God, Sigmund, shut up!” expostulatedone of the men.  His hands were clenched painfully, but he hidthem from sight in the folds of the bearskin upon which he lay.

“And what for, Dave Wertz?” Sigmund demanded.  “Whyshall I not sing when the heart is glad?”

“Because you’ve got no call to, that’s why. Look about you, man, and think of the grub we’ve been defilingour bodies with for the last twelvemonth, and the way we’ve livedand worked like beasts!”

Thus abjured, Sigmund, the golden-haired, surveyed it all, and thefrost-rimmed wolf-dogs and the vapor breaths of the men.  “Andwhy shall not the heart be glad?” he laughed.  “Itis good; it is all good.  As for the grub—”  Hedoubled up his arm and caressed the swelling biceps.  “Andif we have lived and worked like beasts, have we not been paid likekings?  Twenty dollars to the pan the streak is running, and weknow it to be eight feet thick.  It is another Klondike—andwe know it—Jim Hawes there, by your elbow, knows it and complainsnot.  And there’s Hitchcock!  He sews moccasins likean old woman, and waits against the time.  Only you can’twait and work until the wash-up in the spring.  Then we shall allbe rich, rich as kings, only you cannot wait.  You want to go backto the States.  So do I, and I was born there, but I can wait,when each day the gold in the pan shows up yellow as butter in the churning. But you want your good time, and, like a child, you cry for it now. Bah!  Why shall I not sing:

“In a year, in a year, when the grapes are ripe,
   I shall stay no more away.
Then if you still are true, my love,
   It will be our wedding day.
In a year, in a year, when my time is past,
   Then I’ll live in your love for aye.
Then if you still are true, my love,
   It will be our wedding day.”

The dogs, bristling and growling, drew in closer to the firelight. There was a monotonous crunch-crunch of webbed shoes, and between eachcrunch the dragging forward of the heel of the shoe like the sound ofsifting sugar.  Sigmund broke off from his song to hurl oaths andfirewood at the animals.  Then the light was parted by a fur-cladfigure, and an Indian girl slipped out of the webs, threw back the hoodof her squirrel-skin parka, and stood in their midst.  Sigmundand the men on the bearskin greeted her as “Sipsu,” withthe customary “Hello,” but Hitchcock made room on the sledthat she might sit beside him.

“And how goes it, Sipsu?” he asked, talking, after herfashion, in broken English and bastard Chinook.  “Is thehunger still mighty in the camp? and has the witch doctor yet foundthe cause wherefore game is scarce and no moose in the land?”

“Yes; even so.  There is little game, and we prepare toeat the dogs.  Also has the witch doctor found the cause of allthis evil, and to-morrow will he make sacrifice and cleanse the camp.”

“And what does the sacrifice chance to be?—a new-bornbabe or some poor devil of a squaw, old and shaky, who is a care tothe tribe and better out of the way?”

“It chanced not that wise; for the need was great, and he chosenone other than the chief’s daughter; none other than I, Sipsu.”

“Hell!”  The word rose slowly to Hitchcock’slips, and brimmed over full and deep, in a way which bespoke wonderand consideration.

“Wherefore we stand by a forking of the trail, you and I,”she went on calmly, “and I have come that we may look once moreupon each other, and once more only.”

She was born of primitive stock, and primitive had been her traditionsand her days; so she regarded life stoically, and human sacrifice aspart of the natural order.  The powers which ruled the day-lightand the dark, the flood and the frost, the bursting of the bud and thewithering of the leaf, were angry and in need of propitiation. This they exacted in many ways,—death in the bad water, throughthe treacherous ice-crust, by the grip of the grizzly, or a wastingsickness which fell upon a man in his own lodge till he coughed, andthe life of his lungs went out through his mouth and nostrils. Likewise did the powers receive sacrifice.  It was all one. And the witch doctor was versed in the thoughts of the powers and choseunerringly.  It was very natural.  Death came by many ways,yet was it all one after all,—a manifestation of the all-powerfuland inscrutable.

But Hitchcock came of a later world-breed.  His traditions wereless concrete and without reverence, and he said, “Not so, Sipsu. You are young, and yet in the full joy of life.  The witch doctoris a fool, and his choice is evil.  This thing shall not be.”

She smiled and answered, “Life is not kind, and for many reasons. First, it made of us twain the one white and the other red, which isbad.  Then it crossed our trails, and now it parts them again;and we can do nothing.  Once before, when the gods were angry,did your brothers come to the camp.  They were three, big men andwhite, and they said the thing shall not be.  But they died quickly,and the thing was.”

Hitchcock nodded that he heard, half-turned, and lifted his voice. “Look here, you fellows!  There’s a lot of foolerygoing on over to the camp, and they’re getting ready to murderSipsu.  What d’ye say?”

Wertz looked at Hawes, and Hawes looked back, but neither spoke. Sigmund dropped his head, and petted the shepherd dog between his knees. He had brought Shep in with him from the outside, and thought a greatdeal of the animal.  In fact, a certain girl, who was much in histhoughts, and whose picture in the little locket on his breast ofteninspired him to sing, had given him the dog and her blessing when theykissed good-by and he started on his Northland quest.

“What d’ye say?” Hitchcock repeated.

“Mebbe it’s not so serious,” Hawes answered withdeliberation.  “Most likely it’s only a girl’sstory.”

“That isn’t the point!”  Hitchcock felt ahot flush of anger sweep over him at their evident reluctance. “The question is, if it is so, are we going to stand it? What are we going to do?”

“I don’t see any call to interfere,” spoke up Wertz. “If it is so, it is so, and that’s all there is about it. It’s a way these people have of doing.  It’s theirreligion, and it’s no concern of ours.  Our concern is toget the dust and then get out of this God-forsaken land.  ’Tisn’t fit for naught else but beasts?  And what are theseblack devils but beasts?  Besides, it’d be damn poor policy.”

“That’s what I say,” chimed in Hawes.  “Herewe are, four of us, three hundred miles from the Yukon or a white face. And what can we do against half-a-hundred Indians?  If we quarrelwith them, we have to vamose; if we fight, we are wiped out.  Further,we’ve struck pay, and, by God! I, for one, am going to stick byit!”

“Ditto here,” supplemented Wertz.

Hitchcock turned impatiently to Sigmund, who was softly singing,—

“In a year, in a year, when the grapes are ripe,
   I shall stay no more away.”

“Well, it’s this way, Hitchcock,” he finally said,“I’m in the same boat with the rest.  If three-scorebucks have made up their mind to kill the girl, why, we can’thelp it.  One rush, and we’d be wiped off the landscape. And what good’d that be?  They’d still have the girl. There’s no use in going against the customs of a people exceptyou’re in force.”

“But we are in force!” Hitchcock broke in.  “Fourwhites are a match for a hundred times as many reds.  And thinkof the girl!”

Sigmund stroked the dog meditatively.  “But I do thinkof the girl.  And her eyes are blue like summer skies, and laughinglike summer seas, and her hair is yellow, like mine, and braided inropes the size of a big man’s arms.  She’s waitingfor me, out there, in a better land.  And she’s waited long,and now my pile’s in sight I’m not going to throw it away.”

“And shamed I would be to look into the girl’s blue eyesand remember the black ones of the girl whose blood was on my hands,”Hitchcock sneered; for he was born to honor and championship, and todo the thing for the thing’s sake, nor stop to weigh or measure.

Sigmund shook his head.  “You can’t make me mad,Hitchcock, nor do mad things because of your madness.  It’sa cold business proposition and a question of facts.  I didn’tcome to this country for my health, and, further, it’s impossiblefor us to raise a hand.  If it is so, it is too bad for the girl,that’s all.  It’s a way of her people, and it justhappens we’re on the spot this one time.  They’ve donethe same for a thousand-thousand years, and they’re going to doit now, and they’ll go on doing it for all time to come. Besides, they’re not our kind.  Nor’s the girl. No, I take my stand with Wertz and Hawes, and—”

But the dogs snarled and drew in, and he broke off, listening tothe crunch-crunch of many snowshoes.  Indian after Indian stalkedinto the firelight, tall and grim, fur-clad and silent, their shadowsdancing grotesquely on the snow.  One, the witch doctor, spokegutturally to Sipsu.  His face was daubed with savage paint blotches,and over his shoulders was drawn a wolfskin, the gleaming teeth andcruel snout surmounting his head.  No other word was spoken. The prospectors held the peace.  Sipsu arose and slipped into hersnowshoes.

“Good-by, O my man,” she said to Hitchcock.  Butthe man who had sat beside her on the sled gave no sign, nor liftedhis head as they filed away into the white forest.

Unlike many men, his faculty of adaptation, while large, had neversuggested the expediency of an alliance with the women of the Northland. His broad cosmopolitanism had never impelled toward covenanting in marriagewith the daughters of the soil.  If it had, his philosophy of lifewould not have stood between.  But it simply had not.  Sipsu? He had pleasured in camp-fire chats with her, not as a man who knewhimself to be man and she woman, but as a man might with a child, andas a man of his make certainly would if for no other reason than tovary the tedium of a bleak existence.  That was all.  Butthere was a certain chivalric thrill of warm blood in him, despite hisYankee ancestry and New England upbringing, and he was so made thatthe commercial aspect of life often seemed meaningless and bore contradictionto his deeper impulses.

So he sat silent, with head bowed forward, an organic force, greaterthan himself, as great as his race, at work within him.  Wertzand Hawes looked askance at him from time to time, a faint but perceptibletrepidation in their manner.  Sigmund also felt this.  Hitchcockwas strong, and his strength had been impressed upon them in the courseof many an event in their precarious life.  So they stood in acertain definite awe and curiosity as to what his conduct would be whenhe moved to action.

But his silence was long, and the fire nigh out, when Wertz stretchedhis arms and yawned, and thought he’d go to bed.  Then Hitchcockstood up his full height.

“May God damn your souls to the deepest hells, you chicken-heartedcowards!  I’m done with you!”  He said it calmlyenough, but his strength spoke in every syllable, and every intonationwas advertisement of intention.  “Come on,” he continued,“whack up, and in whatever way suits you best.  I own a quarter-interestin the claims; our contracts show that.  There’re twenty-fiveor thirty ounces in the sack from the test pans.  Fetch out thescales.  We’ll divide that now.  And you, Sigmund, measureme my quarter-share of the grub and set it apart.  Four of thedogs are mine, and I want four more.  I’ll trade you my sharein the camp outfit and mining-gear for the dogs.  And I’llthrow in my six or seven ounces and the spare 45-90 with the ammunition. What d’ye say?”

The three men drew apart and conferred.  When they returned,Sigmund acted as spokesman.  “We’ll whack up fair withyou, Hitchcock.  In everything you’ll get your quarter-share,neither more nor less; and you can take it or leave it.  But wewant the dogs as bad as you do, so you get four, and that’s all. If you don’t want to take your share of the outfit and gear, why,that’s your lookout.  If you want it, you can have it; ifyou don’t, leave it.”

“The letter of the law,” Hitchcock sneered.  “Butgo ahead.  I’m willing.  And hurry up.  I can’tget out of this camp and away from its vermin any too quick.”

The division was effected without further comment.  He lashedhis meagre belongings upon one of the sleds, rounded in his four dogs,and harnessed up.  His portion of outfit and gear he did not touch,though he threw onto the sled half a dozen dog harnesses, and challengedthem with his eyes to interfere.  But they shrugged their shouldersand watched him disappear in the forest.

* * * *

A man crawled upon his belly through the snow.  On every handloomed the moose-hide lodges of the camp.  Here and there a miserabledog howled or snarled abuse upon his neighbor.  Once, one of themapproached the creeping man, but the man became motionless.  Thedog came closer and sniffed, and came yet closer, till its nose touchedthe strange object which had not been there when darkness fell. Then Hitchcock, for it was Hitchcock, upreared suddenly, shooting anunmittened hand out to the brute’s shaggy throat.  And thedog knew its death in that clutch, and when the man moved on, was leftbroken-necked under the stars.  In this manner Hitchcock made thechief’s lodge.  For long he lay in the snow without, listeningto the voices of the occupants and striving to locate Sipsu.  Evidentlythere were many in the tent, and from the sounds they were in high excitement. At last he heard the girl’s voice, and crawled around so thatonly the moose-hide divided them.  Then burrowing in the snow,he slowly wormed his head and shoulders underneath.  When the warminner air smote his face, he stopped and waited, his legs and the greaterpart of his body still on the outside.  He could see nothing, nordid he dare lift his head.  On one side of him was a skin bale. He could smell it, though he carefully felt to be certain.  Onthe other side his face barely touched a furry garment which he knewclothed a body.  This must be Sipsu.  Though he wished shewould speak again, he resolved to risk it.

He could hear the chief and the witch doctor talking high, and ina far corner some hungry child whimpering to sleep.  Squirmingover on his side, he carefully raised his head, still just touchingthe furry garment.  He listened to the breathing.  It wasa woman’s breathing; he would chance it.

He pressed against her side softly but firmly, and felt her startat the contact.  Again he waited, till a questioning hand slippeddown upon his head and paused among the curls.  The next instantthe hand turned his face gently upward, and he was gazing into Sipsu’seyes.

She was quite collected.  Changing her position casually, shethrew an elbow well over on the skin bale, rested her body upon it,and arranged her parka.  In this way he was completely concealed. Then, and still most casually, she reclined across him, so that he couldbreathe between her arm and breast, and when she lowered her head herear pressed lightly against his lips.

“When the time suits, go thou,” he whispered, “outof the lodge and across the snow, down the wind to the bunch of jackpinein the curve of the creek.  There wilt thou find my dogs and mysled, packed for the trail.  This night we go down to the Yukon;and since we go fast, lay thou hands upon what dogs come nigh thee,by the scruff of the neck, and drag them to the sled in the curve ofthe creek.”

Sipsu shook her head in dissent; but her eyes glistened with gladness,and she was proud that this man had shown toward her such favor. But she, like the women of all her race, was born to obey the will masculine,and when Hitchcock repeated “Go!” he did it with authority,and though she made no answer he knew that his will was law.

“And never mind harness for the dogs,” he added, preparingto go.  “I shall wait.  But waste no time.  Theday chaseth the night alway, nor does it linger for man’s pleasure.”

Half an hour later, stamping his feet and swinging his arms by thesled, he saw her coming, a surly dog in either hand.  At the approachof these his own animals waxed truculent, and he favored them with thebutt of his whip till they quieted.  He had approached the campup the wind, and sound was the thing to be most feared in making hispresence known.

“Put them into the sled,” he ordered when she had gotthe harness on the two dogs.  “I want my leaders to the fore.”

But when she had done this, the displaced animals pitched upon thealiens.  Though Hitchcock plunged among them with clubbed rifle,a riot of sound went up and across the sleeping camp.

“Now we shall have dogs, and in plenty,” he remarkedgrimly, slipping an axe from the sled lashings.  “Do thouharness whichever I fling thee, and betweenwhiles protect the team.”

He stepped a space in advance and waited between two pines. The dogs of the camp were disturbing the night with their jangle, andhe watched for their coming.  A dark spot, growing rapidly, tookform upon the dim white expanse of snow.  It was a forerunner ofthe pack, leaping cleanly, and, after the wolf fashion, singing directionto its brothers.  Hitchcock stood in the shadow.  As it sprangpast, he reached out, gripped its forelegs in mid-career, and sent itwhirling earthward.  Then he struck it a well-judged blow beneaththe ear, and flung it to Sipsu.  And while she clapped on the harness,he, with his axe, held the passage between the trees, till a shaggyflood of white teeth and glistening eyes surged and crested just beyondreach.  Sipsu worked rapidly.  When she had finished, he leapedforward, seized and stunned a second, and flung it to her.  Thishe repeated thrice again, and when the sled team stood snarling in astring of ten, he called, “Enough!”

But at this instant a young buck, the forerunner of the tribe, andswift of limb, wading through the dogs and cuffing right and left, attemptedthe passage.  The butt of Hitchcock’s rifle drove him tohis knees, whence he toppled over sideways.  The witch doctor,running lustily, saw the blow fall.

Hitchcock called to Sipsu to pull out.  At her shrill “Chook!”the maddened brutes shot straight ahead, and the sled, bounding mightily,just missed unseating her.  The powers were evidently angry withthe witch doctor, for at this moment they plunged him upon the trail. The lead-dog fouled his snowshoes and tripped him up, and the nine succeedingdogs trod him under foot and the sled bumped over him.  But hewas quick to his feet, and the night might have turned out differentlyhad not Sipsu struck backward with the long dog-whip and smitten hima blinding blow across the eyes.  Hitchcock, hurrying to overtakeher, collided against him as he swayed with pain in the middle of thetrail.  Thus it was, when this primitive theologian got back tothe chief’s lodge, that his wisdom had been increased in so faras concerns the efficacy of the white man’s fist.  So, whenhe orated then and there in the council, he was wroth against all whitemen.

* * * *

“Tumble out, you loafers!  Tumble out!  Grub’llbe ready before you get into your footgear!”

Dave Wertz threw off the bearskin, sat up, and yawned.

Hawes stretched, discovered a lame muscle in his arm, and rubbedit sleepily.  “Wonder where Hitchcock bunked last night?”he queried, reaching for his moccasins.  They were stiff, and hewalked gingerly in his socks to the fire to thaw them out.  “It’sa blessing he’s gone,” he added, “though he was amighty good worker.”

“Yep.  Too masterful.  That was his trouble. Too bad for Sipsu.  Think he cared for her much?”

“Don’t think so.  Just principle.  That’sall.  He thought it wasn’t right—and, of course, itwasn’t,—but that was no reason for us to interfere and gethustled over the divide before our time.”

“Principle is principle, and it’s good in its place,but it’s best left to home when you go to Alaska.  Eh?” Wertz had joined his mate, and both were working pliability into theirfrozen moccasins.  “Think we ought to have taken a hand?”

Sigmund shook his head.  He was very busy.  A scud of chocolate-coloredfoam was rising in the coffee-pot, and the bacon needed turning. Also, he was thinking about the girl with laughing eyes like summerseas, and he was humming softly.

His mates chuckled to each other and ceased talking.  Thoughit was past seven, daybreak was still three hours distant.  Theaurora borealis had passed out of the sky, and the camp was an oasisof light in the midst of deep darkness.  And in this light theforms of the three men were sharply defined.  Emboldened by thesilence, Sigmund raised his voice and opened the last stanza of theold song:-

“In a year, in a year, when the grapes are ripe—”

Then the night was split with a rattling volley of rifle-shots. Hawes sighed, made an effort to straighten himself, and collapsed. Wertz went over on an elbow with drooping head.  He choked a little,and a dark stream flowed from his mouth.  And Sigmund, the Golden-Haired,his throat a-gurgle with the song, threw up his arms and pitched acrossthe fire.

* * * *

The witch doctor’s eyes were well blackened, and his tempernone of the best; for he quarrelled with the chief over the possessionof Wertz’s rifle, and took more than his share of the part-sackof beans.  Also he appropriated the bearskin, and caused grumblingamong the tribesmen.  And finally, he tried to kill Sigmund’sdog, which the girl had given him, but the dog ran away, while he fellinto the shaft and dislocated his shoulder on the bucket.  Whenthe camp was well looted they went back to their own lodges, and therewas a great rejoicing among the women.  Further, a band of moosestrayed over the south divide and fell before the hunters, so the witchdoctor attained yet greater honor, and the people whispered among themselvesthat he spoke in council with the gods.

But later, when all were gone, the shepherd dog crept back to thedeserted camp, and all the night long and a day it wailed the dead. After that it disappeared, though the years were not many before theIndian hunters noted a change in the breed of timber wolves, and therewere dashes of bright color and variegated markings such as no wolfbore before.

A DAUGHTER OF THE AURORA

“You—what you call—lazy mans, you lazy mans woulddesire me to haf for wife.  It is not good.  Nevaire, no,nevaire, will lazy mans my hoosband be.”

Thus Joy Molineau spoke her mind to Jack Harrington, even as shehad spoken it, but more tritely and in his own tongue, to Louis Savoythe previous night.

“Listen, Joy—”

“No, no; why moos’ I listen to lazy mans?  It isvaire bad, you hang rount, make visitation to my cabin, and do nothing. How you get grub for the famine?  Why haf not you the dust? Odder mans haf plentee.”

“But I work hard, Joy.  Never a day am I not on trailor up creek.  Even now have I just come off.  My dogs areyet tired.  Other men have luck and find plenty of gold; but I—Ihave no luck.”

“Ah!  But when this mans with the wife which is Indian,this mans McCormack, when him discovaire the Klondike, you go not. Odder mans go; odder mans now rich.”

“You know I was prospecting over on the head-reaches of theTanana,” Harrington protested, “and knew nothing of theEldorado or Bonanza until it was too late.”

“That is deeferent; only you are—what you call way off.”

“What?”

“Way off.  In the—yes—in the dark.  Itis nevaire too late.  One vaire rich mine is there, on the creekwhich is Eldorado.  The mans drive the stake and him go ’way. No odddr mans know what of him become.  The mans, him which drivethe stake, is nevaire no more.  Sixty days no mans on that claimfile the papaire.  Then odder mans, plentee odder mans—whatyou call—jump that claim.  Then they race, O so queek, likethe wind, to file the papaire.  Him be vaire rich.  Him getgrub for famine.”

Harrington hid the major portion of his interest.

“When’s the time up?” he asked.  “Whatclaim is it?”

“So I speak Louis Savoy last night,” she continued, ignoringhim.  “Him I think the winnaire.”

“Hang Louis Savoy!”

“So Louis Savoy speak in my cabin last night.  Him say,‘Joy, I am strong mans.  I haf good dogs.  I haf longwind.  I will be winnaire.  Then you will haf me for hoosband?’ And I say to him, I say—”

“What’d you say?”

“I say, ‘If Louis Savoy is winnaire, then will he hafme for wife.’”

“And if he don’t win?”

“Then Louis Savoy, him will not be—what you call—thefather of my children.”

“And if I win?”

“You winnaire?  Ha! ha!  Nevaire!”

Exasperating as it was, Joy Molineau’s laughter was prettyto hear.  Harrington did not mind it.  He had long since beenbroken in.  Besides, he was no exception.  She had forcedall her lovers to suffer in kind.  And very enticing she was justthen, her lips parted, her color heightened by the sharp kiss of thefrost, her eyes vibrant with the lure which is the greatest of all luresand which may be seen nowhere save in woman’s eyes.  Hersled-dogs clustered about her in hirsute masses, and the leader, WolfFang, laid his long snout softly in her lap.

“If I do win?” Harrington pressed.

She looked from dog to lover and back again.

“What you say, Wolf Fang?  If him strong mans and filethe papaire, shall we his wife become?  Eh?  What you say?”

Wolf Fang picked up his ears and growled at Harrington.

“It is vaire cold,” she suddenly added with feminineirrelevance, rising to her feet and straightening out the team.

Her lover looked on stolidly.  She had kept him guessing fromthe first time they met, and patience had been joined unto his virtues.

“Hi!  Wolf Fang!” she cried, springing upon thesled as it leaped into sudden motion.  “Ai!  Ya! Mush-on!”

From the corner of his eye Harrington watched her swinging down thetrail to Forty Mile.  Where the road forked and crossed the riverto Fort Cudahy, she halted the dogs and turned about.

“O Mistaire Lazy Mans!” she called back.  “WolfFang, him say yes—if you winnaire!”

* * * *

But somehow, as such things will, it leaked out, and all Forty Mile,which had hitherto speculated on Joy Molineau’s choice betweenher two latest lovers, now hazarded bets and guesses as to which wouldwin in the forthcoming race.  The camp divided itself into twofactions, and every effort was put forth in order that their respectivefavorites might be the first in at the finish.  There was a scramblefor the best dogs the country could afford, for dogs, and good ones,were essential, above all, to success.  And it meant much to thevictor.  Besides the possession of a wife, the like of which hadyet to be created, it stood for a mine worth a million at least.

That fall, when news came down of McCormack’s discovery onBonanza, all the Lower Country, Circle City and Forty Mile included,had stampeded up the Yukon,—at least all save those who, likeJack Harrington and Louis Savoy, were away prospecting in the west. Moose pastures and creeks were staked indiscriminately and promiscuously;and incidentally, one of the unlikeliest of creeks, Eldorado. Olaf Nelson laid claim to five hundred of its linear feet, duly postedhis notice, and as duly disappeared.  At that time the nearestrecording office was in the police barracks at Fort Cudahy, just acrossthe river from Forty Mile; but when it became bruited abroad that EldoradoCreek was a treasure-house, it was quickly discovered that Olaf Nelsonhad failed to make the down-Yukon trip to file upon his property. Men cast hungry eyes upon the ownerless claim, where they knew a thousand-thousanddollars waited but shovel and sluice-box.  Yet they dared not touchit; for there was a law which permitted sixty days to lapse betweenthe staking and the filing, during which time a claim was immune. The whole country knew of Olaf Nelson’s disappearance, and scoresof men made preparation for the jumping and for the consequent raceto Fort Cudahy.

But competition at Forty Mile was limited.  With the camp devotingits energies to the equipping either of Jack Harrington or Louis Savoy,no man was unwise enough to enter the contest single-handed.  Itwas a stretch of a hundred miles to the Recorder’s office, andit was planned that the two favorites should have four relays of dogsstationed along the trail.  Naturally, the last relay was to bethe crucial one, and for these twenty-five miles their respective partisansstrove to obtain the strongest possible animals.  So bitter didthe factions wax, and so high did they bid, that dogs brought stifferprices than ever before in the annals of the country.  And, asit chanced, this scramble for dogs turned the public eye still moresearchingly upon Joy Molineau.  Not only was she the cause of itall, but she possessed the finest sled-dog from Chilkoot to Bering Sea. As wheel or leader, Wolf Fang had no equal.  The man whose sledhe led down the last stretch was bound to win.  There could beno doubt of it.  But the community had an innate sense of the fitnessof things, and not once was Joy vexed by overtures for his use. And the factions drew consolation from the fact that if one man didnot profit by him, neither should the other.

However, since man, in the individual or in the aggregate, has beenso fashioned that he goes through life blissfully obtuse to the deepersubtleties of his womankind, so the men of Forty Mile failed to divinethe inner deviltry of Joy Molineau.  They confessed, afterward,that they had failed to appreciate this dark-eyed daughter of the aurora,whose father had traded furs in the country before ever they dreamedof invading it, and who had herself first opened eyes on the scintillantnorthern lights.  Nay, accident of birth had not rendered her lessthe woman, nor had it limited her woman’s understanding of men. They knew she played with them, but they did not know the wisdom ofher play, its deepness and its deftness.  They failed to see morethan the exposed card, so that to the very last Forty Mile was in astate of pleasant obfuscation, and it was not until she cast her finaltrump that it came to reckon up the score.

Early in the week the camp turned out to start Jack Harrington andLouis Savoy on their way.  They had taken a shrewd margin of time,for it was their wish to arrive at Olaf Nelson’s claim some daysprevious to the expiration of its immunity, that they might rest themselves,and their dogs be fresh for the first relay.  On the way up theyfound the men of Dawson already stationing spare dog teams along thetrail, and it was manifest that little expense had been spared in viewof the millions at stake.

A couple of days after the departure of their champions, Forty Milebegan sending up their relays,—first to the seventy-five station,then to the fifty, and last to the twenty-five.  The teams forthe last stretch were magnificent, and so equally matched that the campdiscussed their relative merits for a full hour at fifty below, beforethey were permitted to pull out.  At the last moment Joy Molineaudashed in among them on her sled.  She drew Lon McFane, who hadcharge of Harrington’s team, to one side, and hardly had the firstwords left her lips when it was noticed that his lower jaw dropped witha celerity and emphasis suggestive of great things.  He unhitchedWolf Fang from her sled, put him at the head of Harrington’s team,and mushed the string of animals into the Yukon trail.

“Poor Louis Savoy!” men said; but Joy Molineau flashedher black eyes defiantly and drove back to her father’s cabin.

* * * *

Midnight drew near on Olaf Nelson’s claim.  A few hundredfur-clad men had preferred sixty below and the jumping, to the inducementsof warm cabins and comfortable bunks.  Several score of them hadtheir notices prepared for posting and their dogs at hand.  A bunchof Captain Constantine’s mounted police had been ordered on dutythat fair play might rule.  The command had gone forth that noman should place a stake till the last second of the day had tickeditself into the past.  In the northland such commands are equalto Jehovah’s in the matter of potency; the dum-dum as rapid andeffective as the thunderbolt.  It was clear and cold.  Theaurora borealis painted palpitating color revels on the sky.  Rosywaves of cold brilliancy swept across the zenith, while great coruscatingbars of greenish white blotted out the stars, or a Titan’s handreared mighty arches above the Pole.  And at this mighty displaythe wolf-dogs howled as had their ancestors of old time.

A bearskin-coated policeman stepped prominently to the fore, watchin hand.  Men hurried among the dogs, rousing them to their feet,untangling their traces, straightening them out.  The entries cameto the mark, firmly gripping stakes and notices.  They had goneover the boundaries of the claim so often that they could now have doneit blindfolded.  The policeman raised his hand.  Casting offtheir superfluous furs and blankets, and with a final cinching of belts,they came to attention.

“Time!”

Sixty pairs of hands unmitted; as many pairs of moccasins grippedhard upon the snow.

“Go!”

They shot across the wide expanse, round the four sides, stickingnotices at every corner, and down the middle where the two centre stakeswere to be planted.  Then they sprang for the sleds on the frozenbed of the creek.  An anarchy of sound and motion broke out. Sled collided with sled, and dog-team fastened upon dog-team with bristlingmanes and screaming fangs.  The narrow creek was glutted with thestruggling mass.  Lashes and butts of dog-whips were distributedimpartially among men and brutes.  And to make it of greater moment,each participant had a bunch of comrades intent on breaking him outof jam.  But one by one, and by sheer strength, the sleds creptout and shot from sight in the darkness of the overhanging banks.

Jack Harrington had anticipated this crush and waited by his sleduntil it untangled.  Louis Savoy, aware of his rival’s greaterwisdom in the matter of dog-driving, had followed his lead and alsowaited.  The rout had passed beyond earshot when they took thetrail, and it was not till they had travelled the ten miles or so downto Bonanza that they came upon it, speeding along in single file, butwell bunched.  There was little noise, and less chance of one passinganother at that stage.  The sleds, from runner to runner, measuredsixteen inches, the trail eighteen; but the trail, packed down fullya foot by the traffic, was like a gutter.  On either side spreadthe blanket of soft snow crystals.  If a man turned into this inan endeavor to pass, his dogs would wallow perforce to their belliesand slow down to a snail’s pace.  So the men lay close totheir leaping sleds and waited.  No alteration in position occurreddown the fifteen miles of Bonanza and Klondike to Dawson, where theYukon was encountered.  Here the first relays waited.  Buthere, intent to kill their first teams, if necessary, Harrington andSavoy had had their fresh teams placed a couple of miles beyond thoseof the others.  In the confusion of changing sleds they passedfull half the bunch.  Perhaps thirty men were still leading themwhen they shot on to the broad breast of the Yukon.  Here was thetug.  When the river froze in the fall, a mile of open water hadbeen left between two mighty jams.  This had but recently crusted,the current being swift, and now it was as level, hard, and slipperyas a dance floor.  The instant they struck this glare ice Harringtoncame to his knees, holding precariously on with one hand, his whip singingfiercely among his dogs and fearsome abjurations hurtling about theirears.  The teams spread out on the smooth surface, each strainingto the uttermost.  But few men in the North could lift their dogsas did Jack Harrington.  At once he began to pull ahead, and LouisSavoy, taking the pace, hung on desperately, his leaders running evenwith the tail of his rival’s sled.

Midway on the glassy stretch their relays shot out from the bank. But Harrington did not slacken.  Watching his chance when the newsled swung in close, he leaped across, shouting as he did so and jumpingup the pace of his fresh dogs.  The other driver fell off somehow. Savoy did likewise with his relay, and the abandoned teams, swervingto right and left, collided with the others and piled the ice with confusion. Harrington cut out the pace; Savoy hung on.  As they neared theend of the glare ice, they swept abreast of the leading sled. When they shot into the narrow trail between the soft snowbanks, theyled the race; and Dawson, watching by the light of the aurora, sworethat it was neatly done.

When the frost grows lusty at sixty below, men cannot long remainwithout fire or excessive exercise, and live.  So Harrington andSavoy now fell to the ancient custom of “ride and run.” Leaping from their sleds, tow-thongs in hand, they ran behind till theblood resumed its wonted channels and expelled the frost, then backto the sleds till the heat again ebbed away.  Thus, riding andrunning, they covered the second and third relays.  Several times,on smooth ice, Savoy spurted his dogs, and as often failed to gain past. Strung along for five miles in the rear, the remainder of the race stroveto overtake them, but vainly, for to Louis Savoy alone was the glorygiven of keeping Jack Harrington’s killing pace.

As they swung into the seventy-five-mile station, Lon McFane dashedalongside; Wolf Fang in the lead caught Harrington’s eye, andhe knew that the race was his.  No team in the North could passhim on those last twenty-five miles.  And when Savoy saw Wolf Fangheading his rival’s team, he knew that he was out of the running,and he cursed softly to himself, in the way woman is most frequentlycursed.  But he still clung to the other’s smoking trail,gambling on chance to the last.  And as they churned along, theday breaking in the southeast, they marvelled in joy and sorrow at thatwhich Joy Molineau had done.

* * * *

Forty Mile had early crawled out of its sleeping furs and congregatednear the edge of the trail.  From this point it could view theup-Yukon course to its first bend several miles away.  Here itcould also see across the river to the finish at Fort Cudahy, wherethe Gold Recorder nervously awaited.  Joy Molineau had taken herposition several rods back from the trail, and under the circumstances,the rest of Forty Mile forbore interposing itself.  So the spacewas clear between her and the slender line of the course.  Fireshad been built, and around these men wagered dust and dogs, the longodds on Wolf Fang.

“Here they come!” shrilled an Indian boy from the topof a pine.

Up the Yukon a black speck appeared against the snow, closely followedby a second.  As these grew larger, more black specks manifestedthemselves, but at a goodly distance to the rear.  Gradually theyresolved themselves into dogs and sleds, and men lying flat upon them. “Wolf Fang leads,” a lieutenant of police whispered to Joy. She smiled her interest back.

“Ten to one on Harrington!” cried a Birch Creek King,dragging out his sack.

“The Queen, her pay you not mooch?” queried Joy.

The lieutenant shook his head.

“You have some dust, ah, how mooch?” she continued.

He exposed his sack.  She gauged it with a rapid eye.

“Mebbe—say—two hundred, eh?  Good.  NowI give—what you call—the tip.  Covaire the bet.” Joy smiled inscrutably.  The lieutenant pondered.  He glancedup the trail.  The two men had risen to their knees and were lashingtheir dogs furiously, Harrington in the lead.

“Ten to one on Harrington!” bawled the Birch Creek King,flourishing his sack in the lieutenant’s face.

“Covaire the bet,” Joy prompted.

He obeyed, shrugging his shoulders in token that he yielded, notto the dictate of his reason, but to her charm.  Joy nodded toreassure him.

All noise ceased.  Men paused in the placing of bets.

Yawing and reeling and plunging, like luggers before the wind, thesleds swept wildly upon them.  Though he still kept his leaderup to the tail of Harrington’s sled, Louis Savoy’s facewas without hope.  Harrington’s mouth was set.  He lookedneither to the right nor to the left.  His dogs were leaping inperfect rhythm, firm-footed, close to the trail, and Wolf Fang, headlow and unseeing, whining softly, was leading his comrades magnificently.

Forty Mile stood breathless.  Not a sound, save the roar ofthe runners and the voice of the whips.

Then the clear voice of Joy Molineau rose on the air.  “Ai! Ya!  Wolf Fang!  Wolf Fang!”

Wolf Fang heard.  He left the trail sharply, heading directlyfor his mistress.  The team dashed after him, and the sled poisedan instant on a single runner, then shot Harrington into the snow. Savoy was by like a flash.  Harrington pulled to his feet and watchedhim skimming across the river to the Gold Recorder’s.  Hecould not help hearing what was said.

“Ah, him do vaire well,” Joy Molineau was explainingto the lieutenant.  “Him—what you call—set thepace.  Yes, him set the pace vaire well.”

AT THE RAINBOW’S END

I

It was for two reasons that Montana Kid discarded his “chaps”and Mexican spurs, and shook the dust of the Idaho ranges from his feet. In the first place, the encroachments of a steady, sober, and sternlymoral civilization had destroyed the primeval status of the westerncattle ranges, and refined society turned the cold eye of disfavor uponhim and his ilk.  In the second place, in one of its cyclopeanmoments the race had arisen and shoved back its frontier several thousandmiles.  Thus, with unconscious foresight, did mature society makeroom for its adolescent members.  True, the new territory was mostlybarren; but its several hundred thousand square miles of frigidity atleast gave breathing space to those who else would have suffocated athome.

Montana Kid was such a one.  Heading for the sea-coast, witha haste several sheriff’s posses might possibly have explained,and with more nerve than coin of the realm, he succeeded in shippingfrom a Puget Sound port, and managed to survive the contingent miseriesof steerage sea-sickness and steerage grub.  He was rather sallowand drawn, but still his own indomitable self, when he landed on theDyea beach one day in the spring of the year.  Between the costof dogs, grub, and outfits, and the customs exactions of the two clashinggovernments, it speedily penetrated to his understanding that the Northlandwas anything save a poor man’s Mecca.  So he cast about himin search of quick harvests.  Between the beach and the passeswere scattered many thousands of passionate pilgrims.  These pilgrimsMontana Kid proceeded to farm.  At first he dealt faro in a pine-boardgambling shack; but disagreeable necessity forced him to drop a suddenperiod into a man’s life, and to move on up trail.  Thenhe effected a corner in horseshoe nails, and they circulated at parwith legal tender, four to the dollar, till an unexpected consignmentof a hundred barrels or so broke the market and forced him to disgorgehis stock at a loss.  After that he located at Sheep Camp, organizedthe professional packers, and jumped the freight ten cents a pound ina single day.  In token of their gratitude, the packers patronizedhis faro and roulette layouts and were mulcted cheerfully of their earnings. But his commercialism was of too lusty a growth to be long endured;so they rushed him one night, burned his shanty, divided the bank, andheaded him up the trail with empty pockets.

Ill-luck was his running mate.  He engaged with responsibleparties to run whisky across the line by way of precarious and unknowntrails, lost his Indian guides, and had the very first outfit confiscatedby the Mounted Police.  Numerous other misfortunes tended to makehim bitter of heart and wanton of action, and he celebrated his arrivalat Lake Bennett by terrorizing the camp for twenty straight hours. Then a miners’ meeting took him in hand, and commanded him tomake himself scarce.  He had a wholesome respect for such assemblages,and he obeyed in such haste that he inadvertently removed himself atthe tail-end of another man’s dog team.  This was equivalentto horse-stealing in a more mellow clime, so he hit only the high placesacross Bennett and down Tagish, and made his first camp a full hundredmiles to the north.

Now it happened that the break of spring was at hand, and many ofthe principal citizens of Dawson were travelling south on the last ice. These he met and talked with, noted their names and possessions, andpassed on.  He had a good memory, also a fair imagination; norwas veracity one of his virtues.

II

Dawson, always eager for news, beheld Montana Kid’s sled headingdown the Yukon, and went out on the ice to meet him.  No, he hadn’tany newspapers; didn’t know whether Durrant was hanged yet, norwho had won the Thanksgiving game; hadn’t heard whether the UnitedStates and Spain had gone to fighting; didn’t know who Dreyfuswas; but O’Brien?  Hadn’t they heard?  O’Brien,why, he was drowned in the White Horse; Sitka Charley the only one ofthe party who escaped.  Joe Ladue?  Both legs frozen and amputatedat the Five Fingers.  And Jack Dalton?  Blown up on the “SeaLion” with all hands.  And Bettles?  Wrecked on the“Carthagina,” in Seymour Narrows,—twenty survivorsout of three hundred.  And Swiftwater Bill?  Gone throughthe rotten ice of Lake LeBarge with six female members of the operatroupe he was convoying.  Governor Walsh?  Lost with all handsand eight sleds on the Thirty Mile.  Devereaux?  Who was Devereaux? Oh, the courier!  Shot by Indians on Lake Marsh.

So it went.  The word was passed along.  Men shoulderedin to ask after friends and partners, and in turn were shouldered out,too stunned for blasphemy.  By the time Montana Kid gained thebank he was surrounded by several hundred fur-clad miners.  Whenhe passed the Barracks he was the centre of a procession.  At theOpera House he was the nucleus of an excited mob, each member strugglingfor a chance to ask after some absent comrade.  On every side hewas being invited to drink.  Never before had the Klondike thusopened its arms to a che-cha-qua.  All Dawson was humming. Such a series of catastrophes had never occurred in its history. Every man of note who had gone south in the spring had been wiped out. The cabins vomited forth their occupants.  Wild-eyed men hurrieddown from the creeks and gulches to seek out this man who had told atale of such disaster.  The Russian half-breed wife of Bettlessought the fireplace, inconsolable, and rocked back and forth, and everand anon flung white wood-ashes upon her raven hair.  The flagat the Barracks flopped dismally at half-mast.  Dawson mournedits dead.

Why Montana Kid did this thing no man may know.  Nor beyondthe fact that the truth was not in him, can explanation be hazarded. But for five whole days he plunged the land in wailing and sorrow, andfor five whole days he was the only man in the Klondike.  The countrygave him its best of bed and board.  The saloons granted him thefreedom of their bars.  Men sought him continuously.  Thehigh officials bowed down to him for further information, and he wasfeasted at the Barracks by Constantine and his brother officers. And then, one day, Devereaux, the government courier, halted his tireddogs before the gold commissioner’s office.  Dead? Who said so?  Give him a moose steak and he’d show them howdead he was.  Why, Governor Walsh was in camp on the Little Salmon,and O’Brien coming in on the first water.  Dead?  Givehim a moose steak and he’d show them.

And forthwith Dawson hummed.  The Barracks’ flag roseto the masthead, and Bettles’ wife washed herself and put on cleanraiment.  The community subtly signified its desire that MontanaKid obliterate himself from the landscape.  And Montana Kid obliterated;as usual, at the tail-end of some one else’s dog team.  Dawsonrejoiced when he headed down the Yukon, and wished him godspeed to theultimate destination of the case-hardened sinner.  After that theowner of the dogs bestirred himself, made complaint to Constantine,and from him received the loan of a policeman.

III

With Circle City in prospect and the last ice crumbling under hisrunners, Montana Kid took advantage of the lengthening days and travelledhis dogs late and early.  Further, he had but little doubt thatthe owner of the dogs in question had taken his trail, and he wishedto make American territory before the river broke.  But by theafternoon of the third day it became evident that he had lost in hisrace with spring.  The Yukon was growling and straining at itsfetters.  Long détours became necessary, for the trail hadbegun to fall through into the swift current beneath, while the ice,in constant unrest, was thundering apart in great gaping fissures. Through these and through countless airholes, the water began to sweepacross the surface of the ice, and by the time he pulled into a woodchopper’scabin on the point of an island, the dogs were being rushed off theirfeet and were swimming more often than not.  He was greeted sourlyby the two residents, but he unharnessed and proceeded to cook up.

Donald and Davy were fair specimens of frontier inefficients. Canadian-born, city-bred Scots, in a foolish moment they had resignedtheir counting-house desks, drawn upon their savings, and gone Klondiking. And now they were feeling the rough edge of the country.  Grubless,spiritless, with a lust for home in their hearts, they had been stakedby the P. C. Company to cut wood for its steamers, with the promiseat the end of a passage home.  Disregarding the possibilities ofthe ice-run, they had fittingly demonstrated their inefficiency by theirchoice of the island on which they located.  Montana Kid, thoughpossessing little knowledge of the break-up of a great river, lookedabout him dubiously, and cast yearning glances at the distant bank wherethe towering bluffs promised immunity from all the ice of the Northland.

After feeding himself and dogs, he lighted his pipe and strolledout to get a better idea of the situation.  The island, like allits river brethren, stood higher at the upper end, and it was here thatDonald and Davy had built their cabin and piled many cords of wood. The far shore was a full mile away, while between the island and thenear shore lay a back-channel perhaps a hundred yards across. At first sight of this, Montana Kid was tempted to take his dogs andescape to the mainland, but on closer inspection he discovered a rapidcurrent flooding on top.  Below, the river twisted sharply to thewest, and in this turn its breast was studded by a maze of tiny islands.

“That’s where she’ll jam,” he remarked tohimself.

Half a dozen sleds, evidently bound up-stream to Dawson, were splashingthrough the chill water to the tail of the island.  Travel on theriver was passing from the precarious to the impossible, and it wasnip and tuck with them till they gained the island and came up the pathof the wood-choppers toward the cabin.  One of them, snow-blind,towed helplessly at the rear of a sled.  Husky young fellows theywere, rough-garmented and trail-worn, yet Montana Kid had met the breedbefore and knew at once that it was not his kind.

“Hello!  How’s things up Dawson-way?” queriedthe foremost, passing his eye over Donald and Davy and settling it uponthe Kid.

A first meeting in the wilderness is not characterized by formality. The talk quickly became general, and the news of the Upper and LowerCountries was swapped equitably back and forth.  But the littlethe newcomers had was soon over with, for they had wintered at Minook,a thousand miles below, where nothing was doing.  Montana Kid,however, was fresh from Salt Water, and they annexed him while theypitched camp, swamping him with questions concerning the outside, fromwhich they had been cut off for a twelvemonth.

A shrieking split, suddenly lifting itself above the general uproaron the river, drew everybody to the bank.  The surface water hadincreased in depth, and the ice, assailed from above and below, wasstruggling to tear itself from the grip of the shores.  Fissuresreverberated into life before their eyes, and the air was filled withmultitudinous crackling, crisp and sharp, like the sound that goes upon a clear day from the firing line.

From up the river two men were racing a dog team toward them on anuncovered stretch of ice.  But even as they looked, the pair struckthe water and began to flounder through.  Behind, where their feethad sped the moment before, the ice broke up and turned turtle. Through this opening the river rushed out upon them to their waists,burying the sled and swinging the dogs off at right angles in a drowningtangle.  But the men stopped their flight to give the animals afighting chance, and they groped hurriedly in the cold confusion, slashingat the detaining traces with their sheath-knives.  Then they foughttheir way to the bank through swirling water and grinding ice, where,foremost in leaping to the rescue among the jarring fragments, was theKid.

“Why, blime me, if it ain’t Montana Kid!” exclaimedone of the men whom the Kid was just placing upon his feet at the topof the bank.  He wore the scarlet tunic of the Mounted Police andjocularly raised his right hand in salute.

“Got a warrant for you, Kid,” he continued, drawing abedraggled paper from his breast pocket, “an’ I ’opeas you’ll come along peaceable.”

Montana Kid looked at the chaotic river and shrugged his shoulders,and the policeman, following his glance, smiled.

“Where are the dogs?” his companion asked.

“Gentlemen,” interrupted the policeman, “this ’eremate o’ mine is Jack Sutherland, owner of Twenty-Two Eldorado—”

“Not Sutherland of ’92?” broke in the snow-blindedMinook man, groping feebly toward him.

“The same.”  Sutherland gripped his hand.

“And you?”

“Oh, I’m after your time, but I remember you in my freshmanyear,—you were doing P. G. work then.  Boys,” he called,turning half about, “this is Sutherland, Jack Sutherland, erstwhilefull-back on the ’Varsity.  Come up, you gold-chasers, andfall upon him!  Sutherland, this is Greenwich,—played quartertwo seasons back.”

“Yes, I read of the game,” Sutherland said, shaking hands. “And I remember that big run of yours for the first touchdown.”

Greenwich flushed darkly under his tanned skin and awkwardly maderoom for another.

“And here’s Matthews,—Berkeley man.  And we’vegot some Eastern cracks knocking about, too.  Come up, you Princetonmen!  Come up!  This is Sutherland, Jack Sutherland!”

Then they fell upon him heavily, carried him into camp, and suppliedhim with dry clothes and numerous mugs of black tea.

Donald and Davy, overlooked, had retired to their nightly game ofcrib.  Montana Kid followed them with the policeman.

“Here, get into some dry togs,” he said, pulling themfrom out his scanty kit.  “Guess you’ll have to bunkwith me, too.”

“Well, I say, you’re a good ’un,” the policemanremarked as he pulled on the other man’s socks. “Sorry I’vegot to take you back to Dawson, but I only ’ope they won’tbe ’ard on you.”

“Not so fast.”  The Kid smiled curiously. “We ain’t under way yet.  When I go I’m goingdown river, and I guess the chances are you’ll go along.”

“Not if I know myself—”

“Come on outside, and I’ll show you, then.  Thesedamn fools,” thrusting a thumb over his shoulder at the two Scots,“played smash when they located here.  Fill your pipe, first—thisis pretty good plug—and enjoy yourself while you can.  Youhaven’t many smokes before you.”

The policeman went with him wonderingly, while Donald and Davy droppedtheir cards and followed.  The Minook men noticed Montana Kid pointingnow up the river, now down, and came over.

“What’s up?” Sutherland demanded.

“Nothing much.”  Nonchalance sat well upon the Kid. “Just a case of raising hell and putting a chunk under. See that bend down there?  That’s where she’ll jammillions of tons of ice.  Then she’ll jam in the bends upabove, millions of tons.  Upper jam breaks first, lower jam holds,pouf!”  He dramatically swept the island with his hand. “Millions of tons,” he added reflectively.

“And what of the woodpiles?” Davy questioned.

The Kid repeated his sweeping gestures and Davy wailed, “Thelabor of months!  It canna be!  Na, na, lad, it canna be. I doot not it’s a jowk.  Ay, say that it is,” he appealed.

But when the Kid laughed harshly and turned on his heel, Davy flunghimself upon the piles and began frantically to toss the cordwood backfrom the bank.

“Lend a hand, Donald!” he cried.  “Can yeno lend a hand?  ’T is the labor of months and the passagehome!”

Donald caught him by the arm and shook him, but he tore free. “Did ye no hear, man?  Millions of tons, and the island shallbe sweepit clean.”

“Straighten yersel’ up, man,” said Donald. “It’s a bit fashed ye are.”

But Davy fell upon the cordwood.  Donald stalked back to thecabin, buckled on his money belt and Davy’s, and went out to thepoint of the island where the ground was highest and where a huge pinetowered above its fellows.

The men before the cabin heard the ringing of his axe and smiled. Greenwich returned from across the island with the word that they werepenned in.  It was impossible to cross the back-channel. The blind Minook man began to sing, and the rest joined in with—

“Wonder if it’s true?
Does it seem so to you?
Seems to me he’s lying—
Oh, I wonder if it’s true?”

“It’s ay sinfu’,” Davy moaned, lifting hishead and watching them dance in the slanting rays of the sun. “And my guid wood a’ going to waste.”

“Oh, I wonder if it’s true,”

was flaunted back.

The noise of the river ceased suddenly.  A strange calm wrappedabout them.  The ice had ripped from the shores and was floatinghigher on the surface of the river, which was rising.  Up it came,swift and silent, for twenty feet, till the huge cakes rubbed softlyagainst the crest of the bank.  The tail of the island, being lower,was overrun.  Then, without effort, the white flood started down-stream. But the sound increased with the momentum, and soon the whole islandwas shaking and quivering with the shock of the grinding bergs. Under pressure, the mighty cakes, weighing hundreds of tons, were shotinto the air like peas.  The frigid anarchy increased its riot,and the men had to shout into one another’s ears to be heard. Occasionally the racket from the back channel could be heard above thetumult.  The island shuddered with the impact of an enormous cakewhich drove in squarely upon its point.  It ripped a score of pinesout by the roots, then swinging around and over, lifted its muddy basefrom the bottom of the river and bore down upon the cabin, slicing thebank and trees away like a gigantic knife.  It seemed barely tograze the corner of the cabin, but the cribbed logs tilted up like matches,and the structure, like a toy house, fell backward in ruin.

“The labor of months!  The labor of months, and the passagehome!” Davy wailed, while Montana Kid and the policeman draggedhim backward from the woodpiles.

“You’ll ’ave plenty o’ hoppertunity all ingood time for yer passage ’ome,” the policeman growled,clouting him alongside the head and sending him flying into safety.

Donald, from the top of the pine, saw the devastating berg sweepaway the cordwood and disappear down-stream.  As though satisfiedwith this damage, the ice-flood quickly dropped to its old level andbegan to slacken its pace.  The noise likewise eased down, andthe others could hear Donald shouting from his eyrie to look down-stream. As forecast, the jam had come among the islands in the bend, and theice was piling up in a great barrier which stretched from shore to shore. The river came to a standstill, and the water finding no outlet beganto rise.  It rushed up till the island was awash, the men splashingaround up to their knees, and the dogs swimming to the ruins of thecabin.  At this stage it abruptly became stationary, with no perceptiblerise or fall.

Montana Kid shook his head.  “It’s jammed above,and no more’s coming down.”

“And the gamble is, which jam will break first,” Sutherlandadded.

“Exactly,” the Kid affirmed.  “If the upperjam breaks first, we haven’t a chance.  Nothing will standbefore it.”

The Minook men turned away in silence, but soon “Rumsky Ho”floated upon the quiet air, followed by “The Orange and the Black.” Room was made in the circle for Montana Kid and the policeman, and theyquickly caught the ringing rhythm of the choruses as they drifted onfrom song to song.

“Oh, Donald, will ye no lend a hand?” Davy sobbed atthe foot of the tree into which his comrade had climbed.  “Oh,Donald, man, will ye no lend a hand?” he sobbed again, his handsbleeding from vain attempts to scale the slippery trunk.

But Donald had fixed his gaze up river, and now his voice rang out,vibrant with fear:—

“God Almichty, here she comes!”

Standing knee-deep in the icy water, the Minook men, with MontanaKid and the policeman, gripped hands and raised their voices in theterrible, “Battle Hymn of the Republic.”  But the wordswere drowned in the advancing roar.

And to Donald was vouchsafed a sight such as no man may see and live. A great wall of white flung itself upon the island.  Trees, dogs,men, were blotted out, as though the hand of God had wiped the faceof nature clean.  This much he saw, then swayed an instant longerin his lofty perch and hurtled far out into the frozen hell.

THE SCORN OF WOMEN

I

Once Freda and Mrs. Eppingwell clashed.

Now Freda was a Greek girl and a dancer.  At least she purportedto be Greek; but this was doubted by many, for her classic face hadovermuch strength in it, and the tides of hell which rose in her eyesmade at rare moments her ethnology the more dubious.  To a few—men—thissight had been vouchsafed, and though long years may have passed, theyhave not forgotten, nor will they ever forget.  She never talkedof herself, so that it were well to let it go down that when in repose,expurgated, Greek she certainly was.  Her furs were the most magnificentin all the country from Chilcoot to St. Michael’s, and her namewas common on the lips of men.  But Mrs. Eppingwell was the wifeof a captain; also a social constellation of the first magnitude, thepath of her orbit marking the most select coterie in Dawson,—acoterie captioned by the profane as the “official clique.” Sitka Charley had travelled trail with her once, when famine drew tightand a man’s life was less than a cup of flour, and his judgmentplaced her above all women.  Sitka Charley was an Indian; his criteriawere primitive; but his word was flat, and his verdict a hall-mark inevery camp under the circle.

These two women were man-conquering, man-subduing machines, eachin her own way, and their ways were different.  Mrs. Eppingwellruled in her own house, and at the Barracks, where were younger sonsgalore, to say nothing of the chiefs of the police, the executive, andthe judiciary.  Freda ruled down in the town; but the men she ruledwere the same who functioned socially at the Barracks or were fed teaand canned preserves at the hand of Mrs. Eppingwell in her hillsidecabin of rough-hewn logs.  Each knew the other existed; but theirlives were apart as the Poles, and while they must have heard straybits of news and were curious, they were never known to ask a question. And there would have been no trouble had not a free lance in the shapeof the model-woman come into the land on the first ice, with a spankingdog-team and a cosmopolitan reputation.  Loraine Lisznayi—alliterative,dramatic, and Hungarian—precipitated the strife, and because ofher Mrs. Eppingwell left her hillside and invaded Freda’s domain,and Freda likewise went up from the town to spread confusion and embarrassmentat the Governor’s ball.

All of which may be ancient history so far as the Klondike is concerned,but very few, even in Dawson, know the inner truth of the matter; norbeyond those few are there any fit to measure the wife of the captainor the Greek dancer.  And that all are now permitted to understand,let honor be accorded Sitka Charley.  From his lips fell the mainfacts in the screed herewith presented.  It ill befits that Fredaherself should have waxed confidential to a mere scribbler of words,or that Mrs. Eppingwell made mention of the things which happened. They may have spoken, but it is unlikely.

II

Floyd Vanderlip was a strong man, apparently.  Hard work andhard grub had no terrors for him, as his early history in the countryattested.  In danger he was a lion, and when he held in check halfa thousand starving men, as he once did, it was remarked that no coolereye ever took the glint of sunshine on a rifle-sight.  He had butone weakness, and even that, rising from out his strength, was of anegative sort.  His parts were strong, but they lacked co-ordination. Now it happened that while his centre of amativeness was pronounced,it had lain mute and passive during the years he lived on moose andsalmon and chased glowing Eldorados over chill divides.  But whenhe finally blazed the corner-post and centre-stakes on one of the richestKlondike claims, it began to quicken; and when he took his place insociety, a full-fledged Bonanza King, it awoke and took charge of him. He suddenly recollected a girl in the States, and it came to him quiteforcibly, not only that she might be waiting for him, but that a wifewas a very pleasant acquisition for a man who lived some several degreesnorth of 53.  So he wrote an appropriate note, enclosed a letterof credit generous enough to cover all expenses, including trousseauand chaperon, and addressed it to one Flossie.  Flossie? One could imagine the rest.  However, after that he built a comfortablecabin on his claim, bought another in Dawson, and broke the news tohis friends.

And just here is where the lack of co-ordination came into play. The waiting was tedious, and having been long denied, the amative elementcould not brook further delay.  Flossie was coming; but LoraineLisznayi was here.  And not only was Loraine Lisznayi here, buther cosmopolitan reputation was somewhat the worse for wear, and shewas not exactly so young as when she posed in the studios of artistqueens and received at her door the cards of cardinals and princes. Also, her finances were unhealthy.  Having run the gamut in hertime, she was now not averse to trying conclusions with a Bonanza Kingwhose wealth was such that he could not guess it within six figures. Like a wise soldier casting about after years of service for a comfortablebillet, she had come into the Northland to be married.  So, oneday, her eyes flashed up into Floyd Vanderlip’s as he was buyingtable linen for Flossie in the P. C. Company’s store, and thething was settled out of hand.

When a man is free much may go unquestioned, which, should he berash enough to cumber himself with domestic ties, society will instantlychallenge.  Thus it was with Floyd Vanderlip.  Flossie wascoming, and a low buzz went up when Loraine Lisznayi rode down the mainstreet behind his wolf-dogs.  She accompanied the lady reporterof the “Kansas City Star” when photographs were taken ofhis Bonanza properties, and watched the genesis of a six-column article. At that time they were dined royally in Flossie’s cabin, on Flossie’stable linen.  Likewise there were comings and goings, and junketings,all perfectly proper, by the way, which caused the men to say sharpthings and the women to be spiteful.  Only Mrs. Eppingwell didnot hear.  The distant hum of wagging tongues rose faintly, butshe was prone to believe good of people and to close her ears to evil;so she paid no heed.

Not so with Freda.  She had no cause to love men, but, by somestrange alchemy of her nature, her heart went out to women,—towomen whom she had less cause to love.  And her heart went outto Flossie, even then travelling the Long Trail and facing into thebitter North to meet a man who might not wait for her.  A shrinking,clinging sort of a girl, Freda pictured her, with weak mouth and prettypouting lips, blow-away sun-kissed hair, and eyes full of the merryshallows and the lesser joys of life.  But she also pictured Flossie,face nose-strapped and frost-rimed, stumbling wearily behind the dogs. Wherefore she smiled, dancing one night, upon Floyd Vanderlip.

Few men are so constituted that they may receive the smile of Fredaunmoved; nor among them can Floyd Vanderlip be accounted.  Thegrace he had found with the model-woman had caused him to re-measurehimself, and by the favor in which he now stood with the Greek dancerhe felt himself doubly a man.  There were unknown qualities anddepths in him, evidently, which they perceived.  He did not knowexactly what those qualities and depths were, but he had a hazy ideathat they were there somewhere, and of them was bred a great pride inhimself.  A man who could force two women such as these to lookupon him a second time, was certainly a most remarkable man.  Someday, when he had the time, he would sit down and analyze his strength;but now, just now, he would take what the gods had given him. And a thin little thought began to lift itself, and he fell to wonderingwhatever under the sun he had seen in Flossie, and to regret exceedinglythat he had sent for her.  Of course, Freda was out of the running. His dumps were the richest on Bonanza Creek, and they were many, whilehe was a man of responsibility and position.  But Loraine Lisznayi—shewas just the woman.  Her life had been large; she could do thehonors of his establishment and give tone to his dollars.

But Freda smiled, and continued to smile, till he came to spend muchtime with her.  When she, too, rode down the street behind hiswolf-dogs, the model-woman found food for thought, and the next timethey were together dazzled him with her princes and cardinals and personallittle anecdotes of courts and kings.  She also showed him daintymissives, superscribed, “My dear Loraine,” and ended “Mostaffectionately yours,” and signed by the given name of a reallive queen on a throne.  And he marvelled in his heart that thegreat woman should deign to waste so much as a moment upon him. But she played him cleverly, making flattering contrasts and comparisonsbetween him and the noble phantoms she drew mainly from her fancy, tillhe went away dizzy with self-delight and sorrowing for the world whichhad been denied him so long.  Freda was a more masterful woman. If she flattered, no one knew it.  Should she stoop, the stoopwere unobserved.  If a man felt she thought well of him, so subtlywas the feeling conveyed that he could not for the life of him say whyor how.  So she tightened her grip upon Floyd Vanderlip and rodedaily behind his dogs.

And just here is where the mistake occurred.  The buzz roseloudly and more definitely, coupled now with the name of the dancer,and Mrs. Eppingwell heard.  She, too, thought of Flossie liftingher moccasined feet through the endless hours, and Floyd Vanderlip wasinvited up the hillside to tea, and invited often.  This quitetook his breath away, and he became drunken with appreciation of himself. Never was man so maltreated.  His soul had become a thing for whichthree women struggled, while a fourth was on the way to claim it. And three such women!

But Mrs. Eppingwell and the mistake she made.  She spoke ofthe affair, tentatively, to Sitka Charley, who had sold dogs to theGreek girl.  But no names were mentioned.  The nearest approachto it was when Mrs. Eppingwell said, “This—er—horridwoman,” and Sitka Charley, with the model-woman strong in histhoughts, had echoed, “—er—horrid woman.” And he agreed with her, that it was a wicked thing for a woman to comebetween a man and the girl he was to marry.  “A mere girl,Charley,” she said, “I am sure she is.  And she iscoming into a strange country without a friend when she gets here. We must do something.”  Sitka Charley promised his help,and went away thinking what a wicked woman this Loraine Lisznayi mustbe, also what noble women Mrs. Eppingwell and Freda were to interestthemselves in the welfare of the unknown Flossie.

Now Mrs. Eppingwell was open as the day.  To Sitka Charley,who took her once past the Hills of Silence, belongs the glory of havingmemorialized her clear-searching eyes, her clear-ringing voice, andher utter downright frankness.  Her lips had a way of stiffeningto command, and she was used to coming straight to the point. Having taken Floyd Vanderlip’s measurement, she did not dare thiswith him; but she was not afraid to go down into the town to Freda. And down she went, in the bright light of day, to the house of the dancer. She was above silly tongues, as was her husband, the captain. She wished to see this woman and to speak with her, nor was she awareof any reason why she should not.  So she stood in the snow atthe Greek girl’s door, with the frost at sixty below, and parleyedwith the waiting-maid for a full five minutes.  She had also thepleasure of being turned away from that door, and of going back up thehill, wroth at heart for the indignity which had been put upon her. “Who was this woman that she should refuse to see her?”she asked herself.  One would think it the other way around, andshe herself but a dancing girl denied at the door of the wife of a captain. As it was, she knew, had Freda come up the hill to her,—no matterwhat the errand,—she would have made her welcome at her fire,and they would have sat there as two women, and talked, merely as twowomen.  She had overstepped convention and lowered herself, butshe had thought it different with the women down in the town. And she was ashamed that she had laid herself open to such dishonor,and her thoughts of Freda were unkind.

Not that Freda deserved this.  Mrs. Eppingwell had descendedto meet her who was without caste, while she, strong in the traditionsof her own earlier status, had not permitted it.  She could worshipsuch a woman, and she would have asked no greater joy than to have hadher into the cabin and sat with her, just sat with her, for an hour. But her respect for Mrs. Eppingwell, and her respect for herself, whowas beyond respect, had prevented her doing that which she most desired. Though not quite recovered from the recent visit of Mrs. McFee, thewife of the minister, who had descended upon her in a whirlwind of exhortationand brimstone, she could not imagine what had prompted the present visit. She was not aware of any particular wrong she had done, and surely thiswoman who waited at the door was not concerned with the welfare of hersoul.  Why had she come?  For all the curiosity she couldnot help but feel, she steeled herself in the pride of those who arewithout pride, and trembled in the inner room like a maid on the firstcaress of a lover.  If Mrs. Eppingwell suffered going up the hill,she too suffered, lying face downward on the bed, dry-eyed, dry-mouthed,dumb.

Mrs. Eppingwell’s knowledge of human nature was great. She aimed at universality.  She had found it easy to step fromthe civilized and contemplate things from the barbaric aspect. She could comprehend certain primal and analogous characteristics ina hungry wolf-dog or a starving man, and predicate lines of action tobe pursued by either under like conditions.  To her, a woman wasa woman, whether garbed in purple or the rags of the gutter; Freda wasa woman.  She would not have been surprised had she been takeninto the dancer’s cabin and encountered on common ground; norsurprised had she been taken in and flaunted in prideless arrogance. But to be treated as she had been treated, was unexpected and disappointing. Ergo, she had not caught Freda’s point of view.  And thiswas good.  There are some points of view which cannot be gainedsave through much travail and personal crucifixion, and it were wellfor the world that its Mrs. Eppingwells should, in certain ways, fallshort of universality.  One cannot understand defilement withoutlaying hands to pitch, which is very sticky, while there be plenty willingto undertake the experiment.  All of which is of small concern,beyond the fact that it gave Mrs. Eppingwell ground for grievance, andbred for her a greater love in the Greek girl’s heart.

III

And in this way things went along for a month,—Mrs. Eppingwellstriving to withhold the man from the Greek dancer’s blandishmentsagainst the time of Flossie’s coming; Flossie lessening the mileseach day on the dreary trail; Freda pitting her strength against themodel-woman; the model-woman straining every nerve to land the prize;and the man moving through it all like a flying shuttle, very proudof himself, whom he believed to be a second Don Juan.

It was nobody’s fault except the man’s that Loraine Lisznayiat last landed him.  The way of a man with a maid may be too wonderfulto know, but the way of a woman with a man passeth all conception; whencethe prophet were indeed unwise who would dare forecast Floyd Vanderlip’scourse twenty-four hours in advance.  Perhaps the model-woman’sattraction lay in that to the eye she was a handsome animal; perhapsshe fascinated him with her old-world talk of palaces and princes; leastwiseshe dazzled him whose life had been worked out in uncultured roughness,and he at last agreed to her suggestion of a run down the river anda marriage at Forty Mile.  In token of his intention he boughtdogs from Sitka Charley,—more than one sled is necessary whena woman like Loraine Lisznayi takes to the trail, and then went up thecreek to give orders for the superintendence of his Bonanza mines duringhis absence.

He had given it out, rather vaguely, that he needed the animals forsledding lumber from the mill to his sluices, and right here is whereSitka Charley demonstrated his fitness.  He agreed to furnish dogson a given date, but no sooner had Floyd Vanderlip turned his toes up-creek,than Charley hied himself away in perturbation to Loraine Lisznayi. Did she know where Mr. Vanderlip had gone?  He had agreed to supplythat gentleman with a big string of dogs by a certain time; but thatshameless one, the German trader Meyers, had been buying up the brutesand skimped the market.  It was very necessary he should see Mr.Vanderlip, because of the shameless one he would be all of a week behindhandin filling the contract.  She did know where he had gone? Up-creek?  Good!  He would strike out after him at once andinform him of the unhappy delay.  Did he understand her to saythat Mr. Vanderlip needed the dogs on Friday night? that he must havethem by that time?  It was too bad, but it was the fault of theshameless one who had bid up the prices.  They had jumped fiftydollars per head, and should he buy on the rising market he would loseby the contract.  He wondered if Mr. Vanderlip would be willingto meet the advance.  She knew he would?  Being Mr. Vanderlip’sfriend, she would even meet the difference herself?  And he wasto say nothing about it?  She was kind to so look to his interests. Friday night, did she say?  Good!  The dogs would be on hand.

An hour later, Freda knew the elopement was to be pulled off on Fridaynight; also, that Floyd Vanderlip had gone up-creek, and her hands weretied.  On Friday morning, Devereaux, the official courier, bearingdespatches from the Governor, arrived over the ice.  Besides thedespatches, he brought news of Flossie.  He had passed her campat Sixty Mile; humans and dogs were in good condition; and she woulddoubtless be in on the morrow.  Mrs. Eppingwell experienced a greatrelief on hearing this; Floyd Vanderlip was safe up-creek, and ere theGreek girl could again lay hands upon him, his bride would be on theground.  But that afternoon her big St. Bernard, valiantly defendingher front stoop, was downed by a foraging party of trail-starved Malemutes. He was buried beneath the hirsute mass for about thirty seconds, whenrescued by a couple of axes and as many stout men.  Had he remaineddown two minutes, the chances were large that he would have been roughlyapportioned and carried away in the respective bellies of the attackingparty; but as it was, it was a mere case of neat and expeditious mangling. Sitka Charley came to repair the damages, especially a right fore-pawwhich had inadvertently been left a fraction of a second too long insome other dog’s mouth.  As he put on his mittens to go,the talk turned upon Flossie and in natural sequence passed on to the—“erhorrid woman.”  Sitka Charley remarked incidentally thatshe intended jumping out down river that night with Floyd Vanderlip,and further ventured the information that accidents were very likelyat that time of year.

So Mrs. Eppingwell’s thoughts of Freda were unkinder than ever. She wrote a note, addressed it to the man in question, and intrustedit to a messenger who lay in wait at the mouth of Bonanza Creek. Another man, bearing a note from Freda, also waited at that strategicpoint.  So it happened that Floyd Vanderlip, riding his sled merrilydown with the last daylight, received the notes together.  He toreFreda’s across.  No, he would not go to see her.  Therewere greater things afoot that night.  Besides, she was out ofthe running.  But Mrs. Eppingwell!  He would observe her lastwish,—or rather, the last wish it would be possible for him toobserve,—and meet her at the Governor’s ball to hear whatshe had to say.  From the tone of the writing it was evidentlyimportant; perhaps— He smiled fondly, but failed to shape thethought.  Confound it all, what a lucky fellow he was with thewomen any way!  Scattering her letter to the frost, he mushedthe dogs into a swinging lope and headed for his cabin.  It wasto be a masquerade, and he had to dig up the costume used at the OperaHouse a couple of months before.  Also, he had to shave and toeat.  Thus it was that he, alone of all interested, was unawareof Flossie’s proximity.

“Have them down to the water-hole off the hospital, at midnight,sharp.  Don’t fail me,” he said to Sitka Charley, whodropped in with the advice that only one dog was lacking to fill thebill, and that that one would be forthcoming in an hour or so. “Here’s the sack.  There’s the scales. Weigh out your own dust and don’t bother me.  I’vegot to get ready for the ball.”

Sitka Charley weighed out his pay and departed, carrying with hima letter to Loraine Lisznayi, the contents of which he correctly imaginedto refer to a meeting at the water-hole of the hospital, at midnight,sharp.

IV

Twice Freda sent messengers up to the Barracks, where the dance wasin full swing, and as often they came back without answers.  Thenshe did what only Freda could do—put on her furs, masked her face,and went up herself to the Governor’s ball.  Now there happenedto be a custom—not an original one by any means—to whichthe official clique had long since become addicted.  It was a verywise custom, for it furnished protection to the womankind of the officialsand gave greater selectness to their revels.  Whenever a masqueradewas given, a committee was chosen, the sole function of which was tostand by the door and peep beneath each and every mask.  Most mendid not clamor to be placed upon this committee, while the very oneswho least desired the honor were the ones whose services were most required. The chaplain was not well enough acquainted with the faces and placesof the townspeople to know whom to admit and whom to turn away. In like condition were the several other worthy gentlemen who wouldhave asked nothing better than to so serve.  To fill the covetedplace, Mrs. McFee would have risked her chance of salvation, and did,one night, when a certain trio passed in under her guns and muddledthings considerably before their identity was discovered.  Thereafteronly the fit were chosen, and very ungracefully did they respond.

On this particular night Prince was at the door.  Pressure hadbeen brought to bear, and he had not yet recovered from amaze at hishaving consented to undertake a task which bid fair to lose him halfhis friends, merely for the sake of pleasing the other half.  Threeor four of the men he had refused were men whom he had known on creekand trail,—good comrades, but not exactly eligible for so selectan affair.  He was canvassing the expediency of resigning the postthere and then, when a woman tripped in under the light.  Freda! He could swear it by the furs, did he not know that poise of head sowell.  The last one to expect in all the world.  He had givenher better judgment than to thus venture the ignominy of refusal, or,if she passed, the scorn of women.  He shook his head, withoutscrutiny; he knew her too well to be mistaken.  But she pressedcloser.  She lifted the black silk ribbon and as quickly loweredit again.  For one flashing, eternal second he looked upon herface.  It was not for nothing, the saying which had arisen in thecountry, that Freda played with men as a child with bubbles.  Nota word was spoken.  Prince stepped aside, and a few moments latermight have been seen resigning, with warm incoherence, the post to whichhe had been unfaithful.

* * * *

A woman, flexible of form, slender, yet rhythmic of strength in everymovement, now pausing with this group, now scanning that, urged a restlessand devious course among the revellers.  Men recognized the furs,and marvelled,—men who should have served upon the door committee;but they were not prone to speech.  Not so with the women. They had better eyes for the lines of figure and tricks of carriage,and they knew this form to be one with which they were unfamiliar; likewisethe furs.  Mrs. McFee, emerging from the supper-room where allwas in readiness, caught one flash of the blazing, questing eyes throughthe silken mask-slits, and received a start.  She tried to recollectwhere she had seen the like, and a vivid picture was recalled of a certainproud and rebellious sinner whom she had once encountered on a fruitlesserrand for the Lord.

So it was that the good woman took the trail in hot and righteouswrath, a trail which brought her ultimately into the company of Mrs.Eppingwell and Floyd Vanderlip.  Mrs. Eppingwell had just foundthe opportunity to talk with the man.  She had determined, nowthat Flossie was so near at hand, to proceed directly to the point,and an incisive little ethical discourse was titillating on the endof her tongue, when the couple became three.  She noted, and pleasurably,the faintly foreign accent of the “Beg pardon” with whichthe furred woman prefaced her immediate appropriation of Floyd Vanderlip;and she courteously bowed her permission for them to draw a little apart.

Then it was that Mrs. McFee’s righteous hand descended, andaccompanying it in its descent was a black mask torn from a startledwoman.  A wonderful face and brilliant eyes were exposed to thequiet curiosity of those who looked that way, and they were everybody. Floyd Vanderlip was rather confused.  The situation demanded instantaction on the part of a man who was not beyond his depth, while hehardly knew where he was.  He stared helplessly about him. Mrs. Eppingwell was perplexed.  She could not comprehend. An explanation was forthcoming, somewhere, and Mrs. McFee was equalto it.

“Mrs. Eppingwell,” and her Celtic voice rose shrilly,“it is with great pleasure I make you acquainted with Freda Moloof,MissFreda Moloof, as I understand.”

Freda involuntarily turned.  With her own face bared, she feltas in a dream, naked, upon her turned the clothed features and gleamingeyes of the masked circle.  It seemed, almost, as though a hungrywolf-pack girdled her, ready to drag her down.  It might chancethat some felt pity for her, she thought, and at the thought, hardened. She would by far prefer their scorn.  Strong of heart was she,this woman, and though she had hunted the prey into the midst of thepack, Mrs. Eppingwell or no Mrs. Eppingwell, she could not forego thekill.

But here Mrs. Eppingwell did a strange thing.  So this, at last,was Freda, she mused, the dancer and the destroyer of men; the womanfrom whose door she had been turned.  And she, too, felt the imperiouscreature’s nakedness as though it were her own.  Perhapsit was this, her Saxon disinclination to meet a disadvantaged foe, perhaps,forsooth, that it might give her greater strength in the struggle forthe man, and it might have been a little of both; but be that as itmay, she did do this strange thing.  When Mrs. McFee’s thinvoice, vibrant with malice, had raised, and Freda turned involuntarily,Mrs. Eppingwell also turned, removed her mask, and inclined her headin acknowledgment.

It was another flashing, eternal second, during which these two womenregarded each other.  The one, eyes blazing, meteoric; at bay,aggressive; suffering in advance and resenting in advance the scornand ridicule and insult she had thrown herself open to; a beautiful,burning, bubbling lava cone of flesh and spirit.  And the other,calm-eyed, cool-browed, serene; strong in her own integrity, with faithin herself, thoroughly at ease; dispassionate, imperturbable; a figurechiselled from some cold marble quarry.  Whatever gulf there mightexist, she recognized it not.  No bridging, no descending; herattitude was that of perfect equality.  She stood tranquilly onthe ground of their common womanhood.  And this maddened Freda. Not so, had she been of lesser breed; but her soul’s plummet knewnot the bottomless, and she could follow the other into the deeps ofher deepest depths and read her aright.  “Why do you notdraw back your garment’s hem?” she was fain to cry out,all in that flashing, dazzling second.  “Spit upon me, revileme, and it were greater mercy than this!”  She trembled. Her nostrils distended and quivered.  But she drew herself in check,returned the inclination of head, and turned to the man.

“Come with me, Floyd,” she said simply.  “Iwant you now.”

“What the—” he began explosively, and quit as suddenly,discreet enough to not round it off.  Where the deuce had his witsgone, anyway?  Was ever a man more foolishly placed?  He gurgleddeep down in his throat and high up in the roof of his mouth, heavedas one his big shoulders and his indecision, and glared appealinglyat the two women.

“I beg pardon, just a moment, but may I speak first with Mr.Vanderlip?” Mrs. Eppingwell’s voice, though flute-like andlow, predicated will in its every cadence.

The man looked his gratitude.  He, at least, was willing enough.

“I’m very sorry,” from Freda.  “Thereisn’t time.  He must come at once.”  The conventionalphrases dropped easily from her lips, but she could not forbear to smileinwardly at their inadequacy and weakness.  She would much ratherhave shrieked.

“But, Miss Moloof, who are you that you may possess yourselfof Mr. Vanderlip and command his actions?”

Whereupon relief brightened his face, and the man beamed his approval. Trust Mrs. Eppingwell to drag him clear.  Freda had met her matchthis time.

“I—I—” Freda hesitated, and then her femininemind putting on its harness—“and who are you to ask thisquestion?”

“I?  I am Mrs. Eppingwell, and—”

“There!” the other broke in sharply.  “Youare the wife of a captain, who is therefore your husband.  I amonly a dancing girl.  What do you with this man?”

“Such unprecedented behavior!” Mrs. McFee ruffled herselfand cleared for action, but Mrs. Eppingwell shut her mouth with a lookand developed a new attack.

“Since Miss Moloof appears to hold claims upon you, Mr. Vanderlip,and is in too great haste to grant me a few seconds of your time, Iam forced to appeal directly to you.  May I speak with you, alone,and now?”

Mrs. McFee’s jaws brought together with a snap.  Thatsettled the disgraceful situation.

“Why, er—that is, certainly,” the man stammered. “Of course, of course,” growing more effusive at the prospectof deliverance.

Men are only gregarious vertebrates, domesticated and evolved, andthe chances are large that it was because the Greek girl had in hertime dealt with wilder masculine beasts of the human sort; for she turnedupon the man with hell’s tides aflood in her blazing eyes, muchas a bespangled lady upon a lion which has suddenly imbibed the pernicioustheory that he is a free agent.  The beast in him fawned to thelash.

“That is to say, ah, afterward.  To-morrow, Mrs. Eppingwell;yes, to-morrow.  That is what I meant.”  He solacedhimself with the fact, should he remain, that more embarrassment awaited. Also, he had an engagement which he must keep shortly, down by the water-holeoff the hospital.  Ye gods! he had never given Freda credit! Wasn’t she magnificent!

“I’ll thank you for my mask, Mrs. McFee.”

That lady, for the nonce speechless, turned over the article in question.

“Good-night, Miss Moloof.”  Mrs. Eppingwell wasroyal even in defeat.

Freda reciprocated, though barely downing the impulse to clasp theother’s knees and beg forgiveness,—no, not forgiveness,but something, she knew not what, but which she none the less greatlydesired.

The man was for her taking his arm; but she had made her kill inthe midst of the pack, and that which led kings to drag their vanquishedat the chariot-tail, led her toward the door alone, Floyd Vanderlipclose at heel and striving to re-establish his mental equilibrium.

V

It was bitter cold.  As the trail wound, a quarter of a milebrought them to the dancer’s cabin, by which time her moist breathhad coated her face frostily, while his had massed his heavy mustachetill conversation was painful.  By the greenish light of the auroraborealis, the quicksilver showed itself frozen hard in the bulb of thethermometer which hung outside the door.  A thousand dogs, in pitifulchorus, wailed their ancient wrongs and claimed mercy from the unheedingstars.  Not a breath of air was moving.  For them there wasno shelter from the cold, no shrewd crawling to leeward in snug nooks. The frost was everywhere, and they lay in the open, ever and anon stretchingtheir trail-stiffened muscles and lifting the long wolf-howl.

They did not talk at first, the man and the woman.  While themaid helped Freda off with her wraps, Floyd Vanderlip replenished thefire; and by the time the maid had withdrawn to an inner room, his headover the stove, he was busily thawing out his burdened upper lip. After that he rolled a cigarette and watched her lazily through thefragrant eddies.  She stole a glance at the clock.  It lackedhalf an hour of midnight.  How was she to hold him?  Was heangry for that which she had done?  What was his mood?  Whatmood of hers could meet his best?  Not that she doubted herself. No, no.  Hold him she could, if need be at pistol point, till SitkaCharley’s work was done, and Devereaux’s too.

There were many ways, and with her knowledge of this her contemptfor the man increased.  As she leaned her head on her hand, a fleetingvision of her own girlhood, with its mournful climacteric and tragicebb, was vouchsafed her, and for the moment she was minded to read hima lesson from it.  God! it must be less than human brute who couldnot be held by such a tale, told as she could tell it, but—bah! He was not worth it, nor worth the pain to her.  The candle waspositioned just right, and even as she thought of these things sacredlyshameful to her, he was pleasuring in the transparent pinkiness of herear.  She noted his eye, took the cue, and turned her head tillthe clean profile of the face was presented.  Not the least wasthat profile among her virtues.  She could not help the lines uponwhich she had been builded, and they were very good; but she had longsince learned those lines, and though little they needed, was not aboveadvantaging them to the best of her ability.  The candle beganto flicker.  She could not do anything ungracefully, but that didnot prevent her improving upon nature a bit, when she reached forthand deftly snuffed the red wick from the midst of the yellow flame. Again she rested head on hand, this time regarding the man thoughtfully,and any man is pleased when thus regarded by a pretty woman.

She was in little haste to begin.  If dalliance were to hisliking, it was to hers.  To him it was very comfortable, soothinghis lungs with nicotine and gazing upon her.  It was snug and warmhere, while down by the water-hole began a trail which he would soonbe hitting through the chilly hours.  He felt he ought to be angrywith Freda for the scene she had created, but somehow he didn’tfeel a bit wrathful.  Like as not there wouldn’t have beenany scene if it hadn’t been for that McFee woman.  If hewere the Governor, he would put a poll tax of a hundred ounces a quarterupon her and her kind and all gospel sharks and sky pilots.  Andcertainly Freda had behaved very ladylike, held her own with Mrs. Eppingwellbesides.  Never gave the girl credit for the grit.  He lookedlingeringly over her, coming back now and again to the eyes, behindthe deep earnestness of which he could not guess lay concealed a deepersneer.  And, Jove, wasn’t she well put up!  Wonder whyshe looked at him so?  Did she want to marry him, too?  Likeas not; but she wasn’t the only one.  Her looks were in herfavor, weren’t they?  And young—younger than LoraineLisznayi.  She couldn’t be more than twenty-three or four,twenty-five at most.  And she’d never get stout.  Anybodycould guess that the first time.  He couldn’t say it of Loraine,though.  Shecertainly had put on flesh since the day sheserved as model.  Huh! once he got her on trail he’d takeit off.  Put her on the snowshoes to break ahead of the dogs. Never knew it to fail, yet.  But his thought leaped ahead to thepalace under the lazy Mediterranean sky—and how would it be withLoraine then?  No frost, no trail, no famine now and again to cheerthe monotony, and she getting older and piling it on with every sunrise. While this girl Freda—he sighed his unconscious regret that hehad missed being born under the flag of the Turk, and came back to Alaska.

“Well?”  Both hands of the clock pointed perpendicularlyto midnight, and it was high time he was getting down to the water-hole.

“Oh!” Freda started, and she did it prettily, delightinghim as his fellows have ever been delighted by their womankind. When a man is made to believe that a woman, looking upon him thoughtfully,has lost herself in meditation over him, that man needs be an extremelycold-blooded individual in order to trim his sheets, set a lookout,and steer clear.

“I was just wondering what you wanted to see me about,”he explained, drawing his chair up to hers by the table.

“Floyd,” she looked him steadily in the eyes, “Iam tired of the whole business.  I want to go away.  I can’tlive it out here till the river breaks.  If I try, I’ll die. I am sure of it.  I want to quit it all and go away, and I wantto do it at once.”

She laid her hand in mute appeal upon the back of his, which turnedover and became a prison.  Another one, he thought, just throwingherself at him.  Guess it wouldn’t hurt Loraine to cool herfeet by the water-hole a little longer.

“Well?”  This time from Freda, but softly and anxiously.

“I don’t know what to say,” he hastened to answer,adding to himself that it was coming along quicker than he had expected. “Nothing I’d like better, Freda.  You know that wellenough.”  He pressed her hand, palm to palm.  She nodded. Could she wonder that she despised the breed?

“But you see, I—I’m engaged.  Of course youknow that.  And the girl’s coming into the country to marryme.  Don’t know what was up with me when I asked her, butit was a long while back, and I was all-fired young—”

“I want to go away, out of the land, anywhere,” she wenton, disregarding the obstacle he had reared up and apologized for. “I have been running over the men I know and reached the conclusionthat—that—”

“I was the likeliest of the lot?”

She smiled her gratitude for his having saved her the embarrassmentof confession.  He drew her head against his shoulder with thefree hand, and somehow the scent of her hair got into his nostrils. Then he discovered that a common pulse throbbed, throbbed, throbbed,where their palms were in contact.  This phenomenon is easily comprehensiblefrom a physiological standpoint, but to the man who makes the discoveryfor the first time, it is a most wonderful thing.  Floyd Vanderliphad caressed more shovel-handles than women’s hands in his time,so this was an experience quite new and delightfully strange. And when Freda turned her head against his shoulder, her hair brushinghis cheek till his eyes met hers, full and at close range, luminouslysoft, ay, and tender—why, whose fault was it that he lost hisgrip utterly?  False to Flossie, why not to Loraine?  Evenif the women did keep bothering him, that was no reason he should makeup his mind in a hurry.  Why, he had slathers of money, and Fredawas just the girl to grace it.  A wife she’d make him forother men to envy.  But go slow.  He must be cautious.

“You don’t happen to care for palaces, do you?”he asked.

She shook her head.

“Well, I had a hankering after them myself, till I got to thinking,a while back, and I’ve about sized it up that one’d getfat living in palaces, and soft and lazy.”

“Yes, it’s nice for a time, but you soon grow tired ofit, I imagine,” she hastened to reassure him.  “Theworld is good, but life should be many-sided.  Rough and knockabout for a while, and then rest up somewhere.  Off to the SouthSeas on a yacht, then a nibble of Paris; a winter in South America anda summer in Norway; a few months in England—”

“Good society?”

“Most certainly—the best; and then, heigho! for the dogsand sleds and the Hudson Bay Country.  Change, you know. A strong man like you, full of vitality and go, could not possibly standa palace for a year.  It is all very well for effeminate men, butyou weren’t made for such a life.  You are masculine, intenselymasculine.”

“Think so?”

“It does not require thinking.  I know.  Have youever noticed that it was easy to make women care for you?”

His dubious innocence was superb.

“It is very easy.  And why?  Because you are masculine. You strike the deepest chords of a woman’s heart.  You aresomething to cling to,—big-muscled, strong, and brave.  Inshort, because you area man.”

She shot a glance at the clock.  It was half after the hour. She had given a margin of thirty minutes to Sitka Charley; and it didnot matter, now, when Devereaux arrived.  Her work was done. She lifted her head, laughed her genuine mirth, slipped her hand clear,and rising to her feet called the maid.

“Alice, help Mr. Vanderlip on with his parka. His mittens are on the sill by the stove.”

The man could not understand.

“Let me thank you for your kindness, Floyd.  Your timewas invaluable to me, and it was indeed good of you.  The turningto the left, as you leave the cabin, leads the quickest to the water-hole. Good-night.  I am going to bed.”

Floyd Vanderlip employed strong words to express his perplexity anddisappointment.  Alice did not like to hear men swear, so droppedhis parkaon the floor and tossed his mittens on top of it. Then he made a break for Freda, and she ruined her retreat to the innerroom by tripping over the parka.  He brought her up standingwith a rude grip on the wrist.  But she only laughed.  Shewas not afraid of men.  Had they not wrought their worst with her,and did she not still endure?

“Don’t be rough,” she said finally.  “Onsecond thought,” here she looked at his detaining hand, “I’vedecided not to go to bed yet a while.  Do sit down and be comfortableinstead of ridiculous.  Any questions?”

“Yes, my lady, and reckoning, too.”  He still kepthis hold.  “What do you know about the water-hole? What did you mean by—no, never mind.  One question at a time.”

“Oh, nothing much.  Sitka Charley had an appointment therewith somebody you may know, and not being anxious for a man of yourknown charm to be present, fell back upon me to kindly help him. That’s all.  They’re off now, and a good half hourago.”

“Where?  Down river and without me?  And he an Indian!”

“There’s no accounting for taste, you know, especiallyin a woman.”

“But how do I stand in this deal?  I’ve lost fourthousand dollars’ worth of dogs and a tidy bit of a woman, andnothing to show for it.  Except you,” he added as an afterthought,“and cheap you are at the price.”

Freda shrugged her shoulders.

“You might as well get ready.  I’m going out toborrow a couple of teams of dogs, and we’ll start in as many hours.”

“I am very sorry, but I’m going to bed.”

“You’ll pack if you know what’s good for you. Go to bed, or not, when I get my dogs outside, so help me, onto thesled you go.  Mebbe you fooled with me, but I’ll just seeyour bluff and take you in earnest.  Hear me?”

He closed on her wrist till it hurt, but on her lips a smile wasgrowing, and she seemed to listen intently to some outside sound. There was a jingle of dog bells, and a man’s voice crying “Haw!”as a sled took the turning and drew up at the cabin.

“Nowwill you let me go to bed?”

As Freda spoke she threw open the door.  Into the warm roomrushed the frost, and on the threshold, garbed in trail-worn furs, knee-deepin the swirling vapor, against a background of flaming borealis, a womanhesitated.  She removed her nose-trap and stood blinking blindlyin the white candlelight.  Floyd Vanderlip stumbled forward.

“Floyd!” she cried, relieved and glad, and met him witha tired bound.

What could he but kiss the armful of furs?  And a pretty armfulit was, nestling against him wearily, but happy.

“It was good of you,” spoke the armful, “to sendMr. Devereaux with fresh dogs after me, else I would not have been intill to-morrow.”

The man looked blankly across at Freda, then the light breaking inupon him, “And wasn’t it good of Devereaux to go?”

“Couldn’t wait a bit longer, could you, dear?” Flossie snuggled closer.

“Well, I was getting sort of impatient,” he confessedglibly, at the same time drawing her up till her feet left the floor,and getting outside the door.

That same night an inexplicable thing happened to the Reverend JamesBrown, missionary, who lived among the natives several miles down theYukon and saw to it that the trails they trod led to the white man’sparadise.  He was roused from his sleep by a strange Indian, whogave into his charge not only the soul but the body of a woman, andhaving done this drove quickly away.  This woman was heavy, andhandsome, and angry, and in her wrath unclean words fell from her mouth. This shocked the worthy man, but he was yet young and her presence wouldhave been pernicious (in the simple eyes of his flock), had she notstruck out on foot for Dawson with the first gray of dawn.

The shock to Dawson came many days later, when the summer had comeand the population honored a certain royal lady at Windsor by liningthe Yukon’s bank and watching Sitka Charley rise up with flashingpaddle and drive the first canoe across the line.  On this dayof the races, Mrs. Eppingwell, who had learned and unlearned numerousthings, saw Freda for the first time since the night of the ball. “Publicly, mind you,” as Mrs. McFee expressed it, “withoutregard or respect for the morals of the community,” she went upto the dancer and held out her hand.  At first, it is rememberedby those who saw, the girl shrank back, then words passed between thetwo, and Freda, great Freda, broke down and wept on the shoulder ofthe captain’s wife.  It was not given to Dawson to know whyMrs. Eppingwell should crave forgiveness of a Greek dancing girl, butshe did it publicly, and it was unseemly.

It were well not to forget Mrs. McFee.  She took a cabin passageon the first steamer going out.  She also took with her a theorywhich she had achieved in the silent watches of the long dark nights;and it is her conviction that the Northland is unregenerate becauseit is so cold there.  Fear of hell-fire cannot be bred in an ice-box. This may appear dogmatic, but it is Mrs. McFee’s theory.

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