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+Project Gutenberg Etext of Tales of the Klondyke, by Jack London
+#51-#61 in our series by Jack London
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+Tales of the Klondyke
+
+by Jack London
+
+February, 1999  [Etext #1655]
+
+
+Project Gutenberg Etext of Tales of the Klondyke, by Jack London
+******This file should be named gdfth10.txt or gdfth10.zip******
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+This etext was prepared from the 1906 Sir Isaac Pitman and Sons
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+This etext was prepared from the 1906 Sir Isaac Pitman and Sons
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+
+
+
+TALES OF THE KLONDYKE
+
+
+
+
+THE GOD OF HIS FATHERS
+
+
+
+
+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
+
+
+
+
+THE GOD OF HIS FATHERS
+
+
+
+On every hand stretched the forest primeval,--the home of noisy
+comedy and silent tragedy.  Here the struggle for survival
+continued to wage with all its ancient brutality.  Briton and
+Russian were still to overlap in the Land of the Rainbow's End--
+and this was the very heart of it--nor had Yankee gold yet
+purchased its vast 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 as remorselessly as were it a thousand,
+thousand generations into the past.  The sparse aborigines still
+acknowledged the rule of their chiefs and medicine men, drove out
+bad spirits, burned their witches, fought their neighbors, and ate
+their enemies with a relish which spoke well of their bellies.
+But it was at the moment when the stone age was drawing to 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.  By
+accident or design, single-handed and in twos and threes, they
+came from no one knew whither, and fought, or died, or passed on,
+no one knew whence.  The priests raged against them, the chiefs
+called forth their fighting men, and stone clashed with steel; but
+to little purpose.  Like water seeping from some mighty reservoir,
+they trickled through the dark forests and mountain passes,
+threading the highways in bark canoes, or with their moccasined
+feet breaking trail for the wolf-dogs.  They came of a great
+breed, and their mothers were many; 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 fire of 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 destiny of
+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
+dip of the midnight sun.  The gloaming and the dawn were so
+commingled that there was no night,--simply a wedding of day with
+day, a scarcely perceptible blending of two circles of the sun.  A
+kildee timidly chirped 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 voiced its interminable wrongs, while
+a loon laughed mockingly back across a still stretch of river.
+
+In the foreground, against the bank of a lazy eddy, birch-bark
+canoes were lined two and three deep.  Ivory-bladed spears, bone-
+barbed arrows, buckskin-thonged bows, and simple basket-woven
+traps bespoke the 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 bucks or flirted with the maidens, while the
+older squaws, shut out from this by 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 in the muck with the
+tawny wolf-dogs.
+
+To one side of the encampment, and conspicuously apart from it,
+stood a second camp of two tents.  But it was a white man's camp.
+If nothing else, the choice of position at least bore convincing
+evidence of this.  In case of offence, it commanded the Indian
+quarters a hundred yards away; of defence, a rise to the ground
+and the cleared intervening space; and last, of defeat, the swift
+slope of a score of yards to the canoes below.  From one of the
+tents came the petulant cry of a sick child and the crooning song
+of a mother.  In the open, 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.  "I am Red River born.  My
+father was white--as white as you.  But you are Yankee, and he was
+British bred, and a gentleman's son.  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 blood ran in my veins; for I
+lived with the whites, and was one of them, and my father's heart
+beat in me.  It happened there was a maiden--white--who looked on
+me with kind eyes.  Her father had much land and many horses; also
+he was a big man among his people, and his blood was the blood of
+the French.  He said the girl knew not her own mind, and talked
+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, I
+know not what; so that the priest stiffened his neck and would not
+make us that we might live one with the other.  As at the
+beginning it was the church which would not bless my birth, so now
+it was the church which refused me marriage and put the blood of
+men upon my hands.  Bien!  Thus have I cause to love the church.
+So I struck 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 he had gathered to him.  And we fought, our horses
+on the run, till I 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 we lived one with the other, and we were
+not married,--the work of the good church which I love like a son.
+
+"But mark you, for this is the strangeness of woman, the way of
+which no man may understand.  One of the saddles I emptied was
+that of her father's, and the hoofs of those who came behind had
+pounded him into the earth.  This we saw, the girl and I, and this
+I 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 the silence of the night when we lay beneath the stars and
+should have been one.  It was there always.  She never spoke, but
+it sat by our fire and held us ever apart.  She tried to put it
+aside, but at such times it would rise up till I could read it in
+the look of her eyes, in the very in-take 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 a warm
+breast and live.  But my hands were wet with the blood of men,
+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 fair to the eye.
+
+"You know the winter, long and lonely, breeding evil thoughts and
+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.  Mother of God!
+he sent me away on a long trip with the dogs, that he might--you
+understand, he was a hard man and without heart.  She was most
+white, and her soul was white, and a good woman, and--well, she
+died.
+
+"It was bitter cold the night of my return, and I had been away
+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
+fear of I knew not what, but I said nothing till the dogs were fed
+and I had 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 and what I should do; but the story came out, the pitiful
+story, word for word and act for act, and they marvelled that I
+should be so quiet.
+
+"When they had done I went to the Factor's house, calmer than now
+in the telling of it.  He had been afraid and called upon the
+breeds to help him; but they were not pleased with the deed, and
+had left him to lie on the bed he had made.  So he had fled to the
+house of the priest.  Thither I followed.  But when I was 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, but
+straight to God.  I asked by the right of a father's wrath that he
+give me past, but he said only over his body, and besought with me
+to pray.  Look you, it was the church, always the church; for I
+passed over his body and sent the Factor to meet my woman-child
+before his 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 station
+below, and I came away.  Through the Land of the Great Slave, down
+the Valley of the Mackenzie to the never-opening ice, over the
+White Rockies, past the Great Curve of the Yukon, even to this
+place did I come.  And from that day to this, yours is the first
+face of my father's people I have looked upon.  May it be the
+last!  These people, which are my people, are a simple folk, and I
+have been raised to honor among them.  My word is their law, and
+their priests but do my bidding, else would I not suffer them.
+When I speak for them I speak for myself.  We ask to be let alone.
+We do not want your kind.  If we permit you to sit by our fires,
+after you will come your church, your priests, and your gods.  And
+know this, for each white man who comes to my village, him will I
+make deny his god.  You are the first, and I give you grace.  So
+it were well you go, and go quickly."
+
+"I am not responsible for my brothers," the second man spoke up,
+filling his pipe in a meditative manner.  Hay Stockard was at
+times as thoughtful of speech as he was wanton of action; but only
+at times.
+
+"But I know your breed," responded the other.  "Your brothers are
+many, and it is you and yours who break the trail for them to
+follow.  In time they shall come to possess the land, but not in
+my time.  Already, have I heard, are they on the head-reaches of
+the Great River, and far away below are the Russians."
+
+Hay Stockard lifted his head with a quick start.  This was
+startling geographical information.  The Hudson Bay post at Fort
+Yukon had other notions concerning the course of the river,
+believing it to flow into 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 go while 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 this people."
+
+"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 a bad
+god, and the god of the white men."
+
+The red sun shot up above the northern skyline, dripping and
+bloody.  Baptiste the Red came to his feet, nodded curtly, and
+went back to his camp amid the crimson shadows and the singing of
+the robins.
+
+Hay Stockard finished his pipe by the fire, picturing in smoke and
+coal the unknown upper reaches of the Koyukuk, the strange stream
+which ended here its arctic travels and merged its waters with the
+muddy Yukon flood.  Somewhere up there, if the dying words of a
+ship-wrecked sailorman who had made the fearful overland journey
+were to be believed, and if the vial of golden grains in his pouch
+attested anything,--somewhere up 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 and renegade, barred the way.
+
+"Bah!"  He kicked the embers apart and rose to his full height,
+arms lazily outstretched, facing the flushing north with careless
+soul.
+
+
+II
+
+
+Hay Stockard swore, harshly, in the rugged monosyllables of his
+mother tongue.  His wife lifted her gaze from the pots and pans,
+and followed his in a keen scrutiny of the river.  She was a woman
+of the Teslin Country, wise in the ways of her husband's
+vernacular when it grew intensive.  From the slipping of a snow-
+shoe thong to the forefront of sudden death, she could gauge
+occasion by the pitch and volume of his blasphemy.  So she knew
+the present occasion merited attention.  A long canoe, with
+paddles flashing back the rays of the westering sun, was crossing
+the current from above and urging in for the eddy.  Hay Stockard
+watched it intently.  Three men rose and dipped, rose and dipped,
+in rhythmical precision; but a red bandanna, 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 the
+strange 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 the thing out of hand.
+He'll spoil us sure if we don't."  But the other declined this
+drastic measure and turned away, at the same time bidding the
+woman return to her work, and calling Bill back from the bank.
+The two Indians in the canoe moored it on the edge of 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 unto you 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, in
+your tent this woman whom you live with in adultery; yet of these
+divers sins, 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 Stockard broke 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 was
+looking steadily across, striving to make out the newcomers.
+Sturges Owen, disseminator of light and apostle to the Lord,
+stepped to the edge of the steep and commanded his men to bring up
+the camp outfit.  Stockard followed him.
+
+"Look here," he demanded, plucking the missionary by the shoulder
+and twirling him about.  "Do you value your hide?"
+
+"My life is in the Lord's keeping, and I do but work in 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 going to give you some
+advice first.  Take it or leave it.  If you stop 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 true
+Gospel."
+
+"And myself.  Not only do you bring trouble upon yourself, but
+upon us.  I was frozen in with you last winter, as you will well
+recollect, and I know you for a good man and a fool.  If you think
+it your duty to strive with the heathen, well and good; but, do
+exercise 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-
+necked as I ever dared be, and as wild a fanatic the one way as
+you are the other.  When you two come together, hell'll be to pay,
+and I don't care to be mixed up in it.  Understand?  So take my
+advice and go away.  If you go down-stream, you'll fall in with
+the Russians.  There's bound to be Greek priests among them, and
+they'll see you safe through to Bering Sea,--that's where the
+Yukon empties,--and from there it won't be hard to get back to
+civilization.  Take my word for it and get out of here as fast as
+God'll let you."
+
+"He who carries the Lord in his heart and the Gospel in his hand
+hath no fear of the machinations of man or devil," the missionary
+answered stoutly.  "I will see this man and wrestle with him.  One
+backslider returned to the fold is a greater victory than a
+thousand heathen.  He who is strong for evil can be as mighty for
+good, witness Saul when he journeyed up to Damascus to bring
+Christian captives to Jerusalem.  And the voice of the Saviour
+came to him, crying, 'Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?'  And
+therewith Paul arrayed himself on the side of the Lord, and
+thereafter was most mighty in the saving of souls.  And even as
+thou, Paul of Tarsus, even so do I work in the vineyard of the
+Lord, bearing trials and tribulations, scoffs and sneers, stripes
+and punishments, for His dear sake."
+
+"Bring up the little bag with the tea and a kettle of water," he
+called the next instant to his boatmen; "not forgetting the haunch
+of cariboo and the mixing-pan."
+
+When his men, converts by his own hand, had gained the bank, the
+trio fell to their knees, hands and backs burdened with camp
+equipage, and offered up thanks for their passage through the
+wilderness and their safe arrival.  Hay Stockard looked upon the
+function with sneering disapproval, the romance and solemnity of
+it lost to his matter-of-fact soul.  Baptiste the Red, still
+gazing across, recognized the familiar postures, and remembered
+the girl who had shared his star-roofed couch in the hills and
+forests, and the woman-child who lay somewhere by bleak Hudson's
+Bay.
+
+
+III
+
+
+"Confound it, Baptiste, couldn't think of it.  Not for a moment.
+Grant that this man is a fool and of small use in the nature of
+things, but still, you know, I can't give him up."
+
+Hay Stockard paused, striving to put into speech the rude ethics
+of his heart.
+
+"He's worried me, Baptiste, in the past and now, and caused me all
+manner of troubles; but can't you see, he's my own breed--white--
+and--and--why, I couldn't buy my life with his, not if he was a
+nigger."
+
+"So be it," Baptiste the Red made answer.  "I have given you grace
+and choice.  I shall come presently, with my priests and fighting
+men, and either shall I kill you, or you deny your god.  Give up
+the priest to my pleasure, and you shall depart in peace.
+Otherwise your trail ends here.  My people are against you to the
+babies.  Even now have the children stolen away your canoes."  He
+pointed down to the river.  Naked boys had slipped down the water
+from the point above, cast loose the canoes, and by then had
+worked them into the current.  When they had drifted out of rifle-
+shot they clambered over the sides and paddled ashore.
+
+"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 of the
+Teslin Country with his boy at her breast, and he would have
+wavered had he not lifted his eyes to the men before him.
+
+"I am not afraid," Sturges Owen spoke up.  "The Lord bears me in
+his right hand, and alone am I ready to go into the camp of the
+unbeliever.  It is not too late.  Faith may move mountains.  Even
+in the eleventh hour may I win his soul to the true
+righteousness."
+
+"Trip the beggar up and make him fast," Bill whispered hoarsely in
+the ear of his leader, while the missionary kept the floor and
+wrestled with the heathen.  "Make him hostage, and bore him if
+they get ugly."
+
+"No," Stockard answered.  "I gave him my word that 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 outdo me in fair
+dealing.  Why not do what he wants,--give him the missionary and
+be done with it?"
+
+"N-no," Bill hesitated doubtfully.
+
+"Shoe pinches, eh?"
+
+Bill flushed a little and dropped the discussion.  Baptiste the
+Red was still waiting the final decision.  Stockard went up to
+him.
+
+"It's this way, Baptiste.  I came to your village minded to go up
+the Koyukuk.  I intended no wrong.  My heart was clean of evil.
+It is still clean.  Along comes this priest, as you call him.  I
+didn't bring him here.  He'd have 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'm going to.  Further, it will be no child's play.
+When you have done, your village will be silent and empty, your
+people wasted as after a famine.  True, we will he gone; likewise
+the pick of your fighting men--"
+
+"But those who remain shall be in peace, nor shall the word of
+strange gods and the tongues of strange priests be buzzing in
+their ears."
+
+Both men shrugged their shoulder and turned away, the half-breed
+going back to his own camp.  The missionary called his two men to
+him, and they fell into prayer.  Stockard and Bill attacked the
+few standing pines with their axes, felling them into convenient
+breastworks.  The child had fallen asleep, so the woman placed it
+on a heap of furs and lent a hand in fortifying the camp.  Three
+sides were thus defended, the steep declivity at the rear
+precluding attack from that direction.  When these arrangements
+had been completed, the two men stalked into the open, clearing
+away, here and there, the scattered underbrush.  From the opposing
+camp came the booming of war-drums and the voices of the priests
+stirring the people to anger.
+
+"Worst of it is they'll come in rushes," Bill complained as 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.  One of 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
+could reload in safety, and gave the word.  The medicine-man
+dropped.  For a moment there was silence, then a wild howl went up
+and a flight of 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 drilled him clean between
+the eyes."
+
+"Didn't work."  Stockard shook his head gloomily.  Baptiste had
+evidently quelled the more warlike of his followers, and instead
+of precipitating an attack in the bright light of day, the shot
+had caused a hasty exodus, the Indians drawing out of the village
+beyond the zone of fire.
+
+In the full tide of his proselyting fervor, borne along by the
+hand of God, Sturges Owen would have ventured alone into the camp
+of the unbeliever, equally prepared for miracle or martyrdom; but
+in the waiting which ensued, the fever of conviction died away
+gradually, as the natural man asserted itself.  Physical fear
+replaced spiritual hope; the love 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.  He remembered when the other men had
+driven their paddles like mad in the van of a roaring ice-flood,
+how, at the critical moment, in a panic of worldly terror, he had
+dropped his paddle and besought wildly with his God for pity.  And
+there were other times.  The recollection was not pleasant.  It
+brought shame to him that his spirit should be so weak and his
+flesh so strong.  But the love of life! the love of life!  He
+could not strip it from him.  Because of it had his dim ancestors
+perpetuated their line; because of it was he destined to
+perpetuate his.  His courage, if courage it might be called, was
+bred of fanaticism.  The courage of Stockard and Bill was the
+adherence to deep-rooted ideals.  Not that the love of life was
+less, but the love of race tradition more; not that they were
+unafraid to die, but that they were brave enough not to live at
+the price 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, but sank back, a trembling mass, wailing:  "As the
+spirit moves!  As the spirit moves!  Who am I that I should set
+aside the judgments of God?  Before the foundations of the world
+were all things written in the book of life.  Worm that I am,
+shall I erase the page or any 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 turned his attention to the two converts.  But they
+showed little fright and 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 deposited
+before him, "make us man and wife, and be lively about it."  Then
+he added apologetically to Bill:  "No telling how it's to end, so
+I just thought I'd get my affairs straightened up."
+
+The woman obeyed the behest of her white lord.  To her the
+ceremony was meaningless.  By her lights she was his wife, and had
+been from 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 the time came, for want of better, ringed her finger with
+thumb and forefinger of his own.
+
+"Kiss the bride!" Bill thundered, and Sturges Owen was too weak to
+disobey.
+
+"Now baptize the child!"
+
+"Neat and tidy," Bill commented.
+
+"Gathering the proper outfit for a new trail," the father
+explained, taking the boy from the mother's arms.  "I was grub-
+staked, once, into the Cascades, and had everything in the kit
+except salt.  Never shall forget it.  And if the woman and the kid
+cross the divide to-night they might as well be prepared for pot-
+luck.  A long shot, Bill, between ourselves, but nothing lost if
+it misses."
+
+A cup of water served the purpose, and the child was laid away in
+a secure corner of the barricade.  The men built the fire, and the
+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 slowly died away.  Even the wild fowl in the river
+softened their raucous chatter and feigned the nightly farce of
+going to bed.  Only the tribesmen increased their clamor, war-
+drums booming and voices raised in savage folk songs.  But as the
+sun dipped they ceased their tumult.  The rounded hush of midnight
+was complete.  Stockard rose to his knees and peered over the
+logs.  Once the child wailed in pain and disconcerted him.  The
+mother bent over it, but it slept again.  The silence was
+interminable, profound.  Then, of a sudden, the robins burst into
+full-throated song.  The night had passed.
+
+A flood of dark figures boiled across the open.  Arrows whistled
+and bow-thongs sang.  The shrill-tongued rifles answered back.  A
+spear, and a mighty cast, transfixed the Teslin woman as she
+hovered above the child.  A spent arrow, diving between the logs,
+lodged in the missionary's arm.
+
+There was no stopping the rush.  The middle distance was cumbered
+with bodies, but the rest surged on, breaking against and over the
+barricade like an ocean wave.  Sturges Owen fled to the tent,
+while the men were swept from their feet, buried beneath the human
+tide.  Hay Stockard alone regained the surface, flinging the
+tribesmen aside like yelping curs.  He had managed to seize an
+axe.  A dark hand grasped the child by a naked foot, and drew it
+from beneath its mother.  At arm's length its puny body circled
+through the air, dashing to death against the logs.  Stockard
+clove the man to the chin and fell to clearing space.  The ring of
+savage faces closed in, raining upon him spear-thrusts and bone-
+barbed arrows.  The sun shot up, and they swayed back and forth in
+the crimson shadows.  Twice, with his axe blocked by too deep a
+blow, they rushed him; but each time he flung them clear.  They
+fell underfoot and he trampled dead and dying, the way slippery
+with blood.  And still the day brightened and the robins sang.
+Then they drew back from him in awe, and he leaned breathless upon
+his axe.
+
+"Blood of my soul!" cried Baptiste the Red.  "But thou 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 been brought before the
+half-breed.
+
+Beyond a scratch on the arm, he was uninjured, but his eyes roved
+about 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 a great envy of the man who could go
+down serenely to the dark gates of death.  Surely Christ, and not
+he, Sturges Owen, had been moulded in such manner.  And why not
+he?  He felt dimly the curse of ancestry, the feebleness of spirit
+which had come down to him out of the past, and he felt an anger
+at the creative force, symbolize it as he would, which had formed
+him, its servant, so weakly.  For even a stronger man, this anger
+and the stress of circumstance were sufficient 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 given spirit
+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, like a 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.  The
+missionary looked at him curiously, as in a dream.  A feeling of
+infinite distance came over him, as though of a great remove.  In
+that which had transpired, and which was to transpire, he had no
+part.  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 harm befall
+him.  Let him depart in peace.  Give him a canoe and food.  Set
+his face toward the Russians, that he may tell their priests of
+Baptiste the Red, in whose country there is no god."
+
+They led him to the edge of the steep, where they paused to
+witness the 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-spear
+for the cast.
+
+"Hast thou a god?"
+
+"Ay, the God of my fathers."
+
+He shifted the axe for a better grip.  Baptiste the Red gave the
+sign, and the spear hurtled full against his breast.  Sturges Owen
+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 he
+went down to the river, that he might carry to the Russians the
+message of Baptiste the Red, in whose country there was no god.
+
+
+
+THE GREAT INTERROGATION
+
+
+
+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 soon as it was free of ice.  Now womanless Dawson
+never quite understood this hurried departure, and the local Four
+Hundred felt aggrieved and lonely till the Nome strike was made
+and old sensations gave way to new.  For it had delighted in Mrs.
+Sayther, and received her wide-armed.  She was pretty, charming,
+and, moreover, a widow.  And because of this she at once had at
+heel any number of Eldorado Kings, officials, and adventuring
+younger sons, whose ears were yearning for the frou-frou of a
+woman's skirts.
+
+The mining engineers revered the memory of her husband, the late
+Colonel Sayther, while the syndicate and promoter representatives
+spoke awesomely of his deals and manipulations; for he was known
+down in the States 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, was the great interrogation.  But they were a
+practical breed, the men of the Northland, with a wholesome
+disregard for theories and a firm grip on facts.  And to not a few
+of them Karen Sayther was a most essential fact.  That she did not
+regard the matter in this light, is evidenced by the neatness and
+celerity with which refusal and proposal tallied off during her
+four weeks' stay.  And with 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
+and a five-hundred-foot creek claim on Bonanza, celebrated the
+misfortune by walking all of a night with the gods.  In the
+midwatch of this night he happened to rub shoulders with Pierre
+Fontaine, none other than head man of Karen Sayther's voyageurs.
+This rubbing of shoulders led to recognition and drinks, and
+ultimately involved both 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, and I gif you mooch--one thousand dollar you find thees
+mans.'  Thees mans?  Ah, oui.  Thees man's name--vot you call--
+Daveed Payne.  Oui, m'sieu, Daveed Payne.  All de tam her spik das
+name.  And all de tam I look rount vaire mooch, work lak hell, but
+no can find das dam mans, and no get one thousand dollar 'tall.
+By dam!
+
+"Heh?  Ah, oui.  One tam dose mens vot come from 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 go queek.  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 madame and I go not
+'tall.
+
+"Oui, m'sieu.  Thees day madame spik.  'Pierre,' her spik, and gif
+me five hundred dollar, 'go buy poling-boat.  To-morrow we go up
+de river.'  Ah, oui, to-morrow, up de river, and das dam Sitka
+Charley mak me pay for de poling-boat five hundred dollar.  Dam!"
+
+Thus it was, when Jack Coughran unburdened himself next day, that
+Dawson fell to wondering who was this David Payne, and in what way
+his existence bore upon Karen Sayther's.  But that very day, as
+Pierre Fontaine had said, Mrs. Sayther and her barbaric crew of
+voyageurs towed up the east bank to Klondike City, shot across to
+the west bank to escape the bluffs, and disappeared amid the maze
+of islands to the south.
+
+
+II
+
+
+"Oui, madame, thees is de place.  One, two, t'ree island below
+Stuart River.  Thees is t'ree island."
+
+As he spoke, Pierre Fontaine drove his pole against the bank and
+held the stern of the boat against the current.  This thrust the
+bow in, till a nimble breed climbed ashore with the painter and
+made fast.
+
+"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 the boat.  You
+might have made it softer, you know."
+
+From a nest of furs amidships, Karen Sayther rose to her full
+height of slender fairness.  But if she looked lily-frail in her
+elemental environment, she was belied by the grip she put upon
+Pierre's hand, by the knotting of her woman's biceps as it took
+the weight of her body, by the splendid effort of her limbs as
+they held her out from the perpendicular bank while she made the
+ascent.  Though shapely 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 extra beat to her heart.  But then, also, it was with
+a certain reverent curiousness that she approached the cabin,
+while the Hush on her cheek showed a yet riper mellowness.
+
+"Look, see!"  Pierre pointed to the scattered chips by 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
+blocked vision.  Failing this, she went round to the door, half
+lifted the rude latch to enter, but changed her mind and let it
+fall back into place.  Then she suddenly dropped on one knee and
+kissed the rough-hewn threshold.  If Pierre Fontaine saw, he gave
+no sign, and the memory in the time to come was never shared.  But
+the next instant, one of the boatmen, placidly lighting his pipe,
+was startled by an unwonted harshness in his captain's voice.
+
+"Hey!  You!  Le Goire! You mak'm soft more better," Pierre
+commanded.  "Plenty bear-skin; plenty blanket.  Dam!"
+
+But the nest was soon after disrupted, and the major portion
+tossed up to the crest of the shore, where Mrs. Sayther lay down
+to wait in comfort.
+
+Reclining on her side, she looked out and over the wide-stretching
+Yukon.  Above the mountains which lay beyond the further shore,
+the sky was murky with the smoke of unseen forest fires, and
+through this the afternoon sun broke feebly, throwing a vague
+radiance to earth, and unreal shadows.  To the sky-line of the
+four quarters--spruce-shrouded islands, dark waters, and ice-
+scarred rocky ridges--stretched the immaculate wilderness.  No
+sign of human existence broke the solitude; no sound the
+stillness.  The land seemed bound under the unreality of the
+unknown, wrapped in the brooding mystery of great spaces.
+
+Perhaps it was this which made Mrs. Sayther nervous; for she
+changed her position constantly, now to look up the river, now
+down, or to scan the gloomy shores for the half-hidden mouths of
+back channels.  After an hour or so the boatmen were sent ashore
+to pitch camp for the night, but Pierre remained with his mistress
+to watch.
+
+"Ah! him come thees tam," he whispered, after a long silence, his
+gaze bent up the river to the head of the island.
+
+A canoe, with a paddle flashing on either side, was slipping down
+the current.  In the stern a man's form, and in the bow a woman's,
+swung rhythmically to the work.  Mrs. Sayther had no eyes for the
+woman till the canoe drove in closer and her bizarre beauty
+peremptorily demanded notice.  A close-fitting blouse of moose-
+skin, fantastically beaded, outlined faithfully the well-rounded
+lines of her body, while a silken kerchief, gay of color and
+picturesquely draped, partly covered great masses of blue-black
+hair.  But it was the face, cast belike in copper bronze, which
+caught and held Mrs. Sayther's fleeting glance.  Eyes, piercing
+and black and large, with a traditionary hint of obliqueness,
+looked forth from under clear-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 advertised the dimmest
+trace of ancient Mongol blood, a reversion, after long centuries
+of wandering, to the parent stem.  This effect was heightened by
+the delicately aquiline nose with its thin trembling nostrils, and
+by the general air of eagle wildness which seemed to characterize
+not only the face but the creature herself.  She was, in fact, the
+Tartar type modified to idealization, and the tribe of Red Indian
+is lucky that 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
+brought it gently to the shore.  Another instant and she stood at
+the top of the bank, heaving up by rope, hand under hand, a
+quarter of fresh-killed moose.  Then the man followed her, and
+together, with a swift rush, they drew up the canoe.  The dogs
+were in a whining mass about them, and as the girl stooped among
+them caressingly, the man's gaze fell upon Mrs. Sayther, who had
+arisen.  He looked, brushed his eyes unconsciously as though his
+sight were deceiving him, and looked again.
+
+"Karen," he said simply, coming forward and extending his hand, "I
+thought for the moment I was dreaming.  I went snow-blind for a
+time, this spring, and since then my eyes have been playing tricks
+with me."
+
+Mrs. Sayther, whose flush had deepened and whose heart was urging
+painfully, had been prepared for almost anything save this coolly
+extended hand; but she tactfully curbed herself and grasped it
+heartily with her own.
+
+"You know, Dave, I threatened often to come, and I would have,
+too, only--only--"
+
+"Only I didn't give the word."  David Payne laughed and watched
+the Indian girl disappearing into the cabin.
+
+"Oh, I understand, Dave, and had I been in your place I'd most
+probably have done the same.  But I have come--now."
+
+"Then come a little bit farther, into the cabin and get something
+to eat," he said genially, ignoring or missing the feminine
+suggestion of 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 glanced at the
+voyageurs circled about the fire in the open, and held back 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 prospecting some on
+Henderson Creek, and if that fails, have been thinking of trying
+my 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
+YOU mean?"
+
+But she shrugged her shoulders and peered I through the dim light
+at the Indian girl, who had lighted the fire and was frying great
+chunks of moose meat, alternated with thin ribbons of bacon.
+
+"Did you stop in Dawson long?"  The man was whittling a stave of
+birchwood into a rude axe-handle, and asked the question without
+raising his head.
+
+"Oh, a few days," she answered, following the girl with her eyes,
+and hardly hearing.  "What were you saying?  In Dawson?  A month,
+in fact, and glad to get away.  The arctic male is elemental, you
+know, and somewhat strenuous in his feelings."
+
+"Bound to be when he gets right down to the soil.  He leaves
+convention with the spring bed at borne.  But you were wise in
+your choice of time for leaving.  You'll be out of the country
+before mosquito season, which is a blessing your lack of
+experience will not permit you to appreciate."
+
+"I suppose not.  But tell me about yourself, about your life.
+What kind of neighbors have you?  Or have you any?"
+
+While she queried she watched the girl grinding coffee in the
+corner of a flower sack upon the hearthstone.  With a steadiness
+and skill which predicated nerves as primitive as the method, she
+crushed the imprisoned berries with a heavy fragment of quartz.
+David Payne noted his visitor's gaze, and the shadow of a smile
+drifted over his lips.
+
+"I did have some," he replied.  "Missourian chaps, and a couple of
+Cornishmen, but they went down to Eldorado to work 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's a Koyokuk
+lass,--comes from a thousand miles or so down the river."
+
+Mrs. Sayther felt suddenly faint; and though the smile of interest
+in no wise waned, the face of the man seemed to draw away to a
+telescopic distance, and the tiered logs of the cabin to whirl
+drunkenly about.  But she was bidden draw up to the table, and
+during the meal discovered time and space in which to find
+herself.  She talked little, and that principally about the land
+and weather, while the man wandered off into a long description of
+the difference between the shallow summer diggings of the Lower
+Country and the deep winter diggings of the Upper Country.
+
+"You do not ask why I came north?" she asked.  "Surely you know."
+They had moved back from the table, and David Payne had returned
+to his axe-handle.  "Did you get my letter?"
+
+"A last one?  No, I don't think so.  Most probably it's trailing
+around the Birch Creek Country or lying in some trader's shack on
+the Lower River.  The way they run the mails in here is shameful.
+No order, no system, no--"
+
+"Don't be wooden, Dave!  Help me!"  She spoke sharply now, with an
+assumption of authority which rested upon the past.  "Why don't
+you ask me about myself?  About those we knew in the old times?
+Have you no longer any interest in the world?  Do you know that my
+husband is dead?"
+
+"Indeed, I am sorry.  How long--"
+
+"David!"  She was ready to cry with vexation, but the reproach she
+threw into her voice eased her.
+
+"Did you get any of my letters?  You must have got some of 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 I did get
+some.  I--er--read them aloud to Winapie as a warning--that is,
+you know, to impress upon her the wickedness of her white sisters.
+And I--er--think she profited by it.  Don't you?"
+
+She disregarded the sting, and went on.  "In the last letter,
+which you did not receive, I told, as you have guessed, of Colonel
+Sayther's death.  That was a year ago.  I also said that if you
+did not come out to me, I would go in to you.  And as 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, it was
+unratified.  So I do not know of any such promise.  But I do know
+of another, which you, too, may remember.  It was very long ago."
+He dropped the axe-handle to the floor and raised his head.  "It
+was so very long ago, yet I remember it distinctly, the day, the
+time, every detail.  We were in a rose garden, you and I,--your
+mother's rose garden.  All things were budding, blossoming, and
+the sap of spring was in our blood.  And I drew you over--it was
+the first--and kissed you full on the lips.  Don't you remember?"
+
+"Don't go over it, Dave, don't!  I know every shameful line of it.
+How often have I wept!  If you only knew how I have suffered--"
+
+"You promised me then--ay, and a thousand times in the sweet days
+that followed.  Each look of your eyes, each touch of your hand,
+each syllable that fell from your lips, was a promise.  And then--
+how shall I say?--there came a man.  He was old--old enough to
+have begotten you--and not nice to look upon, but as the world
+goes, clean.  He had done no wrong, followed the 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 clipped
+coupons.  He--"
+
+"But there were other things," she interrupted, "I told 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 it as you wish.
+But, my God!  Dave, I gave you up!  You never did ME justice.
+Think what I have gone through!"
+
+"It was not your will?  Pressure?  Under high heaven there 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 still unused.
+I do not understand."
+
+"But now! now!"
+
+"We were speaking of this man you saw fit to marry.  What manner
+of man was he?  Wherein did he charm your soul?  What potent
+virtues were his?  True, he had a golden grip,--an almighty golden
+grip.  He knew the odds.  He was versed in cent per cent.  He had
+a narrow wit and excellent judgment of the viler parts, whereby he
+transferred this man's money to his pockets, and that man's money,
+and the next man's.  And the law 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, dead to the
+spirit.  He was fat with laziness, and flabby-cheeked, and the
+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 rose garden was of all time, or so you
+said.  Where is it now?"
+
+"It is here! now!" he cried, striking his breast passionately with
+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 it is not fine
+enough, large enough, to forgive me here, crying now at your
+feet?"
+
+The man hesitated.  His mouth opened; words shaped vainly on his
+lips.  She had forced him to bare his heart and speak truths which
+he had hidden from himself.  And she was good to look upon,
+standing there in a glory of passion, calling back old
+associations and 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, after all.  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 slush lamp.  She appeared to start out against a background
+of utter black, and the flame, flaring suddenly up, lighted her
+bronze beauty to royal gold.
+
+"You see, it is impossible," he groaned, thrusting the fair-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.  "It is as a woman that I
+understand.  Men are men.  A common custom of the country.  I am
+not shocked.  I divined it from the first.  But--ah!--it is only a
+marriage of the country--not a real marriage?"
+
+"We do not ask such questions in Alaska," he interposed feebly.
+
+"I know, but--"
+
+"Well, then, it is only a marriage of the country--nothing else."
+
+"And there are no children?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Nor--"
+
+"No, no; nothing--but it is impossible."
+
+"But it is not."  She was at his side again, her hand touching
+lightly, caressingly, the sunburned back of his.  "I know the
+custom of the land too well.  Men do it every day.  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 for a year's
+provisions, some money in hand, and the girl is content.  By the
+end of that time, a man--"  She shrugged her shoulders.  "And so
+with the girl here.  We will give her an order upon the company,
+not for a year, but for life.  What was she when you found her?  A
+raw, meat-eating savage; fish in summer, moose in winter, feasting
+in plenty, starving in famine.  But for you that is what she would
+have remained.  For your coming she was happier; for your going,
+surely, with a life of comparative splendor 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 the soil, yet
+close to the soil, and impossible to lift from the soil.  Born
+savage, savage she will die.  But we--you and I--the dominant,
+evolved race--the salt of the earth and the masters thereof!  We
+are made for each other.  The supreme call is of kind, and we are
+of kind.  Reason and feeling dictate it.  Your very instinct
+demands it.  That you cannot deny.  You cannot escape the
+generations behind you.  Yours is an ancestry which has survived
+for a thousand centuries, and for a hundred thousand centuries,
+and your line must not stop here.  It cannot.  Your ancestry will
+not permit it.  Instinct is stronger than the will.  The race is
+mightier than you.  Come, Dave, let us go.  We are young yet, and
+life is good.  Come."
+
+Winapie, passing out of the cabin to feed the dogs, caught his
+attention and caused him to shake his head and weakly to
+reiterate.  But the woman's hand slipped about his neck, and her
+cheek pressed to his.  His bleak life rose up and smote him,--the
+vain struggle with pitiless forces; the dreary years of frost and
+famine; the harsh and jarring contact with elemental life; the
+aching void which mere animal existence could not fill.  And
+there, seduction by his side, whispering of brighter, warmer
+lands, of music, light, and joy, called the old times back again.
+He visioned it unconsciously.  Faces rushed in upon him; glimpses
+of forgotten scenes, memories of merry hours; strains of song and
+trills of laughter -
+
+"Come, Dave, Come.  I have for both.  The way is soft."  She
+looked about her at the bare furnishings of the cabin.  "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.  He rose
+to his feet . . . But the snarling of hungry dogs, and the shrill
+cries of Winapie bringing about peace between the combatants, came
+muffled to his ear through the heavy logs.  And another scene
+flashed before him.  A struggle in the forest,--a bald-face
+grizzly, broken-legged, terrible; the snarling of the dogs and the
+shrill cries of Winapie as she urged them to the attack; himself
+in the midst of the crush, breathless, panting, striving to hold
+off red death; broken-backed, entrail-ripped dogs howling in
+impotent anguish and desecrating the snow; the virgin white
+running scarlet with the blood of man and beast; the bear,
+ferocious, irresistible, crunching, crunching down to the core of
+his life; and Winapie, at the last, in the thick of the frightful
+muddle, hair flying, eyes flashing, fury incarnate, passing the
+long hunting knife again and again--Sweat started to his forehead.
+He shook off the clinging woman and staggered back to the wall.
+And she, knowing that the moment had come, but unable to divine
+what was passing within him, felt all she had gained slipping
+away.
+
+"Dave!  Dave!" she cried.  "I will not give you up!  I will not
+give you up!  If you do not wish to come, we will stay.  I will
+stay with you.  The world is less 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 paddle with 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 of his 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 to me!  You say
+I did you wrong in the past--and I did--let me make up for it, let
+me atone.  If I did not rightly measure love before, let me show
+that I can now."
+
+She sank to the floor and threw her arms about his knees, sobbing.
+"And you DO care for me.  You DO care for me.  Think!  The long
+years I have waited, suffered!  You can never know!"  He stooped
+and raised her to her feet.
+
+"Listen," he commanded, opening the door and lifting her bodily
+outside.  "It cannot be.  We are not alone to 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, but you 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 quavered and
+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.  Then she turned and
+went away.
+
+
+"Break camp, Pierre," she said to the boatman, who alone had
+remained awake against her return.  "We must be going."
+
+By the firelight his sharp eyes scanned the woe in her face, but
+he received the extraordinary command as though it were the most
+usual thing 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,
+the while his voice, vibrant with action, shrilling through all
+the camp.  In a trice Mrs. Sayther's tiny tent had been struck,
+pots and pans were being gathered up, blankets rolled, and the men
+staggering under the loads to the boat.  Here, on the banks, Mrs.
+Sayther waited till the luggage was made ship-shape and her nest
+prepared.
+
+"We line up to de head of de island," Pierre explained to her
+while running out the long tow rope.  "Den we tak to das back
+channel, where de water not queek, and I t'ink we mak good tam."
+
+A scuffling and pattering of feet in the last year's dry grass
+caught 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 apathetic
+throughout the scene in the cabin, had now quickened into blazing
+and wrathful 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 no say nothing.  After that him
+say, 'Good girl Winapie, go way.  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
+the life 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?  What you think?  I
+have one man.  I Indian girl.  You 'Merican woman.  You good to
+see.  You find plenty men.  Your eyes blue like the sky.  Your
+skin so white, so soft."
+
+Coolly she thrust out a brown forefinger and pressed the soft
+cheek of 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 secret gratitude.  "It's all right, Pierre," she said.
+"Please go away."
+
+He stepped back respectfully out of earshot, where he stood
+grumbling to himself and measuring the distance in springs.
+
+"Um white, um soft, like baby."  Winapie touched the other cheek
+and withdrew her hand.  "Bimeby mosquito come.  Skin get sore in
+spot; um swell, oh, so big; um hurt, oh, so much.  Plenty
+mosquito; plenty spot.  I think better you go now before mosquito
+come.  This way," pointing down the stream, "you go St. Michael's;
+that way," pointing up, "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 burst into tears.
+
+"Be good to him," she cried.  "Be good to him."
+
+Then she slipped half down the face of the bank, called back
+"Good-by," and dropped into the boat amidships.  Pierre followed
+her and cast off.  He shoved the steering oar into place and gave
+the signal.  Le Goire lifted an old French chanson; the men, like
+a row of ghosts in the dim starlight, bent their backs to the tow
+line; the steering oar 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 felt his knife.  The hot blood was freezing on his hands,
+and the scene yet bright in his eyes,--the man, clutching the
+table and sinking slowly to the floor; the rolling counters and
+the scattered deck; the swift shiver throughout the room, and the
+pause; the game-keepers no longer calling, and the clatter of the
+chips dying away; the startled faces; the infinite instant of
+silence; and then the great blood-roar and the tide of vengeance
+which lapped his heels and turned the town mad behind him.
+
+"All hell's broke loose," he sneered, turning aside in the
+darkness and heading for the beach.  Lights were flashing from
+open doors, and tent, cabin, and dance-hall let slip their
+denizens upon the chase.  The clamor of men and howling of dogs
+smote his ears and quickened his feet.  He ran on and on.  The
+sounds grew dim, and the pursuit dissipated itself in vain rage
+and aimless groping.  But a flitting shadow clung to him.  Head
+thrust over shoulder, he caught glimpses of it, now taking vague
+shape on an open expanse of snow, how merging into the deeper
+shadows of some darkened cabin or beach-listed craft.
+
+Fortune La Pearle swore like a woman, weakly, with the hint of
+tears that comes of exhaustion, and plunged deeper into the maze
+of heaped ice, tents, and prospect holes.  He stumbled over taut
+hawsers and piles of dunnage, tripped on crazy guy-ropes and
+insanely planted pegs, and fell again and again upon frozen dumps
+and mounds of hoarded driftwood.  At times, when he deemed he had
+drawn clear, his head dizzy with the painful pounding of his heart
+and the suffocating intake of his breath, he slackened down; and
+ever the shadow leaped out of the gloom and forced him on in
+heart-breaking flight.  A swift intuition 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 which
+waited at the last turn when chips were cashed in and gains and
+losses counted up.  Fortune La Pearle believed in those rare,
+illuminating moments, when the intelligence flung from it time and
+space, to rise naked through eternity and read the facts of life
+from the open book of chance.  That this was such a moment he had
+no doubt; and when he turned inland and sped across the snow-
+covered tundra he was not startled because the shadow took upon it
+greater definiteness and drew in closer.  Oppressed with his own
+impotence, he halted in the midst of the white waste and whirled
+about.  His right hand slipped from its mitten, and a revolver, at
+level, glistened in the pale light of the stars.
+
+"Don't shoot.  I haven't a gun."
+
+The shadow had assumed tangible shape, and at the sound of its
+human voice a trepidation affected Fortune La Pearle's knees, and
+his stomach was stricken with the qualms of sudden relief.
+
+Perhaps things fell out differently because Uri Bram had no gun
+that night when he sat on the hard benches of the El Dorado and
+saw murder done.  To that fact also might be attributed the trip
+on the Long Trail 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 matter much, 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 snow
+and attested by his various deities to the madness of Uri Bram.
+"Who are you," he perorated, "and what am I, that I should put my
+neck into the rope at your bidding?"
+
+"I am Uri Bram," the other said simply, "and my shack is over
+there on the edge of camp.  I don't know who you are, but you've
+thrust the soul from a living man's body,--there's the blood red
+on your sleeve,--and, like a second Cain, the hand of all mankind
+is against you, and there is no place you may lay your head.  Now,
+I have a shack--"
+
+"For the love of your mother, hold your say, man," interrupted
+Fortune La Pearle, "or I'll make you a second Abel for the joy of
+it.  So help me, I will!  With a thousand men to lay me 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 few of
+them, the pigs!  One gorgeous, glorious fight, and end the whole
+damn business!  It's a skin game, that's what life is, and I'm
+sick of it!"
+
+He stopped, appalled, crushed by his great desolation, and Uri
+Bram seized the moment.  He was not given to speech, this man, and
+that which followed was the longest in his life, save one long
+afterward in another place.
+
+"That's why I told you about my shack.  I can stow you there so
+they'll never find you, and I've got grub in plenty.  Elsewise you
+can't get away.  No dogs, no nothing, the sea closed, St. Michael
+the nearest post, runners to carry the news before you, the same
+over the portage to Anvik--not a chance in the world for you!  Now
+wait with me till it blows over.  They'll forget all about you in
+a month or less, what of stampeding to York and what not, and you
+can hit the trail under their noses and they 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't to catch you or give you up.
+My ideas are my own, and that's not 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
+bared to the frost and naked hands grasping the sacred book,
+Fortune La Pearle swore him to the words he had spoken--an oath
+which Uri Bram never intended breaking, and never broke.
+
+At the door of the shack the gambler hesitated for an instant,
+marvelling at 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-assumed indolence, intently
+studying Uri's face through the curling wisps of smoke.  It was a
+powerful face, but its strength was of that peculiar sort which
+stands girt in and unrelated.  The seams were deep-graven, more
+like scars, while the stern features were in no way softened by
+hints of sympathy or humor.  Under prominent bushy brows the eyes
+shone cold and gray.  The cheekbones, high and forbidding, were
+undermined by deep hollows.  The chin and jaw displayed a
+steadiness of purpose which the narrow forehead advertised as
+single, and, if needs be, pitiless.  Everything was harsh, the
+nose, the lips, the voice, the lines about the mouth.  It was the
+face of one who communed much with himself, unused to seeking
+counsel from the world; the face of one who wrestled oft of nights
+with angels, and rose to face the day with shut lips that no man
+might know.  He was narrow but deep; and Fortune, his own humanity
+broad and shallow, could make 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 cups had been
+emptied.  "We've got to fix up for visitors."
+
+Fortune purred his name for the other's benefit, and assisted
+understandingly.  The bunk was built against a side and end of the
+cabin.  It was a rude affair, the bottom being composed of drift-
+wood logs overlaid with moss.  At the foot the rough ends of these
+timbers projected in an uneven row.  From the side next the wall
+Uri ripped back the moss and removed three of the logs.  The
+jagged ends he sawed off and replaced so that the projecting row
+remained unbroken.  Fortune carried in sacks of flour from the
+cache and piled them on the floor beneath the aperture.  On these
+Uri laid a pair of long sea-bags, and over all spread several
+thicknesses of moss and blankets.  Upon this Fortune could lie,
+with the sleeping furs stretching over him from one side of the
+bunk to the other, and all 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
+cranny undisturbed.  In fact, little attention was given to Uri
+Bram's cabin; for it was the last place under the sun to expect to
+find the murderer of John Randolph.  Except during such
+interruptions, Fortune lolled about the cabin, playing long games
+of solitaire and smoking endless cigarettes.  Though his volatile
+nature loved geniality and play of words and laughter, he quickly
+accommodated himself to Uri's taciturnity.  Beyond the actions and
+plans of his pursuers, the state of the trails, and the price of
+dogs, they never talked; and these things were only discussed at
+rare intervals and briefly.  But Fortune fell to working out a
+system, and hour after hour, and day after day, he shuffled and
+dealt, shuffled and dealt, noted the combinations of the cards in
+long columns, and shuffled and dealt again.  Toward the end even
+this absorption failed him, and, head bowed upon the table, he
+visioned the lively all-night houses of Nome, where the
+gamekeepers and lookouts worked in shifts and the clattering
+roulette ball never slept.  At such times his loneliness and
+bankruptcy stunned him till 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 feel of it.
+
+"Life's a skin-game," he was fond of repeating, and on this one
+note he rang the changes.  "I never had half a chance," he
+complained.  "I was faked in my birth and flim-flammed with my
+mother's milk.  The dice were loaded when she tossed the box, and
+I was born to prove the loss.  But that was no reason she should
+blame me for it, and look on me as a cold deck; but she did--ay,
+she did.  Why didn't she give me a show?  Why didn't the world?
+Why did I go broke in Seattle?  Why did I take the steerage, and
+live like a hog to Nome?  Why did I go to the El Dorado?  I was
+heading for Big Pete's and only went for matches.  Why didn't I
+have matches?  Why did I want to smoke?  Don't you see?  All
+worked out, every bit of it, all parts fitting snug.  Before I was
+born, like as not.  I'll put the sack I never hope to get on it,
+before I was born.  That's why!  That's why John Randolph passed
+the word and his checks in at the same time.  Damn him!  It served
+him well right!  Why didn't he keep his tongue between his teeth
+and give me a chance?  He knew I 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
+interrogating the scheme of things.  At such outbreaks Uri said no
+word, gave no sign, save that his grey eyes seemed to turn dull
+and muddy, as though from lack of interest.  There was nothing in
+common between these two men, and this fact Fortune grasped
+sufficiently to wonder sometimes why Uri had stood by him.
+
+But the time of waiting came to an end.  Even a community's blood
+lust cannot stand before its gold lust.  The murder of John
+Randolph had already passed into the annals of the camp, and there
+it rested.  Had the murderer appeared, the men of Nome would
+certainly have stopped stampeding long enough to see justice done,
+whereas the whereabouts of Fortune La Pearle was no longer an
+insistent problem.  There was gold in the creek beds and ruby
+beaches, and when the sea opened, the men with healthy sacks would
+sail away to where the good things of life were sold absurdly
+cheap.
+
+So, one night, Fortune helped Uri Bram harness the dogs and lash
+the 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 miles from its mouth.  Then on, into the northeast, past
+Koyokuk, Tanana, and Minook, till they rounded the Great Curve at
+Fort Yukon, crossed and recrossed the Arctic Circle, and headed
+south through the Flats.  It was a weary journey, and Fortune
+would have wondered why the man went with him, had not Uri told
+him that he owned claims and had men working at Eagle.  Eagle lay
+on the edge of the line; a few miles farther 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 was
+their last camp, and they were now to part.  Fortune's heart was
+light.  There was a promise of spring in the land, and the days
+were growing longer.  The way was passing into Canadian territory.
+Liberty was at hand, the sun was returning, and each day saw him
+nearer to the Great Outside.  The world was big, and he could once
+again paint his future in royal red.  He whistled about the
+breakfast and hummed snatches of light song while Uri put the dogs
+in harness and packed up.  But when all was ready, Fortune's feet
+itching to 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
+chafing at the delay.
+
+"Sometimes there are meetings under circumstances which make men
+remember," Uri continued, speaking in a low voice and very slowly,
+"and I met a man under such circumstances on the Dead Horse Trail.
+Freighting an outfit over the White Pass in '97 broke many a man's
+heart, for there was a world of reason when they gave that trail
+its name.  The horses died like mosquitoes in 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 starved at the
+Lakes; they fell off the trail, what there was of it, or they went
+through it; in the river they drowned under their loads, or were
+smashed to pieces against the boulders; they snapped their legs in
+the crevices and broke their backs falling backwards with their
+packs; in the sloughs they sank from sight or smothered in the
+slime, and they were disembowelled in the bogs where the corduroy
+logs turned end up in the mud; men shot them, worked them to
+death, and when they were gone, went back to the beach and bought
+more.  Some did not bother to shoot them,--stripping the saddles
+off and the shoes and leaving them where they fell.  Their hearts
+turned to stone--those which did not break--and they became
+beasts, the men on Dead Horse Trail.
+
+"It was there I met a man with the heart of a Christ and the
+patience.  And he was honest.  When he rested at midday he took
+the packs from the horses so that they, too, might rest.  He paid
+$50 a hundred-weight for their fodder, and more.  He used his own
+bed to blanket their backs when they rubbed raw.  Other men let
+the saddles eat holes the size of water-buckets.  Other men, when
+the shoes gave out, let them wear their hoofs down to the bleeding
+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 died
+blaspheming God.  He was never too tired to ease a strap or
+tighten a cinch, and often there were tears in his eyes when he
+looked on all that waste of misery.  At a passage in the rocks,
+where the brutes upreared hindlegged and stretched their forelegs
+upward like cats to clear the wall, the way was piled with
+carcasses where they had toppled back.  And here he stood, in the
+stench of hell, with a cheery word and a hand on the rump at the
+right time, till the string passed by.  And when one bogged he
+blocked the trail till it was clear again; nor did the man live
+who crowded him at such time.
+
+"At the end of the trail a man who had killed fifty horses wanted
+to buy, but we looked at him and at our own,--mountain cayuses
+from eastern Oregon.  Five thousand he offered, and we were broke,
+but we remembered the poison grass of the Summit and the passage
+in the Rocks, and the man who was my brother spoke no word, but
+divided the cayuses into two bunches,--his in the one and mine in
+the other,--and he looked at me and we understood each other.  So
+he drove mine to the one side and I drove his to the other, and we
+took with us our rifles and shot them to the last one, while the
+man who had killed fifty horses cursed us till his throat cracked.
+But that man, with whom I welded blood-brothership on the Dead
+Horse Trail--"
+
+"Why, that man was John Randolph," Fortune, sneering the while,
+completed the climax for him.
+
+Uri nodded, and said, "I am glad you understand."
+
+"I am ready," Fortune answered, the old weary bitterness strong 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 believe He
+loves justice.  I believe He is looking down upon us now, choosing
+between us.  I believe He waits to work His will through my own
+right arm.  And such is my belief, that we will take equal chance
+and let Him speak His own judgment."
+
+Fortune's heart leaped at the words.  He did not know much
+concerning Uri's God, but he believed in Chance, and Chance had
+been coming his way ever since the night he ran down the beach and
+across the snow.  "But there is only one gun," he objected.
+
+"We will fire turn about," Uri replied, at the same time throwing
+out the cylinder of the other man's Colt and examining it.
+
+"And the cards to decide!  One hand of seven up!"
+
+Fortune's blood was warming to the game, and he drew the deck from
+his pocket as Uri nodded.  Surely Chance would not desert him now!
+He thought of the returning sun as he cut for deal, and he
+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.  The outside
+seemed very near to him as they stepped off the fifty paces.
+
+"If God withholds His hand and you drop me, the dogs and outfit
+are yours.  You'll find a bill of sale, already made out, in my
+pocket," Uri explained, facing the path of the bullet, straight
+and broad-breasted.
+
+Fortune shook a vision of the sun shining on the ocean from his
+eyes and took aim.  He was very careful.  Twice he lowered as the
+spring breeze shook the pines.  But the third time he dropped on
+one 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
+far to one side, else the man would not have whirled.
+
+When Uri, mastering the flesh and struggling to his feet, beckoned
+for the weapon, Fortune was minded to fire again.  But he thrust
+the idea from him.  Chance had been very good to him already, he
+felt, 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 not
+possibly hold the heavy Colt long enough to draw a bead.
+
+"And where is your God now?" he taunted, as he gave the wounded
+man the revolver.
+
+And Uri answered:  "God has not yet spoken.  Prepare that He may
+speak."
+
+Fortune faced him, but twisted his chest sideways in order to
+present less surface.  Uri tottered about drunkenly, but waited,
+too, for the moment's calm between the catspaws.  The revolver was
+very heavy, and he doubted, like Fortune, because of its weight.
+But he held it, arm extended, above his head, and then let it
+slowly drop forward and down.  At the instant Fortune's left
+breast and the sight flashed into line with his eye, he pulled the
+trigger.  Fortune did not whirl, but gay San Francisco dimmed and
+faded, and as the sun-bright snow turned black and blacker, he
+breathed his last malediction on the Chance he had misplayed.
+
+
+
+SIWASH
+
+
+
+"If I was a man--"  Her words were in themselves indecisive, but
+the withering contempt which flashed from her black eyes 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 upon her benevolently as ever.  He bore women
+too large a portion of his 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 around a thing.  So they said nothing,
+these two men who had taken the half-frozen woman into their tent
+three days back, and who had warmed her, and fed her, and rescued
+her goods from the Indian packers.  This latter had necessitated
+the payment of numerous dollars, to say nothing of a demonstration
+in force--Dick Humphries squinting along the sights of a
+Winchester while Tommy apportioned their wages among them 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 the
+equally desperate Klondike rush of '97.  Men were occupied with
+their own pressing needs, nor did they approve of women playing,
+single-handed, the odds of the arctic winter.  "If I was a man, I
+know what I would do."  Thus reiterated Molly, she of the flashing
+eyes, and therein spoke the cumulative grit of five American-born
+generations.
+
+In the succeeding silence, Tommy thrust a pan of biscuits into the
+Yukon stove and piled on fresh fuel.  A reddish flood pounded
+along under his sun-tanned skin, and as he stooped, the skin of
+his neck was scarlet.  Dick palmed a three-cornered sail needle
+through a set of broken pack straps, his good nature in nowise
+disturbed by the feminine cataclysm which was threatening to burst
+in the storm-beaten tent.
+
+"And if you was a man?" he asked, his voice vibrant with kindness.
+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 back and light out.  I
+wouldn't lay in camp here, with the Yukon like 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, afraid of a little wind
+and wet.  I tell you straight, Yankee-men are made of different
+stuff.  They'd be hitting the trail for Dawson if they had to wade
+through hell-fire.  And you, you--I wish 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 the needle 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
+hurtled past, and the sleet rat-tat-tatted with snappy spite
+against the thin canvas.  The smoke, smothered in its exit, drove
+back through the fire-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 pair of
+smoke-outraged eyes.
+
+"And why can't a man show his manhood?"
+
+Tommy sprang to his feet with an oath which would have shocked a
+woman of lesser heart, ripped loose the sturdy reef-knots and
+flung back 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 which the
+streaming ground sloped to a foaming gorge.  Down this ramped a
+mountain torrent.  Here and there, dwarf spruce, rooting and
+grovelling in the shallow alluvium, marked the proximity of the
+timber line.  Beyond, on the opposing slope, the vague outlines of
+a glacier loomed dead-white through the driving rain.  Even as
+they looked, its massive front crumbled into the valley, on the
+breast of some subterranean vomit, and it lifted its hoarse
+thunder above the screeching voice of the storm.  Involuntarily,
+Molly shrank back.
+
+"Look, woman!  Look with all your eyes!  Three miles in the teeth
+of the gale to Crater Lake, across two glaciers, along the
+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 they on 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 the
+tent till it swayed like a huge bladder at its guy ropes.  The
+smoke swirled about them, and the sleet drove sharply into their
+flesh.  Tommy pulled the flaps together hastily, and returned to
+his tearful task at the fire-box.  Dick Humphries threw the mended
+pack straps into a corner and lighted his pipe.  Even Molly was
+for the moment persuaded.
+
+"There's my clothes," she half-whimpered, the feminine for the
+moment prevailing.  "They're right at the top of the cache, and
+they'll be ruined!  I tell you, ruined!"
+
+"There, there," Dick interposed, when the last quavering syllable
+had wailed itself out.  "Don't let that worry you, little woman.
+I'm old enough to be your father's brother, and I've a daughter
+older than you, and I'll tog you out in fripperies when we get to
+Dawson if it takes my last dollar."
+
+"When we get to Dawson!"  The scorn had come back to her throat
+with a sudden surge.  "You'll rot on the way, first.  You'll drown
+in a mudhole.  You--you--Britishers!"
+
+The last word, explosive, intensive, had strained the limits of
+her vituperation.  If that would not stir these men, what could?
+Tommy's neck ran red again, but he kept his tongue between his
+teeth.  Dick's eyes mellowed.  He had the advantage over 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 enumerated that of being quartered with
+next of kin.  These men were Britons.  On sea and land her
+ancestry and the generations thereof had thrashed them and theirs.
+On sea and land they would continue to do so.  The traditions of
+her race clamored for vindication.  She was but a woman of the
+present, but in her bubbled the whole mighty past.  It was not
+alone Molly Travis who pulled on gum boots, mackintosh, and
+straps; for the phantom hands of ten thousand forbears drew tight
+the buckles, just so as they squared her jaw and set her eyes with
+determination.  She, Molly Travis, intended to shame these
+Britishers; they, the innumerable shades, were asserting the
+dominance of the common race.
+
+The men-folk did not interfere.  Once Dick suggested that she take
+his oilskins, as her mackintosh was worth no more than paper in
+such a storm.  But she sniffed her independence so sharply that he
+communed with his pipe till she tied the flaps on the outside and
+slushed away on the flooded trail.
+
+"Think she'll make it?"  Dick's face belied the indifference of
+his voice.
+
+"Make it?  If she stands the pressure till she gets to the cache,
+what of the cold and misery, she'll be stark, raving mad.  Stand
+it?  She'll be dumb-crazed.  You know it 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 to just let go and cry like a baby.
+Clothes?  She won't be 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'll tone it down a bit."
+
+"Yes," Dick admitted, "she's too ambitious.  But then Molly's all
+right.  A cussed little fool to tackle a trip like this, but a
+plucky sight better than those pick-me-up-and-carry-me kind 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 from the 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 put up with it, eh?"
+
+"The proposition.  A sharp sheath-knife cuts deeper on a slip than
+a dull one; but that's no reason for to hack the edge off over a
+capstan bar."
+
+"All right, if you say so, but when it comes to woman, I guess
+I'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's wet stockings
+and stretched them across his knees to dry.
+
+Dick, eying him querulously, went fishing in her hand satchel,
+then hitched up to the front of the stove with divers articles of
+damp clothing spread 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 with a 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 pot
+back to a cooler surface.  After that he investigated the
+biscuits, tested them with a splinter of wood, and placed them
+aside under cover of a damp cloth.  Dick, after the manner of his
+kind, stifled his interest and waited silently.  "A different
+woman to Molly.  Siwash."
+
+Dick nodded his understanding.
+
+"Not so proud and wilful, but stick by a fellow through thick and
+thin.  Sling a paddle with the next and starve as contentedly as
+Job.  Go for'ard when the sloop's nose was more often under than
+not, and take in sail like a man.  Went prospecting once, up
+Teslin way, past Surprise Lake and the Little Yellow-Head.  Grub
+gave out, and we ate the dogs.  Dogs gave out, and we ate
+harnesses, 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, never a I-told-you-so.  'Never mind, Tommy,'
+she'd say, day after day, that weak she could bare lift a snow-
+shoe and her feet raw with the work.  'Never mind.  I'd sooner be
+flat-bellied of hunger and be your woman, Tommy, than have a
+potlach every day and be Chief George's klooch.'  George was chief
+of the Chilcoots, you know, and wanted her bad.
+
+"Great days, those.  Was a likely chap myself when I struck the
+coast.  Jumped a whaler, the Pole Star, at Unalaska, and worked my
+way down to Sitka on an otter hunter.  Picked up with Happy Jack
+there--know him?"
+
+"Had charge of my traps for me," Dick answered, "down on the
+Columbia.  Pretty wild, wasn't he, with a warm place in his heart
+for whiskey and women?"
+
+"The very chap.  Went trading with him for a couple of seasons--
+hooch, and blankets, and such stuff.  Then got 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 finished the year's trade
+with the Sticks over the Passes, and was down from 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 bucks I'd met over Sitka way,
+but I'd got most of their histories from Happy Jack.
+
+"Everybody talking Chinook, not guessing that I could spit it
+better than most; and principally two girls who'd run away from
+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 they
+were fresh as fresh-caught cod.  Too much edge, you see.  Being a
+new-comer, they started to twist me, not knowing I gathered in
+every word of Chinook they uttered.
+
+"I never let on, but set to dancing with Tilly, and the more we
+danced the more our hearts warmed to each other.  'Looking for a
+woman,' one of the girls says, and the other tosses her head and
+answers, 'Small chance he'll get one when the women are looking
+for men.'  And the bucks and squaws standing around began to grin
+and giggle and repeat what had been said.  'Quite a pretty boy,'
+says the first one.  I'll not deny I was rather smooth-faced and
+youngish, but I'd been a man amongst men many's the day, and it
+rankled me.  'Dancing with Chief George's girl,' pipes the second.
+'First thing George'll give him the flat of a paddle and send him
+about his business.'  Chief George had been looking pretty black
+up to now, but at this he laughed and slapped his knees.  He was a
+husky beggar and would have used the paddle too.
+
+"'Who's the girls?' I asked Tilly, as we went ripping down the
+centre in a reel.  And as soon as she told me their names I
+remembered all about them from Happy Jack.  Had their pedigree
+down fine--several things he'd told me that not even their own
+tribe knew.  But I held my hush, and went on courting 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 Chief
+George had brought a paddle all ready for me.  Everybody was on
+the lookout for mischief when we stopped; but I marched, easy as
+you please, slap into the thick of them.  The Mission girls cut me
+up something clever, and for all I was angry I had to set my teeth
+to keep 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 their
+people before them; their fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers--
+everybody, everything.  Each mean trick they'd played; every
+scrape they'd got into; every shame that'd fallen them.  And I
+burned them without fear or favor.  All hands crowded round.
+Never had they heard a white man sling their lingo as I did.
+Everybody was laughing save the Mission girls.  Even Chief George
+forgot the paddle, or at least he was swallowing too much respect
+to dare to use it.
+
+"But the girls.  'Oh, don't, Tommy,' they cried, the tears running
+down their cheeks.  'Please don'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 and pleading with me to keep quiet.  Then I shot a glance
+at Chief George; but he did not know whether to have at me or not,
+and passed it off by laughing hollowly.
+
+"So be.  When I passed the parting with Tilly that night I 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
+pleasure for the honest girl she was.  Ay, a striking lass, and I
+didn't wonder that Chief George was taken with her.
+
+"Everything my way.  Took the wind from his sails on the first
+leg.  I was for getting her aboard and sailing down Wrangel way
+till it blew over, leaving him to whistle; but I wasn't to get 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 off
+with consumption or some sort of lung trouble.  He was good and
+bad 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'd be; but the old beggar had promised her to Chief George, and
+when he clapped eyes on me his anger brought on a hemorrhage.
+
+"'Come and take me, Tommy,' she says when we bid good-by on the
+beach.  'Ay,' I answers; 'when you give the word.'  And I kissed
+her, white-man-fashion and 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 the uncle a lift over the divide.
+
+"So I went down Wrangel way, past St. Mary's and even to the Queen
+Charlottes, trading, running whiskey, turning the sloop to most
+anything.  Winter was on, stiff and crisp, and I was back to
+Juneau, when the word came.  'Come,' the beggar says 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 sloop
+and 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
+was washed over from the bows.  Jibed all over and crossed the
+course three 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's skirts up to
+dry, "and went down like a pot of lead."
+
+"My idea.  So I finished the course alone, half-dead when I made
+Dyea in the dark of the evening.  The tide favored, and I 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 mainsail or jib.
+First I broached a pint of the cargo raw, and then, leaving all
+standing, ready for the start, and with a blanket around me,
+headed across the flat to the camp.  No mistaking, it was a grand
+layout.  The Chilcats had come in a body--dogs, babies, and
+canoes--to say nothing of the Dog-Ears, the Little Salmons, and
+the Missions.  Full half a thousand of them to celebrate Tilly's
+wedding, and never a white man in a score of miles.
+
+"Nobody took note of me, the blanket over my head and hiding my
+face, and I waded knee deep through the dogs and youngsters till I
+was well up to the front.  The show was being pulled off in a big
+open place among the trees, with great fires burning and the snow
+moccasin-packed as hard as Portland cement.  Next me was Tilly,
+beaded and scarlet-clothed galore, and against her Chief George
+and his head men.  The shaman was being helped out by the big
+medicines from the other tribes, and it shivered my spine up and
+down, the deviltries they cut.  I caught myself wondering if the
+folks in Liverpool could only see me now; and I thought of yellow-
+haired Gussie, whose brother I licked after my first voyage, just
+because he was not for having a sailor-man courting his sister.
+And with Gussie in my eyes I looked at Tilly.  A rum old world,
+thinks I, with man a-stepping in trails the mother little dreamed
+of when he lay at suck.
+
+"So be.  When the noise was loudest, walrus hides booming and
+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 spring tide.
+'Where?'  'The high bank at the edge of the ice,' I whispers back.
+'Jump out when I give the word.'
+
+"Did I say there was no end of huskies?  Well, there was no end.
+Here, there, everywhere, they were scattered about,--tame wolves
+and nothing less.  When the strain runs thin they breed them 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
+threw the 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 there was a
+raging hundred of them, top and bottom, ripping and tearing each
+other, kids and squaws tumbling which way, and the camp gone wild.
+Tilly'd slipped away, so I followed.  But when I looked over my
+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 crowd was
+untangling itself.  Nobody was in proper place, so they didn't
+note that Tilly'd gone.  'Hello,' I says, gripping Chief 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,--him with the
+upper hand and wedding Tilly.  Chance to puff big over me.  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
+richer by playing unbeknowing.
+
+"'What's the row?' I asks.  'Who's getting married now?'
+
+"'Chief George,' the shaman says, ducking his reverence to him.
+
+"'Thought he had two klooches.'
+
+"'Him takum more,--three,' with another duck.
+
+"'Oh!'  And I turned away as though it didn't interest me.
+
+"But this wouldn't do, and everybody begins singing out,
+'Killisnoo!  Killisnoo!'
+
+"'Killisnoo what?' I asked.
+
+"'Killisnoo, klooch, Chief George,' they blathered.  'Killisnoo,
+klooch.'
+
+"I jumped and looked at Chief George.  He nodded his head and
+threw out his chest.
+
+"She'll be no klooch of yours,' I says solemnly.  'No klooch of
+yours,' I repeats, while his face went black and his hand began
+dropping to his hunting-knife.
+
+"'Look!' I cries, striking an attitude.  'Big Medicine.  You watch
+my smoke.'
+
+"I pulled off my mittens, rolled back my sleeves, and made half-a-
+dozen passes in the air.
+
+"'Killisnoo!' I shouts.  'Killisnoo!  Killisnoo!'
+
+"I was making medicine, and they began to scare.  Every eye was on
+me; no time to find out that Tilly wasn't there.  Then I called
+Killisnoo three times again, and waited; and three times more.
+All for mystery and to make them nervous.  Chief George couldn't
+guess what I was up to, and wanted to put a stop to the foolery;
+but the shamans said to wait, and that they'd see me and go me one
+better, or words to that effect.  Besides, he was a superstitious
+cuss, and I fancy a bit afraid of the white man's magic.
+
+"Then I called Killisnoo, long and soft like the howl of a wolf,
+till the women were all a-tremble and the bucks looking serious.
+
+"'Look!' I sprang for'ard, pointing my finger into a bunch of
+squaws--easier to deceive women than men, you know.  'Look!'  And
+I raised it aloft as though following the flight of a bird.  Up,
+up, straight overhead, making to follow it with my eyes till it
+disappeared in the sky.
+
+"'Killisnoo,' I said, looking at Chief George and pointing upward
+again.  'Killisnoo.'
+
+"So help me, Dick, the gammon worked.  Half of them, at least, saw
+Tilly disappear in the air.  They'd drunk my whiskey at Juneau and
+seen stranger sights, I'll warrant.  Why should I 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
+from me.  The time was ripe to go.  'Grab him,' Chief George
+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 pointed
+up.  Touch me?  Not for the kingdoms of the earth.  Chief George
+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 his grit
+went out through his fingers.
+
+"'Let your shamans work wonders the like of which I have done this
+night,' I says.  'Let them call Killisnoo down out of the sky
+whither I have sent her.'  But the priests knew their limits.
+'May your klooches bear you sons as the spawn of the salmon,' I
+says, turning to go; 'and may your totem pole stand long in the
+land, and the smoke of your camp rise always.'
+
+"But if the beggars could have seen me hitting the high places for
+the sloop as soon as I was clear of them, they'd thought my own
+medicine had got after me.  Tilly'd kept warm by chopping the ice
+away, and was all ready to cast off.  Gawd! how we ran before it,
+the Taku howling after us and the freezing seas sweeping over at
+every clip.  With everything battened down, me a-steering and
+Tilly chopping ice, we held on half the night, till I plumped the
+sloop 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 Chilcat
+Station.  She held my hand to the last, the ice creeping up inside
+the 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't ever 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, clear through.
+Towards the last she says, 'Keep my feather bed, Tommy, keep it
+always.'  And I agreed.  Then she opened her eyes, full with the
+pain.  'I've been a good woman to you, Tommy, and because of that
+I want you to promise--to promise'--the words 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 people call you "squaw-man," your women turn their
+heads to the one side on the street, and you do not go to their
+cabins like other men.  Why?  Your wife Siwash.  Is it not so?
+And this is not good.  Wherefore I die.  Promise me.  Kiss me in
+token of your promise.'
+
+"I kissed her, and she dozed off, whispering, 'It is good.'  At
+the end, that near gone my ear was at her lips, she roused for the
+last time.  'Remember, Tommy; remember my feather bed.'  Then she
+died, in childbirth, up there on the Chilcat Station."
+
+The tent heeled over and half flattened before the gale.  Dick
+refilled his pipe, while Tommy drew the tea and set it aside
+against Molly'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
+the wind, she was heading for the tent.  On her shoulders a bulky
+pack caught the full fury of the storm.  She plucked feebly at the
+knotted flaps, but it was Tommy and Dick who cast them loose.
+Then she set her soul for the last effort, staggered in, and fell
+exhausted on the floor.
+
+Tommy unbuckled the straps and took the pack from her.  As he
+lifted it there was a clanging of pots and pans.  Dick, pouring
+out a mug of whiskey, paused long enough to pass the wink across
+her body.  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 straightened
+up a bit.
+
+"Here's some dry togs.  Climb into them.  We're going out to
+extra-peg the tent.  After that, give us the call, and we'll come
+in and have dinner.  Sing out when you're ready."
+
+"So help me, Dick, that's knocked the edge off her for the rest of
+this trip," Tommy spluttered as they crouched to the lee 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 of the
+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
+mind and character had become so warped that he was a very
+disagreeable man to deal with.  He was also a victim to
+somnambulic propensities, and very set in his ideas.  He had been
+a weaver of cloth from the cradle, until the fever of Klondike had
+entered his blood and torn him away from his loom.  His cabin
+stood midway between Sixty Mile Post and the Stuart River; and men
+who made it a custom to travel the trail to Dawson, likened him to
+a robber baron, perched in his fortress and exacting toll from the
+caravans that used his ill-kept roads.  Since a certain amount of
+history was required in the construction of this figure, the less
+cultured wayfarers from Stuart River were prone to describe him
+after a still more primordial fashion, in which a command of
+strong adjectives was to be chiefly noted.
+
+This cabin was not his, by the way, having been built several
+years previously by a couple of miners who had got out a raft of
+logs at that point for a grub-stake.  They had been most
+hospitable lads, and, after they abandoned it, travelers who knew
+the route made it an object to arrive there at nightfall.  It was
+very handy, saving them all the time and toil of pitching camp;
+and it was an unwritten rule that the 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 crowded into its shelter.  Jacob Kent
+noted these things, exercised squatter sovereignty, and moved in.
+Thenceforth, the weary travelers were mulcted 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 wood for him
+and carried his water.  This was rank piracy, but his victims were
+an easy-going breed, and while they detested him, they yet
+permitted him to flourish in his sins.
+
+One afternoon in April he sat by his door,--for all the world like
+a predatory spider,--marvelling at the heat of the returning sun,
+and keeping an eye on the trail for prospective flies.  The Yukon
+lay at his feet, a sea of ice, disappearing around two great bends
+to the north and south, and stretching an honest two miles from
+bank to bank.  Over its rough breast ran the sled-trail, a slender
+sunken line, eighteen inches wide and two thousand miles in
+length, with more curses distributed to the linear foot than any
+other road in or out of all Christendom.
+
+Jacob Kent was feeling particularly good that afternoon.  The
+record had been broken the previous night, and he had sold his
+hospitality to no less than twenty-eight visitors.  True, it had
+been quite uncomfortable, and four had snored beneath his bunk all
+night; but then it had added appreciable weight to the sack in
+which he kept his gold dust.  That sack, with its glittering
+yellow treasure, was at once the chief delight and the chief bane
+of his existence.  Heaven and hell lay within its slender mouth.
+In the nature of things, there being no privacy to his one-roomed
+dwelling, he was tortured by a constant fear of theft.  It would
+be very easy for these bearded, desperate-looking strangers to
+make away with it.  Often he dreamed that such was the case, and
+awoke in the grip of nightmare.  A select number of these robbers
+haunted him through his dreams, and he came to know them quite
+well, especially the bronzed leader with the gash on his right
+cheek.  This fellow was the most persistent of the lot, and,
+because of him, he had, in his waking moments, constructed several
+score of hiding-places in and about the cabin.  After a
+concealment he would breathe freely again, perhaps for several
+nights, only to collar the Man with the Gash in the very act of
+unearthing the sack.  Then, on awakening in the midst of the usual
+struggle, he would at once get up and transfer the bag to a new
+and more ingenious crypt.  It was not that he was the direct
+victim of these phantasms; but he believed in omens and thought-
+transference, and he deemed these dream-robbers to be the astral
+projection of real personages who happened at those particular
+moments, no matter where they were in the flesh, to be harboring
+designs, in the spirit, upon his wealth.  So he continued to bleed
+the unfortunates who crossed his threshold, and at the same time
+to add to his trouble with every ounce that went into the sack.
+
+As he sat sunning himself, a thought came to Jacob Kent that
+brought him to his feet with a jerk.  The pleasures of life had
+culminated in the continual weighing and reweighing of his dust;
+but a shadow had been thrown upon this pleasant avocation, which
+he had hitherto failed to brush aside.  His gold-scales were quite
+small; in fact, their maximum was a pound and a half,--eighteen
+ounces,--while his hoard 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 considered himself to have been shut out from
+a new and most edifying coign of contemplation.  Being denied
+this, half the pleasure of possession had been lost; nay, he felt
+that this miserable obstacle actually minimized the fact, as it
+did the strength, of possession.  It was the solution of this
+problem flashing across his mind that had just brought him to his
+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 set
+up.  On one side he placed the stamped disks to the equivalent of
+fifteen ounces, and balanced it with dust on the other.  Replacing
+the weights with dust, he then had thirty ounces precisely
+balanced.  These, in turn, he placed together on one side and
+again balanced with more dust.  By this time the gold was
+exhausted, and he was sweating liberally.  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 the table.  Equilibrium,
+however, was restored by the addition of a pennyweight and five
+grains to the opposite side.  He stood, head thrown back,
+transfixed.  The sack was empty, but the potentiality of the
+scales had become immeasurable.  Upon them he could weigh any
+amount, from the tiniest grain to pounds upon pounds.  Mammon laid
+hot fingers on his heart.  The sun swung on its westering way till
+it flashed through the open doorway, full upon the yellow-burdened
+scales.  The precious heaps, like the golden breasts of a bronze
+Cleopatra, flung back the light in a mellow glow.  Time and space
+were not.
+
+"Gawd blime me! but you 'aye the makin' of several quid there,
+'aven't you?"
+
+Jacob Kent wheeled about, at the same time reaching for his
+double-barrelled shot-gun, which stood handy.  But when his eyes
+lit on the intruder's face, he staggered back dizzily.  IT WAS THE
+FACE OF THE MAN WITH THE GASH!
+
+The man looked at him curiously.
+
+"Oh, that's all right," he said, waving his hand deprecatingly.
+"You needn't think as I'll 'arm you 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 quavering of his
+knees.
+
+"W'y don't you pipe up an' say somethin'?" he went on, as the
+other struggled for breath.  "Wot's gone wrong o' your gaff?
+Anythink the matter?"
+
+"W--w--where'd you get it?" Kent at last managed to articulate,
+raising a shaking forefinger to the ghastly scar which seamed the
+other's cheek.
+
+"Shipmate stove me down with a marlin-spike from the main-royal.
+An' now as you 'aye your figger'ead in trim, wot I want to know
+is, wot's it to you?  That's wot I want to know--wot's it to you?
+Gawd blime me! do it 'urt you?  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 a sickly 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, intent on humoring this
+strange visitor, but wholly unprepared for the outburst which 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 Almighty ever 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 of
+Oriental profanity, mingling gods and devils, lineages and men,
+metaphors and 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 of a 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 hoppertunity of consortin' with a man o'
+my mug.  Get steam up in that fire-box o' your'n.  I'm goin' to
+unrig the dogs an' grub 'em.  An' don't be shy o' the wood, my
+lad; there's plenty more where that come 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
+the iniquities of this roadside Shylock; and all along the trail
+his numerous victims 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 played in it.  But while he could
+not understand, he saw the terror it created, and resolved to
+exploit it as remorselessly as would any modern trader 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 bustled about.  "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' down
+the river speak o' you, but I 'adn't no idea you was so jolly
+nice."
+
+Jacob Kent experienced a tremendous yearning to try his shotgun on
+him, but the fascination of the gash was too potent.  This was the
+real Man with the Gash, the man who had so often robbed him in the
+spirit.  This, then, was the embodied entity of the being whose
+astral form had been projected into his dreams, the man who had so
+frequently harbored designs against his hoard; hence--there could
+be no other conclusion--this Man with the Gash had now come in the
+flesh to dispossess him.  And that gash!  He could no more keep
+his eyes 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 to the pole.
+
+"Do it 'urt you?" Jim Cardegee thundered suddenly, looking up from
+the spreading of his blankets and encountering the rapt gaze of
+the other.  "It strikes me as 'ow it 'ud be 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 on your 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 had an opportunity to secrete his five pounds
+of gold, and it lay in the ammunition 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 Cardegee have gone mining next
+day with a dish-pan.
+
+The fire fought a losing battle, and at last died away, while the
+frost penetrated the mossy chinks between the logs and chilled the
+inner atmosphere.  The dogs outside ceased their howling, and,
+curled up in the snow, dreamed of salmon-stocked heavens where
+dog-drivers and kindred task-masters were not.  Within, the sailor
+lay like a log, while his host tossed restlessly about, the victim
+of strange fantasies.  As midnight drew near he suddenly threw off
+the blankets and got up.  It was remarkable that he could do what
+he then did without ever striking a light.  Perhaps it was because
+of the darkness that he kept his eyes shut, and perhaps it was for
+fear he would see the 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 heavy charge into the muzzle of the shotgun
+without spilling a particle, rammed it down with double wads, and
+then put everything away and got back into bed.
+
+Just as daylight laid its steel-gray fingers on the parchment
+window, Jacob Kent awoke.  Turning on his elbow, he raised the lid
+and peered into the ammunition box.  Whatever he saw, or whatever
+he did not see, exercised a very peculiar effect upon him,
+considering his neurotic temperament.  He glanced at the sleeping
+man on the floor, let the lid down gently, and rolled over on his
+back.  It was an unwonted calm that rested on his face.  Not a
+muscle quivered.  There was not the least sign of excitement or
+perturbation.  He lay there a long while, thinking, and when he
+got up and began to move about, it was in a cool, collected
+manner, without noise and without hurry.
+
+It happened that a heavy wooden peg had been driven into the
+ridge-pole just 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 running noose.  Then he cocked his shotgun and
+laid it within reach, by the side of numerous moose-hide thongs.
+By an effort of will he bore the sight of the scar, slipped the
+noose over the sleeper's head, and drew it taut by throwing back
+on his weight, at the same time seizing the gun and bringing it to
+bear.
+
+Jim Cardegee awoke, choking, bewildered, staring down the twin
+wells of steel.
+
+"Where is it?" Kent asked, at the same time slacking on the rope.
+
+"You blasted--ugh--"
+
+Kent merely threw back his weight, shutting off the other's wind.
+
+"Bloomin'--Bur--ugh--"
+
+"Where is it?" Kent repeated.
+
+"Wot?"  Cardegee asked, as soon as he had caught his 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 you lift 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
+though from the pressure, managed to loosen the noose a bit and
+work it up so 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
+backward and down, could not lift him clear of the ground.  Strain
+and strive to the uttermost, the sailor's feet still stuck to the
+floor and sustained a part of his weight.  The remaining portion
+was supported by the point of contact just under his chin.
+Failing to swing him clear, Kent clung on, resolved to slowly
+throttle him or force him to tell what he had done with the hoard.
+But the Man with the Gash would not throttle.  Five, ten, fifteen
+minutes passed, and at the end of that time, in despair, Kent let
+his prisoner down.
+
+"Well," he remarked, wiping away the sweat, "if you won't hang
+you'll shoot.  Some men wasn't born to be hanged, anyway."
+
+"An' it's a pretty mess as you'll make o' this 'ere cabin floor."
+Cardegee was fighting for time.  "Now, look 'ere, I'll tell you
+wot we do; we'll lay our 'eads 'longside an' reason together.
+You've lost some dust.  You say as 'ow I know, an' I say as 'ow I
+don't.  Let's get a hobservation an' shape a course--"
+
+"Vast heavin'!"  Kent dashed in, maliciously imitating the other's
+enunciation.  "I'm going to shape all the courses of this shebang,
+and you observe; and if you do 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 of the other by pressing the
+cold muzzle against his forehead.  "Lay quiet, 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 always
+within pulling distance of the finger; but Kent was a weaver, and
+in a few minutes had the sailor tied hand and foot.  Then he
+dragged him without and laid him by the side of the cabin, where
+he could overlook the 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 if you speak up, I'll
+keep you till the next bunch of mounted police come by."
+
+"Well, Gawd blime me, if this ain't a go!  'Ere I be, innercent as
+a lamb, an' 'ere you be, lost all o' your top 'amper an' out o'
+your reckonin', run me foul an' goin' to rake me into 'ell-fire.
+You bloomin' old pirut!  You--"
+
+Jim Cardegee loosed the strings of his profanity and fairly outdid
+himself.  Jacob Kent brought out a stool that he might enjoy it in
+comfort.  Having exhausted all the possible combinations of his
+vocabulary, the sailor quieted down to hard thinking, his eyes
+constantly gauging the progress of the sun, which tore up the
+eastern slope of the heavens with unseemly haste.  His dogs,
+surprised that they had not long since been put to harness,
+crowded around him.  His helplessness appealed to the brutes.
+They felt that something was wrong, though they knew not what, and
+they crowded about, howling their mournful sympathy.
+
+"Chook!  Mush-on! you Siwashes!" he cried, attempting, in a
+vermicular way, to kick at them, and discovering himself to be
+tottering on the edge of a declivity.  As soon as the animals had
+scattered, he devoted himself to the significance of that
+declivity which he felt to be there but could not see.  Nor was he
+long in arriving at a correct conclusion.  In the nature of
+things, he figured, man is lazy.  He does no more than he has to.
+When he builds a cabin he must put dirt on the roof.  From these
+premises it was logical that he should carry that dirt no further
+than was absolutely necessary.  Therefore, he lay upon the edge of
+the hole from which the dirt had been taken to roof Jacob Kent's
+cabin.  This knowledge, properly utilized, might prolong things,
+he thought; and he then turned his attention to the moose-hide
+thongs which bound him.  His hands were tied behind him, and
+pressing against the snow, they were wet with the contact.  This
+moistening of the raw-hide he knew would tend to make it stretch,
+and, without apparent effort, he endeavored to stretch it more and
+more.
+
+He watched the trail hungrily, and when in the direction of Sixty
+Mile a dark speck appeared for a moment against the white
+background of an ice-jam, he cast an anxious eye at the sun.  It
+had climbed nearly to the zenith.  Now and again he caught the
+black speck clearing the hills of ice and sinking into the
+intervening hollows; but he dared not permit himself more than the
+most cursory glances for fear of rousing his enemy's suspicion.
+Once, when Jacob Kent rose to his feet and searched the trail with
+care, Cardegee was frightened, but the dog-sled had struck a piece
+of trail running parallel with 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'ye b'lieve in ghosts?"
+Kent's sudden start made him sure of his ground, and he went on:
+"Now a ghost 'as the right to 'aunt a man wot don't do wot he
+says; and you can't shuffle me off till eight bells--wot I mean is
+twelve o'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 your longitude?  'Ow do you know
+as your time's correct?" Cardegee persisted, vainly hoping to beat
+his executioner out of a few minutes.  "Is it Barrack's time you
+'ave, or is it the Company time?  'Cos if you do it before the
+stroke o' the bell, I'll not rest.  I give you fair warnin'.  I'll
+come back.  An' if you 'aven't the time, 'ow will you know?
+That's wot I want--'ow will 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 sled was
+just clearing a rise, barely a mile away, and the dogs were in
+full lope, running lightly.
+
+"'Ow close is the shadows to the line?"
+
+Kent walked to the primitive timepiece and studied it.  "Three
+inches," he announced, after a careful survey.
+
+"Say, jes' sing out 'eight bells' afore you pull the gun, will
+you?"
+
+Kent agreed, and they lapsed into silence.  The thongs about
+Cardegee's wrists were slowly stretching, and he had begun to work
+them over his hands.
+
+"Say, 'ow close is the shadows?"
+
+"One inch."
+
+The sailor wriggled slightly to assure himself that he would
+topple over at the right moment, and slipped the first turn over
+his hands.
+
+"'Ow close?"
+
+"Half an inch."  Just then Kent heard the jarring churn of the
+runners and turned his eyes to the trail.  The driver was lying
+flat on the sled and the dogs swinging down the straight stretch
+to 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, perhaps ten
+paces from his victim.  The man on the sled must have seen that
+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.  "Eight b- "
+
+But just a fraction of a second too soon, Cardegee rolled backward
+into 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
+from the 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 the driver sprang off as Jim Cardegee freed his hands
+and drew himself from the hole.
+
+"Jim!"  The new-comer recognized him.  "What's the matter?"
+
+"Wot's the matter?  Oh, nothink at all.  It jest 'appens as I do
+little things like this for my 'ealth.  Wot's the matter, you
+bloomin' idjit?  Wot's the 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, an old-
+fashioned, heavy-weighted muzzle-loader, lay near him.  Steel and
+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 yellow dust ran out through the crack.  The facts of the case
+dawned upon Jim Cardegee.
+
+"Strike me standin'!" he roared; "'ere's a 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 hand and
+foot now, and he fought grimly, silently.  Two of the three men
+who hung upon him, shouted directions to each other, and strove to
+curb the short, hairy devil who would not curb.  The third man
+howled.  His finger was between Jan's teeth.
+
+"Quit yer tantrums, Jan, an' ease up!" panted Red Bill, getting a
+strangle-hold on Jan's neck.  "Why on earth can't yeh hang decent
+and peaceable?"
+
+But Jan kept his grip on the third man's finger, and squirmed over
+the floor of the tent, into the pots and pans.
+
+"Youah no gentleman, suh," reproved Mr. Taylor, his body following
+his finger, and endeavoring to accommodate itself to every jerk 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' around an' 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.  "Jam his 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 the critter'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 across the tent
+into a muddle of furs and blankets.  In its passage it cleared the
+body of a man, who lay motionless, bleeding from a bullet-wound in
+the neck.
+
+All this was because of the madness which had come upon Jan--the
+madness which comes upon a man who has stripped off the raw skin
+of earth and grovelled long in primal nakedness, and before whose
+eyes rises the fat vales of the homeland, and into whose nostrils
+steals the 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 and strenuous agriculture, and now it was Nome that bore the
+harvest,--not the 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 he passed the sharp word at a time when Jan's blood-
+shot eyes blazed and his teeth gritted in torment.  And because of
+this, there was a smell of saltpetre in the tent, and one lay
+quietly, while the other fought like a cornered rat, and refused
+to hang in the decent and peacable manner suggested by his
+comrades.
+
+"If you will allow me, Mistah Lawson, befoah we go further in this
+rumpus, I would say it wah a good idea to pry this hyer varmint's
+teeth 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 edge close to Mr. Taylor's
+finger and used the man's teeth as a fulcrum.  Jan held on and
+breathed through his nose, snorting like a grampus.  "Steady, all!
+Now she takes it!"
+
+"Thank you, suh; it is a powerful relief."  And Mr. Taylor
+proceeded to gather into his arms the victim's wildly waving legs.
+
+But Jan upreared in his Berserker rage; bleeding, frothing,
+cursing; five frozen years thawing into sudden hell.  They swayed
+backward and forward, panted, sweated, like some cyclopean, many-
+legged monster rising from the lower deeps.  The slush-lamp went
+over, drowned in its own fat, while the midday twilight scarce
+percolated through the dirty canvas of the tent.
+
+"For the love of Gawd, Jan, get yer senses back!" pleaded Red
+Bill.  "We ain't goin' to hurt yeh, 'r kill yeh, 'r anythin' of
+that sort.  Jes' want to 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 his legs, Taylor, and
+heave'm over!"
+
+"Yes, suh, Mistah Lawson.  Do you press youah weight above, after
+I give the word."  The Kentuckian groped about him in the murky
+darkness.  "Now, suh, now is the accepted time!"
+
+There was a great surge, and a quarter of a ton of human flesh
+tottered and crashed to its fall against the side-wall.  Pegs drew
+and guy-ropes parted, and the tent, collapsing, wrapped the battle
+in its greasy folds.
+
+"Yer only makin' it harder fer yerself," Red Bill continued, at
+the same time driving both his thumbs into a hairy throat, the
+possessor of which he had pinned down.  "You've made nuisance
+enough a' ready, an' it'll take half the 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
+into the 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 snow after the fleeing man.  Buck
+and Bright, followed by the rest of the dogs, outstripped him and
+rapidly overhauled the murderer.
+
+There was no reason that these men should do this; no reason for
+Jan 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
+frozen sea.  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,
+as he inevitably must, when the frost and hunger laid hold of him.
+But these men did not stop to think.  There was a certain taint of
+madness running in the veins of all of them.  Besides, blood had
+been spilled, and upon them was the blood-lust, thick and hot.
+"Vengeance is mine," saith the Lord, and He saith it in temperate
+climes where the warm sun steals away the energies of men.  But in
+the Northland they have discovered that prayer is only efficacious
+when backed by muscle, and they are accustomed to doing things for
+themselves.  God is everywhere, they have heard, but he flings a
+shadow over the land for half the year that they may not find him;
+so they grope in darkness, and it is not to be wondered that they
+often doubt, and deem the Decalogue out of gear.
+
+Jan ran blindly, reckoning not of the way of his feet, for he was
+mastered by the verb "to live."  To live!  To exist!  Buck flashed
+gray through the air, but missed.  The man struck madly at him,
+and stumbled.  Then the white teeth of Bright 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 gripped a wolf-dog by the scruff of
+the back, while the arm was passed around the neck of Lawson.
+Every struggle of the dog helped to throttle the hapless sailor.
+Jan's right hand was buried deep in the curling tendrils of Red
+Bill's shaggy head, and beneath all, Mr. Taylor lay pinned and
+helpless.  It was a deadlock, for the strength of his madness was
+prodigious; but suddenly, without apparent reason, Jan loosed his
+various grips and rolled over quietly on his back.  His
+adversaries drew away a little, dubious and disconcerted.  Jan
+grinned viciously.
+
+"Mine friends," he said, still grinning, "you haf asked me to be
+politeful, und now I am politeful.  Vot piziness vood you do mit
+me?"
+
+"That's right, Jan.  Be ca'm," soothed Red Bill.  "I knowed you'd
+come to yer senses afore long.  Jes' be ca'm now, an' we'll do the
+trick with neatness and despatch."
+
+"Vot piziness?  Vot trick?"
+
+"The hangin'.  An' yeh oughter thank yer lucky stars for havin' a
+man what knows his business.  I've did it afore now, more'n once,
+down in the States, an' I can 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."  He crawled stiffly to his
+feet and looked about him.  "Herr Gott! 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 ominous care.
+"Judge Lynch holds court this day."
+
+"Von liddle while."  Jan stepped back from the proffered noose.
+"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 the robe
+of magistracy, suh, but Judge Lynch can always be relied upon to
+give justice without court fees.  I repeat, suh, without court
+fees.  Law may be bought and sold, but in this enlightened land
+justice 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, Shudge
+Lynch hang dot man?"
+
+"If the evidence is strong enough--yes, suh."
+
+"An' the evidence in this here case is strong enough to hang a
+dozen men, Jan," broke in Red Bill.
+
+"Nefer you mind, Bill.  I talk mit you next.  Now von anodder ding
+I ask Kentucky.  If Shudge Lynch hang not der man, 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, our great
+and glorious constitution has said, to wit:  that no man may twice
+be placed in jeopardy of his life for one and the same crime, or
+words to that effect."
+
+"Unt dey can't shoot him, or hit him mit a club over der 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 hang me up
+brown, eh?  Vot you say?"
+
+"'Betcher life, an', Jan, if yeh don't give no more trouble ye'll
+be almighty proud of the job.  I'm a 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't it?
+Now you follow mit me close und I show you.  It takes tree 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 haf someding to tie der rope to.
+Sling your eyes over der landscape und find der tird ding to tie
+der rope to?  Eh?  Vot you say?"
+
+Mechanically they swept the ice and snow with their eyes.  It was
+a homogeneous scene, devoid of contrasts or bold contours, dreary,
+desolate, and monotonous,--the ice-packed sea, the slow slope of
+the beach, the background of low-lying hills, and over all thrown
+the endless 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 man clear
+o' the ground.  I give it up."  He looked yearningly at that
+portion of Jan's anatomy which joins the head and shoulders.
+"Give it up," he repeated sadly to Lawson.  "Throw the rope down.
+Gawd never intended this here country for livin' purposes, an'
+that's a cold frozen fact."
+
+Jan grinned triumphantly.  "I tank I go mit der tent und haf a
+smoke."
+
+"Ostensiblee y'r correct, Bill, me son," spoke up Lawson; "but y'r
+a dummy, and you can lay to that for another cold frozen fact.
+Takes a sea farmer to learn you landsmen things.  Ever hear of a
+pair of shears?  Then clap y'r eyes to this."
+
+The sailor worked rapidly.  From the pile of dunnage where they
+had pulled up the boat the preceding fall, he unearthed a pair of
+long oars.  These he lashed together, at nearly right angles,
+close to the ends of the blades.  Where the handles rested he
+kicked holes through the snow to the sand.  At the point of
+intersection he 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.  "It is not goot!  I
+vill not hang!  Come, you noddleheads!  I vill lick you, all
+together, von after der odder!  I vill blay hell!  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 white sheet spread by nature.  And ever and anon a
+hand or foot of Jan emerged from the tangle, to be gripped by
+Lawson and lashed fast with rope-yarns.  Pawing, clawing,
+blaspheming, he was conquered and bound, inch by inch, and drawn
+to where the inexorable shears lay like a pair of gigantic
+dividers on the snow.  Red Bill adjusted the noose, placing the
+hangman's knot properly under the left ear.  Mr. Taylor and Lawson
+tailed onto the running-guy, ready at the word to elevate the
+gallows.  Bill lingered, contemplating his work with 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 flapped ghostly
+arms about and titubated toward them drunkenly.  But the next
+instant John Gordon found the opening and crawled forth.
+
+"What the flaming--!"  For the moment his voice died away in his
+throat as his eyes took in the tableau.  "Hold on!  I'm not dead!"
+he cried out, coming up to the group with stormy countenance.
+
+"Allow me, Mistah Gordon, to congratulate you upon youah escape,"
+Mr. Taylor ventured.  "A close shave, suh, a powahful close
+shave."
+
+" Congratulate hell!  I might have been dead and rotten and no
+thanks to you, you--!"  And thereat John Gordon delivered 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 himself
+sufficiently.  "Ever crease cattle, Taylor?"
+
+"Yes, suh, many a time down in God's country."
+
+"Just so.  That's what happened to me.  Bullet just grazed the
+base of my skull at the top of the neck.  Stunned me but no harm
+done."  He turned to the bound man.  "Get up, Jan.  I'm going to
+lick you to a standstill or you're going to apologize.  The rest
+of you lads stand clear."
+
+"I tank not.  Shust tie me loose und you see," replied Jan, 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 sharply with a tin
+plate, and it withdrew hastily.  Louis Savoy refastened the flaps,
+kicked a frying-pan over against the bottom, and warmed his hands.
+It was very cold without.  Forty-eight hours gone, the spirit
+thermometer had burst at sixty-eight below, and since that time it
+had grown steadily and bitterly colder.  There was no telling when
+the snap would end.  And it is poor policy, unless the gods will
+it, to venture far from a stove at such times, or to increase the
+quantity of cold atmosphere one must breathe.  Men sometimes do
+it, 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
+burned in the frozen muck.  Into this a man's carcass is dumped,
+covered over with moss, and left with the assurance that it will
+rise on the crack of Doom, wholly and frigidly intact.  For those
+of little 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 for living 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
+spread the sleeping-furs, beneath lay the winter's snowfall.  The
+remainder of the floor was moccasin-packed snow, littered with
+pots and pans and the general impedimenta of an Arctic camp.  The
+stove was red and roaring hot, but only a bare three feet away lay
+a block of ice, as sharp-edged and dry as when first quarried from
+the creek bottom.  The pressure of the outside cold forced the
+inner heat upward.  Just above the stove, where the pipe
+penetrated the roof, was a tiny circle of dry canvas; next, with
+the pipe always as centre, a circle of steaming canvas; next a
+damp and moisture-exuding ring; and finally, the rest of the tent,
+sidewalls and top, coated with a 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 of pain, 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's crampin'."
+
+And thereat, with pitiless good-will, he was pitched upon and
+rolled and thumped and pounded by half-a-dozen willing comrades.
+
+"Damn the trail," he muttered softly, as he threw off the robes
+and sat up.  "I've run across country, played quarter three
+seasons hand-running, and hardened myself in all manner of ways;
+and then I pilgrim it into this God-forsaken land and find myself
+an effeminate Athenian without the simplest rudiments of manhood!"
+He hunched up to the fire and rolled a cigarette.  "Oh, I'm not
+whining.  I can take my medicine all right, all right; but I'm
+just decently ashamed of myself, that's all.  Here I am, on top of
+a dirty thirty miles, as knocked up and stiff and sore as a pink-
+tea degenerate after a five-mile walk on a country turn-pike.
+Bah!  It makes me sick!  Got a match?"  "Don't git the tantrums,
+youngster."  Bettles passed over the required fire-stick and waxed
+patriarchal.  "Ye've gotter 'low some for the breakin'-in.
+Sufferin' cracky! don't I recollect the first time I hit the
+trail!  Stiff?  I've seen the time it'd take me ten minutes to git
+my mouth from the waterhole an' come to my feet--every jint
+crackin' an' kickin' fit to kill.  Cramp?  In sech knots it'd take
+the camp half a day to untangle me.  You're all right, for a cub,
+any ye've the true sperrit.  Come this day 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 fat in your make-up which has sent
+many a husky man to the bosom of Abraham afore his right and
+proper time."
+
+"Streak of fat?"
+
+"Yep.  Comes along of bulk.  'T ain't the 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's all 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 the small, wiry fellows when it comes to gittin'
+right down an' hangin' on like a lean-jowled dog to a bone.  Why,
+hell's fire, the big men they ain't in it!"
+
+"By gar!" broke in Louis Savoy, "dat is no, vot you 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.  And leetle mans keek an' keek an'
+keek, an' bime by, long time, long way, keek beeg mans into my
+cabin.  Tree days 'fore him 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 up there,
+somewhere."  He swept his hand in the vague direction of the
+mysterious east.
+
+"Biggest man that ever turned his heels to Salt Water, or run a
+moose down with sheer grit," supplemented Bettles; "but he's the
+prove-the-rule exception.  Look at his woman, Unga,--tip the
+scales at a hundred an' ten, clean meat an' nary ounce to spare.
+She'd bank grit 'gainst his for all there was 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 his seat on the
+grub-box.  "Ye have spoken of the streak of fat that 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 when the
+land was young and the fires of men apart as the stars.  It was
+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-heart of the man, and she had grit.  And we traveled a
+weary trail, even to the Salt Water, and the cold was bitter, the
+snow deep, the hunger great.  And the woman's love was a mighty
+love--no more can man say than this."
+
+He paused, and with the hatchet broke pieces of ice from the large
+chunk beside him.  These he threw into the gold pan on the stove,
+where the drinking-water thawed.  The men drew up closer, and he
+of 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
+friends the 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
+Siwash could not withstand you, and like the caribou and the bear,
+must perish in the cold.  So I came into the warm and sat among
+you, by your fires, 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 men of many breeds.  And because of these things,
+I measure deeds after your manner, and judge men, and think
+thoughts.  Wherefore, when I speak harshly of one of your own
+kind, I know you will not take it amiss; and when I speak high of
+one of my father's people, you will not take it upon you to say,
+'Sitka Charley is Siwash, and there 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 her people,
+who were of the Coast and whose Chilcat totem stood at the head of
+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 eyes from
+the ground, and she was timid and afraid, as girls will be when
+cast 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 had
+a great journey in mind, and stood in need of one to feed my dogs
+and to lift a paddle with me through the long river days.  One
+blanket would cover the twain; so I chose Passuk.
+
+"Have I not said I was a servant to the Government?  If not, it is
+well that ye know.  So I was taken on a warship, sleds and dogs
+and evaporated foods, and with me came Passuk.  And we went 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 had never dwelt upon, and messages.  These messages
+were sealed, and protected shrewdly from the weather, and I was to
+deliver them to the whale-ships of the Arctic, ice-bound by the
+great Mackenzie.  Never was there so great a river, forgetting
+only our own Yukon, the Mother of all Rivers.
+
+"All of which is neither here nor there, for my story deals not
+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 crust to 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 was to see white faces once again, so we
+put into the bank.  And that winter was a hard winter.  The
+darkness and the cold drew down upon us, and with them the famine.
+To each man the agent of the Company gave forty pounds of flour
+and twenty of bacon.  There were no beans.  And, the dogs howled
+always, and there were flat bellies and deep-lined faces, and
+strong men became weak, and weak men died.  There was also much
+scurvy.
+
+"Then came we together in the store one night, and the empty
+shelves 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
+those who might yet gasp in the spring.  Discussion was held, and
+it was said that a man must go forth to the Salt Water and tell to
+the world our misery.  At this all eyes turned to me, for it was
+understood that I was a great traveler.  'It is seven hundred
+miles,' said I, 'to Haines Mission by the sea, and every inch of
+it snowshoe work.  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, Long Jeff, a
+Yankee-man, big-boned and big-muscled.  Also his talk was big.
+He, too, was a mighty traveler, he said, born to the snowshoe and
+bred up on buffalo milk.  He would go with me, in case I fell by
+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 that big talk
+betokened the streak of fat, or that Yankee-men who did great
+things kept their teeth together?  So we took the pick of the dogs
+and 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 of
+the 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, while we went on stint from the start.  Likewise the pick of
+the dogs was poor, and we were hard put to keep them on their
+legs.  At the White River our three sleds became two sleds, and we
+had only come two hundred miles.  But we lost nothing; the dogs
+that left the traces 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 were
+wheezing, his eyes bright, his cache nigh empty; and he showed us
+the empty cache of the missionary, also his grave with the rocks
+piled high to keep off the dogs.  There was a bunch of Indians
+there, but babies and old men there were none, and it was clear
+that few would see the spring.
+
+"So we pulled on, light-stomached and heavy-hearted, with half a
+thousand miles of snow and silence between us and Haines Mission
+by the sea.  The darkness was at its worst, and at midday the sun
+could not clear the sky-line to the south.  But the ice-jams were
+smaller, the going better; so I pushed the dogs hard and traveled
+late and early.  As I said at Forty Mile, every inch of it was
+snow-shoe work.  And the shoes made great sores on our feet, which
+cracked and scabbed but would not heal.  And every day these sores
+grew more grievous, till in the morning, when we girded on the
+shoes, Long Jeff cried like a child.  I put him at the fore of the
+light sled to break trail, but he slipped off the shoes for
+comfort.  Because of this the trail was not packed, his moccasins
+made great holes, and into these holes the dogs wallowed.  The
+bones of the dogs were ready 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 wallowed no 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 evening to
+unlash them.  And she saved the dogs.  Ever was she to the fore,
+lifting the webbed shoes and making the way easy.  Passuk--how
+shall 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
+other matters, 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 strength in
+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 on the trail alone.  Then the woman and I broke camp, packed
+the sleds, and harnessed the dogs.  By midday, when the sun mocked
+us, we would overtake the man, with the tears frozen on his
+cheeks, and pass him.  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 with moans and groans, and sleep.  He was not
+sick, this man.  He was only trail-sore and tired, and weak with
+hunger.  But Passuk and I were trail-sore and tired, and weak with
+hunger; and we did all the work and he did none.  But he had the
+streak of fat of which our brother Bettles has spoken.  Further,
+we gave the man always his 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
+opened on Lake Le Barge, and through it had gone their main
+outfit.  One blanket each carried about his shoulders.  At night
+they built a fire and crouched over it till morning.  They had a
+little flour.  This they stirred in warm water and drank.  The man
+showed me eight cups of flour--all they had, and Pelly, stricken
+with famine, two hundred miles away.  They said, also, that there
+was an Indian behind; that they had whacked fair, but that he
+could not keep up.  I did not believe they had whacked fair, else
+would the Indian have kept up.  But I could give them no grub.
+They strove to steal a dog--the fattest, which was very thin--but
+I shoved my pistol in their faces and told them begone.  And they
+went away, like drunken men, through the Silence toward Pelly.
+
+"I had three dogs now, and one sled, and the dogs were only bones
+and hair.  When there is little wood, the fire burns low and the
+cabin grows cold.  So with us.  With little grub the frost bites
+sharp, and our faces were black and frozen till our own mothers
+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 cry when
+the pain of the snowshoes smote me.  Passuk never opened her lips,
+but stepped to the fore to break the way.  The man howled.
+
+"The Thirty Mile was swift, and the current ate away the ice from
+beneath, and there were many air-holes and cracks, and much open
+water.  One day we came upon the man, resting, for he had gone
+ahead, as was his wont, in the morning.  But between us was open
+water.  This he had passed around by taking to the rim-ice where
+it was too narrow for a sled.  So we found an ice-bridge.  Passuk
+weighed little, and went first, with a long pole crosswise in her
+hands in chance she broke through.  But she was light, and her
+shoes large, and she passed over.  Then she called the dogs.  But
+they had neither poles nor shoes, and they broke through and were
+swept 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's grub, 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 up with
+us, or not, as he saw fit; for we were going to travel light and
+fast.  But he raised his voice and cried over his sore feet and
+his troubles, and said harsh things against comradeship.  Passuk's
+feet were sore, and my feet were sore--ay, sorer than his, for we
+had worked with the dogs; also, we looked to see.  Long Jeff swore
+he would die before he hit the trail again; so Passuk took a fur
+robe, 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 wrong to
+waste good food on a baby.  He is better dead.'  I shook my head
+and said no--that a comrade once was a comrade always.  Then she
+spoke of the men of Forty Mile; that they were many 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 of
+Abraham before his time.  I chided Passuk for this; but she showed
+no sorrow, nor was she sorrowful.  And in my heart I knew she was
+right."
+
+Sitka Charley paused and threw pieces of ice into the gold pan on
+the stove.  The men were silent, and their backs chilled to the
+sobbing cries of the dogs as they gave tongue to their misery in
+the outer cold.
+
+"And day by day we passed in the snow the sleeping-places of the
+two ghosts--Passuk and I--and we knew we would be glad for such
+ere we made Salt Water.  Then we came to the Indian, like another
+ghost, with his face set toward Pelly.  They had not whacked up
+fair, the man and the boy, he said, and he had had no flour for
+three days.  Each night he boiled pieces of his moccasins in a
+cup, and ate them.  He did not have much moccasins left.  And he
+was a Coast Indian, and told us these things through Passuk, who
+talked his tongue.  He was a stranger in the Yukon, and he knew
+not the way, but his face was set to Pelly.  How far was it?  Two
+sleeps? 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 hard put.
+Passuk looked at the man, and at me, as though she were of two
+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 eyes light, as with
+quick pleasure; but she looked long at the man and at me, and her
+mouth drew close and hard, and she said, 'No.  The Salt Water is
+afar off, and Death lies in wait.  Better it is that he take this
+stranger man and let my man Charley pass.'  So the man went away
+in the Silence toward Pelly.  That night she wept.  Never had I
+seen her weep before.  Nor was it the smoke of 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 of the 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, but more.
+Why this longing for Life?  It is a game which no man wins.  To
+live is to toil hard, and to suffer sore, till Old Age creeps
+heavily upon us and we throw down our hands on the cold ashes of
+dead fires.  It is hard to live.  In pain the babe sucks his first
+breath, in pain the old man gasps his last, and all his days are
+full of trouble and sorrow; yet he goes down to the open arms of
+Death, stumbling, falling, with head turned backward, fighting to
+the last.  And Death is kind.  It is only Life, and the things of
+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 morning we
+went on our way, walking like dead people.  And all things were
+dead.  There were no ptarmigan, no squirrels, no snowshoe
+rabbits,--nothing.  The river made no sound beneath its white
+robes.  The sap was frozen in the forest.  And it became cold, as
+now; and in the night the stars drew near and large, and leaped
+and danced; and in the day the sun-dogs mocked us till we saw many
+suns, and all the air flashed and sparkled, and the snow was
+diamond dust.  And there was no heat, no sound, only the bitter
+cold and the Silence.  As I say, we walked like 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 we saw it not.
+Our feet trod the portage of the Canyon, but they felt 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
+the trail.  It was in my mind to stay there and meet Death hand-
+in-hand with 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 might hear.  And now, because she need not fear my
+anger, she spoke her heart, 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 been a 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 broken
+trail, I have not complained.  Nor did I say that there was more
+warmth in the lodge of my father, or that there was more grub on
+the Chilcat.  When you have spoken, I have listened.  When you
+have 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, nor looked
+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 a
+good man is kind to his dog.  Your heart was cold, and there was
+no 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,
+and I measured you against the men of other breeds, and I saw you
+stood among 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 heart was ever cold, Charley, and there was no
+room.'
+
+"And I said:  'It is so.  It was cold, and there was no room.  But
+that is past.  Now my heart is like the snowfall in the spring,
+when the sun has come back.  There is a great thaw and a bending,
+a sound of running waters, and a budding and sprouting 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.  And she said, 'I
+am glad.'  After that she lay quiet for a long time, breathing
+softly, her head upon my breast.  Then she whispered:  'The trail
+ends here, and I am tired.  But first I would speak of other
+things.  In the long ago, when I was a girl on the Chilcat, I
+played alone among the skin bales of my father's lodge; for the
+men were away on the hunt, and the women and boys were dragging 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 within the
+lodge and said, "Oof!"  My brother came running back with the
+first sled of meat.  And he fought the bear with burning sticks
+from the fire, and the dogs in their harnesses, with the sled
+behind them, fell upon the bear.  There was a great battle and
+much noise.  They rolled in the fire, the skin bales were
+scattered, the lodge overthrown.  But in the end the bear lay
+dead, with the fingers of my brother in his mouth and the marks of
+his claws upon my brother'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.  And he went away in the Silence without grub.'
+
+"This, my brothers, was the love of Passuk, who died in the snow,
+by the Caribou Crossing.  It was a mighty love, for she denied her
+brother for the man who led her away on weary trails to a bitter
+end.  And, further, such was this woman's love, she denied
+herself.  Ere her eyes closed for the last time she took my hand
+and slipped it under her squirrel-skin parka to her waist.  I felt
+there a well-filled pouch, and learned the secret of her lost
+strength.  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 half
+had 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, down to
+Haines Mission and the sea.  And it leads on and on, by the light
+of many suns, over unknown lands and strange waters, and it is
+full of years and honors and great glories.  It leads you to the
+lodges of many women, and good women, but it will never lead you
+to a greater love than the love of Passuk.'
+
+"And I knew the woman spoke true.  But a madness came upon me, and
+I threw the well-filled pouch from me, and swore that my trail had
+reached an end, till her tired eyes grew soft with tears, and she
+said:  'Among men has Sitka Charley walked in honor, and ever has
+his word been true.  Does he forget that honor now, and talk vain
+words by the Caribou Crossing?  Does he remember no more the men
+of Forty Mile, who gave him of their grub the best, of their dogs
+the pick?  Ever has Passuk been proud of her man.  Let him lift
+himself up, gird on his snow-shoes, and begone, that she may still
+keep her pride.'
+
+"And when she grew cold in my arms I arose, and sought out the
+well-filled pouch, and girt on my snowshoes, and staggered along
+the 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 the full pots of the potlach feast, and raised my voice in
+song, and danced to the chanting of the men and maidens and the
+booming of the 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 back to the trail.  And in this wise, like a man
+bereft of reason, who sees strange visions and whose thoughts are
+light with wine, I came to 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-
+disked sun.  On either hand the sun-dogs blazed.  The air was a
+gossamer of 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 water
+to a pot of simmering beans, and then, rising, a stick of firewood
+in hand, 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 pleasure to look upon his lusty freshness.  A new
+moon was thrusting a dim horn above the white line of close-packed
+snow-capped pines which ringed the camp and segregated it from all
+the world.  Overhead, so clear it was and cold, the stars danced
+with quick, pulsating movements.  To the southeast an evanescent
+greenish glow heralded the opening revels of the aurora borealis.
+Two men, in the immediate foreground, lay upon the bearskin which
+was their bed.  Between the skin and naked snow was a six-inch
+layer of pine boughs.  The blankets were rolled back.  For
+shelter, there was a fly at their backs,--a sheet of canvas
+stretched between two trees and angling at forty-five degrees.
+This caught the radiating heat from the fire and flung it down
+upon the skin.  Another man sat on a sled, drawn close to the
+blaze, mending moccasins.  To the right, a heap of frozen gravel
+and a rude windlass denoted where they toiled each day in dismal
+groping for the pay-streak.  To the left, four pairs of snowshoes
+stood erect, showing the mode of travel which obtained when the
+stamped snow of the camp was left behind.
+
+That Schwabian folk-song sounded strangely pathetic under the cold
+northern stars, and did not do the men good who lounged about the
+fire after 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 souls questing southward across the divides to the sun-
+lands.
+
+"For the love of God, Sigmund, shut up!" expostulated one of the
+men.  His hands were clenched painfully, but he hid them from
+sight in the folds of the bearskin upon which he lay.
+
+"And what for, Dave Wertz?" Sigmund demanded.  "Why shall 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 defiling our bodies with for the
+last twelvemonth, and the way we've lived and worked like beasts!"
+
+Thus abjured, Sigmund, the golden-haired, surveyed it all, and the
+frost-rimmed wolf-dogs and the vapor breaths of the men.  "And why
+shall not the heart be glad?" he laughed.  "It is good; it is all
+good.  As for the grub--"  He doubled up his arm and caressed the
+swelling biceps.  "And if we have lived and worked like beasts,
+have we not been paid like kings?  Twenty dollars to the pan the
+streak is running, and we know it to be eight feet thick.  It is
+another Klondike--and we know it--Jim Hawes there, by your elbow,
+knows it and complains not.  And there's Hitchcock!  He sews
+moccasins like an old woman, and waits against the time.  Only you
+can't wait and work until the wash-up in the spring.  Then we
+shall all be rich, rich as kings, only you cannot wait.  You want
+to go back to 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
+each crunch the dragging forward of the heel of the shoe like the
+sound of sifting sugar.  Sigmund broke off from his song to hurl
+oaths and firewood at the animals.  Then the light was parted by a
+fur-clad figure, and an Indian girl slipped out of the webs, threw
+back the hood of her squirrel-skin parka, and stood in their
+midst.  Sigmund and the men on the bearskin greeted her as
+"Sipsu," with the customary "Hello," but Hitchcock made room on
+the sled that she might sit beside him.
+
+"And how goes it, Sipsu?" he asked, talking, after her fashion, in
+broken English and bastard Chinook.  "Is the hunger still mighty
+in the camp? and has the witch doctor yet found the cause
+wherefore game is scarce and no moose in the land?"
+
+"Yes; even so.  There is little game, and we prepare to eat the
+dogs.  Also has the witch doctor found the cause of all this evil,
+and to-morrow will he make sacrifice and cleanse the camp."
+
+"And what does the sacrifice chance to be?--a new-born babe or
+some poor devil of a squaw, old and shaky, who is a care to the
+tribe and better out of the way?"
+
+"It chanced not that wise; for the need was great, and he chose
+none other than the chief's daughter; none other than I, Sipsu."
+
+"Hell!"  The word rose slowly to Hitchcock's lips, and brimmed
+over full and deep, in a way which bespoke wonder and
+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 more upon
+each other, and once more only."
+
+She was born of primitive stock, and primitive had been her
+traditions and her days; so she regarded life stoically, and human
+sacrifice as part of the natural order.  The powers which ruled
+the day-light and the dark, the flood and the frost, the bursting
+of the bud and the withering of the leaf, were angry and in need
+of propitiation.  This they exacted in many ways,--death in the
+bad water, through the treacherous ice-crust, by the grip of the
+grizzly, or a wasting sickness which fell upon a man in his own
+lodge till he coughed, and the 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 chose unerringly.  It was very
+natural.  Death came by many ways, yet was it all one after all,--
+a manifestation of the all-powerful and inscrutable.
+
+But Hitchcock came of a later world-breed.  His traditions were
+less concrete and without reverence, and he said, "Not so, Sipsu.
+You are young, and yet in the full joy of life.  The witch doctor
+is 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
+is bad.  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 and
+white, 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 foolery going on over
+to the camp, and they're getting ready to murder Sipsu.  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 great deal of the animal.  In fact, a certain girl, who
+was much in his thoughts, and whose picture in the little locket
+on his breast often inspired him to sing, had given him the dog
+and her blessing when they kissed good-by and he started on his
+Northland quest.
+
+"What d'ye say?" Hitchcock repeated.
+
+"Mebbe it's not so serious," Hawes answered with deliberation.
+"Most likely it's only a girl's story."
+
+"That isn't the point!"  Hitchcock felt a hot 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 their religion, and it's no concern of
+ours.  Our concern is to get the dust and then get out of this
+God-forsaken land.  'T isn't fit for naught else but beasts?  And
+what are these black devils but beasts?  Besides, it'd be damn
+poor policy."
+
+"That's what I say," chimed in Hawes.  "Here we 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 quarrel with 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 by it!"
+
+"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-score bucks have made up their
+mind to kill the girl, why, we can't help 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 except you're in force."
+
+"But we are in force!" Hitchcock broke in.  "Four whites are a
+match for a hundred times as many reds.  And think of the girl!"
+
+Sigmund stroked the dog meditatively.  "But I do think of the
+girl.  And her eyes are blue like summer skies, and laughing like
+summer seas, and her hair is yellow, like mine, and braided in
+ropes the size of a big man's arms.  She's waiting for 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 eyes and
+remember the black ones of the girl whose blood was on my hands,"
+Hitchcock sneered; for he was born to honor and championship, and
+to do 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's a cold business
+proposition and a question of facts.  I didn't come to this
+country for my health, and, further, it's impossible for 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 just happens we're on the
+spot this one time.  They've done the same for a thousand-thousand
+years, and they're going to do it 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 to
+the crunch-crunch of many snowshoes.  Indian after Indian stalked
+into the firelight, tall and grim, fur-clad and silent, their
+shadows dancing grotesquely on the snow.  One, the witch doctor,
+spoke gutturally to Sipsu.  His face was daubed with savage paint
+blotches, and over his shoulders was drawn a wolfskin, the
+gleaming teeth and cruel snout surmounting his head.  No other
+word was spoken.  The prospectors held the peace.  Sipsu arose and
+slipped into her snowshoes.
+
+"Good-by, O my man," she said to Hitchcock.  But the man who had
+sat beside her on the sled gave no sign, nor lifted his head as
+they filed away into the white forest.
+
+Unlike many men, his faculty of adaptation, while large, had never
+suggested the expediency of an alliance with the women of the
+Northland.  His broad cosmopolitanism had never impelled toward
+covenanting in marriage with the daughters of the soil.  If it
+had, his philosophy of life would not have stood between.  But it
+simply had not.  Sipsu?  He had pleasured in camp-fire chats with
+her, not as a man who knew himself to be man and she woman, but as
+a man might with a child, and as a man of his make certainly would
+if for no other reason than to vary the tedium of a bleak
+existence.  That was all.  But there was a certain chivalric
+thrill of warm blood in him, despite his Yankee ancestry and New
+England upbringing, and he was so made that the commercial aspect
+of life often seemed meaningless and bore contradiction to his
+deeper impulses.
+
+So he sat silent, with head bowed forward, an organic force,
+greater than himself, as great as his race, at work within him.
+Wertz and Hawes looked askance at him from time to time, a faint
+but perceptible trepidation in their manner.  Sigmund also felt
+this.  Hitchcock was strong, and his strength had been impressed
+upon them in the course of many an event in their precarious life.
+So they stood in a certain definite awe and curiosity as to what
+his conduct would be when he moved to action.
+
+But his silence was long, and the fire nigh out, when Wertz
+stretched his arms and yawned, and thought he'd go to bed.  Then
+Hitchcock stood up his full height.
+
+"May God damn your souls to the deepest hells, you chicken-hearted
+cowards!  I'm done with you!"  He said it calmly enough, but his
+strength spoke in every syllable, and every intonation was
+advertisement of intention.  "Come on," he continued, "whack up,
+and in whatever way suits you best.  I own a quarter-interest in
+the claims; our contracts show that.  There're twenty-five or
+thirty ounces in the sack from the test pans.  Fetch out the
+scales.  We'll divide that now.  And you, Sigmund, measure me my
+quarter-share of the grub and set it apart.  Four of the dogs are
+mine, and I want four more.  I'll trade you my share in the camp
+outfit and mining-gear for the dogs.  And I'll throw 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 with you,
+Hitchcock.  In everything you'll get your quarter-share, neither
+more nor less; and you can take it or leave it.  But we want 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; if you don't,
+leave it."
+
+"The letter of the law," Hitchcock sneered.  "But go ahead.  I'm
+willing.  And hurry up.  I can't get out of this camp and away
+from its vermin any too quick."
+
+The division was effected without further comment.  He lashed his
+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 challenged them with his eyes to interfere.  But they shrugged
+their shoulders and watched him disappear in the forest.
+
+
+A man crawled upon his belly through the snow.  On every hand
+loomed the moose-hide lodges of the camp.  Here and there a
+miserable dog howled or snarled abuse upon his neighbor.  Once,
+one of them approached the creeping man, but the man became
+motionless.  The dog came closer and sniffed, and came yet closer,
+till its nose touched the strange object which had not been there
+when darkness fell.  Then Hitchcock, for it was Hitchcock,
+upreared suddenly, shooting an unmittened hand out to the brute's
+shaggy throat.  And the dog knew its death in that clutch, and
+when the man moved on, was left broken-necked under the stars.  In
+this manner Hitchcock made the chief's lodge.  For long he lay in
+the snow without, listening to the voices of the occupants and
+striving to locate Sipsu.  Evidently there 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 that only the moose-
+hide divided them.  Then burrowing in the snow, he slowly wormed
+his head and shoulders underneath.  When the warm inner air smote
+his face, he stopped and waited, his legs and the greater part of
+his body still on the outside.  He could see nothing, nor did 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.  On the other
+side his face barely touched a furry garment which he knew clothed
+a body.  This must be Sipsu.  Though he wished she would speak
+again, he resolved to risk it.
+
+He could hear the chief and the witch doctor talking high, and in
+a far corner some hungry child whimpering to sleep.  Squirming
+over on his side, he carefully raised his head, still just
+touching the furry garment.  He listened to the breathing.  It was
+a woman's breathing; he would chance it.
+
+He pressed against her side softly but firmly, and felt her start
+at the contact.  Again he waited, till a questioning hand slipped
+down upon his head and paused among the curls.  The next instant
+the hand turned his face gently upward, and he was gazing into
+Sipsu's eyes.
+
+She was quite collected.  Changing her position casually, she
+threw 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 could breathe between her arm and breast, and when
+she lowered her head her ear pressed lightly against his lips.
+
+"When the time suits, go thou," he whispered, "out of the lodge
+and across the snow, down the wind to the bunch of jackpine in the
+curve of the creek.  There wilt thou find my dogs and my sled,
+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 of
+the 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, preparing to go.
+"I shall wait.  But waste no time.  The day chaseth the night
+alway, nor does it linger for man's pleasure."
+
+Half an hour later, stamping his feet and swinging his arms by the
+sled, he saw her coming, a surly dog in either hand.  At the
+approach of these his own animals waxed truculent, and he favored
+them with the butt of his whip till they quieted.  He had
+approached the camp up the wind, and sound was the thing to be
+most feared in making his presence known.
+
+"Put them into the sled," he ordered when she had got the harness
+on the two dogs.  "I want my leaders to the fore."
+
+But when she had done this, the displaced animals pitched upon the
+aliens.  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 remarked grimly,
+slipping an axe from the sled lashings.  "Do thou harness
+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, and
+he watched for their coming.  A dark spot, growing rapidly, took
+form upon the dim white expanse of snow.  It was a forerunner of
+the pack, leaping cleanly, and, after the wolf fashion, singing
+direction to its brothers.  Hitchcock stood in the shadow.  As it
+sprang past, he reached out, gripped its forelegs in mid-career,
+and sent it whirling earthward.  Then he struck it a well-judged
+blow beneath the 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 shaggy flood of white teeth and glistening eyes
+surged and crested just beyond reach.  Sipsu worked rapidly.  When
+she had finished, he leaped forward, seized and stunned a second,
+and flung it to her.  This he repeated thrice again, and when the
+sled team stood snarling in a string of ten, he called, "Enough!"
+
+But at this instant a young buck, the forerunner of the tribe, and
+swift of limb, wading through the dogs and cuffing right and left,
+attempted the passage.  The butt of Hitchcock's rifle drove him to
+his 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 with the 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 succeeding dogs trod him under foot and the sled
+bumped over him.  But he was quick to his feet, and the night
+might have turned out differently had not Sipsu struck backward
+with the long dog-whip and smitten him a blinding blow across the
+eyes.  Hitchcock, hurrying to overtake her, collided against him
+as he swayed with pain in the middle of the trail.  Thus it was,
+when this primitive theologian got back to the chief's lodge, that
+his wisdom had been increased in so far as concerns the efficacy
+of the white man's fist.  So, when he orated then and there in the
+council, he was wroth against all white men.
+
+
+"Tumble out, you loafers!  Tumble out!  Grub'll be 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 rubbed
+it sleepily.  "Wonder where Hitchcock bunked last night?" he
+queried, reaching for his moccasins.  They were stiff, and he
+walked gingerly in his socks to the fire to thaw them out.  "It's
+a blessing he's gone," he added, "though he was a mighty 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's all.  He thought it
+wasn't right--and, of course, it wasn't,--but that was no reason
+for us to interfere and get hustled 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 their frozen
+moccasins.  "Think we ought to have taken a hand?"
+
+Sigmund shook his head.  He was very busy.  A scud of chocolate-
+colored foam was rising in the coffee-pot, and the bacon needed
+turning.  Also, he was thinking about the girl with laughing eyes
+like summer seas, and he was humming softly.
+
+His mates chuckled to each other and ceased talking.  Though it
+was past seven, daybreak was still three hours distant.  The
+aurora borealis had passed out of the sky, and the camp was an
+oasis of light in the midst of deep darkness.  And in this light
+the forms of the three men were sharply defined.  Emboldened by
+the silence, Sigmund raised his voice and opened the last stanza
+of the old 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 across the fire.
+
+
+The witch doctor's eyes were well blackened, and his temper none
+of the best; for he quarrelled with the chief over the possession
+of Wertz's rifle, and took more than his share of the part-sack of
+beans.  Also he appropriated the bearskin, and caused grumbling
+among the tribesmen.  And finally, he tried to kill Sigmund's dog,
+which the girl had given him, but the dog ran away, while he fell
+into the shaft and dislocated his shoulder on the bucket.  When
+the camp was well looted they went back to their own lodges, and
+there was a great rejoicing among the women.  Further, a band of
+moose strayed over the south divide and fell before the hunters,
+so the witch doctor attained yet greater honor, and the people
+whispered among themselves that he spoke in council with the gods.
+
+But later, when all were gone, the shepherd dog crept back to the
+deserted camp, and all the night long and a day it wailed the
+dead.  After that it disappeared, though the years were not many
+before the Indian hunters noted a change in the breed of timber
+wolves, and there were dashes of bright color and variegated
+markings such as no wolf bore before.
+
+
+
+A DAUGHTER OF THE AURORA
+
+
+
+"You--what you call--lazy mans, you lazy mans would desire 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 she
+had spoken it, but more tritely and in his own tongue, to Louis
+Savoy the previous night.
+
+"Listen, Joy--"
+
+"No, no; why moos' I listen to lazy mans?  It is vaire 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 trail or up creek.
+Even now have I just come off.  My dogs are yet tired.  Other men
+have luck and find plenty of gold; but I--I have 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 the
+Tanana," Harrington protested, "and knew nothing of the Eldorado
+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.  It is nevaire too late.  One
+vaire rich mine is there, on the creek which is Eldorado.  The
+mans drive the stake and him go 'way.  No odddr mans know what of
+him become.  The mans, him which drive the stake, is nevaire no
+more.  Sixty days no mans on that claim file the papaire.  Then
+odder mans, plentee odder mans--what you call--jump that claim.
+Then they race, O so queek, like the wind, to file the papaire.
+Him be vaire rich.  Him get grub for famine."
+
+Harrington hid the major portion of his interest.
+
+"When's the time up?" he asked.  "What claim is it?"
+
+"So I speak Louis Savoy last night," she continued, ignoring him.
+"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 long wind.  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 haf me for
+wife.'"
+
+"And if he don't win?"
+
+"Then Louis Savoy, him will not be--what you call--the father of
+my children."
+
+"And if I win?"
+
+"You winnaire?  Ha! ha!  Nevaire!"
+
+Exasperating as it was, Joy Molineau's laughter was pretty to
+hear.  Harrington did not mind it.  He had long since been broken
+in.  Besides, he was no exception.  She had forced all her lovers
+to suffer in kind.  And very enticing she was just then, her lips
+parted, her color heightened by the sharp kiss of the frost, her
+eyes vibrant with the lure which is the greatest of all lures and
+which may be seen nowhere save in woman's eyes.  Her sled-dogs
+clustered about her in hirsute masses, and the leader, Wolf Fang,
+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 file the
+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 feminine irrelevance,
+rising to her feet and straightening out the team.
+
+Her lover looked on stolidly.  She had kept him guessing from the
+first time they met, and patience had been joined unto his
+virtues.
+
+"Hi!  Wolf Fang!" she cried, springing upon the sled as it leaped
+into sudden motion.  "Ai!  Ya!  Mush-on!"
+
+From the corner of his eye Harrington watched her swinging down
+the trail to Forty Mile.  Where the road forked and crossed the
+river to Fort Cudahy, she halted the dogs and turned about.
+
+"O Mistaire Lazy Mans!" she called back.  "Wolf Fang, 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
+between her two latest lovers, now hazarded bets and guesses as to
+which would win in the forthcoming race.  The camp divided itself
+into two factions, and every effort was put forth in order that
+their respective favorites might be the first in at the finish.
+There was a scramble for the best dogs the country could afford,
+for dogs, and good ones, were essential, above all, to success.
+And it meant much to the victor.  Besides the possession of a
+wife, the like of which had yet to be created, it stood for a mine
+worth a million at least.
+
+That fall, when news came down of McCormack's discovery on
+Bonanza, all the Lower Country, Circle City and Forty Mile
+included, had stampeded up the Yukon,--at least all save those
+who, like Jack 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 posted his notice, and as duly
+disappeared.  At that time the nearest recording office was in the
+police barracks at Fort Cudahy, just across the river from Forty
+Mile; but when it became bruited abroad that Eldorado Creek was a
+treasure-house, it was quickly discovered that Olaf Nelson had
+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-thousand dollars waited but shovel and sluice-box.  Yet
+they dared not touch it; for there was a law which permitted sixty
+days to lapse between the staking and the filing, during which
+time a claim was immune.  The whole country knew of Olaf Nelson's
+disappearance, and scores of men made preparation for the jumping
+and for the consequent race to Fort Cudahy.
+
+But competition at Forty Mile was limited.  With the camp devoting
+its energies to the equipping either of Jack Harrington or Louis
+Savoy, no man was unwise enough to enter the contest single-
+handed.  It was a stretch of a hundred miles to the Recorder's
+office, and it was planned that the two favorites should have four
+relays of dogs stationed along the trail.  Naturally, the last
+relay was to be the crucial one, and for these twenty-five miles
+their respective partisans strove to obtain the strongest possible
+animals.  So bitter did the factions wax, and so high did they
+bid, that dogs brought stiffer prices than ever before in the
+annals of the country.  And, as it chanced, this scramble for dogs
+turned the public eye still more searchingly upon Joy Molineau.
+Not only was she the cause of it all, but she possessed the finest
+sled-dog from Chilkoot to Bering Sea.  As wheel or leader, Wolf
+Fang had no equal.  The man whose sled he led down the last
+stretch was bound to win.  There could be no doubt of it.  But the
+community had an innate sense of the fitness of things, and not
+once was Joy vexed by overtures for his use.  And the factions
+drew consolation from the fact that if one man did not profit by
+him, neither should the other.
+
+However, since man, in the individual or in the aggregate, has
+been so fashioned that he goes through life blissfully obtuse to
+the deeper subtleties of his womankind, so the men of Forty Mile
+failed to divine the 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 dreamed of invading it, and who had
+herself first opened eyes on the scintillant northern lights.
+Nay, accident of birth had not rendered her less the woman, nor
+had it limited her woman's understanding of men.  They knew she
+played with them, but they did not know the wisdom of her play,
+its deepness and its deftness.  They failed to see more than the
+exposed card, so that to the very last Forty Mile was in a state
+of pleasant obfuscation, and it was not until she cast her final
+trump that it came to reckon up the score.
+
+Early in the week the camp turned out to start Jack Harrington and
+Louis 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 days
+previous to the expiration of its immunity, that they might rest
+themselves, and their dogs be fresh for the first relay.  On the
+way up they found the men of Dawson already stationing spare dog
+teams along the trail, and it was manifest that little expense had
+been spared in view of the millions at stake.
+
+A couple of days after the departure of their champions, Forty
+Mile began sending up their relays,--first to the seventy-five
+station, then to the fifty, and last to the twenty-five.  The
+teams for the last stretch were magnificent, and so equally
+matched that the camp discussed their relative merits for a full
+hour at fifty below, before they were permitted to pull out.  At
+the last moment Joy Molineau dashed in among them on her sled.
+She drew Lon McFane, who had charge of Harrington's team, to one
+side, and hardly had the first words left her lips when it was
+noticed that his lower jaw dropped with a celerity and emphasis
+suggestive of great things.  He unhitched Wolf 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 flashed her black
+eyes defiantly and drove back to her father's cabin.
+
+
+Midnight drew near on Olaf Nelson's claim.  A few hundred fur-clad
+men had preferred sixty below and the jumping, to the inducements
+of warm cabins and comfortable bunks.  Several score of them had
+their notices prepared for posting and their dogs at hand.  A
+bunch of Captain Constantine's mounted police had been ordered on
+duty that fair play might rule.  The command had gone forth that
+no man should place a stake till the last second of the day had
+ticked itself into the past.  In the northland such commands are
+equal to Jehovah's in the matter of potency; the dum-dum as rapid
+and effective as the thunderbolt.  It was clear and cold.  The
+aurora borealis painted palpitating color revels on the sky.  Rosy
+waves of cold brilliancy swept across the zenith, while great
+coruscating bars of greenish white blotted out the stars, or a
+Titan's hand reared mighty arches above the Pole.  And at this
+mighty display the wolf-dogs howled as had their ancestors of old
+time.
+
+A bearskin-coated policeman stepped prominently to the fore, watch
+in hand.  Men hurried among the dogs, rousing them to their feet,
+untangling their traces, straightening them out.  The entries came
+to the mark, firmly gripping stakes and notices.  They had gone
+over the boundaries of the claim so often that they could now have
+done it blindfolded.  The policeman raised his hand.  Casting off
+their 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 gripped
+hard upon the snow.
+
+"Go!"
+
+They shot across the wide expanse, round the four sides, sticking
+notices at every corner, and down the middle where the two centre
+stakes were to be planted.  Then they sprang for the sleds on the
+frozen bed of the creek.  An anarchy of sound and motion broke
+out.  Sled collided with sled, and dog-team fastened upon dog-team
+with bristling manes and screaming fangs.  The narrow creek was
+glutted with the struggling mass.  Lashes and butts of dog-whips
+were distributed impartially among men and brutes.  And to make it
+of greater moment, each participant had a bunch of comrades intent
+on breaking him out of jam.  But one by one, and by sheer
+strength, the sleds crept out and shot from sight in the darkness
+of the overhanging banks.
+
+Jack Harrington had anticipated this crush and waited by his sled
+until it untangled.  Louis Savoy, aware of his rival's greater
+wisdom in the matter of dog-driving, had followed his lead and
+also waited.  The rout had passed beyond ear-shot when they took
+the trail, and it was not till they had travelled the ten miles or
+so down to Bonanza that they came upon it, speeding along in
+single file, but well bunched.  There was little noise, and less
+chance of one passing another at that stage.  The sleds, from
+runner to runner, measured sixteen inches, the trail eighteen; but
+the trail, packed down fully a foot by the traffic, was like a
+gutter.  On either side spread the blanket of soft snow crystals.
+If a man turned into this in an endeavor to pass, his dogs would
+wallow perforce to their bellies and slow down to a snail's pace.
+So the men lay close to their leaping sleds and waited.  No
+alteration in position occurred down the fifteen miles of Bonanza
+and Klondike to Dawson, where the Yukon was encountered.  Here the
+first relays waited.  But here, intent to kill their first teams,
+if necessary, Harrington and Savoy had had their fresh teams
+placed a couple of miles beyond those of the others.  In the
+confusion of changing sleds they passed full half the bunch.
+Perhaps thirty men were still leading them when they shot on to
+the broad breast of the Yukon.  Here was the tug.  When the river
+froze in the fall, a mile of open water had been left between two
+mighty jams.  This had but recently crusted, the current being
+swift, and now it was as level, hard, and slippery as a dance
+floor.  The instant they struck this glare ice Harrington came to
+his knees, holding precariously on with one hand, his whip singing
+fiercely among his dogs and fearsome abjurations hurtling about
+their ears.  The teams spread out on the smooth surface, each
+straining to the uttermost.  But few men in the North could lift
+their dogs as did Jack Harrington.  At once he began to pull
+ahead, and Louis Savoy, taking the pace, hung on desperately, his
+leaders running even with 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 new
+sled swung in close, he leaped across, shouting as he did so and
+jumping up the pace of his fresh dogs.  The other driver fell off
+somehow.  Savoy did likewise with his relay, and the abandoned
+teams, swerving to right and left, collided with the others and
+piled the ice with confusion.  Harrington cut out the pace; Savoy
+hung on.  As they neared the end of the glare ice, they swept
+abreast of the leading sled.  When they shot into the narrow trail
+between the soft snowbanks, they led the race; and Dawson,
+watching by the light of the aurora, swore that it was neatly
+done.
+
+When the frost grows lusty at sixty below, men cannot long remain
+without fire or excessive exercise, and live.  So Harrington and
+Savoy now fell to the ancient custom of "ride and run."  Leaping
+from their sleds, tow-thongs in hand, they ran behind till the
+blood resumed its wonted channels and expelled the frost, then
+back to the sleds till the heat again ebbed away.  Thus, riding
+and running, 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 strove to overtake them, but vainly, for to
+Louis Savoy alone was the glory given of keeping Jack Harrington's
+killing pace.
+
+As they swung into the seventy-five-mile station, Lon McFane
+dashed alongside; Wolf Fang in the lead caught Harrington's eye,
+and he knew that the race was his.  No team in the North could
+pass him on those last twenty-five miles.  And when Savoy saw Wolf
+Fang heading 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
+frequently cursed.  But he still clung to the other's smoking
+trail, gambling on chance to the last.  And as they churned along,
+the day breaking in the southeast, they marvelled in joy and
+sorrow at that which Joy Molineau had done.
+
+
+Forty Mile had early crawled out of its sleeping furs and
+congregated near the edge of the trail.  From this point it could
+view the up-Yukon course to its first bend several miles away.
+Here it could also see across the river to the finish at Fort
+Cudahy, where the Gold Recorder nervously awaited.  Joy Molineau
+had taken her position several rods back from the trail, and under
+the circumstances, the rest of Forty Mile forbore interposing
+itself.  So the space was clear between her and the slender line
+of the course.  Fires had been built, and around these men wagered
+dust and dogs, the long odds on Wolf Fang.
+
+"Here they come!" shrilled an Indian boy from the top of a pine.
+
+Up the Yukon a black speck appeared against the snow, closely
+followed by a second.  As these grew larger, more black specks
+manifested themselves, but at a goodly distance to the rear.
+Gradually they resolved 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.  Now I give--what you call--
+the tip.  Covaire the bet."  Joy smiled inscrutably.  The
+lieutenant pondered.  He glanced up the trail.  The two men had
+risen to their knees and were lashing their 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, not
+to the dictate of his reason, but to her charm.  Joy nodded to
+reassure him.
+
+All noise ceased.  Men paused in the placing of bets.
+
+Yawing and reeling and plunging, like luggers before the wind, the
+sleds swept wildly upon them.  Though he still kept his leader up
+to the tail of Harrington's sled, Louis Savoy's face was without
+hope.  Harrington's mouth was set.  He looked neither to the right
+nor to the left.  His dogs were leaping in perfect rhythm, firm-
+footed, close to the trail, and Wolf Fang, head low and unseeing,
+whining softly, was leading his comrades magnificently.
+
+Forty Mile stood breathless.  Not a sound, save the roar of the
+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 directly for
+his mistress.  The team dashed after him, and the sled poised an
+instant on a single runner, then shot Harrington into the snow.
+Savoy was by like a flash.  Harrington pulled to his feet and
+watched him skimming across the river to the Gold Recorder's.  He
+could not help hearing what was said.
+
+"Ah, him do vaire well," Joy Molineau was explaining to the
+lieutenant.  "Him--what you call--set the pace.  Yes, him set the
+pace vaire well."
+
+
+
+AT THE RAINBOW'S END
+
+
+
+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 sternly moral civilization had destroyed the primeval status
+of the western cattle ranges, and refined society turned the cold
+eye of disfavor upon him and his ilk.  In the second place, in one
+of its cyclopean moments the race had arisen and shoved back its
+frontier several thousand miles.  Thus, with unconscious
+foresight, did mature society make room for its adolescent
+members.  True, the new territory was mostly barren; but its
+several hundred thousand square miles of frigidity at least gave
+breathing space to those who else would have suffocated at home.
+
+Montana Kid was such a one.  Heading for the sea-coast, with a
+haste several sheriff's posses might possibly have explained, and
+with more nerve than coin of the realm, he succeeded in shipping
+from a Puget Sound port, and managed to survive the contingent
+miseries of steerage sea-sickness and steerage grub.  He was
+rather sallow and drawn, but still his own indomitable self, when
+he landed on the Dyea beach one day in the spring of the year.
+Between the cost of dogs, grub, and outfits, and the customs
+exactions of the two clashing governments, it speedily penetrated
+to his understanding that the Northland was anything save a poor
+man's Mecca.  So he cast about him in search of quick harvests.
+Between the beach and the passes were scattered many thousands of
+passionate pilgrims.  These pilgrims Montana Kid proceeded to
+farm.  At first he dealt faro in a pine-board gambling shack; but
+disagreeable necessity forced him to drop a sudden period into a
+man's life, and to move on up trail.  Then he effected a corner in
+horseshoe nails, and they circulated at par with legal tender,
+four to the dollar, till an unexpected consignment of a hundred
+barrels or so broke the market and forced him to disgorge his
+stock at a loss.  After that he located at Sheep Camp, organized
+the professional packers, and jumped the freight ten cents a pound
+in a single day.  In token of their gratitude, the packers
+patronized his 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, and headed him up the trail
+with empty pockets.
+
+Ill-luck was his running mate.  He engaged with responsible
+parties to run whisky across the line by way of precarious and
+unknown trails, lost his Indian guides, and had the very first
+outfit confiscated by the Mounted Police.  Numerous other
+misfortunes tended to make him bitter of heart and wanton of
+action, and he celebrated his arrival at Lake Bennett by
+terrorizing the camp for twenty straight hours.  Then a miners'
+meeting took him in hand, and commanded him to make himself
+scarce.  He had a wholesome respect for such assemblages, and he
+obeyed in such haste that he inadvertently removed himself at the
+tail-end of another man's dog team.  This was equivalent to horse-
+stealing in a more mellow clime, so he hit only the high places
+across Bennett and down Tagish, and made his first camp a full
+hundred miles to the north.
+
+Now it happened that the break of spring was at hand, and many of
+the principal citizens of Dawson were travelling south on the last
+ice.  These he met and talked with, noted their names and
+possessions, and passed on.  He had a good memory, also a fair
+imagination; nor was veracity one of his virtues.
+
+
+II
+
+
+Dawson, always eager for news, beheld Montana Kid's sled heading
+down the Yukon, and went out on the ice to meet him.  No, he
+hadn't any newspapers; didn't know whether Durrant was hanged yet,
+nor who had won the Thanksgiving game; hadn't heard whether the
+United States and Spain had gone to fighting; didn't know who
+Dreyfus was; but O'Brien?  Hadn't they heard?  O'Brien, why, he
+was drowned in the White Horse; Sitka Charley the only one of the
+party who escaped.  Joe Ladue?  Both legs frozen and amputated at
+the Five Fingers.  And Jack Dalton?  Blown up on the "Sea Lion"
+with all hands.  And Bettles?  Wrecked on the "Carthagina," in
+Seymour Narrows,--twenty survivors out of three hundred.  And
+Swiftwater Bill?  Gone through the rotten ice of Lake LeBarge with
+six female members of the opera troupe he was convoying.  Governor
+Walsh?  Lost with all hands and 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 shouldered in to ask
+after friends and partners, and in turn were shouldered out, too
+stunned for blasphemy.  By the time Montana Kid gained the bank he
+was surrounded by several hundred fur-clad miners.  When he passed
+the Barracks he was the centre of a procession.  At the Opera
+House he was the nucleus of an excited mob, each member struggling
+for a chance to ask after some absent comrade.  On every side he
+was being invited to drink.  Never before had the Klondike thus
+opened 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 hurried
+down from the creeks and gulches to seek out this man who had told
+a tale of such disaster.  The Russian half-breed wife of Bettles
+sought the fireplace, inconsolable, and rocked back and forth, and
+ever and anon flung white wood-ashes upon her raven hair.  The
+flag at the Barracks flopped dismally at half-mast.  Dawson
+mourned its dead.
+
+Why Montana Kid did this thing no man may know.  Nor beyond the
+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,
+and for five whole days he was the only man in the Klondike.  The
+country gave him its best of bed and board.  The saloons granted
+him the freedom of their bars.  Men sought him continuously.  The
+high officials bowed down to him for further information, and he
+was feasted at the Barracks by Constantine and his brother
+officers.  And then, one day, Devereaux, the government courier,
+halted his tired dogs before the gold commissioner's office.
+Dead?  Who said so?  Give him a moose steak and he'd show them how
+dead he was.  Why, Governor Walsh was in camp on the Little
+Salmon, and O'Brien coming in on the first water.  Dead?  Give him
+a moose steak and he'd show them.
+
+And forthwith Dawson hummed.  The Barracks' flag rose to the
+masthead, and Bettles' wife washed herself and put on clean
+raiment.  The community subtly signified its desire that Montana
+Kid obliterate himself from the landscape.  And Montana Kid
+obliterated; as usual, at the tail-end of some one else's dog
+team.  Dawson rejoiced when he headed down the Yukon, and wished
+him godspeed to the ultimate destination of the case-hardened
+sinner.  After that the owner 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 his
+runners, Montana Kid took advantage of the lengthening days and
+travelled his dogs late and early.  Further, he had but little
+doubt that the owner of the dogs in question had taken his trail,
+and he wished to make American territory before the river broke.
+But by the afternoon of the third day it became evident that he
+had lost in his race with spring.  The Yukon was growling and
+straining at its fetters.  Long detours became necessary, for the
+trail had begun 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 sweep across the surface of the ice, and by the
+time he pulled into a woodchopper's cabin on the point of an
+island, the dogs were being rushed off their feet and were
+swimming more often than not.  He was greeted sourly by 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
+resigned their 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 staked by the P. C. Company to cut wood for
+its steamers, with the promise at the end of a passage home.
+Disregarding the possibilities of the ice-run, they had fittingly
+demonstrated their inefficiency by their choice of the island on
+which they located.  Montana Kid, though possessing little
+knowledge of the break-up of a great river, looked about him
+dubiously, and cast yearning glances at the distant bank where the
+towering bluffs promised immunity from all the ice of the
+Northland.
+
+After feeding himself and dogs, he lighted his pipe and strolled
+out to get a better idea of the situation.  The island, like all
+its river brethren, stood higher at the upper end, and it was here
+that Donald 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 the near shore lay a back-channel perhaps a hundred
+yards across.  At first sight of this, Montana Kid was tempted to
+take his dogs and escape to the mainland, but on closer inspection
+he discovered a rapid current flooding on top.  Below, the river
+twisted sharply to the west, and in this turn its breast was
+studded by a maze of tiny islands.
+
+"That's where she'll jam," he remarked to himself.
+
+Half a dozen sleds, evidently bound up-stream to Dawson, were
+splashing through the chill water to the tail of the island.
+Travel on the river was passing from the precarious to the
+impossible, and it was nip and tuck with them till they gained the
+island and came up the path of the wood-choppers toward the cabin.
+One of them, snow-blind, towed helplessly at the rear of a sled.
+Husky young fellows they were, rough-garmented and trail-worn, yet
+Montana Kid had met the breed before and knew at once that it was
+not his kind.
+
+"Hello!  How's things up Dawson-way?" queried the foremost,
+passing his eye over Donald and Davy and settling it upon the Kid.
+
+A first meeting in the wilderness is not characterized by
+formality.  The talk quickly became general, and the news of the
+Upper and Lower Countries was swapped equitably back and forth.
+But the little the 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 they pitched camp, swamping him with questions
+concerning the outside, from which they had been cut off for a
+twelvemonth.
+
+A shrieking split, suddenly lifting itself above the general
+uproar on the river, drew everybody to the bank.  The surface
+water had increased in depth, and the ice, assailed from above and
+below, was struggling to tear itself from the grip of the shores.
+Fissures reverberated into life before their eyes, and the air was
+filled with multitudinous crackling, crisp and sharp, like the
+sound that goes up on a clear day from the firing line.
+
+From up the river two men were racing a dog team toward them on an
+uncovered stretch of ice.  But even as they looked, the pair
+struck the water and began to flounder through.  Behind, where
+their feet had 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 drowning tangle.  But the men stopped their flight to
+give the animals a fighting chance, and they groped hurriedly in
+the cold confusion, slashing at the detaining traces with their
+sheath-knives.  Then they fought their way to the bank through
+swirling water and grinding ice, where, foremost in leaping to the
+rescue among the jarring fragments, was the Kid.
+
+"Why, blime me, if it ain't Montana Kid!" exclaimed one of the men
+whom the Kid was just placing upon his feet at the top of the
+bank.  He wore the scarlet tunic of the Mounted Police and
+jocularly raised his right hand in salute.
+
+"Got a warrant for you, Kid," he continued, drawing a bedraggled
+paper from his breast pocket, "an' I 'ope as 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 'ere mate o' mine is
+Jack Sutherland, owner of Twenty-Two Eldorado--"
+
+"Not Sutherland of '92?" broke in the snow-blinded Minook 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 freshman year,-
+-you were doing P. G. work then.  Boys," he called, turning half
+about, "this is Sutherland, Jack Sutherland, erstwhile full-back
+on the 'Varsity.  Come up, you gold-chasers, and fall upon him!
+Sutherland, this is Greenwich,--played quarter two 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 made
+room for another.
+
+"And here's Matthews,--Berkeley man.  And we've got some Eastern
+cracks knocking about, too.  Come up, you Princeton men!  Come up!
+This is Sutherland, Jack Sutherland!"
+
+Then they fell upon him heavily, carried him into camp, and
+supplied him with dry clothes and numerous mugs of black tea.
+
+Donald and Davy, overlooked, had retired to their nightly game of
+crib.  Montana Kid followed them with the policeman.
+
+"Here, get into some dry togs," he said, pulling them from out his
+scanty kit.  "Guess you'll have to bunk with me, too."
+
+"Well, I say, you're a good 'un," the policeman remarked as he
+pulled on the other man's socks. "Sorry I've got to take you back
+to Dawson, but I only 'ope they won't be 'ard on you."
+
+"Not so fast."  The Kid smiled curiously.  "We ain't under way
+yet.  When I go I'm going down 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.  These damn fools,"
+thrusting a thumb over his shoulder at the two Scots, "played
+smash when they located here.  Fill your pipe, first--this is
+pretty good plug--and enjoy yourself while you can.  You haven't
+many smokes before you."
+
+The policeman went with him wonderingly, while Donald and Davy
+dropped their cards and followed.  The Minook men noticed Montana
+Kid pointing now 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 jam millions of tons of ice.  Then
+she'll jam in the bends up above, 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, "The labor
+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
+flung himself upon the piles and began frantically to toss the
+cordwood back from the bank.
+
+"Lend a hand, Donald!" he cried.  "Can ye no lend a hand?  'T is
+the labor of months and the passage home!"
+
+Donald caught him by the arm and shook him, but he tore free.
+"Did ye no hear, man?  Millions of tons, and the island shall be
+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 the
+cabin, buckled on his money belt and Davy's, and went out to the
+point of the island where the ground was highest and where a huge
+pine towered 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
+were penned 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 his head 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 wrapped
+about them.  The ice had ripped from the shores and was floating
+higher on the surface of the river, which was rising.  Up it came,
+swift and silent, for twenty feet, till the huge cakes rubbed
+softly against 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 island was shaking and quivering with the shock
+of the grinding bergs.  Under pressure, the mighty cakes, weighing
+hundreds of tons, were shot into 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 the tumult.  The island shuddered
+with the impact of an enormous cake which drove in squarely upon
+its point.  It ripped a score of pines out by the roots, then
+swinging around and over, lifted its muddy base from the bottom of
+the river and bore down upon the cabin, slicing the bank and trees
+away like a gigantic knife.  It seemed barely to graze 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 passage home!"
+Davy wailed, while Montana Kid and the policeman dragged him
+backward from the woodpiles.
+
+"You'll 'ave plenty o' hoppertunity all in good 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 sweep
+away the cordwood and disappear down-stream.  As though satisfied
+with this damage, the ice-flood quickly dropped to its old level
+and began to slacken its pace.  The noise likewise eased down, and
+the 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 the ice 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 began to rise.  It rushed up till the
+island was awash, the men splashing around up to their knees, and
+the dogs swimming to the ruins of the cabin.  At this stage it
+abruptly became stationary, with no perceptible rise 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," Sutherland added.
+
+"Exactly," the Kid affirmed.  "If the upper jam breaks first, we
+haven't a chance.  Nothing will stand before 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 they quickly caught the ringing rhythm of the
+choruses as they drifted on from song to song.
+
+"Oh, Donald, will ye no lend a hand?" Davy sobbed at the foot of
+the tree into which his comrade had climbed.  "Oh, Donald, man,
+will ye no lend a hand?" he sobbed again, his hands bleeding 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 Montana
+Kid and the policeman, gripped hands and raised their voices in
+the terrible, "Battle Hymn of the Republic."  But the words were
+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 face of nature clean.  This much he saw, then swayed an
+instant longer in his lofty perch and hurtled far out into the
+frozen hell.
+
+
+
+THE SCORN OF WOMEN
+
+
+
+Once Freda and Mrs. Eppingwell clashed.
+
+Now Freda was a Greek girl and a dancer.  At least she purported
+to be Greek; but this was doubted by many, for her classic face
+had over-much strength in it, and the tides of hell which rose in
+her eyes made at rare moments her ethnology the more dubious.  To
+a few--men--this sight had been vouchsafed, and though long years
+may have passed, they have not forgotten, nor will they ever
+forget.  She never talked of 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 magnificent in all the country from
+Chilcoot to St. Michael's, and her name was common on the lips of
+men.  But Mrs. Eppingwell was the wife of a captain; also a social
+constellation of the first magnitude, the path of her orbit
+marking the most select coterie in Dawson,--a coterie captioned by
+the profane as the "official clique."  Sitka Charley had travelled
+trail with her once, when famine drew tight and a man's life was
+less than a cup of flour, and his judgment placed her above all
+women.  Sitka Charley was an Indian; his criteria were primitive;
+but his word was flat, and his verdict a hall-mark in every camp
+under the circle.
+
+These two women were man-conquering, man-subduing machines, each
+in her own way, and their ways were different.  Mrs. Eppingwell
+ruled in her own house, and at the Barracks, where were younger
+sons galore, to say nothing of the chiefs of the police, the
+executive, and the judiciary.  Freda ruled down in the town; but
+the men she ruled were the same who functioned socially at the
+Barracks or were fed tea and canned preserves at the hand of Mrs.
+Eppingwell in her hillside cabin of rough-hewn logs.  Each knew
+the other existed; but their lives were apart as the Poles, and
+while they must have heard stray bits 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 shape of the model-
+woman come into the land on the first ice, with a spanking dog-
+team and a cosmopolitan reputation.  Loraine Lisznayi--
+alliterative, dramatic, and Hungarian--precipitated the strife,
+and because of her Mrs. Eppingwell left her hillside and invaded
+Freda's domain, and Freda likewise went up from the town to spread
+confusion and embarrassment at 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; nor beyond those few are there any fit to measure the
+wife of the captain or the Greek dancer.  And that all are now
+permitted to understand, let honor be accorded Sitka Charley.
+From his lips fell the main facts in the screed herewith
+presented.  It ill befits that Freda herself 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 and hard
+grub had no terrors for him, as his early history in the country
+attested.  In danger he was a lion, and when he held in check half
+a thousand starving men, as he once did, it was remarked that no
+cooler eye ever took the glint of sunshine on a rifle-sight.  He
+had but one weakness, and even that, rising from out his strength,
+was of a negative 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 and salmon and chased glowing
+Eldorados over chill divides.  But when he finally blazed the
+corner-post and centre-stakes on one of the richest Klondike
+claims, it began to quicken; and when he took his place in
+society, 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 quite forcibly, not only that she might be waiting for him,
+but that a wife was a very pleasant acquisition for a man who
+lived some several degrees north of 53.  So he wrote an
+appropriate note, enclosed a letter of credit generous enough to
+cover all expenses, including trousseau and chaperon, and
+addressed it to one Flossie.  Flossie?  One could imagine the
+rest.  However, after that he built a comfortable cabin on his
+claim, bought another in Dawson, and broke the news to his
+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
+element could not brook further delay.  Flossie was coming; but
+Loraine Lisznayi was here.  And not only was Loraine Lisznayi
+here, but her cosmopolitan reputation was somewhat the worse for
+wear, and she was not exactly so young as when she posed in the
+studios of artist queens and received at her door the cards of
+cardinals and princes.  Also, her finances were unhealthy.  Having
+run the gamut in her time, she was now not averse to trying
+conclusions with a Bonanza King whose wealth was such that he
+could not guess it within six figures.  Like a wise soldier
+casting about after years of service for a comfortable billet, she
+had come into the Northland to be married.  So, one day, her eyes
+flashed up into Floyd Vanderlip's as he was buying table linen for
+Flossie in the P. C. Company's store, and the thing was settled
+out of hand.
+
+When a man is free much may go unquestioned, which, should he be
+rash enough to cumber himself with domestic ties, society will
+instantly challenge.  Thus it was with Floyd Vanderlip.  Flossie
+was coming, and a low buzz went up when Loraine Lisznayi rode down
+the main street behind his wolf-dogs.  She accompanied the lady
+reporter of the "Kansas City Star" when photographs were taken of
+his Bonanza properties, and watched the genesis of a six-column
+article.  At that time they were dined royally in Flossie's cabin,
+on Flossie's table linen.  Likewise there were comings and goings,
+and junketings, all perfectly proper, by the way, which caused the
+men to say sharp things and the women to be spiteful.  Only Mrs.
+Eppingwell did not hear.  The distant hum of wagging tongues rose
+faintly, but she 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 some
+strange alchemy of her nature, her heart went out to women,--to
+women whom she had less cause to love.  And her heart went out to
+Flossie, even then travelling the Long Trail and facing into the
+bitter 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 pretty pouting lips, blow-away sun-kissed hair, and eyes
+full of the merry shallows 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
+Freda unmoved; nor among them can Floyd Vanderlip be accounted.
+The grace he had found with the model-woman had caused him to re-
+measure himself, and by the favor in which he now stood with the
+Greek dancer he felt himself doubly a man.  There were unknown
+qualities and depths in him, evidently, which they perceived.  He
+did not know exactly what those qualities and depths were, but he
+had a hazy idea that they were there somewhere, and of them was
+bred a great pride in himself.  A man who could force two women
+such as these to look upon him a second time, was certainly a most
+remarkable man.  Some day, 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 wondering whatever under the sun he had
+seen in Flossie, and to regret exceedingly that 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, while he was a man
+of responsibility and position.  But Loraine Lisznayi--she was
+just the woman.  Her life had been large; she could do the honors
+of his establishment and give tone to his dollars.
+
+But Freda smiled, and continued to smile, till he came to spend
+much time with her.  When she, too, rode down the street behind
+his wolf-dogs, the model-woman found food for thought, and the
+next time they were together dazzled him with her princes and
+cardinals and personal little anecdotes of courts and kings.  She
+also showed him dainty missives, superscribed, "My dear Loraine,"
+and ended "Most affectionately yours," and signed by the given
+name of a real live queen on a throne.  And he marvelled in his
+heart that the great woman should deign to waste so much as a
+moment upon him.  But she played him cleverly, making flattering
+contrasts and comparisons between him and the noble phantoms she
+drew mainly from her fancy, till he went away dizzy with self-
+delight and sorrowing for the world which had been denied him so
+long.  Freda was a more masterful woman.  If she flattered, no one
+knew it.  Should she stoop, the stoop were unobserved.  If a man
+felt she thought well of him, so subtly was the feeling conveyed
+that he could not for the life of him say why or how.  So she
+tightened her grip upon Floyd Vanderlip and rode daily behind his
+dogs.
+
+And just here is where the mistake occurred.  The buzz rose loudly
+and more definitely, coupled now with the name of the dancer, and
+Mrs. Eppingwell heard.  She, too, thought of Flossie lifting her
+moccasined feet through the endless hours, and Floyd Vanderlip was
+invited up the hillside to tea, and invited often.  This quite
+took his breath away, and he became drunken with appreciation of
+himself.  Never was man so maltreated.  His soul had become a
+thing for which three 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 of the
+affair, tentatively, to Sitka Charley, who had sold dogs to the
+Greek girl.  But no names were mentioned.  The nearest approach to
+it was when Mrs. Eppingwell said, "This--er--horrid woman," and
+Sitka Charley, with the model-woman strong in his thoughts, had
+echoed, "--er--horrid woman."  And he agreed with her, that it was
+a wicked thing for a woman to come between a man and the girl he
+was to marry.  "A mere girl, Charley," she said, "I am sure she
+is.  And she is coming 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 must be, also what noble women Mrs. Eppingwell
+and Freda were to interest themselves 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
+having memorialized her clear-searching eyes, her clear-ringing
+voice, and her utter downright frankness.  Her lips had a way of
+stiffening to command, and she was used to coming straight to the
+point.  Having taken Floyd Vanderlip's measurement, she did not
+dare this with 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 aware of any reason why she should not.  So
+she stood in the snow at the Greek girl's door, with the frost at
+sixty below, and parleyed with the waiting-maid for a full five
+minutes.  She had also the pleasure of being turned away from that
+door, and of going back up the hill, 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, and she 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 matter what the errand,--she
+would have made her welcome at her fire, and they would have sat
+there as two women, and talked, merely as two women.  She had
+overstepped convention and lowered herself, but she 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 descended to
+meet her who was without caste, while she, strong in the
+traditions of her own earlier status, had not permitted it.  She
+could worship such a woman, and she would have asked no greater
+joy than to have had her 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, who was beyond respect, had prevented her
+doing that which she most desired.  Though not quite recovered
+from the recent visit of Mrs. McFee, the wife of the minister, who
+had descended upon her in a whirlwind of exhortation and
+brimstone, she could not imagine what had prompted the present
+visit.  She was not aware of any particular wrong she had done,
+and surely this woman who waited at the door was not concerned
+with the welfare of her soul.  Why had she come?  For all the
+curiosity she could not help but feel, she steeled herself in the
+pride of those who are without pride, and trembled in the inner
+room like a maid on the first caress 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 from the civilized
+and contemplate things from the barbaric aspect.  She could
+comprehend certain primal and analogous characteristics in a
+hungry wolf-dog or a starving man, and predicate lines of action
+to be pursued by either under like conditions.  To her, a woman
+was a woman, whether garbed in purple or the rags of the gutter;
+Freda was a woman.  She would not have been surprised had she been
+taken into the dancer's cabin and encountered on common ground;
+nor surprised 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 this was good.  There are some points of view
+which cannot be gained save through much travail and personal
+crucifixion, and it were well for the world that its Mrs.
+Eppingwells should, in certain ways, fall short of universality.
+One cannot understand defilement without laying hands to pitch,
+which is very sticky, while there be plenty willing to undertake
+the experiment.  All of which is of small concern, beyond the fact
+that it gave Mrs. Eppingwell ground for grievance, and bred for
+her a greater love in the Greek girl's heart.
+
+
+III
+
+
+And in this way things went along for a month,--Mrs. Eppingwell
+striving to withhold the man from the Greek dancer's blandishments
+against the time of Flossie's coming; Flossie lessening the miles
+each day on the dreary trail; Freda pitting her strength against
+the model-woman; the model-woman straining every nerve to land the
+prize; and the man moving through it all like a flying shuttle,
+very proud of himself, whom he believed to be a second Don Juan.
+
+It was nobody's fault except the man's that Loraine Lisznayi at
+last landed him.  The way of a man with a maid may be too
+wonderful to know, but the way of a woman with a man passeth all
+conception; whence the prophet were indeed unwise who would dare
+forecast Floyd Vanderlip's course twenty-four hours in advance.
+Perhaps the model-woman's attraction lay in that to the eye she
+was a handsome animal; perhaps she fascinated him with her old-
+world talk of palaces and princes; leastwise she 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 and a marriage at
+Forty Mile.  In token of his intention he bought dogs from Sitka
+Charley,--more than one sled is necessary when a woman like
+Loraine Lisznayi takes to the trail, and then went up the creek to
+give orders for the superintendence of his Bonanza mines during
+his absence.
+
+He had given it out, rather vaguely, that he needed the animals
+for sledding lumber from the mill to his sluices, and right here
+is where Sitka Charley demonstrated his fitness.  He agreed to
+furnish dogs on 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 supply that gentleman with a
+big string of dogs by a certain time; but that shameless one, the
+German trader Meyers, had been buying up the brutes and skimped
+the market.  It was very necessary he should see Mr. Vanderlip,
+because of the shameless one he would be all of a week behindhand
+in filling the contract.  She did know where he had gone?  Up-
+creek?  Good!  He would strike out after him at once and inform
+him of the unhappy delay.  Did he understand her to say that Mr.
+Vanderlip needed the dogs on Friday night? that he must have them
+by that time?  It was too bad, but it was the fault of the
+shameless one who had bid up the prices.  They had jumped fifty
+dollars per head, and should he buy on the rising market he would
+lose by the contract.  He wondered if Mr. Vanderlip would be
+willing to meet the advance.  She knew he would?  Being Mr.
+Vanderlip's friend, she would even meet the difference herself?
+And he was to 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
+Friday night; also, that Floyd Vanderlip had gone up-creek, and
+her hands were tied.  On Friday morning, Devereaux, the official
+courier, bearing despatches from the Governor, arrived over the
+ice.  Besides the despatches, he brought news of Flossie.  He had
+passed her camp at Sixty Mile; humans and dogs were in good
+condition; and she would doubtless be in on the morrow.  Mrs.
+Eppingwell experienced a great relief on hearing this; Floyd
+Vanderlip was safe up-creek, and ere the Greek girl could again
+lay hands upon him, his bride would be on the ground.  But that
+afternoon her big St. Bernard, valiantly defending her front
+stoop, was downed by a foraging party of trail-starved Malemutes.
+He was buried beneath the hirsute mass for about thirty seconds,
+when rescued by a couple of axes and as many stout men.  Had he
+remained down two minutes, the chances were large that he would
+have been roughly apportioned and carried away in the respective
+bellies of the attacking party; 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-paw which had inadvertently
+been left a fraction of a second too long in some 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--"er horrid
+woman."  Sitka Charley remarked incidentally that she intended
+jumping out down river that night with Floyd Vanderlip, and
+further ventured the information that accidents were very likely
+at 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
+intrusted it to a messenger who lay in wait at the mouth of
+Bonanza Creek.  Another man, bearing a note from Freda, also
+waited at that strategic point.  So it happened that Floyd
+Vanderlip, riding his sled merrily down with the last daylight,
+received the notes together.  He tore Freda's across.  No, he
+would not go to see her.  There were greater things afoot that
+night.  Besides, she was out of the running.  But Mrs. Eppingwell!
+He would observe her last wish,--or rather, the last wish it would
+be possible for him to observe,--and meet her at the Governor's
+ball to hear what she had to say.  From the tone of the writing it
+was evidently important; perhaps-- He smiled fondly, but failed to
+shape the thought.  Confound it all, what a lucky fellow he was
+with the women any way!  Scattering her letter to the frost, he
+mushed the dogs into a swinging lope and headed for his cabin.  It
+was to be a masquerade, and he had to dig up the costume used at
+the Opera House a couple of months before.  Also, he had to shave
+and to eat.  Thus it was that he, alone of all interested, was
+unaware of 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, who dropped in
+with the advice that only one dog was lacking to fill the bill,
+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've got to get ready for the ball."
+
+Sitka Charley weighed out his pay and departed, carrying with him
+a letter to Loraine Lisznayi, the contents of which he correctly
+imagined to 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
+was in full swing, and as often they came back without answers.
+Then she did what only Freda could do--put on her furs, masked her
+face, and went up herself to the Governor's ball.  Now there
+happened to be a custom--not an original one by any means--to
+which the official clique had long since become addicted.  It was
+a very wise custom, for it furnished protection to the womankind
+of the officials and gave greater selectness to their revels.
+Whenever a masquerade was given, a committee was chosen, the sole
+function of which was to stand by the door and peep beneath each
+and every mask.  Most men did not clamor to be placed upon this
+committee, while the very ones who least desired the honor were
+the ones whose services were most required.  The chaplain was not
+well enough acquainted with the faces and places of the
+townspeople to know whom to admit and whom to turn away.  In like
+condition were the several other worthy gentlemen who would have
+asked nothing better than to so serve.  To fill the coveted place,
+Mrs. McFee would have risked her chance of salvation, and did, one
+night, when a certain trio passed in under her guns and muddled
+things considerably before their identity was discovered.
+Thereafter only the fit were chosen, and very ungracefully did
+they respond.
+
+On this particular night Prince was at the door.  Pressure had
+been brought to bear, and he had not yet recovered from amaze at
+his having consented to undertake a task which bid fair to lose
+him half his friends, merely for the sake of pleasing the other
+half.  Three or four of the men he had refused were men whom he
+had known on creek and trail,--good comrades, but not exactly
+eligible for so select an affair.  He was canvassing the
+expediency of resigning the post there 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 so well.  The last one to
+expect in all the world.  He had given her better judgment than to
+thus venture the ignominy of refusal, or, if she passed, the scorn
+of women.  He shook his head, without scrutiny; he knew her too
+well to be mistaken.  But she pressed closer.  She lifted the
+black silk ribbon and as quickly lowered it again.  For one
+flashing, eternal second he looked upon her face.  It was not for
+nothing, the saying which had arisen in the country, that Freda
+played with men as a child with bubbles.  Not a word was spoken.
+Prince stepped aside, and a few moments later might have been seen
+resigning, with warm incoherence, the post to which he had been
+unfaithful.
+
+
+A woman, flexible of form, slender, yet rhythmic of strength in
+every movement, now pausing with this group, now scanning that,
+urged a restless and 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; likewise the furs.  Mrs. McFee,
+emerging from the supper-room where all was in readiness, caught
+one flash of the blazing, questing eyes through the silken mask-
+slits, and received a start.  She tried to recollect where she had
+seen the like, and a vivid picture was recalled of a certain proud
+and rebellious sinner whom she had once encountered on a fruitless
+errand for the Lord.
+
+So it was that the good woman took the trail in hot and righteous
+wrath, a trail which brought her ultimately into the company of
+Mrs. Eppingwell and Floyd Vanderlip.  Mrs. Eppingwell had just
+found the opportunity to talk with the man.  She had determined,
+now that Flossie was so near at hand, to proceed directly to the
+point, and an incisive little ethical discourse was titillating on
+the end of her tongue, when the couple became three.  She noted,
+and pleasurably, the faintly foreign accent of the "Beg pardon"
+with which the 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, and
+accompanying it in its descent was a black mask torn from a
+startled woman.  A wonderful face and brilliant eyes were exposed
+to the quiet curiosity of those who looked that way, and they were
+everybody.  Floyd Vanderlip was rather confused.  The situation
+demanded instant action on the part of a man who was not beyond
+his depth, while HE hardly 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 equal to it.
+
+"Mrs. Eppingwell," and her Celtic voice rose shrilly, "it is with
+great pleasure I make you acquainted with Freda Moloof, MISS Freda
+Moloof, as I understand."
+
+Freda involuntarily turned.  With her own face bared, she felt as
+in a dream, naked, upon her turned the clothed features and
+gleaming eyes of the masked circle.  It seemed, almost, as though
+a hungry wolf-pack girdled her, ready to drag her down.  It might
+chance that 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 the pack, Mrs. Eppingwell or no Mrs. Eppingwell,
+she could not forego the kill.
+
+But here Mrs. Eppingwell did a strange thing.  So this, at last,
+was Freda, she mused, the dancer and the destroyer of men; the
+woman from whose door she had been turned.  And she, too, felt the
+imperious creature's nakedness as though it were her own.  Perhaps
+it was this, her Saxon disinclination to meet a disadvantaged foe,
+perhaps, forsooth, that it might give her greater strength in the
+struggle for the man, and it might have been a little of both; but
+be that as it may, she did do this strange thing.  When Mrs.
+McFee's thin voice, vibrant with malice, had raised, and Freda
+turned involuntarily, Mrs. Eppingwell also turned, removed her
+mask, and inclined her head in acknowledgment.
+
+It was another flashing, eternal second, during which these two
+women regarded each other.  The one, eyes blazing, meteoric; at
+bay, aggressive; suffering in advance and resenting in advance the
+scorn and 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 faith in herself, thoroughly at ease;
+dispassionate, imperturbable; a figure chiselled from some cold
+marble quarry.  Whatever gulf there might exist, she recognized it
+not.  No bridging, no descending; her attitude was that of perfect
+equality.  She stood tranquilly on the ground of their common
+womanhood.  And this maddened Freda.  Not so, had she been of
+lesser breed; but her soul's plummet knew not the bottomless, and
+she could follow the other into the deeps of her deepest depths
+and read her aright.  "Why do you not draw back your garment's
+hem?" she was fain to cry out, all in that flashing, dazzling
+second.  "Spit upon me, revile me, 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.  "I want you now."
+
+"What the--" he began explosively, and quit as suddenly, discreet
+enough to not round it off.  Where the deuce had his wits gone,
+anyway?  Was ever a man more foolishly placed?  He gurgled deep
+down in his throat and high up in the roof of his mouth, heaved as
+one his big shoulders and his indecision, and glared appealingly
+at the two women.
+
+"I beg pardon, just a moment, but may I speak first with Mr.
+Vanderlip?" Mrs. Eppingwell's voice, though flute-like and low,
+predicated will in its every cadence.
+
+The man looked his gratitude.  He, at least, was willing enough.
+
+"I'm very sorry," from Freda.  "There isn't time.  He must come at
+once."  The conventional phrases dropped easily from her lips, but
+she could not forbear to smile inwardly at their inadequacy and
+weakness.  She would much rather have shrieked.
+
+"But, Miss Moloof, who are you that you may possess yourself of
+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 match this time.
+
+"I--I--" Freda hesitated, and then her feminine mind putting on
+its harness--"and who are you to ask this question?"
+
+"I?  I am Mrs. Eppingwell, and--"
+
+"There!" the other broke in sharply.  "You are the wife of a
+captain, who is therefore your husband.  I am only a dancing girl.
+What do you with this man?"
+
+"Such unprecedented behavior!" Mrs. McFee ruffled herself and
+cleared for action, but Mrs. Eppingwell shut her mouth with a look
+and 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,
+I am forced to appeal directly to you.  May I speak with you,
+alone, and now?"
+
+Mrs. McFee's jaws brought together with a snap.  That settled the
+disgraceful situation.
+
+"Why, er--that is, certainly," the man stammered.  "Of course, of
+course," growing more effusive at the prospect of deliverance.
+
+Men are only gregarious vertebrates, domesticated and evolved, and
+the chances are large that it was because the Greek girl had in
+her time dealt with wilder masculine beasts of the human sort; for
+she turned upon the man with hell's tides aflood in her blazing
+eyes, much as a bespangled lady upon a lion which has suddenly
+imbibed the pernicious theory that he is a free agent.  The beast
+in him fawned to the lash.
+
+"That is to say, ah, afterward.  To-morrow, Mrs. Eppingwell; yes,
+to-morrow.  That is what I meant."  He solaced himself with the
+fact, should he remain, that more embarrassment awaited.  Also, he
+had an engagement which he must keep shortly, down by the water-
+hole off 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 was royal even in
+defeat.
+
+Freda reciprocated, though barely downing the impulse to clasp the
+other's knees and beg forgiveness,--no, not forgiveness, but
+something, she knew not what, but which she none the less greatly
+desired.
+
+The man was for her taking his arm; but she had made her kill in
+the midst of the pack, and that which led kings to drag their
+vanquished at the chariot-tail, led her toward the door alone,
+Floyd Vanderlip close at heel and striving to re-establish his
+mental equilibrium.
+
+
+V
+
+
+It was bitter cold.  As the trail wound, a quarter of a mile
+brought them to the dancer's cabin, by which time her moist breath
+had coated her face frostily, while his had massed his heavy
+mustache till conversation was painful.  By the greenish light of
+the aurora borealis, the quicksilver showed itself frozen hard in
+the bulb of the thermometer which hung outside the door.  A
+thousand dogs, in pitiful chorus, wailed their ancient wrongs and
+claimed mercy from the unheeding stars.  Not a breath of air was
+moving.  For them there was no 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 stretching their trail-
+stiffened muscles and lifting the long wolf-howl.
+
+They did not talk at first, the man and the woman.  While the maid
+helped Freda off with her wraps, Floyd Vanderlip replenished the
+fire; and by the time the maid had withdrawn to an inner room, his
+head over the stove, he was busily thawing out his burdened upper
+lip.  After that he rolled a cigarette and watched her lazily
+through the fragrant eddies.  She stole a glance at the clock.  It
+lacked half an hour of midnight.  How was she to hold him?  Was he
+angry for that which she had done?  What was his mood?  What mood
+of hers could meet his best?  Not that she doubted herself.  No,
+no.  Hold him she could, if need be at pistol point, till Sitka
+Charley's work was done, and Devereaux's too.
+
+There were many ways, and with her knowledge of this her contempt
+for the man increased.  As she leaned her head on her hand, a
+fleeting vision of her own girlhood, with its mournful climacteric
+and tragic ebb, was vouchsafed her, and for the moment she was
+minded to read him a lesson from it.  God! it must be less than
+human brute who could not 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 was positioned just right, and even as she
+thought of these things sacredly shameful to her, he was
+pleasuring in the transparent pinkiness of her ear.  She noted his
+eye, took the cue, and turned her head till the clean profile of
+the face was presented.  Not the least was that profile among her
+virtues.  She could not help the lines upon which she had been
+builded, and they were very good; but she had long since learned
+those lines, and though little they needed, was not above
+advantaging them to the best of her ability.  The candle began to
+flicker.  She could not do anything ungracefully, but that did not
+prevent her improving upon nature a bit, when she reached forth
+and 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 his
+liking, it was to hers.  To him it was very comfortable, soothing
+his lungs with nicotine and gazing upon her.  It was snug and warm
+here, while down by the water-hole began a trail which he would
+soon be hitting through the chilly hours.  He felt he ought to be
+angry with Freda for the scene she had created, but somehow he
+didn't feel a bit wrathful.  Like as not there wouldn't have been
+any scene if it hadn't been for that McFee woman.  If he were the
+Governor, he would put a poll tax of a hundred ounces a quarter
+upon her and her kind and all gospel sharks and sky pilots.  And
+certainly Freda had behaved very ladylike, held her own with Mrs.
+Eppingwell besides.  Never gave the girl credit for the grit.  He
+looked lingeringly over her, coming back now and again to the
+eyes, behind the deep earnestness of which he could not guess lay
+concealed a deeper sneer.  And, Jove, wasn't she well put up!
+Wonder why she looked at him so?  Did she want to marry him, too?
+Like as not; but she wasn't the only one.  Her looks were in her
+favor, weren't they?  And young--younger than Loraine Lisznayi.
+She couldn't be more than twenty-three or four, twenty-five at
+most.  And she'd never get stout.  Anybody could guess that the
+first time.  He couldn't say it of Loraine, though.  SHE certainly
+had put on flesh since the day she served as model.  Huh! once he
+got her on trail he'd take it off.  Put her on the snowshoes to
+break ahead of the dogs.  Never knew it to fail, yet.  But his
+thought leaped ahead to the palace under the lazy Mediterranean
+sky--and how would it be with Loraine then?  No frost, no trail,
+no famine now and again to cheer the monotony, and she getting
+older and piling it on with every sunrise.  While this girl Freda-
+-he sighed his unconscious regret that he had missed being born
+under the flag of the Turk, and came back to Alaska.
+
+"Well?"  Both hands of the clock pointed perpendicularly to
+midnight, and it was high time he was getting down to the water-
+hole.
+
+"Oh!" Freda started, and she did it prettily, delighting him 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 extremely cold-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, "I am tired of the
+whole business.  I want to go away.  I can't live 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 want to do it at once."
+
+She laid her hand in mute appeal upon the back of his, which
+turned over and became a prison.  Another one, he thought, just
+throwing herself at him.  Guess it wouldn't hurt Loraine to cool
+her feet 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 well enough."  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 you know that.  And the
+girl's coming into the country to marry me.  Don't know what was
+up with me when I asked her, but it was a long while back, and I
+was all-fired young--"
+
+"I want to go away, out of the land, anywhere," she went on,
+disregarding the obstacle he had reared up and apologized for.  "I
+have been running over the men I know and reached the conclusion
+that--that--"
+
+"I was the likeliest of the lot?"
+
+She smiled her gratitude for his having saved her the
+embarrassment of confession.  He drew her head against his
+shoulder with the free 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 comprehensible from a physiological
+standpoint, but to the man who makes the discovery for the first
+time, it is a most wonderful thing.  Floyd Vanderlip had 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 brushing his cheek
+till his eyes met hers, full and at close range, luminously soft,
+ay, and tender--why, whose fault was it that he lost his grip
+utterly?  False to Flossie, why not to Loraine?  Even if the women
+did keep bothering him, that was no reason he should make up his
+mind in a hurry.  Why, he had slathers of money, and Freda was
+just the girl to grace it.  A wife she'd make him for other 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 get
+fat living in palaces, and soft and lazy."
+
+"Yes, it's nice for a time, but you soon grow tired of it, I
+imagine," she hastened to reassure him.  "The world is good, but
+life should be many-sided.  Rough and knock about for a while, and
+then rest up somewhere.  Off to the South Seas on a yacht, then a
+nibble of Paris; a winter in South America and a summer in Norway;
+a few months in England--"
+
+"Good society?"
+
+"Most certainly--the best; and then, heigho! for the dogs and
+sleds and the Hudson Bay Country.  Change, you know.  A strong man
+like you, full of vitality and go, could not possibly stand a
+palace for a year.  It is all very well for effeminate men, but
+you weren't made for such a life.  You are masculine, intensely
+masculine."
+
+"Think so?"
+
+"It does not require thinking.  I know.  Have you ever 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 are something
+to cling to,--big-muscled, strong, and brave.  In short, because
+you ARE a 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 did
+not 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 time was
+invaluable to me, and it was indeed good of you.  The turning to
+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
+and disappointment.  Alice did not like to hear men swear, so
+dropped his parka on the floor and tossed his mittens on top of
+it.  Then he made a break for Freda, and she ruined her retreat to
+the inner room by tripping over the parka.  He brought her up
+standing with a rude grip on the wrist.  But she only laughed.
+She was 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.  "On second thought," here she
+looked at his detaining hand, "I've decided not to go to bed yet a
+while.  Do sit down and be comfortable instead of ridiculous.  Any
+questions?"
+
+"Yes, my lady, and reckoning, too."  He still kept his 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 there with
+somebody you may know, and not being anxious for a man of your
+known charm to be present, fell back upon me to kindly help him.
+That's all.  They're off now, and a good half hour ago."
+
+"Where?  Down river and without me?  And he an Indian!"
+
+"There's no accounting for taste, you know, especially in a
+woman."
+
+"But how do I stand in this deal?  I've lost four thousand
+dollars' worth of dogs and a tidy bit of a woman, and nothing 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 to borrow 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 the sled you go.
+Mebbe you fooled with me, but I'll just see your bluff and take
+you in earnest.  Hear me?"
+
+He closed on her wrist till it hurt, but on her lips a smile was
+growing, 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.
+
+"NOW will you let me go to bed?"
+
+As Freda spoke she threw open the door.  Into the warm room rushed
+the frost, and on the threshold, garbed in trail-worn furs, knee-
+deep in the swirling vapor, against a background of flaming
+borealis, a woman hesitated.  She removed her nose-trap and stood
+blinking blindly in the white candlelight.  Floyd Vanderlip
+stumbled forward.
+
+"Floyd!" she cried, relieved and glad, and met him with a tired
+bound.
+
+What could he but kiss the armful of furs?  And a pretty armful it
+was, nestling against him wearily, but happy.
+
+"It was good of you," spoke the armful, "to send Mr. Devereaux
+with fresh dogs after me, else I would not have been in till to-
+morrow."
+
+The man looked blankly across at Freda, then the light breaking in
+upon 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 confessed glibly, 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
+James Brown, missionary, who lived among the natives several miles
+down the Yukon and saw to it that the trails they trod led to the
+white man's paradise.  He was roused from his sleep by a strange
+Indian, who gave into his charge not only the soul but the body of
+a woman, and having done this drove quickly away.  This woman was
+heavy, and handsome, 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 would have been pernicious (in the simple
+eyes of his flock), had she not struck out on foot for Dawson with
+the first gray of dawn.
+
+The shock to Dawson came many days later, when the summer had come
+and the population honored a certain royal lady at Windsor by
+lining the Yukon's bank and watching Sitka Charley rise up with
+flashing paddle and drive the first canoe across the line.  On
+this day of the races, Mrs. Eppingwell, who had learned and
+unlearned numerous things, saw Freda for the first time since the
+night of the ball.  "Publicly, mind you," as Mrs. McFee expressed
+it, "without regard or respect for the morals of the community,"
+she went up to the dancer and held out her hand.  At first, it is
+remembered by those who saw, the girl shrank back, then words
+passed between the two, and Freda, great Freda, broke down and
+wept on the shoulder of the captain's wife.  It was not given to
+Dawson to know why Mrs. Eppingwell should crave forgiveness of a
+Greek dancing girl, but she did it publicly, and it was unseemly.
+
+It were well not to forget Mrs. McFee.  She took a cabin passage
+on the first steamer going out.  She also took with her a theory
+which she had achieved in the silent watches of the long dark
+nights; and it is her conviction that the Northland is
+unregenerate because it 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.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg Etext of Tales of the Klondyke, by Jack London
+
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