The Son of the Wolf
Jack London
1900

The White Silence
The Son of the Wolf
The Men of Forty Mile
In a Far Country    
To the Man on the Trail
The Priestly Prerogative
The Wisdom of the Trail
The Wife of a King
An Odyssey of the North



The White Silence

'Carmen won't last more than a couple of days.' Mason spat out a
chunk of ice and surveyed the poor animal ruefully, then put her
foot in his mouth and proceeded to bite out the ice which
clustered cruelly between the toes.

'I never saw a dog with a highfalutin' name that ever was worth a
rap,' he said, as he concluded his task and shoved her aside.
'They just fade away and die under the responsibility. Did ye
ever see one go wrong with a sensible name like Cassiar, Siwash,
or Husky? No, sir! Take a look at Shookum here, he's--' Snap! The
lean brute flashed up, the white teeth just missing Mason's
throat.

'Ye will, will ye?' A shrewd clout behind the ear with the butt
of the dog whip stretched the animal in the snow, quivering
softly, a yellow slaver dripping from its fangs.

'As I was saying, just look at Shookum here--he's got the spirit.
Bet ye he eats Carmen before the week's out.' 'I'll bank another
proposition against that,' replied Malemute Kid, reversing the
frozen bread placed before the fire to thaw. 'We'll eat Shookum
before the trip is over. What d'ye say, Ruth?' The Indian woman
settled the coffee with a piece of ice, glanced from Malemute Kid
to her husband, then at the dogs, but vouchsafed no reply. It was
such a palpable truism that none was necessary. Two hundred miles
of unbroken trail in prospect, with a scant six days' grub for
themselves and none for the dogs, could admit no other
alternative. The two men and the woman grouped about the fire and
began their meager meal. The dogs lay in their harnesses for it
was a midday halt, and watched each mouthful enviously.

'No more lunches after today,' said Malemute Kid. 'And we've got
to keep a close eye on the dogs--they're getting vicious. They'd
just as soon pull a fellow down as not, if they get a chance.'
'And I was president of an Epworth once, and taught in the Sunday
school.' Having irrelevantly delivered himself of this, Mason
fell into a dreamy contemplation of his steaming moccasins, but
was aroused by Ruth filling his cup.

'Thank God, we've got slathers of tea! I've seen it growing, down
in Tennessee. What wouldn't I give for a hot corn pone just now!
Never mind, Ruth; you won't starve much longer, nor wear
moccasins either.' The woman threw off her gloom at this, and in
her eyes welled up a great love for her white lord--the first
white man she had ever seen--the first man whom she had known to
treat a woman as something better than a mere animal or beast of
burden.

'Yes, Ruth,' continued her husband, having recourse to the
macaronic jargon in which it was alone possible for them to
understand each other; 'wait till we clean up and pull for the
Outside. We'll take the White Man's canoe and go to the Salt
Water. Yes, bad water, rough water--great mountains dance up and
down all the time. And so big, so far, so far away--you travel
ten sleep, twenty sleep, forty sleep'--he graphically enumerated
the days on his fingers--'all the time water, bad water. Then you
come to great village, plenty people, just the same mosquitoes
next summer. Wigwams oh, so high--ten, twenty pines.

'Hi-yu skookum!' He paused impotently, cast an appealing glance
at Malemute Kid, then laboriously placed the twenty pines, end on
end, by sign language. Malemute Kid smiled with cheery cynicism;
but Ruth's eyes were wide with wonder, and with pleasure; for she
half believed he was joking, and such condescension pleased her
poor woman's heart.

'And then you step into a--a box, and pouf! up you go.' He tossed
his empty cup in the air by way of illustration and, as he deftly
caught it, cried: 'And biff! down you come. Oh, great medicine
men! You go Fort Yukon. I go Arctic City--twenty-five sleep--big
string, all the time--I catch him string--I say, "Hello, Ruth!
How are ye?"--and you say, "Is that my good husband?"--and I say,
"Yes"--and you say, "No can bake good bread, no more soda"--then
I say, "Look in cache, under flour; good-by." You look and catch
plenty soda. All the time you Fort Yukon, me Arctic City. Hi-yu
medicine man!' Ruth smiled so ingenuously at the fairy story that
both men burst into laughter. A row among the dogs cut short the
wonders of the Outside, and by the time the snarling combatants
were separated, she had lashed the sleds and all was ready for
the trail.--'Mush! Baldy! Hi! Mush on!' Mason worked his whip
smartly and, as the dogs whined low in the traces, broke out the
sled with the gee pole. Ruth followed with the second team,
leaving Malemute Kid, who had helped her start, to bring up the
rear. Strong man, brute that he was, capable of felling an ox at
a blow, he could not bear to beat the poor animals, but humored
them as a dog driver rarely does--nay, almost wept with them in
their misery.

'Come, mush on there, you poor sore-footed brutes!' he murmured,
after several ineffectual attempts to start the load. But his
patience was at last rewarded, and though whimpering with pain,
they hastened to join their fellows.

No more conversation; the toil of the trail will not permit such
extravagance.

And of all deadening labors, that of the Northland trail is the
worst. Happy is the man who can weather a day's travel at the
price of silence, and that on a beaten track. And of all
heartbreaking labors, that of breaking trail is the worst. At
every step the great webbed shoe sinks till the snow is level
with the knee. Then up, straight up, the deviation of a fraction
of an inch being a certain precursor of disaster, the snowshoe
must be lifted till the surface is cleared; then forward, down,
and the other foot is raised perpendicularly for the matter of
half a yard. He who tries this for the first time, if haply he
avoids bringing his shoes in dangerous propinquity and measures
not his length on the treacherous footing, will give up exhausted
at the end of a hundred yards; he who can keep out of the way of
the dogs for a whole day may well crawl into his sleeping bag
with a clear conscience and a pride which passeth all
understanding; and he who travels twenty sleeps on the Long Trail
is a man whom the gods may envy.

The afternoon wore on, and with the awe, born of the White
Silence, the voiceless travelers bent to their work. Nature has
many tricks wherewith she convinces man of his finity--the
ceaseless flow of the tides, the fury of the storm, the shock of
the earthquake, the long roll of heaven's artillery--but the most
tremendous, the most stupefying of all, is the passive phase of
the White Silence. All movement ceases, the sky clears, the
heavens are as brass; the slightest whisper seems sacrilege, and
man becomes timid, affrighted at the sound of his own voice. Sole
speck of life journeying across the ghostly wastes of a dead
world, he trembles at his audacity, realizes that his is a
maggot's life, nothing more.

Strange thoughts arise unsummoned, and the mystery of all things
strives for utterance.

And the fear of death, of God, of the universe, comes over
him--the hope of the Resurrection and the Life, the yearning for
immortality, the vain striving of the imprisoned essence--it is
then, if ever, man walks alone with God.

So wore the day away. The river took a great bend, and Mason
headed his team for the cutoff across the narrow neck of land.
But the dogs balked at the high bank. Again and again, though
Ruth and Malemute Kid were shoving on the sled, they slipped
back. Then came the concerted effort. The miserable creatures,
weak from hunger, exerted their last strength. Up--up--the sled
poised on the top of the bank; but the leader swung the string of
dogs behind him to the right, fouling Mason's snowshoes. The
result was grievous.

Mason was whipped off his feet; one of the dogs fell in the
traces; and the sled toppled back, dragging everything to the
bottom again.

Slash! the whip fell among the dogs savagely, especially upon the
one which had fallen.

'Don't,--Mason,' entreated Malemute Kid; 'the poor devil's on its
last legs. Wait and we'll put my team on.' Mason deliberately
withheld the whip till the last word had fallen, then out flashed
the long lash, completely curling about the offending creature's
body.

Carmen--for it was Carmen--cowered in the snow, cried piteously,
then rolled over on her side.

It was a tragic moment, a pitiful incident of the trail--a dying
dog, two comrades in anger.

Ruth glanced solicitously from man to man. But Malemute Kid
restrained himself, though there was a world of reproach in his
eyes, and, bending over the dog, cut the traces. No word was
spoken. The teams were doublespanned and the difficulty overcome;
the sleds were under way again, the dying dog dragging herself
along in the rear. As long as an animal can travel, it is not
shot, and this last chance is accorded it--the crawling into
camp, if it can, in the hope of a moose being killed.

Already penitent for his angry action, but too stubborn to make
amends, Mason toiled on at the head of the cavalcade, little
dreaming that danger hovered in the air. The timber clustered
thick in the sheltered bottom, and through this they threaded
their way. Fifty feet or more from the trail towered a lofty
pine. For generations it had stood there, and for generations
destiny had had this one end in view--perhaps the same had been
decreed of Mason.

He stooped to fasten the loosened thong of his moccasin. The
sleds came to a halt, and the dogs lay down in the snow without a
whimper. The stillness was weird; not a breath rustled the
frost-encrusted forest; the cold and silence of outer space had
chilled the heart and smote the trembling lips of nature. A sigh
pulsed through the air--they did not seem to actually hear it,
but rather felt it, like the premonition of movement in a
motionless void. Then the great tree, burdened with its weight of
years and snow, played its last part in the tragedy of life. He
heard the warning crash and attempted to spring up but, almost
erect, caught the blow squarely on the shoulder.

The sudden danger, the quick death--how often had Malemute Kid
faced it! The pine needles were still quivering as he gave his
commands and sprang into action. Nor did the Indian girl faint or
raise her voice in idle wailing, as might many of her white
sisters. At his order, she threw her weight on the end of a
quickly extemporized handspike, easing the pressure and listening
to her husband's groans, while Malemute Kid attacked the tree
with his ax. The steel rang merrily as it bit into the frozen
trunk, each stroke being accompanied by a forced, audible
respiration, the 'Huh!' 'Huh!' of the woodsman.

At last the Kid laid the pitiable thing that was once a man in
the snow. But worse than his comrade's pain was the dumb anguish
in the woman's face, the blended look of hopeful, hopeless query.
Little was said; those of the Northland are early taught the
futility of words and the inestimable value of deeds. With the
temperature at sixty-five below zero, a man cannot lie many
minutes in the snow and live. So the sled lashings were cut, and
the sufferer, rolled in furs, laid on a couch of boughs. Before
him roared a fire, built of the very wood which wrought the
mishap. Behind and partially over him was stretched the primitive
fly--a piece of canvas, which caught the radiating heat and threw
it back and down upon hima trick which men may know who study
physics at the fount.

And men who have shared their bed with death know when the call
is sounded. Mason was terribly crushed. The most cursory
examination revealed it.

His right arm, leg, and back were broken; his limbs were
paralyzed from the hips; and the likelihood of internal injuries
was large. An occasional moan was his only sign of life.

No hope; nothing to be done. The pitiless night crept slowly
by--Ruth's portion, the despairing stoicism of her race, and
Malemute Kid adding new lines to his face of bronze.

In fact, Mason suffered least of all, for he spent his time in
eastern Tennessee, in the Great Smoky Mountains, living over the
scenes of his childhood. And most pathetic was the melody of his
long-forgotten Southern vernacular, as he raved of swimming holes
and coon hunts and watermelon raids. It was as Greek to Ruth, but
the Kid understood and felt--felt as only one can feel who has
been shut out for years from all that civilization means.

Morning brought consciousness to the stricken man, and Malemute
Kid bent closer to catch his whispers.

'You remember when we foregathered on the Tanana, four years come
next ice run? I didn't care so much for her then. It was more
like she was pretty, and there was a smack of excitement about
it, I think. But d'ye know, I've come to think a heap of her.
She's been a good wife to me, always at my shoulder in the pinch.
And when it comes to trading, you know there isn't her equal.
D'ye recollect the time she shot the Moosehorn Rapids to pull you
and me off that rock, the bullets whipping the water like
hailstones?--and the time of the famine at Nuklukyeto?--when she
raced the ice run to bring the news?

'Yes, she's been a good wife to me, better'n that other one.
Didn't know I'd been there?

'Never told you, eh? Well, I tried it once, down in the States.
That's why I'm here. Been raised together, too. I came away to
give her a chance for divorce. She got it.

'But that's got nothing to do with Ruth. I had thought of
cleaning up and pulling for the Outside next year--her and I--but
it's too late. Don't send her back to her people, Kid. It's
beastly hard for a woman to go back. Think of it!--nearly four
years on our bacon and beans and flour and dried fruit, and then
to go back to her fish and caribou. It's not good for her to have
tried our ways, to come to know they're better'n her people's,
and then return to them. Take care of her, Kidwhy don't you--but
no, you always fought shy of them--and you never told me why you
came to this country. Be kind to her, and send her back to the
States as soon as you can. But fix it so she can come
back--liable to get homesick, you know.

'And the youngster--it's drawn us closer, Kid. I only hope it is
a boy. Think of it!--flesh of my flesh, Kid. He mustn't stop in
this country. And if it's a girl, why, she can't. Sell my furs;
they'll fetch at least five thousand, and I've got as much more
with the company. And handle my interests with yours. I think
that bench claim will show up. See that he gets a good schooling;
and Kid, above all, don't let him come back. This country was not
made for white men.

'I'm a gone man, Kid. Three or four sleeps at the best. You've
got to go on. You must go on! Remember, it's my wife, it's my
boy--O God! I hope it's a boy! You can't stay by me--and I charge
you, a dying man, to pull on.'

'Give me three days,' pleaded Malemute Kid. 'You may change for
the better; something may turn up.'

'No.'

'Just three days.'

'You must pull on.'

'Two days.'

'It's my wife and my boy, Kid. You would not ask it.'

'One day.'

'No, no! I charge--'

'Only one day. We can shave it through on the grub, and I might
knock over a moose.'

'No--all right; one day, but not a minute more. And, Kid,
don't--don't leave me to face it alone. Just a shot, one pull on
the trigger. You understand. Think of it! Think of it! Flesh of
my flesh, and I'll never live to see him!

'Send Ruth here. I want to say good-by and tell her that she must
think of the boy and not wait till I'm dead. She might refuse to
go with you if I didn't. Goodby, old man; good-by.

'Kid! I say--a--sink a hole above the pup, next to the slide. I
panned out forty cents on my shovel there.

'And, Kid!' He stooped lower to catch the last faint words, the
dying man's surrender of his pride. 'I'm sorry--for--you
know--Carmen.' Leaving the girl crying softly over her man,
Malemute Kid slipped into his parka and snowshoes, tucked his
rifle under his arm, and crept away into the forest. He was no
tyro in the stern sorrows of the Northland, but never had he
faced so stiff a problem as this. In the abstract, it was a
plain, mathematical propositionthree possible lives as against
one doomed one. But now he hesitated. For five years, shoulder to
shoulder, on the rivers and trails, in the camps and mines,
facing death by field and flood and famine, had they knitted the
bonds of their comradeship. So close was the tie that he had
often been conscious of a vague jealousy of Ruth, from the first
time she had come between. And now it must be severed by his own
hand.

Though he prayed for a moose, just one moose, all game seemed to
have deserted the land, and nightfall found the exhausted man
crawling into camp, lighthanded, heavyhearted. An uproar from the
dogs and shrill cries from Ruth hastened him.

Bursting into the camp, he saw the girl in the midst of the
snarling pack, laying about her with an ax. The dogs had broken
the iron rule of their masters and were rushing the grub.

He joined the issue with his rifle reversed, and the hoary game
of natural selection was played out with all the ruthlessness of
its primeval environment. Rifle and ax went up and down, hit or
missed with monotonous regularity; lithe bodies flashed, with
wild eyes and dripping fangs; and man and beast fought for
supremacy to the bitterest conclusion. Then the beaten brutes
crept to the edge of the firelight, licking their wounds, voicing
their misery to the stars.

The whole stock of dried salmon had been devoured, and perhaps
five pounds of flour remained to tide them over two hundred miles
of wilderness. Ruth returned to her husband, while Malemute Kid
cut up the warm body of one of the dogs, the skull of which had
been crushed by the ax. Every portion was carefully put away,
save the hide and offal, which were cast to his fellows of the
moment before.

Morning brought fresh trouble. The animals were turning on each
other. Carmen, who still clung to her slender thread of life, was
downed by the pack. The lash fell among them unheeded. They
cringed and cried under the blows, but refused to scatter till
the last wretched bit had disappeared--bones, hide, hair,
everything.

Malemute Kid went about his work, listening to Mason, who was
back in Tennessee, delivering tangled discourses and wild
exhortations to his brethren of other days.

Taking advantage of neighboring pines, he worked rapidly, and
Ruth watched him make a cache similar to those sometimes used by
hunters to preserve their meat from the wolverines and dogs. One
after the other, he bent the tops of two small pines toward each
other and nearly to the ground, making them fast with thongs of
moosehide. Then he beat the dogs into submission and harnessed
them to two of the sleds, loading the same with everything but
the furs which enveloped Mason. These he wrapped and lashed
tightly about him, fastening either end of the robes to the bent
pines. A single stroke of his hunting knife would release them
and send the body high in the air.

Ruth had received her husband's last wishes and made no struggle.
Poor girl, she had learned the lesson of obedience well. From a
child, she had bowed, and seen all women bow, to the lords of
creation, and it did not seem in the nature of things for woman
to resist. The Kid permitted her one outburst of grief, as she
kissed her husband--her own people had no such custom--then led
her to the foremost sled and helped her into her snowshoes.
Blindly, instinctively, she took the gee pole and whip, and
'mushed' the dogs out on the trail. Then he returned to Mason,
who had fallen into a coma, and long after she was out of sight
crouched by the fire, waiting, hoping, praying for his comrade to
die.

It is not pleasant to be alone with painful thoughts in the White
Silence. The silence of gloom is merciful, shrouding one as with
protection and breathing a thousand intangible sympathies; but
the bright White Silence, clear and cold, under steely skies, is
pitiless.

An hour passed--two hours--but the man would not die. At high
noon the sun, without raising its rim above the southern horizon,
threw a suggestion of fire athwart the heavens, then quickly drew
it back. Malemute Kid roused and dragged himself to his comrade's
side. He cast one glance about him. The White Silence seemed to
sneer, and a great fear came upon him. There was a sharp report;
Mason swung into his aerial sepulcher, and Malemute Kid lashed
the dogs into a wild gallop as he fled across the snow.



The Son of the Wolf

Man rarely places a proper valuation upon his womankind, at least
not until deprived of them. He has no conception of the subtle
atmosphere exhaled by the sex feminine, so long as he bathes in
it; but let it be withdrawn, and an ever-growing void begins to
manifest itself in his existence, and he becomes hungry, in a
vague sort of way, for a something so indefinite that he cannot
characterize it. If his comrades have no more experience than
himself, they will shake their heads dubiously and dose him with
strong physic. But the hunger will continue and become stronger;
he will lose interest in the things of his everyday life and wax
morbid; and one day, when the emptiness has become unbearable, a
revelation will dawn upon him.

In the Yukon country, when this comes to pass, the man usually
provisions a poling boat, if it is summer, and if winter,
harnesses his dogs, and heads for the Southland. A few months
later, supposing him to be possessed of a faith in the country,
he returns with a wife to share with him in that faith, and
incidentally in his hardships. This but serves to show the innate
selfishness of man. It also brings us to the trouble of 'Scruff'
Mackenzie, which occurred in the old days, before the country was
stampeded and staked by a tidal-wave of the che-cha-quas, and
when the Klondike's only claim to notice was its salmon
fisheries.

'Scruff' Mackenzie bore the earmarks of a frontier birth and a
frontier life.

His face was stamped with twenty-five years of incessant struggle
with Nature in her wildest moods,--the last two, the wildest and
hardest of all, having been spent in groping for the gold which
lies in the shadow of the Arctic Circle. When the yearning
sickness came upon him, he was not surprised, for he was a
practical man and had seen other men thus stricken. But he showed
no sign of his malady, save that he worked harder. All summer he
fought mosquitoes and washed the sure-thing bars of the Stuart
River for a double grubstake. Then he floated a raft of houselogs
down the Yukon to Forty Mile, and put together as comfortable a
cabin as any the camp could boast of. In fact, it showed such
cozy promise that many men elected to be his partner and to come
and live with him. But he crushed their aspirations with rough
speech, peculiar for its strength and brevity, and bought a
double supply of grub from the trading-post.

As has been noted, 'Scruff' Mackenzie was a practical man. If he
wanted a thing he usually got it, but in doing so, went no
farther out of his way than was necessary. Though a son of toil
and hardship, he was averse to a journey of six hundred miles on
the ice, a second of two thousand miles on the ocean, and still a
third thousand miles or so to his last stamping-grounds,--all in
the mere quest of a wife. Life was too short. So he rounded up
his dogs, lashed a curious freight to his sled, and faced across
the divide whose westward slopes were drained by the head-reaches
of the Tanana.

He was a sturdy traveler, and his wolf-dogs could work harder and
travel farther on less grub than any other team in the Yukon.
Three weeks later he strode into a hunting-camp of the Upper
Tanana Sticks. They marveled at his temerity; for they had a bad
name and had been known to kill white men for as trifling a thing
as a sharp ax or a broken rifle.

But he went among them single-handed, his bearing being a
delicious composite of humility, familiarity, sang-froid, and
insolence. It required a deft hand and deep knowledge of the
barbaric mind effectually to handle such diverse weapons; but he
was a past-master in the art, knowing when to conciliate and when
to threaten with Jove-like wrath.

He first made obeisance to the Chief Thling-Tinneh, presenting
him with a couple of pounds of black tea and tobacco, and thereby
winning his most cordial regard. Then he mingled with the men and
maidens, and that night gave a potlach.

The snow was beaten down in the form of an oblong, perhaps a
hundred feet in length and quarter as many across. Down the
center a long fire was built, while either side was carpeted with
spruce boughs. The lodges were forsaken, and the fivescore or so
members of the tribe gave tongue to their folk-chants in honor of
their guest.

'Scruff' Mackenzie's two years had taught him the not many
hundred words of their vocabulary, and he had likewise conquered
their deep gutturals, their Japanese idioms, constructions, and
honorific and agglutinative particles. So he made oration after
their manner, satisfying their instinctive poetry-love with crude
flights of eloquence and metaphorical contortions. After
Thling-Tinneh and the Shaman had responded in kind, he made
trifling presents to the menfolk, joined in their singing, and
proved an expert in their fifty-two-stick gambling game.

And they smoked his tobacco and were pleased. But among the
younger men there was a defiant attitude, a spirit of
braggadocio, easily understood by the raw insinuations of the
toothless squaws and the giggling of the maidens. They had known
few white men, 'Sons of the Wolf,' but from those few they had
learned strange lessons.

Nor had 'Scruff' Mackenzie, for all his seeming carelessness,
failed to note these phenomena. In truth, rolled in his
sleeping-furs, he thought it all over, thought seriously, and
emptied many pipes in mapping out a campaign. One maiden only had
caught his fancy,--none other than Zarinska, daughter to the
chief. In features, form, and poise, answering more nearly to the
white man's type of beauty, she was almost an anomaly among her
tribal sisters. He would possess her, make her his wife, and name
her--ah, he would name her Gertrude! Having thus decided, he
rolled over on his side and dropped off to sleep, a true son of
his all-conquering race, a Samson among the Philistines.

It was slow work and a stiff game; but 'Scruff' Mackenzie
maneuvered cunningly, with an unconcern which served to puzzle
the Sticks. He took great care to impress the men that he was a
sure shot and a mighty hunter, and the camp rang with his
plaudits when he brought down a moose at six hundred yards. Of a
night he visited in Chief Thling-Tinneh's lodge of moose and
cariboo skins, talking big and dispensing tobacco with a lavish
hand. Nor did he fail to likewise honor the Shaman; for he
realized the medicine-man's influence with his people, and was
anxious to make of him an ally. But that worthy was high and
mighty, refused to be propitiated, and was unerringly marked down
as a prospective enemy.

Though no opening presented for an interview with Zarinska,
Mackenzie stole many a glance to her, giving fair warning of his
intent. And well she knew, yet coquettishly surrounded herself
with a ring of women whenever the men were away and he had a
chance. But he was in no hurry; besides, he knew she could not
help but think of him, and a few days of such thought would only
better his suit.

At last, one night, when he deemed the time to be ripe, he
abruptly left the chief's smoky dwelling and hastened to a
neighboring lodge. As usual, she sat with squaws and maidens
about her, all engaged in sewing moccasins and beadwork. They
laughed at his entrance, and badinage, which linked Zarinska to
him, ran high. But one after the other they were unceremoniously
bundled into the outer snow, whence they hurried to spread the
tale through all the camp.

His cause was well pleaded, in her tongue, for she did not know
his, and at the end of two hours he rose to go.

'So Zarinska will come to the White Man's lodge? Good! I go now
to have talk with thy father, for he may not be so minded. And I
will give him many tokens; but he must not ask too much. If he
say no? Good! Zarinska shall yet come to the White Man's lodge.'

He had already lifted the skin flap to depart, when a low
exclamation brought him back to the girl's side. She brought
herself to her knees on the bearskin mat, her face aglow with
true Eve-light, and shyly unbuckled his heavy belt. He looked
down, perplexed, suspicious, his ears alert for the slightest
sound without.

But her next move disarmed his doubt, and he smiled with
pleasure. She took from her sewing bag a moosehide sheath, brave
with bright beadwork, fantastically designed. She drew his great
hunting-knife, gazed reverently along the keen edge, half tempted
to try it with her thumb, and shot it into place in its new home.
Then she slipped the sheath along the belt to its customary
resting-place, just above the hip. For all the world, it was like
a scene of olden time,--a lady and her knight.

Mackenzie drew her up full height and swept her red lips with his
moustache,the, to her, foreign caress of the Wolf. It was a
meeting of the stone age and the steel; but she was none the less
a woman, as her crimson cheeks and the luminous softness of her
eyes attested.

There was a thrill of excitement in the air as 'Scruff'
Mackenzie, a bulky bundle under his arm, threw open the flap of
Thling-Tinneh's tent. Children were running about in the open,
dragging dry wood to the scene of the potlach, a babble of
women's voices was growing in intensity, the young men were
consulting in sullen groups, while from the Shaman's lodge rose
the eerie sounds of an incantation.

The chief was alone with his blear-eyed wife, but a glance
sufficed to tell Mackenzie that the news was already told. So he
plunged at once into the business, shifting the beaded sheath
prominently to the fore as advertisement of the betrothal.

'O Thling-Tinneh, mighty chief of the Sticks And the land of the
Tanana, ruler of the salmon and the bear, the moose and the
cariboo! The White Man is before thee with a great purpose. Many
moons has his lodge been empty, and he is lonely. And his heart
has eaten itself in silence, and grown hungry for a woman to sit
beside him in his lodge, to meet him from the hunt with warm fire
and good food. He has heard strange things, the patter of baby
moccasins and the sound of children's voices. And one night a
vision came upon him, and he beheld the Raven, who is thy father,
the great Raven, who is the father of all the Sticks. And the
Raven spake to the lonely White Man, saying: "Bind thou thy
moccasins upon thee, and gird thy snow-shoes on, and lash thy
sled with food for many sleeps and fine tokens for the Chief
Thling-Tinneh. For thou shalt turn thy face to where the
midspring sun is wont to sink below the land and journey to this
great chief's hunting-grounds. There thou shalt make big
presents, and Thling-Tinneh, who is my son, shall become to thee
as a father. In his lodge there is a maiden into whom I breathed
the breath of life for thee. This maiden shalt thou take to
wife." 'O Chief, thus spake the great Raven; thus do I lay many
presents at thy feet; thus am I come to take thy daughter!' The
old man drew his furs about him with crude consciousness of
royalty, but delayed reply while a youngster crept in, delivered
a quick message to appear before the council, and was gone.

'O White Man, whom we have named Moose-Killer, also known as the
Wolf, and the Son of the Wolf! We know thou comest of a mighty
race; we are proud to have thee our potlach-guest; but the
king-salmon does not mate with the dogsalmon, nor the Raven with
the Wolf.' 'Not so!' cried Mackenzie. 'The daughters of the Raven
have I met in the camps of the Wolf,--the squaw of Mortimer, the
squaw of Tregidgo, the squaw of Barnaby, who came two ice-runs
back, and I have heard of other squaws, though my eyes beheld
them not.' 'Son, your words are true; but it were evil mating,
like the water with the sand, like the snow-flake with the sun.
But met you one Mason and his squaw' No?

He came ten ice-runs ago,--the first of all the Wolves. And with
him there was a mighty man, straight as a willow-shoot, and tall;
strong as the bald-faced grizzly, with a heart like the full
summer moon; his-' 'Oh!' interrupted Mackenzie, recognizing the
well-known Northland figure, 'Malemute Kid!' 'The same,--a mighty
man. But saw you aught of the squaw? She was full sister to
Zarinska.' 'Nay, Chief; but I have heard. Mason--far, far to the
north, a spruce-tree, heavy with years, crushed out his life
beneath. But his love was great, and he had much gold. With this,
and her boy, she journeyed countless sleeps toward the winter's
noonday sun, and there she yet lives,--no biting frost, no snow,
no summer's midnight sun, no winter's noonday night.'

A second messenger interrupted with imperative summons from the
council.

As Mackenzie threw him into the snow, he caught a glimpse of the
swaying forms before the council-fire, heard the deep basses of
the men in rhythmic chant, and knew the Shaman was fanning the
anger of his people. Time pressed. He turned upon the chief.

'Come! I wish thy child. And now, see! Here are tobacco, tea,
many cups of sugar, warm blankets, handkerchiefs, both good and
large; and here, a true rifle, with many bullets and much
powder.' 'Nay,' replied the old man, struggling against the great
wealth spread before him. 'Even now are my people come together.
They will not have this marriage.'

'But thou art chief.' 'Yet do my young men rage because the
Wolves have taken their maidens so that they may not marry.'
'Listen, O Thling-Tinneh! Ere the night has passed into the day,
the Wolf shall face his dogs to the Mountains of the East and
fare forth to the Country of the Yukon. And Zarinska shall break
trail for his dogs.' 'And ere the night has gained its middle, my
young men may fling to the dogs the flesh of the Wolf, and his
bones be scattered in the snow till the springtime lay them
bare.' It was threat and counter-threat. Mackenzie's bronzed face
flushed darkly. He raised his voice. The old squaw, who till now
had sat an impassive spectator, made to creep by him for the
door.

The song of the men broke suddenly and there was a hubbub of many
voices as he whirled the old woman roughly to her couch of skins.

'Again I cry--listen, O Thling-Tinneh! The Wolf dies with teeth
fast-locked, and with him there shall sleep ten of thy strongest
men,--men who are needed, for the hunting is not begun, and the
fishing is not many moons away. And again, of what profit should
I die? I know the custom of thy people; thy share of my wealth
shall be very small. Grant me thy child, and it shall all be
thine. And yet again, my brothers will come, and they are many,
and their maws are never filled; and the daughters of the Raven
shall bear children in the lodges of the Wolf. My people are
greater than thy people. It is destiny. Grant, and all this
wealth is thine.' Moccasins were crunching the snow without.
Mackenzie threw his rifle to cock, and loosened the twin Colts in
his belt.

'Grant, O Chief!' 'And yet will my people say no.' 'Grant, and
the wealth is thine. Then shall I deal with thy people after.'
'The Wolf will have it so. I will take his tokens,--but I would
warn him.' Mackenzie passed over the goods, taking care to clog
the rifle's ejector, and capping the bargain with a kaleidoscopic
silk kerchief. The Shaman and half a dozen young braves entered,
but he shouldered boldly among them and passed out.

'Pack!' was his laconic greeting to Zarinska as he passed her
lodge and hurried to harness his dogs. A few minutes later he
swept into the council at the head of the team, the woman by his
side. He took his place at the upper end of the oblong, by the
side of the chief. To his left, a step to the rear, he stationed
Zarinska,her proper place. Besides, the time was ripe for
mischief, and there was need to guard his back.

On either side, the men crouched to the fire, their voices lifted
in a folk-chant out of the forgotten past. Full of strange,
halting cadences and haunting recurrences, it was not beautiful.
'Fearful' may inadequately express it. At the lower end, under
the eye of the Shaman, danced half a score of women. Stern were
his reproofs of those who did not wholly abandon themselves to
the ecstasy of the rite. Half hidden in their heavy masses of
raven hair, all dishevelled and falling to their waists, they
slowly swayed to and fro, their forms rippling to an
ever-changing rhythm.

It was a weird scene; an anachronism. To the south, the
nineteenth century was reeling off the few years of its last
decade; here flourished man primeval, a shade removed from the
prehistoric cave-dweller, forgotten fragment of the Elder World.
The tawny wolf-dogs sat between their skin-clad masters or fought
for room, the firelight cast backward from their red eyes and
dripping fangs. The woods, in ghostly shroud, slept on unheeding.

The White Silence, for the moment driven to the rimming forest,
seemed ever crushing inward; the stars danced with great leaps,
as is their wont in the time of the Great Cold; while the Spirits
of the Pole trailed their robes of glory athwart the heavens.

'Scruff' Mackenzie dimly realized the wild grandeur of the
setting as his eyes ranged down the fur-fringed sides in quest of
missing faces. They rested for a moment on a newborn babe,
suckling at its mother's naked breast. It was forty below,--seven
and odd degrees of frost. He thought of the tender women of his
own race and smiled grimly. Yet from the loins of some such
tender woman had he sprung with a kingly inheritance,--an
inheritance which gave to him and his dominance over the land and
sea, over the animals and the peoples of all the zones.
Single-handed against fivescore, girt by the Arctic winter, far
from his own, he felt the prompting of his heritage, the desire
to possess, the wild danger--love, the thrill of battle, the
power to conquer or to die.

The singing and the dancing ceased, and the Shaman flared up in
rude eloquence.

Through the sinuosities of their vast mythology, he worked
cunningly upon the credulity of his people. The case was strong.
Opposing the creative principles as embodied in the Crow and the
Raven, he stigmatized Mackenzie as the Wolf, the fighting and the
destructive principle. Not only was the combat of these forces
spiritual, but men fought, each to his totem. They were the
children of Jelchs, the Raven, the Promethean fire-bringer;
Mackenzie was the child of the Wolf, or in other words, the
Devil. For them to bring a truce to this perpetual warfare, to
marry their daughters to the arch-enemy, were treason and
blasphemy of the highest order. No phrase was harsh nor figure
vile enough in branding Mackenzie as a sneaking interloper and
emissary of Satan. There was a subdued, savage roar in the deep
chests of his listeners as he took the swing of his peroration.

'Aye, my brothers, Jelchs is all-powerful! Did he not bring
heaven-borne fire that we might be warm? Did he not draw the sun,
moon, and stars, from their holes that we might see? Did he not
teach us that we might fight the Spirits of Famine and of Frost?
But now Jelchs is angry with his children, and they are grown to
a handful, and he will not help.

For they have forgotten him, and done evil things, and trod bad
trails, and taken his enemies into their lodges to sit by their
fires. And the Raven is sorrowful at the wickedness of his
children; but when they shall rise up and show they have come
back, he will come out of the darkness to aid them. O brothers!
the Fire-Bringer has whispered messages to thy Shaman; the same
shall ye hear. Let the young men take the young women to their
lodges; let them fly at the throat of the Wolf; let them be
undying in their enmity! Then shall their women become fruitful
and they shall multiply into a mighty people! And the Raven shall
lead great tribes of their fathers and their fathers' fathers
from out of the North; and they shall beat back the Wolves till
they are as last year's campfires; and they shall again come to
rule over all the land! 'Tis the message of Jelchs, the Raven.'
This foreshadowing of the Messiah's coming brought a hoarse howl
from the Sticks as they leaped to their feet. Mackenzie slipped
the thumbs of his mittens and waited. There was a clamor for the
'Fox,' not to be stilled till one of the young men stepped
forward to speak.

'Brothers! The Shaman has spoken wisely. The Wolves have taken
our women, and our men are childless. We are grown to a handful.
The Wolves have taken our warm furs and given for them evil
spirits which dwell in bottles, and clothes which come not from
the beaver or the lynx, but are made from the grass.

And they are not warm, and our men die of strange sicknesses. I,
the Fox, have taken no woman to wife; and why? Twice have the
maidens which pleased me gone to the camps of the Wolf. Even now
have I laid by skins of the beaver, of the moose, of the cariboo,
that I might win favor in the eyes of Thling-Tinneh, that I might
marry Zarinska, his daughter. Even now are her snow-shoes bound
to her feet, ready to break trail for the dogs of the Wolf. Nor
do I speak for myself alone.

As I have done, so has the Bear. He, too, had fain been the
father of her children, and many skins has he cured thereto. I
speak for all the young men who know not wives. The Wolves are
ever hungry. Always do they take the choice meat at the killing.
To the Ravens are left the leavings.

'There is Gugkla,' he cried, brutally pointing out one of the
women, who was a cripple.

'Her legs are bent like the ribs of a birch canoe. She cannot
gather wood nor carry the meat of the hunters. Did the Wolves
choose her?' 'Ai! ai!' vociferated his tribesmen.

'There is Moyri, whose eyes are crossed by the Evil Spirit. Even
the babes are affrighted when they gaze upon her, and it is said
the bald-face gives her the trail.

Was she chosen?' Again the cruel applause rang out.

'And there sits Pischet. She does not hearken to my words. Never
has she heard the cry of the chit-chat, the voice of her husband,
the babble of her child.

'She lives in the White Silence. Cared the Wolves aught for her?
No! Theirs is the choice of the kill; ours is the leavings.

'Brothers, it shall not be! No more shall the Wolves slink among
our campfires. The time is come.' A great streamer of fire, the
aurora borealis, purple, green, and yellow, shot across the
zenith, bridging horizon to horizon. With head thrown back and
arms extended, he swayed to his climax.

'Behold! The spirits of our fathers have arisen and great deeds
are afoot this night!' He stepped back, and another young man
somewhat diffidently came forward, pushed on by his comrades. He
towered a full head above them, his broad chest defiantly bared
to the frost. He swung tentatively from one foot to the other.

Words halted upon his tongue, and he was ill at ease. His face
was horrible to look upon, for it had at one time been half torn
away by some terrific blow. At last he struck his breast with his
clenched fist, drawing sound as from a drum, and his voice
rumbled forth as does the surf from an ocean cavern.

'I am the Bear,--the Silver-Tip and the Son of the Silver-Tip!
When my voice was yet as a girl's, I slew the lynx, the moose,
and the cariboo; when it whistled like the wolverines from under
a cache, I crossed the Mountains of the South and slew three of
the White Rivers; when it became as the roar of the Chinook, I
met the bald-faced grizzly, but gave no trail.' At this he
paused, his hand significantly sweeping across his hideous scars.

'I am not as the Fox. My tongue is frozen like the river. I
cannot make great talk. My words are few. The Fox says great
deeds are afoot this night. Good! Talk flows from his tongue like
the freshets of the spring, but he is chary of deeds.

This night shall I do battle with the Wolf. I shall slay him, and
Zarinska shall sit by my fire. The Bear has spoken.' Though
pandemonium raged about him, 'Scruff' Mackenzie held his ground.

Aware how useless was the rifle at close quarters, he slipped
both holsters to the fore, ready for action, and drew his mittens
till his hands were barely shielded by the elbow gauntlets. He
knew there was no hope in attack en masse, but true to his boast,
was prepared to die with teeth fast-locked. But the Bear
restrained his comrades, beating back the more impetuous with his
terrible fist. As the tumult began to die away, Mackenzie shot a
glance in the direction of Zarinska. It was a superb picture. She
was leaning forward on her snow-shoes, lips apart and nostrils
quivering, like a tigress about to spring. Her great black eyes
were fixed upon her tribesmen, in fear and defiance. So extreme
the tension, she had forgotten to breathe. With one hand pressed
spasmodically against her breast and the other as tightly gripped
about the dog-whip, she was as turned to stone. Even as he
looked, relief came to her. Her muscles loosened; with a heavy
sigh she settled back, giving him a look of more than love--of
worship.

Thling-Tinneh was trying to speak, but his people drowned his
voice. Then Mackenzie strode forward. The Fox opened his mouth to
a piercing yell, but so savagely did Mackenzie whirl upon him
that he shrank back, his larynx all agurgle with suppressed
sound. His discomfiture was greeted with roars of laughter, and
served to soothe his fellows to a listening mood.

'Brothers! The White Man, whom ye have chosen to call the Wolf,
came among you with fair words. He was not like the Innuit; he
spoke not lies. He came as a friend, as one who would be a
brother. But your men have had their say, and the time for soft
words is past.

First, I will tell you that the Shaman has an evil tongue and is
a false prophet, that the messages he spake are not those of the
Fire-Bringer. His ears are locked to the voice of the Raven, and
out of his own head he weaves cunning fancies, and he has made
fools of you. He has no power.

When the dogs were killed and eaten, and your stomachs were heavy
with untanned hide and strips of moccasins; when the old men
died, and the old women died, and the babes at the dry dugs of
the mothers died; when the land was dark, and ye perished as do
the salmon in the fall; aye, when the famine was upon you, did
the Shaman bring reward to your hunters? did the Shaman put meat
in your bellies? Again I say, the Shaman is without power. Thus I
spit upon his face!' Though taken aback by the sacrilege, there
was no uproar. Some of the women were even frightened, but among
the men there was an uplifting, as though in preparation or
anticipation of the miracle. All eyes were turned upon the two
central figures. The priest realized the crucial moment, felt his
power tottering, opened his mouth in denunciation, but fled
backward before the truculent advance, upraised fist, and
flashing eyes, of Mackenzie. He sneered and resumed.

Was I stricken dead? Did the lightning burn me? Did the stars
fall from the sky and crush me? Pish! I have done with the dog.
Now will I tell you of my people, who are the mightiest of all
the peoples, who rule in all the lands. At first we hunt as I
hunt, alone.

After that we hunt in packs; and at last, like the cariboo-run,
we sweep across all the land.

Those whom we take into our lodges live; those who will not come
die. Zarinska is a comely maiden, full and strong, fit to become
the mother of Wolves. Though I die, such shall she become; for my
brothers are many, and they will follow the scent of my dogs.

Listen to the Law of the Wolf: Whoso taketh the life of one Wolf,
the forfeit shall ten of his people pay. In many lands has the
price been paid; in many lands shall it yet be paid.

'Now will I deal with the Fox and the Bear. It seems they have
cast eyes upon the maiden. So? Behold, I have bought her!
Thling-Tinneh leans upon the rifle; the goods of purchase are by
his fire. Yet will I be fair to the young men. To the Fox, whose
tongue is dry with many words, will I give of tobacco five long
plugs.

Thus will his mouth be wetted that he may make much noise in the
council. But to the Bear, of whom I am well proud, will I give of
blankets two; of flour, twenty cups; of tobacco, double that of
the Fox; and if he fare with me over the Mountains of the East,
then will I give him a rifle, mate to Thling-Tinneh's. If not?
Good! The Wolf is weary of speech. Yet once again will he say the
Law: Whoso taketh the life of one Wolf, the forfeit shall ten of
his people pay.'

Mackenzie smiled as he stepped back to his old position, but at
heart he was full of trouble. The night was yet dark. The girl
came to his side, and he listened closely as she told of the
Bear's battle-tricks with the knife.

The decision was for war. In a trice, scores of moccasins were
widening the space of beaten snow by the fire. There was much
chatter about the seeming defeat of the Shaman; some averred he
had but withheld his power, while others conned past events and
agreed with the Wolf. The Bear came to the center of the
battle-ground, a long naked hunting-knife of Russian make in his
hand. The Fox called attention to Mackenzie's revolvers; so he
stripped his belt, buckling it about Zarinska, into whose hands
he also entrusted his rifle. She shook her head that she could
not shoot,--small chance had a woman to handle such precious
things.

'Then, if danger come by my back, cry aloud, "My husband!" No;
thus, "My husband!"'

He laughed as she repeated it, pinched her cheek, and reentered
the circle. Not only in reach and stature had the Bear the
advantage of him, but his blade was longer by a good two inches.
'Scruff' Mackenzie had looked into the eyes of men before, and he
knew it was a man who stood against him; yet he quickened to the
glint of light on the steel, to the dominant pulse of his race.

Time and again he was forced to the edge of the fire or the deep
snow, and time and again, with the foot tactics of the pugilist,
he worked back to the center. Not a voice was lifted in
encouragement, while his antagonist was heartened with applause,
suggestions, and warnings. But his teeth only shut the tighter as
the knives clashed together, and he thrust or eluded with a
coolness born of conscious strength. At first he felt compassion
for his enemy; but this fled before the primal instinct of life,
which in turn gave way to the lust of slaughter. The ten thousand
years of culture fell from him, and he was a cave-dweller, doing
battle for his female.

Twice he pricked the Bear, getting away unscathed; but the third
time caught, and to save himself, free hands closed on fighting
hands, and they came together.

Then did he realize the tremendous strength of his opponent. His
muscles were knotted in painful lumps, and cords and tendons
threatened to snap with the strain; yet nearer and nearer came
the Russian steel. He tried to break away, but only weakened
himself. The fur-clad circle closed in, certain of and anxious to
see the final stroke. But with wrestler's trick, swinging partly
to the side, he struck at his adversary with his head.
Involuntarily the Bear leaned back, disturbing his center of
gravity. Simultaneous with this, Mackenzie tripped properly and
threw his whole weight forward, hurling him clear through the
circle into the deep snow. The Bear floundered out and came back
full tilt.

'O my husband!' Zarinska's voice rang out, vibrant with danger.

To the twang of a bow-string, Mackenzie swept low to the ground,
and a bonebarbed arrow passed over him into the breast of the
Bear, whose momentum carried him over his crouching foe. The next
instant Mackenzie was up and about. The bear lay motionless, but
across the fire was the Shaman, drawing a second arrow.
Mackenzie's knife leaped short in the air. He caught the heavy
blade by the point. There was a flash of light as it spanned the
fire. Then the Shaman, the hilt alone appearing without his
throat, swayed and pitched forward into the glowing embers.

Click! Click!--the Fox had possessed himself of Thling-Tinneh's
rifle and was vainly trying to throw a shell into place. But he
dropped it at the sound of Mackenzie's laughter.

'So the Fox has not learned the way of the plaything? He is yet a
woman.

'Come! Bring it, that I may show thee!' The Fox hesitated.

'Come, I say!' He slouched forward like a beaten cur.

'Thus, and thus; so the thing is done.' A shell flew into place
and the trigger was at cock as Mackenzie brought it to shoulder.

'The Fox has said great deeds were afoot this night, and he spoke
true. There have been great deeds, yet least among them were
those of the Fox. Is he still intent to take Zarinska to his
lodge? Is he minded to tread the trail already broken by the
Shaman and the Bear?

'No? Good!'

Mackenzie turned contemptuously and drew his knife from the
priest's throat.

'Are any of the young men so minded? If so, the Wolf will take
them by two and three till none are left. No? Good!
Thling-Tinneh, I now give thee this rifle a second time. If, in
the days to come, thou shouldst journey to the Country of the
Yukon, know thou that there shall always be a place and much food
by the fire of the Wolf. The night is now passing into the day. I
go, but I may come again. And for the last time, remember the Law
of the Wolf!' He was supernatural in their sight as he rejoined
Zarinska. She took her place at the head of the team, and the
dogs swung into motion. A few moments later they were swallowed
up by the ghostly forest. Till now Mackenzie had waited; he
slipped into his snow-shoes to follow.

'Has the Wolf forgotten the five long plugs?' Mackenzie turned
upon the Fox angrily; then the humor of it struck him.

'I will give thee one short plug.' 'As the Wolf sees fit,' meekly
responded the Fox, stretching out his hand.



The Men of Forty Mile

When Big Jim Belden ventured the apparently innocuous proposition
that mush-ice was 'rather pecooliar,' he little dreamed of what
it would lead to.

Neither did Lon McFane, when he affirmed that anchor-ice was even
more so; nor did Bettles, as he instantly disagreed, declaring
the very existence of such a form to be a bugaboo.

'An' ye'd be tellin' me this,' cried Lon, 'after the years ye've
spint in the land! An' we atin' out the same pot this many's the
day!' 'But the thing's agin reasin,' insisted Bettles.

'Look you, water's warmer than ice--' 'An' little the difference,
once ye break through.'

'Still it's warmer, because it ain't froze. An' you say it
freezes on the bottom?' 'Only the anchor-ice, David, only the
anchor-ice. An' have ye niver drifted along, the water clear as
glass, whin suddin, belike a cloud over the sun, the mushy-ice
comes bubblin' up an' up till from bank to bank an' bind to bind
it's drapin' the river like a first snowfall?' 'Unh, hunh! more'n
once when I took a doze at the steering-oar. But it allus come
out the nighest side-channel, an' not bubblin' up an' up.' 'But
with niver a wink at the helm?'

'No; nor you. It's agin reason. I'll leave it to any man!'
Bettles appealed to the circle about the stove, but the fight was
on between himself and Lon McFane.

'Reason or no reason, it's the truth I'm tellin' ye. Last fall, a
year gone, 'twas Sitka Charley and meself saw the sight, droppin'
down the riffle ye'll remember below Fort Reliance. An' regular
fall weather it was--the glint o' the sun on the golden larch an'
the quakin' aspens; an' the glister of light on ivery ripple; an'
beyand, the winter an' the blue haze of the North comin' down
hand in hand. It's well ye know the same, with a fringe to the
river an' the ice formin' thick in the eddies--an' a snap an'
sparkle to the air, an' ye a-feelin' it through all yer blood,
atakin' new lease of life with ivery suck of it. 'Tis then, me
boy, the world grows small an' the wandtherlust lays ye by the
heels.

'But it's meself as wandthers. As I was sayin', we a-paddlin',
with niver a sign of ice, barrin' that by the eddies, when the
Injun lifts his paddle an' sings out, "Lon McFane! Look ye
below!" So have I heard, but niver thought to see! As ye know,
Sitka Charley, like meself, niver drew first breath in the land;
so the sight was new. Then we drifted, with a head over ayther
side, peerin' down through the sparkly water. For the world like
the days I spint with the pearlers, watchin' the coral banks
a-growin' the same as so many gardens under the sea. There it
was, the anchor-ice, clingin' an' clusterin' to ivery rock, after
the manner of the white coral.

'But the best of the sight was to come. Just after clearin' the
tail of the riffle, the water turns quick the color of milk, an'
the top of it in wee circles, as when the graylin' rise in the
spring, or there's a splatter of wet from the sky. 'Twas the
anchor-ice comin' up. To the right, to the lift, as far as iver a
man cud see, the water was covered with the same.

An' like so much porridge it was, slickin' along the bark of the
canoe, stickin' like glue to the paddles. It's many's the time I
shot the self-same riffle before, and it's many's the time after,
but niver a wink of the same have I seen. 'Twas the sight of a
lifetime.' 'Do tell!' dryly commented Bettles. 'D'ye think I'd
b'lieve such a yarn? I'd ruther say the glister of light'd gone
to your eyes, and the snap of the air to your tongue.' ''Twas me
own eyes that beheld it, an' if Sitka Charley was here, he'd be
the lad to back me.' 'But facts is facts, an' they ain't no
gettin' round 'em. It ain't in the nature of things for the water
furtherest away from the air to freeze first.' 'But me own eyes-'
'Don't git het up over it,' admonished Bettles, as the quick
Celtic anger began to mount.

'Then yer not after belavin' me?' 'Sence you're so blamed
forehanded about it, no; I'd b'lieve nature first, and facts.'

'Is it the lie ye'd be givin' me?' threatened Lon. 'Ye'd better
be askin' that Siwash wife of yours. I'll lave it to her, for the
truth I spake.' Bettles flared up in sudden wrath. The Irishman
had unwittingly wounded him; for his wife was the half-breed
daughter of a Russian fur-trader, married to him in the Greek
Mission of Nulato, a thousand miles or so down the Yukon, thus
being of much higher caste than the common Siwash, or native,
wife. It was a mere Northland nuance, which none but the
Northland adventurer may understand.

'I reckon you kin take it that way,' was his deliberate
affirmation.

The next instant Lon McFane had stretched him on the floor, the
circle was broken up, and half a dozen men had stepped between.

Bettles came to his feet, wiping the blood from his mouth. 'It
hain't new, this takin' and payin' of blows, and don't you never
think but that this will be squared.' 'An' niver in me life did I
take the lie from mortal man,' was the retort courteous. 'An'
it's an avil day I'll not be to hand, waitin' an' willin' to help
ye lift yer debts, barrin' no manner of way.'

'Still got that 38-55?' Lon nodded.

'But you'd better git a more likely caliber. Mine'll rip holes
through you the size of walnuts.'

'Niver fear; it's me own slugs smell their way with soft noses,
an' they'll spread like flapjacks against the coming out beyand.
An' when'll I have the pleasure of waitin' on ye? The waterhole's
a strikin' locality.' ''Tain't bad. Jest be there in an hour, and
you won't set long on my coming.' Both men mittened and left the
Post, their ears closed to the remonstrances of their comrades.
It was such a little thing; yet with such men, little things,
nourished by quick tempers and stubborn natures, soon blossomed
into big things.

Besides, the art of burning to bedrock still lay in the womb of
the future, and the men of Forty-Mile, shut in by the long Arctic
winter, grew high-stomached with overeating and enforced
idleness, and became as irritable as do the bees in the fall of
the year when the hives are overstocked with honey.

There was no law in the land. The mounted police was also a thing
of the future. Each man measured an offense, and meted out the
punishment inasmuch as it affected himself.

Rarely had combined action been necessary, and never in all the
dreary history of the camp had the eighth article of the
Decalogue been violated.

Big Jim Belden called an impromptu meeting. Scruff Mackenzie was
placed as temporary chairman, and a messenger dispatched to
solicit Father Roubeau's good offices. Their position was
paradoxical, and they knew it. By the right of might could they
interfere to prevent the duel; yet such action, while in direct
line with their wishes, went counter to their opinions. While
their rough-hewn, obsolete ethics recognized the individual
prerogative of wiping out blow with blow, they could not bear to
think of two good comrades, such as Bettles and McFane, meeting
in deadly battle. Deeming the man who would not fight on
provocation a dastard, when brought to the test it seemed wrong
that he should fight.

But a scurry of moccasins and loud cries, rounded off with a
pistol-shot, interrupted the discussion. Then the storm-doors
opened and Malemute Kid entered, a smoking Colt's in his hand,
and a merry light in his eye.

'I got him.' He replaced the empty shell, and added, 'Your dog,
Scruff.' 'Yellow Fang?'

Mackenzie asked.

'No; the lop-eared one.' 'The devil! Nothing the matter with
him.' 'Come out and take a look.' 'That's all right after all.
Buess he's got 'em, too. Yellow Fang came back this morning and
took a chunk out of him, and came near to making a widower of me.

Made a rush for Zarinska, but she whisked her skirts in his face
and escaped with the loss of the same and a good roll in the
snow. Then he took to the woods again. Hope he don't come back.
Lost any yourself?' 'One--the best one of the pack--Shookum.
Started amuck this morning, but didn't get very far. Ran foul of
Sitka Charley's team, and they scattered him all over the street.
And now two of them are loose, and raging mad; so you see he got
his work in. The dog census will be small in the spring if we
don't do something.'

'And the man census, too.' 'How's that? Who's in trouble now?'
'Oh, Bettles and Lon McFane had an argument, and they'll be down
by the waterhole in a few minutes to settle it.' The incident was
repeated for his benefit, and Malemute Kid, accustomed to an
obedience which his fellow men never failed to render, took
charge of the affair. His quickly formulated plan was explained,
and they promised to follow his lead implicitly.

'So you see,' he concluded, 'we do not actually take away their
privilege of fighting; and yet I don't believe they'll fight when
they see the beauty of the scheme. Life's a game and men the
gamblers. They'll stake their whole pile on the one chance in a
thousand.

'Take away that one chance, and--they won't play.' He turned to
the man in charge of the Post. 'Storekeeper, weight out three
fathoms of your best half-inch manila.

'We'll establish a precedent which will last the men of
Forty-Mile to the end of time,' he prophesied. Then he coiled the
rope about his arm and led his followers out of doors, just in
time to meet the principals.

'What danged right'd he to fetch my wife in?' thundered Bettles
to the soothing overtures of a friend. ''Twa'n't called for,' he
concluded decisively. ''Twa'n't called for,' he reiterated again
and again, pacing up and down and waiting for Lon McFane.

And Lon McFane--his face was hot and tongue rapid as he flaunted
insurrection in the face of the Church. 'Then, father,' he cried,
'it's with an aisy heart I'll roll in me flamy blankets, the
broad of me back on a bed of coals. Niver shall it be said that
Lon McFane took a lie 'twixt the teeth without iver liftin' a
hand! An' I'll not ask a blessin'. The years have been wild, but
it's the heart was in the right place.' 'But it's not the heart,
Lon,' interposed Father Roubeau; 'It's pride that bids you forth
to slay your fellow man.' 'Yer Frinch,' Lon replied. And then,
turning to leave him, 'An' will ye say a mass if the luck is
against me?' But the priest smiled, thrust his moccasined feet to
the fore, and went out upon the white breast of the silent river.
A packed trail, the width of a sixteeninch sled, led out to the
waterhole. On either side lay the deep, soft snow. The men trod
in single file, without conversation; and the black-stoled priest
in their midst gave to the function the solemn aspect of a
funeral. It was a warm winter's day for Forty-Mile--a day in
which the sky, filled with heaviness, drew closer to the earth,
and the mercury sought the unwonted level of twenty below. But
there was no cheer in the warmth. There was little air in the
upper strata, and the clouds hung motionless, giving sullen
promise of an early snowfall. And the earth, unresponsive, made
no preparation, content in its hibernation.

When the waterhole was reached, Bettles, having evidently
reviewed the quarrel during the silent walk, burst out in a final
''Twa'n't called for,' while Lon McFane kept grim silence.
Indignation so choked him that he could not speak.

Yet deep down, whenever their own wrongs were not uppermost, both
men wondered at their comrades. They had expected opposition, and
this tacit acquiescence hurt them. It seemed more was due them
from the men they had been so close with, and they felt a vague
sense of wrong, rebelling at the thought of so many of their
brothers coming out, as on a gala occasion, without one word of
protest, to see them shoot each other down. It appeared their
worth had diminished in the eyes of the community. The
proceedings puzzled them.

'Back to back, David. An' will it be fifty paces to the man, or
double the quantity?'

'Fifty,' was the sanguinary reply, grunted out, yet sharply cut.

But the new manila, not prominently displayed, but casually
coiled about Malemute Kid's arm, caught the quick eye of the
Irishman, and thrilled him with a suspicious fear.

'An' what are ye doin' with the rope?' 'Hurry up!' Malemute Kid
glanced at his watch.

'I've a batch of bread in the cabin, and I don't want it to fall.
Besides, my feet are getting cold.' The rest of the men
manifested their impatience in various suggestive ways.

'But the rope, Kid' It's bran' new, an' sure yer bread's not that
heavy it needs raisin' with the like of that?' Bettles by this
time had faced around. Father Roubeau, the humor of the situation
just dawning on him, hid a smile behind his mittened hand.

'No, Lon; this rope was made for a man.' Malemute Kid could be
very impressive on occasion.

'What man?' Bettles was becoming aware of a personal interest.

'The other man.' 'An' which is the one ye'd mane by that?'
'Listen, Lon--and you, too, Bettles! We've been talking this
little trouble of yours over, and we've come to one conclusion.
We know we have no right to stop your fighting-' 'True for ye, me
lad!' 'And we're not going to. But this much we can do, and shall
do--make this the only duel in the history of Forty-Mile, set an
example for every che-cha-qua that comes up or down the Yukon.
The man who escapes killing shall be hanged to the nearest tree.
Now, go ahead!'

Lon smiled dubiously, then his face lighted up. 'Pace her off,
David--fifty paces, wheel, an' niver a cease firin' till a lad's
down for good. 'Tis their hearts'll niver let them do the deed,
an' it's well ye should know it for a true Yankee bluff.'

He started off with a pleased grin on his face, but Malemute Kid
halted him.

'Lon! It's a long while since you first knew me?' 'Many's the
day.' 'And you, Bettles?'

'Five year next June high water.' 'And have you once, in all that
time, known me to break my word' Or heard of me breaking it?'
Both men shook their heads, striving to fathom what lay beyond.

'Well, then, what do you think of a promise made by me?' 'As good
as your bond,' from Bettles.

'The thing to safely sling yer hopes of heaven by,' promptly
endorsed Lon McFane.

'Listen! I, Malemute Kid, give you my word--and you know what
that meansthat the man who is not shot stretches rope within ten
minutes after the shooting.' He stepped back as Pilate might have
done after washing his hands.

A pause and a silence came over the men of Forty-Mile. The sky
drew still closer, sending down a crystal flight of frost--little
geometric designs, perfect, evanescent as a breath, yet destined
to exist till the returning sun had covered half its northern
journey.

Both men had led forlorn hopes in their time--led with a curse or
a jest on their tongues, and in their souls an unswerving faith
in the God of Chance. But that merciful deity had been shut out
from the present deal. They studied the face of Malemute Kid, but
they studied as one might the Sphinx. As the quiet minutes
passed, a feeling that speech was incumbent on them began to
grow. At last the howl of a wolf-dog cracked the silence from the
direction of Forty-Mile. The weird sound swelled with all the
pathos of a breaking heart, then died away in a long-drawn sob.

'Well I be danged!' Bettles turned up the collar of his mackinaw
jacket and stared about him helplessly.

'It's a gloryus game yer runnin', Kid,' cried Lon McFane. 'All
the percentage of the house an' niver a bit to the man that's
buckin'. The Devil himself'd niver tackle such a cinch--and
damned if I do.' There were chuckles, throttled in gurgling
throats, and winks brushed away with the frost which rimed the
eyelashes, as the men climbed the ice-notched bank and started
across the street to the Post. But the long howl had drawn
nearer, invested with a new note of menace. A woman screamed
round the corner. There was a cry of, 'Here he comes!' Then an
Indian boy, at the head of half a dozen frightened dogs, racing
with death, dashed into the crowd. And behind came Yellow Fang, a
bristle of hair and a flash of gray. Everybody but the Yankee
fled.

The Indian boy had tripped and fallen. Bettles stopped long
enough to grip him by the slack of his furs, then headed for a
pile of cordwood already occupied by a number of his comrades.
Yellow Fang, doubling after one of the dogs, came leaping back.
The fleeing animal, free of the rabies, but crazed with fright,
whipped Bettles off his feet and flashed on up the street.
Malemute Kid took a flying shot at Yellow Fang. The mad dog
whirled a half airspring, came down on his back, then, with a
single leap, covered half the distance between himself and
Bettles.

But the fatal spring was intercepted. Lon McFane leaped from the
woodpile, countering him in midair. Over they rolled, Lon holding
him by the throat at arm's length, blinking under the fetid
slaver which sprayed his face. Then Bettles, revolver in hand and
coolly waiting a chance, settled the combat.

''Twas a square game, Kid,' Lon remarked, rising to his feet and
shaking the snow from out his sleeves; 'with a fair percentage to
meself that bucked it.' That night, while Lon McFane sought the
forgiving arms of the Church in the direction of Father Roubeau's
cabin, Malemute Kid talked long to little purpose.

'But would you,' persisted Mackenzie, 'supposing they had
fought?' 'Have I ever broken my word?' 'No; but that isn't the
point. Answer the question. Would you?' Malemute Kid straightened
up. 'Scruff, I've been asking myself that question ever since,
and--'

'Well?'

'Well, as yet, I haven't found the answer.'



In a Far Country

When a man journeys into a far country, he must be prepared to
forget many of the things he has learned, and to acquire such
customs as are inherent with existence in the new land; he must
abandon the old ideals and the old gods, and oftentimes he must
reverse the very codes by which his conduct has hitherto been
shaped. To those who have the protean faculty of adaptability,
the novelty of such change may even be a source of pleasure; but
to those who happen to be hardened to the ruts in which they were
created, the pressure of the altered environment is unbearable,
and they chafe in body and in spirit under the new restrictions
which they do not understand. This chafing is bound to act and
react, producing divers evils and leading to various misfortunes.
It were better for the man who cannot fit himself to the new
groove to return to his own country; if he delay too long, he
will surely die.

The man who turns his back upon the comforts of an elder
civilization, to face the savage youth, the primordial simplicity
of the North, may estimate success at an inverse ratio to the
quantity and quality of his hopelessly fixed habits. He will soon
discover, if he be a fit candidate, that the material habits are
the less important. The exchange of such things as a dainty menu
for rough fare, of the stiff leather shoe for the soft, shapeless
moccasin, of the feather bed for a couch in the snow, is after
all a very easy matter. But his pinch will come in learning
properly to shape his mind's attitude toward all things, and
especially toward his fellow man. For the courtesies of ordinary
life, he must substitute unselfishness, forbearance, and
tolerance. Thus, and thus only, can he gain that pearl of great
price--true comradeship. He must not say 'thank you'; he must
mean it without opening his mouth, and prove it by responding in
kind. In short, he must substitute the deed for the word, the
spirit for the letter.

When the world rang with the tale of Arctic gold, and the lure of
the North gripped the heartstrings of men, Carter Weatherbee
threw up his snug clerkship, turned the half of his savings over
to his wife, and with the remainder bought an outfit. There was
no romance in his nature--the bondage of commerce had crushed all
that; he was simply tired of the ceaseless grind, and wished to
risk great hazards in view of corresponding returns. Like many
another fool, disdaining the old trails used by the Northland
pioneers for a score of years, he hurried to Edmonton in the
spring of the year; and there, unluckily for his soul's welfare,
he allied himself with a party of men.

There was nothing unusual about this party, except its plans.
Even its goal, like that of all the other parties, was the
Klondike. But the route it had mapped out to attain that goal
took away the breath of the hardiest native, born and bred to the
vicissitudes of the Northwest. Even Jacques Baptiste, born of a
Chippewa woman and a renegade voyageur (having raised his first
whimpers in a deerskin lodge north of the sixty-fifth parallel,
and had the same hushed by blissful sucks of raw tallow), was
surprised. Though he sold his services to them and agreed to
travel even to the never-opening ice, he shook his head ominously
whenever his advice was asked.

Percy Cuthfert's evil star must have been in the ascendant, for
he, too, joined this company of argonauts. He was an ordinary
man, with a bank account as deep as his culture, which is saying
a good deal. He had no reason to embark on such a venture--no
reason in the world save that he suffered from an abnormal
development of sentimentality. He mistook this for the true
spirit of romance and adventure. Many another man has done the
like, and made as fatal a mistake.

The first break-up of spring found the party following the
ice-run of Elk River. It was an imposing fleet, for the outfit
was large, and they were accompanied by a disreputable contingent
of half-breed voyageurs with their women and children. Day in and
day out, they labored with the bateaux and canoes, fought
mosquitoes and other kindred pests, or sweated and swore at the
portages. Severe toil like this lays a man naked to the very
roots of his soul, and ere Lake Athabasca was lost in the south,
each member of the party had hoisted his true colors.

The two shirks and chronic grumblers were Carter Weatherbee and
Percy Cuthfert. The whole party complained less of its aches and
pains than did either of them. Not once did they volunteer for
the thousand and one petty duties of the camp. A bucket of water
to be brought, an extra armful of wood to be chopped, the dishes
to be washed and wiped, a search to be made through the outfit
for some suddenly indispensable article--and these two effete
scions of civilization discovered sprains or blisters requiring
instant attention.

They were the first to turn in at night, with score of tasks yet
undone; the last to turn out in the morning, when the start
should be in readiness before the breakfast was begun.

They were the first to fall to at mealtime, the last to have a
hand in the cooking; the first to dive for a slim delicacy, the
last to discover they had added to their own another man's share.
If they toiled at the oars, they slyly cut the water at each
stroke and allowed the boat's momentum to float up the blade.
They thought nobody noticed; but their comrades swore under their
breaths and grew to hate them, while Jacques Baptiste sneered
openly and damned them from morning till night. But Jacques
Baptiste was no gentleman.

At the Great Slave, Hudson Bay dogs were purchased, and the fleet
sank to the guards with its added burden of dried fish and
pemican. Then canoe and bateau answered to the swift current of
the Mackenzie, and they plunged into the Great Barren Ground.
Every likely-looking 'feeder' was prospected, but the elusive
'pay-dirt' danced ever to the north. At the Great Bear, overcome
by the common dread of the Unknown Lands, their voyageurs began
to desert, and Fort of Good Hope saw the last and bravest bending
to the towlines as they bucked the current down which they had so
treacherously glided.

Jacques Baptiste alone remained. Had he not sworn to travel even
to the never-opening ice? The lying charts, compiled in main from
hearsay, were now constantly consulted.

And they felt the need of hurry, for the sun had already passed
its northern solstice and was leading the winter south again.
Skirting the shores of the bay, where the Mackenzie disembogues
into the Arctic Ocean, they entered the mouth of the Little Peel
River. Then began the arduous up-stream toil, and the two
Incapables fared worse than ever. Towline and pole, paddle and
tumpline, rapids and portages--such tortures served to give the
one a deep disgust for great hazards, and printed for the other a
fiery text on the true romance of adventure. One day they waxed
mutinous, and being vilely cursed by Jacques Baptiste, turned, as
worms sometimes will. But the half-breed thrashed the twain, and
sent them, bruised and bleeding, about their work. It was the
first time either had been manhandled.

Abandoning their river craft at the headwaters of the Little
Peel, they consumed the rest of the summer in the great portage
over the Mackenzie watershed to the West Rat. This little stream
fed the Porcupine, which in turn joined the Yukon where that
mighty highway of the North countermarches on the Arctic Circle.

But they had lost in the race with winter, and one day they tied
their rafts to the thick eddy-ice and hurried their goods ashore.
That night the river jammed and broke several times; the
following morning it had fallen asleep for good. 'We can't be
more'n four hundred miles from the Yukon,' concluded Sloper,
multiplying his thumb nails by the scale of the map. The council,
in which the two Incapables had whined to excellent disadvantage,
was drawing to a close.

'Hudson Bay Post, long time ago. No use um now.' Jacques
Baptiste's father had made the trip for the Fur Company in the
old days, incidentally marking the trail with a couple of frozen
toes.

Sufferin' cracky!' cried another of the party. 'No whites?' 'Nary
white,' Sloper sententiously affirmed; 'but it's only five
hundred more up the Yukon to Dawson. Call it a rough thousand
from here.' Weatherbee and Cuthfert groaned in chorus.

'How long'll that take, Baptiste?' The half-breed figured for a
moment. 'Workum like hell, no man play out, ten--
twenty--forty--fifty days. Um babies come' (designating the
Incapables), 'no can tell. Mebbe when hell freeze over; mebbe not
then.' The manufacture of snowshoes and moccasins ceased.
Somebody called the name of an absent member, who came out of an
ancient cabin at the edge of the campfire and joined them. The
cabin was one of the many mysteries which lurk in the vast
recesses of the North. Built when and by whom, no man could tell.

Two graves in the open, piled high with stones, perhaps contained
the secret of those early wanderers. But whose hand had piled the
stones? The moment had come. Jacques Baptiste paused in the
fitting of a harness and pinned the struggling dog in the snow.
The cook made mute protest for delay, threw a handful of bacon
into a noisy pot of beans, then came to attention. Sloper rose to
his feet. His body was a ludicrous contrast to the healthy
physiques of the Incapables. Yellow and weak, fleeing from a
South American fever-hole, he had not broken his flight across
the zones, and was still able to toil with men. His weight was
probably ninety pounds, with the heavy hunting knife thrown in,
and his grizzled hair told of a prime which had ceased to be. The
fresh young muscles of either Weatherbee or Cuthfert were equal
to ten times the endeavor of his; yet he could walk them into the
earth in a day's journey. And all this day he had whipped his
stronger comrades into venturing a thousand miles of the stiffest
hardship man can conceive. He was the incarnation of the unrest
of his race, and the old Teutonic stubbornness, dashed with the
quick grasp and action of the Yankee, held the flesh in the
bondage of the spirit.

'All those in favor of going on with the dogs as soon as the ice
sets, say ay.' 'Ay!' rang out eight voices--voices destined to
string a trail of oaths along many a hundred miles of pain.

'Contrary minded?' 'No!' For the first time the Incapables were
united without some compromise of personal interests.

'And what are you going to do about it?' Weatherbee added
belligerently.

'Majority rule! Majority rule!' clamored the rest of the party.

'I know the expedition is liable to fall through if you don't
come,' Sloper replied sweetly; 'but I guess, if we try real hard,
we can manage to do without you.

What do you say, boys?' The sentiment was cheered to the echo.

'But I say, you know,' Cuthfert ventured apprehensively; 'what's
a chap like me to do?'

'Ain't you coming with us.' 'No--o.' 'Then do as you damn well
please. We won't have nothing to say.' 'Kind o' calkilate yuh
might settle it with that canoodlin' pardner of yourn,' suggested
a heavy-going Westerner from the Dakotas, at the same time
pointing out Weatherbee. 'He'll be shore to ask yuh what yur
a-goin' to do when it comes to cookin' an' gatherin' the wood.'
'Then we'll consider it all arranged,' concluded Sloper.

'We'll pull out tomorrow, if we camp within five miles--just to
get everything in running order and remember if we've forgotten
anything.' The sleds groaned by on their steel-shod runners, and
the dogs strained low in the harnesses in which they were born to
die.

Jacques Baptiste paused by the side of Sloper to get a last
glimpse of the cabin. The smoke curled up pathetically from the
Yukon stovepipe. The two Incapables were watching them from the
doorway.

Sloper laid his hand on the other's shoulder.

'Jacques Baptiste, did you ever hear of the Kilkenny cats?' The
half-breed shook his head.

'Well, my friend and good comrade, the Kilkenny cats fought till
neither hide, nor hair, nor yowl, was left. You understand?--till
nothing was left. Very good.

Now, these two men don't like work. They'll be all alone in that
cabin all wintera mighty long, dark winter. Kilkenny cats--well?'
The Frenchman in Baptiste shrugged his shoulders, but the Indian
in him was silent. Nevertheless, it was an eloquent shrug,
pregnant with prophecy. Things prospered in the little cabin at
first. The rough badinage of their comrades had made Weatherbee
and Cuthfert conscious of the mutual responsibility which had
devolved upon them; besides, there was not so much work after all
for two healthy men. And the removal of the cruel whiphand, or in
other words the bulldozing half-breed, had brought with it a
joyous reaction. At first, each strove to outdo the other, and
they performed petty tasks with an unction which would have
opened the eyes of their comrades who were now wearing out bodies
and souls on the Long Trail.

All care was banished. The forest, which shouldered in upon them
from three sides, was an inexhaustible woodyard. A few yards from
their door slept the Porcupine, and a hole through its winter
robe formed a bubbling spring of water, crystal clear and
painfully cold. But they soon grew to find fault with even that.
The hole would persist in freezing up, and thus gave them many a
miserable hour of ice-chopping. The unknown builders of the cabin
had extended the sidelogs so as to support a cache at the rear.
In this was stored the bulk of the party's provisions.

Food there was, without stint, for three times the men who were
fated to live upon it. But the most of it was the kind which
built up brawn and sinew, but did not tickle the palate.

True, there was sugar in plenty for two ordinary men; but these
two were little else than children. They early discovered the
virtues of hot water judiciously saturated with sugar, and they
prodigally swam their flapjacks and soaked their crusts in the
rich, white syrup.

Then coffee and tea, and especially the dried fruits, made
disastrous inroads upon it. The first words they had were over
the sugar question. And it is a really serious thing when two
men, wholly dependent upon each other for company, begin to
quarrel.

Weatherbee loved to discourse blatantly on politics, while
Cuthfert, who had been prone to clip his coupons and let the
commonwealth jog on as best it might, either ignored the subject
or delivered himself of startling epigrams. But the clerk was too
obtuse to appreciate the clever shaping of thought, and this
waste of ammunition irritated Cuthfert.

He had been used to blinding people by his brilliancy, and it
worked him quite a hardship, this loss of an audience. He felt
personally aggrieved and unconsciously held his muttonhead
companion responsible for it.

Save existence, they had nothing in common--came in touch on no
single point.

Weatherbee was a clerk who had known naught but clerking all his
life; Cuthfert was a master of arts, a dabbler in oils, and had
written not a little. The one was a lower-class man who
considered himself a gentleman, and the other was a gentleman who
knew himself to be such. From this it may be remarked that a man
can be a gentleman without possessing the first instinct of true
comradeship. The clerk was as sensuous as the other was
aesthetic, and his love adventures, told at great length and
chiefly coined from his imagination, affected the supersensitive
master of arts in the same way as so many whiffs of sewer gas. He
deemed the clerk a filthy, uncultured brute, whose place was in
the muck with the swine, and told him so; and he was reciprocally
informed that he was a milk-and-water sissy and a cad. Weatherbee
could not have defined 'cad' for his life; but it satisfied its
purpose, which after all seems the main point in life.

Weatherbee flatted every third note and sang such songs as 'The
Boston Burglar' and 'the Handsome Cabin Boy,' for hours at a
time, while Cuthfert wept with rage, till he could stand it no
longer and fled into the outer cold. But there was no escape. The
intense frost could not be endured for long at a time, and the
little cabin crowded them--beds, stove, table, and all--into a
space of ten by twelve. The very presence of either became a
personal affront to the other, and they lapsed into sullen
silences which increased in length and strength as the days went
by. Occasionally, the flash of an eye or the curl of a lip got
the better of them, though they strove to wholly ignore each
other during these mute periods.

And a great wonder sprang up in the breast of each, as to how God
had ever come to create the other.

With little to do, time became an intolerable burden to them.
This naturally made them still lazier. They sank into a physical
lethargy which there was no escaping, and which made them rebel
at the performance of the smallest chore. One morning when it was
his turn to cook the common breakfast, Weatherbee rolled out of
his blankets, and to the snoring of his companion, lighted first
the slush lamp and then the fire. The kettles were frozen hard,
and there was no water in the cabin with which to wash. But he
did not mind that. Waiting for it to thaw, he sliced the bacon
and plunged into the hateful task of bread-making. Cuthfert had
been slyly watching through his half-closed lids.

Consequently there was a scene, in which they fervently blessed
each other, and agreed, henceforth, that each do his own cooking.
A week later, Cuthfert neglected his morning ablutions, but none
the less complacently ate the meal which he had cooked.
Weatherbee grinned. After that the foolish custom of washing
passed out of their lives.

As the sugar-pile and other little luxuries dwindled, they began
to be afraid they were not getting their proper shares, and in
order that they might not be robbed, they fell to gorging
themselves. The luxuries suffered in this gluttonous contest, as
did also the men.

In the absence of fresh vegetables and exercise, their blood
became impoverished, and a loathsome, purplish rash crept over
their bodies. Yet they refused to heed the warning.

Next, their muscles and joints began to swell, the flesh turning
black, while their mouths, gums, and lips took on the color of
rich cream. Instead of being drawn together by their misery, each
gloated over the other's symptoms as the scurvy took its course.

They lost all regard for personal appearance, and for that
matter, common decency. The cabin became a pigpen, and never once
were the beds made or fresh pine boughs laid underneath. Yet they
could not keep to their blankets, as they would have wished; for
the frost was inexorable, and the fire box consumed much fuel.
The hair of their heads and faces grew long and shaggy, while
their garments would have disgusted a ragpicker. But they did not
care. They were sick, and there was no one to see; besides, it
was very painful to move about.

To all this was added a new trouble--the Fear of the North. This
Fear was the joint child of the Great Cold and the Great Silence,
and was born in the darkness of December, when the sun dipped
below the horizon for good. It affected them according to their
natures.

Weatherbee fell prey to the grosser superstitions, and did his
best to resurrect the spirits which slept in the forgotten
graves. It was a fascinating thing, and in his dreams they came
to him from out of the cold, and snuggled into his blankets, and
told him of their toils and troubles ere they died. He shrank
away from the clammy contact as they drew closer and twined their
frozen limbs about him, and when they whispered in his ear of
things to come, the cabin rang with his frightened shrieks.
Cuthfert did not understand-for they no longer spoke--and when
thus awakened he invariably grabbed for his revolver. Then he
would sit up in bed, shivering nervously, with the weapon trained
on the unconscious dreamer. Cuthfert deemed the man going mad,
and so came to fear for his life.

His own malady assumed a less concrete form. The mysterious
artisan who had laid the cabin, log by log, had pegged a
wind-vane to the ridgepole. Cuthfert noticed it always pointed
south, and one day, irritated by its steadfastness of purpose, he
turned it toward the east. He watched eagerly, but never a breath
came by to disturb it. Then he turned the vane to the north,
swearing never again to touch it till the wind did blow. But the
air frightened him with its unearthly calm, and he often rose in
the middle of the night to see if the vane had veered--ten
degrees would have satisfied him. But no, it poised above him as
unchangeable as fate.

His imagination ran riot, till it became to him a fetish.
Sometimes he followed the path it pointed across the dismal
dominions, and allowed his soul to become saturated with the
Fear. He dwelt upon the unseen and the unknown till the burden of
eternity appeared to be crushing him. Everything in the Northland
had that crushing effect--the absence of life and motion; the
darkness; the infinite peace of the brooding land; the ghastly
silence, which made the echo of each heartbeat a sacrilege; the
solemn forest which seemed to guard an awful, inexpressible
something, which neither word nor thought could compass.

The world he had so recently left, with its busy nations and
great enterprises, seemed very far away. Recollections
occasionally obtruded--recollections of marts and galleries and
crowded thoroughfares, of evening dress and social functions, of
good men and dear women he had known--but they were dim memories
of a life he had lived long centuries agone, on some other
planet. This phantasm was the Reality. Standing beneath the
wind-vane, his eyes fixed on the polar skies, he could not bring
himself to realize that the Southland really existed, that at
that very moment it was a-roar with life and action.

There was no Southland, no men being born of women, no giving and
taking in marriage.

Beyond his bleak skyline there stretched vast solitudes, and
beyond these still vaster solitudes.

There were no lands of sunshine, heavy with the perfume of
flowers. Such things were only old dreams of paradise. The
sunlands of the West and the spicelands of the East, the smiling
Arcadias and blissful Islands of the Blest--ha! ha! His laughter
split the void and shocked him with its unwonted sound. There was
no sun.

This was the Universe, dead and cold and dark, and he its only
citizen. Weatherbee? At such moments Weatherbee did not count. He
was a Caliban, a monstrous phantom, fettered to him for untold
ages, the penalty of some forgotten crime.

He lived with Death among the dead, emasculated by the sense of
his own insignificance, crushed by the passive mastery of the
slumbering ages. The magnitude of all things appalled him.
Everything partook of the superlative save himself--the perfect
cessation of wind and motion, the immensity of the snow-covered
wildness, the height of the sky and the depth of the silence.
That wind-vaneif it would only move. If a thunderbolt would fall,
or the forest flare up in flame.

The rolling up of the heavens as a scroll, the crash of
Doom--anything, anything! But no, nothing moved; the Silence
crowded in, and the Fear of the North laid icy fingers on his
heart.

Once, like another Crusoe, by the edge of the river he came upon
a track--the faint tracery of a snowshoe rabbit on the delicate
snow-crust. It was a revelation.

There was life in the Northland. He would follow it, look upon
it, gloat over it.

He forgot his swollen muscles, plunging through the deep snow in
an ecstasy of anticipation. The forest swallowed him up, and the
brief midday twilight vanished; but he pursued his quest till
exhausted nature asserted itself and laid him helpless in the
snow.

There he groaned and cursed his folly, and knew the track to be
the fancy of his brain; and late that night he dragged himself
into the cabin on hands and knees, his cheeks frozen and a
strange numbness about his feet. Weatherbee grinned malevolently,
but made no offer to help him. He thrust needles into his toes
and thawed them out by the stove. A week later mortification set
in.

But the clerk had his own troubles. The dead men came out of
their graves more frequently now, and rarely left him, waking or
sleeping. He grew to wait and dread their coming, never passing
the twin cairns without a shudder. One night they came to him in
his sleep and led him forth to an appointed task. Frightened into
inarticulate horror, he awoke between the heaps of stones and
fled wildly to the cabin. But he had lain there for some time,
for his feet and cheeks were also frozen.

Sometimes he became frantic at their insistent presence, and
danced about the cabin, cutting the empty air with an axe, and
smashing everything within reach.

During these ghostly encounters, Cuthfert huddled into his
blankets and followed the madman about with a cocked revolver,
ready to shoot him if he came too near.

But, recovering from one of these spells, the clerk noticed the
weapon trained upon him.

His suspicions were aroused, and thenceforth he, too, lived in
fear of his life. They watched each other closely after that, and
faced about in startled fright whenever either passed behind the
other's back. The apprehensiveness became a mania which
controlled them even in their sleep. Through mutual fear they
tacitly let the slush-lamp burn all night, and saw to a plentiful
supply of bacon-grease before retiring. The slightest movement on
the part of one was sufficient to arouse the other, and many a
still watch their gazes countered as they shook beneath their
blankets with fingers on the trigger-guards.

What with the Fear of the North, the mental strain, and the
ravages of the disease, they lost all semblance of humanity,
taking on the appearance of wild beasts, hunted and desperate.
Their cheeks and noses, as an aftermath of the freezing, had
turned black.

Their frozen toes had begun to drop away at the first and second
joints. Every movement brought pain, but the fire box was
insatiable, wringing a ransom of torture from their miserable
bodies. Day in, day out, it demanded its food--a veritable pound
of flesh--and they dragged themselves into the forest to chop
wood on their knees. Once, crawling thus in search of dry sticks,
unknown to each other they entered a thicket from opposite sides.

Suddenly, without warning, two peering death's-heads confronted
each other. Suffering had so transformed them that recognition
was impossible. They sprang to their feet, shrieking with terror,
and dashed away on their mangled stumps; and falling at the
cabin's door, they clawed and scratched like demons till they
discovered their mistake.

Occasionally they lapsed normal, and during one of these sane
intervals, the chief bone of contention, the sugar, had been
divided equally between them. They guarded their separate sacks,
stored up in the cache, with jealous eyes; for there were but a
few cupfuls left, and they were totally devoid of faith in each
other.

But one day Cuthfert made a mistake. Hardly able to move, sick
with pain, with his head swimming and eyes blinded, he crept into
the cache, sugar canister in hand, and mistook Weatherbee's sack
for his own.

January had been born but a few days when this occurred. The sun
had some time since passed its lowest southern declination, and
at meridian now threw flaunting streaks of yellow light upon the
northern sky. On the day following his mistake with the sugarbag,
Cuthfert found himself feeling better, both in body and in
spirit. As noontime drew near and the day brightened, he dragged
himself outside to feast on the evanescent glow, which was to him
an earnest of the sun's future intentions. Weatherbee was also
feeling somewhat better, and crawled out beside him. They propped
themselves in the snow beneath the moveless windvane, and waited.

The stillness of death was about them. In other climes, when
nature falls into such moods, there is a subdued air of
expectancy, a waiting for some small voice to take up the broken
strain. Not so in the North. The two men had lived seeming eons
in this ghostly peace.

They could remember no song of the past; they could conjure no
song of the future. This unearthly calm had always been--the
tranquil silence of eternity.

Their eyes were fixed upon the north. Unseen, behind their backs,
behind the towering mountains to the south, the sun swept toward
the zenith of another sky than theirs. Sole spectators of the
mighty canvas, they watched the false dawn slowly grow. A faint
flame began to glow and smoulder. It deepened in intensity,
ringing the changes of reddish-yellow, purple, and saffron. So
bright did it become that Cuthfert thought the sun must surely be
behind it--a miracle, the sun rising in the north! Suddenly,
without warning and without fading, the canvas was swept clean.
There was no color in the sky. The light had gone out of the day.

They caught their breaths in half-sobs. But lo! the air was
aglint with particles of scintillating frost, and there, to the
north, the wind-vane lay in vague outline of the snow.

A shadow! A shadow! It was exactly midday. They jerked their
heads hurriedly to the south. A golden rim peeped over the
mountain's snowy shoulder, smiled upon them an instant, then
dipped from sight again.

There were tears in their eyes as they sought each other. A
strange softening came over them. They felt irresistibly drawn
toward each other. The sun was coming back again. It would be
with them tomorrow, and the next day, and the next.

And it would stay longer every visit, and a time would come when
it would ride their heaven day and night, never once dropping
below the skyline. There would be no night.

The ice-locked winter would be broken; the winds would blow and
the forests answer; the land would bathe in the blessed sunshine,
and life renew.

Hand in hand, they would quit this horrid dream and journey back
to the Southland. They lurched blindly forward, and their hands
met--their poor maimed hands, swollen and distorted beneath their
mittens.

But the promise was destined to remain unfulfilled. The Northland
is the Northland, and men work out their souls by strange rules,
which other men, who have not journeyed into far countries,
cannot come to understand.

An hour later, Cuthfert put a pan of bread into the oven, and
fell to speculating on what the surgeons could do with his feet
when he got back. Home did not seem so very far away now.
Weatherbee was rummaging in the cache. Of a sudden, he raised a
whirlwind of blasphemy, which in turn ceased with startling
abruptness. The other man had robbed his sugar-sack. Still,
things might have happened differently, had not the two dead men
come out from under the stones and hushed the hot words in his
throat. They led him quite gently from the cache, which he forgot
to close. That consummation was reached; that something they had
whispered to him in his dreams was about to happen. They guided
him gently, very gently, to the woodpile, where they put the axe
in his hands.

Then they helped him shove open the cabin door, and he felt sure
they shut it after him-at least he heard it slam and the latch
fall sharply into place. And he knew they were waiting just
without, waiting for him to do his task.

'Carter! I say, Carter!' Percy Cuthfert was frightened at the
look on the clerk's face, and he made haste to put the table
between them.

Carter Weatherbee followed, without haste and without enthusiasm.
There was neither pity nor passion in his face, but rather the
patient, stolid look of one who has certain work to do and goes
about it methodically.

'I say, what's the matter?'

The clerk dodged back, cutting off his retreat to the door, but
never opening his mouth.

'I say, Carter, I say; let's talk. There's a good chap.' The
master of arts was thinking rapidly, now, shaping a skillful
flank movement on the bed where his Smith & Wesson lay. Keeping
his eyes on the madman, he rolled backward on the bunk, at the
same time clutching the pistol.

'Carter!' The powder flashed full in Weatherbee's face, but he
swung his weapon and leaped forward. The axe bit deeply at the
base of the spine, and Percy Cuthfert felt all consciousness of
his lower limbs leave him. Then the clerk fell heavily upon him,
clutching him by the throat with feeble fingers. The sharp bite
of the axe had caused Cuthfert to drop the pistol, and as his
lungs panted for release, he fumbled aimlessly for it among the
blankets. Then he remembered. He slid a hand up the clerk's belt
to the sheath-knife; and they drew very close to each other in
that last clinch.

Percy Cuthfert felt his strength leave him. The lower portion of
his body was useless, The inert weight of Weatherbee crushed
him--crushed him and pinned him there like a bear under a trap.
The cabin became filled with a familiar odor, and he knew the
bread to be burning. Yet what did it matter? He would never need
it. And there were all of six cupfuls of sugar in the cache--if
he had foreseen this he would not have been so saving the last
several days. Would the wind-vane ever move? Why not' Had he not
seen the sun today? He would go and see. No; it was impossible to
move. He had not thought the clerk so heavy a man.

How quickly the cabin cooled! The fire must be out. The cold was
forcing in.

It must be below zero already, and the ice creeping up the inside
of the door. He could not see it, but his past experience enabled
him to gauge its progress by the cabin's temperature. The lower
hinge must be white ere now. Would the tale of this ever reach
the world? How would his friends take it? They would read it over
their coffee, most likely, and talk it over at the clubs. He
could see them very clearly, 'Poor Old Cuthfert,' they murmured;
'not such a bad sort of a chap, after all.' He smiled at their
eulogies, and passed on in search of a Turkish bath. It was the
same old crowd upon the streets.

Strange, they did not notice his moosehide moccasins and tattered
German socks! He would take a cab. And after the bath a shave
would not be bad. No; he would eat first.

Steak, and potatoes, and green things how fresh it all was! And
what was that? Squares of honey, streaming liquid amber! But why
did they bring so much? Ha! ha! he could never eat it all.

Shine! Why certainly. He put his foot on the box. The bootblack
looked curiously up at him, and he remembered his moosehide
moccasins and went away hastily.

Hark! The wind-vane must be surely spinning. No; a mere singing
in his ears.

That was all--a mere singing. The ice must have passed the latch
by now. More likely the upper hinge was covered. Between the
moss-chinked roof-poles, little points of frost began to appear.
How slowly they grew! No; not so slowly. There was a new one, and
there another. Two--three--four; they were coming too fast to
count. There were two growing together. And there, a third had
joined them.

Why, there were no more spots. They had run together and formed a
sheet.

Well, he would have company. If Gabriel ever broke the silence of
the North, they would stand together, hand in hand, before the
great White Throne. And God would judge them, God would judge
them!

Then Percy Cuthfert closed his eyes and dropped off to sleep.



To the Man on the Trail

'Dump it in!.' 'But I say, Kid, isn't that going it a little too
strong' Whisky and alcohol's bad enough; but when it comes to
brandy and pepper sauce and-' 'Dump it in. Who's making this
punch, anyway?' And Malemute Kid smiled benignantly through the
clouds of steam. 'By the time you've been in this country as long
as I have, my son, and lived on rabbit tracks and salmon belly,
you'll learn that Christmas comes only once per annum.

And a Christmas without punch is sinking a hole to bedrock with
nary a pay streak.'

'Stack up on that fer a high cyard,' approved Big Jim Belden, who
had come down from his claim on Mazy May to spend Christmas, and
who, as everyone knew, had been living the two months past on
straight moose meat. 'Hain't fergot the hooch we-uns made on the
Tanana, hey yeh?' 'Well, I guess yes. Boys, it would have done
your hearts good to see that whole tribe fighting drunk--and all
because of a glorious ferment of sugar and sour dough. That was
before your time,' Malemute Kid said as he turned to Stanley
Prince, a young mining expert who had been in two years. 'No
white women in the country then, and Mason wanted to get married.
Ruth's father was chief of the Tananas, and objected, like the
rest of the tribe. Stiff? Why, I used my last pound of sugar;
finest work in that line I ever did in my life. You should have
seen the chase, down the river and across the portage.' 'But the
squaw?' asked Louis Savoy, the tall French Canadian, becoming
interested; for he had heard of this wild deed when at Forty Mile
the preceding winter.

Then Malemute Kid, who was a born raconteur, told the unvarnished
tale of the Northland Lochinvar. More than one rough adventurer
of the North felt his heartstrings draw closer and experienced
vague yearnings for the sunnier pastures of the Southland, where
life promised something more than a barren struggle with cold and
death.

'We struck the Yukon just behind the first ice run,' he
concluded, 'and the tribe only a quarter of an hour behind. But
that saved us; for the second run broke the jam above and shut
them out. When they finally got into Nuklukyeto, the whole post
was ready for them.

And as to the forgathering, ask Father Roubeau here: he performed
the ceremony.' The Jesuit took the pipe from his lips but could
only express his gratification with patriarchal smiles, while
Protestant and Catholic vigorously applauded.

'By gar!' ejaculated Louis Savoy, who seemed overcome by the
romance of it. 'La petite squaw: mon Mason brav. By gar!' Then,
as the first tin cups of punch went round, Bettles the
Unquenchable sprang to his feet and struck up his favorite
drinking song: 'There's Henry Ward Beecher And Sunday-school
teachers, All drink of the sassafras root; But you bet all the
same, If it had its right name, It's the juice of the forbidden
fruit.'

'Oh, the juice of the forbidden fruit,' roared out the
bacchanalian chorus, 'Oh, the juice of the forbidden fruit; But
you bet all the same, If it had its right name, It's the juice of
the forbidden fruit.'

Malemute Kid's frightful concoction did its work; the men of the
camps and trails unbent in its genial glow, and jest and song and
tales of past adventure went round the board.

Aliens from a dozen lands, they toasted each and all. It was the
Englishman, Prince, who pledged 'Uncle Sam, the precocious infant
of the New World'; the Yankee, Bettles, who drank to 'The Queen,
God bless her'; and together, Savoy and Meyers, the German
trader, clanged their cups to Alsace and Lorraine.

Then Malemute Kid arose, cup in hand, and glanced at the
greased-paper window, where the frost stood full three inches
thick. 'A health to the man on trail this night; may his grub
hold out; may his dogs keep their legs; may his matches never
miss fire.' Crack!

Crack! heard the familiar music of the dog whip, the whining howl
of the Malemutes, and the crunch of a sled as it drew up to the
cabin. Conversation languished while they waited the issue.

'An old-timer; cares for his dogs and then himself,' whispered
Malemute Kid to Prince as they listened to the snapping jaws and
the wolfish snarls and yelps of pain which proclaimed to their
practiced ears that the stranger was beating back their dogs
while he fed his own.

Then came the expected knock, sharp and confident, and the
stranger entered.

Dazzled by the light, he hesitated a moment at the door, giving
to all a chance for scrutiny. He was a striking personage, and a
most picturesque one, in his Arctic dress of wool and fur.
Standing six foot two or three, with proportionate breadth of
shoulders and depth of chest, his smooth-shaven face nipped by
the cold to a gleaming pink, his long lashes and eyebrows white
with ice, and the ear and neck flaps of his great wolfskin cap
loosely raised, he seemed, of a verity, the Frost King, just
stepped in out of the night.

Clasped outside his Mackinaw jacket, a beaded belt held two large
Colt's revolvers and a hunting knife, while he carried, in
addition to the inevitable dog whip, a smokeless rifle of the
largest bore and latest pattern. As he came forward, for all his
step was firm and elastic, they could see that fatigue bore
heavily upon him.

An awkward silence had fallen, but his hearty 'What cheer, my
lads?' put them quickly at ease, and the next instant Malemute
Kid and he had gripped hands. Though they had never met, each had
heard of the other, and the recognition was mutual. A sweeping
introduction and a mug of punch were forced upon him before he
could explain his errand.

How long since that basket sled, with three men and eight dogs,
passed?' he asked.

'An even two days ahead. Are you after them?' 'Yes; my team. Run
them off under my very nose, the cusses. I've gained two days on
them already--pick them up on the next run.' 'Reckon they'll show
spunk?' asked Belden, in order to keep up the conversation, for
Malemute Kid already had the coffeepot on and was busily frying
bacon and moose meat.

The stranger significantly tapped his revolvers.

'When'd yeh leave Dawson?' 'Twelve o'clock.' 'Last night?'--as a
matter of course.

'Today.' A murmur of surprise passed round the circle. And well
it might; for it was just midnight, and seventy-five miles of
rough river trail was not to be sneered at for a twelve hours'
run.

The talk soon became impersonal, however, harking back to the
trails of childhood. As the young stranger ate of the rude fare
Malemute Kid attentively studied his face. Nor was he long in
deciding that it was fair, honest, and open, and that he liked
it. Still youthful, the lines had been firmly traced by toil and
hardship.

Though genial in conversation, and mild when at rest, the blue
eyes gave promise of the hard steel-glitter which comes when
called into action, especially against odds. The heavy jaw and
square-cut chin demonstrated rugged pertinacity and
indomitability. Nor, though the attributes of the lion were
there, was there wanting the certain softness, the hint of
womanliness, which bespoke the emotional nature.

'So thet's how me an' the ol' woman got spliced,' said Belden,
concluding the exciting tale of his courtship. '"Here we be,
Dad," sez she. "An' may yeh be damned," sez he to her, an' then
to me, "Jim, yeh--yeh git outen them good duds o' yourn; I want a
right peart slice o' thet forty acre plowed 'fore dinner." An'
then he sort o' sniffled an' kissed her. An' I was thet
happy--but he seen me an' roars out, "Yeh, Jim!" An' yeh bet I
dusted fer the barn.' 'Any kids waiting for you back in the
States?' asked the stranger.

'Nope; Sal died 'fore any come. Thet's why I'm here.' Belden
abstractedly began to light his pipe, which had failed to go out,
and then brightened up with, 'How 'bout yerself,
stranger--married man?' For reply, he opened his watch, slipped
it from the thong which served for a chain, and passed it over.
Belden picked up the slush lamp, surveyed the inside of the case
critically, and, swearing admiringly to himself, handed it over
to Louis Savoy. With numerous 'By gars!' he finally surrendered
it to Prince, and they noticed that his hands trembled and his
eyes took on a peculiar softness. And so it passed from horny
hand to horny hand--the pasted photograph of a woman, the
clinging kind that such men fancy, with a babe at the breast.
Those who had not yet seen the wonder were keen with curiosity;
those who had became silent and retrospective. They could face
the pinch of famine, the grip of scurvy, or the quick death by
field or flood; but the pictured semblance of a stranger woman
and child made women and children of them all.

'Never have seen the youngster yet--he's a boy, she says, and two
years old,' said the stranger as he received the treasure back. A
lingering moment he gazed upon it, then snapped the case and
turned away, but not quick enough to hide the restrained rush of
tears. Malemute Kid led him to a bunk and bade him turn in.

'Call me at four sharp. Don't fail me,' were his last words, and
a moment later he was breathing in the heaviness of exhausted
sleep.

'By Jove! He's a plucky chap,' commented Prince. 'Three hours'
sleep after seventy-five miles with the dogs, and then the trail
again. Who is he, Kid?' 'Jack Westondale. Been in going on three
years, with nothing but the name of working like a horse, and any
amount of bad luck to his credit. I never knew him, but Sitka
Charley told me about him.' 'It seems hard that a man with a
sweet young wife like his should be putting in his years in this
Godforsaken hole, where every year counts two on the outside.'
'The trouble with him is clean grit and stubbornness. He's
cleaned up twice with a stake, but lost it both times.' Here the
conversation was broken off by an uproar from Bettles, for the
effect had begun to wear away. And soon the bleak years of
monotonous grub and deadening toil were being forgotten in rough
merriment. Malemute Kid alone seemed unable to lose himself, and
cast many an anxious look at his watch. Once he put on his
mittens and beaver-skin cap, and, leaving the cabin, fell to
rummaging about in the cache.

Nor could he wait the hour designated; for he was fifteen minutes
ahead of time in rousing his guest. The young giant had stiffened
badly, and brisk rubbing was necessary to bring him to his feet.
He tottered painfully out of the cabin, to find his dogs
harnessed and everything ready for the start. The company wished
him good luck and a short chase, while Father Roubeau, hurriedly
blessing him, led the stampede for the cabin; and small wonder,
for it is not good to face seventy-four degrees below zero with
naked ears and hands.

Malemute Kid saw him to the main trail, and there, gripping his
hand heartily, gave him advice.

'You'll find a hundred pounds of salmon eggs on the sled,' he
said. 'The dogs will go as far on that as with one hundred and
fifty of fish, and you can't get dog food at Pelly, as you
probably expected.' The stranger started, and his eyes flashed,
but he did not interrupt. 'You can't get an ounce of food for dog
or man till you reach Five Fingers, and that's a stiff two
hundred miles. Watch out for open water on the Thirty Mile River,
and be sure you take the big cutoff above Le Barge.' 'How did you
know it? Surely the news can't be ahead of me already?' 'I don't
know it; and what's more, I don't want to know it. But you never
owned that team you're chasing. Sitka Charley sold it to them
last spring. But he sized you up to me as square once, and I
believe him. I've seen your face; I like it. And I've seen--why,
damn you, hit the high places for salt water and that wife of
yours, and--' Here the Kid unmittened and jerked out his sack.

'No; I don't need it,' and the tears froze on his cheeks as he
convulsively gripped Malemute Kid's hand.

'Then don't spare the dogs; cut them out of the traces as fast as
they drop; buy them, and think they're cheap at ten dollars a
pound. You can get them at Five Fingers, Little Salmon, and
Hootalinqua. And watch out for wet feet,' was his parting advice.
'Keep a-traveling up to twenty-five, but if it gets below that,
build a fire and change your socks.'

Fifteen minutes had barely elapsed when the jingle of bells
announced new arrivals. The door opened, and a mounted policeman
of the Northwest Territory entered, followed by two half-breed
dog drivers. Like Westondale, they were heavily armed and showed
signs of fatigue. The half-breeds had been borne to the trail and
bore it easily; but the young policeman was badly exhausted.
Still, the dogged obstinacy of his race held him to the pace he
had set, and would hold him till he dropped in his tracks.

'When did Westondale pull out?' he asked. 'He stopped here,
didn't he?' This was supererogatory, for the tracks told their
own tale too well.

Malemute Kid had caught Belden's eye, and he, scenting the wind,
replied evasively, 'A right peart while back.' 'Come, my man;
speak up,' the policeman admonished.

'Yeh seem to want him right smart. Hez he ben gittin'
cantankerous down Dawson way?'

'Held up Harry McFarland's for forty thousand; exchanged it at
the P.C. store for a check on Seattle; and who's to stop the
cashing of it if we don't overtake him? When did he pull out?'

Every eye suppressed its excitement, for Malemute Kid had given
the cue, and the young officer encountered wooden faces on every
hand.

Striding over to Prince, he put the question to him. Though it
hurt him, gazing into the frank, earnest face. of his fellow
countryman, he replied inconsequentially on the state of the
trail.

Then he espied Father Roubeau, who could not lie. 'A quarter of
an hour ago,' the priest answered; 'but he had four hours' rest
for himself and dogs.' 'Fifteen minutes' start, and he's fresh!
My God!' The poor fellow staggered back, half fainting from
exhaustion and disappointment, murmuring something about the run
from Dawson in ten hours and the dogs being played out.

Malemute Kid forced a mug of punch upon him; then he turned for
the door, ordering the dog drivers to follow. But the warmth and
promise of rest were too tempting, and they objected strenuously.
The Kid was conversant with their French patois, and followed it
anxiously.

They swore that the dogs were gone up; that Siwash and Babette
would have to be shot before the first mile was covered; that the
rest were almost as bad; and that it would be better for all
hands to rest up.

'Lend me five dogs?' he asked, turning to Malemute Kid.

But the Kid shook his head.

'I'll sign a check on Captain Constantine for five
thousand--here's my papers--I'm authorized to draw at my own
discretion.'

Again the silent refusal.

'Then I'll requisition them in the name of the Queen.' Smiling
incredulously, the Kid glanced at his well-stocked arsenal, and
the Englishman, realizing his impotency, turned for the door. But
the dog drivers still objecting, he whirled upon them fiercely,
calling them women and curs. The swart face of the older
half-breed flushed angrily as he drew himself up and promised in
good, round terms that he would travel his leader off his legs,
and would then be delighted to plant him in the snow.

The young officer--and it required his whole will--walked
steadily to the door, exhibiting a freshness he did not possess.
But they all knew and appreciated his proud effort; nor could he
veil the twinges of agony that shot across his face. Covered with
frost, the dogs were curled up in the snow, and it was almost
impossible to get them to their feet. The poor brutes whined
under the stinging lash, for the dog drivers were angry and
cruel; nor till Babette, the leader, was cut from the traces,
could they break out the sled and get under way.

'A dirty scoundrel and a liar!' 'By gar! Him no good!' 'A thief!'
'Worse than an Indian!'

It was evident that they were angry--first at the way they had
been deceived; and second at the outraged ethics of the
Northland, where honesty, above all, was man's prime jewel.

'An' we gave the cuss a hand, after knowin' what he'd did.' All
eyes turned accusingly upon Malemute Kid, who rose from the
corner where he had been making Babette comfortable, and silently
emptied the bowl for a final round of punch.

'It's a cold night, boys--a bitter cold night,' was the
irrelevant commencement of his defense. 'You've all traveled
trail, and know what that stands for. Don't jump a dog when he's
down. You've only heard one side. A whiter man than Jack
Westondale never ate from the same pot nor stretched blanket with
you or me.

'Last fall he gave his whole clean-up, forty thousand, to Joe
Castrell, to buy in on Dominion. Today he'd be a millionaire.
But, while he stayed behind at Circle City, taking care of his
partner with the scurvy, what does Castell do? Goes into
McFarland's, jumps the limit, and drops the whole sack. Found him
dead in the snow the next day. And poor Jack laying his plans to
go out this winter to his wife and the boy he's never seen.
You'll notice he took exactly what his partner lostforty
thousand. Well, he's gone out; and what are you going to do about
it?' The Kid glanced round the circle of his judges, noted the
softening of their faces, then raised his mug aloft. 'So a health
to the man on trail this night; may his grub hold out; may his
dogs keep their legs; may his matches never miss fire.

'God prosper him; good luck go with him; and--' 'Confusion to the
Mounted Police!' cried Bettles, to the crash of the empty cups.



The Priestly Prerogative

This is the story of a man who did not appreciate his wife; also,
of a woman who did him too great an honor when she gave herself
to him. Incidentally, it concerns a Jesuit priest who had never
been known to lie. He was an appurtenance, and a very necessary
one, to the Yukon country; but the presence of the other two was
merely accidental. They were specimens of the many strange waifs
which ride the breast of a gold rush or come tailing along
behind.

Edwin Bentham and Grace Bentham were waifs; they were also
tailing along behind, for the Klondike rush of '97 had long since
swept down the great river and subsided into the famine-stricken
city of Dawson. When the Yukon shut up shop and went to sleep
under a three-foot ice-sheet, this peripatetic couple found
themselves at the Five Finger Rapids, with the City of Gold still
a journey of many sleeps to the north.

Many cattle had been butchered at this place in the fall of the
year, and the offal made a goodly heap. The three fellow-voyagers
of Edwin Bentham and wife gazed upon this deposit, did a little
mental arithmetic, caught a certain glimpse of a bonanza, and
decided to remain. And all winter they sold sacks of bones and
frozen hides to the famished dog-teams. It was a modest price
they asked, a dollar a pound, just as it came. Six months later,
when the sun came back and the Yukon awoke, they buckled on their
heavy moneybelts and journeyed back to the Southland, where they
yet live and lie mightily about the Klondike they never saw.

But Edwin Bentham--he was an indolent fellow, and had he not been
possessed of a wife, would have gladly joined issued in the
dog-meat speculation. As it was, she played upon his vanity, told
him how great and strong he was, how a man such as he certainly
was could overcome all obstacles and of a surety obtain the
Golden Fleece. So he squared his jaw, sold his share in the bones
and hides for a sled and one dog, and turned his snowshoes to the
north. Needless to state, Grace Bentham's snowshoes never allowed
his tracks to grow cold. Nay, ere their tribulations had seen
three days, it was the man who followed in the rear, and the
woman who broke trail in advance. Of course, if anybody hove in
sight, the position was instantly reversed. Thus did his manhood
remain virgin to the travelers who passed like ghosts on the
silent trail. There are such men in this world.

How such a man and such a woman came to take each other for
better and for worse is unimportant to this narrative. These
things are familiar to us all, and those people who do them, or
even question them too closely, are apt to lose a beautiful faith
which is known as Eternal Fitness.

Edwin Bentham was a boy, thrust by mischance into a man's
body,--a boy who could complacently pluck a butterfly, wing from
wing, or cower in abject terror before a lean, nervy fellow, not
half his size. He was a selfish cry-baby, hidden behind a man's
mustache and stature, and glossed over with a skin-deep veneer of
culture and conventionality. Yes; he was a clubman and a society
man,the sort that grace social functions and utter inanities with
a charm and unction which is indescribable; the sort that talk
big, and cry over a toothache; the sort that put more hell into a
woman's life by marrying her than can the most graceless
libertine that ever browsed in forbidden pastures. We meet these
men every day, but we rarely know them for what they are. Second
to marrying them, the best way to get this knowledge is to eat
out of the same pot and crawl under the same blanket with them
for--well, say a week; no greater margin is necessary.

To see Grace Bentham, was to see a slender, girlish creature; to
know her, was to know a soul which dwarfed your own, yet retained
all the elements of the eternal feminine. This was the woman who
urged and encouraged her husband in his Northland quest, who
broke trail for him when no one was looking, and cried in secret
over her weakling woman's body.

So journeyed this strangely assorted couple down to old Fort
Selkirk, then through fivescore miles of dismal wilderness to
Stuart River. And when the short day left them, and the man lay
down in the snow and blubbered, it was the woman who lashed him
to the sled, bit her lips with the pain of her aching limbs, and
helped the dog haul him to Malemute Kid's cabin. Malemute Kid was
not at home, but Meyers, the German trader, cooked great
moose-steaks and shook up a bed of fresh pine boughs. Lake,
Langham, and Parker, were excited, and not unduly so when the
cause was taken into account.

'Oh, Sandy! Say, can you tell a porterhouse from a round? Come
out and lend us a hand, anyway!' This appeal emanated from the
cache, where Langham was vainly struggling with divers quarters
of frozen moose.

'Don't you budge from those dishes!' commanded Parker.

'I say, Sandy; there's a good fellow--just run down to the
Missouri Camp and borrow some cinnamon,' begged Lake.

'Oh! oh! hurry up! Why don't--' But the crash of meat and boxes,
in the cache, abruptly quenched this peremptory summons.

'Come now, Sandy; it won't take a minute to go down to the
Missouri--' 'You leave him alone,' interrupted Parker. 'How am I
to mix the biscuits if the table isn't cleared off?'

Sandy paused in indecision, till suddenly the fact that he was
Langham's 'man' dawned upon him. Then he apologetically threw
down the greasy dishcloth, and went to his master's rescue.

These promising scions of wealthy progenitors had come to the
Northland in search of laurels, with much money to burn, and a
'man' apiece. Luckily for their souls, the other two men were up
the White River in search of a mythical quartz-ledge; so Sandy
had to grin under the responsibility of three healthy masters,
each of whom was possessed of peculiar cookery ideas. Twice that
morning had a disruption of the whole camp been imminent, only
averted by immense concessions from one or the other of these
knights of the chafing-dish. But at last their mutual creation, a
really dainty dinner, was completed.

Then they sat down to a three-cornered game of 'cut-throat,'--a
proceeding which did away with all casus belli for future
hostilities, and permitted the victor to depart on a most
important mission.

This fortune fell to Parker, who parted his hair in the middle,
put on his mittens and bearskin cap, and stepped over to Malemute
Kid's cabin. And when he returned, it was in the company of Grace
Bentham and Malemute Kid,--the former very sorry her husband
could not share with her their hospitality, for he had gone up to
look at the Henderson Creek mines, and the latter still a trifle
stiff from breaking trail down the Stuart River.

Meyers had been asked, but had declined, being deeply engrossed
in an experiment of raising bread from hops.

Well, they could do without the husband; but a woman--why they
had not seen one all winter, and the presence of this one
promised a new era in their lives.

They were college men and gentlemen, these three young fellows,
yearning for the flesh-pots they had been so long denied.
Probably Grace Bentham suffered from a similar hunger; at least,
it meant much to her, the first bright hour in many weeks of
darkness.

But that wonderful first course, which claimed the versatile Lake
for its parent, had no sooner been served than there came a loud
knock at the door.

'Oh! Ah! Won't you come in, Mr. Bentham?' said Parker, who had
stepped to see who the newcomer might be.

'Is my wife here?' gruffly responded that worthy.

'Why, yes. We left word with Mr. Meyers.' Parker was exerting his
most dulcet tones, inwardly wondering what the deuce it all
meant. 'Won't you come in? Expecting you at any moment, we
reserved a place. And just in time for the first course, too.'
'Come in, Edwin, dear,' chirped Grace Bentham from her seat at
the table.

Parker naturally stood aside.

'I want my wife,' reiterated Bentham hoarsely, the intonation
savoring disagreeably of ownership.

Parker gasped, was within an ace of driving his fist into the
face of his boorish visitor, but held himself awkwardly in check.
Everybody rose. Lake lost his head and caught himself on the
verge of saying, 'Must you go?' Then began the farrago of
leave-taking. 'So nice of you--' 'I am awfully sorry' 'By Jove!
how things did brighten--' 'Really now, you--'

'Thank you ever so much--' 'Nice trip to Dawson--' etc., etc.

In this wise the lamb was helped into her jacket and led to the
slaughter. Then the door slammed, and they gazed woefully upon
the deserted table.

'Damn!' Langham had suffered disadvantages in his early training,
and his oaths were weak and monotonous. 'Damn!' he repeated,
vaguely conscious of the incompleteness and vainly struggling for
a more virile term. It is a clever woman who can fill out the
many weak places in an inefficient man, by her own
indomitability, re-enforce his vacillating nature, infuse her
ambitious soul into his, and spur him on to great achievements.
And it is indeed a very clever and tactful woman who can do all
this, and do it so subtly that the man receives all the credit
and believes in his inmost heart that everything is due to him
and him alone.

This is what Grace Bentham proceeded to do. Arriving in Dawson
with a few pounds of flour and several letters of introduction,
she at once applied herself to the task of pushing her big baby
to the fore. It was she who melted the stony heart and wrung
credit from the rude barbarian who presided over the destiny of
the P. C. Company; yet it was Edwin Bentham to whom the
concession was ostensibly granted. It was she who dragged her
baby up and down creeks, over benches and divides, and on a dozen
wild stampedes; yet everybody remarked what an energetic fellow
that Bentham was. It was she who studied maps, and catechised
miners, and hammered geography and locations into his hollow
head, till everybody marveled at his broad grasp of the country
and knowledge of its conditions. Of course, they said the wife
was a brick, and only a few wise ones appreciated and pitied the
brave little woman.

She did the work; he got the credit and reward. In the Northwest
Territory a married woman cannot stake or record a creek, bench,
or quartz claim; so Edwin Bentham went down to the Gold
Commissioner and filed on Bench Claim 23, second tier, of French
Hill. And when April came they were washing out a thousand
dollars a day, with many, many such days in prospect.

At the base of French Hill lay Eldorado Creek, and on a creek
claim stood the cabin of Clyde Wharton. At present he was not
washing out a diurnal thousand dollars; but his dumps grew, shift
by shift, and there would come a time when those dumps would pass
through his sluice-boxes, depositing in the riffles, in the
course of half a dozen days, several hundred thousand dollars. He
often sat in that cabin, smoked his pipe, and dreamed beautiful
little dreams,--dreams in which neither the dumps nor the
half-ton of dust in the P. C. Company's big safe, played a part.

And Grace Bentham, as she washed tin dishes in her hillside
cabin, often glanced down into Eldorado Creek, and dreamed,--not
of dumps nor dust, however. They met frequently, as the trail to
the one claim crossed the other, and there is much to talk about
in the Northland spring; but never once, by the light of an eye
nor the slip of a tongue, did they speak their hearts.

This is as it was at first. But one day Edwin Bentham was brutal.
All boys are thus; besides, being a French Hill king now, he
began to think a great deal of himself and to forget all he owed
to his wife. On this day, Wharton heard of it, and waylaid Grace
Bentham, and talked wildly. This made her very happy, though she
would not listen, and made him promise to not say such things
again. Her hour had not come.

But the sun swept back on its northern journey, the black of
midnight changed to the steely color of dawn, the snow slipped
away, the water dashed again over the glacial drift, and the
wash-up began. Day and night the yellow clay and scraped bedrock
hurried through the swift sluices, yielding up its ransom to the
strong men from the Southland.

And in that time of tumult came Grace Bentham's hour.

To all of us such hours at some time come,--that is, to us who
are not too phlegmatic.

Some people are good, not from inherent love of virtue, but from
sheer laziness. But those of us who know weak moments may
understand.

Edwin Bentham was weighing dust over the bar of the saloon at the
Forks--altogether too much of his dust went over that pine
board--when his wife came down the hill and slipped into Clyde
Wharton's cabin. Wharton was not expecting her, but that did not
alter the case. And much subsequent misery and idle waiting might
have been avoided, had not Father Roubeau seen this and turned
aside from the main creek trail. 'My child,--' 'Hold on, Father
Roubeau! Though I'm not of your faith, I respect you; but you
can't come in between this woman and me!' 'You know what you are
doing?' 'Know! Were you God Almighty, ready to fling me into
eternal fire, I'd bank my will against yours in this matter.'
Wharton had placed Grace on a stool and stood belligerently
before her.

'You sit down on that chair and keep quiet,' he continued,
addressing the Jesuit. 'I'll take my innings now. You can have
yours after.'

Father Roubeau bowed courteously and obeyed. He was an easy-going
man and had learned to bide his time. Wharton pulled a stool
alongside the woman's, smothering her hand in his.

'Then you do care for me, and will take me away?' Her face seemed
to reflect the peace of this man, against whom she might draw
close for shelter.

'Dear, don't you remember what I said before? Of course I-' 'But
how can you?--the wash-up?' 'Do you think that worries? Anyway,
I'll give the job to Father Roubeau, here.

I can trust him to safely bank the dust with the company.' 'To
think of it!--I'll never see him again.' 'A blessing!' 'And to
go--O, Clyde, I can't! I can't!' 'There, there; of course you
can. just let me plan it.--You see, as soon as we get a few traps
together, we'll start, and-' 'Suppose he comes back?' 'I'll break
every-' 'No, no! No fighting, Clyde! Promise me that.' 'All
right! I'll just tell the men to throw him off the claim. They've
seen how he's treated you, and haven't much love for him.'

'You mustn't do that. You mustn't hurt him.' 'What then? Let him
come right in here and take you away before my eyes?' 'No-o,' she
half whispered, stroking his hand softly.

'Then let me run it, and don't worry. I'll see he doesn't get
hurt. Precious lot he cared whether you got hurt or not! We won't
go back to Dawson. I'll send word down for a couple of the boys
to outfit and pole a boat up the Yukon. We'll cross the divide
and raft down the Indian River to meet them. Then--' 'And then?'
Her head was on his shoulder.

Their voices sank to softer cadences, each word a caress. The
Jesuit fidgeted nervously.

'And then?' she repeated.

'Why we'll pole up, and up, and up, and portage the White Horse
Rapids and the Box Canon.' 'Yes?' 'And the Sixty-Mile River; then
the lakes, Chilcoot, Dyea, and Salt Water.' 'But, dear, I can't
pole a boat.' 'You little goose! I'll get Sitka Charley; he knows
all the good water and best camps, and he is the best traveler I
ever met, if he is an Indian. All you'll have to do, is to sit in
the middle of the boat, and sing songs, and play Cleopatra, and
fight--no, we're in luck; too early for mosquitoes.'

'And then, O my Antony?' 'And then a steamer, San Francisco, and
the world! Never to come back to this cursed hole again. Think of
it! The world, and ours to choose from! I'll sell out. Why, we're
rich! The Waldworth Syndicate will give me half a million for
what's left in the ground, and I've got twice as much in the
dumps and with the P. C. Company. We'll go to the Fair in Paris
in 1900. We'll go to Jerusalem, if you say so.

'We'll buy an Italian palace, and you can play Cleopatra to your
heart's content. No, you shall be Lucretia, Acte, or anybody your
little heart sees fit to become. But you mustn't, you really
mustn't-' 'The wife of Caesar shall be above reproach.' 'Of
course, but--' 'But I won't be your wife, will I, dear?' 'I
didn't mean that.' 'But you'll love me just as much, and never
even think--oh! I know you'll be like other men; you'll grow
tired, and--and-'

'How can you? I--' 'Promise me.' 'Yes, yes; I do promise.' 'You
say it so easily, dear; but how do you know?--or I know? I have
so little to give, yet it is so much, and all I have. O, Clyde!
promise me you won't?'

'There, there! You musn't begin to doubt already. Till death do
us part, you know.'

'Think! I once said that to--to him, and now?' 'And now, little
sweetheart, you're not to bother about such things any more.

Of course, I never, never will, and--' And for the first time,
lips trembled against lips.

Father Roubeau had been watching the main trail through the
window, but could stand the strain no longer.

He cleared his throat and turned around.

'Your turn now, Father!' Wharton's face was flushed with the fire
of his first embrace.

There was an exultant ring to his voice as he abdicated in the
other's favor. He had no doubt as to the result. Neither had
Grace, for a smile played about her mouth as she faced the
priest.

'My child,' he began, 'my heart bleeds for you. It is a pretty
dream, but it cannot be.'

'And why, Father? I have said yes.' 'You knew not what you did.
You did not think of the oath you took, before your God, to that
man who is your husband. It remains for me to make you realize
the sanctity of such a pledge.' 'And if I do realize, and yet
refuse?'

'Then God'

'Which God? My husband has a God which I care not to worship.
There must be many such.' 'Child! unsay those words! Ah! you do
not mean them. I understand. I, too, have had such moments.' For
an instant he was back in his native France, and a wistful,
sad-eyed face came as a mist between him and the woman before
him.

'Then, Father, has my God forsaken me? I am not wicked above
women. My misery with him has been great. Why should it be
greater? Why shall I not grasp at happiness? I cannot, will not,
go back to him!' 'Rather is your God forsaken. Return. Throw your
burden upon Him, and the darkness shall be lifted. O my child,--'
'No; it is useless; I have made my bed and so shall I lie. I will
go on. And if God punishes me, I shall bear it somehow. You do
not understand. You are not a woman.' 'My mother was a woman.'

'But--' 'And Christ was born of a woman.' She did not answer. A
silence fell. Wharton pulled his mustache impatiently and kept an
eye on the trail. Grace leaned her elbow on the table, her face
set with resolve. The smile had died away. Father Roubeau shifted
his ground.

'You have children?'

'At one time I wished--but now--no. And I am thankful.' 'And a
mother?' 'Yes.' 'She loves you?' 'Yes.' Her replies were
whispers.

'And a brother?--no matter, he is a man. But a sister?' Her head
drooped a quavering 'Yes.' 'Younger? Very much?' 'Seven years.'
'And you have thought well about this matter? About them? About
your mother? And your sister? She stands on the threshold of her
woman's life, and this wildness of yours may mean much to her.
Could you go before her, look upon her fresh young face, hold her
hand in yours, or touch your cheek to hers?'

To his words, her brain formed vivid images, till she cried out,
'Don't! don't!' and shrank away as do the wolf-dogs from the
lash.

'But you must face all this; and better it is to do it now.' In
his eyes, which she could not see, there was a great compassion,
but his face, tense and quivering, showed no relenting.

She raised her head from the table, forced back the tears,
struggled for control.

'I shall go away. They will never see me, and come to forget me.
I shall be to them as dead. And--and I will go with
Clyde--today.' It seemed final. Wharton stepped forward, but the
priest waved him back.

'You have wished for children?' A silent 'Yes.' 'And prayed for
them?' 'Often.' 'And have you thought, if you should have
children?' Father Roubeau's eyes rested for a moment on the man
by the window.

A quick light shot across her face. Then the full import dawned
upon her. She raised her hand appealingly, but he went on.

'Can you picture an innocent babe in your arms? A boy? The world
is not so hard upon a girl. Why, your very breast would turn to
gall! And you could be proud and happy of your boy, as you looked
on other children?--' 'O, have pity! Hush!' 'A scapegoat--'

'Don't! don't! I will go back!' She was at his feet.

'A child to grow up with no thought of evil, and one day the
world to fling a tender name in his face. A child to look back
and curse you from whose loins he sprang!'

'O my God! my God!' She groveled on the floor. The priest sighed
and raised her to her feet.

Wharton pressed forward, but she motioned him away.

'Don't come near me, Clyde! I am going back!' The tears were
coursing pitifully down her face, but she made no effort to wipe
them away.

'After all this? You cannot! I will not let you!' 'Don't touch
me!' She shivered and drew back.

'I will! You are mine! Do you hear? You are mine!' Then he
whirled upon the priest. 'O what a fool I was to ever let you wag
your silly tongue! Thank your God you are not a common man, for
I'd--but the priestly prerogative must be exercised, eh? Well,
you have exercised it. Now get out of my house, or I'll forget
who and what you are!' Father Roubeau bowed, took her hand, and
started for the door. But Wharton cut them off.

'Grace! You said you loved me?' 'I did.' 'And you do now?' 'I
do.' 'Say it again.'

'I do love you, Clyde; I do.' 'There, you priest!' he cried. 'You
have heard it, and with those words on her lips you would send
her back to live a lie and a hell with that man?'

But Father Roubeau whisked the woman into the inner room and
closed the door. 'No words!' he whispered to Wharton, as he
struck a casual posture on a stool. 'Remember, for her sake,' he
added.

The room echoed to a rough knock at the door; the latch raised
and Edwin Bentham stepped in.

'Seen anything of my wife?' he asked as soon as salutations had
been exchanged.

Two heads nodded negatively.

'I saw her tracks down from the cabin,' he continued tentatively,
'and they broke off, just opposite here, on the main trail.' His
listeners looked bored.

'And I--I thought--'

'She was here!' thundered Wharton.

The priest silenced him with a look. 'Did you see her tracks
leading up to this cabin, my son?' Wily Father Roubeau--he had
taken good care to obliterate them as he came up the same path an
hour before.

'I didn't stop to look, I--' His eyes rested suspiciously on the
door to the other room, then interrogated the priest. The latter
shook his head; but the doubt seemed to linger.

Father Roubeau breathed a swift, silent prayer, and rose to his
feet. 'If you doubt me, why--' He made as though to open the door.

A priest could not lie. Edwin Bentham had heard this often, and
believed it.

'Of course not, Father,' he interposed hurriedly. 'I was only
wondering where my wife had gone, and thought maybe--I guess
she's up at Mrs. Stanton's on French Gulch. Nice weather, isn't
it? Heard the news? Flour's gone down to forty dollars a hundred,
and they say the che-cha-quas are flocking down the river in
droves.

'But I must be going; so good-by.' The door slammed, and from the
window they watched him take his guest up French Gulch. A few
weeks later, just after the June high-water, two men shot a canoe
into mid-stream and made fast to a derelict pine. This tightened
the painter and jerked the frail craft along as would a tow-boat.
Father Roubeau had been directed to leave the Upper Country and
return to his swarthy children at Minook. The white men had come
among them, and they were devoting too little time to fishing,
and too much to a certain deity whose transient habitat was in
countless black bottles.

Malemute Kid also had business in the Lower Country, so they
journeyed together.

But one, in all the Northland, knew the man Paul Roubeau, and
that man was Malemute Kid. Before him alone did the priest cast
off the sacerdotal garb and stand naked. And why not? These two
men knew each other. Had they not shared the last morsel of fish,
the last pinch of tobacco, the last and inmost thought, on the
barren stretches of Bering Sea, in the heartbreaking mazes of the
Great Delta, on the terrible winter journey from Point Barrow to
the Porcupine? Father Roubeau puffed heavily at his trail-worn
pipe, and gazed on the reddisked sun, poised somberly on the edge
of the northern horizon.

Malemute Kid wound up his watch. It was midnight.

'Cheer up, old man!' The Kid was evidently gathering up a broken
thread.

'God surely will forgive such a lie. Let me give you the word of
a man who strikes a true note: If She have spoken a word,
remember thy lips are sealed, And the brand of the Dog is upon
him by whom is the secret revealed.

If there be trouble to Herward, and a lie of the blackest can
clear, Lie, while thy lips can move or a man is alive to hear.'

Father Roubeau removed his pipe and reflected. 'The man speaks
true, but my soul is not vexed with that. The lie and the penance
stand with God; but--but--'

'What then? Your hands are clean.' 'Not so. Kid, I have thought
much, and yet the thing remains. I knew, and made her go back.'
The clear note of a robin rang out from the wooden bank, a
partridge drummed the call in the distance, a moose lunged
noisily in the eddy; but the twain smoked on in silence.



The Wisdom of the Trail

Sitka Charley had achieved the impossible. Other Indians might
have known as much of the wisdom of the trail as he did; but he
alone knew the white man's wisdom, the honor of the trail, and
the law. But these things had not come to him in a day. The
aboriginal mind is slow to generalize, and many facts, repeated
often, are required to compass an understanding. Sitka Charley,
from boyhood, had been thrown continually with white men, and as
a man he had elected to cast his fortunes with them, expatriating
himself, once and for all, from his own people. Even then,
respecting, almost venerating their power, and pondering over it,
he had yet to divine its secret essence--the honor and the law.
And it was only by the cumulative evidence of years that he had
finally come to understand. Being an alien, when he did know, he
knew it better than the white man himself; being an Indian, he
had achieved the impossible.

And of these things had been bred a certain contempt for his own
people--a contempt which he had made it a custom to conceal, but
which now burst forth in a polyglot whirlwind of curses upon the
heads of Kah-Chucte and Gowhee. They cringed before him like a
brace of snarling wolf dogs, too cowardly to spring, too wolfish
to cover their fangs. They were not handsome creatures. Neither
was Sitka Charley. All three were frightful-looking. There was no
flesh to their faces; their cheekbones were massed with hideous
scabs which had cracked and frozen alternately under the intense
frost; while their eyes burned luridly with the light which is
born of desperation and hunger. Men so situated, beyond the pale
of the honor and the law, are not to be trusted. Sitka Charley
knew this; and this was why he had forced them to abandon their
rifles with the rest of the camp outfit ten days before. His
rifle and Captain Eppingwell's were the only ones that remained.

'Come, get a fire started,' he commanded, drawing out the
precious matchbox with its attendant strips of dry birchbark.

The two Indians fell sullenly to the task of gathering dead
branches and underwood. They were weak and paused often, catching
themselves, in the act of stooping, with giddy motions, or
staggering to the center of operations with their knees shaking
like castanets.

After each trip they rested for a moment, as though sick and
deadly weary. At times their eyes took on the patient stoicism of
dumb suffering; and again the ego seemed almost burst forth with
its wild cry, 'I, I, I want to exist!'--the dominant note of the
whole living universe.

A light breath of air blew from the south, nipping the exposed
portions of their bodies and driving the frost, in needles of
fire, through fur and flesh to the bones. So, when the fire had
grown lusty and thawed a damp circle in the snow about it, Sitka
Charley forced his reluctant comrades to lend a hand in pitching
a fly. It was a primitive affair, merely a blanket stretched
parallel with the fire and to windward of it, at an angle of
perhaps forty-five degrees. This shut out the chill wind and
threw the heat backward and down upon those who were to huddle in
its shelter. Then a layer of green spruce boughs were spread,
that their bodies might not come in contact with the snow. When
this task was completed, Kah-Chucte and Gowhee proceeded to take
care of their feet. Their icebound mocassins were sadly worn by
much travel, and the sharp ice of the river jams had cut them to
rags.

Their Siwash socks were similarly conditioned, and when these had
been thawed and removed, the dead-white tips of the toes, in the
various stages of mortification, told their simple tale of the
trail.

Leaving the two to the drying of their footgear, Sitka Charley
turned back over the course he had come. He, too, had a mighty
longing to sit by the fire and tend his complaining flesh, but
the honor and the law forbade. He toiled painfully over the
frozen field, each step a protest, every muscle in revolt.
Several times, where the open water between the jams had recently
crusted, he was forced to miserably accelerate his movements as
the fragile footing swayed and threatened beneath him. In such
places death was quick and easy; but it was not his desire to
endure no more.

His deepening anxiety vanished as two Indians dragged into view
round a bend in the river. They staggered and panted like men
under heavy burdens; yet the packs on their backs were a matter
of but a few pounds. He questioned them eagerly, and their
replies seemed to relieve him. He hurried on. Next came two white
men, supporting between them a woman. They also behaved as though
drunken, and their limbs shook with weakness. But the woman
leaned lightly upon them, choosing to carry herself forward with
her own strength. At the sight of her a flash of joy cast its
fleeting light across Sitka Charley's face. He cherished a very
great regard for Mrs. Eppingwell. He had seen many white women,
but this was the first to travel the trail with him. When Captain
Eppingwell proposed the hazardous undertaking and made him an
offer for his services, he had shaken his head gravely; for it
was an unknown journey through the dismal vastnesses of the
Northland, and he knew it to be of the kind that try to the
uttermost the souls of men.

But when he learned that the captain's wife was to accompany
them, he had refused flatly to have anything further to do with
it. Had it been a woman of his own race he would have harbored no
objections; but these women of the Southland--no, no, they were
too soft, too tender, for such enterprises.

Sitka Charley did not know this kind of woman. Five minutes
before, he did not even dream of taking charge of the expedition;
but when she came to him with her wonderful smile and her
straight clean English, and talked to the point, without pleading
or persuading, he had incontinently yielded. Had there been a
softness and appeal to mercy in the eyes, a tremble to the voice,
a taking advantage of sex, he would have stiffened to steel;
instead her clear-searching eyes and clear-ringing voice, her
utter frankness and tacit assumption of equality, had robbed him
of his reason. He felt, then, that this was a new breed of woman;
and ere they had been trail mates for many days he knew why the
sons of such women mastered the land and the sea, and why the
sons of his own womankind could not prevail against them. Tender
and soft! Day after day he watched her, muscle-weary, exhausted,
indomitable, and the words beat in upon him in a perennial
refrain. Tender and soft! He knew her feet had been born to easy
paths and sunny lands, strangers to the moccasined pain of the
North, unkissed by the chill lips of the frost, and he watched
and marveled at them twinkling ever through the weary day.

She had always a smile and a word of cheer, from which not even
the meanest packer was excluded. As the way grew darker she
seemed to stiffen and gather greater strength, and when
Kah-Chucte and Gowhee, who had bragged that they knew every
landmark of the way as a child did the skin bails of the tepee,
acknowledged that they knew not where they were, it was she who
raised a forgiving voice amid the curses of the men. She had sung
to them that night till they felt the weariness fall from them
and were ready to face the future with fresh hope. And when the
food failed and each scant stint was measured jealously, she it
was who rebelled against the machinations of her husband and
Sitka Charley, and demanded and received a share neither greater
nor less than that of the others.

Sitka Charley was proud to know this woman. A new richness, a
greater breadth, had come into his life with her presence.
Hitherto he had been his own mentor, had turned to right or left
at no man's beck; he had moulded himself according to his own
dictates, nourished his manhood regardless of all save his own
opinion. For the first time he had felt a call from without for
the best that was in him. just a glance of appreciation from the
clear-searching eyes, a word of thanks from the clear-ringing
voice, just a slight wreathing of the lips in the wonderful
smile, and he walked with the gods for hours to come. It was a
new stimulant to his manhood; for the first time he thrilled with
a conscious pride in his wisdom of the trail; and between the
twain they ever lifted the sinking hearts of their comrades. The
faces of the two men and the woman brightened as they saw him,
for after all he was the staff they leaned upon. But Sitka
Charley, rigid as was his wont, concealing pain and pleasure
impartially beneath an iron exterior, asked them the welfare of
the rest, told the distance to the fire, and continued on the
back-trip.

Next he met a single Indian, unburdened, limping, lips
compressed, and eyes set with the pain of a foot in which the
quick fought a losing battle with the dead. All possible care had
been taken of him, but in the last extremity the weak and
unfortunate must perish, and Sitka Charley deemed his days to be
few. The man could not keep up for long, so he gave him rough
cheering words. After that came two more Indians, to whom he had
allotted the task of helping along Joe, the third white man of
the party. They had deserted him. Sitka Charley saw at a glance
the lurking spring in their bodies, and knew they had at last
cast off his mastery. So he was not taken unawares when he
ordered them back in quest of their abandoned charge, and saw the
gleam of the hunting knives that they drew from the sheaths. A
pitiful spectacle, three weak men lifting their puny strength in
the face of the mighty vastness; but the two recoiled under the
fierce rifle blows of the one and returned like beaten dogs to
the leash. Two hours later, with Joe reeling between them and
Sitka Charley bringing up the rear, they came to the fire, where
the remainder of the expedition crouched in the shelter of the
fly.

'A few words, my comrades, before we sleep,' Sitka Charley said
after they had devoured their slim rations of unleavened bread.
He was speaking to the Indians in their own tongue, having
already given the import to the whites. 'A few words, my
comrades, for your own good, that ye may yet perchance live. I
shall give you the law; on his own head by the death of him that
breaks it. We have passed the Hills of Silence, and we now travel
the head reaches of the Stuart. It may be one sleep, it may be
several, it may be many sleeps, but in time we shall come among
the men of the Yukon, who have much grub. It were well that we
look to the law. Today Kah-Chucte and Gowhee, whom I commanded to
break trail, forgot they were men, and like frightened children
ran away.

True, they forgot; so let us forget. But hereafter, let them
remember. If it should happen they do not...' He touched his
rifle carelessly, grimly. 'Tomorrow they shall carry the flour
and see that the white man Joe lies not down by the trail. The
cups of flour are counted; should so much as an ounce be wanting
at nightfall... Do ye understand? Today there were others that
forgot. Moose Head and Three Salmon left the white man Joe to lie
in the snow. Let them forget no more. With the light of day shall
they go forth and break trail. Ye have heard the law. Look well,
lest ye break it.' Sitka Charley found it beyond him to keep the
line close up. From Moose Head and Three Salmon, who broke trail
in advance, to Kah-Chucte, Gowhee, and Joe, it straggled out over
a mile. Each staggered, fell or rested as he saw fit.

The line of march was a progression through a chain of irregular
halts. Each drew upon the last remnant of his strength and
stumbled onward till it was expended, but in some miraculous way
there was always another last remnant. Each time a man fell it
was with the firm belief that he would rise no more; yet he did
rise, and again and again. The flesh yielded, the will conquered;
but each triumph was a tragedy. The Indian with the frozen foot,
no longer erect, crawled forward on hand and knee. He rarely
rested, for he knew the penalty exacted by the frost.

Even Mrs. Eppingwell's lips were at last set in a stony smile,
and her eyes, seeing, saw not. Often she stopped, pressing a
mittened hand to her heart, gasping and dizzy.

Joe, the white man, had passed beyond the stage of suffering. He
no longer begged to be let alone, prayed to die; but was soothed
and content under the anodyne of delirium. Kah-Chucte and Gowhee
dragged him on roughly, venting upon him many a savage glance or
blow. To them it was the acme of injustice.

Their hearts were bitter with hate, heavy with fear. Why should
they cumber their strength with his weakness? To do so meant
death; not to do so--and they remembered the law of Sitka
Charley, and the rifle.

Joe fell with greater frequency as the daylight waned, and so
hard was he to raise that they dropped farther and farther
behind. Sometimes all three pitched into the snow, so weak had
the Indians become. Yet on their backs was life, and strength,
and warmth.

Within the flour sacks were all the potentialities of existence.
They could not but think of this, and it was not strange, that
which came to pass. They had fallen by the side of a great timber
jam where a thousand cords of firewood waited the match. Near by
was an air hole through the ice. Kah-Chucte looked on the wood
and the water, as did Gowhee; then they looked at each other.

Never a word was spoken. Gowhee struck a fire; Kah-Chucte filled
a tin cup with water and heated it; Joe babbled of things in
another land, in a tongue they did not understand.

They mixed flour with the warm water till it was a thin paste,
and of this they drank many cups. They did not offer any to Joe;
but he did not mind. He did not mind anything, not even his
moccasins, which scorched and smoked among the coals.

A crystal mist of snow fell about them, softly, caressingly,
wrapping them in clinging robes of white. And their feet would
have yet trod many trails had not destiny brushed the clouds
aside and cleared the air. Nay, ten minutes' delay would have
been salvation.

Sitka Charley, looking back, saw the pillared smoke of their
fire, and guessed. And he looked ahead at those who were
faithful, and at Mrs. Eppingwell. 'So, my good comrades, ye have
again forgotten that you were men? Good! Very good. There will be
fewer bellies to feed.' Sitka Charley retied the flour as he
spoke, strapping the pack to the one on his own back. He kicked
Joe till the pain broke through the poor devil's bliss and
brought him doddering to his feet. Then he shoved him out upon
the trail and started him on his way. The two Indians attempted
to slip off.

'Hold, Gowhee! And thou, too, Kah-Chucte! Hath the flour given
such strength to thy legs that they may outrun the swift-winged
lead? Think not to cheat the law. Be men for the last time, and
be content that ye die full-stomached.

Come, step up, back to the timber, shoulder to shoulder. Come!'
The two men obeyed, quietly, without fear; for it is the future
which pressed upon the man, not the present.

'Thou, Gowhee, hast a wife and children and a deerskin lodge in
the Chipewyan. What is thy will in the matter?' 'Give thou her of
the goods which are mine by the word of the captain--the
blankets, the beads, the tobacco, the box which makes strange
sounds after the manner of the white men. Say that I did die on
the trail, but say not how.' 'And thou, Kah-Chucte, who hast nor
wife nor child?' 'Mine is a sister, the wife of the factor at
Koshim. He beats her, and she is not happy. Give thou her the
goods which are mine by the contract, and tell her it were well
she go back to her own people. Shouldst thou meet the man, and be
so minded, it were a good deed that he should die. He beats her,
and she is afraid.' 'Are ye content to die by the law?' 'We are.'
'Then good-bye, my good comrades. May ye sit by the well-filled
pot, in warm lodges, ere the day is done.' As he spoke he raised
his rifle, and many echoes broke the silence. Hardly had they
died away when other rifles spoke in the distance. Sitka Charley
started.

There had been more than one shot, yet there was but one other
rifle in the party.

He gave a fleeting glance at the men who lay so quietly, smiled
viciously at the wisdom of the trail, and hurried on to meet the
men of the Yukon.



The Wife of a King

Once when the northland was very young, the social and civic
virtues were remarkably alike for their paucity and their
simplicity. When the burden of domestic duties grew grievous, and
the fireside mood expanded to a constant protest against its
bleak loneliness, the adventurers from the Southland, in lieu of
better, paid the stipulated prices and took unto themselves
native wives. It was a foretaste of Paradise to the women, for it
must be confessed that the white rovers gave far better care and
treatment of them than did their Indian copartners. Of course,
the white men themselves were satisfied with such deals, as were
also the Indian men for that matter. Having sold their daughters
and sisters for cotton blankets and obsolete rifles and traded
their warm furs for flimsy calico and bad whisky, the sons of the
soil promptly and cheerfully succumbed to quick consumption and
other swift diseases correlated with the blessings of a superior
civilization.

It was in these days of Arcadian simplicity that Cal Galbraith
journeyed through the land and fell sick on the Lower River. It
was a refreshing advent in the lives of the good Sisters of the
Holy Cross, who gave him shelter and medicine; though they little
dreamed of the hot elixir infused into his veins by the touch of
their soft hands and their gentle ministrations. Cal Galbraith,
became troubled with strange thoughts which clamored for
attention till he laid eyes on the Mission girl, Madeline. Yet he
gave no sign, biding his time patiently. He strengthened with the
coming spring, and when the sun rode the heavens in a golden
circle, and the joy and throb of life was in all the land, he
gathered his still weak body together and departed.

Now, Madeline, the Mission girl, was an orphan. Her white father
had failed to give a bald-faced grizzly the trail one day, and
had died quickly. Then her Indian mother, having no man to fill
the winter cache, had tried the hazardous experiment of waiting
till the salmon-run on fifty pounds of flour and half as many of
bacon. After that, the baby, Chook-ra, went to live with the good
Sisters, and to be thenceforth known by another name.

But Madeline still had kinsfolk, the nearest being a dissolute
uncle who outraged his vitals with inordinate quantities of the
white man's whisky. He strove daily to walk with the gods, and
incidentally, his feet sought shorter trails to the grave. When
sober he suffered exquisite torture. He had no conscience. To
this ancient vagabond Cal Galbraith duly presented himself, and
they consumed many words and much tobacco in the conversation
that followed. Promises were also made; and in the end the old
heathen took a few pounds of dried salmon and his birch-bark
canoe, and paddled away to the Mission of the Holy Cross.

It is not given the world to know what promises he made and what
lies he toldthe Sisters never gossip; but when he returned, upon
his swarthy chest there was a brass crucifix, and in his canoe
his niece Madeline. That night there was a grand wedding and a
potlach; so that for two days to follow there was no fishing done
by the village. But in the morning Madeline shook the dust of the
Lower River from her moccasins, and with her husband, in a
poling-boat, went to live on the Upper River in a place known as
the Lower Country. And in the years which followed she was a good
wife, sharing her husband's hardships and cooking his food. And
she kept him in straight trails, till he learned to save his dust
and to work mightily. In the end, he struck it rich and built a
cabin in Circle City; and his happiness was such that men who
came to visit him in his home-circle became restless at the sight
of it and envied him greatly.

But the Northland began to mature and social amenities to make
their appearance.

Hitherto, the Southland had sent forth its sons; but it now
belched forth a new exodus-this time of its daughters. Sisters
and wives they were not; but they did not fail to put new ideas
in the heads of the men, and to elevate the tone of things in
ways peculiarly their own. No more did the squaws gather at the
dances, go roaring down the center in the good, old Virginia
reels, or make merry with jolly 'Dan Tucker.' They fell back on
their natural stoicism and uncomplainingly watched the rule of
their white sisters from their cabins.

Then another exodus came over the mountains from the prolific
Southland.

This time it was of women that became mighty in the land. Their
word was law; their law was steel. They frowned upon the Indian
wives, while the other women became mild and walked humbly. There
were cowards who became ashamed of their ancient covenants with
the daughters of the soil, who looked with a new distaste upon
their dark-skinned children; but there were also others--men--who
remained true and proud of their aboriginal vows. When it became
the fashion to divorce the native wives. Cal Galbraith retained
his manhood, and in so doing felt the heavy hand of the women who
had come last, knew least, but who ruled the land.

One day, the Upper Country, which lies far above Circle City, was
pronounced rich. Dog-teams carried the news to Salt Water; golden
argosies freighted the lure across the North Pacific; wires and
cables sang with the tidings; and the world heard for the first
time of the Klondike River and the Yukon Country. Cal Galbraith
had lived the years quietly. He had been a good husband to
Madeline, and she had blessed him. But somehow discontent fell
upon him; he felt vague yearnings for his own kind, for the life
he had been shut out from--a general sort of desire, which men
sometimes feel, to break out and taste the prime of living.
Besides, there drifted down the river wild rumors of the
wonderful El Dorado, glowing descriptions of the city of logs and
tents, and ludicrous accounts of the che-cha-quas who had rushed
in and were stampeding the whole country.

Circle City was dead. The world had moved on up river and become
a new and most marvelous world.

Cal Galbraith grew restless on the edge of things, and wished to
see with his own eyes.

So, after the wash-up, he weighed in a couple of hundred pounds
of dust on the Company's big scales, and took a draft for the
same on Dawson. Then he put Tom Dixon in charge of his mines,
kissed Madeline good-by, promised to be back before the first
mush-ice ran, and took passage on an up-river steamer.

Madeline waited, waited through all the three months of daylight.
She fed the dogs, gave much of her time to Young Cal, watched the
short summer fade away and the sun begin its long journey to the
south. And she prayed much in the manner of the Sisters of the
Holy Cross. The fall came, and with it there was mush-ice on the
Yukon, and Circle City kings returning to the winter's work at
their mines, but no Cal Galbraith. Tom Dixon received a letter,
however, for his men sledded up her winter's supply of dry pine.
The Company received a letter for its dogteams filled her cache
with their best provisions, and she was told that her credit was
limitless.

Through all the ages man has been held the chief instigator of
the woes of woman; but in this case the men held their tongues
and swore harshly at one of their number who was away, while the
women failed utterly to emulate them. So, without needless delay,
Madeline heard strange tales of Cal Galbraith's doings; also, of
a certain Greek dancer who played with men as children did with
bubbles. Now Madeline was an Indian woman, and further, she had
no woman friend to whom to go for wise counsel. She prayed and
planned by turns, and that night, being quick of resolve and
action, she harnessed the dogs, and with Young Cal securely
lashed to the sled, stole away.

Though the Yukon still ran free, the eddy-ice was growing, and
each day saw the river dwindling to a slushy thread. Save him who
has done the like, no man may know what she endured in traveling
a hundred miles on the rim-ice; nor may they understand the toil
and hardship of breaking the two hundred miles of packed ice
which remained after the river froze for good. But Madeline was
an Indian woman, so she did these things, and one night there
came a knock at Malemute Kid's door. Thereat he fed a team of
starving dogs, put a healthy youngster to bed, and turned his
attention to an exhausted woman. He removed her icebound
moccasins while he listened to her tale, and stuck the point of
his knife into her feet that he might see how far they were
frozen.

Despite his tremendous virility, Malemute Kid was possessed of a
softer, womanly element, which could win the confidence of a
snarling wolf-dog or draw confessions from the most wintry heart.
Nor did he seek them. Hearts opened to him as spontaneously as
flowers to the sun. Even the priest, Father Roubeau, had been
known to confess to him, while the men and women of the Northland
were ever knocking at his door--a door from which the
latch-string hung always out. To Madeline, he could do no wrong,
make no mistake. She had known him from the time she first cast
her lot among the people of her father's race; and to her
half-barbaric mind it seemed that in him was centered the wisdom
of the ages, that between his vision and the future there could
be no intervening veil.

There were false ideals in the land. The social strictures of
Dawson were not synonymous with those of the previous era, and
the swift maturity of the Northland involved much wrong. Malemute
Kid was aware of this, and he had Cal Galbraith's measure
accurately.

He knew a hasty word was the father of much evil; besides, he was
minded to teach a great lesson and bring shame upon the man. So
Stanley Prince, the young mining expert, was called into the
conference the following night as was also Lucky Jack Harrington
and his violin. That same night, Bettles, who owed a great debt
to Malemute Kid, harnessed up Cal Galbraith's dogs, lashed Cal
Galbraith, Junior, to the sled, and slipped away in the dark for
Stuart River.

II

'So; one--two--three, one--two--three. Now reverse! No, no! Start
up again, Jack. See--this way.' Prince executed the movement as
one should who has led the cotillion.

'Now; one--two--three, one--two--three. Reverse! Ah! that's
better. Try it again. I say, you know, you mustn't look at your
feet. One--two--three, one--twothree. Shorter steps! You are not
hanging to the gee-pole just now. Try it over.

'There! that's the way. One--two--three, one--two--three.' Round
and round went Prince and Madeline in an interminable waltz. The
table and stools had been shoved over against the wall to
increase the room. Malemute Kid sat on the bunk, chin to knees,
greatly interested. Jack Harrington sat beside him, scraping away
on his violin and following the dancers.

It was a unique situation, the undertaking of these three men
with the woman.

The most pathetic part, perhaps, was the businesslike way in
which they went about it.

No athlete was ever trained more rigidly for a coming contest,
nor wolf-dog for the harness, than was she. But they had good
material, for Madeline, unlike most women of her race, in her
childhood had escaped the carrying of heavy burdens and the toil
of the trail. Besides, she was a clean-limbed, willowy creature,
possessed of much grace which had not hitherto been realized. It
was this grace which the men strove to bring out and knock into
shape.

'Trouble with her she learned to dance all wrong,' Prince
remarked to the bunk after having deposited his breathless pupil
on the table. 'She's quick at picking up; yet I could do better
had she never danced a step. But say, Kid, I can't understand
this.' Prince imitated a peculiar movement of the shoulders and
head--a weakness Madeline suffered from in walking.

'Lucky for her she was raised in the Mission,' Malemute Kid
answered. 'Packing, you know,--the head-strap. Other Indian women
have it bad, but she didn't do any packing till after she
married, and then only at first. Saw hard lines with that husband
of hers. They went through the Forty-Mile famine together.' 'But
can we break it?' 'Don't know.

'Perhaps long walks with her trainers will make the riffle.
Anyway, they'll take it out some, won't they, Madeline?' The girl
nodded assent. If Malemute Kid, who knew all things, said so, why
it was so. That was all there was about it.

She had come over to them, anxious to begin again. Harrington
surveyed her in quest of her points much in the same manner men
usually do horses. It certainly was not disappointing, for he
asked with sudden interest, 'What did that beggarly uncle of
yours get anyway?' 'One rifle, one blanket, twenty bottles of
hooch. Rifle broke.' She said this last scornfully, as though
disgusted at how low her maiden-value had been rated.

She spoke fair English, with many peculiarities of her husband's
speech, but there was still perceptible the Indian accent, the
traditional groping after strange gutturals. Even this her
instructors had taken in hand, and with no small success, too.

At the next intermission, Prince discovered a new predicament.

'I say, Kid,' he said, 'we're wrong, all wrong. She can't learn
in moccasins.

'Put her feet into slippers, and then onto that waxed
floor--phew!' Madeline raised a foot and regarded her shapeless
house-moccasins dubiously. In previous winters, both at Circle
City and Forty-Mile, she had danced many a night away with
similar footgear, and there had been nothing the matter.

But now--well, if there was anything wrong it was for Malemute
Kid to know, not her.

But Malemute Kid did know, and he had a good eye for measures; so
he put on his cap and mittens and went down the hill to pay Mrs.
Eppingwell a call. Her husband, Clove Eppingwell, was prominent
in the community as one of the great Government officials.

The Kid had noted her slender little foot one night, at the
Governor's Ball. And as he also knew her to be as sensible as she
was pretty, it was no task to ask of her a certain small favor.

On his return, Madeline withdrew for a moment to the inner room.
When she reappeared Prince was startled.

'By Jove!' he gasped. 'Who'd a' thought it! The little witch! Why
my sister--' 'Is an English girl,' interrupted Malemute Kid,
'with an English foot. This girl comes of a small-footed race.
Moccasins just broadened her feet healthily, while she did not
misshape them by running with the dogs in her childhood.' But
this explanation failed utterly to allay Prince's admiration.
Harrington's commercial instinct was touched, and as he looked
upon the exquisitely turned foot and ankle, there ran through his
mind the sordid list--'One rifle, one blanket, twenty bottles of
hooch.' Madeline was the wife of a king, a king whose yellow
treasure could buy outright a score of fashion's puppets; yet in
all her life her feet had known no gear save red-tanned
moosehide. At first she had looked in awe at the tiny white-satin
slippers; but she had quickly understood the admiration which
shone, manlike, in the eyes of the men. Her face flushed with
pride. For the moment she was drunken with her woman's
loveliness; then she murmured, with increased scorn, 'And one
rifle, broke!' So the training went on. Every day Malemute Kid
led the girl out on long walks devoted to the correction of her
carriage and the shortening of her stride.

There was little likelihood of her identity being discovered, for
Cal Galbraith and the rest of the Old-Timers were like lost
children among the many strangers who had rushed into the land.
Besides, the frost of the North has a bitter tongue, and the
tender women of the South, to shield their cheeks from its biting
caresses, were prone to the use of canvas masks. With faces
obscured and bodies lost in squirrel-skin parkas, a mother and
daughter, meeting on trail, would pass as strangers.

The coaching progressed rapidly. At first it had been slow, but
later a sudden acceleration had manifested itself. This began
from the moment Madeline tried on the white-satin slippers, and
in so doing found herself. The pride of her renegade father,
apart from any natural self-esteem she might possess, at that
instant received its birth. Hitherto, she had deemed herself a
woman of an alien breed, of inferior stock, purchased by her
lord's favor. Her husband had seemed to her a god, who had lifted
her, through no essential virtues on her part, to his own godlike
level. But she had never forgotten, even when Young Cal was born,
that she was not of his people. As he had been a god, so had his
womenkind been goddesses. She might have contrasted herself with
them, but she had never compared.

It might have been that familiarity bred contempt; however, be
that as it may, she had ultimately come to understand these
roving white men, and to weigh them.

True, her mind was dark to deliberate analysis, but she yet
possessed her woman's clarity of vision in such matters. On the
night of the slippers she had measured the bold, open admiration
of her three man-friends; and for the first time comparison had
suggested itself. It was only a foot and an ankle, but--but
comparison could not, in the nature of things, cease at that
point. She judged herself by their standards till the divinity of
her white sisters was shattered. After all, they were only women,
and why should she not exalt herself to their midst? In doing
these things she learned where she lacked and with the knowledge
of her weakness came her strength. And so mightily did she strive
that her three trainers often marveled late into the night over
the eternal mystery of woman.

In this way Thanksgiving Night drew near. At irregular intervals
Bettles sent word down from Stuart River regarding the welfare of
Young Cal. The time of their return was approaching. More than
once a casual caller, hearing dance-music and the rhythmic pulse
of feet, entered, only to find Harrington scraping away and the
other two beating time or arguing noisily over a mooted step.
Madeline was never in evidence, having precipitately fled to the
inner room.

On one of these nights Cal Galbraith dropped in. Encouraging news
had just come down from Stuart River, and Madeline had surpassed
herself--not in walk alone, and carriage and grace, but in
womanly roguishness. They had indulged in sharp repartee and she
had defended herself brilliantly; and then, yielding to the
intoxication of the moment, and of her own power, she had
bullied, and mastered, and wheedled, and patronized them with
most astonishing success. And instinctively, involuntarily, they
had bowed, not to her beauty, her wisdom, her wit, but to that
indefinable something in woman to which man yields yet cannot
name.

The room was dizzy with sheer delight as she and Prince whirled
through the last dance of the evening. Harrington was throwing in
inconceivable flourishes, while Malemute Kid, utterly abandoned,
had seized the broom and was executing mad gyrations on his own
account.

At this instant the door shook with a heavy rap-rap, and their
quick glances noted the lifting of the latch. But they had
survived similar situations before. Harrington never broke a
note. Madeline shot through the waiting door to the inner room.
The broom went hurtling under the bunk, and by the time Cal
Galbraith and Louis Savoy got their heads in, Malemute Kid and
Prince were in each other's arms, wildly schottisching down the
room.

As a rule, Indian women do not make a practice of fainting on
provocation, but Madeline came as near to it as she ever had in
her life. For an hour she crouched on the floor, listening to the
heavy voices of the men rumbling up and down in mimic thunder.
Like familiar chords of childhood melodies, every intonation,
every trick of her husband's voice swept in upon her, fluttering
her heart and weakening her knees till she lay half-fainting
against the door. It was well she could neither see nor hear when
he took his departure.

'When do you expect to go back to Circle City?' Malemute Kid
asked simply.

'Haven't thought much about it,' he replied. 'Don't think till
after the ice breaks.' 'And Madeline?'

He flushed at the question, and there was a quick droop to his
eyes. Malemute Kid could have despised him for that, had he known
men less. As it was, his gorge rose against the wives and
daughters who had come into the land, and not satisfied with
usurping the place of the native women, had put unclean thoughts
in the heads of the men and made them ashamed.

'I guess she's all right,' the Circle City King answered hastily,
and in an apologetic manner. 'Tom Dixon's got charge of my
interests, you know, and he sees to it that she has everything
she wants.' Malemute Kid laid hand upon his arm and hushed him
suddenly. They had stepped without. Overhead, the aurora, a
gorgeous wanton, flaunted miracles of color; beneath lay the
sleeping town. Far below, a solitary dog gave tongue.

The King again began to speak, but the Kid pressed his hand for
silence. The sound multiplied. Dog after dog took up the strain
till the full-throated chorus swayed the night.

To him who hears for the first time this weird song, is told the
first and greatest secret of the Northland; to him who has heard
it often, it is the solemn knell of lost endeavor. It is the
plaint of tortured souls, for in it is invested the heritage of
the North, the suffering of countless generations--the warning
and the requiem to the world's estrays.

Cal Galbraith shivered slightly as it died away in half-caught
sobs. The Kid read his thoughts openly, and wandered back with
him through all the weary days of famine and disease; and with
him was also the patient Madeline, sharing his pains and perils,
never doubting, never complaining. His mind's retina vibrated to
a score of pictures, stern, clear-cut, and the hand of the past
drew back with heavy fingers on his heart. It was the
psychological moment. Malemute Kid was halftempted to play his
reserve card and win the game; but the lesson was too mild as
yet, and he let it pass. The next instant they had gripped hands,
and the King's beaded moccasins were drawing protests from the
outraged snow as he crunched down the hill.

Madeline in collapse was another woman to the mischievous
creature of an hour before, whose laughter had been so infectious
and whose heightened color and flashing eyes had made her
teachers for the while forget. Weak and nerveless, she sat in the
chair just as she had been dropped there by Prince and
Harrington.

Malemute Kid frowned. This would never do. When the time of
meeting her husband came to hand, she must carry things off with
high-handed imperiousness. It was very necessary she should do it
after the manner of white women, else the victory would be no
victory at all. So he talked to her, sternly, without mincing of
words, and initiated her into the weaknesses of his own sex, till
she came to understand what simpletons men were after all, and
why the word of their women was law.

A few days before Thanksgiving Night, Malemute Kid made another
call on Mrs. Eppingwell. She promptly overhauled her feminine
fripperies, paid a protracted visit to the dry-goods department
of the P. C. Company, and returned with the Kid to make
Madeline's acquaintance. After that came a period such as the
cabin had never seen before, and what with cutting, and fitting,
and basting, and stitching, and numerous other wonderful and
unknowable things, the male conspirators were more often banished
the premises than not. At such times the Opera House opened its
double storm-doors to them.

So often did they put their heads together, and so deeply did
they drink to curious toasts, that the loungers scented unknown
creeks of incalculable richness, and it is known that several
checha-quas and at least one Old-Timer kept their stampeding
packs stored behind the bar, ready to hit the trail at a moment's
notice.

Mrs. Eppingwell was a woman of capacity; so, when she turned
Madeline over to her trainers on Thanksgiving Night she was so
transformed that they were almost afraid of her. Prince wrapped a
Hudson Bay blanket about her with a mock reverence more real than
feigned, while Malemute Kid, whose arm she had taken, found it a
severe trial to resume his wonted mentorship. Harrington, with
the list of purchases still running through his head, dragged
along in the rear, nor opened his mouth once all the way down
into the town. When they came to the back door of the Opera House
they took the blanket from Madeline's shoulders and spread it on
the snow. Slipping out of Prince's moccasins, she stepped upon it
in new satin slippers. The masquerade was at its height. She
hesitated, but they jerked open the door and shoved her in. Then
they ran around to come in by the front entrance.

III

'Where is Freda?' the Old-Timers questioned, while the
che-cha-quas were equally energetic in asking who Freda was. The
ballroom buzzed with her name.

It was on everybody's lips. Grizzled 'sour-dough boys,'
day-laborers at the mines but proud of their degree, either
patronized the spruce-looking tenderfeet and lied eloquently--the
'sour-dough boys' being specially created to toy with truth--or
gave them savage looks of indignation because of their ignorance.
Perhaps forty kings of the Upper and Lower Countries were on the
floor, each deeming himself hot on the trail and sturdily backing
his judgment with the yellow dust of the realm. An assistant was
sent to the man at the scales, upon whom had fallen the burden of
weighing up the sacks, while several of the gamblers, with the
rules of chance at their finger-ends, made up alluring books on
the field and favorites.

Which was Freda? Time and again the 'Greek Dancer' was thought to
have been discovered, but each discovery brought panic to the
betting ring and a frantic registering of new wagers by those who
wished to hedge. Malemute Kid took an interest in the hunt, his
advent being hailed uproariously by the revelers, who knew him to
a man. The Kid had a good eye for the trick of a step, and ear
for the lilt of a voice, and his private choice was a marvelous
creature who scintillated as the 'Aurora Borealis.' But the Greek
dancer was too subtle for even his penetration. The majority of
the gold-hunters seemed to have centered their verdict on the
'Russian Princess,' who was the most graceful in the room, and
hence could be no other than Freda Moloof.

During a quadrille a roar of satisfaction went up. She was
discovered. At previous balls, in the figure, 'all hands round,'
Freda had displayed an inimitable step and variation peculiarly
her own. As the figure was called, the 'Russian Princess' gave
the unique rhythm to limb and body. A chorus of I-told-you-so's
shook the squared roof-beams, when lo! it was noticed that
'Aurora Borealis' and another masque, the 'Spirit of the Pole,'
were performing the same trick equally well. And when two twin
'Sun-Dogs' and a 'Frost Queen' followed suit, a second assistant
was dispatched to the aid of the man at the scales.

Bettles came off trail in the midst of the excitement, descending
upon them in a hurricane of frost. His rimed brows turned to
cataracts as he whirled about; his mustache, still frozen, seemed
gemmed with diamonds and turned the light in varicolored rays;
while the flying feet slipped on the chunks of ice which rattled
from his moccasins and German socks. A Northland dance is quite
an informal affair, the men of the creeks and trails having lost
whatever fastidiousness they might have at one time possessed;
and only in the high official circles are conventions at all
observed. Here, caste carried no significance. Millionaires and
paupers, dog-drivers and mounted policemen joined hands with
'ladies in the center,' and swept around the circle performing
most remarkable capers. Primitive in their pleasure, boisterous
and rough, they displayed no rudeness, but rather a crude
chivalry more genuine than the most polished courtesy.

In his quest for the 'Greek Dancer,' Cal Galbraith managed to get
into the same set with the 'Russian Princess,' toward whom
popular suspicion had turned.

But by the time he had guided her through one dance, he was
willing not only to stake his millions that she was not Freda,
but that he had had his arm about her waist before. When or where
he could not tell, but the puzzling sense of familiarity so
wrought upon him that he turned his attention to the discovery of
her identity. Malemute Kid might have aided him instead of
occasionally taking the Princess for a few turns and talking
earnestly to her in low tones. But it was Jack Harrington who
paid the 'Russian Princess' the most assiduous court. Once he
drew Cal Galbraith aside and hazarded wild guesses as to who she
was, and explained to him that he was going in to win. That
rankled the Circle City King, for man is not by nature monogamic,
and he forgot both Madeline and Freda in the new quest.

It was soon noised about that the 'Russian Princess' was not
Freda Moloof. Interest deepened. Here was a fresh enigma. They
knew Freda though they could not find her, but here was somebody
they had found and did not know. Even the women could not place
her, and they knew every good dancer in the camp. Many took her
for one of the official clique, indulging in a silly escapade.
Not a few asserted she would disappear before the unmasking.
Others were equally positive that she was the woman-reporter of
the Kansas City Star, come to write them up at ninety dollars per
column. And the men at the scales worked busily.

At one o'clock every couple took to the floor. The unmasking
began amid laughter and delight, like that of carefree children.
There was no end of Oh's and Ah's as mask after mask was lifted.
The scintillating 'Aurora Borealis' became the brawny negress
whose income from washing the community's clothes ran at about
five hundred a month. The twin 'Sun-Dogs' discovered mustaches on
their upper lips, and were recognized as brother Fraction-Kings
of El Dorado. In one of the most prominent sets, and the slowest
in uncovering, was Cal Galbraith with the 'Spirit of the Pole.'
Opposite him was Jack Harrington and the 'Russian Princess.' The
rest had discovered themselves, yet the 'Greek Dancer' was still
missing. All eyes were upon the group. Cal Galbraith, in response
to their cries, lifted his partner's mask. Freda's wonderful face
and brilliant eyes flashed out upon them. A roar went up, to be
squelched suddenly in the new and absorbing mystery of the
'Russian Princess.' Her face was still hidden, and Jack
Harrington was struggling with her. The dancers tittered on the
tiptoes of expectancy. He crushed her dainty costume roughly, and
then--and then the revelers exploded. The joke was on them. They
had danced all night with a tabooed native woman.

But those that knew, and they were many, ceased abruptly, and a
hush fell upon the room.

Cal Galbraith crossed over with great strides, angrily, and spoke
to Madeline in polyglot Chinook. But she retained her composure,
apparently oblivious to the fact that she was the cynosure of all
eyes, and answered him in English. She showed neither fright nor
anger, and Malemute Kid chuckled at her well-bred equanimity. The
King felt baffled, defeated; his common Siwash wife had passed
beyond him.

'Come!' he said finally. 'Come on home.' 'I beg pardon,' she
replied; 'I have agreed to go to supper with Mr. Harrington.
Besides, there's no end of dances promised.'

Harrington extended his arm to lead her away. He evinced not the
slightest disinclination toward showing his back, but Malemute
Kid had by this time edged in closer. The Circle City King was
stunned. Twice his hand dropped to his belt, and twice the Kid
gathered himself to spring; but the retreating couple passed
through the supper-room door where canned oysters were spread at
five dollars the plate.

The crowd sighed audibly, broke up into couples, and followed
them. Freda pouted and went in with Cal Galbraith; but she had a
good heart and a sure tongue, and she spoiled his oysters for
him. What she said is of no importance, but his face went red and
white at intervals, and he swore repeatedly and savagely at
himself.

The supper-room was filled with a pandemonium of voices, which
ceased suddenly as Cal Galbraith stepped over to his wife's
table. Since the unmasking considerable weights of dust had been
placed as to the outcome. Everybody watched with breathless
interest.

Harrington's blue eyes were steady, but under the overhanging
tablecloth a Smith & Wesson balanced on his knee. Madeline looked
up, casually, with little interest.

'May--may I have the next round dance with you?' the King
stuttered.

The wife of the King glanced at her card and inclined her head.



An Odyssey of the North

The sleds were singing their eternal lament to the creaking of
the harness and the tinkling bells of the leaders; but the men
and dogs were tired and made no sound. The trail was heavy with
new-fallen snow, and they had come far, and the runners, burdened
with flint-like quarters of frozen moose, clung tenaciously to
the unpacked surface and held back with a stubbornness almost
human.

Darkness was coming on, but there was no camp to pitch that
night. The snow fell gently through the pulseless air, not in
flakes, but in tiny frost crystals of delicate design. It was
very warm--barely ten below zero--and the men did not mind.
Meyers and Bettles had raised their ear flaps, while Malemute Kid
had even taken off his mittens.

The dogs had been fagged out early in the after noon, but they
now began to show new vigor. Among the more astute there was a
certain restlessness--an impatience at the restraint of the
traces, an indecisive quickness of movement, a sniffing of snouts
and pricking of ears. These became incensed at their more
phlegmatic brothers, urging them on with numerous sly nips on
their hinder quarters. Those, thus chidden, also contracted and
helped spread the contagion. At last the leader of the foremost
sled uttered a sharp whine of satisfaction, crouching lower in
the snow and throwing himself against the collar. The rest
followed suit.

There was an ingathering of back hands, a tightening of traces;
the sleds leaped forward, and the men clung to the gee poles,
violently accelerating the uplift of their feet that they might
escape going under the runners. The weariness of the day fell
from them, and they whooped encouragement to the dogs. The
animals responded with joyous yelps. They were swinging through
the gathering darkness at a rattling gallop.

'Gee! Gee!' the men cried, each in turn, as their sleds abruptly
left the main trail, heeling over on single runners like luggers
on the wind.

Then came a hundred yards' dash to the lighted parchment window,
which told its own story of the home cabin, the roaring Yukon
stove, and the steaming pots of tea. But the home cabin had been
invaded. Threescore huskies chorused defiance, and as many furry
forms precipitated themselves upon the dogs which drew the first
sled. The door was flung open, and a man, clad in the scarlet
tunic of the Northwest Police, waded knee-deep among the furious
brutes, calmly and impartially dispensing soothing justice with
the butt end of a dog whip. After that the men shook hands; and
in this wise was Malemute Kid welcomed to his own cabin by a
stranger.

Stanley Prince, who should have welcomed him, and who was
responsible for the Yukon stove and hot tea aforementioned, was
busy with his guests. There were a dozen or so of them, as
nondescript a crowd as ever served the Queen in the enforcement
of her laws or the delivery of her mails. They were of many
breeds, but their common life had formed of them a certain
type--a lean and wiry type, with trail-hardened muscles, and
sun-browned faces, and untroubled souls which gazed frankly
forth, clear-eyed and steady.

They drove the dogs of the Queen, wrought fear in the hearts of
her enemies, ate of her meager fare, and were happy. They had
seen life, and done deeds, and lived romances; but they did not
know it.

And they were very much at home. Two of them were sprawled upon
Malemute Kid's bunk, singing chansons which their French
forebears sang in the days when first they entered the Northwest
land and mated with its Indian women. Bettles' bunk had suffered
a similar invasion, and three or four lusty voyageurs worked
their toes among its blankets as they listened to the tale of one
who had served on the boat brigade with Wolseley when he fought
his way to Khartoum.

And when he tired, a cowboy told of courts and kings and lords
and ladies he had seen when Buffalo Bill toured the capitals of
Europe. In a corner two half-breeds, ancient comrades in a lost
campaign, mended harnesses and talked of the days when the
Northwest flamed with insurrection and Louis Riel was king.

Rough jests and rougher jokes went up and down, and great hazards
by trail and river were spoken of in the light of commonplaces,
only to be recalled by virtue of some grain of humor or ludicrous
happening. Prince was led away by these uncrowned heroes who had
seen history made, who regarded the great and the romantic as but
the ordinary and the incidental in the routine of life. He passed
his precious tobacco among them with lavish disregard, and rusty
chains of reminiscence were loosened, and forgotten odysseys
resurrected for his especial benefit.

When conversation dropped and the travelers filled the last pipes
and lashed their tight-rolled sleeping furs. Prince fell back
upon his comrade for further information.

'Well, you know what the cowboy is,' Malemute Kid answered,
beginning to unlace his moccasins; 'and it's not hard to guess
the British blood in his bed partner. As for the rest, they're
all children of the coureurs du bois, mingled with God knows how
many other bloods. The two turning in by the door are the
regulation 'breeds' or Boisbrules. That lad with the worsted
breech scarf--notice his eyebrows and the turn of his jaw--shows
a Scotchman wept in his mother's smoky tepee. And that handsome
looking fellow putting the capote under his head is a French
half-breed--you heard him talking; he doesn't like the two
Indians turning in next to him. You see, when the 'breeds' rose
under the Riel the full-bloods kept the peace, and they've not
lost much love for one another since.' 'But I say, what's that
glum-looking fellow by the stove? I'll swear he can't talk
English. He hasn't opened his mouth all night.' 'You're wrong. He
knows English well enough. Did you follow his eyes when he
listened? I did. But he's neither kith nor kin to the others.
When they talked their own patois you could see he didn't
understand. I've been wondering myself what he is. Let's find
out.' 'Fire a couple of sticks into the stove!'

Malemute Kid commanded, raising his voice and looking squarely at
the man in question.

He obeyed at once.

'Had discipline knocked into him somewhere.' Prince commented in
a low tone.

Malemute Kid nodded, took off his socks, and picked his way among
recumbent men to the stove. There he hung his damp footgear among
a score or so of mates.

'When do you expect to get to Dawson?' he asked tentatively.

The man studied him a moment before replying. 'They say
seventy-five mile. So? Maybe two days.' The very slightest accent
was perceptible, while there was no awkward hesitancy or groping
for words.

'Been in the country before?' 'No.' 'Northwest Territory?' 'Yes.'
'Born there?' 'No.'

'Well, where the devil were you born? You're none of these.'
Malemute Kid swept his hand over the dog drivers, even including
the two policemen who had turned into Prince's bunk. 'Where did
you come from? I've seen faces like yours before, though I can't
remember just where.' 'I know you,' he irrelevantly replied, at
once turning the drift of Malemute Kid's questions.

'Where? Ever see me?' 'No; your partner, him priest, Pastilik,
long time ago. Him ask me if I see you, Malemute Kid. Him give me
grub. I no stop long. You hear him speak 'bout me?' 'Oh! you're
the fellow that traded the otter skins for the dogs?' The man
nodded, knocked out his pipe, and signified his disinclination
for conversation by rolling up in his furs. Malemute Kid blew out
the slush lamp and crawled under the blankets with Prince.

'Well, what is he?' 'Don't know--turned me off, somehow, and then
shut up like a clam.

'But he's a fellow to whet your curiosity. I've heard of him. All
the coast wondered about him eight years ago. Sort of mysterious,
you know. He came down out of the North in the dead of winter,
many a thousand miles from here, skirting Bering Sea and
traveling as though the devil were after him. No one ever learned
where he came from, but he must have come far. He was badly
travel-worn when he got food from the Swedish missionary on
Golovin Bay and asked the way south. We heard of all this
afterward. Then he abandoned the shore line, heading right across
Norton Sound. Terrible weather, snowstorms and high winds, but he
pulled through where a thousand other men would have died,
missing St. Michaels and making the land at Pastilik. He'd lost
all but two dogs, and was nearly gone with starvation.

'He was so anxious to go on that Father Roubeau fitted him out
with grub; but he couldn't let him have any dogs, for he was only
waiting my arrival, to go on a trip himself. Mr. Ulysses knew too
much to start on without animals, and fretted around for several
days. He had on his sled a bunch of beautifully cured otter
skins, sea otters, you know, worth their weight in gold. There
was also at Pastilik an old Shylock of a Russian trader, who had
dogs to kill. Well, they didn't dicker very long, but when the
Strange One headed south again, it was in the rear of a spanking
dog team. Mr. Shylock, by the way, had the otter skins. I saw
them, and they were magnificent. We figured it up and found the
dogs brought him at least five hundred apiece. And it wasn't as
if the Strange One didn't know the value of sea otter; he was an
Indian of some sort, and what little he talked showed he'd been
among white men.

'After the ice passed out of the sea, word came up from Nunivak
Island that he'd gone in there for grub. Then he dropped from
sight, and this is the first heard of him in eight years. Now
where did he come from? and what was he doing there? and why did
he come from there? He's Indian, he's been nobody knows where,
and he's had discipline, which is unusual for an Indian. Another
mystery of the North for you to solve, Prince.' 'Thanks awfully,
but I've got too many on hand as it is,' he replied.

Malemute Kid was already breathing heavily; but the young mining
engineer gazed straight up through the thick darkness, waiting
for the strange orgasm which stirred his blood to die away. And
when he did sleep, his brain worked on, and for the nonce he,
too, wandered through the white unknown, struggled with the dogs
on endless trails, and saw men live, and toil, and die like men.
The next morning, hours before daylight, the dog drivers and
policemen pulled out for Dawson. But the powers that saw to Her
Majesty's interests and ruled the destinies of her lesser
creatures gave the mailmen little rest, for a week later they
appeared at Stuart River, heavily burdened with letters for Salt
Water.

However, their dogs had been replaced by fresh ones; but, then,
they were dogs.

The men had expected some sort of a layover in which to rest up;
besides, this Klondike was a new section of the Northland, and
they had wished to see a little something of the Golden City
where dust flowed like water and dance halls rang with
never-ending revelry. But they dried their socks and smoked their
evening pipes with much the same gusto as on their former visit,
though one or two bold spirits speculated on desertion and the
possibility of crossing the unexplored Rockies to the east, and
thence, by the Mackenzie Valley, of gaining their old stamping
grounds in the Chippewyan country.

Two or three even decided to return to their homes by that route
when their terms of service had expired, and they began to lay
plans forthwith, looking forward to the hazardous undertaking in
much the same way a city-bred man would to a day's holiday in the
woods.

He of the Otter Skins seemed very restless, though he took little
interest in the discussion, and at last he drew Malemute Kid to
one side and talked for some time in low tones.

Prince cast curious eyes in their direction, and the mystery
deepened when they put on caps and mittens and went outside. When
they returned, Malemute Kid placed his gold scales on the table,
weighed out the matter of sixty ounces, and transferred them to
the Strange One's sack. Then the chief of the dog drivers joined
the conclave, and certain business was transacted with him.

The next day the gang went on upriver, but He of the Otter Skins
took several pounds of grub and turned his steps back toward
Dawson.

'Didn't know what to make of it,' said Malemute Kid in response
to Prince's queries; 'but the poor beggar wanted to be quit of
the service for some reason or other--at least it seemed a most
important one to him, though he wouldn't let on what. You see,
it's just like the army: he signed for two years, and the only
way to get free was to buy himself out. He couldn't desert and
then stay here, and he was just wild to remain in the country.

'Made up his mind when he got to Dawson, he said; but no one knew
him, hadn't a cent, and I was the only one he'd spoken two words
with. So he talked it over with the lieutenant-governor, and made
arrangements in case he could get the money from me-loan, you
know. Said he'd pay back in the year, and, if I wanted, would put
me onto something rich. Never'd seen it, but he knew it was rich.

'And talk! why, when he got me outside he was ready to weep.
Begged and pleaded; got down in the snow to me till I hauled him
out of it. Palavered around like a crazy man.

'Swore he's worked to this very end for years and years, and
couldn't bear to be disappointed now. Asked him what end, but he
wouldn't say.

Said they might keep him on the other half of the trail and he
wouldn't get to Dawson in two years, and then it would be too
late. Never saw a man take on so in my life. And when I said I'd
let him have it, had to yank him out of the snow again. Told him
to consider it in the light of a grubstake. Think he'd have it?
No sir! Swore he'd give me all he found, make me rich beyond the
dreams of avarice, and all such stuff. Now a man who puts his
life and time against a grubstake ordinarily finds it hard enough
to turn over half of what he finds. Something behind all this,
Prince; just you make a note of it. We'll hear of him if he stays
in the country--' 'And if he doesn't?' 'Then my good nature gets
a shock, and I'm sixty some odd ounces out.' The cold weather had
come on with the long nights, and the sun had begun to play his
ancient game of peekaboo along the southern snow line ere aught
was heard of Malemute Kid's grubstake. And then, one bleak
morning in early January, a heavily laden dog train pulled into
his cabin below Stuart River. He of the Otter Skins was there,
and with him walked a man such as the gods have almost forgotten
how to fashion. Men never talked of luck and pluck and
five-hundreddollar dirt without bringing in the name of Axel
Gunderson; nor could tales of nerve or strength or daring pass up
and down the campfire without the summoning of his presence. And
when the conversation flagged, it blazed anew at mention of the
woman who shared his fortunes.

As has been noted, in the making of Axel Gunderson the gods had
remembered their old-time cunning and cast him after the manner
of men who were born when the world was young. Full seven feet he
towered in his picturesque costume which marked a king of
Eldorado. His chest, neck, and limbs were those of a giant. To
bear his three hundred pounds of bone and muscle, his snowshoes
were greater by a generous yard than those of other men.
Rough-hewn, with rugged brow and massive jaw and unflinching eyes
of palest blue, his face told the tale of one who knew but the
law of might. Of the yellow of ripe corn silk, his
frost-incrusted hair swept like day across the night and fell far
down his coat of bearskin.

A vague tradition of the sea seemed to cling about him as he
swung down the narrow trail in advance of the dogs; and he
brought the butt of his dog whip against Malemute Kid's door as a
Norse sea rover, on southern foray, might thunder for admittance
at the castle gate.

Prince bared his womanly arms and kneaded sour-dough bread,
casting, as he did so, many a glance at the three guests--three
guests the like of which might never come under a man's roof in a
lifetime. The Strange One, whom Malemute Kid had surnamed
Ulysses, still fascinated him; but his interest chiefly
gravitated between Axel Gunderson and Axel Gunderson's wife. She
felt the day's journey, for she had softened in comfortable
cabins during the many days since her husband mastered the wealth
of frozen pay streaks, and she was tired. She rested against his
great breast like a slender flower against a wall, replying
lazily to Malemute Kid's good-natured banter, and stirring
Prince's blood strangely with an occasional sweep of her deep,
dark eyes. For Prince was a man, and healthy, and had seen few
women in many months. And she was older than he, and an Indian
besides. But she was different from all native wives he had met:
she had traveled--had been in his country among others, he
gathered from the conversation; and she knew most of the things
the women of his own race knew, and much more that it was not in
the nature of things for them to know. She could make a meal of
sun-dried fish or a bed in the snow; yet she teased them with
tantalizing details of many-course dinners, and caused strange
internal dissensions to arise at the mention of various quondam
dishes which they had well-nigh forgotten. She knew the ways of
the moose, the bear, and the little blue fox, and of the wild
amphibians of the Northern seas; she was skilled in the lore of
the woods, and the streams, and the tale writ by man and bird and
beast upon the delicate snow crust was to her an open book; yet
Prince caught the appreciative twinkle in her eye as she read the
Rules of the Camp. These rules had been fathered by the
Unquenchable Bettles at a time when his blood ran high, and were
remarkable for the terse simplicity of their humor.

Prince always turned them to the wall before the arrival of
ladies; but who could suspect that this native wife--Well, it was
too late now.

This, then, was the wife of Axel Gunderson, a woman whose name
and fame had traveled with her husband's, hand in hand, through
all the Northland. At table, Malemute Kid baited her with the
assurance of an old friend, and Prince shook off the shyness of
first acquaintance and joined in. But she held her own in the
unequal contest, while her husband, slower in wit, ventured
naught but applause. And he was very proud of her; his every look
and action revealed the magnitude of the place she occupied in
his life. He of the Otter Skins ate in silence, forgotten in the
merry battle; and long ere the others were done he pushed back
from the table and went out among the dogs. Yet all too soon his
fellow travelers drew on their mittens and parkas and followed
him.

There had been no snow for many days, and the sleds slipped along
the hardpacked Yukon trail as easily as if it had been glare ice.
Ulysses led the first sled; with the second came Prince and Axel
Gunderson's wife; while Malemute Kid and the yellow-haired giant
brought up the third.

'It's only a hunch, Kid,' he said, 'but I think it's straight.
He's never been there, but he tells a good story, and shows a map
I heard of when I was in the Kootenay country years ago. I'd like
to have you go along; but he's a strange one, and swore
point-blank to throw it up if anyone was brought in. But when I
come back you'll get first tip, and I'll stake you next to me,
and give you a half share in the town site besides.' 'No! no!' he
cried, as the other strove to interrupt. 'I'm running this, and
before I'm done it'll need two heads.

'If it's all right, why, it'll be a second Cripple Creek, man; do
you hear?--a second Cripple Creek! It's quartz, you know, not
placer; and if we work it right we'll corral the whole
thing--millions upon millions. I've heard of the place before,
and so have you. We'll build a town--thousands of workmen--good
waterways--steamship lines--big carrying trade--lightdraught
steamers for head reaches--survey a railroad, perhaps--sawmills--
electric-light plant--do our own banking--commercial
company--syndicate--Say! Just you hold your hush till I get
back!' The sleds came to a halt where the trail crossed the mouth
of Stuart River. An unbroken sea of frost, its wide expanse
stretched away into the unknown east.

The snowshoes were withdrawn from the lashings of the sleds. Axel
Gunderson shook hands and stepped to the fore, his great webbed
shoes sinking a fair half yard into the feathery surface and
packing the snow so the dogs should not wallow. His wife fell in
behind the last sled, betraying long practice in the art of
handling the awkward footgear, The stillness was broken with
cheery farewells; the dogs whined; and He of the Otter Skins
talked with his whip to a recalcitrant wheeler.

An hour later the train had taken on the likeness of a black
pencil crawling in a long, straight line across a mighty sheet of
foolscap.

II

One night, many weeks later, Malemute Kid and Prince fell to
solving chess problems from the torn page of an ancient magazine.
The Kid had just returned from his Bonanza properties and was
resting up preparatory to a long moose hunt.

Prince, too, had been on creek and trail nearly all winter, and
had grown hungry for a blissful week of cabin life.

'Interpose the black knight, and force the king. No, that won't
do. See, the next move-'

'Why advance the pawn two squares? Bound to take it in transit,
and with the bishop out of the way-' 'But hold on! That leaves a
hole, and-' 'No; it's protected. Go ahead! You'll see it works.'
It was very interesting. Somebody knocked at the door a second
time before Malemute Kid said, 'Come in.' The door swung open.
Something staggered in.

Prince caught one square look and sprang to his feet. The horror
in his eyes caused Malemute Kid to whirl about; and he, too, was
startled, though he had seen bad things before. The thing
tottered blindly toward them. Prince edged away till he reached
the nail from which hung his Smith & Wesson.

'My God! what is it?' he whispered to Malemute Kid.

'Don't know. Looks like a case of freezing and no grub,' replied
the Kid, sliding away in the opposite direction. 'Watch out! It
may be mad,' he warned, coming back from closing the door.

The thing advanced to the table. The bright flame of the slush
lamp caught its eye. It was amused, and gave voice to eldritch
cackles which betokened mirth.

Then, suddenly, he--for it was a man--swayed back, with a hitch
to his skin trousers, and began to sing a chantey, such as men
lift when they swing around the capstan circle and the sea snorts
in their ears: Yan-kee ship come down de ri-ib-er, Pull! my bully
boys! Pull! D'yeh want--to know de captain ru-uns her? Pull! my
bully boys! Pull! Jon-a-than Jones ob South Caho-li-in-a, Pull!
my bullyHe broke off abruptly, tottered with a wolfish snarl to
the meat shelf, and before they could intercept was tearing with
his teeth at a chunk of raw bacon. The struggle was fierce
between him and Malemute Kid; but his mad strength left him as
suddenly as it had come, and he weakly surrendered the spoil.
Between them they got him upon a stool, where he sprawled with
half his body across the table.

A small dose of whiskey strengthened him, so that he could dip a
spoon into the sugar caddy which Malemute Kid placed before him.
After his appetite had been somewhat cloyed, Prince, shuddering
as he did so, passed him a mug of weak beef tea.

The creature's eyes were alight with a somber frenzy, which
blazed and waned with every mouthful. There was very little skin
to the face. The face, for that matter, sunken and emaciated,
bore little likeness to human countenance.

Frost after frost had bitten deeply, each depositing its stratum
of scab upon the half-healed scar that went before. This dry,
hard surface was of a bloody-black color, serrated by grievous
cracks wherein the raw red flesh peeped forth. His skin garments
were dirty and in tatters, and the fur of one side was singed and
burned away, showing where he had lain upon his fire.

Malemute Kid pointed to where the sun-tanned hide had been cut
away, strip by strip--the grim signature of famine.

'Who--are--you?' slowly and distinctly enunciated the Kid.

The man paid no heed.

'Where do you come from?' 'Yan-kee ship come down de ri-ib-er,'
was the quavering response.

'Don't doubt the beggar came down the river,' the Kid said,
shaking him in an endeavor to start a more lucid flow of talk.

But the man shrieked at the contact, clapping a hand to his side
in evident pain. He rose slowly to his feet, half leaning on the
table.

'She laughed at me--so--with the hate in her eye; and
she--would--not--come.' His voice died away, and he was sinking
back when Malemute Kid gripped him by the wrist and shouted,
'Who? Who would not come?' 'She, Unga. She laughed, and struck at
me, so, and so. And then-' 'Yes?'

'And then--' 'And then what?' 'And then he lay very still in the
snow a long time. He is-still in--the--snow.' The two men looked
at each other helplessly.

'Who is in the snow?' 'She, Unga. She looked at me with the hate
in her eye, and then--'

'Yes, yes.' 'And then she took the knife, so; and once,
twice--she was weak. I traveled very slow. And there is much gold
in that place, very much gold.' 'Where is Unga?' For all Malemute
Kid knew, she might be dying a mile away. He shook the man
savagely, repeating again and again, 'Where is Unga? Who is
Unga?' 'She--is--in--the--snow.' 'Go on!' The Kid was pressing
his wrist cruelly.

'So--I--would--be--in--the snow--but--I--had--a--debt--to--pay.
It--was--heavy--Ihad--a-debt--to--pay--a--debt--to--pay I--had-'
The faltering monosyllables ceased as he fumbled in his pouch and
drew forth a buckskin sack. 'A--debt--to--pay--
five--pounds--of--gold-grub--stake--Mal--e--mute--Kid--I-' The
exhausted head dropped upon the table; nor could Malemute Kid
rouse it again.

'It's Ulysses,' he said quietly, tossing the bag of dust on the
table. 'Guess it's all day with Axel Gunderson and the woman.
Come on, let's get him between the blankets. He's Indian; he'll
pull through and tell a tale besides.' As they cut his garments
from him, near his right breast could be seen two unhealed,
hard-lipped knife thrusts.

III

'I will talk of the things which were in my own way; but you will
understand. I will begin at the beginning, and tell of myself and
the woman, and, after that, of the man.' He of the Otter Skins
drew over to the stove as do men who have been deprived of fire
and are afraid the Promethean gift may vanish at any moment.
Malemute Kid picked up the slush lamp and placed it so its light
might fall upon the face of the narrator. Prince slid his body
over the edge of the bunk and joined them.

'I am Naass, a chief, and the son of a chief, born between a
sunset and a rising, on the dark seas, in my father's oomiak. All
of a night the men toiled at the paddles, and the women cast out
the waves which threw in upon us, and we fought with the storm.
The salt spray froze upon my mother's breast till her breath
passed with the passing of the tide. But I--I raised my voice
with the wind and the storm, and lived.

'We dwelt in Akatan--' 'Where?' asked Malemute Kid.

'Akatan, which is in the Aleutians; Akatan, beyond Chignik,
beyond Kardalak, beyond Unimak. As I say, we dwelt in Akatan,
which lies in the midst of the sea on the edge of the world. We
farmed the salt seas for the fish, the seal, and the otter; and
our homes shouldered about one another on the rocky strip between
the rim of the forest and the yellow beach where our kayaks lay.
We were not many, and the world was very small. There were
strange lands to the east--islands like Akatan; so we thought all
the world was islands and did not mind.

'I was different from my people. In the sands of the beach were
the crooked timbers and wave-warped planks of a boat such as my
people never built; and I remember on the point of the island
which overlooked the ocean three ways there stood a pine tree
which never grew there, smooth and straight and tall. It is said
the two men came to that spot, turn about, through many days, and
watched with the passing of the light. These two men came from
out of the sea in the boat which lay in pieces on the beach. And
they were white like you, and weak as the little children when
the seal have gone away and the hunters come home empty. I know
of these things from the old men and the old women, who got them
from their fathers and mothers before them. These strange white
men did not take kindly to our ways at first, but they grew
strong, what of the fish and the oil, and fierce. And they built
them each his own house, and took the pick of our women, and in
time children came. Thus he was born who was to become the father
of my father's father.

'As I said, I was different from my people, for I carried the
strong, strange blood of this white man who came out of the sea.
It is said we had other laws in the days before these men; but
they were fierce and quarrelsome, and fought with our men till
there were no more left who dared to fight. Then they made
themselves chiefs, and took away our old laws, and gave us new
ones, insomuch that the man was the son of his father, and not
his mother, as our way had been. They also ruled that the son,
first-born, should have all things which were his father's before
him, and that the brothers and sisters should shift for
themselves. And they gave us other laws. They showed us new ways
in the catching of fish and the killing of bear which were thick
in the woods; and they taught us to lay by bigger stores for the
time of famine. And these things were good.

'But when they had become chiefs, and there were no more men to
face their anger, they fought, these strange white men, each with
the other. And the one whose blood I carry drove his seal spear
the length of an arm through the other's body. Their children
took up the fight, and their children's children; and there was
great hatred between them, and black doings, even to my time, so
that in each family but one lived to pass down the blood of them
that went before. Of my blood I was alone; of the other man's
there was but a girl. Unga, who lived with her mother. Her father
and my father did not come back from the fishing one night; but
afterward they washed up to the beach on the big tides, and they
held very close to each other.

'The people wondered, because of the hatred between the houses,
and the old men shook their heads and said the fight would go on
when children were born to her and children to me. They told me
this as a boy, till I came to believe, and to look upon Unga as a
foe, who was to be the mother of children which were to fight
with mine. I thought of these things day by day, and when I grew
to a stripling I came to ask why this should be so.

And they answered, "We do not know, but that in such way your
fathers did." And I marveled that those which were to come should
fight the battles of those that were gone, and in it I could see
no right. But the people said it must be, and I was only a
stripling.

'And they said I must hurry, that my blood might be the older and
grow strong before hers. This was easy, for I was head man, and
the people looked up to me because of the deeds and the laws of
my fathers, and the wealth which was mine. Any maiden would come
to me, but I found none to my liking. And the old men and the
mothers of maidens told me to hurry, for even then were the
hunters bidding high to the mother of Unga; and should her
children grow strong before mine, mine would surely die.

'Nor did I find a maiden till one night coming back from the
fishing. The sunlight was lying, so, low and full in the eyes,
the wind free, and the kayacks racing with the white seas. Of a
sudden the kayak of Unga came driving past me, and she looked
upon me, so, with her black hair flying like a cloud of night and
the spray wet on her cheek. As I say, the sunlight was full in
the eyes, and I was a stripling; but somehow it was all clear,
and I knew it to be the call of kind to kind.

As she whipped ahead she looked back within the space of two
strokes--looked as only the woman Unga could look--and again I
knew it as the call of kind. The people shouted as we ripped past
the lazy oomiaks and left them far behind. But she was quick at
the paddle, and my heart was like the belly of a sail, and I did
not gain. The wind freshened, the sea whitened, and, leaping like
the seals on the windward breech, we roared down the golden
pathway of the sun.' Naass was crouched half out of his stool, in
the attitude of one driving a paddle, as he ran the race anew.
Somewhere across the stove he beheld the tossing kayak and the
flying hair of Unga. The voice of the wind was in his ears, and
its salt beat fresh upon his nostrils.

'But she made the shore, and ran up the sand, laughing, to the
house of her mother. And a great thought came to me that night--a
thought worthy of him that was chief over all the people of
Akatan. So, when the moon was up, I went down to the house of her
mother, and looked upon the goods of Yash-Noosh, which were piled
by the door--the goods of Yash-Noosh, a strong hunter who had it
in mind to be the father of the children of Unga. Other young men
had piled their goods there and taken them away again; and each
young man had made a pile greater than the one before.

'And I laughed to the moon and the stars, and went to my own
house where my wealth was stored. And many trips I made, till my
pile was greater by the fingers of one hand than the pile of
Yash-Noosh. There were fish, dried in the sun and smoked; and
forty hides of the hair seal, and half as many of the fur, and
each hide was tied at the mouth and big bellied with oil; and ten
skins of bear which I killed in the woods when they came out in
the spring. And there were beads and blankets and scarlet cloths,
such as I got in trade from the people who lived to the east, and
who got them in trade from the people who lived still beyond in
the east.

And I looked upon the pile of Yash-Noosh and laughed, for I was
head man in Akatan, and my wealth was greater than the wealth of
all my young men, and my fathers had done deeds, and given laws,
and put their names for all time in the mouths of the people.

'So, when the morning came, I went down to the beach, casting out
of the corner of my eye at the house of the mother of Unga. My
offer yet stood untouched.

And the women smiled, and said sly things one to the other. I
wondered, for never had such a price been offered; and that night
I added more to the pile, and put beside it a kayak of
well-tanned skins which never yet had swam in the sea. But in the
day it was yet there, open to the laughter of all men. The mother
of Unga was crafty, and I grew angry at the shame in which I
stood before my people. So that night I added till it became a
great pile, and I hauled up my oomiak, which was of the value of
twenty kayaks. And in the morning there was no pile.

'Then made I preparation for the wedding, and the people that
lived even to the east came for the food of the feast and the
potlatch token. Unga was older than I by the age of four suns in
the way we reckoned the years. I was only a stripling; but then I
was a chief, and the son of a chief, and it did not matter.

'But a ship shoved her sails above the floor of the ocean, and
grew larger with the breath of the wind. From her scuppers she
ran clear water, and the men were in haste and worked hard at the
pumps. On the bow stood a mighty man, watching the depth of the
water and giving commands with a voice of thunder. His eyes were
of the pale blue of the deep waters, and his head was maned like
that of a sea lion. And his hair was yellow, like the straw of a
southern harvest or the manila rope yarns which sailormen plait.

'Of late years we had seen ships from afar, but this was the
first to come to the beach of Akatan. The feast was broken, and
the women and children fled to the houses, while we men strung
our bows and waited with spears in hand. But when the ship's
forefoot smelled the beach the strange men took no notice of us,
being busy with their own work. With the falling of the tide they
careened the schooner and patched a great hole in her bottom. So
the women crept back, and the feast went on.

'When the tide rose, the sea wanderers kedged the schooner to
deep water and then came among us. They bore presents and were
friendly; so I made room for them, and out of the largeness of my
heart gave them tokens such as I gave all the guests, for it was
my wedding day, and I was head man in Akatan. And he with the
mane of the sea lion was there, so tall and strong that one
looked to see the earth shake with the fall of his feet. He
looked much and straight at Unga, with his arms folded, so, and
stayed till the sun went away and the stars came out. Then he
went down to his ship. After that I took Unga by the hand and led
her to my own house. And there was singing and great laughter,
and the women said sly things, after the manner of women at such
times. But we did not care. Then the people left us alone and
went home.

'The last noise had not died away when the chief of the sea
wanderers came in by the door. And he had with him black bottles,
from which we drank and made merry. You see, I was only a
stripling, and had lived all my days on the edge of the world. So
my blood became as fire, and my heart as light as the froth that
flies from the surf to the cliff. Unga sat silent among the skins
in the corner, her eyes wide, for she seemed to fear. And he with
the mane of the sea lion looked upon her straight and long. Then
his men came in with bundles of goods, and he piled before me
wealth such as was not in all Akatan. There were guns, both large
and small, and powder and shot and shell, and bright axes and
knives of steel, and cunning tools, and strange things the like
of which I had never seen. When he showed me by sign that it was
all mine, I thought him a great man to be so free; but he showed
me also that Unga was to go away with him in his ship.

'Do you understand?--that Unga was to go away with him in his
ship. The blood of my fathers flamed hot on the sudden, and I
made to drive him through with my spear. But the spirit of the
bottles had stolen the life from my arm, and he took me by the
neck, so, and knocked my head against the wall of the house. And
I was made weak like a newborn child, and my legs would no more
stand under me.

'Unga screamed, and she laid hold of the things of the house with
her hands, till they fell all about us as he dragged her to the
door. Then he took her in his great arms, and when she tore at
his yellow hair laughed with a sound like that of the big bull
seal in the rut.

'I crawled to the beach and called upon my people, but they were
afraid. Only Yash-Noosh was a man, and they struck him on the
head with an oar, till he lay with his face in the sand and did
not move. And they raised the sails to the sound of their songs,
and the ship went away on the wind.

'The people said it was good, for there would be no more war of
the bloods in Akatan; but I said never a word, waiting till the
time of the full moon, when I put fish and oil in my kayak and
went away to the east. I saw many islands and many people, and I,
who had lived on the edge, saw that the world was very large. I
talked by signs; but they had not seen a schooner nor a man with
the mane of a sea lion, and they pointed always to the east. And
I slept in queer places, and ate odd things, and met strange
faces. Many laughed, for they thought me light of head; but
sometimes old men turned my face to the light and blessed me, and
the eyes of the young women grew soft as they asked me of the
strange ship, and Unga, and the men of the sea.

'And in this manner, through rough seas and great storms, I came
to Unalaska. There were two schooners there, but neither was the
one I sought. So I passed on to the east, with the world growing
ever larger, and in the island of Unamok there was no word of the
ship, nor in Kadiak, nor in Atognak. And so I came one day to a
rocky land, where men dug great holes in the mountain. And there
was a schooner, but not my schooner, and men loaded upon it the
rocks which they dug. This I thought childish, for all the world
was made of rocks; but they gave me food and set me to work. When
the schooner was deep in the water, the captain gave me money and
told me to go; but I asked which way he went, and he pointed
south. I made signs that I would go with him, and he laughed at
first, but then, being short of men, took me to help work the
ship. So I came to talk after their manner, and to heave on
ropes, and to reef the stiff sails in sudden squalls, and to take
my turn at the wheel. But it was not strange, for the blood of my
fathers was the blood of the men of the sea.

'I had thought it an easy task to find him I sought, once I got
among his own people; and when we raised the land one day, and
passed between a gateway of the sea to a port, I looked for
perhaps as many schooners as there were fingers to my hands. But
the ships lay against the wharves for miles, packed like so many
little fish; and when I went among them to ask for a man with the
mane of a sea lion, they laughed, and answered me in the tongues
of many peoples. And I found that they hailed from the uttermost
parts of the earth.

'And I went into the city to look upon the face of every man. But
they were like the cod when they run thick on the banks, and I
could not count them. And the noise smote upon me till I could
not hear, and my head was dizzy with much movement. So I went on
and on, through the lands which sang in the warm sunshine; where
the harvests lay rich on the plains; and where great cities were
fat with men that lived like women, with false words in their
mouths and their hearts black with the lust of gold. And all the
while my people of Akatan hunted and fished, and were happy in
the thought that the world was small.

'But the look in the eyes of Unga coming home from the fishing
was with me always, and I knew I would find her when the time was
met. She walked down quiet lanes in the dusk of the evening, or
led me chases across the thick fields wet with the morning dew,
and there was a promise in her eyes such as only the woman Unga
could give.

'So I wandered through a thousand cities. Some were gentle and
gave me food, and others laughed, and still others cursed; but I
kept my tongue between my teeth, and went strange ways and saw
strange sights. Sometimes I, who was a chief and the son of a
chief, toiled for men--men rough of speech and hard as iron, who
wrung gold from the sweat and sorrow of their fellow men. Yet no
word did I get of my quest till I came back to the sea like a
homing seal to the rookeries.

'But this was at another port, in another country which lay to
the north. And there I heard dim tales of the yellow-haired sea
wanderer, and I learned that he was a hunter of seals, and that
even then he was abroad on the ocean.

'So I shipped on a seal schooner with the lazy Siwashes, and
followed his trackless trail to the north where the hunt was then
warm. And we were away weary months, and spoke many of the fleet,
and heard much of the wild doings of him I sought; but never once
did we raise him above the sea. We went north, even to the
Pribilofs, and killed the seals in herds on the beach, and
brought their warm bodies aboard till our scuppers ran grease and
blood and no man could stand upon the deck. Then were we chased
by a ship of slow steam, which fired upon us with great guns. But
we put sail till the sea was over our decks and washed them
clean, and lost ourselves in a fog.

'It is said, at this time, while we fled with fear at our hearts,
that the yellowhaired sea wanderer put in to the Pribilofs, right
to the factory, and while the part of his men held the servants
of the company, the rest loaded ten thousand green skins from the
salt houses. I say it is said, but I believe; for in the voyages
I made on the coast with never a meeting the northern seas rang
with his wildness and daring, till the three nations which have
lands there sought him with their ships.

'And I heard of Unga, for the captains sang loud in her praise,
and she was always with him. She had learned the ways of his
people, they said, and was happy. But I knew better--knew that
her heart harked back to her own people by the yellow beach of
Akatan.

'So, after a long time, I went back to the port which is by a
gateway of the sea, and there I learned that he had gone across
the girth of the great ocean to hunt for the seal to the east of
the warm land which runs south from the Russian seas.

'And I, who was become a sailorman, shipped with men of his own
race, and went after him in the hunt of the seal. And there were
few ships off that new land; but we hung on the flank of the seal
pack and harried it north through all the spring of the year. And
when the cows were heavy with pup and crossed the Russian line,
our men grumbled and were afraid. For there was much fog, and
every day men were lost in the boats. They would not work, so the
captain turned the ship back toward the way it came. But I knew
the yellow-haired sea wanderer was unafraid, and would hang by
the pack, even to the Russian Isles, where few men go. So I took
a boat, in the black of night, when the lookout dozed on the
fo'c'slehead, and went alone to the warm, long land. And I
journeyed south to meet the men by Yeddo Bay, who are wild and
unafraid. And the Yoshiwara girls were small, and bright like
steel, and good to look upon; but I could not stop, for I knew
that Unga rolled on the tossing floor by the rookeries of the
north.

'The men by Yeddo Bay had met from the ends of the earth, and had
neither gods nor homes, sailing under the flag of the Japanese.
And with them I went to the rich beaches of Copper Island, where
our salt piles became high with skins.

'And in that silent sea we saw no man till we were ready to come
away. Then one day the fog lifted on the edge of a heavy wind,
and there jammed down upon us a schooner, with close in her wake
the cloudy funnels of a Russian man-of-war. We fled away on the
beam of the wind, with the schooner jamming still closer and
plunging ahead three feet to our two. And upon her poop was the
man with the mane of the sea lion, pressing the rails under with
the canvas and laughing in his strength of life. And Unga was
there--I knew her on the moment--but he sent her below when the
cannons began to talk across the sea.

As I say, with three feet to our two, till we saw the rudder lift
green at every jump--and I swinging on to the wheel and cursing,
with my back to the Russian shot. For we knew he had it in mind
to run before us, that he might get away while we were caught.
And they knocked our masts out of us till we dragged into the
wind like a wounded gull; but he went on over the edge of the sky
line--he and Unga.

'What could we? The fresh hides spoke for themselves. So they
took us to a Russian port, and after that to a lone country,
where they set us to work in the mines to dig salt. And some
died, and--and some did not die.' Naass swept the blanket from
his shoulders, disclosing the gnarled and twisted flesh, marked
with the unmistakable striations of the knout. Prince hastily
covered him, for it was not nice to look upon.

'We were there a weary time and sometimes men got away to the
south, but they always came back. So, when we who hailed from
Yeddo Bay rose in the night and took the guns from the guards, we
went to the north. And the land was very large, with plains,
soggy with water, and great forests. And the cold came, with much
snow on the ground, and no man knew the way. Weary months we
journeyed through the endless forest--I do not remember, now, for
there was little food and often we lay down to die. But at last
we came to the cold sea, and but three were left to look upon it.
One had shipped from Yeddo as captain, and he knew in his head
the lay of the great lands, and of the place where men may cross
from one to the other on the ice. And he led us--I do not know,
it was so long--till there were but two. When we came to that
place we found five of the strange people which live in that
country, and they had dogs and skins, and we were very poor. We
fought in the snow till they died, and the captain died, and the
dogs and skins were mine. Then I crossed on the ice, which was
broken, and once I drifted till a gale from the west put me upon
the shore. And after that, Golovin Bay, Pastilik, and the priest.
Then south, south, to the warm sunlands where first I wandered.

'But the sea was no longer fruitful, and those who went upon it
after the seal went to little profit and great risk. The fleets
scattered, and the captains and the men had no word of those I
sought. So I turned away from the ocean which never rests, and
went among the lands, where the trees, the houses, and the
mountains sit always in one place and do not move. I journeyed
far, and came to learn many things, even to the way of reading
and writing from books. It was well I should do this, for it came
upon me that Unga must know these things, and that someday, when
the time was met--we--you understand, when the time was met.

'So I drifted, like those little fish which raise a sail to the
wind but cannot steer. But my eyes and my ears were open always,
and I went among men who traveled much, for I knew they had but
to see those I sought to remember. At last there came a man,
fresh from the mountains, with pieces of rock in which the free
gold stood to the size of peas, and he had heard, he had met, he
knew them. They were rich, he said, and lived in the place where
they drew the gold from the ground.

'It was in a wild country, and very far away; but in time I came
to the camp, hidden between the mountains, where men worked night
and day, out of the sight of the sun. Yet the time was not come.
I listened to the talk of the people. He had gone away--they had
gone away--to England, it was said, in the matter of bringing men
with much money together to form companies. I saw the house they
had lived in; more like a palace, such as one sees in the old
countries. In the nighttime I crept in through a window that I
might see in what manner he treated her. I went from room to
room, and in such way thought kings and queens must live, it was
all so very good. And they all said he treated her like a queen,
and many marveled as to what breed of woman she was for there was
other blood in her veins, and she was different from the women of
Akatan, and no one knew her for what she was. Aye, she was a
queen; but I was a chief, and the son of a chief, and I had paid
for her an untold price of skin and boat and bead.

'But why so many words? I was a sailorman, and knew the way of
the ships on the seas. I followed to England, and then to other
countries. Sometimes I heard of them by word of mouth, sometimes
I read of them in the papers; yet never once could I come by
them, for they had much money, and traveled fast, while I was a
poor man. Then came trouble upon them, and their wealth slipped
away one day like a curl of smoke. The papers were full of it at
the time; but after that nothing was said, and I knew they had
gone back where more gold could be got from the ground.

'They had dropped out of the world, being now poor, and so I
wandered from camp to camp, even north to the Kootenay country,
where I picked up the cold scent. They had come and gone, some
said this way, and some that, and still others that they had gone
to the country of the Yukon. And I went this way, and I went
that, ever journeying from place to place, till it seemed I must
grow weary of the world which was so large. But in the Kootenay I
traveled a bad trail, and a long trail, with a breed of the
Northwest, who saw fit to die when the famine pinched. He had
been to the Yukon by an unknown way over the mountains, and when
he knew his time was near gave me the map and the secret of a
place where he swore by his gods there was much gold.

'After that all the world began to flock into the north. I was a
poor man; I sold myself to be a driver of dogs. The rest you
know. I met him and her in Dawson.

'She did not know me, for I was only a stripling, and her life
had been large, so she had no time to remember the one who had
paid for her an untold price.

'So? You bought me from my term of service. I went back to bring
things about in my own way, for I had waited long, and now that I
had my hand upon him was in no hurry.

'As I say, I had it in mind to do my own way, for I read back in
my life, through all I had seen and suffered, and remembered the
cold and hunger of the endless forest by the Russian seas. As you
know, I led him into the easthim and Unga--into the east where
many have gone and few returned. I led them to the spot where the
bones and the curses of men lie with the gold which they may not
have.

'The way was long and the trail unpacked. Our dogs were many and
ate much; nor could our sleds carry till the break of spring. We
must come back before the river ran free. So here and there we
cached grub, that our sleds might be lightened and there be no
chance of famine on the back trip. At the McQuestion there were
three men, and near them we built a cache, as also did we at the
Mayo, where was a hunting camp of a dozen Pellys which had
crossed the divide from the south.

'After that, as we went on into the east, we saw no men; only the
sleeping river, the moveless forest, and the White Silence of the
North. As I say, the way was long and the trail unpacked.
Sometimes, in a day's toil, we made no more than eight miles, or
ten, and at night we slept like dead men. And never once did they
dream that I was Naass, head man of Akatan, the righter of
wrongs.

'We now made smaller caches, and in the nighttime it was a small
matter to go back on the trail we had broken and change them in
such way that one might deem the wolverines the thieves. Again
there be places where there is a fall to the river, and the water
is unruly, and the ice makes above and is eaten away beneath.

'In such a spot the sled I drove broke through, and the dogs; and
to him and Unga it was ill luck, but no more. And there was much
grub on that sled, and the dogs the strongest.

'But he laughed, for he was strong of life, and gave the dogs
that were left little grub till we cut them from the harnesses
one by one and fed them to their mates. We would go home light,
he said, traveling and eating from cache to cache, with neither
dogs nor sleds; which was true, for our grub was very short, and
the last dog died in the traces the night we came to the gold and
the bones and the curses of men.

'To reach that place--and the map spoke true--in the heart of the
great mountains, we cut ice steps against the wall of a divide.
One looked for a valley beyond, but there was no valley; the snow
spread away, level as the great harvest plains, and here and
there about us mighty mountains shoved their white heads among
the stars. And midway on that strange plain which should have
been a valley the earth and the snow fell away, straight down
toward the heart of the world.

'Had we not been sailormen our heads would have swung round with
the sight, but we stood on the dizzy edge that we might see a way
to get down. And on one side, and one side only, the wall had
fallen away till it was like the slope of the decks in a topsail
breeze. I do not know why this thing should be so, but it was so.
"It is the mouth of hell," he said; "let us go down." And we went
down.

'And on the bottom there was a cabin, built by some man, of logs
which he had cast down from above. It was a very old cabin, for
men had died there alone at different times, and on pieces of
birch bark which were there we read their last words and their
curses.

'One had died of scurvy; another's partner had robbed him of his
last grub and powder and stolen away; a third had been mauled by
a baldface grizzly; a fourth had hunted for game and starved--and
so it went, and they had been loath to leave the gold, and had
died by the side of it in one way or another. And the worthless
gold they had gathered yellowed the floor of the cabin like in a
dream.

'But his soul was steady, and his head clear, this man I had led
thus far. "We have nothing to eat," he said, "and we will only
look upon this gold, and see whence it comes and how much there
be. Then we will go away quick, before it gets into our eyes and
steals away our judgment. And in this way we may return in the
end, with more grub, and possess it all." So we looked upon the
great vein, which cut the wall of the pit as a true vein should,
and we measured it, and traced it from above and below, and drove
the stakes of the claims and blazed the trees in token of our
rights. Then, our knees shaking with lack of food, and a sickness
in our bellies, and our hearts chugging close to our mouths, we
climbed the mighty wall for the last time and turned our faces to
the back trip.

'The last stretch we dragged Unga between us, and we fell often,
but in the end we made the cache. And lo, there was no grub. It
was well done, for he thought it the wolverines, and damned them
and his gods in one breath. But Unga was brave, and smiled, and
put her hand in his, till I turned away that I might hold myself.
"We will rest by the fire," she said, "till morning, and we will
gather strength from our moccasins." So we cut the tops of our
moccasins in strips, and boiled them half of the night, that we
might chew them and swallow them. And in the morning we talked of
our chance. The next cache was five days' journey; we could not
make it. We must find game.

'"We will go forth and hunt," he said.

'"Yes," said I, "we will go forth and hunt." 'And he ruled that
Unga stay by the fire and save her strength. And we went forth,
he in quest of the moose and I to the cache I had changed. But I
ate little, so they might not see in me much strength. And in the
night he fell many times as he drew into camp. And I, too, made
to suffer great weakness, stumbling over my snowshoes as though
each step might be my last. And we gathered strength from our
moccasins.

'He was a great man. His soul lifted his body to the last; nor
did he cry aloud, save for the sake of Unga. On the second day I
followed him, that I might not miss the end. And he lay down to
rest often. That night he was near gone; but in the morning he
swore weakly and went forth again. He was like a drunken man, and
I looked many times for him to give up, but his was the strength
of the strong, and his soul the soul of a giant, for he lifted
his body through all the weary day. And he shot two ptarmigan,
but would not eat them. He needed no fire; they meant life; but
his thought was for Unga, and he turned toward camp.

'He no longer walked, but crawled on hand and knee through the
snow. I came to him, and read death in his eyes. Even then it was
not too late to eat of the ptarmigan. He cast away his rifle and
carried the birds in his mouth like a dog. I walked by his side,
upright. And he looked at me during the moments he rested, and
wondered that I was so strong. I could see it, though he no
longer spoke; and when his lips moved, they moved without sound.

'As I say, he was a great man, and my heart spoke for softness;
but I read back in my life, and remembered the cold and hunger of
the endless forest by the Russian seas. Besides, Unga was mine,
and I had paid for her an untold price of skin and boat and bead.

'And in this manner we came through the white forest, with the
silence heavy upon us like a damp sea mist. And the ghosts of the
past were in the air and all about us; and I saw the yellow beach
of Akatan, and the kayaks racing home from the fishing, and the
houses on the rim of the forest. And the men who had made
themselves chiefs were there, the lawgivers whose blood I bore
and whose blood I had wedded in Unga. Aye, and Yash-Noosh walked
with me, the wet sand in his hair, and his war spear, broken as
he fell upon it, still in his hand. And I knew the time was meet,
and saw in the eyes of Unga the promise.

'As I say, we came thus through the forest, till the smell of the
camp smoke was in our nostrils. And I bent above him, and tore
the ptarmigan from his teeth.

'He turned on his side and rested, the wonder mounting in his
eyes, and the hand which was under slipping slow toward the knife
at his hip. But I took it from him, smiling close in his face.
Even then he did not understand. So I made to drink from black
bottles, and to build high upon the snow a pile--of goods, and to
live again the things which had happened on the night of my
marriage. I spoke no word, but he understood. Yet was he
unafraid. There was a sneer to his lips, and cold anger, and he
gathered new strength with the knowledge. It was not far, but the
snow was deep, and he dragged himself very slow.

'Once he lay so long I turned him over and gazed into his eyes.
And sometimes he looked forth, and sometimes death. And when I
loosed him he struggled on again. In this way we came to the
fire. Unga was at his side on the instant. His lips moved without
sound; then he pointed at me, that Unga might understand. And
after that he lay in the snow, very still, for a long while. Even
now is he there in the snow.

'I said no word till I had cooked the ptarmigan. Then I spoke to
her, in her own tongue, which she had not heard in many years.
She straightened herself, so, and her eyes were wonder-wide, and
she asked who I was, and where I had learned that speech.

'"I am Naass," I said.

'"You?" she said. "You?" And she crept close that she might look
upon me.

'"Yes," I answered; "I am Naass, head man of Akatan, the last of
the blood, as you are the last of the blood." 'And she laughed.
By all the things I have seen and the deeds I have done may I
never hear such a laugh again. It put the chill to my soul,
sitting there in the White Silence, alone with death and this
woman who laughed.

'"Come!" I said, for I thought she wandered. "Eat of the food and
let us be gone. It is a far fetch from here to Akatan." 'But she
shoved her face in his yellow mane, and laughed till it seemed
the heavens must fall about our ears. I had thought she would be
overjoyed at the sight of me, and eager to go back to the memory
of old times, but this seemed a strange form to take.

'"Come!' I cried, taking her strong by the hand. "The way is long
and dark. Let us hurry!' '"Where?" she asked, sitting up, and
ceasing from her strange mirth.

'"To Akatan," I answered, intent on the light to grow on her face
at the thought. But it became like his, with a sneer to the lips,
and cold anger.

'"Yes,' she said; "we will go, hand in hand, to Akatan, you and
I. And we will live in the dirty huts, and eat of the fish and
oil, and bring forth a spawn--a spawn to be proud of all the days
of our life. We will forget the world and be happy, very happy.
It is good, most good. Come! Let us hurry. Let us go back to
Akatan." 'And she ran her hand through his yellow hair, and
smiled in a way which was not good. And there was no promise in
her eyes.

'I sat silent, and marveled at the strangeness of woman. I went
back to the night when he dragged her from me and she screamed
and tore at his hair--at his hair which now she played with and
would not leave. Then I remembered the price and the long years
of waiting; and I gripped her close, and dragged her away as he
had done. And she held back, even as on that night, and fought
like a she-cat for its whelp. And when the fire was between us
and the man. I loosed her, and she sat and listened. And I told
her of all that lay between, of all that had happened to me on
strange seas, of all that I had done in strange lands; of my
weary quest, and the hungry years, and the promise which had been
mine from the first. Aye, I told all, even to what had passed
that day between the man and me, and in the days yet young. And
as I spoke I saw the promise grow in her eyes, full and large
like the break of dawn. And I read pity there, the tenderness of
woman, the love, the heart and the soul of Unga. And I was a
stripling again, for the look was the look of Unga as she ran up
the beach, laughing, to the home of her mother. The stern unrest
was gone, and the hunger, and the weary waiting.

'The time was met. I felt the call of her breast, and it seemed
there I must pillow my head and forget. She opened her arms to
me, and I came against her. Then, sudden, the hate flamed in her
eye, her hand was at my hip. And once, twice, she passed the
knife.

'"Dog!" she sneered, as she flung me into the snow. "Swine!" And
then she laughed till the silence cracked, and went back to her
dead.

'As I say, once she passed the knife, and twice; but she was weak
with hunger, and it was not meant that I should die. Yet was I
minded to stay in that place, and to close my eyes in the last
long sleep with those whose lives had crossed with mine and led
my feet on unknown trails. But there lay a debt upon me which
would not let me rest.

'And the way was long, the cold bitter, and there was little
grub. The Pellys had found no moose, and had robbed my cache. And
so had the three white men, but they lay thin and dead in their
cabins as I passed. After that I do not remember, till I came
here, and found food and fire--much fire.' As he finished, he
crouched closely, even jealously, over the stove. For a long
while the slush-lamp shadows played tragedies upon the wall.

'But Unga!' cried Prince, the vision still strong upon him.

'Unga? She would not eat of the ptarmigan. She lay with her arms
about his neck, her face deep in his yellow hair. I drew the fire
close, that she might not feel the frost, but she crept to the
other side. And I built a fire there; yet it was little good, for
she would not eat. And in this manner they still lie up there in
the snow.'

'And you?' asked Malemute Kid.

'I do not know; but Akatan is small, and I have little wish to go
back and live on the edge of the world. Yet is there small use in
life. I can go to Constantine, and he will put irons upon me, and
one day they will tie a piece of rope, so, and I will sleep good.
Yet--no; I do not know.' 'But, Kid,' protested Prince, 'this is
murder!' 'Hush!' commanded Malemute Kid. 'There be things greater
than our wisdom, beyond our justice. The right and the wrong of
this we cannot say, and it is not for us to judge.' Naass drew
yet closer to the fire. There was a great silence, and in each
man's eyes many pictures came and went.

The End