The Faith of Men .................................................................................................................................................1

I wash my hands of him at the start. I cannot father his tales, nor will I be responsible for them. I make these

preliminary reservations, observe, as a guard upon my own integrity. I possess a certain definite position in a

small way, also a wife; and for the good name of the community that honours my existence with its approval,

and for the sake of her posterity and mine, I cannot take the chances I once did, nor foster probabilities with

the careless improvidence of youth. So, I repeat, I wash my hands of him, this Nimrod, this mighty hunter,

Having been honest to myself, and to whatever prospective olive branches my wife may be pleased to tender

me, I can now afford to be generous. I shall not criticize the tales told me by Thomas Stevens, and, further, I

shall withhold my judgment. If it be asked why, I can only add that judgment I have none. Long have I

pondered, weighed, and balanced, but never have my conclusions been twice the sameforsooth! because

Thomas Stevens is a greater man than I. If he have told truths, well and good; if untruths, still well and good.

For who can prove? or who disprove? I eliminate myself from the proposition, while those of little faith may

do as I have donego find the same Thomas Stevens, and discuss to his face the various matters which, if

fortune serve, I shall relate. As to where he may be found? The directions are simple: anywhere between 53

north latitude and the Pole, on the one hand; and, on the other, the likeliest hunting grounds that lie between

the east coast of Siberia and farthermost Labrador. That he is there, somewhere, within that clearly defined

territory, I pledge the word of an honourable man whose expectations entail straight speaking and right

Thomas Stevens may have toyed prodigiously with truth, but when we first met (it were well to mark this

point), he wandered into my camp when I thought myself a thousand miles beyond the outermost post of

civilization. At the sight of his human face, the first in weary months, I could have sprung forward and folded

him in my arms (and I am not by any means a demonstrative man); but to him his visit seemed the most

casual thing under the sun. He just strolled into the light of my camp, passed the time of day after the custom

of men on beaten trails, threw my snowshoes the one way and a couple of dogs the other, and so made room

for himself by the fire. Said he'd just dropped in to borrow a pinch of soda and to see if I had any decent

tobacco. He plucked forth an ancient pipe, loaded it with painstaking care, and, without as much as by your

leave, whacked half the tobacco of my pouch into his. Yes, the stuff was fairly good. He sighed with the

contentment of the just, and literally absorbed the smoke from the crisping yellow flakes, and it did my

Hunter? Trapper? Prospector? He shrugged his shoulders No; just sort of knocking round a bit. Had come up

from the Great Slave some time since, and was thinking of trapsing over into the Yukon country. The factor

of Koshim had spoken about the discoveries on the Klondike, and he was of a mind to run over for a peep. I

noticed that he spoke of the Klondike in the archaic vernacular, calling it the Reindeer Rivera conceited

custom that the Old Timers employ against the CHECHAQUAS and all tenderfeet in general. But he did it so

naively and as such a matter of course, that there was no sting, and I forgave him. He also had it in view, he

said, before he crossed the divide into the Yukon, to make a little run up Fort o' Good Hope way.

Now Fort o' Good Hope is a far journey to the north, over and beyond the Circle, in a place where the feet of

few men have trod; and when a nondescript ragamuffin comes in out of the night, from nowhere in particular,

to sit by one's fire and discourse on such in terms of "trapsing" and "a little run," it is fair time to rouse up and

shake off the dream. Wherefore I looked about me; saw the fly and, underneath, the pine boughs spread for

the sleeping furs; saw the grub sacks, the camera, the frosty breaths of the dogs circling on the edge of the

light; and, above, a great streamer of the aurora, bridging the zenith from southeast to northwest. I

shivered. There is a magic in the Northland night, that steals in on one like fevers from malarial marshes. You

are clutched and downed before you are aware. Then I looked to the snowshoes, lying prone and crossed

where he had flung them. Also I had an eye to my tobacco pouch. Half, at least, of its goodly store had

Crazed with suffering, I thought, looking steadfastly at the man one of those wild stampeders, strayed far

from his bearings and wandering like a lost soul through great vastnesses and unknown deeps. Oh, well, let

his moods slip on, until, mayhap, he gathers his tangled wits together. Who knows?the mere sound of a

So I led him on in talk, and soon I marvelled, for he talked of game and the ways thereof. He had killed the

Siberian wolf of westernmost Alaska, and the chamois in the secret Rockies. He averred he knew the haunts

where the last buffalo still roamed; that he had hung on the flanks of the caribou when they ran by the

And I shifted my judgment accordingly (the first revision, but by no account the last), and deemed him a

monumental effigy of truth. Why it was I know not, but the spirit moved me to repeat a tale told to me by a

man who had dwelt in the land too long to know better. It was of the great bear that hugs the steep slopes of

St Elias, never descending to the levels of the gentler inclines. Now God so constituted this creature for its

hillside habitat that the legs of one side are all of a foot longer than those of the other. This is mighty

convenient, as will be reality admitted. So I hunted this rare beast in my own name, told it in the first person,

present tense, painted the requisite locale, gave it the necessary garnishings and touches of verisimilitude, and

Not he. Had he doubted, I could have forgiven him. Had he objected, denying the dangers of such a hunt by

virtue of the animal's inability to turn about and go the other wayhad he done this, I say, I could have taken

him by the hand for the true sportsman that he was. Not he. He sniffed, looked on me, and sniffed again; then

gave my tobacco due praise, thrust one foot into my lap, and bade me examine the gear. It was a MUCLUC

of the Innuit pattern, sewed together with sinew threads, and devoid of beads or furbelows. But it was the

skin itself that was remarkable. In that it was all of half an inch thick, it reminded me of walrushide; but

there the resemblance ceased, for no walrus ever bore so marvellous a growth of hair. On the side and ankles

this hair was wellnigh worn away, what of friction with underbrush and snow; but around the top and down

the more sheltered back it was coarse, dirty black, and very thick. I parted it with difficulty and looked

beneath for the fine fur that is common with northern animals, but found it in this case to be absent. This,

however, was compensated for by the length. Indeed, the tufts that had survived wear and tear measured all of

I looked up into the man's face, and he pulled his foot down and asked, "Find hide like that on your St Elias

I shook my head. "Nor on any other creature of land or sea," I answered candidly. The thickness of it, and the

"That," he said, and said without the slightest hint of impressiveness, "that came from a mammoth."

"Nonsense!" I exclaimed, for I could not forbear the protest of my unbelief. "The mammoth, my dear sir, long

ago vanished from the earth. We know it once existed by the fossil remains that we have unearthed, and by a

frozen carcase that the Siberian sun saw fit to melt from out the bosom of a glacier; but we also know that no

At this word he broke in impatiently. "Your explorers? Pish! A weakly breed. Let us hear no more of them.

Beyond contradiction, this was leading to a yarn; so I baited my hook by ransacking my memory for

whatever data I possessed on the subject in hand. To begin with, I emphasized that the animal was

prehistoric, and marshalled all my facts in support of this. I mentioned the Siberian sandbars that abounded

with ancient mammoth bones; spoke of the large quantities of fossil ivory purchased from the Innuits by the

Alaska Commercial Company; and acknowledged having myself mined six and eightfoot tusks from the

pay gravel of the Klondike creeks. "All fossils," I concluded, "found in the midst of debris deposited through

"I remember when I was a kid," Thomas Stevens sniffed (he had a most confounded way of sniffing), "that I

saw a petrified water melon. Hence, though mistaken persons sometimes delude themselves into thinking

that they are really raising or eating them, there are no such things as extant watermelons?"

"But the question of food," I objected, ignoring his point, which was puerile and without bearing. "The soil

must bring forth vegetable life in lavish abundance to support so monstrous creations. Nowhere in the North

"I pardon your ignorance concerning many matters of this Northland, for you are a young man and have

travelled little; but, at the same time, I am inclined to agree with you on one thing. The mammoth no longer

Thus spake Nimrod, the mighty Hunter. I threw a stick of firewood at the dogs and bade them quit their

unholy howling, and waited. Undoubtedly this liar of singular felicity would open his mouth and requite me

"It was this way," he at last began, after the appropriate silence had intervened. "I was in camp one day"

He waved his hand vaguely in the direction of the northeast, where stretched a TERRA INCOGNITA into

which vastness few men have strayed and fewer emerged. "I was in camp one day with Klooch. Klooch was

as handsome a little KAMOOKS as ever whined betwixt the traces or shoved nose into a camp kettle. Her

father was a full blood Malemute from Russian Pastilik on Bering Sea, and I bred her, and with

understanding, out of a cleanlegged bitch of the Hudson Bay stock. I tell you, O man, she was a corker

combination. And now, on this day I have in mind, she was brought to pup through a pure wild wolf of the

woodsgrey, and long of limb, with big lungs and no end of staying powers. Say! Was there ever the like? It

"As I have said, she was brought neatly to pup, and safely delivered. I was squatting on my hams over the

litterseven sturdy, blind little beggarswhen from behind came a bray of trumpets and crash of brass.

There was a rush, like the wind squall that kicks the heels of the rain, and I was midway to my feet when

knocked flat on my face. At the same instant I heard Klooch sigh, very much as a man does when you've

planted your fist in his belly. You can stake your sack I lay quiet, but I twisted my head around and saw a

huge bulk swaying above me. Then the blue sky flashed into view and I got to my feet. A hairy mountain of

flesh was just disappearing in the underbrush on the edge of the open. I caught a rearend glimpse, with a

stiff tail, as big in girth as my body, standing out straight behind. The next second only a tremendous hole

remained in the thicket, though I could still hear the sounds as of a tornado dying quickly away, underbrush

"I cast about for my rifle. It had been lying on the ground with the muzzle against a log; but now the stock

was smashed, the barrel out of line, and the workinggear in a thousand bits. Then I looked for the slut,

"May my soul burn in a thousand hells if there was anything left of her! Klooch, the seven sturdy, blind little

beggarsgone, all gone. Where she had stretched was a slimy, bloody depression in the soft earth, all of a

I measured three feet on the snow, threw about it a circle, and glanced at Nimrod.

"The beast was thirty long and twenty high," he answered, "and its tusks scaled over six times three feet. I

couldn't believe, myself, at the time, for all that it had just happened. But if my senses had played me, there

was the broken gun and the hole in the brush. And there wasor, rather, there was notKlooch and the

pups. O man, it makes me hot all over now when I think of it Klooch! Another Eve! The mother of a new

race! And a rampaging, ranting, old bull mammoth, like a second flood, wiping them, root and branch, off the

face of the earth! Do you wonder that the bloodsoaked earth cried out to high God? Or that I grabbed the

"The handaxe?" I exclaimed, startled out of myself by the picture. "The handaxe, and a big bull mammoth,

Nimrod joined me in my merriment, chuckling gleefully. "Wouldn't it kill you?" he cried. "Wasn't it a

beaver's dream? Many's the time I've laughed about it since, but at the time it was no laughing matter, I was

that danged mad, what of the gun and Klooch. Think of it, O man! A brandnew, unclassified, uncopyrighted

breed, and wiped out before ever it opened its eyes or took out its intention papers! Well, so be it. Life's full

of disappointments, and rightly so. Meat is best after a famine, and a bed soft after a hard trail.

"As I was saying, I took out after the beast with the handaxe, and hung to its heels down the valley; but

when he circled back toward the head, I was left winded at the lower end. Speaking of grub, I might as well

stop long enough to explain a couple of points. Up thereabouts, in the midst of the mountains, is an almighty

curious formation. There is no end of little valleys, each like the other much as peas in a pod, and all neatly

tucked away with straight, rocky walls rising on all sides. And at the lower ends are always small openings

where the drainage or glaciers must have broken out. The only way in is through these mouths, and they are

all small, and some smaller than others. As to grubyou've slushed around on the rainsoaked islands of the

Alaskan coast down Sitka way, most likely, seeing as you're a traveller. And you know how stuff grows

therebig, and juicy, and jungly. Well, that's the way it was with those valleys. Thick, rich soil, with ferns

and grasses and such things in patches higher than your head. Rain three days out of four during the summer

months; and food in them for a thousand mammoths, to say nothing of small game for man.

"But to get back. Down at the lower end of the valley I got winded and gave over. I began to speculate, for

when my wind left me my dander got hotter and hotter, and I knew I'd never know peace of mind till I dined

PUKAPUKexcuse Chinook, I mean there was a big fight coming. Now the mouth of my valley was very

narrow, and the walls steep. High up on one side was one of those big pivot rocks, or balancing rocks, as

some call them, weighing all of a couple of hundred tons. Just the thing. I hit back for camp, keeping an eye

open so the bull couldn't slip past, and got my ammunition. It wasn't worth anything with the rifle smashed;

so I opened the shells, planted the powder under the rock, and touched it off with slow fuse. Wasn't much of a

charge, but the old boulder tilted up lazily and dropped down into place, with just space enough to let the

"But how did you have him?" I queried. "Who ever heard of a man killing a mammoth with a handaxe?

"O man, have I not told you I was mad?" Nimrod replied, with a slight manifestation of sensitiveness. "Mad

clean through, what of Klooch and the gun. Also, was I not a hunter? And was this not new and most unusual

game? A handaxe? Pish! I did not need it. Listen, and you shall hear of a hunt, such as might have happened

in the youth of the world when cavemen rounded up the kill with handaxe of stone. Such would have served

me as well. Now is it not a fact that man can outwalk the dog or horse? That he can wear them out with the

"My valley was perhaps five miles around. The mouth was closed. There was no way to get out. A timid

beast was that bull mammoth, and I had him at my mercy. I got on his heels again hollered like a fiend, pelted

him with cobbles, and raced him around the valley three times before I knocked off for supper. Don't you

see? A racecourse! A man and a mammoth! A hippodrome, with sun, moon, and stars to referee!

"It took me two months to do it, but I did it. And that's no beaver dream. Round and round I ran him, me

travelling on the inner circle, eating jerked meat and salmon berries on the run, and snatching winks of sleep

between. Of course, he'd get desperate at times and turn. Then I'd head for soft ground where the creek spread

out, and lay anathema upon him and his ancestry, and dare him to come on. But he was too wise to bog in a

mud puddle. Once he pinned me in against the walls, and I crawled back into a deep crevice and waited.

Whenever he felt for me with his trunk, I'd belt him with the handaxe till he pulled out, shrieking fit to split

my ear drums, he was that mad. He knew he had me and didn't have me, and it near drove him wild. But he

was no man's fool. He knew he was safe as long as I stayed in the crevice, and he made up his mind to keep

me there. And he was dead right, only he hadn't figured on the commissary. There was neither grub nor water

around that spot, so on the face of it he couldn't keep up the siege. He'd stand before the opening for hours,

keeping an eye on me and flapping mosquitoes away with his big blanket ears. Then the thirst would come on

him and he'd ramp round and roar till the earth shook, calling me every name he could lay tongue to. This

was to frighten me, of course; and when he thought I was sufficiently impressed, he'd back away softly and

try to make a sneak for the creek. Sometimes I'd let him get almost thereonly a couple of hundred yards

away it waswhen out I'd pop and back he'd come, lumbering along like the old landslide he was. After I'd

done this a few times, and he'd figured it out, he changed his tactics. Grasped the time element, you see.

Without a word of warning, away he'd go, tearing for the water like mad, scheming to get there and back

before I ran away. Finally, after cursing me most horribly, he raised the siege and deliberately stalked off to

"That was the only time he penned me,three days of it,but after that the hippodrome never stopped.

Round, and round, and round, like a six days' goasIplease, for he never pleased. My clothes went to rags

and tatters, but I never stopped to mend, till at last I ran naked as a son of earth, with nothing but the old

handaxe in one hand and a cobble in the other. In fact, I never stopped, save for peeps of sleep in the

crannies and ledges of the cliffs. As for the bull, he got perceptibly thinner and thinnermust have lost

several tons at leastand as nervous as a schoolmarm on the wrong side of matrimony. When I'd come up

with him and yell, or lain him with a rock at long range, he'd jump like a skittish colt and tremble all over.

Then he'd pull out on the run, tail and trunk waving stiff, head over one shoulder and wicked eyes blazing,

and the way he'd swear at me was something dreadful. A most immoral beast he was, a murderer, and a

"But towards the end he quit all this, and fell to whimpering and crying like a baby. His spirit broke and he

became a quivering jellymountain of misery. He'd get attacks of palpitation of the heart, and stagger around

like a drunken man, and fall down and bark his shins. And then he'd cry, but always on the run. O man, the

gods themselves would have wept with him, and you yourself or any other man. It was pitiful, and there was

so I much of it, but I only hardened my heart and hit up the pace. At last I wore him clean out, and he lay

down, brokenwinded, brokenhearted, hungry, and thirsty. When I found he wouldn't budge, I hamstrung

him, and spent the better part of the day wading into him with the handaxe, he asniffing and sobbing till I

worked in far enough to shut him off. Thirty feet long he was, and twenty high, and a man could sling a

hammock between his tusks and sleep comfortably. Barring the fact that I had run most of the juices out of

him, he was fair eating, and his four feet, alone, roasted whole, would have lasted a man a twelvemonth. I

He waved his hand in the direction of the northeast, and said: "Your tobacco is very good. I carry a fair

share of it in my pouch, but I shall carry the recollection of it until I die. In token of my appreciation, and in

return for the moccasins on your own feet, I will present to you these muclucs. They commemorate Klooch

and the seven blind little beggars. They are also souvenirs of an unparalleled event in history, namely, the

destruction of the oldest breed of animal on earth, and the youngest. And their chief virtue lies in that they

Having effected the exchange, he knocked the ashes from his pipe, gripped my hand goodnight, and

wandered off through the snow. Concerning this tale, for which I have already disclaimed responsibility, I

would recommend those of little faith to make a visit to the Smithsonian Institute. If they bring the requisite

credentials and do not come in vacation time, they will undoubtedly gain an audience with Professor

Dolvidson. The muclucs are in his possession, and he will verify, not the manner in which they were

obtained, but the material of which they are composed. When he states that they are made from the skin of

the mammoth, the scientific world accepts his verdict. What more would you have?

[The story of a scheming white man among the strange people who live on the rim of the Arctic sea]

Thomas Stevens's veracity may have been indeterminate as X, and his imagination the imagination of

ordinary men increased to the nth power, but this, at least, must be said: never did he deliver himself of word

nor deed that could be branded as a lie outright. . . He may have played with probability, and verged on the

extremest edge of possibility, but in his tales the machinery never creaked. That he knew the Northland like a

book, not a soul can deny. That he was a great traveller, and had set foot on countless unknown trails, many

evidences affirm. Outside of my own personal knowledge, I knew men that had met him everywhere, but

principally on the confines of Nowhere. There was Johnson, the exHudson Bay Company factor, who had

housed him in a Labrador factory until his dogs rested up a bit, and he was able to strike out again. There was

McMahon, agent for the Alaska Commercial Company, who had run across him in Dutch Harbour, and later

on, among the outlying islands of the Aleutian group. It was indisputable that he had guided one of the earlier

United States surveys, and history states positively that in a similar capacity he served the Western Union

when it attempted to put through its transAlaskan and Siberian telegraph to Europe. Further, there was Joe

Lamson, the whaling captain, who, when icebound off the mouth of the Mackenzie, had had him come

aboard after tobacco. This last touch proves Thomas Stevens's identity conclusively. His quest for tobacco

was perennial and untiring. Ere we became fairly acquainted, I learned to greet him with one hand, and pass

the pouch with the other. But the night I met him in John O'Brien's Dawson saloon, his head was wreathed in

a nimbus of fiftycent cigar smoke, and instead of my pouch he demanded my sack. We were standing by a

faro table, and forthwith he tossed it upon the "high card." "Fifty," he said, and the gamekeeper nodded. The

"high card" turned, and he handed back my sack, called for a "tab," and drew me over to the scales, where the

"And now we'll drink," he said; and later, at the bar, when he lowered his glass: "Reminds me of a little brew

I had up Tattarat way. No, you have no knowledge of the place, nor is it down on the charts. But it's up by the

rim of the Arctic Sea, not so many hundred miles from the American line, and all of half a thousand

Godforsaken souls live there, giving and taking in marriage, and starving and dying inbetweenwhiles.

Explorers have overlooked them, and you will not find them in the census of 1890. A whale ship was

pinched there once, but the men, who had made shore over the ice, pulled out for the south and were never

"But it was a great brew we had, Moosu and I," he added a moment later, with just the slightest suspicion of a

I knew there were big deeds and wild doings behind that sigh, so I haled him into a corner, between a roulette

"Had one objection to Moosu," he began, cocking his head meditatively"one objection, and only one. He

was an Indian from over on the edge of the Chippewyan country, but the trouble was, he'd picked up a

smattering of the Scriptures. Been campmate a season with a renegade French Canadian who'd studied for the

church. Moosu'd never seen applied Christianity, and his head was crammed with miracles, battles, and

dispensations, and what not he didn't understand. Otherwise he was a good sort, and a handy man on trail or

"We'd had a hard time together and were badly knocked out when we plumped upon Tattarat. Lost outfits and

dogs crossing a divide in a fall blizzard, and our bellies clove to our backs and our clothes were in rags when

we crawled into the village. They weren't much surprised at seeing usbecause of the whalemenand gave

us the meanest shack in the village to live in, and the worst of their leavings to live on. What struck me at the

"'Shaman SICK TUMTUM,' he said, meaning the shaman, or medicine man, was jealous, and had advised the

people to have nothing to do with us. From the little he'd seen of the whalemen, he'd learned that mine was a

stronger race, and a wiser; so he'd only behaved as shamans have always behaved the world over. And before

"'These people have a law,' said Mosu: 'whoso eats of meat must hunt. We be awkward, you and I, O master,

in the weapons of this country; nor can we string bows nor fling spears after the manner approved. Wherefore

the shaman and Tummasook, who is chief, have put their heads together, and it has been decreed that we

work with the women and children in dragging in the meat and tending the wants of the hunters.'

"'And this is very wrong,' I made to answer; 'for we be better men, Moosu, than these people who walk in

darkness. Further, we should rest and grow strong, for the way south is long, and on that trail the weak cannot

"'But we have nothing,' he objected, looking about him at the rotten timbers of the igloo, the stench of the

ancient walrus meat that had been our supper disgusting his nostrils. 'And on this fare we cannot thrive. We

have nothing save the bottle of "pain killer," which will not fill emptiness, so we must bend to the yoke of

the unbeliever and become hewers of wood and drawers of water. And there be good things in this place, the

which we may not have. Ah, master, never has my nose lied to me, and I have followed it to secret caches

and among the furbales of the igloos. Good provender did these people extort from the poor whalemen, and

this provender has wandered into few hands. The woman Ipsukuk, who dwelleth in the far end of the village

next she igloo of the chief, possesseth much flour and sugar, and even have my eyes told me of molasses

smeared on her face. And in the igloo of Tummasook, the chief, there be teahave I not seen the old pig

guzzling? And the shaman owneth a caddy of "Star" and two buckets of prime smoking. And what have we?

"And Moosu, what of his own desire, broke silence: 'And there be Tukeliketa, daughter of a big hunter and

"I figured hard during the night while Moosu snored, for I could not bear the thought of the tobacco so near

which I could not smoke. True, as he had said, we had nothing. But the way became clear to me, and in the

morning I said to him: 'Go thou cunningly abroad, after thy fashion, and procure me some sort of bone,

crooked like a gooseneck, and hollow. Also, walk humbly, but have eyes awake to the lay of pots and pans

and cooking contrivances. And remember, mine is the white man's wisdom, and do what I have bid you, with

"While he was away I placed the whaleoil cooking lamp in the middle of the igloo, and moved the mangy

sleeping furs back that I might have room. Then I took apart his gun and put the barrel by handy, and

afterwards braided many wicks from the cotton that the women gather wild in the summer. When he came

back, it was with the bone I had commanded, and with news that in the igloo of Tummasook there was a

fivegallon kerosene can and a big copper kettle. So I said he had done well and we would tarry through the

"'This chief, this Tummasook, hath a copper kettle, likewise a kerosene can.' I put a rock, smooth and

wavewashed, in Moosu's hand. 'The camp is hushed and the stars are winking. Go thou, creep into the

chief's igloo softly, and smite him thus upon the belly, and hard. And let the meat and good grub of the days

to come put strength into thine arm. There will be uproar and outcry, and the village will come hot afoot. But

be thou unafraid. Veil thy movements and lose thy form in the obscurity of the night and the confusion of

men. And when the woman Ipsukuk is anigh thee, she who smeareth her face with molasses,do thou

smite her likewise, and whosoever else that possesseth flour and cometh to thy hand. Then do thou lift thy

voice in pain and double up with clasped hands, and make outcry in token that thou, too, hast felt the

visitation of the night. And in this way shall we achieve honour and great possessions, and the caddy of

"When he had departed on this errand, I bided patiently in the shack, and the tobacco seemed very near. Then

there was a cry of affright in the night, that became an uproar and assailed the sky. I seized the 'painkiller'

and ran forth. There was much noise, and a wailing among the women, and fear sat heavily on all.

Tummasook and the woman Ipsukuk rolled on the ground in pain, and with them there were divers others,

also Moosu. I thrust aside those that cluttered the way of my feet, and put the mouth of the bottle to Moosu's

lips. And straightway he became well and ceased his howling. Whereat there was a great clamour for the

bottle from the others so stricken. But I made harangue, and ere they tasted and were made well I had

mulcted Tummasook of his copper kettle and kerosene can, and the woman Ipsukuk of her sugar and

molasses, and the other sick ones of goodly measures of flour. The shaman glowered wickedly at the people

around my knees, though he poorly concealed the wonder that lay beneath. But I held my head high, and

"There I set to work. In Tummasook's copper kettle I mixed three quarts of wheat flour with five of molasses,

and to this I added of water twenty quarts. Then I placed the kettle near the lamp, that it might sour in the

warmth and grow strong. Moosu understood, and said my wisdom passed understanding and was greater than

Solomon's, who he had heard was a wise man of old time. The kerosene can I set over the lamp, and to its

nose I affixed a snout, and into the snout the bone that was like a gooseneck. I sent Moosu without to pound

ice, while I connected the barrel of his gun with the gooseneck, and midway on the barrel I piled the ice he

had pounded. And at the far end of the gunbarrel, beyond the pan of ice, I placed a small iron pot. When the

brew was strong enough (and it was two days ere it could stand on its own legs), I filled the kerosene can

"Now that all was ready, I spoke to Moosu. 'Go forth,' I said, 'to the chief men of the village, and give them

greeting, and bid them come into my igloo and sleep the night away with me and the gods.'

"The brew was singing merrily when they began shoving aside the skin flap and crawling in, and I was

heaping cracked ice on the gunbarrel. Out of the priming hole at the far end, drip, drip, drip into the iron pot

fell the liquorHOOCH, you know. But they'd never seen the like, and giggled nervously when I made

harangue about its virtues. As I talked I noted the jealousy in the shaman's eye, so when I had done, I placed

him side by side with Tummasook and the woman Ipsukuk. Then I gave them to drink, and their eyes watered

and their stomachs warmed, till from being afraid they reached greedily for more; and when I had them well

started, I turned to the others. Tummasook made a brag about how he had once killed a polar bear, and in the

vigour of his pantomime nearly slew his mother's brother. But nobody heeded. The woman Ipsukuk fell to

weeping for a son lost long years agone in the ice, and the shaman made incantation and prophecy. So it

went, and before morning they were all on the floor, sleeping soundly with the gods.

"The story tells itself, does it not? The news of the magic potion spread. It was too marvellous for utterance.

Tongues could tell but a tithe of the miracles it performed. It eased pain, gave surcease to sorrow, brought

back old memories, dead faces, and forgotten dreams. It was a fire that ate through all the blood, and,

burning, burned not. It stoutened the heart, stiffened the back, and made men more than men. It revealed the

future, and gave visions and prophecy. It brimmed with wisdom and unfolded secrets. There was no end of

the things it could do, and soon there was a clamouring on all hands to sleep with the gods. They brought

their warmest furs, their strongest dogs, their best meats; but I sold the hooch with discretion, and only those

were favoured that brought flour and molasses and sugar. And such stores poured in that I set Moosu to build

a cache to hold them, for there was soon no space in the igloo. Ere three days had passed Tummasook had

gone bankrupt. The shaman, who was never more than half drunk after the first night, watched me closely

and hung on for the better part of the week. But before ten days were gone, even the woman Ipsukuk

"But Moosu complained. 'O master,' he said, 'we have laid by great wealth in molasses and sugar and flour,

but our shack is yet mean, our clothes thin, and our sleeping furs mangy. There is a call of the belly for meat

the stench of which offends not the stars, and for tea such as Tummasook guzzles, and there is a great

yearning for the tobacco of Neewak, who is shaman and who plans to destroy us. I have flour until I am sick,

and sugar and molasses without stint, yet is the heart of Moosu sore and his bed empty.'

"'Peace!' I answered, 'thou art weak of understanding and a fool. Walk softly and wait, and we will grasp it

all. But grasp now, and we grasp little, and in the end it will be nothing. Thou art a child in the way of the

white man's wisdom. Hold thy tongue and watch, and I will show you the way my brothers do overseas, and,

so doing, gather to themselves the riches of the earth. It is what is called "business," and what dost thou know

"But the next day he came in breathless. 'O master, a strange thing happeneth in the igloo of Neewak, the

shaman; wherefore we are lost, and we have neither worn the warm furs nor tasted the good tobacco, what of

your madness for the molasses and flour. Go thou and witness whilst I watch by the brew.'

"So I went to the igloo of Neewak. And behold, he had made his own still, fashioned cunningly after mine.

And as he beheld me he could ill conceal his triumph. For he was a man of parts, and his sleep with the gods

"But I was not disturbed, for I knew what I knew, and when I returned to my own igloo, I descanted to

Moosu, and said: 'Happily the property right obtains amongst this people, who otherwise have been blessed

with but few of the institutions of men. And because of this respect for property shall you and I wax fat, and,

further, we shall introduce amongst them new institutions that other peoples have worked out through great

"But Moosu understood dimly, till the shaman came forth, with eyes flashing and a threatening note in his

voice, and demanded to trade with me. 'For look you,' he cried, 'there be of flour and molasses none in all the

village. The like have you gathered with a shrewd hand from my people, who have slept with your gods and

who now have nothing save large heads, and weak knees, and a thirst for cold water that they cannot quench.

This is not good, and my voice has power among them; so it were well that we trade, you and I, even as you

"And I made answer: 'This be good talk, and wisdom abideth in thy mouth. We will trade. For this much of

flour and molasses givest thou me the caddy of "Star" and the two buckets of smoking.'

"And Moosu groaned, and when the trade was made and the shaman departed, he upbraided me: 'Now,

because of thy madness are we, indeed, lost! Neewak maketh hooch on his own account, and when the time is

ripe, he will command the people to drink of no hooch but his hooch. And in this way are we undone, and our

"And I answered: 'By the body of the wolf, say I, thou art a fool, and thy father before thee, and thy children

after thee, down to the last generation. Thy wisdom is worse than no wisdom and thine eyes blinded to

business, of which I have spoken and whereof thou knowest nothing. Go, thou son of a thousand fools, and

drink of the hooch that Neewak brews in his igloo, and thank thy gods that thou hast a white man's wisdom to

make soft the bed thou liest in. Go! and when thou hast drunken, return with the taste still on thy lips, that I

"And two days after, Neewak sent greeting and invitation to his igloo. Moosu went, but I sat alone, with the

song of the still in my ears, and the air thick with the shaman's tobacco; for trade was slack that night, and no

one dropped in but Angeit, a young hunter that had faith in me. Later, Moosu came back, his speech thick

"'Thou art a great man,' he said. 'Thou art a great man, O master, and because of thy greatness thou wilt not

condemn Moosu, thy servant, who ofttimes doubts and cannot be made to understand.'

"'And wherefore now?' I demanded. 'Hast thou drunk overmuch? And are they sleeping sound in the igloo of

"'Nay, they are angered and sore of body, and Chief Tummasook has thrust his thumbs in the throat of

Neewak, and sworn by the bones of his ancestors to look upon his face no more. For behold! I went to the

igloo, and the brew simmered and bubbled, and the steam journeyed through the gooseneck even as thy

steam, and even as thine it became water where it met the ice, and dropped into the pot at the far end. And

Neewak gave us to drink, and lo, it was not like thine, for there was no bite to the tongue nor tingling to the

eyeballs, and of a truth it was water. So we drank, and we drank overmuch; yet did we sit with cold hearts

and solemn. And Neewak was perplexed and a cloud came on his brow. And he took Tummasook and

Ipsukuk alone of all the company and set them apart, and bade them drink and drink and drink. And they

drank and drank and drank, and yet sat solemn and cold, till Tummasook arose in wrath and demanded back

the furs and the tea he had paid. And Ipsukuk raised her voice, thin and angry. And the company demanded

"'Does the son of a dog deem me a whale?' demanded Tummasook, shoving back the skin flap and standing

erect, his face black and his brows angry. 'Wherefore I am filled, like a fishbladder, to bursting, till I can

scarce walk, what of the weight within me. Lalah! I have drunken as never before, yet are my eyes clear, my

"'The shaman cannot send us to sleep with the gods,' the people complained, stringing in and joining us, 'and

"So I laughed to myself as I passed the hooch around and the guests made merry. For in the flour I had traded

to Neewak I had mixed much soda that I had got from the woman Ipsukuk. So how could his brew ferment

"After that our wealth flowed in without let or hindrance. Furs we had without number, and the fancywork

of the women, all of the chief's tea, and no end of meat. One day Moosu retold for my benefit, and sadly

mangled, the story of Joseph in Egypt, but from it I got an idea, and soon I had half the tribe at work building

me great meat caches. And of all they hunted I got the lion's share and stored it away. Nor was Moosu idle.

He made himself a pack of cards from birch bark, and taught Neewak the way to play sevenup. He also

inveigled the father of Tukeliketa into the game. And one day he married the maiden, and the next day he

moved into the shaman's house, which was the finest in the village. The fall of Neewak was complete, for he

lost all his possessions, his walrus hide drums, his incantation toolseverything. And in the end he became

a hewer of wood and drawer of water at the beck and call of Moosu. And Moosuhe set himself up as

shaman, or high priest, and out of his garbled Scripture created new gods and made incantation before strange

"And I was well pleased, for I thought it good that church and state go hand in hand, and I had certain plans

of my own concerning the state. Events were shaping as I had foreseen. Good temper and smiling faces had

vanished from the village. The people were morose and sullen. There were quarrels and fighting, and things

were in an uproar night and day. Moosu's cards were duplicated and the hunters fell to gambling among

themselves. Tummasook beat his wife horribly, and his mother's brother objected and smote him with a tusk

of walrus till he cried aloud in the night and was shamed before the people. Also, amid such diversions no

hunting was done, and famine fell upon the land. The nights were long and dark, and without meat no hooch

could be bought; so they murmured against the chief. This I had played for, and when they were well and

hungry, I summoned the whole village, made a great harangue, posed as patriarch, and fed the famishing.

Moosu made harangue likewise, and because of this and the thing I had done I was made chief. Moosu, who

had the ear of God and decreed his judgments, anointed me with whale blubber, and right blubberly he did it,

not understanding the ceremony. And between us we interpreted to the people the new theory of the divine

right of kings. There was hooch galore, and meat and feastings, and they took kindly to the new order.

"So you see, O man, I have sat in the high places, and worn the purple, and ruled populations. And I might

yet be a king had the tobacco held out, or had Moosu been more fool and less knave. For he cast eyes upon

"'O brother,' he explained, 'thou hast seen fit to speak of introducing new institutions amongst this people, and

I have listened to thy words and gained wisdom thereby. Thou rulest by the Godgiven right, and by the

"I noted that he 'brothered' me, and was angry and put my foot down. But he fell back upon the people and

made incantations for three days, in which all hands joined; and then, speaking with the voice of God, he

decreed polygamy by divine fiat. But he was shrewd, for he limited the number of wives by a property

qualification, and because of which he, above all men, was favoured by his wealth. Nor could I fail to admire,

though it was plain that power had turned his head, and he would not be satisfied till all the power and all the

wealth rested in his own hands. So he became swollen with pride, forgot it was I that had placed him there,

"But it was interesting, for the beggar was working out in his own way an evolution of primitive society.

Now I, by virtue of the hooch monopoly, drew a revenue in which I no longer permitted him to share. So he

meditated for a while and evolved a system of ecclesiastical taxation. He laid tithes upon the people,

harangued about fat firstlings and such things, and twisted whatever twisted texts he had ever heard to serve

his purpose. Even this I bore in silence, but when he instituted what may be likened to a graduated

incometax, I rebelled, and blindly, for this was what he worked for. Thereat, he appealed to the people, and

they, envious of my great wealth and well taxed themselves, upheld him. 'Why should we pay,' they asked,

'and not you? Does not the voice of God speak through the lips of Moosu, the shaman?' So I yielded. But at

the same time I raised the price of hooch, and lo, he was not a whit behind me in raising my taxes.

"Then there was open war. I made a play for Neewak and Tummasook, because of the traditionary rights they

possessed; but Moosu won out by creating a priesthood and giving them both high office. The problem of

authority presented itself to him, and he worked it out as it has often been worked before. There was my

mistake. I should have been made shaman, and he chief; but I saw it too late, and in the clash of spiritual and

temporal power I was bound to be worsted. A great controversy waged, but it quickly became one sided.

The people remembered that he had anointed me, and it was clear to them that the source of my authority lay,

not in me, but in Moosu. Only a few faithful ones clung to me, chief among whom Angeit was; while he

headed the popular party and set whispers afloat that I had it in mind to overthrow him and set up my own

gods, which were most unrighteous gods. And in this the clever rascal had anticipated me, for it was just what

I had intended forsake my kingship, you see, and fight spiritual with spiritual. So he frightened the people

with the iniquities of my peculiar godsespecially the one he named 'BizeNass'and nipped the scheme

"Now, it happened that Kluktu, youngest daughter to Tummasook, had caught my fancy, and I likewise hers.

So I made overtures, but the exchief refused bluntlyafter I had paid the purchase priceand informed me

that she was set aside for Moosu. This was too much, and I was half of a mind to go to his igloo and slay him

with my naked hands; but I recollected that the tobacco was near gone, and went home laughing. The next

day he made incantation, and distorted the miracle of the loaves and fishes till it became prophecy, and I,

reading between the lines, saw that it was aimed at the wealth of meat stored in my caches. The people also

read between the lines, and, as he did not urge them to go on the hunt, they remained at home, and few

"But I had plans of my own, seeing that not only the tobacco but the flour and molasses were near gone. And

further, I felt it my duty to prove the white man's wisdom and bring sore distress to Moosu, who had waxed

highstomached, what of the power I had given him. So that night I went to my meat caches and toiled

mightily, and it was noted next day that all the dogs of the village were lazy. No one suspected, and I toiled

thus every night, and the dogs grew fat and fatter, and the people lean and leaner. They grumbled and

demanded the fulfilment of prophecy, but Moosu restrained them, waiting for their hunger to grow yet

greater. Nor did he dream, to the very last, of the trick I had been playing on the empty caches.

"When all was ready, I sent Angeit, and the faithful ones whom I had fed privily, through the village to call

assembly. And the tribe gathered on a great space of beaten snow before my door, with the meat caches

towering stiltlegged in the rear. Moosu came also, standing on the inner edge of the circle opposite me,

confident that I had some scheme afoot, and prepared at the first break to down me. But I arose, giving him

"'O Moosu, thou blessed of God,' I began, 'doubtless thou hast wondered in that I have called this

convocation together; and doubtless, because of my many foolishnesses, art thou prepared for rash sayings

and rash doings. Not so. It has been said, that those the gods would destroy they first make mad. And I have

been indeed mad. I have crossed thy will, and scoffed at thy authority, and done divers evil and wanton

things. Wherefore, last night a vision was vouchsafed me, and I have seen the wickedness of my ways. And

thou stoodst forth like a shining star, with brows aflame, and I knew in mine own heart thy greatness. I saw

all things clearly. I knew that thou didst command the ear of God, and that when you spoke he listened. And I

remembered that whatever of the good deeds that I had done, I had done through the grace of God, and the

"'Yes, my children,' I cried, turning to the people, 'whatever right I have done, and whatever good I have

done, have been because of the counsel of Moosu. When I listened to him, affairs prospered; when I closed

my ears, and acted according to my folly, things came to folly. By his advice it was that I laid my store of

meat, and in time of darkness fed the famishing. By his grace it was that I was made chief. And what have I

done with my chiefship? Let me tell you. I have done nothing. My head was turned with power, and I deemed

myself greater than Moosu, and, behold I have come to grief. My rule has been unwise, and the gods are

angered. Lo, ye are pinched with famine, and the mothers are drybreasted, and the little babies cry through

the long nights. Nor do I, who have hardened my heart against Moosu, know what shall be done, nor in what

"At this there was nodding and laughing, and the people put their heads together, and I knew they whispered

of the loaves and fishes. I went on hastily. 'So I was made aware of my foolishness and of Moosu's wisdom;

of my own unfitness and of Moosu's fitness. And because of this, being no longer mad, I make

acknowledgment and rectify evil. I did cast unrighteous eyes upon Kluktu, and lo, she was sealed to Moosu.

Yet is she mine, for did I not pay to Tummasook the goods of purchase? But I am well unworthy of her, and

she shall go from the igloo of her father to the igloo of Moosu. Can the moon shine in the sunshine? And

further, Tummasook shall keep the goods of purchase, and she be a free gift to Moosu, whom God hath

"'And further yet, because I have used my wealth unwisely, and to oppress ye, O my children, do I make gifts

of the kerosene can to Moosu, and the gooseneck, and the gunbarrel, and the copper kettle. Therefore, I can

gather to me no more possessions, and when ye are athirst for hooch, he will quench ye and without robbery.

"'And yet further, my heart is softened, and I have repented me of my madness. I, who am a fool and a son of

fools; I, who am the slave of the bad god BizeNass; I, who see thy empty bellies and knew not wherewith

to fill themwhy shall I be chief, and sit above thee, and rule to thine own destruction? Why should I do

this, which is not good? But Moosu, who is shaman, and who is wise above men, is so made that he can rule

with a soft hand and justly. And because of the things I have related do I make abdication and give my

chiefship to Moosu, who alone knoweth how ye may be fed in this day when there be no meat in the land.'

"At this there was a great clapping of hands, and the people cried, 'KLOSHE! KLOSHE!' which means

'good.' I had seen the wonderworry in Moosu's eyes; for he could not understand, and was fearful of my

white man's wisdom. I had met his wishes all along the line, and even anticipated some; and standing there,

selfshorn of all my power, he knew the time did not favour to stir the people against me.

"Before they could disperse I made announcement that while the still went to Moosu, whatever hooch I

possessed went to the people. Moosu tried to protest at this, for never had we permitted more than a handful

to be drunk at a time; but they cried, 'KLOSHE! KLOSHE!' and made festival before my door. And while

they waxed uproarious without, as the liquor went to their heads, I held council within with Angeit and the

faithful ones. I set them the tasks they were to do, and put into their mouths the words they were to say. Then

I slipped away to a place back in the woods where I had two sleds, well loaded, with teams of dogs that were

not overfed. Spring was at hand, you see, and there was a crust to the snow; so it was the best time to take the

way south. Moreover, the tobacco was gone. There I waited, for I had nothing to fear. Did they bestir

themselves on my trail, their dogs were too fat, and themselves too lean, to overtake me; also, I deemed their

"First came a faithful one, running, and after him another. 'O master,' the first cried, breathless, 'there be great

confusion in the village, and no man knoweth his own mind, and they be of many minds. Everybody hath

drunken overmuch, and some be stringing bows, and some be quarrelling one with another. Never was there

"And the second one: 'And I did as thou biddest, O master, whispering shrewd words in thirsty ears, and

raising memories of the things that were of old time. The woman Ipsukuk waileth her poverty and the wealth

that no longer is hers. And Tummasook thinketh himself once again chief, and the people are hungry and rage

"And a third one: 'And Neewak hath overthrown the altars of Moosu, and maketh incantation before the

timehonoured and ancient gods. And all the people remember the wealth that ran down their throats, and

which they possess no more. And first, Esanetuk, who be SICK TUMTUM, fought with Kluktu, and there

was much noise. And next, being daughters of the one mother, did they fight with Tukeliketa. And after that

did they three fall upon Moosu, like windsqualls, from every hand, till he ran forth from the igloo, and the

"Then came Angeit: 'Great trouble hath befallen Moosu, O master, for I have whispered to advantage, till the

people came to Moosu, saying they were hungry and demanding the fulfilment of prophecy. And there was a

loud shout of "Itlwillie! Itlwillie!" (Meat.) So he cried peace to his womenfolk, who were overwrought with

anger and with hooch, and led the tribe even to thy meat caches. And he bade the men open them and be fed.

And lo, the caches were empty. There was no meat. They stood without sound, the people being frightened,

and in the silence I lifted my voice. "O Moosu, where is the meat? That there was meat we know. Did we not

hunt it and drag it in from the hunt? And it were a lie to say one man hath eaten it; yet have we seen nor hide

nor hair. Where is the meat, O Moosu? Thou hast the ear of God. Where is the meat?"

"'And the people cried, "Thou hast the ear of God. Where is the meat?" And they put their heads together and

were afraid. Then I went among them, speaking fearsomely of the unknown things, of the dead that come and

go like shadows and do evil deeds, till they cried aloud in terror and gathered all together, like little children

afraid of the dark. Neewak made harangue, laying this evil that had come upon them at the door of Moosu.

When he had done, there was a furious commotion, and they took spears in their hands, and tusks of walrus,

and clubs, and stones from the beach. But Moosu ran away home, and because he had not drunken of hooch

they could not catch him, and fell one over another and made haste slowly. Even now they do howl without

his igloo, and his woman folk within, and what of the noise, he cannot make himself heard.'

"'O Angeit, thou hast done well,' I commanded. 'Go now, taking this empty sled and the lean dogs, and ride

fast to the igloo of Moosu; and before the people, who are drunken, are aware, throw him quick upon the sled

"I waited and gave good advice to the faithful ones till Angeit returned. Moosu was on the sled, and I saw by

the fingermarks on his face that his womankind had done well by him. But he tumbled off and fell in the

snow at my feet, crying: 'O master, thou wilt forgive Moosu, thy servant, for the wrong things he has done!

"'Call me "brother," Moosucall me "brother,"' I chided, lifting him to his feet with the toe of my moccasin.

"'Then dispose thy body, so, across the sled,' I shifted the dogwhip to my right hand. 'And direct thy face

downwards, toward the snow. And make haste, for we journey south this day.' And when he was well fixed I

laid the lash upon him, reciting, at every stroke, the wrongs he had done me. 'This for thy disobedience in

generalwhack! And this for thy disobedience in particular whack! whack! And this for Esanetuk! And

this for thy soul's welfare! And this for the grace of thy authority! And this for Kluktu! And this for thy rights

Godgiven! And this for thy fat firstlings! And this and this for thy incometax and thy loaves and fishes!

And this for all thy disobedience! And this, finally, that thou mayest henceforth walk softly and with

understanding! Now cease thy sniffling and get up! Gird on thy snowshoes and go to the fore and break trail

Thomas Stevens smiled quietly to himself as he lighted his fifth cigar and sent curling smokerings

"But how about the people of Tattarat?" I asked. "Kind of rough, wasn't it, to leave them flat with famine?"

And he answered, laughing, between two smokerings, "Were there not the fat dogs?"

"That suits me," said the second man, turning, as he spoke, to the Indian that was mending snowshoes in a

corner of the cabin. "Here, you Billebedam, take a run down to Oleson's cabin like a good fellow, and tell

This sudden request in the midst of a council on wages of men, wood, and grub surprised Billebedam.

Besides, it was early in the day, and he had never known white men of the calibre of Pentfield and

Hutchinson to dice and play till the day's work was done. But his face was impassive as a Yukon Indian's

Though eight o'clock, it was still dark outside, and the cabin was lighted by a tallow candle thrust into an

empty whisky bottle. It stood on the pineboard table in the middle of a disarray of dirty tin dishes. Tallow

from innumerable candles had dripped down the long neck of the bottle and hardened into a miniature

glacier. The small room, which composed the entire cabin, was as badly littered as the table; while at one end,

against the wall, were two bunks, one above the other, with the blankets turned down just as the two men had

Lawrence Pentfield and Corry Hutchinson were millionaires, though they did not look it. There seemed

nothing unusual about them, while they would have passed muster as fair specimens of lumbermen in any

Michigan camp. But outside, in the darkness, where holes yawned in the ground, were many men engaged in

windlassing muck and gravel and gold from the bottoms of the holes where other men received fifteen dollars

per day for scraping it from off the bedrock. Each day thousands of dollars' worth of gold were scraped from

bedrock and windlassed to the surface, and it all belonged to Pentfield and Hutchinson, who took their rank

Pentfield broke the silence that followed on Billebedam's departure by heaping the dirty plates higher on the

table and drumming a tattoo on the cleared space with his knuckles. Hutchinson snuffed the smoky candle

"By Jove, I wish we could both go out!" he abruptly exclaimed. "That would settle it all."

"If it weren't for your cursed obstinacy, it'd be settled anyway. All you have to do is get up and go. I'll look

"That'd be three years. Think of it, old man, three years in this end of the earth, this fallingoff place for the

He was several years younger than his partner, not more than twentysix, and there was a certain wistfulness

in his face that comes into the faces of men when they yearn vainly for the things they have been long denied.

This same wistfulness was in Pentfield's face, and the groan of it was articulate in the heave of his shoulders.

"I dreamed last night I was in Zinkand's," he said. "The music playing, glasses clinking, voices humming,

women laughing, and I was ordering eggsyes, sir, eggs, fried and boiled and poached and scrambled, and

"I'd have ordered salads and green things," Hutchinson criticized hungrily, "with a big, rare, Porterhouse, and

"I'd have followed the eggs with them, I guess, if I hadn't awakened," Pentfield replied.

He picked up a trailscarred banjo from the floor and began to strum a few wandering notes. Hutchinson

"Quit it!" he burst out with sudden fury, as the other struck into a gaily lifting swing. "It drives me mad. I

"Hear me babble what the weakest won't confess I am Memory and TormentI am Town! I am all that

The other man winced where he sat and dropped his head forward on the table. Pentfield resumed the

monotonous drumming with his knuckles. A loud snap from the door attracted his attention. The frost was

"The flocks are folded, boughs are bare, The salmon takes the sea; And oh, my fair, would I somewhere

Silence fell and was not again broken till Billebedam arrived and threw the dice box on the table.

"Um much cold," he said. "Oleson um speak to me, um say um Yukon freeze last night."

"Hear that, old man!" Pentfield cried, slapping Hutchinson on the shoulder. "Whoever wins can be hitting the

Pentfield swept the dishes from the table with a crash and rolled out the five dice. Both looked tragedy. The

After much deliberating Pentfield picked up all the five dice and put them in the box.

"No, you wouldn't, not when you see this," Pentfield replied, shaking out the dice.

Again they were without a pair, running this time in unbroken sequence from two to six.

The other man gathered up the dice without a word, rattled them, rolled them out on the table with a flourish,

"Tied you, anyway, but I'll have to do better than that," he said, gathering in four of them and shaking to the

But they rolled out deuce, tray, four, and fivea stiff still and no better nor worse than Pentfield's throw.

"Nor in a million lives," Pentfield added, catching up the dice and quickly throwing them out. Three fives

appeared, and, after much delay, he was rewarded by a fourth five on the second shake. Hutchinson seemed

But three sixes turned up on his first shake. A great doubt rose in the other's eyes, and hope returned into his.

He had one more shake. Another six and he would go over the ice to salt water and the States.

He rattled the dice in the box, made as though to cast them, hesitated, and continued rattle them.

"Go on! Go on! Don't take all night about it!" Pentfield cried sharply, bending his nails on the table, so tight

The dice rolled forth, an upturned six meeting their eyes. Both men sat staring at it. There was a long silence.

Hutchinson shot a covert glance at his partner, who, still more covertly, caught it, and pursed up his lips in an

Hutchinson laughed as he got up on his feet. It was a nervous, apprehensive laugh. It was a case where it was

more awkward to win than lose. He walked over to his partner, who whirled upon him fiercely:

"Now you just shut up, Corry! I know all you're going to saythat you'd rather stay in and let me go, and all

that; so don't say it. You've your own people in Detroit to see, and that's enough. Besides, you can do for me

"Yes, that very thing. You can bring her in to me. The only difference will be a Dawson wedding instead of a

"But, man alike!" Corry Hutchinson objected "how under the sun can I bring her in? We're not exactly

brother and sister, seeing that I have not even met her, and it wouldn't be just the proper thing, you know, for

us to travel together. Of course, it would be all rightyou and I know that; but think of the looks of it, man!"

Pentfield swore under his breath, consigning the looks of it to a less frigid region than Alaska.

"Now, if you'll just listen and not get astride that high horse of yours so blamed quick," his partner went on,

"you'll see that the only fair thing under the circumstances is for me to let you go out this year. Next year is

"It won't do, Corry, old man. I appreciate your kindness and all that, but it won't do. I'd be ashamed every

A thought seemed suddenly to strike him. Burrowing into his bunk and disrupting it in his eagerness, he

secured a writingpad and pencil, and sitting down at the table, began to write with swiftness and certitude.

"Here," he said, thrusting the scrawled letter into his partner's hand. "You just deliver that and everything'll be

"How do you know the brother will be willing to make that beastly trip in here?" he demanded.

"Oh, he'll do it for meand for his sister," Pentfield replied. "You see, he's tenderfoot, and I wouldn't trust

her with him alone. But with you along it will be an easy trip and a safe one. As soon as you get out, you'll go

to her and prepare her. Then you can take your run east to your own people, and in the spring she and her

brother'll be ready to start with you. You'll like her, I know, right from the jump; and from that, you'll know

So saying he opened the back of his watch and exposed a girl's photograph pasted on the inside of the case.

"Mabel is her name," Pentfield went on. "And it's just as well you should know how to find the house. Soon

as you strike 'Frisco, take a cab, and just say, 'Holmes's place, Myrdon Avenue'I doubt if the Myrdon

"And say," Pentfield continued, after a pause, "it won't be a bad idea for you to get me a few little things

"A married man should have in his business," Hutchinson blurted out with a grin.

"Sure, napkins and tablecloths and sheets and pillowslips, and such things. And you might get a good set of

china. You know it'll come hard for her to settle down to this sort of thing. You can freight them in by

Hutchinson seconded the idea heartily. His reluctance had vanished, and he was warming up to his mission.

"By Jove! Lawrence," he said at the conclusion of the council, as they both rose to their feet, "I'll bring back

that girl of yours in style. I'll do the cooking and take care of the dogs, and all that brother'll have to do will

be to see to her comfort and do for her whatever I've forgotten. And I'll forget damn little, I can tell you."

The next day Lawrence Pentfield shook hands with him for the last time and watched him, running with his

dogs, disappear up the frozen Yukon on his way to salt water and the world. Pentfield went back to his

Bonanza mine, which was many times more dreary than before, and faced resolutely into the long winter.

There was work to be done, men to superintend, and operations to direct in burrowing after the erratic pay

streak; but his heart was not in the work. Nor was his heart in any work till the tiered logs of a new cabin

began to rise on the hill behind the mine. It was a grand cabin, warmly built and divided into three

comfortable rooms. Each log was handhewed and squaredan expensive whim when the axemen received

a daily wage of fifteen dollars; but to him nothing could be too costly for the home in which Mabel Holmes

So he went about with the building of the cabin, singing, "And oh, my fair, would I somewhere might house

my heart with thee!" Also, he had a calendar pinned on the wall above the table, and his first act each

morning was to check off the day and to count the days that were left ere his partner would come booming

down the Yukon ice in the spring. Another whim of his was to permit no one to sleep in the new cabin on the

hill. It must be as fresh for her occupancy as the squarehewed wood was fresh; and when it stood complete,

he put a padlock on the door. No one entered save himself, and he was wont to spend long hours there, and to

In December he received a letter from Corry Hutchinson. He had just seen Mabel Holmes. She was all she

ought to be, to be Lawrence Pentfield's wife, he wrote. He was enthusiastic, and his letter sent the blood

tingling through Pentfield's veins. Other letters followed, one on the heels of another, and sometimes two or

three together when the mail lumped up. And they were all in the same tenor. Corry had just come from

Myrdon Avenue; Corry was just going to Myrdon Avenue; or Corry was at Myrdon Avenue. And he lingered

Lawrence Pentfield began to think that his partner was a great deal in the company of Mabel Holmes for a

fellow who was going east to see his people. He even caught himself worrying about it at times, though he

would have worried more had he not known Mabel and Corry so well. Mabel's letters, on the other hand, had

a great deal to say about Corry. Also, a thread of timidity that was near to disinclination ran through them

concerning the trip in over the ice and the Dawson marriage. Pentfield wrote back heartily, laughing at her

fears, which he took to be the mere physical ones of danger and hardship rather than those bred of maidenly

But the long winter and tedious wait, following upon the two previous long winters, were telling upon him.

The superintendence of the men and the pursuit of the pay streak could not break the irk of the daily round,

and the end of January found him making occasional trips to Dawson, where he could forget his identity for a

space at the gambling tables. Because he could afford to lose, he won, and "Pentfield's luck" became a stock

His luck ran with him till the second week in February. How much farther it might have run is conjectural;

It was in the Opera House that it occurred, and for an hour it had seemed that he could not place his money

on a card without making the card a winner. In the lull at the end of a deal, while the gamekeeper was

shuffling the deck, Nick Inwood the owner of the game, remarked, apropos of nothing:

"I say, Pentfield, I see that partner of yours has been cutting up monkeyshines on the outside."

"Trust Corry to have a good time," Pentfield had answered; "especially when he has earned it."

"Every man to his taste," Nick Inwood laughed; "but I should scarcely call getting married a good time."

"Corry married!" Pentfield cried, incredulous and yet surprised out of himself for the moment.

'Sure," Inwood said. "I saw it in the 'Frisco paper that came in over the ice this morning."

"Well, and who's the girl?" Pentfield demanded, somewhat with the air of patient fortitude with which one

takes the bait of a catch and is aware at the time of the large laugh bound to follow at his expense.

Nick Inwood pulled the newspaper from his pocket and began looking it over, saying:

"I haven't a remarkable memory for names, but it seems to me it's something like MabelMabeloh yes,

Lawrence Pentfield never turned a hair, though he wondered how any man in the North could know her

name. He glanced coolly from face to face to note any vagrant signs of the game that was being played upon

him, but beyond a healthy curiosity the faces betrayed nothing. Then he turned to the gambler and said in

"Inwood, I've got an even five hundred here that says the print of what you have just said is not in that paper."

The gambler looked at him in quizzical surprise. "Go 'way, child. I don't want your money."

"I thought so," Pentfield sneered, returning to the game and laying a couple of bets.

Nick Inwood's face flushed, and, as though doubting his senses, he ran careful eyes over the print of a quarter

"Look here, Pentfield," he said, in a quiet, nervous manner; "I can't allow that, you know."

"Nothing of the sort," came the reply. "I merely implied that you were trying to be clumsily witty."

"And I have told you I've five hundred that says it's not in that paper," Pentfield answered, at the same time

"I am sorry to take your money," was the retort, as Inwood thrust the newspaper into Pentfield's hand.

Pentfield saw, though he could not quite bring himself to believe. Glancing through the headline, "Young

Lochinvar came out of the North," and skimming the article until the names of Mabel Holmes and Corry

Hutchinson, coupled together, leaped squarely before his eyes, he turned to the top of the page. It was a San

"The money's yours, Inwood," he remarked, with a short laugh. "There's no telling what that partner of mine

Then he returned to the article and read it word for word, very slowly and very carefully. He could no longer

doubt. Beyond dispute, Corry Hutchinson had married Mabel Holmes. "One of the Bonanza kings," it

described him, "a partner with Lawrence Pentfield (whom San Francisco society has not yet forgotten), and

interested with that gentleman in other rich, Klondike properties." Further, and at the end, he read, "It is

whispered that Mr. and Mrs. Hutchinson will, after a brief trip east to Detroit, make their real honeymoon

"I'll be back again; keep my place for me," Pentfield said, rising to his feet and taking his sack, which

He went down the street and bought a Seattle paper. It contained the same facts, though somewhat

condensed. Corry and Mabel were indubitably married. Pentfield returned to the Opera House and resumed

"Trying to get action," Nick Inwood laughed, as he nodded assent to the dealer. "I was going down to the A.

This Lawrence Pentfield did at the end of two hours' plunging, when the dealer bit the end off a fresh cigar

and struck a match as he announced that the bank was broken. Pentfield cashed in for forty thousand, shook

hands with Nick Inwood, and stated that it was the last time he would ever play at his game or at anybody's

No one knew nor guessed that he had been hit, much less hit hard. There was no apparent change in his

manner. For a week he went about his work much as he had always done, when he read an account of the

marriage in a Portland paper. Then he called in a friend to take charge of his mine and departed up the Yukon

behind his dogs. He held to the Salt Water trail till White River was reached, into which he turned. Five days

later he came upon a hunting camp of the White River Indians. In the evening there was a feast, and he sat in

honour beside the chief; and next morning he headed his dogs back toward the Yukon. But he no longer

travelled alone. A young squaw fed his dogs for him that night and helped to pitch camp. She had been

mauled by a bear in her childhood and suffered from a slight limp. Her name was Lashka, and she was

diffident at first with the strange white man that had come out of the Unknown, married her with scarcely a

But Lashka's was better fortune than falls to most Indian girls that mate with white men in the Northland. No

sooner was Dawson reached than the barbaric marriage that had joined them was re solemnized, in the white

man's fashion, before a priest. From Dawson, which to her was all a marvel and a dream, she was taken

directly to the Bonanza claim and installed in the squarehewed cabin on the hill.

The nine days' wonder that followed arose not so much out of the fact of the squaw whom Lawrence

Pentfield had taken to bed and board as out of the ceremony that had legalized the tie. The properly

sanctioned marriage was the one thing that passed the community's comprehension. But no one bothered

Pentfield about it. So long as a man's vagaries did no special hurt to the community, the community let the

man alone, nor was Pentfield barred from the cabins of men who possessed white wives. The marriage

ceremony removed him from the status of squawman and placed him beyond moral reproach, though there

No more letters arrived from the outside. Six sledloads of mails had been lost at the Big Salmon. Besides,

Pentfield knew that Corry and his bride must by that time have started in over the trail. They were even then

on their honeymoon tripthe honeymoon trip he had dreamed of for himself through two dreary years. His

lip curled with bitterness at the thought; but beyond being kinder to Lashka he gave no sign.

March had passed and April was nearing its end, when, one spring morning, Lashka asked permission to go

down the creek several miles to Siwash Pete's cabin. Pete's wife, a Stewart River woman, had sent up word

that something was wrong with her baby, and Lashka, who was preeminently a motherwoman and who

held herself to be truly wise in the matter of infantile troubles, missed no opportunity of nursing the children

Pentfield harnessed his dogs, and with Lashka behind took the trail down the creek bed of Bonanza. Spring

was in the air. The sharpness had gone out of the bite of the frost and though snow still covered the land, the

murmur and trickling of water told that the iron grip of winter was relaxing. The bottom was dropping out of

the trail, and here and there a new trail had been broken around open holes. At such a place, where there was

not room for two sleds to pass, Pentfield heard the jingle of approaching bells and stopped his dogs.

A team of tiredlooking dogs appeared around the narrow bend, followed by a heavilyloaded sled. At the

geepole was a man who steered in a manner familiar to Pentfield, and behind the sled walked two women.

His glance returned to the man at the geepole. It was Corry. Pentfield got on his feet and waited. He was

glad that Lashka was with him. The meeting could not have come about better had it been planned, he

thought. And as he waited he wondered what they would say, what they would be able to say. As for himself

there was no need to say anything. The explaining was all on their side, and he was ready to listen to them.

As they drew in abreast, Corry recognized him and halted the dogs. With a "Hello, old man," he held out his

Pentfield shook it, but without warmth or speech. By this time the two women had come up, and he noticed

that the second one was Dora Holmes. He doffed his fur cap, the flaps of which were flying, shook hands

with her, and turned toward Mabel. She swayed forward, splendid and radiant, but faltered before his

outstretched hand. He had intended to say, "How do you do, Mrs. Hutchinson?"but somehow, the Mrs.

Hutchinson had choked him, and all he had managed to articulate was the "How do you do?"

There was all the constraint and awkwardness in the situation he could have wished. Mabel betrayed the

agitation appropriate to her position, while Dora, evidently brought along as some sort of peacemaker, was

"See here, old man, what's this mean?" Corry demanded in a low tone, indicating Lashka with his eyes.

"I can hardly see, Corry, where you can have any concern in the matter," Pentfield answered mockingly.

"What is that squaw doing on your sled? A nasty job you've given me to explain all this away. I only hope it

Then Lawrence Pentfield delivered his stroke, and he delivered it with a certain calm elation of spirit that

Corry Hutchinson gasped, and Pentfield left him and returned to the two women. Mabel, with a worried

expression on her face, seemed holding herself aloof. He turned to Dora and asked, quite genially, as though

all the world was sunshine: "How did you stand the trip, anyway? Have any trouble to sleep warm?"

"Oh, you dear ninny!" Dora cried, throwing her arms around him and hugging him. "Then you saw it, too! I

"It was corrected in next day's paper," Dora chattered on. "We did not dream you would see it. All the other

papers had it correctly, and of course that one miserable paper was the very one you saw!"

"Wait a moment! What do you mean?" Pentfield demanded, a sudden fear at his heart, for he felt himself on

"Why, when it became known that Mabel and I were going to Klondike, EVERY OTHER WEEK said that

when we were gone, it would be lovely on Myrdon Avenue, meaning, of course, lonely."

"I am Mrs. Hutchinson," Dora answered. "And you thought it was Mabel all the time"

"Precisely the way of it," Pentfield replied slowly. "But I can see now. The reporter got the names mixed. The

He stood silently for a minute. Mabel's face was turned toward him again, and he could see the glow of

expectancy in it. Corry was deeply interested in the ragged toe of one of his moccasins, while Dora was

stealing sidelong glances at the immobile face of Lashka sitting on the sled. Lawrence Pentfield stared

straight out before him into a dreary future, through the grey vistas of which he saw himself riding on a sled

"I am very sorry. I did not dream it. I thought you had married Corry. That is Mrs. Pentfield sitting on the

Mabel Holmes turned weakly toward her sister, as though all the fatigue of her great journey had suddenly

descended on her. Dora caught her around the waist. Corry Hutchinson was still occupied with his moccasins.

The long whiplash hissed out, the dogs sprang against the breast bands, and the sled lurched and jerked

"Oh, I say, Corry," Pentfield called back, "you'd better occupy the old cabin. It's not been used for some time.

This being a storyand a truer one than it may appearof a mining country, it is quite to be expected that it

will be a hardluck story. But that depends on the point of view. Hard luck is a mild way of terming it so far

as Kink Mitchell and Hootchinoo Bill are concerned; and that they have a decided opinion on the subject is a

It was in the fall of 1896 that the two partners came down to the east bank of the Yukon, and drew a

Peterborough canoe from a moss covered cache. They were not particularly pleasantlooking objects. A

summer's prospecting, filled to repletion with hardship and rather empty of grub, had left their clothes in

tatters and themselves worn and cadaverous. A nimbus of mosquitoes buzzed about each man's head. Their

faces were coated with blue clay. Each carried a lump of this damp clay, and, whenever it dried and fell from

their faces, more was daubed on in its place. There was a querulous plaint in their voices, an irritability of

movement and gesture, that told of broken sleep and a losing struggle with the little winged pests.

"Them skeeters'll be the death of me yet," Kink Mitchell whimpered, as the canoe felt the current on her nose,

"Cheer up, cheer up. We're about done," Hootchinoo Bill answered, with an attempted heartiness in his

funereal tones that was ghastly. "We'll be in Forty Mile in forty minutes, and then cursed little devil!"

One hand left his paddle and landed on the back of his neck with a sharp slap. He put a fresh daub of clay on

the injured part, swearing sulphurously the while. Kink Mitchell was not in the least amused. He merely

They crossed the Yukon to its west bank, shot downstream with easy stroke, and at the end of forty minutes

swung in close to the left around the tail of an island. Forty Mile spread itself suddenly before them. Both

men straightened their backs and gazed at the sight. They gazed long and carefully, drifting with the current,

in their faces an expression of mingled surprise and consternation slowly gathering. Not a thread of smoke

was rising from the hundreds of logcabins. There was no sound of axes biting sharply into wood, of

hammering and sawing. Neither dogs nor men loitered before the big store. No steamboats lay at the bank, no

canoes, nor scows, nor polingboats. The river was as bare of craft as the town was of life.

"Kind of looks like Gabriel's tooted his little horn, and you an' me has turned up missing," remarked

His remark was casual, as though there was nothing unusual about the occurrence. Kink Mitchell's reply was

just as casual as though he, too, were unaware of any strange perturbation of spirit.

"Looks as they was all Baptists, then, and took the boats to go by water," was his contribution.

"My ol' dad was a Baptist," Hootchinoo Bill supplemented. "An' he always did hold it was forty thousand

This was the end of their levity. They ran the canoe in and climbed the high earth bank. A feeling of awe

descended upon them as they walked the deserted streets. The sunlight streamed placidly over the town. A

gentle wind tapped the halyards against the flagpole before the closed doors of the Caledonia Dance Hall.

Mosquitoes buzzed, robins sang, and moose birds tripped hungrily among the cabins; but there was no human

"I'm just dyin' for a drink," Hootchinoo Bill said and unconsciously his voice sank to a hoarse whisper.

His partner nodded his head, loth to hear his own voice break the stillness. They trudged on in uneasy silence

till surprised by an open door. Above this door, and stretching the width of the building, a rude sign

announced the same as the "Monte Carlo." But beside the door, hat over eyes, chair tilted back, a man sat

sunning himself. He was an old man. Beard and hair were long and white and patriarchal.

"If it ain't ol' Jim Cummings, turned up like us, too late for Resurrection!" said Kink Mitchell.

The old man unlimbered lamely, blinking his eyes and murmuring automatically: "What'll ye have, gents?

They followed him inside and ranged up against the long bar where of yore a halfdozen nimble barkeepers

found little time to loaf. The great room, ordinarily aroar with life, was still and gloomy as a tomb. There was

no rattling of chips, no whirring of ivory balls. Roulette and faro tables were like gravestones under their

canvas covers. No women's voices drifted merrily from the dance room behind. Ol' Jim Cummings wiped a

glass with palsied hands, and Kink Mitchell scrawled his initials on the dustcovered bar.

"Gone," was the ancient barkeeper's reply, in a voice thin and aged as himself, and as unsteady as his hand.

"Gone, all gone." The old man shook his head sadly, rummaging in an absent way among the dusty bottles.

"Great Sardanapolis! Where?" Kink Mitchell exploded, unable longer to restrain himself. "You don't say

"Why, ain't you heerd?" The old man chuckled quietly. "Theyall's gone to Dawson."

"Ain't never heered of Dawson, eh?" The old man chuckled exasperatingly. "Why, Dawson's a town, a city,

"I've ben in this land seven year," Bill announced emphatically, "an' I make free to say I never heard tell of

the burg before. Hold on! Let's have some more of that whisky. Your information's flabbergasted me, that it

"On the big flat jest below the mouth of Klondike," ol' Jim answered. "But where has youall ben this

"Never you mind where weall's ben," was Kink Mitchell's testy reply. "Weall's ben where the skeeters is

that thick you've got to throw a stick into the air so as to see the sun and tell the time of day. Ain't I right,

"Right you are," said Bill. "But speakin' of this Dawsonplace how like did it happen to be, Jim?"

"Ounce to the pan on a creek called Bonanza, an' they ain't got to bedrock yet."

At mention of the discoverer's name the partners stared at each other disgustedly. Then they winked with

"I wouldn't put on my moccasins to stampede after anything he'd ever find," said Bill.

"Same here," announced his partner. "A cuss that's too plumb lazy to fish his own salmon. That's why he took

up with the Indians. S'pose that black brotherinlaw of his,lemme see, Skookum Jim, eh?s'pose he's in

The old barkeeper nodded. "Sure, an' what's more, all Forty Mile, exceptin' me an' a few cripples."

"I bet you the drinks Honkins ain't in on it!" Hootchinoo Bill cried with certitude.

"The ties him down an' throws him in the bottom of a polin'boat," ol' Jim explained. "Come right in here,

they did, an' takes him out of that there chair there in the corner, an' three more drunks they finds under the

pianny. I tell youalls the whole camp hits up the Yukon for Dawson jes' like Sam Scratch was after them,

wimmen, children, babes in arms, the whole shebang. Bidwell comes to me an' sez, sez he, 'Jim, I wants you

"'Where's Barlow?' sez I. 'Gone,' sez he, 'an' I'm afollowin' with a load of whisky.' An' with that, never

waitin' for me to decline, he makes a run for his boat an' away he goes, polin' up river like mad. So here I be,

"Gosh darn my buttoms!" said Hootchinoo Bill. "Seems likes you and me, Kink, is the kind of folks always

"Wouldn't it take the saleratus out your dough, now?" said Kink Mitchell. "A stampede of tinhorns, drunks,

"Genooine miners like you an' me, Kink," he went on academically, "is all out an' sweatin' hard over Birch

Creek way. Not a genooine miner in this whole crazy Dawson outfit, and I say right here, not a step do I

Having wet this resolution, they beached the canoe, transferred its contents to their cabin, and cooked dinner.

But as the afternoon wore along they grew restive. They were men used to the silence of the great wilderness,

but this gravelike silence of a town worried them. They caught themselves listening for familiar sounds

"waitin' for something to make a noise which ain't goin' to make a noise," as Bill put it. They strolled through

the deserted streets to the Monte Carlo for more drinks, and wandered along the river bank to the steamer

landing, where only water gurgled as the eddy filled and emptied, and an occasional salmon leapt flashing

They sat down in the shade in front of the store and talked with the consumptive storekeeper, whose liability

to hemorrhage accounted for his presence. Bill and Kink told him how they intended loafing in their cabin

and resting up after the hard summer's work. They told him, with a certain insistence, that was half appeal for

belief, half challenge for contradiction, how much they were going to enjoy their idleness. But the

storekeeper was uninterested. He switched the conversation back to the strike on Klondike, and they could

not keep him away from it. He could think of nothing else, talk of nothing else, till Hootchinoo Bill rose up in

"Same here," said Kink Mitchell, with a brightening face. "One'd think something was doin' up there, 'stead

But a boat came into view from downstream. It was long and slim. It hugged the bank closely, and its three

occupants, standing upright, propelled it against the stiff current by means of long poles.

"Circle City outfit," said the storekeeper. "I was lookin' for 'em along by afternoon. Forty Mile had the start

'We'll just sit here quietlike and watch 'em string by," Bill said complacently.

As he spoke, another boat appeared in sight, followed after a brief interval by two others. By this time the

first boat was abreast of the men on the bank. Its occupants did not cease poling while greetings were

exchanged, and, though its progress was slow, a halfhour saw it out of sight up river.

Still they came from below, boat after boat, in endless procession. The uneasiness of Bill and Kink increased.

They stole speculative, tentative glances at each other, and when their eyes met looked away in

Kink opened his mouth to speak, but words failed him and his mouth remained open while he continued to

They grinned sheepishly at each other, and by tacit consent started to walk away. Their pace quickened, and

"Can't lose no time with all that multitude arushin' by," Kink spluttered, as he jabbed the sourdough can

into the beanpot with one hand and with the other gathered in the fryingpan and coffee pot.

"Should say not," gasped Bill, his head and shoulders buried in a clothessack wherein were stored winter

socks and underwear. "I say, Kink, don't forget the saleratus on the corner shelf back of the stove."

Halfanhour later they were launching the canoe and loading up, while the storekeeper made jocular

remarks about poor, weak mortals and the contagiousness of "stampedin' fever." But when Bill and Kink

thrust their long poles to bottom and started the canoe against the current, he called after them:

They nodded their heads vigorously and felt sorry for the poor wretch who remained perforce behind.

Kink and Bill were sweating hard. According to the revised Northland Scripture, the stampede is to the swift,

the blazing of stakes to the strong, and the Crown in royalties, gathers to itself the fulness thereof. Kink and

Bill were both swift and strong. They took the soggy trail at a long, swinging gait that broke the hearts of a

couple of tenderfeet who tried to keep up with them. Behind, strung out between them and Dawson (where

the boats were discarded and land travel began), was the vanguard of the Circle City outfit. In the race from

Forty Mile the partners had passed every boat, winning from the leading boat by a length in the Dawson

eddy, and leaving its occupants sadly behind the moment their feet struck the trail.

"Huh! couldn't see us for smoke," Hootchinoo Bill chuckled, flirting the stinging sweat from his brow and

Three men emerged from where the trail broke through the trees. Two followed close at their heels, and then

"And here's one that's loped himself out," said Bill, pointing to the side of the trail.

A man was lying on his back panting in the culminating stages of violent exhaustion. His face was ghastly,

"CHECHAQUO!" Kink Mitchell grunted, and it was the grunt of the old "sour dough" for the greenhorn,

for the man who outfitted with "selfrisin'" flour and used bakingpowder in his biscuits.

The partners, true to the oldtimer custom, had intended to stake downstream from the strike, but when they

saw claim 81 BELOW blazed on a tree,which meant fully eight miles below Discovery, they changed

their minds. The eight miles were covered in less than two hours. It was a killing pace, over so rough trail,

At Discovery little was to be learned of the upper creek. Cormack's Indian brotherinlaw, Skookum Jim,

had a hazy notion that the creek was staked as high as the 30's; but when Kink and Bill looked at the

cornerstakes of 79 ABOVE, they threw their stampeding packs off their backs and sat down to smoke. All

their efforts had been vain. Bonanza was staked from mouth to source, "out of sight and across the next

divide." Bill complained that night as they fried their bacon and boiled their coffee over Cormack's fire at

"That pup" was a broad creek that flowed into Bonanza at 7 ABOVE. The partners received his advice with

the magnificent contempt of the sour dough for a squawman, and, instead, spent the day on Adam's Creek,

another and more likelylooking tributary of Bonanza. But it was the old story over againstaked to the

For threes days Carmack repeated his advice, and for three days they received it contemptuously. But on the

fourth day, there being nowhere else to go, they went up "that pup." They knew that it was practically

unstaked, but they had no intention of staking. The trip was made more for the purpose of giving vent to their

ill humour than for anything else. They had become quite cynical, sceptical. They jeered and scoffed at

But Bill gravely paced off five hundred feet up the creek and blazed the cornerstakes. He had picked up the

bottom of a candle box, and on the smooth side he wrote the notice for his centre stake:

So the name of Charles Mitchell was added to the notice; and many an old sour dough's face relaxed that day

"To hell with pups!" was Hootchinoo Bill's reply. "Me and Kink's goin' alookin' for Too Much Gold when

Too Much Gold was the fabled creek of which all sour doughs dreamed, whereof it was said the gold was so

thick that, in order to wash it, gravel must first be shovelled into the sluiceboxes. But the several days' rest,

preliminary to the quest for Too Much Gold, brought a slight change in their plan, inasmuch as it brought one

Ans Handerson had been working for wages all summer at Miller Creek over on the Sixty Mile, and, the

summer done, had strayed up Bonanza like many another waif helplessly adrift on the gold tides that swept

willynilly across the land. He was tall and lanky. His arms were long, like prehistoric man's, and his hands

were like soupplates, twisted and gnarled, and bigknuckled from toil. He was slow of utterance and

movement, and his eyes, pale blue as his hair was pale yellow, seemed filled with an immortal dreaming, the

stuff of which no man knew, and himself least of all. Perhaps this appearance of immortal dreaming was due

to a supreme and vacuous innocence. At any rate, this was the valuation men of ordinary clay put upon him,

and there was nothing extraordinary about the composition of Hootchinoo Bill and Kink Mitchell.

The partners had spent a day of visiting and gossip, and in the evening met in the temporary quarters of the

Monte Carloa large tent were stampeders rested their weary bones and bad whisky sold at a dollar a drink.

Since the only money in circulation was dust, and since the house took the "downweight" on the scales, a

drink cost something more than a dollar. Bill and Kink were not drinking, principally for the reason that their

one and common sack was not strong enough to stand many excursions to the scales.

"Say, Bill, I've got a chechaquo on the string for a sack of flour," Mitchell announced jubilantly.

Bill looked interested and pleased. Grub as scarce, and they were not overplentifully supplied for the quest

"Flour's worth a dollar a pound," he answered. "How like do you calculate to get your finger on it?"

"What claim?" Bill was surprised. Then he remembered the reservation he had staked off for the Swedes, and

"I wouldn't be so clost about it, though," he added. "Give 'm the whole thing while you're about it, in a right

Bill shook his head. "If I did, he'd get clean scairt and prance off. I'm lettin' on as how the ground is believed

to be valuable, an' that we're lettin' go half just because we're monstrous short on grub. After the dicker we

"If somebody ain't disregarded our notice," Bill objected, though he was plainly pleased at the prospect of

"She ain't jumped," Kink assured him. "It's No. 24, and it stands. The chechaquos took it serious, and they

begun stakin' where you left off. Staked clean over the divide, too. I was gassin' with one of them which has

It was then, and for the first time, that they heard the slow and groping utterance of Ans Handerson.

The partners winked at each other, and a few minutes later a surprised and grateful Swede was drinking bad

whisky with two hard hearted strangers. But he was as hardheaded as they were hard hearted. The sack

made frequent journeys to the scales, followed solicitously each time by Kink Mitchell's eyes, and still Ans

Handerson did not loosen up. In his pale blue eyes, as in summer seas, immortal dreams swam up and burned,

but the swimming and the burning were due to the tales of gold and prospect pans he heard, rather than to the

The partners were in despair, though they appeared boisterous and jovial of speech and action.

"Don't mind me, my friend," Hootchinoo Bill hiccoughed, his hand upon Ans Handerson's shoulder. "Have

another drink. We're just celebratin' Kink's birthday here. This is my pardner, Kink, Kink Mitchell. An' what

This learned, his hand descended resoundingly on Kink's back, and Kink simulated clumsy

selfconsciousness in that he was for the time being the centre of the rejoicing, while Ans Handerson looked

pleased and asked them to have a drink with him. It was the first and last time he treated, until the play

changed and his canny soul was roused to unwonted prodigality. But he paid for the liquor from a fairly

healthylooking sack. "Not less 'n eight hundred in it," calculated the lynxeyed Kink; and on the strength of

it he took the first opportunity of a privy conversation with Bidwell, proprietor of the bad whisky and the

"Here's my sack, Bidwell," Kink said, with the intimacy and surety of one oldtimer to another. "Just weigh

fifty dollars into it for a day or so more or less, and we'll be yours truly, Bill an' me."

Thereafter the journeys of the sack to the scales were more frequent, and the celebration of Kink's natal day

waxed hilarious. He even essayed to sing the oldtimer's classic, "The Juice of the Forbidden Fruit," but

broke down and drowned his embarrassment in another round of drinks. Even Bidwell honoured him with a

round or two on the house; and he and Bill were decently drunk by the time Ans Handerson's eyelids began to

Bill grew affectionate, then confidential. He told his troubles and hard luck to the barkeeper and the world

in general, and to Ans Handerson in particular. He required no histrionic powers to act the part. The bad

whisky attended to that. He worked himself into a great sorrow for himself and Bill, and his tears were

sincere when he told how he and his partner were thinking of selling a halfinterest in good ground just

Ans Handerson's eyes were shining unholily as he asked, "How much you tank you take?"

Bill and Kink did not hear him, and he was compelled to repeat his query. They appeared reluctant. He grew

keener. And he swayed back and forward, holding on to the bar and listened with all his ears while they

conferred together on one side, and wrangled as to whether they should or not, and disagreed in stage

"Two hundred andhic!fifty," Bill finally announced, "but we reckon as we won't sell."

"Yes, indeedy," added Kink. "We ain't in no charity business a disgorgin' free an' generous to Swedes an'

"Ay tank we haf another drink," hiccoughed Ans Handerson, craftily changing the subject against a more

And thereafter, to bring about that propitious time, his own sack began to seesaw between his hip pocket

and the scales. Bill and Kink were coy, but they finally yielded to his blandishments. Whereupon he grew shy

and drew Bidwell to one side. He staggered exceedingly, and held on to Bidwell for support as he asked

"Sure," Bidwell answered heartily. "Known 'em for years. Old sour doughs. When they sell a claim, they sell

But by now he was dreaming deeply, and he proclaimed he would have the whole claim or nothing. This was

the cause of great pain to Hootchinoo Bill. He orated grandly against the "hawgishness" of chechaquos and

Swedes, albeit he dozed between periods, his voice dying away to a gurgle, and his head sinking forward on

his breast. But whenever roused by a nudge from Kink or Bidwell, he never failed to explode another volley

Ans Handerson was calm under it all. Each insult added to the value of the claim. Such unamiable reluctance

to sell advertised but one thing to him, and he was aware of a great relief when Hootchinoo Bill sank snoring

to the floor, and he was free to turn his attention to his less intractable partner.

Kink Mitchell was persuadable, though a poor mathematician. He wept dolefully, but was willing to sell a

halfinterest for two hundred and fifty dollars or the whole claim for seven hundred and fifty. Ans Handerson

and Bidwell laboured to clear away his erroneous ideas concerning fractions, but their labour was vain. He

spilled tears and regrets all over the bar and on their shoulders, which tears, however, did not wash away his

opinion, that if one half was worth two hundred and fifty, two halves were worth three times as much.

In the end,and even Bidwell retained no more than hazy recollections of how the night terminated,a bill

of sale was drawn up, wherein Bill Rader and Charles Mitchell yielded up all right and title to the claim

known as 24 ELDORADO, the same being the name the creek had received from some optimistic chechaquo.

When Kink had signed, it took the united efforts of the three to arouse Bill. Pen in hand, he swayed long over

the document; and, each time he rocked back and forth, in Ans Handerson's eyes flashed and faded a

wondrous golden vision. When the precious signature was at last appended and the dust paid over, he

breathed a great sigh, and sank to sleep under a table, where he dreamed immortally until morning.

But the day was chill and grey. He felt bad. His first act, unconscious and automatic, was to feel for his sack.

Its lightness startled him. Then, slowly, memories of the night thronged into his brain. Rough voices

disturbed him. He opened his eyes and peered out from under the table. A couple of early risers, or, rather,

men who had been out on trail all night, were vociferating their opinions concerning the utter and loathsome

worthlessness of Eldorado Creek. He grew frightened, felt in his pocket, and found the deed to 24

Ten minutes later Hootchinoo Bill and Kink Mitchell were roused from their blankets by a wildeyed Swede

Tears were in his eyes and throat. They ran down his cheeks as he knelt before them and pleaded and

"First time I ever hear a man squeal over a minin' deal," Bill said. "An' I make free to say 'tis too onusual for

They were honest in their wonderment. They could not conceive of themselves raising a wail over a business

"The poor, ornery chechaquo," murmured Hootchinoo Bill, as they watched the sorrowing Swede disappear

And ere the day was out they purchased flour and bacon at exorbitant prices with Ans Handerson's dust and

crossed over the divide in the direction of the creeks that lie between Klondike and Indian River.

Three months later they came back over the divide in the midst of a snowstorm and dropped down the trail

to 24 ELDORADO. It merely chanced that the trail led them that way. They were not looking for the claim.

Nor could they see much through the driving white till they set foot upon the claim itself. And then the air

lightened, and they beheld a dump, capped by a windlass that a man was turning. They saw him draw a

bucket of gravel from the hole and tilt it on the edge of the dump. Likewise they saw another, man, strangely

familiar, filling a pan with the fresh gravel. His hands were large; his hair wets pale yellow. But before they

reached him, he turned with the pan and fled toward a cabin. He wore no hat, and the snow falling down his

neck accounted for his haste. Bill and Kink ran after him, and came upon him in the cabin, kneeling by the

He was too deeply engaged to notice more than that somebody had entered the cabin. They stood at his

shoulder and looked on. He imparted to the pan a deft circular motion, pausing once or twice to rake out the

larger particles of gravel with his fingers. The water was muddy, and, with the pan buried in it, they could see

nothing of its contents. Suddenly he lifted the pan clear and sent the water out of it with a flirt. A mass of

Hootchinoo Bill swallowed. Never in his life had he dreamed of so rich a testpan.

"Kind of thick, my friend," he said huskily. "How much might you reckon thatall to be?"

Still Ans Handerson kept his head down, absorbed in putting in the fine touches which wash out the last

particles of dross, though he answered, "Ay tank Ay ban wort' five hundred t'ousand dollar."

"Yes, Bill, gosh!" said Kink Mitchell; and they went out softly and closed the door.

David Rasmunsen was a hustler, and, like many a greater man, a man of the one idea. Wherefore, when the

clarion call of the North rang on his ear, he conceived an adventure in eggs and bent all his energy to its

achievement. He figured briefly and to the point, and the adventure became iridescenthued, splendid. That

eggs would sell at Dawson for five dollars a dozen was a safe working premise. Whence it was

incontrovertible that one thousand dozen would bring, in the Golden Metropolis, five thousand dollars.

On the other hand, expense was to be considered, and he considered it well, for he was a careful man, keenly

practical, with a hard head and a heart that imagination never warmed. At fifteen cents a dozen, the initial

cost of his thousand dozen would be one hundred and fifty dollars, a mere bagatelle in face of the enormous

profit. And suppose, just suppose, to be wildly extravagant for once, that transportation for himself and eggs

should run up eight hundred and fifty more; he would still have four thousand clear cash and clean when the

"You see, Alma,"he figured it over with his wife, the cosy diningroom submerged in a sea of maps,

government surveys, guide books, and Alaskan itineraries,"you see, expenses don't really begin till you

make Dyeafifty dollars'll cover it with a first class passage thrown in. Now from Dyea to Lake

Linderman, Indian packers take your goods over for twelve cents a pound, twelve dollars a hundred, or one

hundred and twenty dollars a thousand. Say I have fifteen hundred pounds, it'll cost one hundred and eighty

dollarscall it two hundred and be safe. I am creditably informed by a Klondiker just come out that I can

buy a boat for three hundred. But the same man says I'm sure to get a couple of passengers for one hundred

and fifty each, which will give me the boat for nothing, and, further, they can help me manage it. And . . .

that's all; I put my eggs ashore from the boat at Dawson. Now let me see how much is that?"

"Fifty dollars from San Francisco to Dyea, two hundred from Dyea to Linderman, passengers pay for the

"And a hundred for my clothes and personal outfit," he went on happily; "that leaves a margin of five

Alma shrugged her shoulders and elevated her brows. If that vast Northland was capable of swallowing up a

man and a thousand dozen eggs, surely there was room and to spare for whatever else he might happen to

possess. So she thought, but she said nothing. She knew David Rasmunsen too well to say anything.

"Doubling the time because of chance delays, I should make the trip in two months. Think of it, Alma! Four

thousand in two months! Beats the paltry hundred a month I'm getting now. Why, we'll build further out

where we'll have more space, gas in every room, and a view, and the rent of the cottage'll pay taxes,

insurance, and water, and leave something over. And then there's always the chance of my striking it and

coming out a millionaire. Now tell me, Alma, don't you think I'm very moderate?"

And Alma could hardly think otherwise. Besides, had not her own cousin,though a remote and distant one

to be sure, the black sheep, the harumscarum, the ne'erdowell,had not he come down out of that weird

North country with a hundred thousand in yellow dust, to say nothing of a halfownership in the hole from

David Rasmunsen's grocer was surprised when he found him weighing eggs in the scales at the end of the

counter, and Rasmunsen himself was more surprised when he found that a dozen eggs weighed a pound and a

halffifteen hundred pounds for his thousand dozen! There would be no weight left for his clothes, blankets,

and cooking utensils, to say nothing of the grub he must necessarily consume by the way. His calculations

were all thrown out, and he was just proceeding to recast them when he hit upon the idea of weighing small

eggs. "For whether they be large or small, a dozen eggs is a dozen eggs," he observed sagely to himself; and a

dozen small ones he found to weigh but a pound and a quarter. Thereat the city of San Francisco was overrun

by anxiouseyed emissaries, and commission houses and dairy associations were startled by a sudden

Rasmunsen mortgaged the little cottage for a thousand dollars, arranged for his wife to make a prolonged stay

among her own people, threw up his job, and started North. To keep within his schedule he compromised on

a secondclass passage, which, because of the rush, was worse than steerage; and in the late summer, a pale

and wabbly man, he disembarked with his eggs on the Dyea beach. But it did not take him long to recover his

land legs and appetite. His first interview with the Chilkoot packers straightened him up and stiffened his

backbone. Forty cents a pound they demanded for the twentyeightmile portage, and while he caught his

breath and swallowed, the price went up to fortythree. Fifteen husky Indians put the straps on his packs at

fortyfive, but took them off at an offer of fortyseven from a Skaguay Croesus in dirty shirt and ragged

overalls who had lost his horses on the White Pass trail and was now making a last desperate drive at the

But Rasmunsen was clean grit, and at fifty cents found takers, who, two days later, set his eggs down intact at

Linderman. But fifty cents a pound is a thousand dollars a ton, and his fifteen hundred pounds had exhausted

his emergency fund and left him stranded at the Tantalus point where each day he saw the freshwhipsawed

boats departing for Dawson. Further, a great anxiety brooded over the camp where the boats were built. Men

worked frantically, early and late, at the height of their endurance, caulking, nailing, and pitching in a frenzy

of haste for which adequate explanation was not far to seek. Each day the snowline crept farther down the

bleak, rockshouldered peaks, and gale followed gale, with sleet and slush and snow, and in the eddies and

quiet places young ice formed and thickened through the fleeting hours. And each morn, toilstiffened men

turned wan faces across the lake to see if the freezeup had come. For the freezeup heralded the death of

their hopethe hope that they would be floating down the swift river ere navigation closed on the chain of

To harrow Rasmunsen's soul further, he discovered three competitors in the egg business. It was true that one,

a little German, had gone broke and was himself forlornly backtripping the last pack of the portage; but the

other two had boats nearly completed, and were daily supplicating the god of merchants and traders to stay

the iron hand of winter for just another day. But the iron hand closed down over the land. Men were being

frozen in the blizzard which swept Chilkoot, and Rasmunsen frosted his toes ere he was aware. He found a

chance to go passenger with his freight in a boat just shoving off through the rubble, but two hundred hard

"Ay tank you yust wait one leedle w'ile," said the Swedish boat builder, who had struck his Klondike right

there and was wise enough to know it"one leedle w'ile und I make you a tam fine skiff boat, sure Pete."

With this unpledged word to go on, Rasmunsen hit the back trail to Crater Lake, where he fell in with two

press correspondents whose tangled baggage was strewn from Stone House, over across the Pass, and as far

"Yes," he said with consequence. "I've a thousand dozen eggs at Linderman, and my boat's just about got the

last seam caulked. Consider myself in luck to get it. Boats are at a premium, you know, and none to be had."

Whereupon and almost with bodily violence the correspondents clamoured to go with him, fluttered

greenbacks before his eyes, and spilled yellow twenties from hand to hand. He could not hear of it, but they

overpersuaded him, and he reluctantly consented to take them at three hundred apiece. Also they pressed

upon him the passage money in advance. And while they wrote to their respective journals concerning the

Good Samaritan with the thousand dozen eggs, the Good Samaritan was hurrying back to the Swede at

"Here, you! Gimme that boat!" was his salutation, his hand jingling the correspondents' gold pieces and his

"How much is the other fellow paying? Three hundred? Well, here's four. Take it."

The Swede wavered. "Ay tank yes," he finally said, and the last Rasmunsen saw of him his vocabulary was

The German slipped and broke his ankle on the steep hogback above Deep Lake, sold out his stock for a

dollar a dozen, and with the proceeds hired Indian packers to carry him back to Dyea. But on the morning

The correspondents offered to lend him the money; but Rasmunsen declined, and the Yankee closed with the

remaining rival, a brawny son of the sea and sailor of ships and things, who promised to show them all a

wrinkle or two when it came to cracking on. And crack on he did, with a large tarpaulin squaresail which

pressed the bow half under at every jump. He was the first to run out of Linderman, but, disdaining the

portage, piled his loaded boat on the rocks in the boiling rapids. Rasmunsen and the Yankee, who likewise

had two passengers, portaged across on their backs and then lined their empty boats down through the bad

Bennett was a twentyfivemile lake, narrow and deep, a funnel between the mountains through which

storms ever romped. Rasmunsen camped on the sandpit at its head, where were many men and boats bound

north in the teeth of the Arctic winter. He awoke in the morning to find a piping gale from the south, which

caught the chill from the whited peaks and glacial valleys and blew as cold as north wind ever blew. But it

was fair, and he also found the Yankee staggering past the first bold headland with all sail set. Boat after boat

"We'll catch him before Cariboo Crossing," they assured Rasmunsen, as they ran up the sail and the Alma

Now Rasmunsen all his life had been prone to cowardice on water, but he clung to the kicking steeringoar

with set face and determined jaw. His thousand dozen were there in the boat before his eyes, safely secured

beneath the correspondents' baggage, and somehow, before his eyes were the little cottage and the mortgage

It was bitter cold. Now and again he hauled in the steeringsweep and put out a fresh one while his

passengers chopped the ice from the blade. Wherever the spray struck, it turned instantly to frost, and the

dipping boom of the spritsail was quickly fringed with icicles. The Alma strained and hammered through the

big seas till the seams and butts began to spread, but in lieu of bailing the correspondents chopped ice and

flung it overboard. There was no letup. The mad race with winter was on, and the boats tore along in a

"Wwwe can't stop to save our souls!" one of the correspondents chattered, from cold, not fright.

Rasmunsen replied with an idiotic grin. The ironbound shores were in a lather of foam, and even down the

middle the only hope was to keep running away from the big seas. To lower sail was to be overtaken and

swamped. Time and again they passed boats pounding among the rocks, and once they saw one on the edge

of the breakers about to strike. A little craft behind them, with two men, jibed over and turned bottom up.

Rasmunsen grinned and tightened his aching grip on the sweep. Scores of times had the send of the sea

caught the big square stern of the Alma and thrown her off from dead before it till the after leach of the

spritsail fluttered hollowly, and each time, and only with all his strength, had he forced her back. His grin by

They roared down past an isolated rock a hundred yards from shore. From its wavedrenched top a man

shrieked wildly, for the instant cutting the storm with his voice. But the next instant the Alma was by, and the

Rasmunsen shot a glance over his shoulder at a black squaresail. He had seen it leap up out of the grey to

windward, and for an hour, off and on, had been watching it grow. The sailor had evidently repaired damages

Both passengers stopped chopping ice to watch. Twenty miles of Bennett were behind themroom and to

spare for the sea to toss up its mountains toward the sky. Sinking and soaring like a storm god, the sailor

drove by them. The huge sail seemed to grip the boat from the crests of the waves, to tear it bodily out of the

Even as they spoke, the black tarpaulin swooped from sight behind a big comber. The next wave rolled over

the spot, and the next, but the boat did not reappear. The Alma rushed by the place. A little riffraff of oats and

boxes was seen. An arm thrust up and a shaggy head broke surface a score of yards away.

For a time there was silence. As the end of the lake came in sight, the waves began to leap aboard with such

steady recurrence that the correspondents no longer chopped ice but flung the water out with buckets. Even

this would not do, and, after a shouted conference with Rasmunsen, they attacked the baggage. Flour, bacon,

beans, blankets, cookingstove, ropes, odds and ends, everything they could get hands on, flew overboard.

"That'll do!" Rasmunsen called sternly, as they applied themselves to the top layer of eggs.

"The hhell it will!" answered the shivering one, savagely. With the exception of their notes, films, and

cameras, they had sacrificed their outfit. He bent over, laid hold of an eggbox, and began to worry it out

Rasmunsen had managed to draw his revolver, and with the crook of his arm over the sweep head, was taking

aim. The correspondent stood up on the thwart, balancing back and forth, his face twisted with menace and

So cried his brother correspondent, hurling himself, face downward, into the bottom of the boat. The Alma,

under the divided attention of Rasmunsen, had been caught by a great mass of water and whirled around. The

after leach hollowed, the sail emptied and jibed, and the boom, sweeping with terrific force across the boat,

carried the angry correspondent overboard with a broken back. Mast and sail had gone over the side as well.

A drenching sea followed, as the boat lost headway, and Rasmunsen sprang to the bailing bucket

Several boats hurtled past them in the next halfhour,small boats, boats of their own size, boats afraid,

unable to do aught but run madly on. Then a tenton barge, at imminent risk of destruction, lowered sail to

But his low gunwale ground against the heavy craft, and the remaining correspondent clambered aboard.

Rasmunsen was over the eggs like a cat and in the bow of the Alma, striving with numb fingers to bend the

"I've a thousand dozen eggs here," he shouted back. "Gimme a tow! I'll pay you!"

A big whitecap broke just beyond, washing over the barge and leaving the Alma half swamped. The men cast

off, cursing him as they ran up their sail. Rasmunsen cursed back and fell to bailing. The mast and sail, like a

sea anchor, still fast by the halyards, held the boat head on to wind and sea and gave him a chance to fight the

Three hours later, numbed, exhausted, blathering like a lunatic, but still bailing, he went ashore on an

icestrewn beach near Cariboo Crossing. Two men, a government courier and a halfbreed voyageur,

dragged him out of the surf, saved his cargo, and beached the Alma. They were paddling out of the country in

a Peterborough, and gave him shelter for the night in their stormbound camp. Next morning they departed,

but he elected to stay by his eggs. And thereafter the name and fame of the man with the thousand dozen eggs

began to spread through the land. Goldseekers who made in before the freezeup carried the news of his

coming. Grizzled old timers of Forty Mile and Circle City, sour doughs with leathern jaws and

beancalloused stomachs, called up dream memories of chickens and green things at mention of his name.

Dyea and Skaguay took an interest in his being, and questioned his progress from every man who came over

the passes, while Dawsongolden, omeletless Dawsonfretted and worried, and waylaid every chance

But of this Rasmunsen knew nothing. The day after the wreck he patched up the Alma and pulled out. A cruel

east wind blew in his teeth from Tagish, but he got the oars over the side and bucked manfully into it, though

half the time he was drifting backward and chopping ice from the blades. According to the custom of the

country, he was driven ashore at Windy Arm; three times on Tagish saw him swamped and beached; and

Lake Marsh held him at the freeze up. The Alma was crushed in the jamming of the floes, but the eggs were

intact. These he backtripped two miles across the ice to the shore, where he built a cache, which stood for

Half a thousand frozen miles stretched between him and Dawson, and the waterway was closed. But

Rasmunsen, with a peculiar tense look in his face, struck back up the lakes on foot. What he suffered on that

lone trip, with nought but a single blanket, an axe, and a handful of beans, is not given to ordinary mortals to

know. Only the Arctic adventurer may understand. Suffice that he was caught in a blizzard on Chilkoot and

left two of his toes with the surgeon at Sheep Camp. Yet he stood on his feet and washed dishes in the

scullery of the PAWONA to the Puget Sound, and from there passed coal on a P. S. boat to San Francisco.

It was a haggard, unkempt man who limped across the shining office floor to raise a second mortgage from

the bank people. His hollow cheeks betrayed themselves through the scraggy beard, and his eyes seemed to

have retired into deep caverns where they burned with cold fires. His hands were grained from exposure and

hard work, and the nails were rimmed with tightpacked dirt and coaldust. He spoke vaguely of eggs and

icepacks, winds and tides; but when they declined to let him have more than a second thousand, his talk

became incoherent, concerning itself chiefly with the price of dogs and dogfood, and such things as

snowshoes and moccasins and winter trails. They let him have fifteen hundred, which was more than the

cottage warranted, and breathed easier when he scrawled his signature and passed out the door.

Two weeks later he went over Chilkoot with three dog sleds of five dogs each. One team he drove, the two

Indians with him driving the others. At Lake Marsh they broke out the cache and loaded up. But there was no

trail. He was the first in over the ice, and to him fell the task of packing the snow and hammering away

through the rough river jams. Behind him he often observed a campfire smoke trickling thinly up through

the quiet air, and he wondered why the people did not overtake him. For he was a stranger to the land and did

not understand. Nor could he understand his Indians when they tried to explain. This they conceived to be a

hardship, but when they balked and refused to break camp of mornings, he drove them to their work at pistol

When he slipped through an ice bridge near the White Horse and froze his foot, tender yet and oversensitive

from the previous freezing, the Indians looked for him to lie up. But he sacrificed a blanket, and, with his foot

incased in an enormous moccasin, big as a waterbucket, continued to take his regular turn with the front

sled. Here was the cruellest work, and they respected him, though on the side they rapped their foreheads

with their knuckles and significantly shook their heads. One night they tried to run away, but the zipzip of

his bullets in the snow brought them back, snarling but convinced. Whereupon, being only savage Chilkat

men, they put their heads together to kill him; but he slept like a cat, and, waking or sleeping, the chance

never came. Often they tried to tell him the import of the smoke wreath in the rear, but he could not

comprehend and grew suspicious of them. And when they sulked or shirked, he was quick to let drive at them

between the eyes, and quick to cool their heated souls with sight of his ready revolver.

And so it wentwith mutinous men, wild dogs, and a trail that broke the heart. He fought the men to stay

with him, fought the dogs to keep them away from the eggs, fought the ice, the cold, and the pain of his foot,

which would not heal. As fast as the young tissue renewed, it was bitten and scared by the frost, so that a

running sore developed, into which he could almost shove his fist. In the mornings, when he first put his

weight upon it, his head went dizzy, and he was near to fainting from the pain; but later on in the day it

usually grew numb, to recommence when he crawled into his blankets and tried to sleep. Yet he, who had

been a clerk and sat at a desk all his days, toiled till the Indians were exhausted, and even outworked the

dogs. How hard he worked, how much he suffered, he did not know. Being a man of the one idea, now that

the idea had come, it mastered him. In the foreground of his consciousness was Dawson, in the background

his thousand dozen eggs, and midway between the two his ego fluttered, striving always to draw them

together to a glittering golden point. This golden point was the five thousand dollars, the consummation of

the idea and the point of departure for whatever new idea might present itself. For the rest, he was a mere

automaton. He was unaware of other things, seeing them as through a glass darkly, and giving them no

thought. The work of his hands he did with machinelike wisdom; likewise the work of his head. So the look

on his face grew very tense, till even the Indians were afraid of it, and marvelled at the strange white man

Then came a snap on Lake Le Barge, when the cold of outer space smote the tip of the planet, and the force

ranged sixty and odd degrees below zero. Here, labouring with open mouth that he might breathe more freely,

he chilled his lungs, and for the rest of the trip he was troubled with a dry, hacking cough, especially irritable

in smoke of camp or under stress of undue exertion. On the Thirty Mile river he found much open water,

spanned by precarious ice bridges and fringed with narrow rim ice, tricky and uncertain. The rim ice was

impossible to reckon on, and he dared it without reckoning, falling back on his revolver when his drivers

demurred. But on the ice bridges, covered with snow though they were, precautions could be taken. These

they crossed on their snowshoes, with long poles, held crosswise in their hands, to which to cling in case of

accident. Once over, the dogs were called to follow. And on such a bridge, where the absence of the centre

ice was masked by the snow, one of the Indians met his end. He went through as quickly and neatly as a knife

through thin cream, and the current swept him from view down under the stream ice.

That night his mate fled away through the pale moonlight, Rasmunsen futilely puncturing the silence with his

revolvera thing that he handled with more celerity than cleverness. Thirtysix hours later the Indian made

"Umumum funny manswhat you call?top um head all loose," the interpreter explained to the

puzzled captain. "Eh? Yep, clazy, much clazy mans. Eggs, eggs, all a time eggssavvy? Come bime by."

It was several days before Rasmunsen arrived, the three sleds lashed together, and all the dogs in a single

team. It was awkward, and where the going was bad he was compelled to backtrip it sled by sled, though he

managed most of the time, through herculean efforts, to bring all along on the one haul. He did not seem

moved when the captain of police told him his man was hitting the high places for Dawson, and was by that

time, probably, half way between Selkirk and Stewart. Nor did he appear interested when informed that the

police had broken the trail as far as Pelly; for he had attained to a fatalistic acceptance of all natural

dispensations, good or ill. But when they told him that Dawson was in the bitter clutch of famine, he smiled,

But it was at his next halt that the mystery of the smoke was explained. With the word at Big Salmon that the

trail was broken to Pelly, there was no longer any need for the smoke wreath to linger in his wake; and

Rasmunsen, crouching over lonely fire, saw a motley string of sleds go by. First came the courier and the

halfbreed who had hauled him out from Bennett; then mailcarriers for Circle City, two sleds of them, and a

mixed following of ingoing Klondikers. Dogs and men were fresh and fat, while Rasmunsen and his brutes

were jaded and worn down to the skin and bone. They of the smoke wreath had travelled one day in three,

resting and reserving their strength for the dash to come when broken trail was met with; while each day he

had plunged and floundered forward, breaking the spirit of his dogs and robbing them of their mettle.

As for himself, he was unbreakable. They thanked him kindly for his efforts in their behalf, those fat, fresh

men,thanked him kindly, with broad grins and ribald laughter; and now, when he understood, he made no

answer. Nor did he cherish silent bitterness. It was immaterial. The ideathe fact behind the ideawas not

changed. Here he was and his thousand dozen; there was Dawson; the problem was unaltered.

At the Little Salmon, being short of dog food, the dogs got into his grub, and from there to Selkirk he lived

on beanscoarse, brown beans, big beans, grossly nutritive, which griped his stomach and doubled him up

at twohour intervals. But the Factor at Selkirk had a notice on the door of the Post to the effect that no

steamer had been up the Yukon for two years, and in consequence grub was beyond price. He offered to swap

flour, however, at the rate of a cupful of each egg, but Rasmunsen shook his head and hit the trail. Below the

Post he managed to buy frozen horse hide for the dogs, the horses having been slain by the Chilkat cattle

men, and the scraps and offal preserved by the Indians. He tackled the hide himself, but the hair worked into

Here at Selkirk he met the forerunners of the hungry exodus of Dawson, and from there on they crept over the

trail, a dismal throng. "No grub!" was the song they sang. "No grub, and had to go." "Everybody holding

candles for a rise in the spring." "Flour dollar 'n a half a pound, and no sellers."

When he arrived at Stewart River, seventy from Dawson, five of his dogs were gone, and the remainder were

falling in the traces. He, also, was in the traces, hauling with what little strength was left in him. Even then he

was barely crawling along ten miles a day. His cheekbones and nose, frostbitten again and again, were

turned bloodyblack and hideous. The thumb, which was separated from the fingers by the geepole, had

likewise been nipped and gave him great pain. The monstrous moccasin still incased his foot, and strange

pains were beginning to rack the leg. At Sixty Mile, the last beans, which he had been rationing for some

time, were finished; yet he steadfastly refused to touch the eggs. He could not reconcile his mind to the

legitimacy of it, and staggered and fell along the way to Indian River. Here a freshkilled moose and an

openhanded oldtimer gave him and his dogs new strength, and at Ainslie's he felt repaid for it all when a

stampede, ripe from Dawson in five hours, was sure he could get a dollar and a quarter for every egg he

He came up the steep bank by the Dawson barracks with fluttering heart and shaking knees. The dogs were so

weak that he was forced to rest them, and, waiting, he leaned limply against the geepole. A man, an

eminently decorouslooking man, came sauntering by in a great bearskin coat. He glanced at Rasmunsen

curiously, then stopped and ran a speculative eye over the dogs and the three lashed sleds.

"Eggs," Rasmunsen answered huskily, hardly able to pitch his voice above a whisper.

"Eggs! Whoopee! Whoopee!" He sprang up into the air, gyrated madly, and finished with halfadozen war

"Say, you must be the Egg Man." He walked around and viewed Rasmunsen from the other side. "Come,

The man pulled out a healthy gold sack the size of a small sausage and knocked it negligently against the

geepole. Rasmunsen felt a strange trembling in the pit of his stomach, a tickling of the nostrils, and an

almost overwhelming desire to sit down and cry. But a curious, wideeyed crowd was beginning to collect,

and man after man was calling out for eggs. He was without scales, but the man with the bearskin coat

fetched a pair and obligingly weighed in the dust while Rasmunsen passed out the goods. Soon there was a

pushing and shoving and shouldering, and a great clamour. Everybody wanted to buy and to be served first.

And as the excitement grew, Rasmunsen cooled down. This would never do. There must be something behind

the fact of their buying so eagerly. It would be wiser if he rested first and sized up the market. Perhaps eggs

were worth two dollars apiece. Anyway, whenever he wished to sell, he was sure of a dollar and a half.

"Stop!" he cried, when a couple of hundred had been sold. "No more now. I'm played out. I've got to get a

A groan went up at this, but the man with the bearskin coat approved. Twentyfour of the frozen eggs went

rattling in his capacious pockets, and he didn't care whether the rest of the town ate or not. Besides, he could

"There's a cabin right around the second corner from the Monte Carlo," he told him"the one with the

sodybottle window. It ain't mine, but I've got charge of it. Rents for ten a day and cheap for the money. You

"Tralaloo!" he called back a moment later. "I'm goin' up the hill to eat eggs and dream of home."

On his way to the cabin, Rasmunsen recollected he was hungry and bought a small supply of provisions at the

N. A. T. T. store also a beefsteak at the butcher shop and dried salmon for the dogs. He found the cabin

without difficulty, and left the dogs in the harness while he started the fire and got the coffee under way.

A dollar 'n a half apieceone thousand dozeneighteen thousand dollars!" he kept muttering it to himself,

As he flopped the steak into the fryingpan the door opened. He turned. It was the man with the bearskin

coat. He seemed to come in with determination, as though bound on some explicit errand, but as he looked at

Rasmunsen staggered. He felt as though some one had struck him an astounding blow between the eyes. The

walls of the cabin reeled and tilted up. He put out his hand to steady himself and rested it on the stove. The

"I see," he said slowly, fumbling in his pocket for the sack. "You want your money back."

But the man refused and backed away. "I'll come back," he said, "when you've taken stock, and get what's

Rasmunsen rolled the choppingblock into the cabin and carried in the eggs. He went about it quite calmly.

He took up the handaxe, and, one by one, chopped the eggs in half. These halves he examined carefully and

let fall to the floor. At first he sampled from the different cases, then deliberately emptied one case at a time.

The heap on the floor grew larger. The coffee boiled over and the smoke of the burning beefsteak filled the

The severed eggs were beginning to thaw in the heat of the stove, and a miserable odour was growing

"I'm Murray, Big Jim Murray, everybody knows me," the man volunteered. "I'm just hearin' your eggs is

rotten, and I'm offerin' you two hundred for the batch. They ain't good as salmon, but still they're fair scoffin's

Rasmunsen seemed turned to stone. He did not move. "You go to hell," he said passionlessly.

"Now just consider. I pride myself it's a decent price for a mess like that, and it's better 'n nothin'. Two

Murray gaped with a great awe, then went out carefully, backward, with his eyes fixed an the other's face.

Rasmunsen followed him out and turned the dogs loose. He threw them all the salmon he had bought, and

coiled a sledlashing up in his hand. Then he reentered the cabin and drew the latch in after him. The smoke

from the cindered steak made his eyes smart. He stood on the bunk, passed the lashing over the ridgepole,

and measured the swingoff with his eye. It did not seem to satisfy, for he put the stool on the bunk and

climbed upon the stool. He drove a noose in the end of the lashing and slipped his head through. The other

When John Fox came into a country where whisky freezes solid and may be used as a paperweight for a

large part of the year, he came without the ideals and illusions that usually hamper the progress of more

delicately nurtured adventurers. Born and reared on the frontier fringe of the United States, he took with him

into Canada a primitive cast of mind, an elemental simplicity and grip on things, as it were, that insured him

immediate success in his new career. From a mere servant of the Hudson Bay Company, driving a paddle

with the voyageurs and carrying goods on his back across the portages, he swiftly rose to a Factorship and

Here, because of his elemental simplicity, he took to himself a native wife, and, by reason of the connubial

bliss that followed, he escaped the unrest and vain longings that curse the days of more fastidious men, spoil

their work, and conquer them in the end. He lived contentedly, was at single purposes with the business he

was set there to do, and achieved a brilliant record in the service of the Company. About this time his wife

died, was claimed by her people, and buried with savage circumstance in a tin trunk in the top of a tree.

Two sons she had borne him, and when the Company promoted him, he journeyed with them still deeper into

the vastness of the North West Territory to a place called Sin Rock, where he took charge of a new post in a

more important fur field. Here he spent several lonely and depressing months, eminently disgusted with the

unprepossessing appearance of the Indian maidens, and greatly worried by his growing sons who stood in

"Litlitwell, she is Litlit," was the fashion in which he despairingly described her to his chief clerk,

McLean was too fresh from his Scottish upbringing"not dry behind the ears yet," John Fox put itto take

to the marriage customs of the country. Nevertheless he was not averse to the Factor's imperilling his own

immortal soul, and, especially, feeling an ominous attraction himself for Litlit, he was sombrely content to

Nor is it to be wondered that McLean's austere Scotch soul stood in danger of being thawed in the sunshine of

Litlit's eyes. She was pretty, and slender, and willowy; without the massive face and temperamental stolidity

of the average squaw. "Litlit," so called from her fashion, even as a child, of being fluttery, of darting about

from place to place like a butterfly, of being inconsequent and merry, and of laughing as lightly as she darted

Litlit was the daughter of Snettishane, a prominent chief in the tribe, by a halfbreed mother, and to him the

Factor fared casually one summer day to open negotiations of marriage. He sat with the chief in the smoke of

a mosquito smudge before his lodge, and together they talked about everything under the sun, or, at least,

everything that in the Northland is under the sun, with the sole exception of marriage. John Fox had come

particularly to talk of marriage; Snettishane knew it, and John Fox knew he knew it, wherefore the subject

was religiously avoided. This is alleged to be Indian subtlety. In reality it is transparent simplicity.

The hours slipped by, and Fox and Snettishane smoked interminable pipes, looking each other in the eyes

with a guilelessness superbly histrionic. In the midafternoon McLean and his brother clerk, McTavish,

strolled past, innocently uninterested, on their way to the river. When they strolled back again an hour later,

Fox and Snettishane had attained to a ceremonious discussion of the condition and quality of the gunpowder

and bacon which the Company was offering in trade. Meanwhile Litlit, divining the Factor's errand, had

crept in under the rear wall of the lodge, and through the front flap was peeping out at the two logomachists

by the mosquito smudge. She was flushed and happyeyed, proud that no less a man than the Factor (who

stood next to God in the Northland hierarchy) had singled her out, femininely curious to see at close range

what manner of man he was. Sunglare on the ice, camp smoke, and weather beat had burned his face to a

copperbrown, so that her father was as fair as he, while she was fairer. She was remotely glad of this, and

more immediately glad that he was large and strong, though his great black beard half frightened her, it was

Being very young, she was unversed in the ways of men. Seventeen times she had seen the sun travel south

and lose itself beyond the skyline, and seventeen times she had seen it travel back again and ride the sky day

and night till there was no night at all. And through these years she had been cherished jealously by

Snettishane, who stood between her and all suitors, listening disdainfully to the young hunters as they bid for

her hand, and turning them away as though she were beyond price. Snettishane was mercenary. Litlit was to

him an investment. She represented so much capital, from which he expected to receive, not a certain definite

And having thus been reared in a manner as near to that of the nunnery as tribal conditions would permit, it

was with a great and maidenly anxiety that she peeped out at the man who had surely come for her, at the

husband who was to teach her all that was yet unlearned of life, at the masterful being whose word was to be

her law, and who was to mete and bound her actions and comportment for the rest of her days.

But, peeping through the front flap of the lodge, flushed and thrilling at the strange destiny reaching out for

her, she grew disappointed as the day wore along, and the Factor and her father still talked pompously of

matters concerning other things and not pertaining to marriage things at all. As the sun sank lower and lower

toward the north and midnight approached, the Factor began making unmistakable preparations for departure.

As he turned to stride away Litlit's heart sank; but it rose again as he halted, half turning on one heel.

"Oh, by the way, Snettishane," he said, "I want a squaw to wash for me and mend my clothes."

"No, no," interposed the Factor. "What I want is a wife. I've been kind of thinking about it, and the thought

Snettishane looked interested, whereupon the Factor retraced his steps, casually and carelessly to linger and

"Her knees be wide apart when she stands upright. Kips, your biggest dog, can leap between her knees when

But John Fox feigned anger, crying: "What foolishness is this? Am I old, that thou shouldst mate me with old

women? Am I toothless? lame of leg? blind of eye? Or am I poor that no brighteyed maiden may look with

favour upon me? Behold! I am the Factor, both rich and great, a power in the land, whose speech makes men

Snettishane was inwardly pleased, though his sphinxlike visage never relaxed. He was drawing the Factor,

and making him break ground. Being a creature so elemental as to have room for but one idea at a time,

Snettishane could pursue that one idea a greater distance than could John Fox. For John Fox, elemental as he

was, was still complex enough to entertain several glimmering ideas at a time, which debarred him from

Snettishane calmly continued calling the roster of eligible maidens, which, name by name, as fast as uttered,

were stamped ineligible by John Fox, with specified objections appended. Again he gave it up and started to

return to the Fort. Snettishane watched him go, making no effort to stop him, but seeing him, in the end, stop

"Come to think of it," the Factor remarked, "we both of us forgot Litlit. Now I wonder if she'll suit me?"

Snettishane met the suggestion with a mirthless face, behind the mask of which his soul grinned wide. It was

a distinct victory. Had the Factor gone but one step farther, perforce Snettishane would himself have

The chief was noncommittal concerning Litlit's suitability, till he drove the white man into taking the next

"Well," the Factor meditated aloud, "the only way to find out is to make a try of it." He raised his voice. "So I

will give for Lit lit ten blankets and three pounds of tobacco which is good tobacco."

Snettishane replied with a gesture which seemed to say that all the blankets and tobacco in all the world could

not compensate him for the loss of Litlit and her manifold virtues. When pressed by the Factor to set a price,

he coolly placed it at five hundred blankets, ten guns, fifty pounds of tobacco, twenty scarlet cloths, ten

bottles of rum, a musicbox, and lastly the goodwill and best offices of the Factor, with a place by his fire.

The Factor apparently suffered a stroke of apoplexy, which stroke was successful in reducing the blankets to

two hundred and in cutting out the place by the firean unheardof condition in the marriages of white men

with the daughters of the soil. In the end, after three hours more of chaffering, they came to an agreement.

For Litlit Snettishane was to receive one hundred blankets, five pounds of tobacco, three guns, and a bottle

of rum, goodwill and best offices included, which according to John Fox, was ten blankets and a gun more

than she was worth. And as he went home through the wee sma' hours, the threeo'clock sun blazing in the

due northeast, he was unpleasantly aware that Snettishane had bested him over the bargain.

Snettishane, tired and victorious, sought his bed, and discovered Litlit before she could escape from the

He grunted knowingly: "Thou hast seen. Thou has heard. Wherefore it be plain to thee thy father's very great

wisdom and understanding. I have made for thee a great match. Heed my words and walk in the way of my

words, go when I say go, come when I bid thee come, and we shall grow fat with the wealth of this big white

The next day no trading was done at the store. The Factor opened whisky before breakfast, to the delight of

McLean and McTavish, gave his dogs double rations, and wore his best moccasins. Outside the Fort

preparations were under way for a POTLATCH. Potlatch means "a giving," and John Fox's intention was to

signalize his marriage with Litlit by a potlatch as generous as she was good looking. In the afternoon the

whole tribe gathered to the feast. Men, women, children, and dogs gorged to repletion, nor was there one

person, even among the chance visitors and stray hunters from other tribes, who failed to receive some token

Litlit, tearfully shy and frightened, was bedecked by her bearded husband with a new calico dress,

splendidly beaded moccasins, a gorgeous silk handkerchief over her raven hair, a purple scarf about her

throat, brass earrings and fingerrings, and a whole pint of pinchbeck jewellery, including a Waterbury

watch. Snettishane could scarce contain himself at the spectacle, but watching his chance drew her aside from

"Not this night, nor the next night," he began ponderously, "but in the nights to come, when I shall call like a

raven by the river bank, it is for thee to rise up from thy big husband, who is a fool, and come to me.

"Nay, nay," he went on hastily, at sight of the dismay in her face at turning her back upon her wonderful new

life. "For no sooner shall this happen than thy big husband, who is a fool, will come wailing to my lodge.

Then it is for thee to wail likewise, claiming that this thing is not well, and that the other thing thou dost not

like, and that to be the wife of the Factor is more than thou didst bargain for, only wilt thou be content with

more blankets, and more tobacco, and more wealth of various sorts for thy poor old father, Snettishane.

Litlit nodded; for to disobey her father was a peril she knew well; and, furthermore, it was a little thing he

asked, a short separation from the Factor, who would know only greater gladness at having her back. She

returned to the feast, and, midnight being well at hand, the Factor sought her out and led her away to the Fort

Litlit quickly found that married life with the headman of a fort was even better than she had dreamed. No

longer did she have to fetch wood and water and wait hand and foot upon cantankerous menfolk. For the first

time in her life she could lie abed till breakfast was on the table. And what a bed!clean and soft, and

comfortable as no bed she had ever known. And such food! Flour, cooked into biscuits, hotcakes and bread,

three times a day and every day, and all one wanted! Such prodigality was hardly believable.

To add to her contentment, the Factor was cunningly kind. He had buried one wife, and he knew how to drive

with a slack rein that went firm only on occasion, and then went very firm. "Litlit is boss of this place," he

announced significantly at the table the morning after the wedding. "What she says goes. Understand?" And

McLean and McTavish understood. Also, they knew that the Factor had a heavy hand.

But Litlit did not take advantage. Taking a leaf from the book of her husband, she at once assumed charge

of his own growing sons, giving them added comforts and a measure of freedom like to that which he gave

her. The two sons were loud in the praise of their new mother; McLean and McTavish lifted their voices; and

the Factor bragged of the joys of matrimony till the story of her good behaviour and her husband's

Whereupon Snettishane, with visions of his incalculable interest keeping him awake of nights, thought it time

to bestir himself. On the tenth night of her wedded life Litlit was awakened by the croaking of a raven, and

she knew that Snettishane was waiting for her by the river bank. In her great happiness she had forgotten her

pact, and now it came back to her with behind it all the childish terror of her father. For a time she lay in fear

and trembling, loath to go, afraid to stay. But in the end the Factor won the silent victory, and his kindness

plus his great muscles and square jaw, nerved her to disregard Snettishane's call.

But in the morning she arose very much afraid, and went about her duties in momentary fear of her father's

coming. As the day wore along, however, she began to recover her spirits. John Fox, soundly berating

McLean and McTavish for some petty dereliction of duty, helped her to pluck up courage. She tried not to let

him go out of her sight, and when she followed him into the huge cache and saw him twirling and tossing

great bales around as though they were feather pillows, she felt strengthened in her disobedience to her father.

Also (it was her first visit to the warehouse, and Sin Rock was the chief distributing point to several chains of

lesser posts), she was astounded at the endlessness of the wealth there stored away.

This sight and the picture in her mind's eye of the bare lodge of Snettishane, put all doubts at rest. Yet she

capped her conviction by a brief word with one of her stepsons. "White daddy good?" was what she asked,

and the boy answered that his father was the best man he had ever known. That night the raven croaked

again. On the night following the croaking was more persistent. It awoke the Factor, who tossed restlessly for

a while. Then he said aloud, "Damn that raven," and Litlit laughed quietly under the blankets.

In the morning, bright and early, Snettishane put in an ominous appearance and was set to breakfast in the

kitchen with Wanidani. He refused "squaw food," and a little later bearded his soninlaw in the store where

the trading was done. Having learned, he said, that his daughter was such a jewel, he had come for more

blankets, more tobacco, and more gunsespecially more guns. He had certainly been cheated in her price, he

held, and he had come for justice. But the Factor had neither blankets nor justice to spare. Whereupon he was

informed that Snettishane had seen the missionary at Three Forks, who had notified him that such marriages

were not made in heaven, and that it was his father's duty to demand his daughter back.

"I am good Christian man now," Snettishane concluded. "I want my Litlit to go to heaven."

The Factor's reply was short and to the point; for he directed his fatherinlaw to go to the heavenly

antipodes, and by the scruff of the neck and the slack of the blanket propelled him on that trail as far as the

But Snettishane sneaked around and in by the kitchen, cornering Litlit in the great livingroom of the Fort.

"Mayhap thou didst sleep oversound last night when I called by the river bank," he began, glowering darkly.

"Nay, I was awake and heard." Her heart was beating as though it would choke her, but she went on steadily,

And thereat, out of her great happiness and out of the fear that it might be taken from her, she launched into

an original and glowing address upon the status and rights of womanthe first newwoman lecture

But it fell on unheeding ears. Snettishane was still in the dark ages. As she paused for breath, he said

At this moment the Factor entered the room and again helped Snettishane on his way to the heavenly

That night the raven croaked more persistently than ever. Litlit, who was a light sleeper, heard and smiled.

John Fox tossed restlessly. Then he awoke and tossed about with greater restlessness. He grumbled and

snorted, swore under his breath and over his breath, and finally flung out of bed. He groped his way to the

great livingroom, and from the rack took down a loaded shotgunloaded with birdshot, left therein by

The Factor crept carefully out of the Fort and down to the river. The croaking had ceased, but he stretched out

in the long grass and waited. The air seemed a chilly balm, and the earth, after the heat of the day, now and

again breathed soothingly against him. The Factor, gathered into the rhythm of it all, dozed off, with his head

Fifty yards away, head resting on knees, and with his back to John Fox, Snettishane likewise slept, gently

conquered by the quietude of the night. An hour slipped by and then he awoke, and, without lifting his head,

The Factor roused, not with the abrupt start of civilized man, but with the swift and comprehensive glide

from sleep to waking of the savage. In the nightlight he made out a dark object in the midst of the grass and

brought his gun to bear upon it. A second croak began to rise, and he pulled the trigger. The crickets ceased

from their singsong chant, the wildfowl from their squabbling, and the raven croak broke midmost and died

John Fox ran to the spot and reached for the thing he had killed, but his fingers closed on a coarse mop of hair

and he turned Snettishane's face upward to the starlight. He knew how a shotgun scattered at fifty yards, and

he knew that he had peppered Snettishane across the shoulders and in the small of the back. And Snettishane

"What dost thou here?" the Factor demanded. "It were time old bones should be in bed."

"Old bones will not sleep," he said solemnly. "I weep for my daughter, for my daughter Litlit, who liveth

"Weep henceforth on the far bank, beyond earshot of the Fort," said John Fox, turning on his heel, "for the

"My heart is sore," Snettishane answered, "and my days and nights be black with sorrow."

Never again was the voice of the raven heard by the river bank. Litlit grows matronly day by day and is very

happy. Also, there are sisters to the sons of John Fox's first wife who lies buried in a tree. Old Snettishane is

no longer a visitor at the Fort, and spends long hours raising a thin, aged voice against the filial ingratitude of

children in general and of his daughter Litlit in particular. His declining years are embittered by the

knowledge that he was cheated, and even John Fox has withdrawn the assertion that the price for Litlit was

Batard was a devil. This was recognized throughout the Northland. "Hell's Spawn" he was called by many

men, but his master, Black Leclere, chose for him the shameful name "Batard." Now Black Leclere was also

a devil, and the twain were well matched. There is a saying that when two devils come together, hell is to

pay. This is to be expected, and this certainly was to be expected when Batard and Black Leclere came

together. The first time they met, Batard was a partgrown puppy, lean and hungry, with bitter eyes; and they

met with snap and snarl, and wicked looks, for Leclere's upper lip had a wolfish way of lifting and showing

the white, cruel teeth. And it lifted then, and his eyes glinted viciously, as he reached for Batard and dragged

him out from the squirming litter. It was certain that they divined each other, for on the instant Batard had

buried his puppy fangs in Leclere's hand, and Leclere, thumb and finger, was coolly choking his young life

"SACREDAM," the Frenchman said softly, flirting the quick blood from his bitten hand and gazing down on

Leclere turned to John Hamlin, storekeeper of the Sixty Mile Post. "Dat fo' w'at Ah lak heem. 'Ow moch, eh,

And because he hated him with an exceeding bitter hate, Leclere bought Batard and gave him his shameful

name. And for five years the twain adventured across the Northland, from St. Michael's and the Yukon delta

to the headreaches of the Pelly and even so far as the Peace River, Athabasca, and the Great Slave. And they

acquired a reputation for uncompromising wickedness, the like of which never before attached itself to man

Batard did not know his fatherhence his namebut, as John Hamlin knew, his father was a great grey

timber wolf. But the mother of Batard, as he dimly remembered her, was snarling, bickering, obscene, husky,

fullfronted and heavychested, with a malign eye, a catlike grip on life, and a genius for trickery and evil.

There was neither faith nor trust in her. Her treachery alone could be relied upon, and her wildwood amours

attested her general depravity. Much of evil and much of strength were there in these, Batard's progenitors,

and, bone and flesh of their bone and flesh, he had inherited it all. And then came Black Leclere, to lay his

heavy hand on the bit of pulsating puppy life, to press and prod and mould till it became a big bristling beast,

acute in knavery, overspilling with hate, sinister, malignant, diabolical. With a proper master Batard might

have made an ordinary, fairly efficient sleddog. He never got the chance: Leclere but confirmed him in his

The history of Batard and Leclere is a history of warof five cruel, relentless years, of which their first

meeting is fit summary. To begin with, it was Leclere's fault, for he hated with understanding and

intelligence, while the longlegged, ungainly puppy hated only blindly, instinctively, without reason or

method. At first there were no refinements of cruelty (these were to come later), but simple beatings and

crude brutalities. In one of these Batard had an ear injured. He never regained control of the riven muscles,

and ever after the ear drooped limply down to keep keen the memory of his tormentor. And he never forgot.

His puppyhood was a period of foolish rebellion. He was always worsted, but he fought back because it was

his nature to fight back. And he was unconquerable. Yelping shrilly from the pain of lash and club, he none

the less contrived always to throw in the defiant snarl, the bitter vindictive menace of his soul which fetched

without fail more blows and beatings. But his was his mother's tenacious grip on life. Nothing could kill him.

He flourished under misfortune, grew fat with famine, and out of his terrible struggle for life developed a

preternatural intelligence. His were the stealth and cunning of the husky, his mother, and the fierceness and

Possibly it was because of his father that he never wailed. His puppy yelps passed with his lanky legs, so that

he became grim and taciturn, quick to strike, slow to warn. He answered curse with snarl, and blow with

snap, grinning the while his implacable hatred; but never again, under the extremest agony, did Leclere bring

from him the cry of fear nor of pain. This unconquerableness but fanned Leclere's wrath and stirred him to

Did Leclere give Batard half a fish and to his mates whole ones, Batard went forth to rob other dogs of their

fish. Also he robbed caches and expressed himself in a thousand rogueries, till he became a terror to all dogs

and masters of dogs. Did Leclere beat Batard and fondle BabetteBabette who was not half the worker he

waswhy, Batard threw her down in the snow and broke her hind leg in his heavy jaws, so that Leclere was

forced to shoot her. Likewise, in bloody battles, Batard mastered all his teammates, set them the law of trail

In five years he heard but one kind word, received but one soft stroke of a hand, and then he did not know

what manner of things they were. He leaped like the untamed thing he was, and his jaws were together in a

flash. It was the missionary at Sunrise, a newcomer in the country, who spoke the kind word and gave the soft

stroke of the hand. And for six months after, he wrote no letters home to the States, and the surgeon at

McQuestion travelled two hundred miles on the ice to save him from bloodpoisoning.

Men and dogs looked askance at Batard when he drifted into their camps and posts. The men greeted him

with feet threateningly lifted for the kick, the dogs with bristling manes and bared fangs. Once a man did kick

Batard, and Batard, with quick wolf snap, closed his jaws like a steel trap on the man's calf and crunched

down to the bone. Whereat the man was determined to have his life, only Black Leclere, with ominous eyes

and naked huntingknife, stepped in between. The killing of Batardah, SACREDAM, THAT was a

pleasure Leclere reserved for himself. Some day it would happen, or elsebah! who was to know? Anyway,

For they had become problems to each other. The very breath each drew was a challenge and a menace to the

other. Their hate bound them together as love could never bind. Leclere was bent on the coming of the day

when Batard should wilt in spirit and cringe and whimper at his feet. And BatardLeclere knew what was in

Batard's mind, and more than once had read it in Batard's eyes. And so clearly had he read, that when Batard

Men marvelled when Leclere refused large money for the dog. "Some day you'll kill him and be out his

price," said John Hamlin once, when Batard lay panting in the snow where Leclere had kicked him, and no

And the men marvelled that Batard did not run away. They did not understand. But Leclere understood. He

was a man who lived much in the open, beyond the sound of human tongue, and he had learned the voices of

wind and storm, the sigh of night, the whisper of dawn, the clash of day. In a dim way he could hear the green

things growing, the running of the sap, the bursting of the bud. And he knew the subtle speech of the things

that moved, of the rabbit in the snare, the moody raven beating the air with hollow wing, the baldface

shuffling under the moon, the wolf like a grey shadow gliding betwixt the twilight and the dark. And to him

Batard spoke clear and direct. Full well he understood why Batard did not run away, and he looked more

When in anger, Batard was not nice to look upon, and more than once had he leapt for Leclere's throat, to be

stretched quivering and senseless in the snow, by the butt of the ever ready dogwhip. And so Batard learned

to bide his time. When he reached his full strength and prime of youth, he thought the time had come. He was

broadchested, powerfully muscled, of far more than ordinary size, and his neck from head to shoulders was

a mass of bristling hair to all appearances a fullblooded wolf. Leclere was lying asleep in his furs when

Batard deemed the time to be ripe. He crept upon him stealthily, head low to earth and lone ear laid back,

with a feline softness of tread. Batard breathed gently, very gently, and not till he was close at hand did he

raise his head. He paused for a moment and looked at the bronzed bull throat, naked and knotty, and swelling

to a deep steady pulse. The slaver dripped down his fangs and slid off his tongue at the sight, and in that

moment he remembered his drooping ear, his uncounted blows and prodigious wrongs, and without a sound

Leclere awoke to the pang of the fangs in his throat, and, perfect animal that he was, he awoke clearheaded

and with full comprehension. He closed on Batard's windpipe with both his hands, and rolled out of his furs

to get his weight uppermost. But the thousands of Batard's ancestors had clung at the throats of unnumbered

moose and caribou and dragged them down, and the wisdom of those ancestors was his. When Leclere's

weight came on top of him, he drove his hind legs upwards and in, and clawed down chest and abdomen,

ripping and tearing through skin and muscle. And when he felt the man's body wince above him and lift, he

worried and shook at the man's throat. His teammates closed around in a snarling circle, and Batard, with

failing breath and fading sense, knew that their jaws were hungry for him. But that did not matter it was

the man, the man above him, and he ripped and clawed, and shook and worried, to the last ounce of his

strength. But Leclere choked him with both his hands, till Batard's chest heaved and writhed for the air

denied, and his eyes glazed and set, and his jaws slowly loosened, and his tongue protruded black and

"Eh? Bon, you devil!" Leclere gurgled mouth and throat clogged with his own blood, as he shoved the dizzy

And then Leclere cursed the other dogs off as they fell upon Batard. They drew back into a wider circle,

squatting alertly on their haunches and licking their chops, the hair on every neck bristling and erect.

Batard recovered quickly, and at sound of Leclere's voice, tottered to his feet and swayed weakly back and

"Ahah! You beeg devil!" Leclere spluttered. "Ah fix you; Ah fix you plentee, by GAR!"

Batard, the air biting into his exhausted lungs like wine, flashed full into the man's face, his jaws missing and

coming together with a metallic clip. They rolled over and over on the snow, Leclere striking madly with his

fists. Then they separated, face to face, and circled back and forth before each other. Leclere could have

drawn his knife. His rifle was at his feet. But the beast in him was up and raging. He would do the thing with

his handsand his teeth. Batard sprang in, but Leclere knocked him over with a blow of the fist, fell upon

It was a primordial setting and a primordial scene, such as might have been in the savage youth of the world.

An open space in a dark forest, a ring of grinning wolfdogs, and in the centre two beasts, locked in combat,

snapping and snarling raging madly about panting, sobbing, cursing, straining, wild with passion, in a fury of

But Leclere caught Batard behind the ear with a blow from his fist, knocking him over, and, for the instant,

stunning him. Then Leclere leaped upon him with his feet, and sprang up and down, striving to grind him into

the earth. Both Batard's hind legs were broken ere Leclere ceased that he might catch breath.

"Aaah! Aaah!" he screamed, incapable of speech, shaking his fist, through sheer impotence of throat

But Batard was indomitable. He lay there in a helpless welter, his lip feebly lifting and writhing to the snarl

he had not the strength to utter. Leclere kicked him, and the tired jaws closed on the ankle, but could not

Then Leclere picked up the whip and proceeded almost to cut him to pieces, at each stroke of the lash crying:

In the end, exhausted, fainting from loss of blood, he crumpled up and fell by his victim, and when the

wolfdogs closed in to take their vengeance, with his last consciousness dragged his body on top of Batard to

This occurred not far from Sunrise, and the missionary, opening the door to Leclere a few hours later, was

surprised to note the absence of Batard from the team. Nor did his surprise lessen when Leclere threw back

the robes from the sled, gathered Batard into his arms and staggered across the threshold. It happened that the

surgeon of McQuestion, who was something of a gadabout, was up on a gossip, and between them they

"Merci, non," said he. "Do you fix firs' de dog. To die? NON. Eet is not good. Becos' heem Ah mus' yet

The surgeon called it a marvel, the missionary a miracle, that Leclere pulled through at all; and so weakened

was he, that in the spring the fever got him, and he went on his back again. Batard had been in even worse

plight, but his grip on life prevailed, and the bones of his hind legs knit, and his organs righted themselves,

during the several weeks he lay strapped to the floor. And by the time Leclere, finally convalescent, sallow

and shaky, took the sun by the cabin door, Batard had reasserted his supremacy among his kind, and brought

He moved never a muscle, nor twitched a hair, when, for the first time, Leclere tottered out on the

missionary's arm, and sank down slowly and with infinite caution on the threelegged stool.

"BON!" he said. "BON! De good sun!" And he stretched out his wasted hands and washed them in the

Then his gaze fell on the dog, and the old light blazed back in his eyes. He touched the missionary lightly on

the arm. "Mon pere, dat is one beeg devil, dat Batard. You will bring me one pistol, so, dat Ah drink de sun in

And thenceforth for many days he sat in the sun before the cabin door. He never dozed, and the pistol lay

always across his knees. Batard had a way, the first thing each day, of looking for the weapon in its wonted

place. At sight of it he would lift his lip faintly in token that he understood, and Leclere would lift his own lip

Leclere laughed softly. "Look you, mon pere. Dat w'at Ah now spik, to dat does he lissen."

As if in confirmation, Batard just perceptibly wriggled his lone ear up to catch the sound.

Batard growled deep down in his throat, the hair bristled along his neck, and every muscle went tense and

"Ah lift de gun, so, like dat." And suiting action to word, he sighted the pistol at Batard. Batard, with a single

The Frenchman's shoulders went up in the racial shrug that means all things from total ignorance to infinite

"Mon pere," he said after a pause, "de taim is not yet. He is one beeg devil. Some taim Ah break heem, so an'

A day came when Leclere gathered his dogs together and floated down in a bateau to Forty Mile, and on to

the Porcupine, where he took a commission from the P. C. Company, and went exploring for the better part of

a year. After that he poled up the Koyokuk to deserted Arctic City, and later came drifting back, from camp

to camp, along the Yukon. And during the long months Batard was well lessoned. He learned many tortures,

and, notably, the torture of hunger, the torture of thirst, the torture of fire, and, worst of all, the torture of

Like the rest of his kind, he did not enjoy music. It gave him exquisite anguish, racking him nerve by nerve,

and ripping apart every fibre of his being. It made him howl, long and wolflife, as when the wolves bay the

stars on frosty nights. He could not help howling. It was his one weakness in the contest with Leclere, and it

was his shame. Leclere, on the other hand, passionately loved musicas passionately as he loved strong

drink. And when his soul clamoured for expression, it usually uttered itself in one or the other of the two

ways, and more usually in both ways. And when he had drunk, his brain alilt with unsung song and the devil

in him aroused and rampant, his soul found its supreme utterance in torturing Batard.

It was only an old and battered harmonica, tenderly treasured and patiently repaired; but it was the best that

money could buy, and out of its silver reeds he drew weird vagrant airs that men had never heard before.

Then Batard, dumb of throat, with teeth tight clenched, would back away, inch by inch, to the farthest cabin

corner. And Leclere, playing, playing, a stout club tucked under his arm, followed the animal up, inch by

At first Batard would crowd himself into the smallest possible space, grovelling close to the floor; but as the

music came nearer and nearer, he was forced to uprear, his back jammed into the logs, his fore legs fanning

the air as though to beat off the rippling waves of sound. He still kept his teeth together, but severe muscular

contractions attacked his body, strange twitchings and jerkings, till he was all aquiver and writhing in silent

torment. As he lost control, his jaws spasmodically wrenched apart, and deep throaty vibrations issued forth,

too low in the register of sound for human ear to catch. And then, nostrils distended, eyes dilated, hair

bristling in helpless rage, arose the long wolf howl. It came with a slurring rush upwards, swelling to a great

heart breaking burst of sound, and dying away in sadly cadenced woethen the next rush upward, octave

upon octave; the bursting heart; and the infinite sorrow and misery, fainting, fading, falling, and dying slowly

It was fit for hell. And Leclere, with fiendish ken, seemed to divine each particular nerve and heartstring, and

with long wails and tremblings and sobbing minors to make it yield up its last shred of grief. It was frightful,

and for twentyfour hours after, Batard was nervous and unstrung, starting at common sounds, tripping over

his own shadow, but, withal, vicious and masterful with his teammates. Nor did he show signs of a breaking

spirit. Rather did he grow more grim and taciturn, biding his time with an inscrutable patience that began to

puzzle and weigh upon Leclere. The dog would lie in the firelight, motionless, for hours, gazing straight

Often the man felt that he had bucked against the very essence of lifethe unconquerable essence that swept

the hawk down out of the sky like a feathered thunderbolt, that drove the great grey goose across the zones,

that hurled the spawning salmon through two thousand miles of boiling Yukon flood. At such times he felt

impelled toexpress his own unconquerable essence; and with strong drink, wild music, and Batard, he

indulged in vast orgies, wherein he pitted his puny strength in the face of things, and challenged all that was,

"Dere is somet'ing dere," he affirmed, when the rhythmed vagaries of his mind touched the secret chords of

Batard's being and brought forth the long lugubrious howl. "Ah pool eet out wid bot' my han's, so, an' so. Ha!

ha! Eet is fonee! Eet is ver' fonee! De priest chant, de womans pray, de mans swear, de leetle bird go

Father Gautier, a worthy priest, one reproved him with instances of concrete perdition. He never reproved

"Eet may be so, mon pere," he made answer. "An' Ah t'ink Ah go troo hell asnappin', lak de hemlock troo de

But all bad things come to an end as well as good, and so with Black Leclere. On the summer low water, in a

poling boat, he left McDougall for Sunrise. He left McDougall in company with Timothy Brown, and arrived

at Sunrise by himself. Further, it was known that they had quarrelled just previous to pulling out; for the

Lizzie, a wheezy tenton sternwheeler, twentyfour hours behind, beat Leclere in by three days. And when

he did get in, it was with a cleandrilled bullethole through his shoulder muscle, and a tale of ambush and

A strike had been made at Sunrise, and things had changed considerably. With the infusion of several

hundred goldseekers, a deal of whisky, and halfadozen equipped gamblers, the missionary had seen the

page of his years of labour with the Indians wiped clean. When the squaws became preoccupied with cooking

beans and keeping the fire going for the wifeless miners, and the bucks with swapping their warm furs for

black bottles and broken timepieces, he took to his bed, said "Bless me" several times, and departed to his

final accounting in a roughhewn, oblong box. Whereupon the gamblers moved their roulette and faro tables

into the mission house, and the click of chips and clink of glasses went up from dawn till dark and to dawn

Now Timothy Brown was well beloved among these adventurers of the North. The one thing against him was

his quick temper and ready fista little thing, for which his kind heart and forgiving hand more than atoned.

On the other hand, there was nothing to atone for Black Leclere. He was "black," as more than one

remembered deed bore witness, while he was as well hated as the other was beloved. So the men of Sunrise

It was a simple affair. He had quarrelled with Timothy Brown at McDougall. With Timothy Brown he had

left McDougall. Without Timothy Brown he had arrived at Sunrise. Considered in the light of his evilness,

the unanimous conclusion was that he had killed Timothy Brown. On the other hand, Leclere acknowledged

their facts, but challenged their conclusion, and gave his own explanation. Twenty miles out of Sunrise he

and Timothy Brown were poling the boat along the rocky shore. From that shore two rifle shots rang out.

Timothy Brown pitched out of the boat and went down bubbling red, and that was the last of Timothy Brown.

He, Leclere, pitched into the bottom of the boat with a stinging shoulder. He lay very quiet, peeping at the

shore. After a time two Indians stuck up their heads and came out to the water's edge, carrying between them

a birchbark canoe. As they launched it, Leclere let fly. He potted one, who went over the side after the

manner of Timothy Brown. The other dropped into the bottom of the canoe, and then canoe and poling boat

went down the stream in a drifting battle. After that they hung up on a split current, and the canoe passed on

one side of an island, the poling boat on the other. That was the last of the canoe, and he came on into

Sunrise. Yes, from the way the Indian in the canoe jumped, he was sure he had potted him. That was all. This

explanation was not deemed adequate. They gave him ten hours' grace while the Lizzie steamed down to

investigate. Ten hours later she came wheezing back to Sunrise. There had been nothing to investigate. No

evidence had been found to back up his statements. They told him to make his will, for he possessed a

fiftythousand dollar Sunrise claim, and they were a lawabiding as well as a lawgiving breed.

Leclere shrugged his shoulders. "Bot one t'ing," he said; "a leetle, w'at you call, favoura leetle favour, dat

is eet. I gif my feefty t'ousan' dollair to de church. I gif my husky dog, Batard, to de devil. De leetle favour?

Good it was, they agreed, that Hell's Spawn should break trail for his master across the last divide, and the

court was adjourned down to the river bank, where a big spruce tree stood by itself. Slackwater Charley put a

hangman's knot in the end of a hauling line, and the noose was slipped over Leclere's head and pulled tight

around his neck. His hands were tied behind his back, and he was assisted to the top of a cracker box. Then

the running end of the line was passed over an overhanging branch, drawn taut, and made fast. To kick the

"Now for the dog," said Webster Shaw, sometime mining engineer. "You'll have to rope him, Slackwater."

Leclere grinned. Slackwater took a chew of tobacco, rove a running noose, and proceeded leisurely to coil a

few turns in his hand. He paused once or twice to brush particularly offensive mosquitoes from off his face.

Everybody was brushing mosquitoes, except Leclere, about whose head a small cloud was visible. Even

Batard, lying fullstretched on the ground with his fore paws rubbed the pests away from eyes and mouth.

But while Slackwater waited for Batard to lift his head, a faint call came from the quiet air, and a man was

seen waving his arms and running across the flat from Sunrise. It was the storekeeper.

"Little Sandy and Bernadotte's jes' got in," he explained with returning breath. "Landed down below an' come

up by the short cut. Got the Beaver with 'm. Picked 'm up in his canoe, stuck in a back channel, with a couple

of bulletholes in 'm. Other buck was Klok Kutz, the one that knocked spots out of his squaw and dusted."

"Eh? W'at Ah say? Eh?" Leclere cried exultantly. "Dat de one fo' sure! Ah know. Ah spik true."

"The thing to do is to teach these damned Siwashes a little manners," spoke Webster Shaw. "They're getting

fat and sassy, and we'll have to bring them down a peg. Round in all the bucks and string up the Beaver for an

object lesson. That's the programme. Come on and let's see what he's got to say for himself."

"Heh, M'sieu!" Leclere called, as the crowd began to melt away through the twilight in the direction of

"Oh, we'll turn you loose when we come back," Webster Shaw shouted over his shoulder. "In the meantime

meditate on your sins and the ways of Providence. It will do you good, so be grateful."

As is the way with men who are accustomed to great hazards, whose nerves are healthy and trained in

patience, so it was with Leclere who settled himself to the long waitwhich is to say that he reconciled his

mind to it. There was no settling of the body, for the taut rope forced him to stand rigidly erect. The least

relaxation of the leg muscles pressed the roughfibred noose into his neck, while the upright position caused

him much pain in his wounded shoulder. He projected his under lip and expelled his breath upwards along his

face to blow the mosquitoes away from his eyes. But the situation had its compensation. To be snatched from

the maw of death was well worth a little bodily suffering, only it was unfortunate that he should miss the

And so he mused, till his eyes chanced to fall upon Batard, head between fore paws and stretched on the

ground asleep. And their Leclere ceased to muse. He studied the animal closely, striving to sense if the sleep

were real or feigned. Batard's sides were heaving regularly, but Leclere felt that the breath came and went a

shade too quickly; also he felt that there was a vigilance or alertness to every hair that belied unshackling

sleep. He would have given his Sunrise claim to be assured that the dog was not awake, and once, when one

of his joints cracked, he looked quickly and guiltily at Batard to see if he roused. He did not rouse then but a

few minutes later he got up slowly and lazily, stretched, and looked carefully about him.

Assured that no one was in sight or hearing, Batard sat down, curled his upper lip almost into a smile, looked

Batard came nearer, the useless ear wabbling, the good ear cocked forward with devilish comprehension. He

thrust his head on one side quizzically, and advanced with mincing, playful steps. He rubbed his body gently

against the box till it shook and shook again. Leclere teetered carefully to maintain his equilibrium.

Batard snarled at the word and shook the box with greater force. Then he upreared, and with his fore paws

threw his weight against it higher up. Leclere kicked out with one foot, but the rope bit into his neck and

Batard retreated, for twenty feet or so, with a fiendish levity in his bearing that Leclere could not mistake. He

remembered the dog often breaking the scum of ice on the water hole by lifting up and throwing his weight

upon it; and remembering, he understood what he now had in mind. Batard faced about and paused. He

showed his white teeth in a grin, which Leclere answered; and then hurled his body through the air, in full

Fifteen minutes later, Slackwater Charley and Webster Shaw returning, caught a glimpse of a ghostly

pendulum swinging back and forth in the dim light. As they hurriedly drew in closer, they made out the man's

inert body, and a live thing that clung to it, and shook and worried, and gave to it the swaying motion.

Slackwater Charley got out his revolver, but his hand was shaking, as with a chill, and he fumbled.

Webster Shaw laughed shortly, drew a sight between the gleaming eyes, and pressed the trigger. Batard's

body twitched with the shock, threshed the ground spasmodically for a moment, and went suddenly limp. But

There have been renunciations and renunciations. But, in its essence, renunciation is ever the same. And the

paradox of it is, that men and women forego the dearest thing in the world for something dearer. It was never

otherwise. Thus it was when Abel brought of the firstlings of his flock and of the fat thereof. The firstlings

and the fat thereof were to him the dearest things in the world; yet he gave them over that he might be on

good terms with God. So it was with Abraham when he prepared to offer up his son Isaac on a stone. Isaac

was very dear to him; but God, in incomprehensible ways, was yet dearer. It may be that Abraham feared the

Lord. But whether that be true or not it has since been determined by a few billion people that he loved the

And since it has been determined that love is service, and since to renounce is to serve, then Jees Uck, who

was merely a woman of a swartskinned breed, loved with a great love. She was unversed in history, having

learned to read only the signs of weather and of game; so she had never heard of Abel nor of Abraham; nor,

having escaped the good sisters at Holy Cross, had she been told the story of Ruth, the Moabitess, who

renounced her very God for the sake of a stranger woman from a strange land. Jees Uck had learned only one

way of renouncing, and that was with a club as the dynamic factor, in much the same manner as a dog is

made to renounce a stolen marrowbone. Yet, when the time came, she proved herself capable of rising to

the height of the fairfaced royal races and of renouncing in right regal fashion.

So this is the story of Jees Uck, which is also the story of Neil Bonner, and Kitty Bonner, and a couple of

Neil Bonner's progeny. Jees Uck was of a swartskinned breed, it is true, but she was not an Indian; nor was

she an Eskimo; nor even an Innuit. Going backward into mouth tradition, there appears the figure of one

Skolkz, a Toyaat Indian of the Yukon, who journeyed down in his youth to the Great Delta where dwell the

Innuits, and where he foregathered with a woman remembered as Olillie. Now the woman Olillie had been

bred from an Eskimo mother by an Innuit man. And from Skolkz and Olillie came Halie, who was onehalf

Toyaat Indian, onequarter Innuit, and onequarter Eskimo. And Halie was the grandmother of Jees Uck.

Now Halie, in whom three stocks had been bastardized, who cherished no prejudice against further

admixture, mated with a Russian fur trader called Shpack, also known in his time as the Big Fat. Shpack is

herein classed Russian for lack of a more adequate term; for Shpack's father, a Slavonic convict from the

Lower Provinces, had escaped from the quicksilver mines into Northern Siberia, where he knew Zimba, who

was a woman of the Deer People and who became the mother of Shpack, who became the grandfather of Jees

Now had not Shpack been captured in his boyhood by the Sea People, who fringe the rim of the Arctic Sea

with their misery, he would not have become the grandfather of Jees Uck and there would be no story at all.

But he WAS captured by the Sea People, from whom he escaped to Kamchatka, and thence, on a Norwegian

whaleship, to the Baltic. Not long after that he turned up in St. Petersburg, and the years were not many till

he went drifting east over the same weary road his father had measured with blood and groans a half century

before. But Shpack was a free man, in the employ of the great Russian Fur Company. And in that employ he

fared farther and farther east, until he crossed Bering Sea into Russian America; and at Pastolik, which is

hard by the Great Delta of the Yukon, became the husband of Halie, who was the grandmother of Jees Uck.

Shpack, under the orders of the Company, made a canoe voyage of a few hundred miles up the Yukon to the

post of Nulato. With him he took Halie and the babe Tukesan. This was in 1850, and in 1850 it was that the

river Indians fell upon Nulato and wiped it from the face of the earth. And that was the end of Shpack and

Halie. On that terrible night Tukesan disappeared. To this day the Toyaats aver they had no hand in the

trouble; but, be that as it may, the fact remains that the babe Tukesan grew up among them.

Tukesan was married successively to two Toyaat brothers, to both of whom she was barren. Because of this,

other women shook their heads, and no third Toyaat man could be found to dare matrimony with the childless

widow. But at this time, many hundred miles above, at Fort Yukon, was a man, Spike O'Brien. Fort Yukon

was a Hudson Bay Company post, and Spike O'Brien one of the Company's servants. He was a good servant,

but he achieved an opinion that the service was bad, and in the course of time vindicated that opinion by

deserting. It was a year's journey, by the chain of posts, back to York Factory on Hudson's Bay. Further,

being Company posts, he knew he could not evade the Company's clutches. Nothing retained but to go down

the Yukon. It was true no white man had ever gone down the Yukon, and no white man knew whether the

Yukon emptied into the Arctic Ocean or Bering Sea; but Spike O'Brien was a Celt, and the promise of danger

A few weeks later, somewhat battered, rather famished, and about dead with riverfever, he drove the nose of

his canoe into the earth bank by the village of the Toyaats and promptly fainted away. While getting his

strength back, in the weeks that followed, he looked upon Tukesan and found her good. Like the father of

Shpack, who lived to a ripe old age among the Siberian Deer People, Spike O'Brien might have left his aged

bones with the Toyaats. But romance gripped his heartstrings and would not let him stay. As he had

journeyed from York Factory to Fort Yukon, so, first among men, might he journey from Fort Yukon to the

sea and win the honour of being the first man to make the NorthWest Passage by land. So he departed down

the river, won the honour, and was unannaled and unsung. In after years he ran a sailors' boardinghouse in

San Francisco, where he became esteemed a most remarkable liar by virtue of the gospel truths he told. But a

child was born to Tukesan, who had been childless. And this child was Jees Uck. Her lineage has been traced

at length to show that she was neither Indian, nor Eskimo, nor Innuit, nor much of anything else; also to show

what waifs of the generations we are, all of us, and the strange meanderings of the seed from which we

What with the vagrant blood in her and the heritage compounded of many races, Jees Uck developed a

wonderful young beauty. Bizarre, perhaps, it was, and Oriental enough to puzzle any passing ethnologist. A

lithe and slender grace characterized her. Beyond a quickened lilt to the imagination, the contribution of the

Celt was in no wise apparent. It might possibly have put the warm blood under her skin, which made her face

less swart and her body fairer; but that, in turn, might have come from Shpack, the Big Fat, who inherited the

colour of his Slavonic father. And, finally, she had great, blazing black eyesthe halfcaste eye, round,

fullorbed, and sensuous, which marks the collision of the dark races with the light. Also, the white blood in

her, combined with her knowledge that it was in her, made her, in a way, ambitious. Otherwise by upbringing

One winter, when she was a young woman, Neil Bonner came into her life. But he came into her life, as he

had come into the country, somewhat reluctantly. In fact, it was very much against his will, coming into the

country. Between a father who clipped coupons and cultivated roses, and a mother who loved the social

round, Neil Bonner had gone rather wild. He was not vicious, but a man with meat in his belly and without

work in the world has to expend his energy somehow, and Neil Bonner was such a man. And he expended his

energy in such a fashion and to such extent that when the inevitable climax came, his father, Neil Bonner,

senior, crawled out of his roses in a panic and looked on his son with a wondering eye. Then he hied himself

away to a crony of kindred pursuits, with whom he was wont to confer over coupons and roses, and between

the two the destiny of young Neil Bonner was made manifest. He must go away, on probation, to live down

his harmless follies in order that he might live up to their own excellent standard.

This determined upon, and young Neil a little repentant and a great deal ashamed, the rest was easy. The

cronies were heavy stockholders in the P. C. Company. The P. C. Company owned fleets of riversteamers

and oceangoing craft, and, in addition to farming the sea, exploited a hundred thousand square miles or so

of the land that, on the maps of geographers, usually occupies the white spaces. So the P. C. Company sent

young Neil Bonner north, where the white spaces are, to do its work and to learn to be good like his father.

"Five years of simplicity, close to the soil and far from temptation, will make a man of him," said old Neil

Bonner, and forthwith crawled back among his roses. Young Neil set his jaw, pitched his chin at the proper

angle, and went to work. As an underling he did his work well and gained the commendation of his superiors.

Not that he delighted in the work, but that it was the one thing that prevented him from going mad.

The first year he wished he was dead. The second year he cursed God. The third year he was divided between

the two emotions, and in the confusion quarrelled with a man in authority. He had the best of the quarrel,

though the man in authority had the last word,a word that sent Neil Bonner into an exile that made his old

billet appear as paradise. But he went without a whimper, for the North had succeeded in making him into a

Here and there, on the white spaces on the map, little circlets like the letter "o" are to be found, and, appended

to these circlets, on one side or the other, are names such as "Fort Hamilton," "Yanana Station," "Twenty

Mile," thus leading one to imagine that the white spaces are plentifully besprinkled with towns and villages.

But it is a vain imagining. Twenty Mile, which is very like the rest of the posts, is a log building the size of a

corner grocery with rooms to let upstairs. A long legged cache on stilts may be found in the back yard;

also a couple of outhouses. The back yard is unfenced, and extends to the skyline and an unascertainable bit

beyond. There are no other houses in sight, though the Toyaats sometimes pitch a winter camp a mile or two

down the Yukon. And this is Twenty Mile, one tentacle of the manytentacled P. C. Company. Here the

agent, with an assistant, barters with the Indians for their furs, and does an erratic trade on a golddust basis

with the wandering miners. Here, also, the agent and his assistant yearn all winter for the spring, and when

the spring comes, camp blasphemously on the roof while the Yukon washes out the establishment. And here,

also, in the fourth year of his sojourn in the land, came Neil Bonner to take charge.

He had displaced no agent; for the man that previously ran the post had made away with himself; "because of

the rigours of the place," said the assistant, who still remained; though the Toyaats, by their fires, had another

version. The assistant was a shrunken shouldered, hollowchested man, with a cadaverous face and

cavernous cheeks that his sparse black beard could not hide. He coughed much, as though consumption

gripped his lungs, while his eyes had that mad, fevered light common to consumptives in the last stage.

Pentley was his nameAmos Pentleyand Bonner did not like him, though he felt a pity for the forlorn and

hopeless devil. They did not get along together, these two men who, of all men, should have been on good

In the end, Bonner concluded that Amos was partly demented, and left him alone, doing all the work himself

except the cooking. Even then, Amos had nothing but bitter looks and an undisguised hatred for him. This

was a great loss to Bonner; for the smiling face of one of his own kind, the cheery word, the sympathy of

comradeship shared with misfortunethese things meant much; and the winter was yet young when he

began to realize the added reasons, with such an assistant, that the previous agent had found to impel his own

It was very lonely at Twenty Mile. The bleak vastness stretched away on every side to the horizon. The snow,

which was really frost, flung its mantle over the land and buried everything in the silence of death. For days it

was clear and cold, the thermometer steadily recording forty to fifty degrees below zero. Then a change came

over the face of things. What little moisture had oozed into the atmosphere gathered into dull grey, formless

clouds; it became quite warm, the thermometer rising to twenty below; and the moisture fell out of the sky in

hard frostgranules that hissed like dry sugar or driving sand when kicked underfoot. After that it became

clear and cold again, until enough moisture had gathered to blanket the earth from the cold of outer space.

That was all. Nothing happened. No storms, no churning waters and threshing forests, nothing but the

machinelike precipitation of accumulated moisture. Possibly the most notable thing that occurred through

the weary weeks was the gliding of the temperature up to the unprecedented height of fifteen below. To atone

for this, outer space smote the earth with its cold till the mercury froze and the spirit thermometer remained

more than seventy below for a fortnight, when it burst. There was no telling how much colder it was after

that. Another occurrence, monotonous in its regularity, was the lengthening of the nights, till day became a

Neil Bonner was a social animal. The very follies for which he was doing penance had been bred of his

excessive sociability. And here, in the fourth year of his exile, he found himself in company which were to

travesty the wordwith a morose and speechless creature in whose sombre eyes smouldered a hatred as

bitter as it was unwarranted. And Bonner, to whom speech and fellowship were as the breath of life, went

about as a ghost might go, tantalized by the gregarious revelries of some former life. In the day his lips were

compressed, his face stern; but in the night he clenched his hands, rolled about in his blankets, and cried

aloud like a little child. And he would remember a certain man in authority and curse him through the long

hours. Also, he cursed God. But God understands. He cannot find it in his heart to blame weak mortals who

And here, to the post of Twenty Mile, came Jees Uck, to trade for flour and bacon, and beads, and bright

scarlet cloths for her fancy work. And further, and unwittingly, she came to the post of Twenty Mile to make

a lonely man more lonely, make him reach out empty arms in his sleep. For Neil Bonner was only a man.

When she first came into the store, he looked at her long, as a thirsty man may look at a flowing well. And

she, with the heritage bequeathed her by Spike O'Brien, imagined daringly and smiled up into his eyes, not as

the swartskinned peoples should smile at the royal races, but as a woman smiles at a man. The thing was

inevitable; only, he did not see it, and fought against her as fiercely and passionately as he was drawn towards

her. And she? She was Jees Uck, by upbringing wholly and utterly a Toyaat Indian woman.

She came often to the post to trade. And often she sat by the big wood stove and chatted in broken English

with Neil Bonner. And he came to look for her coming; and on the days she did not come he was worried and

restless. Sometimes he stopped to think, and then she was met coldly, with a resolve that perplexed and

piqued her, and which, she was convinced, was not sincere. But more often he did not dare to think, and then

all went well and there were smiles and laughter. And Amos Pentley, gasping like a stranded catfish, his

hollow cough areek with the grave, looked upon it all and grinned. He, who loved life, could not live, and it

rankled his soul that others should be able to live. Wherefore he hated Bonner, who was so very much alive

and into whose eyes sprang joy at the sight of Jees Uck. As for Amos, the very thought of the girl was

Jees Uck, whose mind was simple, who thought elementally and was unused to weighing life in its subtler

quantities, read Amos Pentley like a book. She warned Bonner, openly and bluntly, in few words; but the

complexities of higher existence confused the situation to him, and he laughed at her evident anxiety. To him,

Amos was a poor, miserable devil, tottering desperately into the grave. And Bonner, who had suffered much,

But one morning, during a bitter snap, he got up from the breakfasttable and went into the store. Jees Uck

was already there, rosy from the trail, to buy a sack of flour. A few minutes later, he was out in the snow

lashing the flour on her sled. As he bent over he noticed a stiffness in his neck and felt a premonition of

impending physical misfortune. And as he put the last half hitch into the lashing and attempted to straighten

up, a quick spasm seized him and he sank into the snow. Tense and quivering, head jerked back, limbs

extended, back arched and mouth twisted and distorted, he appeared as though being racked limb from limb.

Without cry or sound, Jees Uck was in the snow beside him; but he clutched both her wrists spasmodically,

and as long as the convulsion endured she was helpless. In a few moments the spasm relaxed and he was left

weak and fainting, his forehead beaded with sweat, and his lips flecked with foam.

He started to crawl on hands and knees, but she raised him up, and, supported by her young arm, he made

faster progress. As he entered the store the spasm seized him again, and his body writhed irresistibly away

from her and rolled and curled on the floor. Amos Pentley came and looked on with curious eyes.

"Oh, Amos!" she cried in an agony of apprehension and helplessness, "him die, you think?" But Amos

Bonner's body went slack, the tense muscles easing down and an expression of relief coming into his face.

"Quick!" he gritted between his teeth, his mouth twisting with the oncoming of the next spasm and with his

She knew where the medicinechest stood, at the rear of the room beyond the stove, and thither, by the legs,

she dragged the struggling man. As the spasm passed he began, very faint and very sick, to overhaul the

chest. He had seen dogs die exhibiting symptoms similar to his own, and he knew what should be done. He

held up a vial of chloral hydrate, but his fingers were too weak and nerveless to draw the cork. This Jees Uck

did for him, while he was plunged into another convulsion. As he came out of it he found the open bottle

proffered him, and looked into the great black eyes of the woman and read what men have always read in the

Matewoman's eyes. Taking a full dose of the stuff, he sank back until another spasm had passed. Then he

"Listen, Jees Uck!" he said very slowly, as though aware of the necessity for haste and yet afraid to hasten.

"Do what I say. Stay by my side, but do not touch me. I must be very quiet, but you must not go away." His

jaw began to set and his face to quiver and distort with the forerunning pangs, but he gulped and struggled

to master them. "Do not got away. And do not let Amos go away. Understand! Amos must stay right here."

She nodded her head, and he passed off into the first of many convulsions, which gradually diminished in

force and frequency. Jees Uck hung over him remembering his injunction and not daring to touch him. Once

Amos grew restless and made as though to go into the kitchen; but a quick blaze from her eyes quelled him,

and after that, save for his laboured breathing and charnel cough, he was very quiet.

Bonner slept. The blink of light that marked the day disappeared. Amos, followed about by the woman's eyes,

lighted the kerosene lamps. Evening came on. Through the north window the heavens were emblazoned with

an auroral display, which flamed and flared and died down into blackness. Some time after that, Neil Bonner

roused. First he looked to see that Amos was still there, then smiled at Jees Uck and pulled himself up. Every

muscle was stiff and sore, and he smiled ruefully, pressing and prodding himself as if to ascertain the extent

"Jees Uck," he said, "take a candle. Go into the kitchen. There is food on the tablebiscuits and beans and

bacon; also, coffee in the pot on the stove. Bring it here on the counter. Also, bring tumblers and water and

whisky, which you will find on the top shelf of the locker. Do not forget the whisky."

Having swallowed a stiff glass of the whisky, he went carefully through the medicine chest, now and again

putting aside, with definite purpose, certain bottles and vials. Then he set to work on the food, attempting a

crude analysis. He had not been unused to the laboratory in his college days and was possessed of sufficient

imagination to achieve results with his limited materials. The condition of tetanus, which had marked his

paroxysms, simplified matters, and he made but one test. The coffee yielded nothing; nor did the beans. To

the biscuits he devoted the utmost care. Amos, who knew nothing of chemistry, looked on with steady

curiosity. But Jees Uck, who had boundless faith in the white man's wisdom, and especially in Neil Bonner's

wisdom, and who not only knew nothing but knew that she knew nothing watched his face rather than his

Step by step he eliminated possibilities, until he came to the final test. He was using a thin medicine vial for a

tube, and this he held between him and the light, watching the slow precipitation of a salt through the solution

contained in the tube. He said nothing, but he saw what he had expected to see. And Jees Uck, her eyes

riveted on his face, saw something too,something that made her spring like a tigress upon Amos, and with

splendid suppleness and strength bend his body back across her knee. Her knife was out of its sheaf and

uplifted, glinting in the lamplight. Amos was snarling; but Bonner intervened ere the blade could fall.

She dropped the man obediently, though with protest writ large on her face; and his body thudded to the

"Get up, Amos!" he commanded. "You've got to pack an outfit yet tonight and hit the trail."

"I mean to say that you tried to kill me," Neil went on in cold, even tones. "I mean to say that you killed

Birdsall, for all the Company believes he killed himself. You used strychnine in my case. God knows with

what you fixed him. Now I can't hang you. You're too near dead as it is. But Twenty Mile is too small for the

pair of us, and you've got to mush. It's two hundred miles to Holy Cross. You can make it if you're careful not

to overexert. I'll give you grub, a sled, and three dogs. You'll be as safe as if you were in jail, for you can't

get out of the country. And I'll give you one chance. You're almost dead. Very well. I shall send no word to

the Company until the spring. In the meantime, the thing for you to do is to die. Now MUSH!"

"You go to bed!" Jees Uck insisted, when Amos had churned away into the night towards Holy Cross. "You

"And you're a good girl, Jees Uck," he answered. "And here's my hand on it. But you must go home."

He smiled, helped her on with her PARKA, and led her to the door. "Only too well, Jees Uck," he said softly;

After that the pall of the Arctic night fell deeper and blacker on the land. Neil Bonner discovered that he had

failed to put proper valuation upon even the sullen face of the murderous and death stricken Amos. It

became very lonely at Twenty Mile. "For the love of God, Prentiss, send me a man," he wrote to the agent at

Fort Hamilton, three hundred miles up river. Six weeks later the Indian messenger brought back a reply. It

To make matters worse, most of the Toyaats were in the back country on the flanks of a caribou herd, and

Jees Uck was with them. Removing to a distance seemed to bring her closer than ever, and Neil Bonner found

himself picturing her, day by day, in camp and on trail. It is not good to be alone. Often he went out of the

quiet store, bareheaded and frantic, and shook his fist at the blink of day that came over the southern

skyline. And on still, cold nights he left his bed and stumbled into the frost, where he assaulted the silence at

the top of his lungs, as though it were some tangible, sentiment thing that he might arouse; or he shouted at

the sleeping dogs till they howled and howled again. One shaggy brute he brought into the post, playing that

it was the new man sent by Prentiss. He strove to make it sleep decently under blankets at nights and to sit at

table and eat as a man should; but the beast, mere domesticated wolf that it was, rebelled, and sought out dark

corners and snarled and bit him in the leg, and was finally beaten and driven forth.

Then the trick of personification seized upon Neil Bonner and mastered him. All the forces of his

environment metamorphosed into living, breathing entities and came to live with him. He recreated the

primitive pantheon; reared an altar to the sun and burned candle fat and bacon grease thereon; and in the

unfenced yard, by the longlegged cache, made a frost devil, which he was wont to make faces at and mock

when the mercury oozed down into the bulb. All this in play, of course. He said it to himself that it was in

play, and repeated it over and over to make sure, unaware that madness is ever prone to express itself in

One midwinter day, Father Champreau, a Jesuit missionary, pulled into Twenty Mile. Bonner fell upon him

and dragged him into the post, and clung to him and wept, until the priest wept with him from sheer

compassion. Then Bonner became madly hilarious and made lavish entertainment, swearing valiantly that his

guest should not depart. But Father Champreau was pressing to Salt Water on urgent business for his order,

And the threat was in a fair way toward realization, when the Toyaats returned from their long hunt to the

winter camp. They had many furs, and there was much trading and stir at Twenty Mile. Also, Jees Uck came

to buy beads and scarlet cloths and things, and Bonner began to find himself again. He fought for a week

against her. Then the end came one night when she rose to leave. She had not forgotten her repulse, and the

pride that drove Spike O'Brien on to complete the NorthWest Passage by land was her pride.

And as she turned her face toward his with a sudden joyful flash, he bent forward, slowly and gravely, as it

were a sacred thing, and kissed her on the lips. The Toyaats had never taught her the meaning of a kiss upon

With the coming of Jees Uck, at once things brightened up. She was regal in her happiness, a source of

unending delight. The elemental workings of her mind and her naive little ways made an immense sum of

pleasurable surprise to the overcivilized man that had stooped to catch her up. Not alone was she solace to

his loneliness, but her primitiveness rejuvenated his jaded mind. It was as though, after long wandering, he

had returned to pillow his head in the lap of Mother Earth. In short, in Jees Uck he found the youth of the

And to fill the full round of his need, and that they might not see overmuch of each other, there arrived at

Twenty Mile one Sandy MacPherson, as companionable a man as ever whistled along the trail or raised a

ballad by a campfire. A Jesuit priest had run into his camp, a couple of hundred miles up the Yukon, in the

nick of time to say a last word over the body of Sandy's partner. And on departing, the priest had said, "My

son, you will be lonely now." And Sandy had bowed his head brokenly. "At Twenty Mile," the priest added,

So it was that Sandy became a welcome third at the post, brother to the man and woman that resided there.

He took Bonner moosehunting and wolftrapping; and, in return, Bonner resurrected a battered and

wayworn volume and made him friends with Shakespeare, till Sandy declaimed iambic pentameters to his

sleddogs whenever they waxed mutinous. And of the long evenings they played cribbage and talked and

disagreed about the universe, the while Jees Uck rocked matronly in an easychair and darned their

Spring came. The sun shot up out of the south. The land exchanged its austere robes for the garb of a smiling

wanton. Everywhere light laughed and life invited. The days stretched out their balmy length and the nights

passed from blinks of darkness to no darkness at all. The river bared its bosom, and snorting steamboats

challenged the wilderness. There were stir and bustle, new faces, and fresh facts. An assistant arrived at

Twenty Mile, and Sandy MacPherson wandered off with a bunch of prospectors to invade the Koyokuk

country. And there were newspapers and magazines and letters for Neil Bonner. And Jees Uck looked on in

Without much shock, it came to him that his father was dead. There was a sweet letter of forgiveness,

dictated in his last hours. There were official letters from the Company, graciously ordering him to turn the

post over to the assistant and permitting him to depart at his earliest pleasure. A long, legal affair from the

lawyers informed him of interminable lists of stocks and bonds, real estate, rents, and chattels that were his

by his father's will. And a dainty bit of stationery, sealed and monogramed, implored dear Neil's return to his

Neil Bonner did some swift thinking, and when the Yukon Belle coughed in to the bank on her way down to

Bering Sea, he departed departed with the ancient lie of quick return young and blithe on his lips.

"I'll come back, dear Jees Uck, before the first snow flies," he promised her, between the last kisses at the

And not only did he promise, but, like the majority of men under the same circumstances, he really meant it.

To John Thompson, the new agent, he gave orders for the extension of unlimited credit to his wife, Jees Uck.

Also, with his last look from the deck of the Yukon Belle, he saw a dozen men at work rearing the logs that

were to make the most comfortable house along a thousand miles of river frontthe house of Jees Uck, and

likewise the house of Neil Bonnerere the first flurry of snow. For he fully and fondly meant to come back.

Jees Uck was dear to him, and, further, a golden future awaited the north. With his father's money he

intended to verify that future. An ambitious dream allured him. With his four years of experience, and aided

by the friendly cooperation of the P. C. Company, he would return to become the Rhodes of Alaska. And he

would return, fast as steam could drive, as soon as he had put into shape the affairs of his father, whom he

There was much ado when Neil Bonner came back from the Arctic. The fires were lighted and the fleshpots

slung, and he took of it all and called it good. Not only was he bronzed and creased, but he was a new man

under his skin, with a grip on things and a seriousness and control. His old companions were amazed when he

declined to hit up the pace in the good old way, while his father's crony rubbed hands gleefully, and became

For four years Neil Bonner's mind had lain fallow. Little that was new had been added to it, but it had

undergone a process of selection. It had, so to say, been purged of the trivial and superfluous. He had lived

quick years, down in the world; and, up in the wilds, time had been given him to organize the confused mass

of his experiences. His superficial standards had been flung to the winds and new standards erected on deeper

and broader generalizations. Concerning civilization, he had gone away with one set of values, had returned

with another set of values. Aided, also, by the earth smells in his nostrils and the earth sights in his eyes, he

laid hold of the inner significance of civilization, beholding with clear vision its futilities and powers. It was a

simple little philosophy he evolved. Clean living was the way to grace. Duty performed was sanctification.

One must live clean and do his duty in order that he might work. Work was salvation. And to work toward

life abundant, and more abundant, was to be in line with the scheme of things and the will of God.

Primarily, he was of the city. And his fresh earth grip and virile conception of humanity gave him a finer

sense of civilization and endeared civilization to him. Day by day the people of the city clung closer to him

and the world loomed more colossal. And, day by day, Alaska grew more remote and less real. And then he

met Kitty Sharona woman of his own flesh and blood and kind; a woman who put her hand into his hand

and drew him to her, till he forgot the day and hour and the time of the year the first snow flies on the Yukon.

Jees Uck moved into her grand loghouse and dreamed away three golden summer months. Then came the

autumn, posthaste before the down rush of winter. The air grew thin and sharp, the days thin and short. The

river ran sluggishly, and skin ice formed in the quiet eddies. All migratory life departed south, and silence fell

upon the land. The first snow flurries came, and the last homing steamboat bucked desperately into the

running mush ice. Then came the hard ice, solid cakes and sheets, till the Yukon ran level with its banks. And

when all this ceased the river stood still and the blinking days lost themselves in the darkness.

John Thompson, the new agent, laughed; but Jees Uck had faith in the mischances of sea and river. Neil

Bonner might be frozen in anywhere between Chilkoot Pass and St. Michael's, for the last travellers of the

year are always caught by the ice, when they exchange boat for sled and dash on through the long hours

But no flying dogs came up the trail, nor down the trail, to Twenty Mile. And John Thompson told Jees Uck,

with a certain gladness ill concealed, that Bonner would never come back again. Also, and brutally, he

suggested his own eligibility. Jees Uck laughed in his face and went back to her grand loghouse. But when

midwinter came, when hope dies down and life is at its lowest ebb, Jees Uck found she had no credit at the

store. This was Thompson's doing, and he rubbed his hands, and walked up and down, and came to his door

and looked up at Jees Uck's house and waited. And he continued to wait. She sold her dogteam to a party of

miners and paid cash for her food. And when Thompson refused to honour even her coin, Toyaat Indians

In February the first post came in over the ice, and John Thompson read in the society column of a

fivemonthsold paper of the marriage of Neil Bonner and Kitty Sharon. Jees Uck held the door ajar and him

outside while he imparted the information; and, when he had done, laughed pridefully and did not believe. In

March, and all alone, she gave birth to a manchild, a brave bit of new life at which she marvelled. And at

that hour, a year later, Neil Bonner sat by another bed, marvelling at another bit of new life that had fared into

The snow went off the ground and the ice broke out of the Yukon. The sun journeyed north, and journeyed

south again; and, the money from the being spent, Jees Uck went back to her own people. Oche Ish, a shrewd

hunter, proposed to kill the meat for her and her babe, and catch the salmon, if she would marry him. And

Imego and Hah Yo and Wy Nooch, husky young hunters all, made similar proposals. But she elected to live

alone and seek her own meat and fish. She sewed moccasins and PARKAS and mittenswarm, serviceable

things, and pleasing to the eye, withal, what of the ornamental hairtufts and beadwork. These she sold to

the miners, who were drifting faster into the land each year. And not only did she win food that was good and

plentiful, but she laid money by, and one day took passage on the Yukon Belle down the river.

At St. Michael's she washed dishes in the kitchen of the post. The servants of the Company wondered at the

remarkable woman with the remarkable child, though they asked no questions and she vouchsafed nothing.

But just before Bering Sea closed in for the year, she bought a passage south on a strayed sealing schooner.

That winter she cooked for Captain Markheim's household at Unalaska, and in the spring continued south to

Sitka on a whisky sloop. Later on appeared at Metlakahtla, which is near to St. Mary's on the end of the

PanHandle, where she worked in the cannery through the salmon season. When autumn came and the

Siwash fishermen prepared to return to Puget Sound, she embarked with a couple of families in a big cedar

canoe; and with them she threaded the hazardous chaos of the Alaskan and Canadian coasts, till the Straits of

Juan de Fuca were passed and she led her boy by the hand up the hard pave of Seattle.

There she met Sandy MacPherson, on a windy corner, very much surprised and, when he had heard her story,

very wrothnot so wroth as he might have been, had he known of Kitty Sharon; but of her Jees Uck

breathed not a word, for she had never believed. Sandy, who read commonplace and sordid desertion into the

circumstance, strove to dissuade her from her trip to San Francisco, where Neil Bonner was supposed to live

when he was at home. And, having striven, he made her comfortable, bought her tickets and saw her off, the

With roar and rumble, through daylight and dark, swaying and lurching between the dawns, soaring into the

winter snows and sinking to summer valleys, skirting depths, leaping chasms, piercing mountains, Jees Uck

and her boy were hurled south. But she had no fear of the iron stallion; nor was she stunned by this masterful

civilization of Neil Bonner's people. It seemed, rather, that she saw with greater clearness the wonder that a

man of such godlike race had held her in his arms. The screaming medley of San Francisco, with its restless

shipping, belching factories, and thundering traffic, did not confuse her; instead, she comprehended swiftly

the pitiful sordidness of Twenty Mile and the skinlodged Toyaat village. And she looked down at the boy

She paid the hackdriver five pieces and went up the stone steps of Neil Bonner's front door. A slanteyed

Japanese parleyed with her for a fruitless space, then led her inside and disappeared. She remained in the hall,

which to her simply fancy seemed to be the guestroomthe showplace wherein were arrayed all the

household treasures with the frank purpose of parade and dazzlement. The walls and ceiling were of oiled and

panelled redwood. The floor was more glassy than glareice, and she sought standing place on one of the

great skins that gave a sense of security to the polished surface. A huge fireplacean extravagant fireplace,

she deemed ityawned in the farther wall. A flood of light, mellowed by stained glass, fell across the room,

This much she saw, and more, when the slanteyed servant led the way past another roomof which she

caught a fleeting glanceand into a third, both of which dimmed the brave show of the entrance hall. And to

her eyes the great house seemed to hold out the promise of endless similar rooms. There was such length and

breadth to them, and the ceilings were so far away! For the first time since her advent into the white man's

civilization, a feeling of awe laid hold of her. Neil, her Neil, lived in this house, breathed the air of it, and lay

down at night and slept! It was beautiful, all this that she saw, and it pleased her; but she felt, also, the

wisdom and mastery behind. It was the concrete expression of power in terms of beauty, and it was the power

And then came a woman, queenly tall, crowned with a glory of hair that was like a golden sun. She seemed to

come toward Jees Uck as a ripple of music across still water; her sweeping garment itself a song, her body

playing rhythmically beneath. Jees Uck herself was a man compeller. There were Oche Ish and Imego and

Hah Yo and Wy Nooch, to say nothing of Neil Bonner and John Thompson and other white men that had

looked upon her and felt her power. But she gazed upon the wide blue eyes and rosewhite skin of this

woman that advanced to meet her, and she measured her with woman's eyes looking through man's eyes; and

as a man compeller she felt herself diminish and grow insignificant before this radiant and flashing creature.

"You wish to see my husband?" the woman asked; and Jees Uck gasped at the liquid silver of a voice that had

never sounded harsh cries at snarling wolfdogs, nor moulded itself to a guttural speech, nor toughened in

"No," Jees Uck answered slowly and gropingly, in order that she might do justice to her English. "I come to

Then it was true! John Thompson had not lied that bleak February day, when she laughed pridefully and shut

the door in his face. As once she had thrown Amos Pentley across her knee and ripped her knife into the air,

so now she felt impelled to spring upon this woman and bear her back and down, and tear the life out of her

fair body. But Jees Uck was thinking quickly and gave no sign, and Kitty Bonner little dreamed how

Jees Uck nodded her head that she understood, and Kitty Bonner explained that Neil was expected at any

moment. Then they sat down on ridiculously comfortable chairs, and Kitty sought to entertain her strange

"Sure. I wash um clothes," Jees Uck had answered, her English abruptly beginning to grow atrocious.

Kitty caused her daughter to be brought, and while the children, after their manner, struck an acquaintance,

the mothers indulged in the talk of mothers and drank tea from cups so fragile that Jees Uck feared lest hers

should crumble to pieces beneath her fingers. Never had she seen such cups, so delicate and dainty. In her

mind she compared them with the woman who poured the tea, and there uprose in contrast the gourds and

pannikins of the Toyaat village and the clumsy mugs of Twenty Mile, to which she likened herself. And in

such fashion and such terms the problem presented itself. She was beaten. There was a woman other than

herself better fitted to bear and upbring Neil Bonner's children. Just as his people exceeded her people, so did

his womankind exceed her. They were the man compellers, as their men were the world compellers. She

looked at the rosewhite tenderness of Kitty Bonner's skin and remembered the sunbeat on her own face.

Likewise she looked from brown hand to whitethe one, workworn and hardened by whiphandle and

paddle, the other as guiltless of toil and soft as a newborn babe's. And, for all the obvious softness and

apparent weakness, Jees Uck looked into the blue eyes and saw the mastery she had seen in Neil Bonner's

"Why, it's Jees Uck!" Neil Bonner said, when he entered. He said it calmly, with even a ring of joyful

cordiality, coming over to her and shaking both her hands, but looking into her eyes with a worry in his own

"Fine, fine, Jees Uck," he answered heartily, though secretly studying Kitty for some sign of what had passed

between the two. Yet he knew his wife too well to expect, even though the worst had passed, such a sign.

"Well, I can't say how glad I am to see you," he went on. "What's happened? Did you strike a mine? And

"Ooa, I get in today," she replied, her voice instinctively seeking its guttural parts. "I no strike it, Neil. You

known Cap'n Markheim, Unalaska? I cook, his house, long time. No spend money. Bimeby, plenty. Pretty

good, I think, go down and see White Man's Land. Very fine, White Man's Land, very fine," she added. Her

English puzzled him, for Sandy and he had sought, constantly, to better her speech, and she had proved an apt

pupil. Now it seemed that she had sunk back into her race. Her face was guileless, stolidly guileless, giving

no cue. Kitty's untroubled brow likewise baffled him. What had happened? How much had been said? and

While he wrestled with these questions and while Jees Uck wrestled with her problemnever had he looked

Knew him! Jees Uck could not forbear a glance at the boy she had borne him, and his eyes followed hers

mechanically to the window where played the two children. An iron hand seemed to tighten across his

forehead. His knees went weak and his heart leaped up and pounded like a fist against his breast. His boy! He

Little Kitty Bonner, fairylike in gauzy lawn, with pinkest of cheeks and bluest of dancing eyes, arms

outstretched and lips puckered in invitation, was striving to kiss the boy. And the boy, lean and lithe,

sunbeaten and browned, skinclad and in hair fringed and hairtufted MUCLUCS that showed the wear of

the sea and rough work, coolly withstood her advances, his body straight and stiff with the peculiar erectness

common to children of savage people. A stranger in a strange land, unabashed and unafraid, he appeared

more like an untamed animal, silent and watchful, his black eyes flashing from face to face, quiet so long as

quiet endured, but prepared to spring and fight and tear and scratch for life, at the first sign of danger.

The contrast between boy and girl was striking, but not pitiful. There was too much strength in the boy for

that, waif that he was of the generations of Shpack, Spike O'Brien, and Bonner. In his features, clean cut as a

cameo and almost classic in their severity, there were the power and achievement of his father, and his

grandfather, and the one known as the Big Fat, who was captured by the Sea people and escaped to

Neil Bonner fought his emotion down, swallowed it down, and choked over it, though his face smiled with

"Your boy, eh, Jees Uck?" he said. And then turning to Kitty: "Handsome fellow! He'll do something with

The young savage flashed his quick eyes upon her and dwelt over her for a space, seeking out, as it were, the

"Injun talk," Jees Uck interposed, glibly manufacturing languages on the spur of the moment. "Him Injun

talk, NEEAL all the same 'cracker.' Him baby, him like cracker; him cry for cracker. Him say, 'NEEAL,

NEEAL,' all time him say, 'NEEAL.' Then I say that um name. So um name all time Neeal."

Never did sound more blessed fall upon Neil Bonner's ear than that lie from Jees Uck's lips. It was the cue,

"Know him? Most intimately," Neil answered, and harked back to dreary Twenty Mile and the man alone in

And here might well end the story of Jees Uck but for the crown she put upon her renunciation. When she

returned to the North to dwell in her grand loghouse, John Thompson found that the P. C. Company could

make a shift somehow to carry on its business without his aid. Also, the new agent and the succeeding agents

received instructions that the woman Jees Uck should be given whatsoever goods and grub she desired, in

whatsoever quantities she ordered, and that no charge should be placed upon the books. Further, the

When he had attained suitable age, Father Champreau laid hands upon the boy, and the time was not long

when Jees Uck received letters regularly from the Jesuit college in Maryland. Later on these letters came

from Italy, and still later from France. And in the end there returned to Alaska one Father Neil, a man mighty

for good in the land, who loved his mother and who ultimately went into a wider field and rose to high

Jees Uck was a young woman when she went back into the North, and men still looked upon her and yearned.

But she lived straight, and no breath was ever raised save in commendation. She stayed for a while with the

good sisters at Holy Cross, where she learned to read and write and became versed in practical medicine and

surgery. After that she returned to her grand loghouse and gathered about her the young girls of the Toyaat

village, to show them the way of their feet in the world. It is neither Protestant nor Catholic, this school in the

house built by Neil Bonner for Jees Uck, his wife; but the missionaries of all the sects look upon it with equal

favour. The latchstring is always out, and tired prospectors and trailweary men turn aside from the flowing

river or frozen trail to rest there for a space and be warm by her fire. And, down in the States, Kitty Bonner is

pleased at the interest her husband takes in Alaskan education and the large sums he devotes to that purpose;

and, though she often smiles and chaffs, deep down and secretly she is but the prouder of him.