The Faith of Men, by Jack London

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Title: The Faith of Men

Author: Jack London

Release Date: February 6, 2005  [eBook #1096]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)


***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FAITH OF MEN***




Transcribed from the 1919 William Heinemann edition by David Price, email
ccx074@coventry.ac.uk





THE FAITH OF MEN


Contents:

A Relic of the Pliocene
A Hyperborean Brew
The Faith of Men
Too Much Gold
The One Thousand Dozen
The Marriage of Lit-lit
Batard
The Story of Jees Uck




A RELIC OF THE PLIOCENE


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, this
homely, blue-eyed, freckle-faced Thomas Stevens.

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 same--forsooth! 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 done--go 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 living.

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
smoker's heart good to behold him.

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 River--a
conceited custom that the Old Timers employ against the _che-chaquas_
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 south-
east to north-west.  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
vamosed.  That settled it.  Fancy had not tricked me after all.

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 fellow-creature's voice may bring all
straight again.

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 hundred thousand, and slept in the Great
Barrens on the musk-ox's winter trail.

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 looked to
see the man stunned by the recital.

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 way--had 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
walrus-hide; but there the resemblance ceased, for no walrus ever bore so
marvellous a growth of hair.  On the side and ankles this hair was well-
nigh 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 seven or eight
inches.

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

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

"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 living specimen exists.  Our
explorers--"

At this word he broke in impatiently.  "Your explorers?  Pish!  A weakly
breed.  Let us hear no more of them.  But tell me, O man, what you may
know of the mammoth and his ways."

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
sand-bars 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 eight-
foot tusks from the pay gravel of the Klondike creeks.  "All fossils," I
concluded, "found in the midst of _debris_ deposited through countless
ages."

"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 water-melons?"

"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 is the soil so prolific.  Ergo, the mammoth cannot exist."

"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
exists.  How do I know?  I killed the last one with my own right arm."

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 for my
St. Elias bear.

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

"Where?" I interrupted.

He waved his hand vaguely in the direction of the north-east, 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 clean-legged 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 woods--grey, and long
of limb, with big lungs and no end of staying powers.  Say!  Was there
ever the like?  It was a new breed of dog I had started, and I could look
forward to big things.

"As I have said, she was brought neatly to pup, and safely delivered.  I
was squatting on my hams over the litter--seven sturdy, blind little
beggars--when 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 rear-end 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 ripping and tearing, and trees
snapping and crashing.

"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 working-gear in a thousand bits.  Then I looked for the
slut, and--and what do you suppose?"

I shook my head.

"May my soul burn in a thousand hells if there was anything left of her!
Klooch, the seven sturdy, blind little beggars--gone, all gone.  Where
she had stretched was a slimy, bloody depression in the soft earth, all
of a yard in diameter, and around the edges a few scattered hairs."

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 was--or,
rather, there was not--Klooch 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 blood-soaked earth cried out to high God?  Or that I grabbed the
hand-axe and took the trail?"

"The hand-axe?" I exclaimed, startled out of myself by the picture.  "The
hand-axe, and a big bull mammoth, thirty feet long, twenty feet--"

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
brand-new, 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 hand-axe, 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 grub--you've slushed
around on the rain-soaked islands of the Alaskan coast down Sitka way,
most likely, seeing as you're a traveller.  And you know how stuff grows
there--big, 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
on roasted mammoth-foot.  And I knew, also, that that stood for _skookum_
_mamook pukapuk_--excuse 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
creek drain nicely.  Now I had him."

"But how did you have him?" I queried.  "Who ever heard of a man killing
a mammoth with a hand-axe?  And, for that matter, with anything else?"

"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 hand-axe?  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 hand-axe 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 intelligence of his
endurance?"

I nodded.

"Well?"

The light broke in on me, and I bade him continue.

"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 race-course!  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 hand-axe 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
there--only a couple of hundred yards away it was--when 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 the water-hole.

"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' go-as-I-please, 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 hand-axe 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 thinner--must have lost several tons at least--and 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 blasphemer.

"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 jelly-mountain
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, broken-winded,
broken-hearted, 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 hand-axe, he a-sniffing 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 spent the winter there myself."

"And where is this valley?" I asked

He waved his hand in the direction of the north-east, 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 will
never wear out."

Having effected the exchange, he knocked the ashes from his pipe, gripped
my hand good-night, 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?




A HYPERBOREAN BREW


[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 ex-Hudson
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 trans-Alaskan and Siberian telegraph to Europe.  Further,
there was Joe Lamson, the whaling captain, who, when ice-bound 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 fifty-cent 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 game-keeper
nodded.  The "high card" turned, and he handed back my sack, called for a
"tab," and drew me over to the scales, where the weigher nonchalantly
cashed him out fifty dollars in dust.

"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 God-forsaken souls live there,
giving and taking in marriage, and starving and dying in-between-whiles.
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 heard of.

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

I knew there were big deeds and wild doings behind that sigh, so I haled
him into a corner, between a roulette outfit and a poker layout, and
waited for his tongue to thaw.

"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 over a fire.

"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
us--because of the whalemen--and 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 time as strange was that they left us strictly alone.  But Moosu
explained it.

"'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 I get done, you'll see how near right
he was.

"'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 prosper.'"

"'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 fur-bales 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 tea--have 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?  Nothing!  Nothing!'

"But I was stunned by the word he brought of the tobacco, and made no
answer.

"And Moosu, what of his own desire, broke silence: 'And there be
Tukeliketa, daughter of a big hunter and wealthy man.  A likely girl.
Indeed, a very nice girl.'

"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 sureness and despatch.'

"While he was away I placed the whale-oil 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 five-gallon kerosene
can and a big copper kettle.  So I said he had done well and we would
tarry through the day.  And when midnight was near I made harangue to
him.

"'This chief, this Tummasook, hath a copper kettle, likewise a kerosene
can.'  I put a rock, smooth and wave-washed, 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 "Star" and the prime smoking, and thy
Tukeliketa, who is a likely maiden.'

"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 'pain-
killer' 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 Moosu groaned
beneath the loot as he followed my heels to the shack.

"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 gun-barrel, 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 with
it, and lighted the wicks I had braided.

"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 gun-barrel.  Out of
the priming hole at the far end, drip, drip, drip into the iron pot fell
the liquor--_hooch_, 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 exhausted her provisions, and went
home weak and tottery.

"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 about business?'

"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 when in my igloo had not been sound.

"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 travail
and suffering.'

"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 have traded with them, for
molasses and flour.'

"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 goods worthless, and our igloo mean, and
the bed of Moosu cold and empty!'

"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 may know.'

"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 with chuckling and his eyes
wrinkling with laughter.

"'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 Neewak, the shaman?'

"'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 back what they had given, and
there was a great commotion.'

"'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 fish-bladder, 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 knees strong, my hand steady.'

"'The shaman cannot send us to sleep with the gods,' the people
complained, stringing in and joining us, 'and only in thy igloo may the
thing be done.'

"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 when the soda kept it sweet?  Or his _hooch_ be _hooch_ when it
would not sour?

"After that our wealth flowed in without let or hindrance.  Furs we had
without number, and the fancy-work 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 seven-up.  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 tools--everything.  And in the end he became
a hewer of wood and drawer of water at the beck and call of Moosu.  And
Moosu--he set himself up as shaman, or high priest, and out of his
garbled Scripture created new gods and made incantation before strange
altars.

"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
Esanetuk, eldest daughter to Tummasook, and I objected.

"'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 God-given right, and by
the God-given right I marry.'

"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, and made preparations to destroy me.

"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 income-tax, 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 gods--especially the one he named 'Biz-e-Nass'--and nipped the
scheme in the bud.

"Now, it happened that Kluktu, youngest daughter to Tummasook, had caught
my fancy, and I likewise hers.  So I made overtures, but the ex-chief
refused bluntly--after I had paid the purchase price--and 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 caribou or bear were brought in.

"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 high-stomached, 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 stilt-legged 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 salutation before all men.

"'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 grace of Moosu.

"'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
dry-breasted, 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 manner of way grub shall be had.'

"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 ordained her rightful lord.

"'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 gun-barrel, 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.  For he is a great man, and God
speaketh through his lips.

"'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 Biz-e-Nass; I, who see thy empty bellies and knew not wherewith
to fill them--why 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 wonder-worry
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, self-shorn 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 bestirring would be of an
order for which I had made due preparation.

"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 such a trouble.'

"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 up and down.'

"And a third one: 'And Neewak hath overthrown the altars of Moosu, and
maketh incantation before the time-honoured 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 wind-squalls, from every hand, till he
ran forth from the igloo, and the people mocked him.  For a man who
cannot command his womankind is a fool.'

"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 and bring him to me.'

"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!  Thou art a great man!  Surely wilt thou
forgive!'

"'Call me "brother," Moosu--call me "brother,"' I chided, lifting him to
his feet with the toe of my moccasin.  'Wilt thou evermore obey?'

"'Yea, master,' he whimpered, 'evermore.'

"'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 general--whack!  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 God-given!  And this for
thy fat firstlings!  And this and this for thy income-tax 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 for the dogs.  _Chook_!  _Mush-on_!  Git!'"

Thomas Stevens smiled quietly to himself as he lighted his fifth cigar
and sent curling smoke-rings ceilingward.

"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 smoke-rings, "Were there not the
fat dogs?"




THE FAITH OF MEN


"Tell you what we'll do; we'll shake for it."

"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 him we want to borrow his dice box."

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 should be, as he pulled on his mittens and went out the
door.

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 pine-board 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 crawled out in the morning.

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 among the
richest kings of Bonanza.

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 and
reflectively rubbed the soot from the wick between thumb and forefinger.

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

Pentfield looked at him darkly.

"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 after things, and next year I
can go out."

"Why should I go?  I've no one waiting for me--"

"Your people," Pentfield broke in roughly.

"Like you have," Hutchinson went on.  "A girl, I mean, and you know it."

Pentfield shrugged his shoulders gloomily.  "She can wait, I guess."

"But she's been waiting two years now."

"And another won't age her beyond recognition."

"That'd be three years.  Think of it, old man, three years in this end of
the earth, this falling-off place for the damned!"  Hutchinson threw up
his arm in an almost articulate groan.

He was several years younger than his partner, not more than twenty-six,
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
eggs--yes, sir, eggs, fried and boiled and poached and scrambled, and in
all sorts of ways, and downing them as fast as they arrived."

"I'd have ordered salads and green things," Hutchinson criticized
hungrily, "with a big, rare, Porterhouse, and young onions and
radishes,--the kind your teeth sink into with a crunch."

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

He picked up a trail-scarred banjo from the floor and began to strum a
few wandering notes.  Hutchinson winced and breathed heavily.

"Quit it!" he burst out with sudden fury, as the other struck into a
gaily lifting swing.  "It drives me mad.  I can't stand it"

Pentfield tossed the banjo into a bunk and quoted:-

   "Hear me babble what the weakest won't confess--
   I am Memory and Torment--I am Town!
   I am all that ever went with evening dress!"

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 creeping
up the inside in a white sheet, and he began to hum:-

   "The flocks are folded, boughs are bare,
   The salmon takes the sea;
   And oh, my fair, would I somewhere
   Might house my heart with thee."

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 trail for God's country this
time tomorrow morning!"

He picked up the box, briskly rattling the dice.

"What'll it be?"

"Straight poker dice," Hutchinson answered.  "Go on and roll them out."

Pentfield swept the dishes from the table with a crash and rolled out the
five dice.  Both looked tragedy.  The shake was without a pair and five-
spot high.

"A stiff!" Pentfield groaned.

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

"I'd shake to the five if I were you," Hutchinson suggested.

"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.

"A second stiff!" he groaned.  "No use your shaking, Corry.  You can't
lose."

The other man gathered up the dice without a word, rattled them, rolled
them out on the table with a flourish, and saw that he had likewise
shaken a six-high stiff.

"Tied you, anyway, but I'll have to do better than that," he said,
gathering in four of them and shaking to the six.  "And here's what beats
you!"

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

Hutchinson sighed.

"Couldn't happen once in a million times," said.

"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
to have lost his last hope.

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 was the clutch with which he
strove to control himself.

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 attempt to advertise his unconcern.

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 say--that 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 the very thing I expected to do if I went out."

"And that is--?"

Pentfield read the full question in his partner's eyes, and answered:-

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

"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 right--you 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 only a year away, and then I can take my fling."

Pentfield shook his head, though visibly swayed by the temptation.

"It won't do, Corry, old man.  I appreciate your kindness and all that,
but it won't do.  I'd be ashamed every time I thought of you slaving away
in here in my place."

A thought seemed suddenly to strike him.  Burrowing into his bunk and
disrupting it in his eagerness, he secured a writing-pad 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 all right."

Hutchinson ran his eye over it and laid it down.

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

"Oh, he'll do it for me--and 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 her as soon as you lay eyes on her."

So saying he opened the back of his watch and exposed a girl's photograph
pasted on the inside of the case.  Corry Hutchinson gazed at it with
admiration welling up in his eyes.

"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
Avenue is necessary.  The cabby'll know where Judge Holmes lives.

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

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

Pentfield grinned back.

"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
steamer around by Bering Sea.  And, I say, what's the matter with a
piano?"

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 hand-hewed and squared--an 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 was to live.

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 square-hewed 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 come
forth with his face strangely radiant and in his eyes a glad, warm light.

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 on and on in San Francisco, nor even
mentioned his trip to Detroit.

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
reserve.

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
phrase among the faro players.

His luck ran with him till the second week in February.  How much farther
it might have run is conjectural; for, after one big game, he never
played again.

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 game-keeper 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 monkey-
shines 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 Mabel--Mabel--oh yes, here it--'Mabel Holmes, daughter of
Judge Holmes,'--whoever he is."

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 cold, even tones:-

"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 of a column.  Then be turned on
Lawrence Pentfield.

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

"Allow what?" Pentfield demanded brutally.

"You implied that I lied."

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

"Make your bets, gentlemen," the dealer protested.

"But I tell you it's true," Nick Inwood insisted.

"And I have told you I've five hundred that says it's not in that paper,"
Pentfield answered, at the same time throwing a heavy sack of dust on the
table.

"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 Francisco paper.

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

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 journey into the fascinating
Klondike country."

"I'll be back again; keep my place for me," Pentfield said, rising to his
feet and taking his sack, which meantime had hit the blower and came back
lighter by five hundred dollars.

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 his seat in
the game.  He asked to have the limit removed.

"Trying to get action," Nick Inwood laughed, as he nodded assent to the
dealer.  "I was going down to the A. C. store, but now I guess I'll stay
and watch you do your worst."

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 else'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 look or word, and now was carrying her back
with him into the Unknown.

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 square-hewed 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 squaw-man and placed him
beyond moral reproach, though there were men that challenged his taste
where women were concerned.

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 trip--the 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 pre-eminently a
mother-woman and who held herself to be truly wise in the matter of
infantile troubles, missed no opportunity of nursing the children of
other women as yet more fortunate than she.

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 tired-looking dogs appeared around the narrow bend, followed by
a heavily-loaded sled.  At the gee-pole 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 gee-pole.  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 hand.

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
saying:-

"Why, what is the matter, Lawrence?"

Before he could answer, Corry plucked him by the sleeve and drew him
aside.

"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.

But Corry drove straight to the point.

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

Then Lawrence Pentfield delivered his stroke, and he delivered it with a
certain calm elation of spirit that seemed somewhat to compensate for the
wrong that had been done him.

"She is my squaw," he said; "Mrs. Pentfield, if you please."

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?"

"And, how did Mrs. Hutchinson stand it?" he asked next, his eyes on
Mabel.

"Oh, you dear ninny!" Dora cried, throwing her arms around him and
hugging him.  "Then you saw it, too!  I thought something was the matter,
you were acting so strangely."

"I--I hardly understand," he stammered.

"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 the verge of a great gulf.

But Dora swept volubly 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."

"Then--"

"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 Seattle and Portland paper
copied."

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
behind running dogs with lame Lashka by his side.

Then he spoke, quite simply, looking Mabel in the eyes.

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

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.  Pentfield glanced quickly from face to face, then turned to
his sled.

"Can't stop here all day, with Pete's baby waiting," he said to Lashka.

The long whip-lash hissed out, the dogs sprang against the breast bands,
and the sled lurched and jerked ahead.

"Oh, I say, Corry," Pentfield called back, "you'd better occupy the old
cabin.  It's not been used for some time.  I've built a new one on the
hill."




TOO MUCH GOLD


This being a story--and a truer one than it may appear--of a mining
country, it is quite to be expected that it will be a hard-luck 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 matter of common
knowledge in the Yukon country.

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 pleasant-looking 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, and leaped out from the bank.

"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 improved the opportunity by putting a thicker coating of clay on
his own neck.

They crossed the Yukon to its west bank, shot down-stream 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 log-cabins.  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 poling-boats.  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 Hootchinoo Bill.

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 miles nearer that way."

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
life nor sign of human life.

"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.

"Most like he didn't hear Gabriel tootin'," was Hootchinoo Bill's
suggestion.

"Hello, Jim!  Wake up!" he shouted.

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

They followed him inside and ranged up against the long bar where of yore
a half-dozen nimble bar-keepers 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 dust-covered bar.

"Where's the girls?" Hootchinoo Bill shouted, with affected geniality.

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

"Where's Bidwell and Barlow?"

"Gone."

"And Sweetwater Charley?"

"Gone."

"And his sister?"

"Gone too."

"Your daughter Sally, then, and her little kid?"

"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 you've had the plague?"

"Why, ain't you heerd?"  The old man chuckled quietly.  "They-all's gone
to Dawson."

"What-like is that?" Bill demanded.  "A creek? or a bar? or a place?"

"Ain't never heered of Dawson, eh?"  The old man chuckled exasperatingly.
"Why, Dawson's a town, a city, bigger'n Forty Mile.  Yes, sir, bigger'n
Forty Mile."

"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 has.  Now just whereabouts is this Dawson-place you was a-mentionin'?"

"On the big flat jest below the mouth of Klondike," ol' Jim answered.
"But where has you-all ben this summer?"

"Never you mind where we-all's ben," was Kink Mitchell's testy reply.  "We-
all'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, Bill?"

"Right you are," said Bill.  "But speakin' of this Dawson-place 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."

"Who struck it?"

"Carmack."

At mention of the discoverer's name the partners stared at each other
disgustedly.  Then they winked with great solemnity.

"Siwash George," sniffed Hootchinoo Bill.

"That squaw-man," sneered Kink Mitchell.

"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 brother-in-law of his,--lemme see, Skookum Jim, eh?--s'pose
he's in on it?"

The old bar-keeper nodded.  "Sure, an' what's more, all Forty Mile,
exceptin' me an' a few cripples."

"And drunks," added Kink Mitchell.

"No-sir-ee!" the old man shouted emphatically.

"I bet you the drinks Honkins ain't in on it!" Hootchinoo Bill cried with
certitude.

Ol' Jim's face lighted up.  "I takes you, Bill, an' you loses."

"However did that ol' soak budge out of Forty Mile?" Mitchell demanded.

"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 you-alls 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 to keep tab on the Monte Carlo.  I'm goin'.'

"'Where's Barlow?' sez I.  'Gone,' sez he, 'an' I'm a-followin' 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, an' these is the first drinks I've passed out in three days."

The partners looked at each other.

"Gosh darn my buttoms!" said Hootchinoo Bill.  "Seems likes you and me,
Kink, is the kind of folks always caught out with forks when it rains
soup."

"Wouldn't it take the saleratus out your dough, now?" said Kink Mitchell.
"A stampede of tin-horns, drunks, an' loafers."

"An' squaw-men," added Bill.  "Not a genooine miner in the whole
caboodle."

"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 budge
for any Carmack strike.  I've got to see the colour of the dust first."

"Same here," Mitchell agreed.  "Let's have another drink."

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 into the sun.

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 anger and disgust.

"Gosh darn Dawson, say I!" he cried.

"Same here," said Kink Mitchell, with a brightening face.  "One'd think
something was doin' up there, 'stead of bein' a mere stampede of
greenhorns an' tinhorns."

But a boat came into view from down-stream.  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 of them by a hundred and seventy
miles.  But gee! they ain't losin' any time!"

"We'll just sit here quiet-like 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 half-hour 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
embarrassment.  Finally, however, their eyes met and neither looked away.

Kink opened his mouth to speak, but words failed him and his mouth
remained open while he continued to gaze at his partner.

"Just what I was thinken', Kink," said Bill.

They grinned sheepishly at each other, and by tacit consent started to
walk away.  Their pace quickened, and by the time they arrived at their
cabin they were on the run.

"Can't lose no time with all that multitude a-rushin' by," Kink
spluttered, as he jabbed the sour-dough can into the beanpot with one
hand and with the other gathered in the frying-pan and coffee-pot.

"Should say not," gasped Bill, his head and shoulders buried in a clothes-
sack wherein were stored winter socks and underwear.  "I say, Kink, don't
forget the saleratus on the corner shelf back of the stove."

Half-an-hour 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:-

"Well, so-long and good luck!  And don't forget to blaze a stake or two
for me!"

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
tender-feet 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 glancing swiftly back along the way they
had come.

Three men emerged from where the trail broke through the trees.  Two
followed close at their heels, and then a man and a woman shot into view.

"Come on, you Kink!  Hit her up!  Hit her up!"

Bill quickened his pace.  Mitchell glanced back in more leisurely
fashion.

"I declare if they ain't lopin'!"

"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, his eyes bloodshot and glazed, for all
the world like a dying man.

"_Chechaquo_!" Kink Mitchell grunted, and it was the grunt of the old
"sour dough" for the green-horn, for the man who outfitted with "self-
risin'" flour and used baking-powder in his biscuits.

The partners, true to the old-timer custom, had intended to stake down-
stream 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, and they passed scores of exhausted
men that had fallen by the wayside.

At Discovery little was to be learned of the upper creek.  Cormack's
Indian brother-in-law, 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 corner-
stakes 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 Discovery.

"Try that pup," Carmack suggested next morning.

"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 squaw-man, and, instead, spent the day on Adam's Creek,
another and more likely-looking tributary of Bonanza.  But it was the old
story over again--staked to the sky-line.

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 everything, and insulted every _chechaquo_ they met along the way.

At No. 23 the stakes ceased.  The remainder of the creek was open for
location.

"Moose pasture," sneered Kink Mitchell.

But Bill gravely paced off five hundred feet up the creek and blazed the
corner-stakes.  He had picked up the bottom of a candle-box, and on the
smooth side he wrote the notice for his centre-stake:-

   THIS MOOSE PASTURE IS RESERVED FOR THE
   SWEDES AND CHECHAQUOS.
   --BILL RADER.

Kink read it over with approval, saying:-

"As them's my sentiments, I reckon I might as well subscribe."

So the name of Charles Mitchell was added to the notice; and many an old
sour dough's face relaxed that day at sight of the handiwork of a kindred
spirit.

"How's the pup?" Carmack inquired when they strolled back into camp.

"To hell with pups!" was Hootchinoo Bill's reply.  "Me and Kink's goin' a-
lookin' for Too Much Gold when we get rested up."

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 sluice-boxes.  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, a Swede.

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 willy-nilly
across the land.  He was tall and lanky.  His arms were long, like
prehistoric man's, and his hands were like soup-plates, twisted and
gnarled, and big-knuckled 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 Carlo--a 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 "down-weight" 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
over-plentifully supplied for the quest after Too Much Gold.

"Flour's worth a dollar a pound," he answered.  "How like do you
calculate to get your finger on it?"

"Trade 'm a half-interest in that claim of ourn," Kink answered.

"What claim?" Bill was surprised.  Then he remembered the reservation he
had staked off for the Swedes, and said, "Oh!"

"I wouldn't be so clost about it, though," he added.  "Give 'm the whole
thing while you're about it, in a right free-handed way."

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 can make him a present of the whole shebang."

"If somebody ain't disregarded our notice," Bill objected, though he was
plainly pleased at the prospect of exchanging the claim for a sack of
flour.

"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 just got in with cramps in his legs."

It was then, and for the first time, that they heard the slow and groping
utterance of Ans Handerson.

"Ay like the looks," he was saying to the bar-keeper.  "Ay tank Ay gat a
claim."

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 hard-headed 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 whisky he slid so easily
down his throat.

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
might your name be?"

This learned, his hand descended resoundingly on Kink's back, and Kink
simulated clumsy self-consciousness 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 healthy-looking
sack.  "Not less 'n eight hundred in it," calculated the lynx-eyed 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 tent.

"Here's my sack, Bidwell," Kink said, with the intimacy and surety of one
old-timer 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 old-timer'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 droop
and his tongue gave promise of loosening.

Bill grew affectionate, then confidential.  He told his troubles and hard
luck to the bar-keeper 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 half-interest in good ground just
because they were short of grub.  Even Kink listened and believed.

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 whispers over the price they should set.

"Two hundred and--hic!--fifty," Bill finally announced, "but we reckon as
we won't sell."

"Which is monstrous wise if I might chip in my little say," seconded
Bidwell.

"Yes, indeedy," added Kink.  "We ain't in no charity business
a-disgorgin' free an' generous to Swedes an' white men."

"Ay tank we haf another drink," hiccoughed Ans Handerson, craftily
changing the subject against a more propitious time.

And thereafter, to bring about that propitious time, his own sack began
to see-saw 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--

"They ban all right, them men, you tank so?"

"Sure," Bidwell answered heartily.  "Known 'em for years.  Old sour
doughs.  When they sell a claim, they sell a claim.  They ain't no air-
dealers."

"Ay tank Ay buy," Ans Handerson announced, tottering back to the two men.

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 of abuse and insult.

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 half-interest 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 ELDORADO.

Ten minutes later Hootchinoo Bill and Kink Mitchell were roused from
their blankets by a wild-eyed Swede that strove to force upon them an ink-
scrawled and very blotty piece of paper.

"Ay tank Ay take my money back," he gibbered.  "Ay tank Ay take my money
back."

Tears were in his eyes and throat.  They ran down his cheeks as he knelt
before them and pleaded and implored.  But Bill and Kink did not laugh.
They might have been harder hearted.

"First time I ever hear a man squeal over a minin' deal," Bill said.  "An'
I make free to say 'tis too onusual for me to savvy."

"Same here," Kink Mitchell remarked.  "Minin' deals is like
horse-tradin'."

They were honest in their wonderment.  They could not conceive of
themselves raising a wail over a business transaction, so they could not
understand it in another man.

"The poor, ornery _chechaquo_," murmured Hootchinoo Bill, as they watched
the sorrowing Swede disappear up the trail.

"But this ain't Too Much Gold," Kink Mitchell said cheerfully.

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 snow-
storm 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 stove and washing the pan of gravel in a tub of water.

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 yellow, like butter in a churn, showed across the bottom.

Hootchinoo Bill swallowed.  Never in his life had he dreamed of so rich a
test-pan.

"Kind of thick, my friend," he said huskily.  "How much might you reckon
that-all to be?"

Ans Handerson did not look up as he replied, "Ay tank fafty ounces."

"You must be scrumptious rich, then, eh?"

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."

"Gosh!" said Hootchinoo Bill, and he said it reverently.

"Yes, Bill, gosh!" said Kink Mitchell; and they went out softly and
closed the door.




THE ONE THOUSAND DOZEN


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 iridescent-hued, 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 last egg was
disposed of and the last dust had rippled into his sack.

"You see, Alma,"--he figured it over with his wife, the cosy dining-room
submerged in a sea of maps, government surveys, guide-books, and Alaskan
itineraries,--"you see, expenses don't really begin till you make
Dyea--fifty 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 dollars--call 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 boat--two hundred and fifty all told,"
she summed up swiftly.

"And a hundred for my clothes and personal outfit," he went on happily;
"that leaves a margin of five hundred for emergencies.  And what possible
emergencies can arise?"

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
harum-scarum, the ne'er-do-well,--had not he come down out of that weird
North country with a hundred thousand in yellow dust, to say nothing of a
half-ownership in the hole from which it came?

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
half--fifteen 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 anxious-eyed
emissaries, and commission houses and dairy associations were startled by
a sudden demand for eggs running not more than twenty ounces to the
dozen.

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
second-class 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 twenty-eight-mile portage, and while he
caught his breath and swallowed, the price went up to forty-three.
Fifteen husky Indians put the straps on his packs at forty-five, but took
them off at an offer of forty-seven 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 country by way of Chilkoot.

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