Lost Face

“It is the judgment of this court that you vamose the camp . . . in the customary way, sir, in the customary way.”

Judge Marcus O’Brien was absent-minded, and Mucluc Charley nudged him in the ribs.  Marcus O’Brien cleared his throat and went on—

“Weighing the gravity of the offence, sir, and the extenuating circumstances, it is the opinion of this court, and its verdict, that you be outfitted with three days’ grub.  That will do, I think.”

Arizona Jack cast a bleak glance out over the Yukon.  It was a swollen, chocolate flood, running a mile wide and nobody knew how deep.  The earth-bank on which he stood was ordinarily a dozen feet above the water, but the river was now growling at the top of the bank, devouring, instant by instant, tiny portions of the top-standing soil.  These portions went into the gaping mouths of the endless army of brown swirls and vanished away.  Several inches more, and Red Cow would be flooded.

“It won’t do,” Arizona Jack said bitterly.  “Three days’ grub ain’t enough.”

“There was Manchester,” Marcus O’Brien replied gravely.  “He didn’t get any grub.”

“And they found his remains grounded on the Lower River an’ half eaten by huskies,” was Arizona Jack’s retort.  “And his killin’ was without provocation.  Joe Deeves never did nothin’, never warbled once, an’ jes’ because his stomach was out of order, Manchester ups an’ plugs him.  You ain’t givin’ me a square deal, O’Brien, I tell you that straight.  Give me a week’s grub, and I play even to win out.  Three days’ grub, an’ I cash in.”

“What for did you kill Ferguson?” O’Brien demanded.  “I haven’t any patience for these unprovoked killings.  And they’ve got to stop.  Red Cow’s none so populous.  It’s a good camp, and there never used to be any killings.  Now they’re epidemic.  I’m sorry for you, Jack, but you’ve got to be made an example of.  Ferguson didn’t provoke enough for a killing.”

“Provoke!” Arizona Jack snorted.  “I tell you, O’Brien, you don’t savve.  You ain’t got no artistic sensibilities.  What for did I kill Ferguson?  What for did Ferguson sing ‘Then I wisht I was a little bird’?  That’s what I want to know.  Answer me that.  What for did he sing ‘little bird, little bird’?  One little bird was enough.  I could a-stood one little bird.  But no, he must sing two little birds.  I gave ’m a chanst.  I went to him almighty polite and requested him kindly to discard one little bird.  I pleaded with him.  There was witnesses that testified to that.

“An’ Ferguson was no jay-throated songster,” some one spoke up from the crowd.

O’Brien betrayed indecision.

“Ain’t a man got a right to his artistic feelin’s?” Arizona Jack demanded.  “I gave Ferguson warnin’.  It was violatin’ my own nature to go on listening to his little birds.  Why, there’s music sharps that fine-strung an’ keyed-up they’d kill for heaps less’n I did.  I’m willin’ to pay for havin’ artistic feelin’s.  I can take my medicine an’ lick the spoon, but three days’ grub is drawin’ it a shade fine, that’s all, an’ I hereby register my kick.  Go on with the funeral.”

O’Brien was still wavering.  He glanced inquiringly at Mucluc Charley.

“I should say, Judge, that three days’ grub was a mite severe,” the latter suggested; “but you’re runnin’ the show.  When we elected you judge of this here trial court, we agreed to abide by your decisions, an’ we’ve done it, too, b’gosh, an’ we’re goin’ to keep on doin’ it.”

“Mebbe I’ve been a trifle harsh, Jack,” O’Brien said apologetically—“I’m that worked up over those killings; an’ I’m willing to make it a week’s grub.”  He cleared his throat magisterially and looked briskly about him.  “And now we might as well get along and finish up the business.  The boat’s ready.  You go and get the grub, Leclaire.  We’ll settle for it afterward.”

Arizona Jack looked grateful, and, muttering something about “damned little birds,” stepped aboard the open boat that rubbed restlessly against the bank.  It was a large skiff, built of rough pine planks that had been sawed by hand from the standing timber of Lake Linderman, a few hundred miles above, at the foot of Chilcoot.  In the boat were a pair of oars and Arizona Jack’s blankets.  Leclaire brought the grub, tied up in a flour-sack, and put it on board.  As he did so, he whispered—“I gave you good measure, Jack.  You done it with provocation.”

“Cast her off!” Arizona Jack cried.

Somebody untied the painter and threw it in.  The current gripped the boat and whirled it away.  The murderer did not bother with the oars, contenting himself with sitting in the stern-sheets and rolling a cigarette.  Completing it, he struck a match and lighted up.  Those that watched on the bank could see the tiny puffs of smoke.  They remained on the bank till the boat swung out of sight around the bend half a mile below.  Justice had been done.

The denizens of Red Cow imposed the law and executed sentences without the delays that mark the softness of civilization.  There was no law on the Yukon save what they made for themselves.  They were compelled to make it for themselves.  It was in an early day that Red Cow flourished on the Yukon—1887—and the Klondike and its populous stampedes lay in the unguessed future.  The men of Red Cow did not even know whether their camp was situated in Alaska or in the North-west Territory, whether they drew breath under the stars and stripes or under the British flag.  No surveyor had ever happened along to give them their latitude and longitude.  Red Cow was situated somewhere along the Yukon, and that was sufficient for them.  So far as flags were concerned, they were beyond all jurisdiction.  So far as the law was concerned, they were in No-Man’s land.

They made their own law, and it was very simple.  The Yukon executed their decrees.  Some two thousand miles below Red Cow the Yukon flowed into Bering Sea through a delta a hundred miles wide.  Every mile of those two thousand miles was savage wilderness.  It was true, where the Porcupine flowed into the Yukon inside the Arctic Circle there was a Hudson Bay Company trading post.  But that was many hundreds of miles away.  Also, it was rumoured that many hundreds of miles farther on there were missions.  This last, however, was merely rumour; the men of Red Cow had never been there.  They had entered the lone land by way of Chilcoot and the head-waters of the Yukon.

The men of Red Cow ignored all minor offences.  To be drunk and disorderly and to use vulgar language were looked upon as natural and inalienable rights.  The men of Red Cow were individualists, and recognized as sacred but two things, property and life.  There were no women present to complicate their simple morality.  There were only three log-cabins in Red Cow—the majority of the population of forty men living in tents or brush shacks; and there was no jail in which to confine malefactors, while the inhabitants were too busy digging gold or seeking gold to take a day off and build a jail.  Besides, the paramount question of grub negatived such a procedure.  Wherefore, when a man violated the rights of property or life, he was thrown into an open boat and started down the Yukon.  The quantity of grub he received was proportioned to the gravity of the offence.  Thus, a common thief might get as much as two weeks’ grub; an uncommon thief might get no more than half of that.  A murderer got no grub at all.  A man found guilty of manslaughter would receive grub for from three days to a week.  And Marcus O’Brien had been elected judge, and it was he who apportioned the grub.  A man who broke the law took his chances.  The Yukon swept him away, and he might or might not win to Bering Sea.  A few days’ grub gave him a fighting chance.  No grub meant practically capital punishment, though there was a slim chance, all depending on the season of the year.

Having disposed of Arizona Jack and watched him out of sight, the population turned from the bank and went to work on its claims—all except Curly Jim, who ran the one faro layout in all the Northland and who speculated in prospect-holes on the sides.  Two things happened that day that were momentous.  In the late morning Marcus O’Brien struck it.  He washed out a dollar, a dollar and a half, and two dollars, from three successive pans.  He had found the streak.  Curly Jim looked into the hole, washed a few pans himself, and offered O’Brien ten thousand dollars for all rights—five thousand in dust, and, in lieu of the other five thousand, a half interest in his faro layout.  O’Brien refused the offer.  He was there to make money out of the earth, he declared with heat, and not out of his fellow-men.  And anyway, he didn’t like faro.  Besides, he appraised his strike at a whole lot more than ten thousand.

The second event of moment occurred in the afternoon, when Siskiyou Pearly ran his boat into the bank and tied up.  He was fresh from the Outside, and had in his possession a four-months-old newspaper.  Furthermore, he had half a dozen barrels of whisky, all consigned to Curly Jim.  The men of Red Cow quit work.  They sampled the whisky—at a dollar a drink, weighed out on Curly’s scales; and they discussed the news.  And all would have been well, had not Curly Jim conceived a nefarious scheme, which was, namely, first to get Marcus O’Brien drunk, and next, to buy his mine from him.

The first half of the scheme worked beautifully.  It began in the early evening, and by nine o’clock O’Brien had reached the singing stage.  He clung with one arm around Curly Jim’s neck, and even essayed the late lamented Ferguson’s song about the little birds.  He considered he was quite safe in this, what of the fact that the only man in camp with artistic feelings was even then speeding down the Yukon on the breast of a five-mile current.

But the second half of the scheme failed to connect.  No matter how much whisky was poured down his neck, O’Brien could not be brought to realize that it was his bounden and friendly duty to sell his claim.  He hesitated, it is true, and trembled now and again on the verge of giving in.  Inside his muddled head, however, he was chuckling to himself.  He was up to Curly Jim’s game, and liked the hands that were being dealt him.  The whisky was good.  It came out of one special barrel, and was about a dozen times better than that in the other five barrels.

Siskiyou Pearly was dispensing drinks in the bar-room to the remainder of the population of Red Cow, while O’Brien and Curly had out their business orgy in the kitchen.  But there was nothing small about O’Brien.  He went into the bar-room and returned with Mucluc Charley and Percy Leclaire.

“Business ’sociates of mine, business ’sociates,” he announced, with a broad wink to them and a guileless grin to Curly.  “Always trust their judgment, always trust ’em.  They’re all right.  Give ’em some fire-water, Curly, an’ le’s talk it over.”

This was ringing in; but Curly Jim, making a swift revaluation of the claim, and remembering that the last pan he washed had turned out seven dollars, decided that it was worth the extra whisky, even if it was selling in the other room at a dollar a drink.

“I’m not likely to consider,” O’Brien was hiccoughing to his two friends in the course of explaining to them the question at issue.  “Who?  Me?—sell for ten thousand dollars!  No indeed.  I’ll dig the gold myself, an’ then I’m goin’ down to God’s country—Southern California—that’s the place for me to end my declinin’ days—an’ then I’ll start . . . as I said before, then I’ll start . . . what did I say I was goin’ to start?”

“Ostrich farm,” Mucluc Charley volunteered.

“Sure, just what I’m goin’ to start.”  O’Brien abruptly steadied himself and looked with awe at Mucluc Charley.  “How did you know?  Never said so.  Jes’ thought I said so.  You’re a min’ reader, Charley.  Le’s have another.”

Curly Jim filled the glasses and had the pleasure of seeing four dollars’ worth of whisky disappear, one dollar’s worth of which he punished himself—O’Brien insisted that he should drink as frequently as his guests.

“Better take the money now,” Leclaire argued.  “Take you two years to dig it out the hole, an’ all that time you might be hatchin’ teeny little baby ostriches an’ pulling feathers out the big ones.”

O’Brien considered the proposition and nodded approval.  Curly Jim looked gratefully at Leclaire and refilled the glasses.

“Hold on there!” spluttered Mucluc Charley, whose tongue was beginning to wag loosely and trip over itself.  “As your father confessor—there I go—as your brother—O hell!”  He paused and collected himself for another start.  “As your frien’—business frien’, I should say, I would suggest, rather—I would take the liberty, as it was, to mention—I mean, suggest, that there may be more ostriches . . . O hell!”  He downed another glass, and went on more carefully.  “What I’m drivin’ at is . . . what am I drivin’ at?”  He smote the side of his head sharply half a dozen times with the heel of his palm to shake up his ideas.  “I got it!” he cried jubilantly.  “Supposen there’s slathers more’n ten thousand dollars in that hole!”

O’Brien, who apparently was all ready to close the bargain, switched about.

“Great!” he cried.  “Splen’d idea.  Never thought of it all by myself.”  He took Mucluc Charley warmly by the hand.  “Good frien’!  Good ’s’ciate!”  He turned belligerently on Curly Jim.  “Maybe hundred thousand dollars in that hole.  You wouldn’t rob your old frien’, would you, Curly?  Course you wouldn’t.  I know you—better’n yourself, better’n yourself.  Le’s have another: We’re good frien’s, all of us, I say, all of us.”

And so it went, and so went the whisky, and so went Curly Jim’s hopes up and down.  Now Leclaire argued in favour of immediate sale, and almost won the reluctant O’Brien over, only to lose him to the more brilliant counter-argument of Mucluc Charley.  And again, it was Mucluc Charley who presented convincing reasons for the sale and Percy Leclaire who held stubbornly back.  A little later it was O’Brien himself who insisted on selling, while both friends, with tears and curses, strove to dissuade him.  The more whiskey they downed, the more fertile of imagination they became.  For one sober pro or con they found a score of drunken ones; and they convinced one another so readily that they were perpetually changing sides in the argument.

The time came when both Mucluc Charley and Leclaire were firmly set upon the sale, and they gleefully obliterated O’Brien’s objections as fast as he entered them.  O’Brien grew desperate.  He exhausted his last argument and sat speechless.  He looked pleadingly at the friends who had deserted him.  He kicked Mucluc Charley’s shins under the table, but that graceless hero immediately unfolded a new and most logical reason for the sale.  Curly Jim got pen and ink and paper and wrote out the bill of sale.  O’Brien sat with pen poised in hand.

“Le’s have one more,” he pleaded.  “One more before I sign away a hundred thousan’ dollars.”

Curly Jim filled the glasses triumphantly.  O’Brien downed his drink and bent forward with wobbling pen to affix his signature.  Before he had made more than a blot, he suddenly started up, impelled by the impact of an idea colliding with his consciousness.  He stood upon his feet and swayed back and forth before them, reflecting in his startled eyes the thought process that was taking place behind.  Then he reached his conclusion.  A benevolent radiance suffused his countenance.  He turned to the faro dealer, took his hand, and spoke solemnly.

“Curly, you’re my frien’.  There’s my han’.  Shake.  Ol’ man, I won’t do it.  Won’t sell.  Won’t rob a frien’.  No son-of-a-gun will ever have chance to say Marcus O’Brien robbed frien’ cause frien’ was drunk.  You’re drunk, Curly, an’ I won’t rob you.  Jes’ had thought—never thought it before—don’t know what the matter ’ith me, but never thought it before.  Suppose, jes’ suppose, Curly, my ol’ frien’, jes’ suppose there ain’t ten thousan’ in whole damn claim.  You’d be robbed.  No, sir; won’t do it.  Marcus O’Brien makes money out of the groun’, not out of his frien’s.”

Percy Leclaire and Mucluc Charley drowned the faro dealer’s objections in applause for so noble a sentiment.  They fell upon O’Brien from either side, their arms lovingly about his neck, their mouths so full of words they could not hear Curly’s offer to insert a clause in the document to the effect that if there weren’t ten thousand in the claim he would be given back the difference between yield and purchase price.  The longer they talked the more maudlin and the more noble the discussion became.  All sordid motives were banished.  They were a trio of philanthropists striving to save Curly Jim from himself and his own philanthropy.  They insisted that he was a philanthropist.  They refused to accept for a moment that there could be found one ignoble thought in all the world.  They crawled and climbed and scrambled over high ethical plateaux and ranges, or drowned themselves in metaphysical seas of sentimentality.

Curly Jim sweated and fumed and poured out the whisky.  He found himself with a score of arguments on his hands, not one of which had anything to do with the gold-mine he wanted to buy.  The longer they talked the farther away they got from that gold-mine, and at two in the morning Curly Jim acknowledged himself beaten.  One by one he led his helpless guests across the kitchen floor and thrust them outside.  O’Brien came last, and the three, with arms locked for mutual aid, titubated gravely on the stoop.

“Good business man, Curly,” O’Brien was saying.  “Must say like your style—fine an’ generous, free-handed hospital . . . hospital . . . hospitality.  Credit to you.  Nothin’ base ’n graspin’ in your make-up.  As I was sayin’—”

But just then the faro dealer slammed the door.

The three laughed happily on the stoop.  They laughed for a long time.  Then Mucluc Charley essayed speech.

“Funny—laughed so hard—ain’t what I want to say.  My idea is . . . what wash it?  Oh, got it!  Funny how ideas slip.  Elusive idea—chasin’ elusive idea—great sport.  Ever chase rabbits, Percy, my frien’?  I had dog—great rabbit dog.  Whash ’is name?  Don’t know name—never had no name—forget name—elusive name—chasin’ elusive name—no, idea—elusive idea, but got it—what I want to say was—O hell!”

Thereafter there was silence for a long time.  O’Brien slipped from their arms to a sitting posture on the stoop, where he slept gently.  Mucluc Charley chased the elusive idea through all the nooks and crannies of his drowning consciousness.  Leclaire hung fascinated upon the delayed utterance.  Suddenly the other’s hand smote him on the back.

“Got it!” Mucluc Charley cried in stentorian tones.

The shock of the jolt broke the continuity of Leclaire’s mental process.

“How much to the pan?” he demanded.

“Pan nothin’!” Mucluc Charley was angry.  “Idea—got it—got leg-hold—ran it down.”

Leclaire’s face took on a rapt, admiring expression, and again he hung upon the other’s lips.

“ . . . O hell!” said Mucluc Charley.

At this moment the kitchen door opened for an instant, and Curly Jim shouted, “Go home!”

“Funny,” said Mucluc Charley.  “Shame idea—very shame as mine.  Le’s go home.”

They gathered O’Brien up between them and started.  Mucluc Charley began aloud the pursuit of another idea.  Leclaire followed the pursuit with enthusiasm.  But O’Brien did not follow it.  He neither heard, nor saw, nor knew anything.  He was a mere wobbling automaton, supported affectionately and precariously by his two business associates.

They took the path down by the bank of the Yukon.  Home did not lie that way, but the elusive idea did.  Mucluc Charley giggled over the idea that he could not catch for the edification of Leclaire.  They came to where Siskiyou Pearly’s boat lay moored to the bank.  The rope with which it was tied ran across the path to a pine stump.  They tripped over it and went down, O’Brien underneath.  A faint flash of consciousness lighted his brain.  He felt the impact of bodies upon his and struck out madly for a moment with his fists.  Then he went to sleep again.  His gentle snore arose on the air, and Mucluc Charley began to giggle.

“New idea,” he volunteered, “brand new idea.  Jes’ caught it—no trouble at all.  Came right up an’ I patted it on the head.  It’s mine.  ’Brien’s drunk—beashly drunk.  Shame—damn shame—learn’m lesshon.  Trash Pearly’s boat.  Put ’Brien in Pearly’s boat.  Casht off—let her go down Yukon.  ’Brien wake up in mornin’.  Current too strong—can’t row boat ’gainst current—mush walk back.  Come back madder ’n hatter.  You an’ me headin’ for tall timber.  Learn ’m lesshon jes’ shame, learn ’m lesshon.”

Siskiyou Pearly’s boat was empty, save for a pair of oars.  Its gunwale rubbed against the bank alongside of O’Brien.  They rolled him over into it.  Mucluc Charley cast off the painter, and Leclaire shoved the boat out into the current.  Then, exhausted by their labours, they lay down on the bank and slept.

Next morning all Red Cow knew of the joke that had been played on Marcus O’Brien.  There were some tall bets as to what would happen to the two perpetrators when the victim arrived back.  In the afternoon a lookout was set, so that they would know when he was sighted.  Everybody wanted to see him come in.  But he didn’t come, though they sat up till midnight.  Nor did he come next day, nor the next.  Red Cow never saw Marcus O’Brien again, and though many conjectures were entertained, no certain clue was ever gained to dispel the mystery of his passing.

* * * * *

Only Marcus O’Brien knew, and he never came back to tell.  He awoke next morning in torment.  His stomach had been calcined by the inordinate quantity of whisky he had drunk, and was a dry and raging furnace.  His head ached all over, inside and out; and, worse than that, was the pain in his face.  For six hours countless thousands of mosquitoes had fed upon him, and their ungrateful poison had swollen his face tremendously.  It was only by a severe exertion of will that he was able to open narrow slits in his face through which he could peer.  He happened to move his hands, and they hurt.  He squinted at them, but failed to recognize them, so puffed were they by the mosquito virus.  He was lost, or rather, his identity was lost to him.  There was nothing familiar about him, which, by association of ideas, would cause to rise in his consciousness the continuity of his existence.  He was divorced utterly from his past, for there was nothing about him to resurrect in his consciousness a memory of that past.  Besides, he was so sick and miserable that he lacked energy and inclination to seek after who and what he was.

It was not until he discovered a crook in a little finger, caused by an unset breakage of years before, that he knew himself to be Marcus O’Brien.  On the instant his past rushed into his consciousness.  When he discovered a blood-blister under a thumb-nail, which he had received the previous week, his self-identification became doubly sure, and he knew that those unfamiliar hands belonged to Marcus O’Brien, or, just as much to the point, that Marcus O’Brien belonged to the hands.  His first thought was that he was ill—that he had had river fever.  It hurt him so much to open his eyes that he kept them closed.  A small floating branch struck the boat a sharp rap.  He thought it was some one knocking on the cabin door, and said, “Come in.”  He waited for a while, and then said testily, “Stay out, then, damn you.”  But just the same he wished they would come in and tell him about his illness.

But as he lay there, the past night began to reconstruct itself in his brain.  He hadn’t been sick at all, was his thought; he had merely been drunk, and it was time for him to get up and go to work.  Work suggested his mine, and he remembered that he had refused ten thousand dollars for it.  He sat up abruptly and squeezed open his eyes.  He saw himself in a boat, floating on the swollen brown flood of the Yukon.  The spruce-covered shores and islands were unfamiliar.  He was stunned for a time.  He couldn’t make it out.  He could remember the last night’s orgy, but there was no connection between that and his present situation.

He closed his eyes and held his aching head in his hands.  What had happened?  Slowly the dreadful thought arose in his mind.  He fought against it, strove to drive it away, but it persisted: he had killed somebody.  That alone could explain why he was in an open boat drifting down the Yukon.  The law of Red Cow that he had so long administered had now been administered to him.  He had killed some one and been set adrift.  But whom?  He racked his aching brain for the answer, but all that came was a vague memory of bodies falling upon him and of striking out at them.  Who were they?  Maybe he had killed more than one.  He reached to his belt.  The knife was missing from its sheath.  He had done it with that undoubtedly.  But there must have been some reason for the killing.  He opened his eyes and in a panic began to search about the boat.  There was no grub, not an ounce of grub.  He sat down with a groan.  He had killed without provocation.  The extreme rigour of the law had been visited upon him.

For half an hour he remained motionless, holding his aching head and trying to think.  Then he cooled his stomach with a drink of water from overside and felt better.  He stood up, and alone on the wide-stretching Yukon, with naught but the primeval wilderness to hear, he cursed strong drink.  After that he tied up to a huge floating pine that was deeper sunk in the current than the boat and that consequently drifted faster.  He washed his face and hands, sat down in the stern-sheets, and did some more thinking.  It was late in June.  It was two thousand miles to Bering Sea.  The boat was averaging five miles an hour.  There was no darkness in such high latitudes at that time of the year, and he could run the river every hour of the twenty-four.  This would mean, daily, a hundred and twenty miles.  Strike out the twenty for accidents, and there remained a hundred miles a day.  In twenty days he would reach Bering Sea.  And this would involve no expenditure of energy; the river did the work.  He could lie down in the bottom of the boat and husband his strength.

For two days he ate nothing.  Then, drifting into the Yukon Flats, he went ashore on the low-lying islands and gathered the eggs of wild geese and ducks.  He had no matches, and ate the eggs raw.  They were strong, but they kept him going.  When he crossed the Arctic Circle, he found the Hudson Bay Company’s post.  The brigade had not yet arrived from the Mackenzie, and the post was completely out of grub.  He was offered wild-duck eggs, but he informed them that he had a bushel of the same on the boat.  He was also offered a drink of whisky, which he refused with an exhibition of violent repugnance.  He got matches, however, and after that he cooked his eggs.  Toward the mouth of the river head-winds delayed him, and he was twenty-four days on the egg diet.  Unfortunately, while asleep he had drifted by both the missions of St. Paul and Holy Cross.  And he could sincerely say, as he afterward did, that talk about missions on the Yukon was all humbug.  There weren’t any missions, and he was the man to know.

Once on Bering Sea he exchanged the egg diet for seal diet, and he never could make up his mind which he liked least.  In the fall of the year he was rescued by a United States revenue cutter, and the following winter he made quite a hit in San Francisco as a temperance lecturer.  In this field he found his vocation.  “Avoid the bottle” is his slogan and battle-cry.  He manages subtly to convey the impression that in his own life a great disaster was wrought by the bottle.  He has even mentioned the loss of a fortune that was caused by that hell-bait of the devil, but behind that incident his listeners feel the loom of some terrible and unguessed evil for which the bottle is responsible.  He has made a success in his vocation, and has grown grey and respected in the crusade against strong drink.  But on the Yukon the passing of Marcus O’Brien remains tradition.  It is a mystery that ranks at par with the disappearance of Sir John Franklin.

El-Soo had been a Mission girl.  Her mother had died when she was very small, and Sister Alberta had plucked El-Soo as a brand from the burning, one summer day, and carried her away to Holy Cross Mission and dedicated her to God.  El-Soo was a full-blooded Indian, yet she exceeded all the half-breed and quarter-breed girls.  Never had the good sisters dealt with a girl so adaptable and at the same time so spirited.

El-Soo was quick, and deft, and intelligent; but above all she was fire, the living flame of life, a blaze of personality that was compounded of will, sweetness, and daring.  Her father was a chief, and his blood ran in her veins.  Obedience, on the part of El-Soo, was a matter of terms and arrangement.  She had a passion for equity, and perhaps it was because of this that she excelled in mathematics.

But she excelled in other things.  She learned to read and write English as no girl had ever learned in the Mission.  She led the girls in singing, and into song she carried her sense of equity.  She was an artist, and the fire of her flowed toward creation.  Had she from birth enjoyed a more favourable environment, she would have made literature or music.

Instead, she was El-Soo, daughter of Klakee-Nah, a chief, and she lived in the Holy Cross Mission where were no artists, but only pure-souled Sisters who were interested in cleanliness and righteousness and the welfare of the spirit in the land of immortality that lay beyond the skies.

The years passed.  She was eight years old when she entered the Mission; she was sixteen, and the Sisters were corresponding with their superiors in the Order concerning the sending of El-Soo to the United States to complete her education, when a man of her own tribe arrived at Holy Cross and had talk with her.  El-Soo was somewhat appalled by him.  He was dirty.  He was a Caliban-like creature, primitively ugly, with a mop of hair that had never been combed.  He looked at her disapprovingly and refused to sit down.

“Thy brother is dead,” he said shortly.

El-Soo was not particularly shocked.  She remembered little of her brother.  “Thy father is an old man, and alone,” the messenger went on.  “His house is large and empty, and he would hear thy voice and look upon thee.”

Him she remembered—Klakee-Nah, the headman of the village, the friend of the missionaries and the traders, a large man thewed like a giant, with kindly eyes and masterful ways, and striding with a consciousness of crude royalty in his carriage.

“Tell him that I will come,” was El-Soo’s answer.

Much to the despair of the Sisters, the brand plucked from the burning went back to the burning.  All pleading with El-Soo was vain.  There was much argument, expostulation, and weeping.  Sister Alberta even revealed to her the project of sending her to the United States.  El-Soo stared wide-eyed into the golden vista thus opened up to her, and shook her head.  In her eyes persisted another vista.  It was the mighty curve of the Yukon at Tana-naw Station.  With the St. George Mission on one side, and the trading post on the other, and midway between the Indian village and a certain large log house where lived an old man tended upon by slaves.

All dwellers on the Yukon bank for twice a thousand miles knew the large log house, the old man and the tending slaves; and well did the Sisters know the house, its unending revelry, its feasting and its fun.  So there was weeping at Holy Cross when El-Soo departed.

There was a great cleaning up in the large house when El-Soo arrived.  Klakee-Nah, himself masterful, protested at this masterful conduct of his young daughter; but in the end, dreaming barbarically of magnificence, he went forth and borrowed a thousand dollars from old Porportuk, than whom there was no richer Indian on the Yukon.  Also, Klakee-Nah ran up a heavy bill at the trading post.  El-Soo re-created the large house.  She invested it with new splendour, while Klakee-Nah maintained its ancient traditions of hospitality and revelry.

All this was unusual for a Yukon Indian, but Klakee-Nah was an unusual Indian.  Not alone did he like to render inordinate hospitality, but, what of being a chief and of acquiring much money, he was able to do it.  In the primitive trading days he had been a power over his people, and he had dealt profitably with the white trading companies.  Later on, with Porportuk, he had made a gold-strike on the Koyokuk River.  Klakee-Nah was by training and nature an aristocrat.  Porportuk was bourgeois, and Porportuk bought him out of the gold-mine.  Porportuk was content to plod and accumulate.  Klakee-Nah went back to his large house and proceeded to spend.  Porportuk was known as the richest Indian in Alaska.  Klakee-Nah was known as the whitest.  Porportuk was a money-lender and a usurer.  Klakee-Nah was an anachronism—a mediæval ruin, a fighter and a feaster, happy with wine and song.

El-Soo adapted herself to the large house and its ways as readily as she had adapted herself to Holy Cross Mission and its ways.  She did not try to reform her father and direct his footsteps toward God.  It is true, she reproved him when he drank overmuch and profoundly, but that was for the sake of his health and the direction of his footsteps on solid earth.

The latchstring to the large house was always out.  What with the coming and the going, it was never still.  The rafters of the great living-room shook with the roar of wassail and of song.  At table sat men from all the world and chiefs from distant tribes—Englishmen and Colonials, lean Yankee traders and rotund officials of the great companies, cowboys from the Western ranges, sailors from the sea, hunters and dog-mushers of a score of nationalities.

El-Soo drew breath in a cosmopolitan atmosphere.  She could speak English as well as she could her native tongue, and she sang English songs and ballads.  The passing Indian ceremonials she knew, and the perishing traditions.  The tribal dress of the daughter of a chief she knew how to wear upon occasion.  But for the most part she dressed as white women dress.  Not for nothing was her needlework at the Mission and her innate artistry.  She carried her clothes like a white woman, and she made clothes that could be so carried.

In her way she was as unusual as her father, and the position she occupied was as unique as his.  She was the one Indian woman who was the social equal with the several white women at Tana-naw Station.  She was the one Indian woman to whom white men honourably made proposals of marriage.  And she was the one Indian woman whom no white man ever insulted.

For El-Soo was beautiful—not as white women are beautiful, not as Indian women are beautiful.  It was the flame of her, that did not depend upon feature, that was her beauty.  So far as mere line and feature went, she was the classic Indian type.  The black hair and the fine bronze were hers, and the black eyes, brilliant and bold, keen as sword-light, proud; and hers the delicate eagle nose with the thin, quivering nostrils, the high cheek-bones that were not broad apart, and the thin lips that were not too thin.  But over all and through all poured the flame of her—the unanalysable something that was fire and that was the soul of her, that lay mellow-warm or blazed in her eyes, that sprayed the cheeks of her, that distended the nostrils, that curled the lips, or, when the lip was in repose, that was still there in the lip, the lip palpitant with its presence.

And El-Soo had wit—rarely sharp to hurt, yet quick to search out forgivable weakness.  The laughter of her mind played like lambent flame over all about her, and from all about her arose answering laughter.  Yet she was never the centre of things.  This she would not permit.  The large house, and all of which it was significant, was her father’s; and through it, to the last, moved his heroic figure—host, master of the revels, and giver of the law.  It is true, as the strength oozed from him, that she caught up responsibilities from his failing hands.  But in appearance he still ruled, dozing, ofttimes at the board, a bacchanalian ruin, yet in all seeming the ruler of the feast.

And through the large house moved the figure of Porportuk, ominous, with shaking head, coldly disapproving, paying for it all.  Not that he really paid, for he compounded interest in weird ways, and year by year absorbed the properties of Klakee-Nah.  Porportuk once took it upon himself to chide El-Soo upon the wasteful way of life in the large house—it was when he had about absorbed the last of Klakee-Nah’s wealth—but he never ventured so to chide again.  El-Soo, like her father, was an aristocrat, as disdainful of money as he, and with an equal sense of honour as finely strung.

Porportuk continued grudgingly to advance money, and ever the money flowed in golden foam away.  Upon one thing El-Soo was resolved—her father should die as he had lived.  There should be for him no passing from high to low, no diminution of the revels, no lessening of the lavish hospitality.  When there was famine, as of old, the Indians came groaning to the large house and went away content.  When there was famine and no money, money was borrowed from Porportuk, and the Indians still went away content.  El-Soo might well have repeated, after the aristocrats of another time and place, that after her came the deluge.  In her case the deluge was old Porportuk.  With every advance of money, he looked upon her with a more possessive eye, and felt bourgeoning within him ancient fires.

But El-Soo had no eyes for him.  Nor had she eyes for the white men who wanted to marry her at the Mission with ring and priest and book.  For at Tana-naw Station was a young man, Akoon, of her own blood, and tribe, and village.  He was strong and beautiful to her eyes, a great hunter, and, in that he had wandered far and much, very poor; he had been to all the unknown wastes and places; he had journeyed to Sitka and to the United States; he had crossed the continent to Hudson Bay and back again, and as seal-hunter on a ship he had sailed to Siberia and for Japan.

When he returned from the gold-strike in Klondike he came, as was his wont, to the large house to make report to old Klakee-Nah of all the world that he had seen; and there he first saw El-Soo, three years back from the Mission.  Thereat, Akoon wandered no more.  He refused a wage of twenty dollars a day as pilot on the big steamboats.  He hunted some and fished some, but never far from Tana-naw Station, and he was at the large house often and long.  And El-Soo measured him against many men and found him good.  He sang songs to her, and was ardent and glowed until all Tana-naw Station knew he loved her.  And Porportuk but grinned and advanced more money for the upkeep of the large house.

Then came the death table of Klakee-Nah.

He sat at feast, with death in his throat, that he could not drown with wine.  And laughter and joke and song went around, and Akoon told a story that made the rafters echo.  There were no tears or sighs at that table.  It was no more than fit that Klakee-Nah should die as he had lived, and none knew this better than El-Soo, with her artist sympathy.  The old roystering crowd was there, and, as of old, three frost-bitten sailors were there, fresh from the long traverse from the Arctic, survivors of a ship’s company of seventy-four.  At Klakee-Nah’s back were four old men, all that were left him of the slaves of his youth.  With rheumy eyes they saw to his needs, with palsied hands filling his glass or striking him on the back between the shoulders when death stirred and he coughed and gasped.

It was a wild night, and as the hours passed and the fun laughed and roared along, death stirred more restlessly in Klakee-Nah’s throat.  Then it was that he sent for Porportuk.  And Porportuk came in from the outside frost to look with disapproving eyes upon the meat and wine on the table for which he had paid.  But as he looked down the length of flushed faces to the far end and saw the face of El-Soo, the light in his eyes flared up, and for a moment the disapproval vanished.

Place was made for him at Klakee-Nah’s side, and a glass placed before him.  Klakee-Nah, with his own hands, filled the glass with fervent spirits.  “Drink!” he cried.  “Is it not good?”

And Porportuk’s eyes watered as he nodded his head and smacked his lips.

“When, in your own house, have you had such drink?” Klakee-Nah demanded.

“I will not deny that the drink is good to this old throat of mine,” Porportuk made answer, and hesitated for the speech to complete the thought.

“But it costs overmuch,” Klakee-Nah roared, completing it for him.

Porportuk winced at the laughter that went down the table.  His eyes burned malevolently.  “We were boys together, of the same age,” he said.  “In your throat is death.  I am still alive and strong.”

An ominous murmur arose from the company.  Klakee-Nah coughed and strangled, and the old slaves smote him between the shoulders.  He emerged gasping, and waved his hand to still the threatening rumble.

“You have grudged the very fire in your house because the wood cost overmuch!” he cried.  “You have grudged life.  To live cost overmuch, and you have refused to pay the price.  Your life has been like a cabin where the fire is out and there are no blankets on the floor.”  He signalled to a slave to fill his glass, which he held aloft.  “But I have lived.  And I have been warm with life as you have never been warm.  It is true, you shall live long.  But the longest nights are the cold nights when a man shivers and lies awake.  My nights have been short, but I have slept warm.”

He drained the glass.  The shaking hand of a slave failed to catch it as it crashed to the floor.  Klakee-Nah sank back, panting, watching the upturned glasses at the lips of the drinkers, his own lips slightly smiling to the applause.  At a sign, two slaves attempted to help him sit upright again.  But they were weak, his frame was mighty, and the four old men tottered and shook as they helped him forward.

“But manner of life is neither here nor there,” he went on.  “We have other business, Porportuk, you and I, to-night.  Debts are mischances, and I am in mischance with you.  What of my debt, and how great is it?”

Porportuk searched in his pouch and brought forth a memorandum.  He sipped at his glass and began.  “There is the note of August, 1889, for three hundred dollars.  The interest has never been paid.  And the note of the next year for five hundred dollars.  This note was included in the note of two months later for a thousand dollars.  Then there is the note—”

“Never mind the many notes!” Klakee-Nah cried out impatiently.  “They make my head go around and all the things inside my head.  The whole!  The round whole!  How much is it?”

Porportuk referred to his memorandum.  “Fifteen thousand nine hundred and sixty-seven dollars and seventy-five cents,” he read with careful precision.

“Make it sixteen thousand, make it sixteen thousand,” Klakee-Nah said grandly.  “Odd numbers were ever a worry.  And now—and it is for this that I have sent for you—make me out a new note for sixteen thousand, which I shall sign.  I have no thought of the interest.  Make it as large as you will, and make it payable in the next world, when I shall meet you by the fire of the Great Father of all Indians.  Then the note will be paid.  This I promise you.  It is the word of Klakee-Nah.”

Porportuk looked perplexed, and loudly the laughter arose and shook the room.  Klakee-Nah raised his hands.  “Nay,” he cried.  “It is not a joke.  I but speak in fairness.  It was for this I sent for you, Porportuk.  Make out the note.”

“I have no dealings with the next world,” Porportuk made answer slowly.

“Have you no thought to meet me before the Great Father!” Klakee-Nah demanded.  Then he added, “I shall surely be there.”

“I have no dealings with the next world,” Porportuk repeated sourly.

The dying man regarded him with frank amazement.

“I know naught of the next world,” Porportuk explained.  “I do business in this world.”

Klakee-Nah’s face cleared.  “This comes of sleeping cold of nights,” he laughed.  He pondered for a space, then said, “It is in this world that you must be paid.  There remains to me this house.  Take it, and burn the debt in the candle there.”

“It is an old house and not worth the money,” Porportuk made answer.

“There are my mines on the Twisted Salmon.”

“They have never paid to work,” was the reply.

“There is my share in the steamer Koyokuk.  I am half owner.”

“She is at the bottom of the Yukon.”

Klakee-Nah started.  “True, I forgot.  It was last spring when the ice went out.”  He mused for a time while the glasses remained untasted, and all the company waited upon his utterance.

“Then it would seem I owe you a sum of money which I cannot pay . . . in this world?”  Porportuk nodded and glanced down the table.

“Then it would seem that you, Porportuk, are a poor business man,” Klakee-Nah said slyly.  And boldly Porportuk made answer, “No; there is security yet untouched.”

“What!” cried Klakee-Nah.  “Have I still property?  Name it, and it is yours, and the debt is no more.”

“There it is.”  Porportuk pointed at El-Soo.

Klakee-Nah could not understand.  He peered down the table, brushed his eyes, and peered again.

“Your daughter, El-Soo—her will I take and the debt be no more.  I will burn the debt there in the candle.”

Klakee-Nah’s great chest began to heave.  “Ho! ho!—a joke.  Ho! ho! ho!” he laughed Homerically.  “And with your cold bed and daughters old enough to be the mother of El-Soo!  Ho! ho! ho!”  He began to cough and strangle, and the old slaves smote him on the back.  “Ho! ho!” he began again, and went off into another paroxysm.

Porportuk waited patiently, sipping from his glass and studying the double row of faces down the board.  “It is no joke,” he said finally.  “My speech is well meant.”

Klakee-Nah sobered and looked at him, then reached for his glass, but could not touch it.  A slave passed it to him, and glass and liquor he flung into the face of Porportuk.

“Turn him out!” Klakee-Nah thundered to the waiting table that strained like a pack of hounds in leash.  “And roll him in the snow!”

As the mad riot swept past him and out of doors, he signalled to the slaves, and the four tottering old men supported him on his feet as he met the returning revellers, upright, glass in hand, pledging them a toast to the short night when a man sleeps warm.

It did not take long to settle the estate of Klakee-Nah.  Tommy, the little Englishman, clerk at the trading post, was called in by El-Soo to help.  There was nothing but debts, notes overdue, mortgaged properties, and properties mortgaged but worthless.  Notes and mortgages were held by Porportuk.  Tommy called him a robber many times as he pondered the compounding of the interest.

“Is it a debt, Tommy?” El-Soo asked.

“It is a robbery,” Tommy answered.

“Nevertheless, it is a debt,” she persisted.

The winter wore away, and the early spring, and still the claims of Porportuk remained unpaid.  He saw El-Soo often and explained to her at length, as he had explained to her father, the way the debt could be cancelled.  Also, he brought with him old medicine-men, who elaborated to her the everlasting damnation of her father if the debt were not paid.  One day, after such an elaboration, El-Soo made final announcement to Porportuk.

“I shall tell you two things,” she said.  “First I shall not be your wife.  Will you remember that?  Second, you shall be paid the last cent of the sixteen thousand dollars—”

“Fifteen thousand nine hundred and sixty-seven dollars and seventy-five cents,” Porportuk corrected.

“My father said sixteen thousand,” was her reply.  “You shall be paid.”

“How?”

“I know not how, but I shall find out how.  Now go, and bother me no more.  If you do”—she hesitated to find fitting penalty—“if you do, I shall have you rolled in the snow again as soon as the first snow flies.”

This was still in the early spring, and a little later El-Soo surprised the country.  Word went up and down the Yukon from Chilcoot to the Delta, and was carried from camp to camp to the farthermost camps, that in June, when the first salmon ran, El-Soo, daughter of Klakee-Nah, would sell herself at public auction to satisfy the claims of Porportuk.  Vain were the attempts to dissuade her.  The missionary at St. George wrestled with her, but she replied—

“Only the debts to God are settled in the next world.  The debts of men are of this world, and in this world are they settled.”

Akoon wrestled with her, but she replied, “I do love thee, Akoon; but honour is greater than love, and who am I that I should blacken my father?”  Sister Alberta journeyed all the way up from Holy Cross on the first steamer, and to no better end.

“My father wanders in the thick and endless forests,” said El-Soo.  “And there will he wander, with the lost souls crying, till the debt be paid.  Then, and not until then, may he go on to the house of the Great Father.”

“And you believe this?” Sister Alberta asked.

“I do not know,” El-Soo made answer.  “It was my father’s belief.”

Sister Alberta shrugged her shoulders incredulously.

“Who knows but that the things we believe come true?” El-Soo went on.  “Why not?  The next world to you may be heaven and harps . . . because you have believed heaven and harps; to my father the next world may be a large house where he will sit always at table feasting with God.”

“And you?” Sister Alberta asked.  “What is your next world?”

El-Soo hesitated but for a moment.  “I should like a little of both,” she said.  “I should like to see your face as well as the face of my father.”

The day of the auction came.  Tana-naw Station was populous.  As was their custom, the tribes had gathered to await the salmon-run, and in the meantime spent the time in dancing and frolicking, trading and gossiping.  Then there was the ordinary sprinkling of white adventurers, traders, and prospectors, and, in addition, a large number of white men who had come because of curiosity or interest in the affair.

It had been a backward spring, and the salmon were late in running.  This delay but keyed up the interest.  Then, on the day of the auction, the situation was made tense by Akoon.  He arose and made public and solemn announcement that whosoever bought El-Soo would forthwith and immediately die.  He flourished the Winchester in his hand to indicate the manner of the taking-off.  El-Soo was angered thereat; but he refused to speak with her, and went to the trading post to lay in extra ammunition.

The first salmon was caught at ten o’clock in the evening, and at midnight the auction began.  It took place on top of the high bank alongside the Yukon.  The sun was due north just below the horizon, and the sky was lurid red.  A great crowd gathered about the table and the two chairs that stood near the edge of the bank.  To the fore were many white men and several chiefs.  And most prominently to the fore, rifle in hand, stood Akoon.  Tommy, at El-Soo’s request, served as auctioneer, but she made the opening speech and described the goods about to be sold.  She was in native costume, in the dress of a chief’s daughter, splendid and barbaric, and she stood on a chair, that she might be seen to advantage.

“Who will buy a wife?” she asked.  “Look at me.  I am twenty years old and a maid.  I will be a good wife to the man who buys me.  If he is a white man, I shall dress in the fashion of white women; if he is an Indian, I shall dress as”—she hesitated a moment—“a squaw.  I can make my own clothes, and sew, and wash, and mend.  I was taught for eight years to do these things at Holy Cross Mission.  I can read and write English, and I know how to play the organ.  Also I can do arithmetic and some algebra—a little.  I shall be sold to the highest bidder, and to him I will make out a bill of sale of myself.  I forgot to say that I can sing very well, and that I have never been sick in my life.  I weigh one hundred and thirty-two pounds; my father is dead and I have no relatives.  Who wants me?”

She looked over the crowd with flaming audacity and stepped down.  At Tommy’s request she stood upon the chair again, while he mounted the second chair and started the bidding.

Surrounding El-Soo stood the four old slaves of her father.  They were age-twisted and palsied, faithful to their meat, a generation out of the past that watched unmoved the antics of younger life.  In the front of the crowd were several Eldorado and Bonanza kings from the Upper Yukon, and beside them, on crutches, swollen with scurvy, were two broken prospectors.  From the midst of the crowd, thrust out by its own vividness, appeared the face of a wild-eyed squaw from the remote regions of the Upper Tana-naw; a strayed Sitkan from the coast stood side by side with a Stick from Lake Le Barge, and, beyond, a half-dozen French-Canadian voyageurs, grouped by themselves.  From afar came the faint cries of myriads of wild-fowl on the nesting-grounds.  Swallows were skimming up overhead from the placid surface of the Yukon, and robins were singing.  The oblique rays of the hidden sun shot through the smoke, high-dissipated from forest fires a thousand miles away, and turned the heavens to sombre red, while the earth shone red in the reflected glow.  This red glow shone in the faces of all, and made everything seem unearthly and unreal.

The bidding began slowly.  The Sitkan, who was a stranger in the land and who had arrived only half an hour before, offered one hundred dollars in a confident voice, and was surprised when Akoon turned threateningly upon him with the rifle.  The bidding dragged.  An Indian from the Tozikakat, a pilot, bid one hundred and fifty, and after some time a gambler, who had been ordered out of the Upper Country, raised the bid to two hundred.  El-Soo was saddened; her pride was hurt; but the only effect was that she flamed more audaciously upon the crowd.

There was a disturbance among the onlookers as Porportuk forced his way to the front.  “Five hundred dollars!” he bid in a loud voice, then looked about him proudly to note the effect.

He was minded to use his great wealth as a bludgeon with which to stun all competition at the start.  But one of the voyageurs, looking on El-Soo with sparkling eyes, raised the bid a hundred.

“Seven hundred!” Porportuk returned promptly.

And with equal promptness came the “Eight hundred” of the voyageur.

Then Porportuk swung his club again.

“Twelve hundred!” he shouted.

With a look of poignant disappointment, the voyageur succumbed.  There was no further bidding.  Tommy worked hard, but could not elicit a bid.

El-Soo spoke to Porportuk.  “It were good, Porportuk, for you to weigh well your bid.  Have you forgotten the thing I told you—that I would never marry you!”

“It is a public auction,” he retorted.  “I shall buy you with a bill of sale.  I have offered twelve hundred dollars.  You come cheap.”

“Too damned cheap!” Tommy cried.  “What if I am auctioneer?  That does not prevent me from bidding.  I’ll make it thirteen hundred.”

“Fourteen hundred,” from Porportuk.

“I’ll buy you in to be my—my sister,” Tommy whispered to El-Soo, then called aloud, “Fifteen hundred!”

At two thousand one of the Eldorado kings took a hand, and Tommy dropped out.

A third time Porportuk swung the club of his wealth, making a clean raise of five hundred dollars.  But the Eldorado king’s pride was touched.  No man could club him.  And he swung back another five hundred.

El-Soo stood at three thousand.  Porportuk made it thirty-five hundred, and gasped when the Eldorado king raised it a thousand dollars.  Porportuk again raised it five hundred, and again gasped when the king raised a thousand more.

Porportuk became angry.  His pride was touched; his strength was challenged, and with him strength took the form of wealth.  He would not be ashamed for weakness before the world.  El-Soo became incidental.  The savings and scrimpings from the cold nights of all his years were ripe to be squandered.  El-Soo stood at six thousand.  He made it seven thousand.  And then, in thousand-dollar bids, as fast as they could be uttered, her price went up.  At fourteen thousand the two men stopped for breath.

Then the unexpected happened.  A still heavier club was swung.  In the pause that ensued, the gambler, who had scented a speculation and formed a syndicate with several of his fellows, bid sixteen thousand dollars.

“Seventeen thousand,” Porportuk said weakly.

“Eighteen thousand,” said the king.

Porportuk gathered his strength.  “Twenty thousand.”

The syndicate dropped out.  The Eldorado king raised a thousand, and Porportuk raised back; and as they bid, Akoon turned from one to the other, half menacingly, half curiously, as though to see what manner of man it was that he would have to kill.  When the king prepared to make his next bid, Akoon having pressed closer, the king first loosed the revolver at his hip, then said:

“Twenty-three thousand.”

“Twenty-four thousand,” said Porportuk.  He grinned viciously, for the certitude of his bidding had at last shaken the king.  The latter moved over close to El-Soo.  He studied her carefully for a long while.

“And five hundred,” he said at last.

“Twenty-five thousand,” came Porportuk’s raise.

The king looked for a long space, and shook his head.  He looked again, and said reluctantly, “And five hundred.”

“Twenty-six thousand,” Porportuk snapped.

The king shook his head and refused to meet Tommy’s pleading eye.  In the meantime Akoon had edged close to Porportuk.  El-Soo’s quick eye noted this, and, while Tommy wrestled with the Eldorado king for another bid, she bent, and spoke in a low voice in the ear of a slave.  And while Tommy’s “Going—going—going—” dominated the air, the slave went up to Akoon and spoke in a low voice in his ear.  Akoon made no sign that he had heard, though El-Soo watched him anxiously.

“Gone!” Tommy’s voice rang out.  “To Porportuk, for twenty-six thousand dollars.”

Porportuk glanced uneasily at Akoon.  All eyes were centred upon Akoon, but he did nothing.

“Let the scales be brought,” said El-Soo.

“I shall make payment at my house,” said Porportuk.

“Let the scales be brought,” El-Soo repeated.  “Payment shall be made here where all can see.”

So the gold scales were brought from the trading post, while Porportuk went away and came back with a man at his heels, on whose shoulders was a weight of gold-dust in moose-hide sacks.  Also, at Porportuk’s back, walked another man with a rifle, who had eyes only for Akoon.

“Here are the notes and mortgages,” said Porportuk, “for fifteen thousand nine hundred and sixty-seven dollars and seventy-five cents.”

El-Soo received them into her hands and said to Tommy, “Let them be reckoned as sixteen thousand.”

“There remains ten thousand dollars to be paid in gold,” Tommy said.

Porportuk nodded, and untied the mouths of the sacks.  El-Soo, standing at the edge of the bank, tore the papers to shreds and sent them fluttering out over the Yukon.  The weighing began, but halted.

“Of course, at seventeen dollars,” Porportuk had said to Tommy, as he adjusted the scales.

“At sixteen dollars,” El-Soo said sharply.

“It is the custom of all the land to reckon gold at seventeen dollars for each ounce,” Porportuk replied.  “And this is a business transaction.”

El-Soo laughed.  “It is a new custom,” she said.  “It began this spring.  Last year, and the years before, it was sixteen dollars an ounce.  When my father’s debt was made, it was sixteen dollars.  When he spent at the store the money he got from you, for one ounce he was given sixteen dollars’ worth of flour, not seventeen.  Wherefore, shall you pay for me at sixteen, and not at seventeen.”  Porportuk grunted and allowed the weighing to proceed.

“Weigh it in three piles, Tommy,” she said.  “A thousand dollars here, three thousand here, and here six thousand.”

It was slow work, and, while the weighing went on, Akoon was closely watched by all.

“He but waits till the money is paid,” one said; and the word went around and was accepted, and they waited for what Akoon should do when the money was paid.  And Porportuk’s man with the rifle waited and watched Akoon.

The weighing was finished, and the gold-dust lay on the table in three dark-yellow heaps.  “There is a debt of my father to the Company for three thousand dollars,” said El-Soo.  “Take it, Tommy, for the Company.  And here are four old men, Tommy.  You know them.  And here is one thousand dollars.  Take it, and see that the old men are never hungry and never without tobacco.”

Tommy scooped the gold into separate sacks.  Six thousand dollars remained on the table.  El-Soo thrust the scoop into the heap, and with a sudden turn whirled the contents out and down to the Yukon in a golden shower.  Porportuk seized her wrist as she thrust the scoop a second time into the heap.

“It is mine,” she said calmly.  Porportuk released his grip, but he gritted his teeth and scowled darkly as she continued to scoop the gold into the river till none was left.

The crowd had eyes for naught but Akoon, and the rifle of Porportuk’s man lay across the hollow of his arm, the muzzle directed at Akoon a yard away, the man’s thumb on the hammer.  But Akoon did nothing.

“Make out the bill of sale,” Porportuk said grimly.

And Tommy made out the till of sale, wherein all right and title in the woman El-Soo was vested in the man Porportuk.  El-Soo signed the document, and Porportuk folded it and put it away in his pouch.  Suddenly his eyes flashed, and in sudden speech he addressed El-Soo.

“But it was not your father’s debt,” he said, “What I paid was the price for you.  Your sale is business of to-day and not of last year and the years before.  The ounces paid for you will buy at the post to-day seventeen dollars of flour, and not sixteen.  I have lost a dollar on each ounce.  I have lost six hundred and twenty-five dollars.”

El-Soo thought for a moment, and saw the error she had made.  She smiled, and then she laughed.

“You are right,” she laughed, “I made a mistake.  But it is too late.  You have paid, and the gold is gone.  You did not think quick.  It is your loss.  Your wit is slow these days, Porportuk.  You are getting old.”

He did not answer.  He glanced uneasily at Akoon, and was reassured.  His lips tightened, and a hint of cruelty came into his face.  “Come,” he said, “we will go to my house.”

“Do you remember the two things I told you in the spring?” El-Soo asked, making no movement to accompany him.

“My head would be full with the things women say, did I heed them,” he answered.

“I told you that you would be paid,” El-Soo went on carefully.  “And I told you that I would never be your wife.”

“But that was before the bill of sale.”  Porportuk crackled the paper between his fingers inside the pouch.  “I have bought you before all the world.  You belong to me.  You will not deny that you belong to me.”

“I belong to you,” El-Soo said steadily.

“I own you.”

“You own me.”

Porportuk’s voice rose slightly and triumphantly.  “As a dog, I own you.”

“As a dog you own me,” El-Soo continued calmly.  “But, Porportuk, you forget the thing I told you.  Had any other man bought me, I should have been that man’s wife.  I should have been a good wife to that man.  Such was my will.  But my will with you was that I should never be your wife.  Wherefore, I am your dog.”

Porportuk knew that he played with fire, and he resolved to play firmly.  “Then I speak to you, not as El-Soo, but as a dog,” he said; “and I tell you to come with me.”  He half reached to grip her arm, but with a gesture she held him back.

“Not so fast, Porportuk.  You buy a dog.  The dog runs away.  It is your loss.  I am your dog.  What if I run away?”

“As the owner of the dog, I shall beat you—”

“When you catch me?”

“When I catch you.”

“Then catch me.”

He reached swiftly for her, but she eluded him.  She laughed as she circled around the table.  “Catch her!” Porportuk commanded the Indian with the rifle, who stood near to her.  But as the Indian stretched forth his arm to her, the Eldorado king felled him with a fist blow under the ear.  The rifle clattered to the ground.  Then was Akoon’s chance.  His eyes glittered, but he did nothing.

Porportuk was an old man, but his cold nights retained for him his activity.  He did not circle the table.  He came across suddenly, over the top of the table.  El-Soo was taken off her guard.  She sprang back with a sharp cry of alarm, and Porportuk would have caught her had it not been for Tommy.  Tommy’s leg went out, Porportuk tripped and pitched forward on the ground.  El-Soo got her start.