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The Barrier

by Rex Beach · English · Gutenberg #4082 · 496,996 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Barrier

Author: Rex Beach


        
Release date: May 1, 2003 [eBook #4082]
                Most recently updated: December 27, 2020

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/4082

Credits: Produced by Charles Franks and the Online Distributed
        Proofreading Team. HTML version by Al Haines.


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BARRIER ***




Produced by Charles Franks and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team. HTML version by Al Haines.











THE BARRIER


BY

REX BEACH



AUTHOR OF "THE SPOILERS"




ILLUSTRATED BY DENMAN FINK






 CONTENTS

     I. THE LAST FRONTIER
     II. POLEON DORET'S HAND IS QUICKER THAN HIS TONGUE
    III. WITHOUT BENEFIT OF CLERGY
     IV. THE SOLDIER FINDS AN UNTRODDEN VALLEY
      V. A STORY IS BEGUN
     VI. THE BURRELL CODE
    VII. THE MAGIC OF BEN STARK
   VIII. THE KNIFE
     IX. THE AWAKENING
      X. MEADE BURRELL FINDS A PATH IN THE MOONLIGHT
     XI. WHERE THE PATH LED
    XII. A TANGLED SKEIN
   XIII. STARK TAKES A HAND IN THE GAME
    XIV. A MYSTERY IS UNRAVELLED
     XV. AND A KNOT TIGHTENED
    XVI. JOHN GALE'S HOUR
   XVII. THE LOVE OF POLEON DORET
  XVIII. RUNNION FINDS THE SINGING PEOPLE
    XIX. THE CALL OF THE OREADS




ILLUSTRATIONS

"GREAT LOVELY DOVE!" EJACULATED BURRELL, FERVENTLY ... WONDERING IF
THIS GLORIOUS THING COULD BE THE QUAINT HALF-BREED GIRL OF YESTERDAY

"I MISSED YOU DREADFULLY, DADDY," SAID NECIA. "THERE WASN'T ANY FUN IN
THINGS WITHOUT YOU"

POLEON FOLLOWED HER WITH HIS EYES. "AN' DAT'S DE END OF IT ALL," HE
MUSED. "FIVE YEAR I'VE WAIT--AN' JUS' FOR DIS"

"LET ME OUT OF HERE!" THE GIRL DEMANDED, IMPERIOUSLY

THE COMBATANTS WERE DRAGGED APART ... "I GOT YOU, BENNETT!" CRIED THE
TRADER, HOARSELY. "YOUR MAGIC IS NO GOOD"

NECIA SAW RUNNION RAISE HIS GUN, AND WITHOUT THOUGHT OF HER OWN SAFETY,
THREW HERSELF UPON HIM






THE BARRIER




CHAPTER I

THE LAST FRONTIER


Many men were in debt to the trader at Flambeau, and many counted him
as a friend. The latter never reasoned why, except that he had done
them favors, and in the North that counts for much. Perhaps they built
likewise upon the fact that he was ever the same to all, and that, in
days of plenty or in times of famine, his store was open to every man,
and all received the same measure. Nor did he raise his prices when the
boats were late. They recalled one bleak and blustery autumn when the
steamer sank at the Lower Ramparts, taking with her all their winter's
food, how he eked out his scanty stock, dealing to each and every one
his portion, month by month. They remembered well the bitter winter
that followed, when the spectre of famine haunted their cabins, and
when for endless periods they cinched their belts, and cursed and went
hungry to sleep, accepting, day by day, the rations doled out to them
by the grim, gray man at the log store. Some of them had money-belts
weighted low with gold washed from the bars at Forty Mile, and there
were others who had wandered in from the Koyukuk with the first frosts,
foot-sore and dragging, the legs of their skin boots eaten to the
ankle, and the taste of dog meat still in their mouths. Broken and
dispirited, these had fared as well through that desperate winter as
their brothers from up-river, and received pound for pound of musty
flour, strip for strip of rusty bacon, lump for lump of precious sugar.
Moreover, the price of no single thing had risen throughout the famine.

Some of them, to this day, owed bills at Old Man Gale's, of which they
dared not think; but every fall and every spring they came again and
told of their disappointment, and every time they fared back into the
hills bearing another outfit, for which he rendered no account, not
even when the debts grew year by year, not even to "No Creek" Lee, the
most unlucky of them all, who said that a curse lay on him so that when
a pay-streak heard him coming it got up and moved away and hid itself.

There were some who had purposely shirked a reckoning, in years past,
but these were few, and their finish had been of a nature to discourage
a similar practice on the part of others, and of a nature, moreover, to
lead good men to care for the trader and for his methods. He mixed in
no man's business, he took and paid his dues unfalteringly. He spoke in
a level voice, and he smiled but rarely. He gazed at a stranger once
and weighed him carefully, thereafter his eyes sought the distances
again, as if in search of some visitor whom he knew or hoped or feared
would come. Therefore, men judged he had lived as strong men live, and
were glad to call him friend.

This day he stood in the door of his post staring up the sun-lit river,
absorbing the warmth of the Arctic afternoon. The Yukon swept down
around the great bend beneath the high, cut banks and past the little
town, disappearing behind the wooded point below, which masked the
up-coming steamers till one heard the sighing labor of their stacks
before he saw their smoke. It was a muddy, rushing giant, bearing a
burden of sand and silt, so that one might hear it hiss and grind by
stooping at its edge to listen; but the slanting sun this afternoon
made it appear like a boiling flood of molten gold which issued
silently out of a land of mystery and vanished into a valley of
forgetfulness. At least so the trader fancied, and found himself
wishing that it might carry away on its bosom the heavy trouble which
weighed him down, and bring in its place forgetfulness of all that had
gone before. Instead, however, it seemed to hurry with news of those
strange doings "up-river," news that every down-coming steamboat
verified. For years he had known that some day this thing would happen,
that some day this isolation would be broken, that some day great
hordes of men would overrun this unknown land, bringing with them that
which he feared to meet, that which had made him what he was. And now
that the time had come, he was unprepared.

The sound of shouting caused him to turn his head. Down-stream, a
thousand yards away, men were raising a flag-staff made from the trunk
of a slender fir, from which the bark had been stripped, heaving on
their tackle as they sang in unison. They stood well out upon the
river's bank before a group of well-made houses, the peeled timbers of
which shone yellow in the sun. He noted the symmetrical arrangement of
the buildings, noted the space about them that had been smoothed for a
drill-ground, and from which the stumps had been removed; noted that
the men wore suits of blue; and noted, in particular, the figure of an
officer commanding them.

The lines about the trader's mouth deepened, and his heavy brows
contracted.

"That means the law," he murmured, half aloud, while in his voice was
no trace of pleasure, nor of that interest which good men are wont to
show at sight of the flag. "The last frontier is gone. The trail ends
here!"

He stood so, meditating sombrely, till the fragment of a song hummed
lightly by a girl fell pleasantly on his ears, whereupon the shadows
vanished from his face, and he turned expectantly, the edges of his
teeth showing beneath his mustache, the corners of his eyes wrinkling
with pleasure.

The sight was good to him, for the girl approaching down the trail was
like some wood sprite, light-footed, slender, and dark, with twin
braids of hair to her waist framing an oval face colored by the wind
and sun. She was very beautiful, and a great fever surged up through
the old man's veins, till he gripped the boards at his side and bit
sharply at the pipe between his teeth.

"The salmon-berries are ripe," she announced, "and the hills back of
the village are pink with them. I took Constantine's squaw with me, and
we picked quarts and quarts. I ate them all!"

Her laughter was like the tinkle of silver bells. Her head, thrown back
as she laughed gayly, displayed a throat rounded and full and smooth,
and tanned to the hue of her wind-beaten cheeks. Every move of her
graceful body was unrestrained and flowing, with a hint of Indian
freedom about it. Beaded and trimmed like a native princess, her
garments manifested an ornature that spoke of savagery, yet they were
neatly cut and held to the pattern of the whites.

"Constantine was drunk again last night, and I had to give him a
talking to when we came back. Oh, but I laid him out! He's frightened
to death of me when I'm angry."

She furrowed her brow in a scowl--the daintiest, most ridiculous pucker
of a brow that ever man saw--and drew her red lips into an angry pout
as she recounted her temperance talk till the trader broke in, his
voice very soft, his gray-blue eyes as tender as those of a woman:

"It's good to have you home again, Necia. The old sun don't shine as
bright when you're away, and when it rains it seems like the moss and
the grass and the little trees was crying for you. I reckon everything
weeps when you're gone, girl, everything except your old dad, and
sometimes he feels like he'd have to bust out and join the rest of
them."

He seated himself upon the worn spruce-log steps, and the girl settled
beside him and snuggled against his knee.

"I missed you dreadfully, daddy," she said. "It seemed as if those days
at the Mission would never end. Father Barnum and the others were very
kind, and I studied hard, but there wasn't any fun in things without
you."

"I reckon you know as much as a priest, now, don't you?"

"Oh, lots more," she said, gravely. "You see, I am a woman."

He nodded reflectively. "So you are! I keep forgetting that."

Their faces were set towards the west, where the low sun hung over a
ragged range of hills topped with everlasting white. The great valley,
dark with an untrodden wilderness of birch and spruce and alder, lay on
this side, sombre and changeless, like a great, dark-green mat too
large for its resting-place, its edges turned up towards the line of
unmelting snow. Beyond were other ranges thrust skyward in a
magnificent confusion, while still to the farther side lay the purple
valley of the Koyukuk, a valley that called insistently to restless
men, welcoming them in the spring, and sending them back in the late
summer tired and haggard with the hunger of the North. Each year a
tithe remained behind, the toll of the trackless places, but the rest
went back again and again, and took new brothers with them.

"Did you like the books I sent you with Poleon when he went down to the
coast? I borrowed them from Shakespeare George."

The girl laughed. "Of course I did--that is, all but one of them."

"Which one?"

"I think it was called The Age of Reason, or something like that. I
didn't get a good look at it, for Father Barnum shrieked when he saw
it, then snatched it as if it were afire. He carried it down to the
river with the tongs."

"H'm! Now that I think of it," said the old man, "Shakespeare grinned
when he gave it to me. You see, Poleon ain't much better on the read
than I am, so we never noticed what kind of a book it was."

"When will Poleon get back, do you suppose?"

"Most any day now, unless the Dawson dance-halls are too much for him.
It won't take him long to sell our skins if what I hear is true."

"What is that?"

"About these Cheechakos. They say there are thousands of tenderfeet up
there, and more coming in every day."

"Oh! If I had only been here in time to go with him!" breathed the
girl. "I never saw a city. It must be just like Seattle, or New York."

Gale shook his head. "No. There's considerable difference. Some time
I'll take you out to the States, and let you see the world--maybe." He
uttered the last word in an undertone, as if in self-debate, but the
girl was too excited to notice.

"You will take mother, too, and the kiddies, won't you?"

"Of course!"

"Oh! I--I--" The attempt to express what this prospect meant to her was
beyond her girlish rapture, but her parted lips and shining eyes told
the story to Gale. "And Poleon must go, too. We can't go anywhere
without him." The old man smiled down upon her in reassurance. "I
wonder what he'll say when he finds the soldiers have come. I wonder if
he'll like it."

Gale turned his eyes down-stream to the barracks, and noted that the
long flag-staff had at last been erected. Even as he looked he saw a
bundle mounting towards its tip, and then beheld the Stars and Stripes
flutter out in the air, while the men below cheered noisily. It was
some time before he answered.

"Poleon Doret is like the rest of us men up here in the North. We have
taken care of ourselves so far, and I guess we're able to keep it up
without the help of a smooth-faced Yankee kid for guardian."

"Lieutenant Burrell isn't a Yankee," said Necia. "He is a blue-grass
man. He comes from Kentucky."

Her father grunted contemptuously. "I might have known it. Those rebels
are a cultus, lazy lot. A regular male man with any ginger in him would
shed his coat and go to work, instead of wearing his clothes buttoned
up all day. It don't take much 'savvy' to run a handful of
thirteen-dollar-a-month soldiers." Necia stirred a bit restlessly, and
the trader continued: "It ain't man's work, it's--loafing. If he tries
to boss us he'll get QUITE a surprise."

"He won't try to boss you. He has been sent here to build a military
post, and to protect the miners in their own self-government. He won't
take any part in their affairs as long as they are conducted peaceably."

Being at a loss for an answer to this unexpected defence, the old man
grunted again, with added contempt, while his daughter continued:

"This rush to the upper country has brought in all sorts of people,
good, bad--and worse; and the soldiers have been sent to prevent
trouble, and to hold things steady till the law can be established. The
Canadian Mounted Police are sending all their worst characters
down-river, and our soldiers have been scattered among the American
camps for our protection. I think it's fine."

"Where did you learn all this?"

"Lieutenant Burrell told me," she replied; at which her father regarded
her keenly. She could not see the curious look in his eyes, nor did she
turn when, a moment later, he resumed, in an altered tone:

"I reckon Poleon will bring you something pretty from Dawson, eh?"

"He has never failed to bring me presents, no matter where he came
from. Dear old Poleon!" She smiled tenderly. "Do you remember that
first day when he drifted, singing, into sight around the bend up
yonder? He had paddled his birch-bark from the Chandelar without a
thing to eat; hunger and hardship only made him the happier, and the
closer he drew his belt the louder he sang."

"He was bound for his 'New Country'!"

"Yes. He didn't know where it lay, but the fret for travel was on him,
and so he drifted and sang, as he had drifted and sung from the foot of
Lake Le Barge."

"That was four years ago," mused Gale, "and he never found his 'New
Country,' did he?"

"No. We tied him down and choked it out of him," Necia laughed. "Dear,
funny old Poleon--he loves me like a brother."

The man opened his lips, then closed them, as if on second thought, and
rose to his feet, for, coming towards them up the trail from the
barracks, he beheld a trim, blue-coated figure. He peered at the
approaching officer a moment, set his jaw more firmly, and disappeared
into the store.

"Well, we have raised our flag-staff," said the Lieutenant as he took a
seat below Necia. "It's like getting settled to keep house."

"Are you lazy?" inquired the girl.

"I dare say I am," he admitted. "I've never had time to find out. Why?"

"Are you going to boss our people around?" she continued, bent on her
own investigation.

"No. Not as long as they behave. In fact, I hardly know what I am to
do. Maybe you can tell me." His smile was peculiarly frank and winning.
"You see, it's my first command, and my instructions, although
comprehensive, are rather vague. I am supposed to see that mining
rights are observed, to take any criminals who kindly offer themselves
up to be arrested, and to sort of handle things that are too tough for
the miners themselves."

"Why, you are a policeman!" said Necia, at which he made a wry face.

"The Department, in its wisdom, would have me, a tenderfoot, adjust
those things that are too knotty for these men who have spent their
lives along the frontier."

"I don't believe you will be very popular with our people," Necia
announced, meditatively.

"No. I can see that already. I wasn't met with any brass-bands, and I
haven't received any engraved silver from the admiring citizens of
Flambeau. That leaves nothing but the women to like me, and, as you are
the only one in camp, you will have to like me very much to make up for
its shortcomings."

She approved of his unusual drawl; it gave him a kind of deliberation
which every move of his long, lithe body belied and every glance of his
eyes contradicted. Moreover, she liked his youth, so clean and fresh
and strange in this land where old men are many and the young ones old
with hardship and grave with the silence of the hills. Her life had
been spent entirely among men who were her seniors, and, although she
had ruled them like a spoiled queen, she knew as little of their sex as
they did of hers. Unconsciously the strong young life within her had
clamored for companionship, and it was this that had drawn her to
Poleon Doret--who would ever remain a boy--and it was this that drew
her to the young Kentuckian; this, and something else in him, that the
others lacked.

"Now that I think it over," he continued, "I'd rather have you like me
than have the men do so."

"Of course," she nodded. "They do anything I want them to--all but
father, and--"

"It isn't that," he interrupted, quickly. "It is because you ARE the
only woman of the place, because you are such a surprise. To think that
in the heart of this desolation I should find a girl like--like you,
like the girls I know at home."

"Am I like other girls?" she inquired, eagerly. "I have often wondered."

"You are, and you are not. You are surprisingly conventional for these
surroundings, and yet unconventionally surprising--for any place. Who
are you? Where did you come from? How did you get here?"

"I am just what you see. I came from the States, and I was carried.
That is all I can remember."

"Then you haven't lived here always?"

"Oh, dear, no! We came here while I was very little, but of late I have
been away at school."

"Some seminary, eh?"

At this she laughed aloud. "Hardly that, either. I've been at the
Mission. Father Barnum has been teaching me for five years. I came
up-river a day ahead of you."

She asked no questions of him in return, for she had already learned
all there was to know the day before from a grizzled corporal in whom
was the hunger to talk. She had learned of a family of Burrells whose
name was known throughout the South, and that Meade Burrell came from
the Frankfort branch, the branch that had raised the soldiers. His
father had fought with Lee, and an uncle was now in the service at
Washington. On the mother's side the strain was equally militant, but
the Meades had sought the sea. The old soldier had told her much more,
of which she understood little; told her of the young man's sister, who
had come all the way from Kentucky to see her brother off when he
sailed from San Francisco; told her of the Lieutenant's many friends in
Washington, and of his family name and honor. Meade Burrell was
undoubtedly a fine young fellow in his corporal's eyes, and destined to
reach great heights, as the other Burrells had before him. The old
soldier, furthermore, had looked at her keenly and added that the
Burrells were known as "divils among the weemen."

Resting thus on the steps of Old Man Gale's store, the two talked on
till they were disturbed by the sound of shrill voices approaching, at
which the man looked up. Coming down the trail from the town was a
squaw and two children. At sight of Necia the little ones shouted
gleefully and scampered forward, climbing over her like half-grown
puppies. They were boy and girl, both brown as Siwashes, with eyes like
jet beads and hair that was straight and coarse and black. At a glance
Burrell knew them for "breeds," and evidently the darker half was
closer to the surface now, for they choked, gurgled, stuttered, and
coughed in their Indian tongue, while Necia answered them likewise. At
a word from her they turned and saw him, then, abashed at the strange
splendor of his uniform, fell silent, pressing close to her. The squaw,
also, seemed to resent his presence, for, after a lowering glance, she
drew the shawl closer about her head, and, leaving the trail, slunk out
of sight around the corner of the store.

Burrell looked up at his companion's clear-cut, delicate face, at the
wind-tanned cheeks, against which her long braids lay like the
blue-black locks of an Egyptian maid, then at her warm, dark eyes, in
which was a hint of the golden light of the afternoon sun. He noted
covertly the slender lines of her body and the dainty, firm, brown
hands flung protectingly about the shoulders of her little friends, who
were peering at him owlishly from their shelter.

The bitter revolt that had burned in him at the prospect of a long
exile in this undiscovered spot died out suddenly. What a picture she
made! How fresh and flower-like she looked, and yet the wisdom of her!
He spoke impulsively:

"I am glad you are here, Miss Necia. I was glad the moment I saw you,
and I have been growing gladder ever since, for I never imagined there
would be anybody in this place but men and squaws--men who hate the law
and squaws who slink about--like that." He nodded in the direction of
the Indian woman's disappearance. "Either that, or, at best, a few
'breeds' like these little fellows."

She looked at him quickly.

"Well! What difference would that make?"

"Ugh! Squaws and half-breeds!" His tone conveyed in full his utter
contempt.

The tiny hands of the boy and girl slid into her own as she arose. A
curiously startled look lay in her eyes, and an inquiring, plaintive
wrinkle came between her brows.

"I don't believe you understand," she said. "Lieutenant Burrell, this
is my sister, Molly Gale, and this is my little brother John." Both
round-eyed elfs made a ducking courtesy and blinked at the soldier, who
gained his feet awkwardly, a flush rising into his cheeks.

From the regions at the rear of the store came the voice of an Indian
woman calling:

"Necia! Necia!"

"Coming in a moment!" the girl called back; then, turning to the young
officer, she added, quietly: "Mother needs me now. Good-bye!"




CHAPTER II

POLEON DORET'S HAND IS QUICKER THAN HIS TONGUE


The trader's house sat back of the post, farther up on the hill. It was
a large, sleepy house, sprawling against the sunny side of the slope,
as if it had sought the southern exposure for warmth, and had dozed off
one sultry afternoon and never waked up from its slumber. It was of
great, square-hewn timbers, built in the Russian style, the under side
of each log hollowed to fit snugly over its fellow underneath, upon
which dried moss had previously been spread, till in effect the
foot-thick walls were tongued and grooved and, through years of
seasoning, become so tinder dry that no frosts or heats could penetrate
them. Many architects had worked on it as it grew, room by room,
through the years, and every man had left behind the mark of his
individuality, from Pretty Charlie the pilot, who swung an axe better
than any Indian on the river, to Larsen the ship's carpenter, who
worked with an adze and who starved the summer following on the
Koyukuk. It had stretched a bit year by year, for the trader's family
had been big in the early days when hunters and miners of both breeds
came in to trade, to loaf, and to swap stories with him. Through the
winter days, when the caribou were in the North and the moose were
scarce, whole families of natives came and camped there, for Alluna,
his squaw, drew to her own blood, and they felt it their due to eat of
the bounty of him who ruled them like an overlord; but when the first
goose honked they slipped away until, by the time the salmon showed,
the house was empty again and silent, save for Alluna and the
youngsters. In return these people brought him many skins and much
fresh meat, for which he paid no price, and, with the fall, his cache
was filled with fish of which the bulk were dried king salmon as long
as a grown man's leg and worth a dollar apiece to any traveller.

There are men whose wits are quick as light, and whose muscles have
been so tempered and hardened by years of exercise that they are like
those of a wild animal. Of such was John Gale; but with all his
intelligence he was very slow at reading, hence he chose to spend his
evenings with his pipe and his thoughts, rather than with a book, as
lonesome men are supposed to do. He did with little sleep, and many
nights he sat alone till Alluna and Necia would be awakened by his
heavy step as he went to his bed. That he was a man who could really
think, and that his thoughts were engrossing, no one doubted who saw
him sitting enthralled at such a time, for he neither rocked, nor
talked, nor moved a muscle hour after hour, and only his eyes were
alive. To-night the spell was on him again, and he sat bulked up in his
chair, rocklike and immovable.

From the open door of the next room he could hear Necia and the little
ones. She had made them ready for bed, and was telling them the tale of
the snow-bird's spot.

"So when all the other birds had failed," he heard her say, "the little
snowbird asked for a chance to try. He flew and flew, and just before
he came to the edge of the world where the two Old Women lived he
pulled out all of his feathers. When he came to them he said:"

"'I am very cold. May I warm myself at your fire?'"

"They saw how little and naked he was, and how he shivered, so they did
not throw sticks at him, but allowed him to creep close. He watched his
chance, and when they were not looking he picked up a red-hot coal in
his beak and flew back home with it as fast as ever he could--and that
is how fire came to the Indian people."

"Of course the coal was hot, and it burned his throat till a drop of
blood came through, so ever since that day the snowbird has had a red
spot on his throat."

The two children spoke out in their mother's tongue, clamoring for the
story of the Good Beaver who saved the hunter's life, and she began,
this time in the language of the Yukon people, while Gale listened to
the low music of her voice, muffled and broken by the log partition.

His squaw came in, her arrival unannounced except by the scuff of her
moccasins, and seated herself against the wall. She did not use a
chair, of which there were several, but crouched upon a bear-skin, her
knees beneath her chin, her toes a trifle drawn together. She sat thus
for a long time, while Necia continued her stories and put the little
ones to bed. Soon the girl came to say good-night.

John Gale had never kissed his daughter, and, as it was not a custom of
her mother's race, she never missed the caresses. On rare occasions the
old man romped with the little ones and took them in his arms and acted
as other fathers act, but he had never done these things with her. When
she had gone he spoke without moving.

"She'll never marry Poleon Doret."

"Why?" inquired Alluna.

"He ain't her kind."

"Poleon is a good man."

"None better. But she'll marry some--some white man."

"Poleon is white," the squaw declared.

"He is and he ain't. I mean she'll marry an 'outside' man. He ain't
good enough, and--well, he ain't her kind." Alluna's grunt of
indignation was a sufficient answer to this, but he resumed, jerking
his head in the direction of the barracks. "She's been talking a lot
with this--this soldier."

"Him good man, too, I guess," said the wife.

"The hell he is!" cried the trader, fiercely. "He don't mean any good
to her."

"Him got a woman, eh?" said the other.

"No, no! I reckon he's single all right, but you don't understand. He's
different from us people. He's--he's--" Gale paused, at a loss for
words to convey his meaning. "Well, he ain't the kind that would marry
a half-breed."

Alluna pondered this cryptic remark unsuccessfully, and was still
seeking its solution when her lord continued:

"If she really got to loving him it would be bad for all of us."

Evidently Alluna read some hidden meaning back of these words, for she
spoke quickly, but in her own tongue now, as she was accustomed to do
when excited or alarmed.

"Then this thing must cease at once. The risk is too great. Better that
you kill him before it is too late."'

"Hardly that," said the trader.

"Think of the little ones and of me," the squaw insisted, and,
encouraged by his silence, continued: "Why not? Soon the nights will
grow dark. The river runs swiftly, and it never gives up its dead. I
can do it if you dare not. No one would suspect me."

Gale rose and laid his big hand firmly on her shoulder.

"Don't talk like that. There has been too much blood let already. We'll
allow things to run along a bit as they are. There's time enough to
worry."

He rose, but instead of going to his room he strode out of the house
and walked northward up the trail, passing through the town and out of
sight. Alluna sat huddled up in the doorway, her shawl drawn close
about her head, and waited for him until the late sun--which at this
time of year revolves in a great circle overhead--dipped down below the
distant mountains for the midnight hour, then rolled slanting out again
a few points farther north, to begin its long journey anew; but he did
not return. At last she crept stiffly in-doors, like an old and weary
woman, the look of fright still staring in her eyes.

About nine o'clock the next morning a faint and long-drawn cry came
from the farthest limits of the little camp. An instant later it was
echoed closer, and then a dog began to howl. Before its voice had died
away another took it up sadly, and within three breaths, from tip and
down the half-mile of scanty water-front, came the cry of
"Steam-bo-o-a-t!" Cabin doors opened and men came out, glanced up the
stream and echoed the call, while from sleepy nooks and sun-warmed
roofs wolf-dogs arose, yawning and stretching. Those who had slept late
dressed as they hurried towards the landing-place, joining in the
plaint, till men and malamutes united in the shrill, slow cry.

Down-stream came the faint-sighing whoof-whoof of a steamer, and then
out from behind the bend she burst, running on the swift spring current
with the speed of a deer. She blew hoarsely before the tardy ones had
reached the bank, and when abreast of the town her bell clanged, the
patter of her great wheel ceased, she reversed her engines and swung
gracefully till her bow was up against the current, then ploughed back,
inching in slowly until, with much shouting and the sound of many
gongs, she slid her nose quietly into the bank beneath the trading-post
and was made fast. Her cabin-deck was lined with passengers, most of
whom were bound for the "outside," although still clad in mackinaw and
overalls. They all gazed silently at the hundred men of Flambeau, who
stared back at them till the gang-plank was placed, when they came
ashore to stretch their legs. One of them, however, made sufficient
noise to make up for the silence of the others. Before the steamer had
grounded he appeared among the Siwash deck-hands, his head and
shoulders towering above them, his white teeth gleaming from a face as
dark as theirs, shouting to his friends ashore and pantomiming his
delight to the two Gale children who had come with Alluna to welcome
him.

"Who's dose beeg, tall people w'at stan' 'longside of you, Miz Gale?"
he called to her; then, shading his eyes elaborately, he cried, in a
great voice: "Wall! wal! I b'lieve dat's M'sieu Jean an' Mam'selle
Mollee. Ba Gar! Dey get so beeg w'ile I'm gone I don' know dem no more!"

The youthful Gales wriggled at this delicious flattery and dug their
tiny moccasined toes into the sand. Molly courtesied nervously and
continuously as she clung to her mother, and the boy showed a gap where
two front teeth had been and was now filled by a very pink tongue.

"Wen you goin' stop grow, anyhow, you two, eh?" continued the
Frenchman, and then, in a tone of sadness: "If I t'ink you ack lak'
dis, I don' buy all dese present. Dese t'ing ain' no good for ole
folks. I guess I'll t'row dem away." He made as if to heave a bundle
that he carried into the river, whereupon the children shrieked at him
so shrilly that he laughed long and incontinently at the success of his
sally.

Lieutenant Burrell had come with the others, for the arrival of a
steamboat called for the presence of every soul in camp, and, spying
Necia in the outskirts of the crowd, he took his place beside her. He
felt constrained, after what had happened on the previous evening, but
she seemed to have forgotten the episode, and greeted him with her
usual frankness. Even had she remembered it, there was nothing he could
say in explanation or in apology. He had lain awake for hours thinking
of her, and had fallen asleep with her still in his mind, for the
revelation of her blood had come as a shock to him, the full force of
which he could not appreciate until he had given himself time to think
of it calmly.

He had sprung from a race of Slave-holders, from a land where birth and
breed are more than any other thing, where a drop of impure blood
effects an ineradicable stain; therefore the thought of this girl's
ignoble parentage was so repugnant to him that the more he pondered it
the more pitiful it seemed, the more monstrous. Lying awake and
thinking of her in the stillness of his quarters, it had seemed a very
unfortunate and a very terrible thing. During his morning duties the
vision of her had been fresh before him again, and his constant
contemplation of the matter had wrought a change in his attitude
towards the girl, of which he was uncomfortably conscious and which he
was glad to see she did not perceive.

"There are some of the lucky men from El Dorado Creek," she informed
him, pointing out certain people on the deck. "They are going out to
the States to get something to eat. They say that nothing like those
mines have ever been heard of in the world. I wish father had gone up
last year when the news came."

"Why didn't he?" asked the Lieutenant. "Surely he must have been among
the first to learn of it."

"Yes. 'Stick' George sent him word a year ago last fall, when he made
the first discovery, but for some reason father wouldn't go."

The men were pouring off the boat now, and through the crowd came the
tall Frenchman, bearing in the hollow of each arm a child who clasped a
bundle to its breast. His eyes grew brighter at sight of Necia, and he
broke into a flood of patois; they fairly bombarded each other with
quick questions and fragmentary answers till she remembered her
companion, who had fallen back a pace and was studying the newcomer,
whereupon she turned.

"Oh, I forgot my manners. Lieutenant Burrell, this is Napoleon
Doret--our Poleon!" she added, with proud emphasis.

Doret checked his volubility and stared at the soldier, whom he
appeared to see for the first time. The little brown people in his arms
stared likewise, and it seemed to Burrell that a certain distrust was
in each of the three pairs of eyes, only in those of the man there was
no shyness. Instead, the Canadian looked him over gravely from head to
heel, seeming to note each point of the unfamiliar attire; then he
inquired, without removing his glance:

"Were'bouts you live, eh?"

"I live at the post yonder," said the Lieutenant.

"Wat biznesse you work at?"

"I am a soldier."

"Wat for you come 'ere? Dere's nobody fightin' roun' dis place."

"The Lieutenant has been stationed here, foolish," said Necia. "Come up
to the store quick and tell me what it's like at Dawson." With a
farewell nod to Burrell, she went off with Doret, whose speech was
immediately released again.

In spite of the man's unfriendliness, Burrell watched him with
admiration. There were no heels to his tufted fur boots, and yet he
stood a good six feet two, as straight as a pine sapling, and it needed
no second glance to tell of what metal he was made. His spirit showed
in his whole body, in the set of his head, and, above all, in his dark,
warm face, which glowed with eagerness when he talked, and that was
ever--when he was not singing.

"I never see so many people since I lef Quebec," he was saying. "She's
jus' lak' beeg city--mus' be t'ree, four t'ousan' people. Every day
some more dey come, an' all night dey dance an' sing an' drink w'iskee.
Ba gosh, dat's fine place!"

"Are there lots of white women?" asked the girl.

"Yes, two, t'ree hondred. Mos' of dem is work in dance-halls. Dere's
one fine gal I see, name' Marie Bourgette. I tell you 'bout her
by-an'-by."

"Oh, Poleon, you're in love!" cried Necia.

"No, siree!" he denied. "Dere's none of dem gal look half so purty lak'
you." He would have said more, but spying the trader at the entrance of
the store, he went to him, straightway launching into the details of
their commercial enterprise, which, happily, had been most successful.
Before they could finish, the crowd from the boat began to drift in,
some of them buying drinks at the bar and others making purchases of
tobacco and so forth, but for the main part merely idling about
curiously.

Among the merchandise of the Post there were for sale a scanty
assortment of fire-arms, cheap shot-guns, and a Winchester or two,
displayed in a rack behind the counter in a manner to attract the eye
of such native hunters as might need them, and with the rest hung a
pair of Colt's revolvers. One of the new arrivals, who had separated
from the others at the front, now called to Gale:

"Are those Colts for sale? Mine was stolen the other day." Evidently he
was accustomed to Yukon prices, for he showed no surprise at the figure
the trader named, but took the guns and tested each of them, whereupon
the old man knew that here was no "Cheechako," as tenderfeet are known
in the North, although the man's garb had deceived him at first glance.
The stranger balanced the weapons, one in either hand, then he did the
"double roll" neatly, following which he executed a move that Gale had
not witnessed for many years. He extended one of the guns, butt
foremost, as if surrendering it, the action being free and open, save
for the fact that his forefinger was crooked and thrust through the
trigger-guard; then, with the slightest jerk of the wrist, the gun spun
about, the handle jumped into his palm, and instantly there was a click
as his thumb flipped the hammer. It was the old "road-agent spin,"
which Gale as a boy had practised hours at a time; but that this man
was in earnest he showed by glancing upward sharply when the trader
laughed.

"This one hangs all right," he said; "give me a box of cartridges."

He emptied his gold-sack in payment for the gun and ammunition, then
remarked:  "That pretty nearly cleans me. If I had the price I'd take
them both."

Gale wondered what need induced this fellow to spend his last few
dollars on a fire-arm, but he said nothing until the man had loosened
the bottom buttons of his vest and slipped the weapon inside the band
of his trousers, concealing its handle beneath the edge of his
waistcoat. Then he inquired:

"Bound for the outside?"

"No. I'm locating here."

The trader darted a quick glance at him. He did not like this man.

"There ain't much doing in this camp; it's a pretty poor place," he
said, guardedly.

"I'll put in with you, from its looks," agreed the other. "It's got too
many soldiers to be worth a damn." He snarled this bitterly, with a
peculiar leering lift of his lip, as if his words tasted badly.

"Most of the boys are going up-river," said Gale.

"Well, those hills look as if they had gold in them," said the
stranger, pointing vaguely. "I'm going to prospect."

Gale knew instinctively that the fellow was lying, for his hands were
not those of a miner; but there was nothing to be said. His judgment
was verified, however, when Poleon drew him aside later and said:

"You know dat feller?"

"No."

"He's bad man."

"How do you know?"

"She's leave Dawson damn queeck. Dose Mounted Police t'row 'im on de
boat jus' before we lef." Then he told a story that he had heard. The
man, it seemed, had left Skagway between two suns, upon the disruption
of Soapy Smith's band of desperadoes, and had made for the interior,
but had been intercepted at the Pass by two members of the Citizens'
Committee who came upon him suddenly. Pretending to yield, he had
executed some unexpected coup as he delivered his gun, for both men
fell, shot through the body. No one knew just what it was he did, nor
cared to question him overmuch. The next heard of him was at Lake
Bennett, over the line, where the Mounted Police recognized him and
sent him on. They marked him well, however, and passed him on from post
to post as they had driven others whose records were known; but he had
lost himself in the confusion at Dawson for a few weeks, until the
scarlet-coated riders searched him out, disarmed him, and forced him
sullenly aboard this steamer. The offscourings of the Canadian frontier
were drifting back into their native country to settle.

Old Man Gale cared little for this, for he had spent his life among
such men, but as he watched the fellow a scheme outlined itself in his
head. Evidently the man dared not go farther down the river, for there
was nothing save Indian camps and a Mission or two this side of St.
Michael's, and at that point there was a court and many soldiers, where
one was liable to meet the penalty of past misdeeds, hence he was
probably resolved to stop here, and, judging by his record, he was a
man of settled convictions. Continued persecution is wont to stir
certain natures to such reckless desperation that interference is
dangerous, and Gale, recalling his sullen look and ill-concealed
contempt for the soldiers, put the stranger down as a man of this type.
Furthermore, he had been impressed by the fellow's remarkable dexterity
of wrist.

The trader stepped to the door, and, seeing Burrell on the deck of the
steamer, went down towards him. It was a long chance, but the stakes
were big and worth the risk. He had thought much during the night
previous--in fact, for many hours--and the morning had found him still
undecided, wherefore he took this course.

"Necia tells me that you aim to keep law and order here," he began,
abruptly, having drawn the young man aside.

"Those are my instructions," said Burrell, "but they are so vague--"

"Well! This camp is bigger than it was an hour ago, and it 'ain't
improved any in the growth. Yonder goes the new citizen." He pointed to
the stranger, who had returned to the steamer for his baggage and was
descending the gang-plank beneath them, a valise in each hand. "He's a
thief and a murderer, and we don't want him here. Now, it's up to you."

"I don't understand," said the Lieutenant, whereupon the trader told
him Doret's tale. "You and your men were sent here to keep things
peaceable," he concluded, "and I reckon when a man is too tough for the
Canuck police he is tough enough for you to tackle. There ain't a lock
and key in the camp, and we ain't had a killing or a stealing in ten
years. We'd like to keep it that way."

"Well--you see--I know nothing of that shooting affray, so I doubt if
my authority would permit me to interfere," the soldier mused, half to
himself.

"I allowed you were to use your own judgment," said the elder man.

"So I am, I suppose. There is one chance, Mr. Gale. If you'll back me
up I'll send him on down to St. Michael's. That is the most I can do."

The Lieutenant outlined his plan, and as he went on the trader nodded
approval.

The young man gazed back at him so squarely, his eyes were so pleasant
and friendly, his whole person breathed such straight-up honesty and
freshness, that shame arose in the old man, and he had hard shift to
keep his glance from wavering. Without forethought he answered,
impulsively:

"He's desperate and he's dangerous. I sold him a '45' just now." He was
about to tell him where the man wore it, and to add a word concerning
his dexterity with the gun, when the very fearless deliberation of the
youth deterred him. On second thought, Gale yielded to an impulse to
wait and see how Meade Burrell would act under fire. If the soldier
emerged scathless, it would give him a line on his character; if he did
not--well, that would be even better. The sight of his blue and brass
awoke in the elder man dread and cowardice, emotions he had never
experienced before. Anyhow, he owed it to himself, to Necia, and to the
others to find out what kind of man this soldier was.

The crowd was coming back to the steamer, which had discharged her few
bundles of freight, and there was no one inside the log post as they
entered except Doret and the stranger, who had deposited his baggage at
the rear and was talking with the Frenchman at the bar. At sight of the
Lieutenant he became silent, and turned carelessly, although with a
distrustful stare. Burrell wasted no time.

"Are you going to locate here?" he began.

"Yes."

"I notice you go skeleton-rigged," the soldier continued, indicating
the man's baggage. "Pretty small outfit for a miner, isn't it?"

"It's plenty for me."

"Have you enough money to buy your season's grub?"

"I guess that's my business."

"Pardon me, it is my business also."

"What is this--a hold-up?" The man laughed harshly, at the same time
swinging around till he faced his questioner. Gale noted that his right
hand now hung directly over the spot where his suspenders buttoned on
the right side. The trader moved aside and took up a position at some
distance.

"My orders are to see that all new-comers either have an outfit or are
able to buy one," said Burrell. "Those that are not equipped properly
are to be sent down-river to St. Michael's, where there is plenty of
everything and where they will be taken care of by the government. Mr.
Gale has only sufficient provisions to winter the men already in this
district."

"I can take care of myself," said the man, angrily, "whether I'm broke
or not, and I don't want any of your interference." He shot a quick
glance at Poleon Doret, but the Frenchman's face was like wood, and his
hand still held the neck of the whiskey bottle he had set out for the
stranger before the others entered. Gale leaned against the opposite
counter, his countenance inert but for the eyes, which were fixed upon
the Lieutenant.

"Come," said the officer, peremptorily, "I have heard all about you,
and you are not the kind of citizen we want here, but if you have
enough money for an outfit I can't send you away. If you haven't--"

"I'm broke," said the man, but at the note in his voice Poleon Doret's
muscles tightened, and Burrell, who also read a sinister message in the
tone, slid his heavy service revolver from its holster beneath his coat.

He had never done this thing before, and it galled him. He had never
drawn a weapon on a man, and this playing at policeman became suddenly
most repugnant, stirring in him the uncomfortable feeling that he was
doing a mean thing, and not only a mean thing, but one of which he
ought to be heartily ashamed. He felt decidedly amateurish, especially
when he saw that the man apparently intended no resistance and made no
move. However, he was in for it now, and must end as he had begun.

"Give me your gun," he said; "I'll unload it and give it back to you at
the gang-plank."

"All right, you've got the upper hand," said the man through lips that
had gone white. Drawing his weapon from beneath his vest, he presented
it to the officer, butt foremost, hammer underneath. The cylinder
reposed naturally in the palm of his hand, and the tip of his
forefinger was thrust through the trigger-guard.

Burrell lowered the barrel of his revolver and put out his left hand
for the other's weapon. Suddenly the man's wrist jerked, the soldier
saw a blue flicker of sunlight on the steel as it whirled, saw the arm
of Poleon Doret fling itself across the bar with the speed of a
striking serpent, heard a smash of breaking glass, felt the shock of a
concussion, and the spatter of some liquid in his face. Then he saw the
man's revolver on the floor half-way across the room, saw fragments of
glass with it, and saw the fellow step backward, snatching at the
fingers of his right hand. A smell of powder-smoke and rank whiskey was
in the air.

There are times when a man's hand will act more swiftly than his
tongue. Napoleon Doret had seen the manner of the stranger's surrender
of his gun, and, realizing too late what it meant, had acted. At the
very instant of the fellow's treachery, Doret struck with his bottle
just in time to knock the weapon from his hand, but not in time to
prevent its discharge. The bullet was lodged in the wall a foot from
where Gale stood. As the stranger staggered back, the Frenchman vaulted
the bar, but, though swift as a cat, the soldier, who had also leaped,
was before him. Aiming a sweeping downward blow with his Colt, Burrell
clipped the Skagway man just above the ear, and he reeled; then as he
fell the officer struck wickedly again at his opponent's skull, but
Doret seized him by the arm.

"Ba Gar, don't kill 'im twice!"

Burrell wrenched his arm free and turned on Doret a face that remained
long in the Frenchman's memory, a face suffused with fury and convulsed
like that of a sprinter at the finish of a race. The two men stared at
each other over the fallen figure for a brief moment, until the soldier
gained mastery of himself and sheathed his weapon, when Poleon smiled.

"I spoil' a quart of good w'iskee on you. Dat's wort' five dollar."

The Lieutenant wiped the liquor from his face.

"Quick work, Doret," he said. "I owe you one."

Gale's face was hidden as he bent over the prostrate man, fingering a
long and ragged cut which laid the fellow's scalp open from back of the
ear to the temple, but he mumbled something unintelligible.

"Is he hurt badly?"

"No, you chipped him too low," said the trader. "I told you he was bad."

"He's goin' have nice birt'-mark, anyhow," said Doret, going back of
the bar for some water. They revived the man, then bound up his injury
hastily, and as the steamer cast off they led him to the bank and
passed his grip-sacks to a roustabout. He said no word as he walked
unsteadily up the plank, but turned and stared malignantly at them from
the deck; then, as the craft swung outward into the stream, he grinned
through the trickle of blood that stole down from beneath his wide hat,
if the convulsive grimace he made could be termed a grin, and cried:

"I'd like to introduce myself, for I'm coming back to winter with you,
Lieutenant! My name is Runnion." And until the steamer was hidden
behind the bend below they saw him standing there gazing back at them
fixedly.

As Burrell left the two men at the store, he gave his hand frankly to
the French-Canadian, and said, while his cheeks flushed:

"I want to thank you for saving me from my own awkwardness."

Doret became even more embarrassed than the Lieutenant at this show of
gratitude, and grunted churlishly. But when the young man had gone he
turned to Gale, who had watched them silently, and said:

"He's nice young feller, ole man. Sapre! Wen he's mad his eye got so
red lak' my ondershirt."

But the trader made no reply.




CHAPTER III

WITHOUT BENEFIT OF CLERGY


When the steamer had gone Napoleon Doret went to look for Necia, and
found her playing with the younger Gales, who revelled in the gifts he
had brought. Never had there been such a surprise. Never had there been
such gorgeous presents for little folks. This was a land in which there
were no toys, a country too young for babes; and any one whose youth
had been like that of other children would have seen a pathos in the
joy of these two. Poleon had been hard put to it to find anything
suitable for his little friends, for although there was all manner of
merchandise coming into Dawson, none of it was designed for tiny
people, not even clothes.

It was evident that he had pleased them, for when he appeared they ran
at his legs like twin cubs, incoherent and noisy, the pleasure within
them too turbulent for expression. They had never played with a toy
that Poleon had not built for them, nor worn a garment that Alluna had
not made. This, then, was a day of revelations, for the first thing
they beheld upon opening their packs was a pair of rubber boots for
each. They were ladies' knee-boots, the smallest size in stock, but the
Gales entered them bodily, so to speak, moccasins and all, clear to
their hips, like the waders that duck-hunters use. When they ran they
fell down and out of them, but their pride remained upright and serene,
for were not these like the boots that Poleon wore, and not of Indian
make, with foolish beads on them? Next, the youthful heir had found a
straw hat of strange and wondrous fashion, with a brim like a board and
a band of blue, which Poleon had bought from a college man who had
retained this emblem of his past to the final moment. Like the boots,
it was much too large for little John, and hard to master, but it made
a brave display, as did a red cravat, which covered his front like a
baseball catcher's harness. Molly had also two sets of side-combs,
gorgeously ornamented with glass diamonds, and a silver-handled
tooth-brush, with which she scrubbed the lame puppy. This puppy had
three legs and the mange, and he was her particular pride.

There were certain other things, the use of which they did not
understand, like queer-smelling, soft, yellow balls which Necia said
were oranges and good to eat, although the skins were leathery and very
bitter, nor were they nearly so pleasant to the nose as the toilet
soap, which Necia would not allow them even to taste. Then there was a
box of chocolate candies such as the superintendent at St. Michael's
sent them every spring, and an atomizer, which Necia had filled with
Florida Water. This worked on the puppy even better than the
tooth-brush.

The elder girl laughed gladly as Poleon entered, though her eyes were
wet with the pity of it.

"You seem to bring sunshine wherever you go," she said. "They have
never had things to play with like other children, and it makes me cry
to watch them."

"Ho, ho!" he chuckled, "dis ain'no time for cryin'. Ba gosh! I guess
you don' have so much present w'en you was li'l' gal you'se'f, w'at?
Mebbe you t'ink I forget you. Wal, I didn't."

He began to undo the fastenings of a parcel he carried in his arms, for
Napoleon Doret had brought other things from Dawson besides his gifts
to the children. Necia snatched at the package.

"Don't you dare open it! Why, that's half the fun." She was a child
herself now, her face flushed and her hands a-tremble. Taking the
package to the table, she hurriedly untied the knots while he stood
watching her, his teeth showing white against his dark face, and his
eyes half shut as if dazzled by the sight of her.

"Oh, why didn't you tie more knots in it?" she breathed as she undid
the last, and then, opening the wrappings slowly, she gasped in
astonishment. She shook it out gently, reverently--a clinging black
lace gown of Paris make. Next she opened a box and took from it a
picture hat, with long jet plumes, which she stroked and pressed fondly
against her face. There were other garments also--a silken petticoat,
silk stockings, and a pair of high-heeled shoes to match, with certain
other delicate and dainty things which she modestly forbore to inspect
before the Frenchman, who said no word, but only gazed at her, and for
whom she had no eyes as yet. Finally she laid her presents aside, and,
turning to him, said, in a hushed, awe-stricken voice:

"It's all there, everything complete! Oh, Poleon--you dear, dear
Poleon!" She took his two big hands by the thumbs, as had been her
custom ever since she was a child, and looked up at him, her eyes wet
with emotion. But she could not keep away from the dress for long, and
returned to feast her eyes upon it, the two children standing beside
her, sprouting out of their rubber boots, with eyes and mouths round
and protruding.

"You lak' it, eh?" pressed Poleon, hungry for more demonstrative
expression.

"Oh-h," she sighed, "can't you SEE? Where on earth did you get it?"
Then suddenly realizing its value, she cried, "Why, it must have cost a
fortune!" A quick reproach leaped into her face, but he only laughed
again.

"Wan night I gamble in beeg saloon. Yes, sir! I gamble good dat night,
too. For w'ile I play roulette, den I dance, den I play some more, an'
by-an'-by I see a new dance gal. She's Franche gal, from Montreal.
Dat's de one I tol' you 'bout. Ba Gar! She's swell dress', too. She's
name' Marie Bourgette."

"Oh, I've heard about her," said Necia. "She owns a claim on Bonanza
Creek."

"Sure, she's frien's wit' Charlie McCormack, dat riche feller, but I
don' know it dis tam', so I ask her for dance wit' me. Den we drink a
bottle of champagne--twenty dollar."

"'Mamselle,' I say, 'how much you charge for sell me dat dress?'"

"'For w'y shall I sell im,' she say; 'I don' wear 'im before till
to-night, an' I don' get no more dress lak' dis for t'ousan' dollar.'"

Necia exclaimed excitedly.

'"For w'y you sell 'im?' I say. 'Biccause I'll tak' 'im down to
Flambeau for Necia Gale, w'at never had no dress lak' dat in all her
life.' Wal, sir, dat Marie Bourgette, she's hear of you before, an'
your dad, too--mos' all dose Cheechakos know 'bout Old Man Gale--so she
say:

"'Wat lookin' kind of gal is dis Necia?' An' I tell her all 'bout you.
Wen I'm t'rough she say:'"

"'But maybe your little frien' is more bigger as I am. Maybe de dress
won't fit.'"

"'Ha! You don' know me, mamselle,' I say. 'I can guess de weight of a
caribou to five poun'. She'll be same size la'kin' one inch 'roun' de
wais'.'"

"'Poleon Doret,' she say, 'you ain' no Franchemans to talk lak'dat.
Look here! I can sell dis dress for t'ousan' dollar to-night, or I can
trade 'im for gol'-mine on El Dorado Creek to some dose Swede w'at want
to catch a gal, but I'm goin' sell 'im to you for t'ree hondred dollar,
jus' w'at I pay for 'im. You wait here till I come back.'"

"'No, no, Mamselle Marie, I'll go 'long, too, for so you don' change
your min',' I say; an' I stan' outside her door till she pass me de
whole dam' works."

"' Don' forget de little shoes,' I say--an' dat's how it come!"

"And you paid three hundred dollars for it!" Necia said, aghast. The
Canadian shrugged.

"Only for de good heart of Marie Bourgette I pay wan t'ousan'," said
he. "I mak' seven hondred dollar clean profit!"

"It was very nice of both of you, but--I can't wear it. I've never seen
a dress like it, except in pictures, and I couldn't--" She saw his face
fall, and said, impulsively:

"I'll wear it once, anyhow, Poleon, just for you. Go away quick, now,
and let me put it on."

"Dat's good," he nodded, as he moved away. "I bet you mak' dose
dance-hall women look lak' sucker."

No man may understand the girl's feelings as she set about clothing
herself in her first fine dress. Time and again she had studied
pictures from the "outside" showing women arrayed in the newest styles,
and had closed her eyes to fancy herself dressed in like manner. She
had always had an instinctive feeling that some day she would leave the
North and see the wonderful world of which men spoke so much, and
mingle with the fine ladies of her picture-books, but she never dreamed
to possess an evening-gown while she lived in Alaska. And now, even
while she recognized the grotesqueness of the situation, she burned to
wear it and see herself in the garb of other women. So, with the
morning sun streaming brightly into her room, lighting up the
moss-chinked walls, the rough barbarism of fur and head and trophy, she
donned the beautiful garments.

Poleon's eye had been amazingly correct, for it fitted her neatly, save
at the waist, which was even more than an inch too large,
notwithstanding the fact that she had never worn such a corset as the
well-formed Marie Bourgette was accustomed to.

She pondered long and hesitated modestly when she saw its low cut,
which exposed her neck and shoulders in a totally unaccustomed manner,
for it struck her as amazingly indecent until she scurried through her
magazines again and saw that its construction, as compared with others,
was most conservative. Even so she shrank at sight of herself below the
line of sunburn, for she was ringed about like a blue-winged teal, the
demarcation being more pronounced because of the natural whiteness of
her skin. The year previous Doret had brought her from the coast a
Spanish shawl, which a salt-water sailor had sold him, and which had
lain folded away ever since. She brought it forth now and arranged it
about her shoulders, but in spite of this covering the fair flesh
beneath peeped through its wide interstices most brazenly. She had
never paid marked attention to the fairness of her skin till now, and
all at once this difference between herself and her little brother and
sister struck her. She had been a mother to them ever since they came,
and had often laughed when she saw how brown their little bodies were,
rejoicing in blushing quietude at her own whiteness, but to-day she
neither laughed nor felt any joy, rather a dim wonder. She sat down,
dress and all, in the thick softness of a great brown bear-skin and
thought it over.

How odd it was, now that she considered it, that she needed no aid with
these alien garments, that she knew instinctively their every feature,
that there was no intricacy to cause her more than an instant's
trouble. This knowledge must be a piece with the intuitive wit that had
been the wonder of Father Barnum and had enabled her to absorb his
teachings as fast as he gave them forth.

She was interrupted in her reverie by the passing of a shadow across
her window and the stamp of a man's feet on the planks at the door. Of
course, it was Poleon, who had come back to see her; so she rose
hastily, gave one quick glance at the mirror above her washstand,
choosing the side that distorted her image the least, and, hearing him
still stamping, perfunctorily called:

"Come in! I'll be right out."

She kicked the train into place behind her, looped the shawl carelessly
about her in a way to veil her modesty effectively, and, with an
expectant smile at his extravagance of admiration, swept out into the
big room, very self-conscious and very pleasing to the eye. She crossed
proudly to the reading-table to give him a fair view of her splendor,
and was into the middle of the room before she looked up. Taken aback,
she uttered a little strangled cry and made a quick movement of
retreat, only to check herself and stand with her chin high in the air,
while wave after wave of color swept over her face.

"Great lovely dove!" ejaculated Burrell, fervently, staring at her.

"Oh, I--I thought you were Poleon. He--" In spite of herself she
glanced towards her room as if to flee; she writhed at the utter
absurdity of her appearance, and knew the Lieutenant must be laughing
at her. But flight would only make it worse, so she stood as she was,
having drawn back as far as she could, till the table checked her.
Burrell, however, was not laughing, nor smiling even, for his
embarrassment rivalled hers.

"I was looking for your father," he said, wondering if this glorious
thing could be the quaint half-breed girl of yesterday. There was
nothing of the native about her now, for her lithe young figure was
drawn up to its height, and her head, upon which the long, black braids
were coiled, was tipped back in a haughty poise. She had flung her
hands out to grasp the table edge behind her, forgetful of her shawl,
which drooped traitorously and showed such rounded lines as her
ordinary dress scarce hinted at. This was no Indian maid, the soldier
vowed; no blood but the purest could pulse in such veins, no spirit
save the highest could flash in such eyes as these. A jealous rancor
irked him at the thought of this beauty intended for the Frenchman's
eyes.

"Can't you show yourself to me as well as to Poleon?" he said.

"Certainly not!" she declared. "He bought this dress for me, and I put
it on to please him." Now she was herself again, for some note in the
Lieutenant's voice gave her dominance over him. "After he sees it I
will take it off, and--"

"Don't--don't take it off--ever," said Burrell. "I thought you were
beautiful before, because of your quaintness and simplicity, but now--"
his chest swelled--"why, this is a breath from home. You're like my
sister and the girls back in Kentucky, only more wonderful."

"Am I?" she cried, eagerly. "Am I like other girls? Do I really look as
if I'd always worn clothes like these?"

"Born to them," said he.

A smile broke over her grave face, assuming a hundred different shades
of pleasure and making a child of her on the instant; all her reserve
and hauteur vanished. Her warmth and unaffected frankness suffused him,
as she stood out, turning to show the beauties of her gown, her brown
hands fluttering tremulously as she talked.

"It's my first party-dress, you know, and I'm as proud of it as Molly
is of her rubber boots. It's too big in here and too small right there;
that girl must have had a bad chest; but otherwise it fits me as if it
had been made for me, doesn't it? And the shoes! Aren't they the
dearest things? See." She held her skirts back, showing her two feet
side by side, her dainty ankles slim and shapely in their silk.

"They won't shed water," he said.

"I know; and look at the heels. I couldn't walk a mile to save my life."

"And they will come off if they get wet."

"But they make me very tall."

"They don't wear as well as moccasins." Both laughed delightedly till
he broke in, impulsively:

"Oh, girl, don't you know how beautiful you are?"

"Of course I do!" she cried, imitating his change of voice; then added,
naively, "That's why I hate to take it off."

"Where did you learn to wear things like that?" he questioned. "Where
did you get that--well--that air?"

"It seems to me I've always known. There's nothing strange about it.
The buttons and the hooks and the eyes are all where they belong. It's
instinct, I suppose, from father's side--"

"Probably. I dare say I should understand the mechanism of a
dress-suit, even if I'd never seen one," said the man, amused, yet
impressed by her argument.

"I've always had visions of women dressed in this kind of clothing,
white women--never natives--not dressed like this exactly, but in
dainty, soft things, not at all like the ones I wear. I seem to have a
memory, although it's hardly that, either--it's more like a dream--as
if I were somebody else. Father says it is from reading too much."

"A memory of what?"

"It's too vague and tantalizing to tell what it is, except that I
should be called Merridy."

"Merridy? Why that?"

"I'll show you. See." She slipped her hand inside the shawl and drew
from her breast a thin gold chain on which was strung a band ring. "It
was grandmother's--that's where I got the fancy for the name of
Merridy, I suppose."

"May I look?"

"Of course. But I daren't take it off. I haven't had it off my neck
since I was a baby." She held it out for him to examine, and, although
it brought his head close to hers, there was no trace of coquetry in
the invitation. He read the inscription, "From Dan to Merridy," but had
no realization of what it meant, for he glimpsed the milk-white flesh
almost at his lips, and felt her breath stirring his hair, while the
delicate scent of her person seemed to loose every strong emotion in
him. She was so dainty and yet so virile, so innocent and yet so wise,
so cold and yet so pulsating.

"It is very pretty," he said, inanely.

At the look in his eyes as he raised his head her own widened, and she
withdrew from him imperceptibly, dismissing him with a mere inflection.

"I wish you would send Poleon here. It's time he saw his present."

As Burrell walked out into the air he shut his jaws grimly and
muttered: "Hold tight, young man. She's not your kind--she's not your
kind."

Inside the store he found Doret and the trader in conversation with a
man he had not met before, a ragged nondescript whose overalls were
blue and faded and patched, particularly on the front of the legs above
the knees, where a shovel-handle wears hardest; whose coat was of
yellow mackinaw, the sleeves worn thin below the elbows, where they had
rubbed against his legs in his work. As the soldier entered, the man
turned on him a small, shrewd, weather-beaten face with one eye, while
he went on talking to Gale.

"It ain't nothin' to git excited over, but it's wuth follerin'. If I
wasn't so cussed unlucky I'd know there was a pay streak som'ere close
by."

"Your luck is bound to change, Lee," said the trader, who helped him to
roll up a pack of provisions.

"Mebbe so. Who's the dressmaker?" He jerked his bushy head towards
Burrell, who had stopped at the front door with Poleon to examine some
yellow grains in a folded paper.

"He's the boss soldier."

"Purty, ain't he?"

"If you ain't good he'll get you," said Gale, a trifle cynically, at
which Lee chuckled.

"I reckon there's several of us in camp that ain't been a whole lot too
good," said he. "Has he tried to git anybody yet?"

"No, but he's liable to. What would happen if he did? Suppose, for
instance, he went after you--or me?"

The one-eyed man snorted derisively. "It ain't wuth considerin'!"

"Why not?" insisted Gale, guardedly. "Maybe I've got a record--you
don't know."

"If you have, don't tell me nothin' about it," hastily observed Lee.
"I'm a God-fearin' citizen myself, leanin' ever towards peace and
quietudes, but what's past is dead and gone, and I'd hate to see a
lispin' child like that blue-and-yeller party try to reezureck it."

"He's got the American army to back him up--at least five of them."

"Five agin a hundred. He aims to overawe us, don't he?" snickered the
unregenerate Lee, but his wrinkles changed and deepened as he leaned
across the counter confidentially.

"You say the word, John, and I'll take some feller along to help me,
and we'll transfer this military post. There's plenty that would like
the job if you give the wink."

"Pshaw! I'm just supposing," said the trader. "As long as they play
around and drill and toot that horn, and don't bother anybody, I allow
they're not in the way."

"All right! It's up to you. However, if I happen to leap down on this
pay streak before it sees me comin', I'm goin' to put my friends in
first and foremost, and shut out these dressmakers complete. So long!"
He thrust his arms beneath the legs of a new pair of blue overalls that
formed his pack-straps, wriggled the burden comfortably into place
between his shoulders, and slouched out past Doret, to whom he nodded,
ignoring the "dressmaker."

Having given Necia's message to Poleon, the Lieutenant took up his
business with the trader. It concerned the purchase of certain supplies
that had been omitted from the military outfit, and when this was
concluded he referred to the encounter of that morning.

"I don't want you to think I bungle everything in that manner," he
said, "for I don't. I want to work with you, and I want to be friends
with you."

"I'm willing," said Gale.

"Nobody dislikes playing policeman more than I do, but it's a part of
my duty, and I'll have to do it," continued the young man.

"I reckon you simply aim to keep peace, eh? You ain't lookin' for
nobody in particular?"

"Of course not--outside of certain notorious criminals who have escaped
justice and worked north."

"Then there is a few that you want, eh?"

"Yes, certain old-timers. The officers at every post have descriptions
of a few such, and if they show up we will take them in and hold them
till courts are established."

"If you've got their names and descriptions, mebbe I could help you,"
said the trader, carelessly.

"Thank you, I'll bring up the list and we'll go over it together. You
must have been here a good while."

"About ten years."

"Then Miss Necia was born out in the States?"

Gale shot a startled glance at the soldier before he answered in the
affirmative, but Burrell was studying a pattern of sunlight on the
floor and did not observe him. A moment later he inquired, hesitatingly:

"Is this your first marriage, Mr. Gale?" When the other did not answer,
he looked up and quickly added:

"I beg your pardon, sir. What led me to ask was Miss Necia--she is
so--well--she is such a remarkable girl."

Gale's face had undergone a change, but he answered, quietly:

"I 'ain't never been married."

"What?"

"When I took Alluna it wasn't the style, and neither one of us has
thought much about it since."

"Oh, I see," exclaimed Burrell, hurriedly. "I'll bring that list with
me the first time I think about it," and, nodding amiably, he sauntered
out. But his mind was in a whirl, and even after he had reached his
quarters he found himself repeating:

"The other was bad enough. Poor little girl! Poor little girl!"

Gale likewise left the store and went into his house, the odd look
still strong in his eyes, to find Necia posing in her new regalia for
Poleon's benefit. At sight of her he fell into a strange and unexpected
humor, and to their amazement commanded her roughly to take the things
off. His voice and manner were harsh and at utter variance with any
mood he had ever displayed before; nor would he explain his unreasoning
fury, but strode out again, leaving her in tears and the Frenchman
staring.




CHAPTER IV

THE SOLDIER FINDS AN UNTRODDEN VALLEY


During the weeks that followed Meade Burrell saw much of Necia. At
first he had leaned on the excuse that he wanted to study the curious
freak of heredity she presented; but that wore out quickly, and he let
himself drift, content with the pleasure of her company and happy in
the music of her laughter. Her quick wit and keen humor delighted him,
and the mystery of her dark eyes seemed to hold the poetry and beauty
of all the red races that lay behind her on the maternal side. At times
he thought of her as he had seen her that morning in the dance-girl's
dress, and remembered the purity of neck and breast it had displayed,
but he attributed that to the same prank of heritage that had endowed
her with other traits alien to her mother's race.

He had experienced a profound sense of pity for her upon learning her
father's relation to Alluna, but this also largely vanished when he
found that the girl was entirely oblivious to its significance. He had
tried her in many subtle ways, and found that she regarded the matter
innocently, as customary, and therefore in the light of an accepted
convention; nor did she seem to see anything in her blood or station to
render her inferior to other women. She questioned him tirelessly about
his sister, and he was glad of this, for it placed no constraint
between them. So that, as he explored her many quaint beliefs and pagan
superstitions, the delight of being with her grew, and he ceased to
reason whither it might lead him.

As for her, each day brought a keener delight. She unfolded before the
Kentuckian like some beautiful woodland flower, and through
innumerable, unnoticed familiarities took him into her innermost
confidence, sharing with him those girlish hopes and beliefs and
aspirations she had never voiced till now.

A month of this went by, and then Runnion returned. He came on an
up-going steamer which panted in for a rest from its thousand-mile
climb, and for breath to continue its fight against the never-tiring
sweep of waters. The manner of his coming was bold, for he stood fairly
upon the ship's deck, staring at the growing picture of the town, as he
had watched it recede a month before, and his smile was evil now, as it
had been then. With him was a stranger. When the boat was at rest
Runnion sauntered down the gang-plank and up to the Lieutenant, who
stood above the landing-place, and who noted that the scar, close up
against his hat-band, was scarce healed. He accosted the officer with
an insolent assurance.

"Well, I'm back again, you see, and I'm back to stay."

"Very well, Runnion; did you bring an outfit with you?" The young man
addressed him civilly, although he felt that the fellow's presence was
a menace and would lead to trouble.

"Yes, and I'm pretty fat besides." He shook a well-laden gold-sack at
the officer. "I reckon I can rustle thirteen dollars a month most
anywhere, if I'm left alone."

"What do you want in this place, anyhow?" demanded Burrell, curiously.

"None of your damned business," the man answered, grinning.

"Be sure it isn't," retorted the Lieutenant, "because it would please
me right down to the ground if it were. I'd like to get you."

"I'm glad we understand each other," Runnion said, and turned to
oversee the unloading of his freight, falling into conversation with
the stranger, who had been surveying the town without leaving the boat.
Evidently this man had a voice in Runnion's affairs, for he not only
gave him instructions, but bossed the crew who handled his merchandise,
and Meade Burrell concluded that he must be some incoming tenderfoot
who had grub-staked the desperado to prospect in the hills back of
Flambeau. As the two came up past him he saw that he was mistaken--this
man was no more of a tenderfoot than Runnion; on the contrary, he had
the bearing of one to whom new countries are old, who had trod the edge
of things all his life. There was a hint of the meat-eating animal
about him; his nose was keen and hawk-like, his walk and movements
those of the predatory beast, and as he passed by, Burrell observed
that his eyes were of a peculiar cruelty that went well with his thin
lips. He was older by far than Runnion, but, while the latter was
mean-visaged and swaggering, the stranger's manner was noticeable for
its repression.

Impelled by an irresistible desire to learn something about the man,
the Lieutenant loitered after Runnion and his companion, and entered
the store in time to see the latter greet "No Creek" Lee, the
prospector, who had come into town for more food. Both men spoke with
quiet restraint.

"Nine years since I saw you, Stark," said the miner. "Where you bound?"

"The diggings," replied Stark, as Lee addressed the stranger.

"Mining now?"

"No, same old thing, but I'm grub-staking a few men, as usual. One of
them stays here. I may open a house in Dawson if the camp is as good as
they say it is."

"This here's a good place for you."

Stark laughed noiselessly and without mirth. "Fine! There must be a
hundred people living here."

"Never mind, you take it from me," said the miner, positively, "and get
in now on the quiet. There's something doing." His one sharp eye
detected the Lieutenant close by, so he drew his friend aside and began
talking to him earnestly and with such evident effect as to alter
Stark's plans on the moment; for when Runnion entered the store shortly
Stark spoke to him quickly, following which they both hurried back to
the steamer and saw to the unloading of much additional freight and
baggage. From the volume and variety of this merchandise, it was
evident that Mr. Stark would in no wise be a burden to the community.

Burrell was not sufficiently versed in the ways of mining-camps to know
exactly what this abrupt change of policy meant, but that there was
something in the air he knew from the mysterious manner of "No Creek"
Lee and from the suppressed excitement of Doret and the trader. His
curiosity got the better of him finally, and he fell into talk with
Lee, inquiring about the stranger by way of an opening.

"That's Ben Stark. I knew him back in the Cassiar country," said Lee.

"Is he a mining man?"

"Well, summat. He's made and lost a bank-roll that a greyhound couldn't
leap over in the mining business, but it ain't his reg'lar graft. He
run one of the biggest places in the Northwest for years."

"Saloon, eh?"

"Saloon and variety house--seven bartenders, that's all. He's the
feller that killed the gold-commissioner. Of course, that put him on
the hike again."

"How do you mean?"

"Well, he had a record as long as a sick man's drug bill before he went
into that country, and when he put the commissioner away them Canadian
officials went after him like they was killin' snakes, and it cost him
all he had made to get clear. If it had happened across the line, the
coroner's jury would have freed him, 'cause the commissioner was drunk
and started the row; but it happened right in Stark's saloon, and you
know Canucks is stronger than vitriol for law and order. Not bein' his
first offence, it went hard with him."

"He looks like a killer," said Burrell.

"Yes, but he ain't the common kind. He always lets the other man begin,
and therefore he ain't never done time."

"Come, now," argued the Lieutenant, "if it were the other man who
invariably shot first, Stark would have been killed long ago."

"I don't care what WOULD have happened, it 'AIN'T happened, and he's
got notches on his gun till it looks like a cub bear had chawed it. If
you was a Western man you'd know what they say about him."

"'The bullet 'ain't been run to kill him.' That's the sayin'. You
needn't grin, there's many a better man than you believes it."

"Who is it that the bullet hasn't been run to kill?" said the trader's
deep voice behind them. He had finished with his duties, and now
sauntered forward.

"Ben Stark," said Lee, turning. "You know him, John?"

"No, I never saw him, but I know who he is--used to hear of him in the
Coeur d'Alenes."

"That's him I was talking to," said the miner. "He's an old friend of
mine, and he's going to locate here."

Burrell thought he saw Lee wink at the trader, but he was not sure, for
at that moment the man of whom they were speaking re-entered. Lee
introduced him, and the three men shook hands. While the soldier fell
into easy conversation with the new-comer, Gale gazed at him narrowly,
studying him as he studied all men who came as strangers. As he was
doing so Alluna entered, followed by Johnny and Molly. She had come for
sugar, and asked for it in her native tongue. Upon her exit Stark broke
off talking to the Lieutenant and turned to the trader.

"Your squaw, Mr. Gale?"

The old man nodded.

"Pah-Ute, eh?"

"Yes. Why, do you savvy the talk?"

"Some. I lived in California once."

"Where?" The question came like a shot.

"Oh, here and there; I followed the Mother Lode for a spell."

"I don't recall the name," said the trader, after a bit.

 "Possibly. Where were you located?"

"I never lit on any one place long enough to call it home."

It seemed to Burrell that both men were sparring cautiously in an
indirect, impersonal manner.

"Those your kids, too, eh?" Stark continued.

"Yes, and I got another one besides--older. A girl."

"She's a 'pip,' too," said "No Creek" Lee, fervently. "She's plumb
beautiful."

"All of them half-breeds?" questioned Stark.

"Sure." The trader's answer was short, and when the other showed no
intention of pressing the subject further he sauntered away; but no
sooner was he out of hearing than Stark said: "Humph! They're all
alike."

"Who?"

"Squaw-men."

"This one ain't," Lee declared. "He's different; ain't he, Lieutenant?"

"He certainly is," agreed Burrell. This was the first criticism he had
heard of Necia's father, and although Stark volunteered no argument, it
was plain that his opinion remained unaffected.

The old man went through the store at the rear and straightway sought
Alluna. Speaking to her with unwonted severity in the Pah-Ute language,
he said:

"I have told you never to use your native tongue before strangers. That
man in the store understands."

"I only asked for sugar to cook the berries with," she replied.

"True, but another time you might say more, therefore the less you
speak it the better. He is the kind who sees much and talks little.
Address me in Siwash or in English unless we are alone."

"I do not like that man," said the woman. "His eyes are bad, like a
fish eagle's, and he has no heart."

Suddenly she dropped her work and came close up to him. "Can he be the
one?"

"I don't know. Stark is not the name, but he might have changed it; he
had reasons enough."

"Who is this man Stark?"

"I don't know that, either. I used to hear of him when I was in British
Columbia."

"But surely you must know if he is the same--she must have told you how
he looked--others must have told you--"

Gale shook his head. "Very little. I could not ask her, and others knew
him so well they never doubted that I had seen him; but this much I do
know, he was dark--"

"This man is dark--"

"--and his spirit was like that of a mad horse--"

"This man's temper is black--"

"--and his eyes were cruel."

"This man has evil eyes."

"He lacked five years of my age," said the trader.

"This man is forty years old. It must be he," said the squaw.

Even Necia would have marvelled had she heard this revelation of her
father's age, for his hair and brows were grizzled, and his face had
the look of a man of sixty, while only those who knew him well, like
Doret, were aware of his great strength and the endurance that belied
his appearance.

"We will send Necia down to the Mission to-night, and let Father Barnum
keep her there till this man goes," said the squaw, after some
deliberation.

"No, she must stay here," Gale replied, with decision. "The man has
come here to live, so it won't do any good to send her away, and, after
all, what is to be will be. But she must never be seen in that
dance-girl's dress again, at least, not till I learn more about this
Stark. It makes no difference whether this one is the man or not; he
will come and I shall know him. For a year I have felt that the time
was growing short, and now I know it."

"No, no!" Alluna cried; "we have no strangers here. No white men except
the soldiers and this one have come in a year. This is but a little
trading-post."

"It was yesterday, but it isn't to-day. Lee has made a strike--like the
one George Carmack made on the Klondike. He came to tell me and Poleon,
and we are going back with him to-night, but you must say nothing or it
will start a stampede."

"Other men will come--a great many of them?" interrogated Alluna,
fearfully, ignoring utterly the momentous news.

"Yes. Flambeau will be another Dawson if this find is what Lee thinks
it is. I stayed away from the Upper Country because I knew crowds of
men would come from the States, and I feared that he might be among
them; but it's no use hiding any longer, there's no other place for us
to go. If Lee has got a mine, I'll have the one next to it, for we will
be the first ones on the ground. What happens after that won't matter
much, you four will be provided for. We are to leave in an hour, one at
a time, to avoid comment."

"But why did this man stop here?" insisted the woman. "Why did he not
stay on the steamboat and go to Dawson?"

"He's a friend of Lee's. He is going with us." Then he added, almost in
a whisper, "Before we return I shall know."

Alluna seized his arm. "Promise to come back, John! Promise that you
will come back even if this should be the man."

"I promise. Don't worry, little woman; I'm not ready for a reckoning
yet."

He gave her certain instructions about the store, charging her in
particular to observe the utmost secrecy regarding the strike, else she
might precipitate a premature excitement which would go far towards
ruining his and Poleon's chances. All of which she noted; then, as he
turned away, she laid her hand on his arm and said:

"If you do not know him he will not know you. Is it not so?"

"Yes."

"Then the rest is easy--"

But he only shook his head doubtfully and answered, "Perhaps--I am not
sure," and went inside, where he made up a light pack of bacon, flour
and tea, a pail or two, a coffee-pot and a frying-pan, which he rolled
inside a robe of rabbit-skin and bound about in turn with a light
tarpaulin. It did not weigh thirty pounds in all. Selecting a new pair
of water-boots, he stuffed dry grass inside them, oiled up his
six-shooter, then slipped out the back way, and in five minutes was
hidden in the thickets. Half an hour later, having completed a detour
of the town, he struck the trail to the interior, where he found Poleon
Doret, equipped in a similar manner, resting beside a stream, singing
the songs of his people.

When Burrell returned to his quarters he tried to mitigate the feeling
of lonesomeness that oppressed him by tackling his neglected
correspondence. Somehow, to-day, the sense of his isolation had come
over him stronger than ever. His rank forbade any intimacy with his
miserable handful of men, who had already fallen into the monotony of
routine, while every friendly overture he made towards the citizens of
Flambeau was met with distrust and coldness, his stripes of office
seeming to erect a barrier and induce an ostracism stronger and more
complete than if they had been emblems of the penitentiary. He began to
resent it keenly. Even Doret and the trader seemed to share the general
feeling, hence the thought of the long, lonesome winter approaching
reduced the Lieutenant to a state of black despondency, deepened by the
knowledge that he now had an open enemy in camp in the person of
Runnion. Then, too, he had taken a morbid dislike to the new man,
Stark. So that, all in all, the youth felt he had good reason to be in
the dumps this afternoon. There was nothing desirable in this
place--everything undesirable--except Necia. Her presence in Flambeau
went far towards making his humdrum existence bearable, but of late he
had found himself dwelling with growing seriousness on the unhappy
circumstances of her birth, and had almost made up his mind that it
would be wise not to see her any more. The tempting vision of her in
the ball-dress remained vividly in his imagination, causing him hours
of sweet torment. There was a sparkle, a fineness, a gentleness about
her that seemed to make the few women he had known well dull and
commonplace, and even his sister, whom till now he had held as the
perfection of all things feminine, suffered by comparison with this
maiden of the frontier.

He was steeped in this sweet, grave melancholy, when a knock came at
his door, and he arose to find Necia herself there, excited and
radiant. She came in without sign of embarrassment or slightest
consciousness of the possible impropriety of her act.

"The most wonderful thing has happened," she began at once, when she
found they were alone. "You'll faint for joy."

"What is it?"

"Nobody knows except father and Poleon and the two new men--"

"What is it?"

"I teased the news out of mother, and then came right here."

He laughed. "But what--may I ask--"

"Lee has made a strike--a wonderful strike--richer than the Klondike."

"So? The old man's luck has changed. I'm right glad of that," said the
soldier.

"I came as fast as I could, because to-morrow everybody will know about
it, and it will be too late."

"Too late for what?"

"For us to get in on it, of course. Oh, but won't there be a stampede!
Why, all the people bound for Dawson on the next boat will pile off
here, then the news will go up-river and down-river, and thousands of
others will come pouring in from everywhere, and this will be a city.
Then we will stake our town lots and sell them for ever so much money,
and go around with our noses in the air, and they will say to each
other:

"'Who is that beautiful lady with the fine clothes?' and somebody will
answer:

"'Why, that is Miss Necia Gale, the mine-owner.' And then you will come
along, and they will say:

"'That is Lieutenant Burrell, the millionaire, and--'"

"Hold on! hold on!" said the soldier, stopping her breathless patter.
"Tell me all about this."

"Well, 'No Creek' came in this morning to tell dad and Poleon. Then the
boat arrived with an old friend of Lee's, a Mr. Stark, so Lee told him,
too, and now they've all gone back to his creek to stake more claims.
They slipped away quietly to prevent suspicion, but I knew there was
something up from the way Poleon acted, so I made Alluna tell me all
about it. They haven't more than two hours start of us, and we can
overtake them easily."

"We! Why, we are not going?"

"Yes, we are," she insisted, impatiently--"you and I. That's why I
came, so you can get a mine for yourself and be a rich man, and so you
can help me get one. I know the way. Hurry up!"

"No," said he, in as firm a tone as he could command. "In the first
place, these men don't like me, and they don't want me to share in
this."

"What do you care?"

"In the second place, I'm not a miner. I don't know how to proceed."

"Nevermind; I do. I've heard nothing but mining all my life."

"In the third place, I don't think I have the right, for I'm a soldier.
I'm working for Uncle Sam, and I don't believe I ought to take up
mining claims. I'm not sure there is anything to prevent it, but
neither am I sure it would be quite the square thing--are you?"

"Why, of course it's all right," said Necia, her eager face clouding
with the look of a hurt child. "If you don't do it, somebody else will."

But the Lieutenant shook his head. "Maybe I'm foolish, but I can't see
my way clear, much as I would like to."

"Oh, dear! Oh, dear!" she exclaimed, brokenly. "I do so want to go. I
want you to be rich, and I want to be rich myself. I want to be a fine
lady, and go outside and live like other girls. It's--the only
chance--I ever had--and I'll never have another. Oh, it means so much
to me; it means life, future, everything! Why, it means heaven to a
girl like me!" Her eyes were wet with the sudden dashing of her hopes,
and her chin quivered in a sweet, girlish way that made the youth
almost surrender on the instant. But she turned to the window and gazed
out over the river, continuing, after a moment's pause: "Please
don't--mind me--but you can't understand what a difference this would
make to me."

"We couldn't possibly overtake them if we tried," he said, as if
willing to treat with his conscience.

"No, but we could beat them in. I know where Lee is working, for I went
up last winter with Constantine and his dog-team, over a short cut by
way of Black Bear Creek. We took it coming back, and I could find it
again, but Lee doesn't know that route, so he will follow the summer
trail, which is fifteen miles farther. You see, his creek makes a great
bend to the southward, and heads back towards the river, so by crossing
the divide at the source of Black Bear you drop into it a few miles
above his cabin."

While she made this appeal Burrell fought with himself. There were
reasons why he longed to take this trip, more than he had longed for
anything since boyhood. These men of Flambeau had disregarded him, and
insisted on treating him with contemptuous distrust, despite his
repeated friendly overtures; wherefore he was hungry to beat them at
their own game, hungry to thrust himself ahead of them and compel them
to reckon with him as an equal, preferring a state of open enmity, if
necessary, to this condition of indifferent toleration. Moreover, he
knew that Necia was coveted by half of them, and if he spent a night in
the woods alone with her it would stir them up a bit, he fancied. By
Heaven! That would make them sit up and notice him! But then--it might
work a wrong upon her; and yet, would it? He was not so sure that it
would. She had come to him; she was old enough to know her mind, and
she was but a half-breed girl, after all, who doubtless was not so
simple as she seemed. Other men had no such scruples in this or any
other land, and yet the young man hesitated until, encouraged by his
silence, the girl came forward and spoke again, impulsively:

"Don't be silly, Mr. Burrell. Come! Please come with me, won't you?"

She took him by the edges of his coat and drew him to her coaxingly. It
may have been partly the spirit of revolt that had been growing in him
all day, or it may have been wholly the sense of her there beside him,
warm and pleading, but something caused a great wave to surge up
through his veins, caused him to take her in his arms, fiercely kissing
her upturned face again and again, crying softly, deep down in his
throat:

"Yes! Yes! Yes! You little witch! I'll go anywhere with you! Anywhere!
Anywhere!" The impulse was blind and ungovernable, and it grew as his
lips met hers, while, strangely enough, she made no resistance,
yielding herself quietly, till he found her arms wound softly about his
neck and her face nestling close to his. Neither of them knew how long
they stood thus blended together, but soon he grew conscious of the
beating of her heart against his breast, as she lay there like a little
fluttering bird, and felt the throbbing of his own heart swaying him.
Her arms, her lips, and her whole body clung to his in a sweet
surrender, and yet there was nothing immodest or unmaidenly about it,
for his strength and ardor had lifted her and drawn her to him as on
the sweep of a great wave.

She drew her face free and hid it against his neck, breathing softly
and with shy timidity, as if the sound of the words she whispered half
frightened her.

"I love you. I love you, Meade."

It may happen that a man will spend months in friendly and charming
intimacy with a woman and never feel the violence or tenderness of
passion till there comes a psychic moment or a physical touch that
suddenly enwraps them like a flame. So it was with Burrell. The sweet
burden of this girl in his arms, the sense of her yielding lips, the
warmth of her caressing hands, momentarily unleashed a leaping pack of
mad desires, and it was she who finally drew herself away to remind him
smilingly that he was wasting time.

"My lips will be here when those mines are worked out," she said. "No,
no!" and she held him off as he came towards her again, insisting that
if they were going they must be off at once, and that he could have no
more kisses for the present. "But, of course, it is a long trip, and we
will have to sit down now and then to rest," she added, shyly; at which
he vowed that he was far from strong, and could not walk but a little
way at a time, yet even so, he declared, the trail would be too short,
even though it led to Canada.

"Then get your pack made up," she ordered, "for we must be well up
towards the head of Black Bear Creek before it grows dark enough to
camp."

Swiftly he made his preparations; a madness was upon him now, and he
took no pains to check or analyze the reasons for his decision. The
thought of her loveliness in his arms once more, far up among the
perfumed wooded heights, as the silent darkness stole upon them,
stirred in him such a fret to be gone that it was like a fever. He
slipped away to the barracks with instructions for his corporal, but
was back again in a moment. Finally he took up his burden of blanket
and food, then said to her:

"Well, are you ready, little one?"

"Yes, Meade," she answered, simply.

"And you are sure you won't regret it?"

"Not while you love me."

He kissed her again before they stepped out on the river trail that
wound along the bank. A hundred yards beyond they were hidden by the
groves of birch and fir.

Two hours later they paused where the foaming waters of Black Bear
Creek rioted down across a gravelled bar and into the silent, sweeping
river, standing at the entrance to a wooded, grass-grown valley, with
rolling hills and domes displayed at its head, while back of them lay
the town, six miles away, its low, squat buildings tiny and toy like,
but distinctly silhouetted against the evening sky.

"Is it not time to rest?" said the soldier, laughingly, yet with a look
of yearning in his misty eyes as he took the girlish figure in his
arms. But she only smiled up at him and, releasing his hold, led the
way into the forest.

He turned for a moment and shook his fist at the village and those in
it, laughing loudly as if from the feel of the blood that leaped within
him. Then he joined his companion, and, hand-in-hand, they left the
broad reaches of the greater stream behind them and plunged into the
untrodden valley.




CHAPTER V

A STORY IS BEGUN

     "It's fonny t'ing how two brown eye
      Was changin' everything--
      De cloud she's no more on de sky,
      An' winter's jus' lak' spring
      Dey mak' my pack so very light,
      De trail, she's not so long--
      I'd walk it forty mile to-night
      For hear her sing wan song
      But now I'm busy mak' fortune
      For marry on dat girl,
      An' if she's tole me yass, dat's soon,
      Bonheur! I'm own de worl'!"


Poleon Doret sang gayly as the trader came towards him through the open
grove of birch, for he was happy this afternoon, and, being much of a
dreamer, this fresh enterprise awoke in him a boyish pleasure. Then
Necia had teased him as he came away, and begged him, as was always her
custom, to take her with him, no matter whence or whither, so long as
there was adventure afoot. Well, it would not be long now before he
could say yes, and he would take her on a journey far longer than
either of them had yet taken--a journey that would never end. Had not
the gods looked with favor, at last, upon his long novitiate, and been
pleased with the faith he had kept? Had not this discovery of "No
Creek" Lee's been providentially arranged for his own especial benefit?
A fool could see that this was a mark of celestial approbation, and
none but a fool would question the wisdom of the gods. Had he not
watched the girl grow from a slip of thirteen and spoken never a word
of his love? Had he not served and guarded her with all the gentle
chivalry of an olden knight? Of course! And here was his reward, a gift
of wealth to crown his service, all for her. Now that she was a woman,
and had seen him tried, and knew he was a man, he would bring his
burden of prosperity and lay it at her feet, saying:

"Here is another offering, my Necia, and with it go the laughter and
the music and the heart of Poleon Doret."

Sacré! It would not take her long to wake up after that! The world was
very bright indeed this afternoon, and he burst again into song in
company with the voices of the forest people:

    "Chanté, rossignol, chanté!
      Toi qui à le coeur gai;
      Tu as le coeur à rire
      Mai j' l' ai-tà pleurer,
        Il y a longtemps que j' t'aime
        Jamais je ne t'oublierai."

     [Footnote:
     "Sing, little bird, oh, sing away!
      You with the voice so light and gay!
      Yours is a heart that laughter cheers,
      Mine is a hearts that's full of tears.
         Long have I loved, I love her yet;
         Leave her I can, but not forget."]


"Whew!" said Gale, slipping out of his pack-straps, "the skeeters is
bad."

"You bet your gum boots," said Poleon. "Dey're mos' so t'ick as de
summer dey kill Johnnie Platt on de Porcupine." Both men wore
gauntleted gloves of caribou-skin and head harnesses of
mosquito-netting stretched over globelike frames of thin steel bands,
which they slipped on over their hats after the manner of divers'
helmets, for without protection of some kind the insects would have
made travel impossible once the Yukon breezes were left behind or once
the trail dipped from the high divides where there was no moss.

"Let's see. It was you that found him, wasn't it?" said Gale.

"Sure t'ing! I'm comin' down for grub in my canoe, w'en I see dis
feller on de bank, walkin' lak' he's in beeg horry. 'Ba Gar!' I say,
'dere's man goin' so fast he'll meet hese'f comin' home!' Den he turn
roun' an' go tearin' back, wavin' hees arms lak' he's callin' me, till
he fall down. Wen I paddle close up, I don' know 'im no more dan
stranger, an' me an' Johnnie Platt is trap togeder wan winter. Wat you
t'ink of dat?"

"I saw a fellow killed that way at Holy Cross," interpolated the trader.

"'Hello,' I say, 'w'at's de matter?' An' den I see somet'ing 'bout 'im
dat look familiar. Hees face she's all swell' up an' bleedin' lak' raw
meat." The Frenchman curled his upper lip back from his teeth and shook
his head at the remembrance.

"Jesu, dat's 'orrible sight! Dem fly is drive 'im crazee. Hees nose an'
ears is look lak' holes in beeg red sponge, an' hees eye are close up
tight."

"He died before you got him in, didn't he?"

"Yes. He was good man, too. Some tam' if I ever have bad enemy w'at I
like to see catch hell I'm goin' turn 'im loose 'mong dose skeeter-bug."

"Holy Mackinaw!" ejaculated Gale. "Who'd ever think of that? Why,
that's worse than dropping water on his skull till he goes crazy, like
them Chinamen do."

The Frenchman nodded. "It's de wors' t'ing I know. Dat's w'y I lak' to
geeve it to my enemy."

"Imagine fightin' the little devils till they stung you crazy and
pizened your eyes shut!"

Gale fell to considering this, while Poleon filled his pipe, and,
raising his veil, undertook to smoke. The pests proved too numerous,
however, and forced him to give it up.

"Bagosh! Dey're hongry!"

"It will be all right when we get out of the woods," said the elder man.

"I guess you been purty glad for havin' Necia home again, eh?" ventured
the other after a while, unable to avoid any longer the subject
uppermost in his mind.

"Yes, I'm glad she's through with her schooling."

"She's gettin' purty beeg gal now."

"That's right."

"By-an'-by she's goin' marry on some feller--w'at?"

"I suppose so. She ain't the kind to stay single."

"Ha! Dat's right, too. Mebbe you don' care if she does get marry, eh?"

"Not if she gets a man that will treat her right."

"Wal! Wal! Dere's no trouble 'bout dat," exclaimed Doret, fervently.
"No man w'at's livin' could treat her bad. She's too good an' too purty
for have bad husban'."

"She is, is she?" Gale turned on him with a strange glare in his eyes.
"Them's the kind that get the he-devils. There's something about a good
girl that attracts a bad man, particularly if she's pretty; and it goes
double, too--the good men get the hellions. A fellow can't get so tough
but what he can catch a good woman, and a decent man usually draws a
critter that looks like a sled and acts like a timber wolf."

"Necia wouldn't marry on no bad man," said Doret, positively.

"No?" said Gale. "Let me tell you what I saw with my own eyes. I knew a
girl once that was just as good and pure as Necia, and just as pretty,
too--yes, and a thousand times prettier."

"Ho, ho!" laughed Doret, sceptically.

"She was an Eastern girl, and she come West where men were different to
what she'd been used to. Those were early days, and it was a new
country, where a person didn't know much about his neighbor's past and
cared less; and, although there were a heap of girls thereabouts, they
were the kind you'll always find in such communities, while this one
was plumb different. Man! Man! But she was different. She was a WOMAN!
Two fellows fell in love with her. One of them lived in the same camp
as her, and he was a good man, leastways everybody said he was, but he
wasn't wise to all the fancy tricks that pretty women hanker after;
and, it being his first affair, he was right down buffaloed at the very
thought of her, so he just hung around and slept late so that he might
dream about her and feel like he was her equal or that she loved back
at him. You know! The other fellow came from a neighboring town, and he
wasn't the same kind, for he'd knocked around more, and was a better
liar, but he wasn't right. No, sir! He was sure a wrong guy, as it came
out, but he was handsomer and younger, and the very purity and
innocence of the girl drew him, I reckon, being a change from what he
had ever mixed up with."

"W'y don' dis good man tak' a shot at him?" asked Poleon, hotly.

"First, he didn't realize what was going on, being too tied up with
dreaming, I reckon; and, second, neither man didn't know the other by
sight, living as they did in different parts; third, he was an ordinary
sort of fellow, and hadn't ever had any trouble, man to man, at that
time. Anyhow, the girl up and took the bad one."

"Wat does de good man do, eh?"

"Well, he was all tore up about it, but he went away like a sick quail
hides out."

"Dat's too bad."

"He heard about them now and then, and what he heard tore him up worse
than the other had, for the girl's husband couldn't wear the harness
long, and, having taken away what good there was in her, he made up in
deviltry for the time he had lost. She stood it pretty well, and never
whimpered, even when her eyes were open and she saw what a
prize-package she had drawn. The fact that she was game enough to stand
for him and yet keep herself clean without complaint made the man
worse. He tried to break her spirit in a thousand ways, tried to make
her the same as he was, tried to make her a bad woman, like the others
he had known. It appeared like the one pleasure he got was to torture
her."

"W'y don' she quit 'im?" said Doret. "Dat ain' wrong for quit a man
lak' him."

"She couldn't quit on account of the kid. They had a youngster. Then,
too, she had ideas of her own; so she stood it for three years, living
worse than a dog, till she saw it wasn't any use--till she saw that he
would make a bad woman of her as sure as he would make one of the
kid--till he got rough--"

"No! No! You don' mean dat? No man don' hurt no woman," interjected
Doret.

"By God! That's just what I mean," the trader answered, while his face
had grown so gray as to match his brows. "He beat her."

Poleon broke into French words that accorded well with the trader's
harsh voice.

"The woman sent for the other man after that, for he had been living
lonely, loving her all the time, and you'd better believe he went."

"Ha! Dat's fine! Dat's dam' fine!" said the other. "I'll bet dere's
hell to pay den--w'at?"

"Yes, there was a kind of reckoning." The old man lapsed into moody
silence, the younger one waiting eagerly for him to continue, but there
came the sound of voices down the trail, and they looked up.

"Here comes Lee," said Gale.

"Wat happen' den? I'm got great interes' 'bout dis woman," insisted
Poleon.

"It's a long story, and I just told you this much to show what I said
was true about a good girl and a bad man, and to show why I want Necia
to get a good one. The sooner it happens the better it will suit me."

Neither man had ever spoken thus openly to the other about Necia
before, and although their language was indirect, each knew the other's
thought. But there was no time for further talk now, for the others
were close upon them. As they came into view, Gale exclaimed:

"Well, if he hasn't brought Runnion along!"

"Humph!" grunted Doret. "I don' t'ink much of dat feller. Wat's de
matter wit' 'No Creek,' anyhow?"

The three new arrivals dropped down upon the moss to rest, for the
up-trail was heavy and the air sultry inside the forest. Lee was the
first to speak.

"Did you get away without bein' seen?" he asked.

"Sure," answered Gale. "Poleon has been here two hours."

"That's good; I don't want nobody taggin' along."

"We came right through the town boldly," announced Stark; "but if they
had seen you two they would have suspected something, sure."

Runnion volunteered nothing except oaths at the mosquitoes and at his
pack-straps, which were new and cut him already. As no explanation of
his presence was offered, neither the trader nor Doret made any comment
then, but it came out later, when the old miner dropped far enough
behind the others to render conversation possible.

"You decided to take in another one, eh?" Gale asked Lee.

"It wasn't exactly my doin's," replied the miner. "Stark asked me to
let Runnion come 'long, bein' as he had grub-staked him, and he seemed
so set on it that I ackeressed. You see, it's the first chance I ever
had to pay him back for a favor he done me in the Cassiar country.
There's plenty of land to go around."

It was Lee's affair, thought the trader, and he might tell whom he
liked, so he said no more, but fell to studying the back of the man
next in front, who happened to be Stark, observing every move and trick
of him, and, during the frequent pauses, making a point of listening
and watching him guardedly.

All through the afternoon the five men wound up the valley, following
one another's footsteps, emerging from sombre thickets of fir to
flounder across wide pastures of "nigger-heads," that wobbled and
wriggled and bowed beneath their feet, until at cost of much effort and
profanity they gained the firmer footing of the forest. Occasionally
they came upon the stream, and found easier going along its gravel
bars, till a bend threw them again into the meadows and mesas on either
hand. Their course led them far up the big valley to another stream
that entered from the right, bearing backward in a great bow towards
the Yukon, and always there were dense clouds of mosquitoes above their
heads. At one point Stark, hot and irritable, remarked:

"There must be a shorter cut than this, Lee?"

"I reckon there is," the miner replied, "but I've always had a pack to
carry, so I chose the level ground ruther than climb the divides."

"S'pose dose people at camp hear 'bout dis strike an' beat us in?"
suggested Poleon.

"It wouldn't be easy going for them after they got there," Stark said,
sourly. "I, for one, wouldn't stand for it."

"Nor I," agreed Runnion.

"I don't see how you'd help yourself," the trader remarked. "One man's
got as good a right as another."

"I guess I'd help myself, all right," Stark laughed, significantly, as
did Runnion, who added:

"Lee is entitled to put in anybody he wants on his own discovery, and
if anybody tries to get ahead of us there's liable to be trouble."

"I reckon if I don't know no short-cut, nobody else does," Lee
remarked, whereupon Doret spoke up reassuringly:

"Dere's no use gettin' scare' lak' dat, biccause nobody knows w'ere
Lee's creek she's locate' but John an' me, an' dere's nobody w'at knows
he mak' de strike but us four."

"That's right," said Gale; "the only other way across is by Black Bear
Creek, and there ain't a half-dozen men ever been up to the head of
that stream, much less over the divide, so I don't allow there's any
use to fret ourselves."

They went on their way, travelling leisurely until late evening, when
they camped at the mouth of the valley up which the miner's cabin lay.
They chose a long gravel bar, that curved like a scimitar, and made
down upon its outer tip where the breeze tended to thin the plague of
insects. They were all old-stagers in the ways of camplife, so there
was no lost motion or bickering as to their respective duties. Their
preparations were simple. First they built a circle of smudges out of
wet driftwood, and inside this Lee kindled a camp-fire of dry sticks,
upon which he cooked, protected by the smoke of the others, while Gale
went back to the edge of the forest and felled a dozen small firs, the
branches of which he clipped. These Poleon and Runnion bore down to the
end of the spit for bedding, while Stark chopped a pile of dry wood for
the night. Gale noted that the new man swung an axe with the free
dexterity of one to whom its feel was familiar, also that he never made
a slip nor dulled it on the gravel of the bar, displaying an all-round
completeness and a knack of doing things efficiently that won reluctant
approval from the trader despite the unreasoning dislike he had taken
to him.

Lee was ready for them by the time they had finished their tasks, and,
fanned by the breeze that sucked up the stream and lulled by the
waters, they ate their scanty supper. Their one-eyed guide had lived so
long among mosquitoes and had become so inoculated with their poison
that he was in a measure impervious to their sting, hence the insects
gathered on his wrinkled, hair-grown hide only to give up in melancholy
disgust and fly to other and fuller-blooded feeding-grounds. Camp had
been made early, at Gale's suggestion, instead of pushing on a few
miles farther, as Lee had intended; and now, when the cool evening fell
and the draught quickened, it became possible to lay off gloves and
head-gear; so they sat about the fire, talking, smoking, and rubbing
their tired feet.

It is at such hours and in the smoke of such fires that men hark
backward and bring forth the sacred, time-worn memories they have
treasured, to turn them over fondly by the glow of dying embers. It is
at such times that men's garrulity asserts itself, for the barriers of
caution are let down, as are the gates of remembrance, and it is then
that friends and enemies are made, for there are those who cannot
listen and others who cannot understand.

"No Creek" Lee, the one-eyed miner who had made this lucky strike, told
in simple words of his long and solitary quest, when ill-luck had risen
with him at the dawn and misfortune had stalked beside him as he
drifted and drank from camp to camp, while the gloom of a settled
pessimism soured him, and men began to shun him because of the evil
that seemed to follow in his steps.

"I've been rainbow-chasin' forty years," he said, "and never caught
nothin' but cramps and epidemics and inflammations. I'm the only miner
in Alaska that never made a discovery of gold and never had a creek
named after him."

"Is that how you got your name?" asked Runnion.

"It is. I never was no good to myself nor nobody else. I just occupied
space. I've been the vermifuge appendix of the body politic; yes,
worse'n that--I've been an appendix with a seed in it. I made myself
sore, and everybody around me, but I'm at the bat now, and don't you
never let that fact escape you."

"How are you going to spend your money?" inquired Stark.

"I'm goin' to eat it up! I've fed on dried and desiccated and other
disastrous and dissatisfactory diets till I'm all shrivelled up inside
like a dead puff-ball; now it's me for the big feed and the long drink.
I'm goin' to 'Frisco and get full of wasteful and exorbitant grub, of
one kind and another, like tomatters and French vicious water."

Poleon Doret laughed with the others; he was bubbling with the spirits
of a boy whose life is clean, for whom there are no eyes in the black
dark that lies beyond a camp-fire, and for whom there are no
unforgettable faces in its smoke. When Lee fell silent the trader and
Stark resumed their talk, which was mainly of California, it seemed to
the Frenchman, who also noted that it was his friend who subtly shaped
the topics. In time their stories revived his memory of the
conversation in the birch grove that morning, and when there occurred a
lapse in the talk he said:

"Say, John, w'at happen' to dat gal we was talkin' 'bout dis mornin'?"

Gale shook his head and turned again to his companion, but the young
man's mind was bent on its quest, and he continued:

"Dat was strange tale, for sure."

"What was it?" questioned Runnion.

"John was tell 'bout a feller he knowed w'at marry a good gal jus' to
mak' her bad lak' hese'f."

"How's that?" inquired Stark, turning curiously upon the old man; but
Gale knocked the ashes from his pipe and replied:

"Oh, it's a long story--happened when I was in Washington State."

Poleon was about to correct him--it was California, he had said--when
Gale arose, remarking sleepily that it was time to turn in if they
wished to get any rest before the mosquitoes got bad again, then
sauntered away from the fire and spread his blanket. The rest followed
and made down their beds; then, drawing on gloves and hat-nets, and
rolling themselves up in their coverings, fell to snoring. All except
the trader, who lay for hours on his back staring up at the stars, as
if trying to solve some riddle that baffled him.

They awoke early, and in half an hour had eaten, remade their packs,
and were ready to resume their march. As they were about to start, Gale
said:

"I reckon we'd better settle right now who has the choice of locations
when we get up yonder. I've been on stampedes where it saved a heap of
hard feeling."

"I'm agreeable," said Stark. "Then there won't be any misunderstanding."

The others, being likewise old at the game, acquiesced. They knew that
in such cases grave trouble has often occurred when two men have cast
eyes on the same claim, and have felt the miner's causeless "hunch"
that gold lies here or there, or that the ground one of them covets is
wanted by the other.

"I'll hold the straws," said Lee, "and every feller will have an even
break." Turning his back on the others, he cut four splinters of
varying lengths, and, arranging them so that the ends peeped evenly
from his big hand, he held them out.

"The longest one has the first choice, and so on," he said, presenting
them to Gale, who promptly drew the longest of the four. He turned to
Doret, but the Frenchman waved him courteously to Stark, and, when both
he and Runnion had made their choice, Lee handed him the remaining one,
which was next in length to that of the trader. Stark and Runnion
qualified in the order they drew, the latter cursing his evil luck.

"Never min', ole man," laughed Poleon, "de las' shot she's de sure wan."

They took up their burdens again, and filed towards the narrow valley
that stretched away into the hazy distances.




CHAPTER VI

THE BURRELL CODE


Not until his dying day will Burrell lose the memory of that march with
Necia through the untrodden valley, and yet its incidents were never
clear-cut nor distinct when he looked back upon them, but blended into
one dreamlike procession, as if he wandered through some calenture
where every image was delightfully distorted and each act deliriously
unreal, yet all the sweeter from its fleeting unreality. They talked
and laughed and sang with a rush of spirits as untamed as the waters in
the course they followed. They wandered, hand-in-hand, into a land of
illusions, where there was nothing real but love and nothing tangible
but joy. The touch of their lips had waked that delight which comes but
once in a lifetime and then to but few; it was like the moon-madness of
the tropics or the dementia of the forest folk in spring. A gentle
frenzy possessed them, rendering them insensible to fatigue and causing
them to hurry the more breathlessly that they might sooner rest and sit
beside each other. At times they fell into sweet silences where the
waters laughed with them and the trees whispered their secret, bowing
and nodding in joyous surprise at this invasion; or, again, the breezes
romped with them, withdrawing now and then to rush out and greet them
at the bends in boisterous pleasure.

They held to the bed of the stream, for its volume was low and enabled
them to ford it from bar to bar. Necia had been raised in the open,
with the wild places for her playground, and her muscles were like
those of a boy, hence the two swung merrily onward, as if in playful
contest, while the youth had never occasion to wait for her or to
moderate his gait. Indeed, her footing was more sure than his, as he
found when she ventured out unhesitatingly upon felled logs that lay
across swift, brawling depths. The wilderness had no mystery for her,
and no terrors, so she was ever at his side, or in advance, while her
eyes, schooled in the tints of the forest, and more active than those
of a bird, saw every moving thing, from the flash of a camp-robber's
wing through some hidden glade to the inquisitive nodding of a fool hen
where it perched high up against the bole of a spruce. They surprised a
marten fishing in a drift-wood dam, but she would not let the soldier
shoot, and made him pass it by, where it sat amazed till it realized
that these were lovers and resumed its fishing. Gradually the stream
diminished, and its bowldered bed became more difficult to traverse,
until, assuming the airs of a leader, the girl commanded him to lay off
his pack, at which he pretended to obey mutinously, though thrilling
with the keenest delight at his own submission.

"What are you going to do?" he inquired.

"Mind your own business, sir," she commanded, sternly.

From her belt she drew a little hunting-knife, with which she cut and
trimmed a slender birch the thickness of his thumb, whereupon he
pretended great fright, and said:

"Please! please! What have I done?"

"A great deal! You are a most bold and stubborn creature."

"All pack animals are stubborn," he declared. "It's the only privilege
they have."

"You are much too presumptuous, also, as I discovered in your quarters."

"My only presumption is in loving you."

"That was not presumption," she smiled; "it was pre-emption. You must
be punished."

"I shall run away," he threatened. "I shall gallop right off through
the woods and--begin to eat grass. I am very wild."

As she talked she drew from her pocket a spool of line, and took a
fly-hook from her hat; then, in a trice, she had rigged a fishing-rod,
and, creeping out upon a ledge, she whipped the pool below of a
half-dozen rainbow trout, which she thrust into his coat while they
were still wriggling. Then she as quickly put up her gear, and they
resumed their journey, climbing more steeply now, until, when the sun
was low, they quit the stream-bed and made through the forest towards
the shoulder of an untimbered ridge that ran down into the valley. And
there, high up on the edge of the spruce, they selected a mossy shelf
and pitched their camp.

They had become so intimate by now as to fall into a whimsical mode of
speech, and Necia reverted to a childish habit in her talk that brought
many a smile to the youth's face. It had been her fancy as a little
girl to speak in adjectives, ignoring many of her nouns, and its
quaintness had so amused her father that on rare occasions, when the
humor was on him, he also took it up. She now addressed herself to
Burrell in the same manner.

"I think we are very smarts to come so far," she said.

"You travel like a deer," he declared, admiringly. "Why, you have tired
me down." Removing his pack, he stretched his arms and shook out the
ache in his shoulders.

"Which way does our course lie now, Pathfinder?"

"Right up the side of this big, and then along the ridge. In two hours
we come to a gully running so"--she indicated an imaginary
direction--"which we go down till it joins another stream so, and right
there we'll find old 'No Creek's' cabin, so! Won't they be surprised to
see us! I think we're very cunning to beat them in, don't you?" She
laughed a glad little bubbling laugh, and he cried:

"Oh, girl! How wonderful you are!"

"It's getting very dark and fierce," she chided, "and all the housework
must be done."

So he built a fire, then fetched a bucket of water from a rill that
trickled down among the rocks near by. He made as if to prepare their
meal, but she would have none of it.

"Bigs should never cook," she declared. "That work belongs to littles,"
then forced him to vacate her domain and turn himself to the manlier
duties of chopping wood and boughs.

First, however, she showed him how to place two green foot-logs upon
which the teapot and the frying-pan would sit without upsetting, and
how long she wished the sticks of cooking-wood. Then she banished him,
as it were, and he built a wickiup of spruce tops, under the shelter of
which he piled thick, fragrant billows of "Yukon feathers."

Once while he was busy at his task he paused to revel in the colors
that lay against hill and valley, and to drink in the splendid
isolation of it all. Below lay the bed of Black Bear Creek, silent and
sombre in the creeping twilight; beyond, away beyond, across the
westward brim of the Yukon basin, the peaks were blue and ivory and
gold in the last rays of the sun; while the open slopes behind and all
about wore a carpet of fragrant short-lived flowers, nodding as if
towards sleep, and over all was the hush of the lonely hills. A gust
blew a whiff of the camp smoke towards him, and he turned back to watch
Necia kneeling beside the fire like some graceful virgin at her altar
rites, while the peculiar acrid out-door odor of burning spruce was
like an incense in his nostrils.

He filled his chest deeply and leaned on his axe, for he found himself
shaking as if under the spell of some great expectancy.

"Your supper is getting cold," she called to him.

He took a seat beside her on a pile of boughs where the smoke was least
troublesome; he had chosen a spot that was sheltered by a
lichen-covered ledge, and this low wall behind, with the wickiup
joining it, formed an enclosure that lent them a certain air of
privacy. They ate ravenously, and drank deep cupfuls of the unflavored
tea. By the time they were finished the night had fallen and the air
was just cool enough to make the fire agreeable. Burrell heaped on more
wood and stretched out beside her.

"This day has been so wonderful," said the girl, "that I shall never go
to sleep. I can't bear to end it."

"But you must be weary, little maid," he said, gently; "I am."

"Wait, let me see." She stretched her limbs and moved slightly to try
her muscles. "Yes, I am a very tired, but not the kind of tired that
makes you want to go to bed. I want to talk, talk, talk, and not about
ourselves either, but about sensibles. Tell me about your people--your
sister."

He had expected her to ask this, for the subject seemed to have an
inexhaustible charm for her. She would sit rapt and motionless as long
as he cared to talk of his sister, in her wide, meditative eyes the
shadow of a great unvoiced longing. It always seemed to make her grave
and thoughtful, he had noticed, so he had tried lately to avoid the
topic, and to-night in particular he wanted to do so, for this was no
time for melancholy. He had not even allowed himself to think, as yet,
and there were reasons why he did not wish her to do so; thought and
realization and a readjustment of their relations would come after
to-night, but this was the hour of illusion, and it must not be broken;
therefore he began to tell her of other people and of his youth, making
his tales as fanciful as possible, choosing deliberately to foster the
merry humor in which they had been all day. He told her of his father,
the crotchety old soldier, whose absurd sense of duty and whose
elaborate Southern courtesy had become a byword in the South. He told
her household tales that were prized like pieces of the Burrell plate,
beautiful heirlooms of sentiment that mark the honor of high-blooded
houses; following which there was much to recount of the Meades, from
the admiral who fought as a boy in the Bay of Tripoli down to the
cousin who was at Annapolis; the while his listener hung upon his words
hungrily, her mind so quick in pursuit of his that it spurred him
unconsciously, her great, dark eyes half closed in silent laughter or
wide with wonder, and in them always the warmth of the leaping
firelight blended with the trust of a new-born virginal love.

Without realizing it, the young man drifted further than he had
intended, and further than he had ever allowed himself to go before,
for in him was a clean and honest pride of birth, like his mother's
glory in her forebears, the expression of which he had learned to
repress, inasmuch as it was a Dixie-land conceit and had been
misunderstood when he went North to the Academy. In some this would
have seemed bigoted and feminine, this immoderate admiration for his
own blood, this exaggerated appreciation of his family honor, but in
this Southern youth it was merely the unconscious commendation of an
upright manliness for an upright code. When he had finished, the girl
remarked, with honest approval:

"What a fine you are. Those people of yours have all been good men and
women, haven't they?"

"Most of them," he admitted, "and I think the reason is that we've been
soldiers. The army discipline is good for a man. It narrows a fellow, I
suppose, but it keeps him straight."

Then he began to laugh silently.

"What is it?" she said, curiously.

"Oh, nothing! I was just wondering what my strait-laced ancestors would
say if they could see me now."

"What do you mean?" the girl asked, in open-eyed wonderment.

"I don't care," he went on, unheeding her question. "They did worse
things in their time, from what I hear." He leaned forward to draw her
to him.

"Worse things? But we are doing nothing bad," said Necia, holding him
off. "There's no wrong in loving."

"Of course not," he assured her.

"I am proud of it," she declared. "It is the finest thing, the greatest
thing that has ever come into my life. Why, I simply can't hold it; I
want to sing it to the stars and cry it out to the whole world. Don't
you?"

"I hardly think we'd better advertise," he said, dryly.

"Why not?"

"Well, I shouldn't care to publish the tale of this excursion of ours,
would you?"

"I don't see any reason against it. I have often taken trips with
Poleon, and been gone with him for days and days at a time."

"But you were not a woman then," he said, softly.

"No, not until to-day, that's true. Dear, dear! How I did grow all of a
sudden! And yet I'm just the same as I was yesterday, and I'll always
be the same, just a wild little. Please don't ever let me be a big
tame. I don't want to be commonplace and ordinary. I want to be
natural--and good."

"You couldn't be like other women," he declared, and there was more
tenderness than hunger in his tone now, as she looked up at him
trustingly from the shelter of his arms. "It would spoil you to grow
up."

"It is so good to be alive and to love you like this!" she continued,
dreamily, staring into the fire. "I seem to have come out of a gloomy
house into the glory of a warm spring day, for my eyes are blinded and
I can't see half the beautifuls I want to, there are so many about me."

"Those are my arms," interjected the soldier, lightly, in an effort to
ward off her growing seriousness.

"I've never been afraid of anything, and yet I feel so safe inside
them. Isn't it queer?"

The young man became conscious of a vague discomfort, and realized
dimly that for hours now he had been smothering with words and caresses
a something that had striven with him to be heard, a something that
instead of dying grew stronger the more utterly this innocent maid
yielded to him. It was as if he had ridden impulse with rough spurs in
a fierce desire to distance certain voices, and in the first mad gallop
had lost them, but now far back heard them calling again more strongly
every moment. A man's honor, if old, may travel feebly, but its pursuit
is persistent. It was the talk about his people that had raised this
damned uneasiness and indecision, he thought. Why had he ever started
it?

"The marvellous part of it all," continued the girl, "is that it will
never end. I know I shall love you always. Do you suppose I am really
different from other girls?"

"Everything is different to-night--the whole world," he declared,
impatiently. "I thought I knew myself, but suddenly I seem strange in
my own eyes."

"I've had a big handicap," she said, "but you must help me to overcome
it. I want to be like your sister."

He rose and piled more wood upon the fire. What possessed the girl? It
was as if she knew each cunning joint of his armor, as if she had
realized her peril and had set about the awakening of his conscience,
deliberately and with a cautious wisdom beyond her years. Well, she had
done it--and he swore to himself. Then he melted at the sight of her,
crouched there against the shadows, following his every movement with
her soul in her eyes, the tenderest trace of a smile upon her lips. He
vowed he was a reprobate to wrong her so; it was her white soul and her
woman's love that spoke.

When she beheld him gazing at her, she tilted her head sidewise
daintily, like a little bird.

"Oh, my! What a fierce you are all at once!"

Her smile flashed up as if illumined by the leaping blaze, and he
crossed quickly, kneeling beside her.

"Dear, wonderful girl," he said, "it is going to be my heart's work to
see that you never change and that you remain just what you are. You
can't understand what this means to me, for I, too, was blinded, but
the darkness of the night has restored my vision. Now you must go to
sleep; the hours are short and we must be going early."

He piled up a great, sweet-scented couch of springy boughs, and
fashioned her a pillow out of a bundle of smaller ones, around which he
wrapped his khaki coat; then he removed her high-laced boots, and,
taking her tiny feet, one in the palm of either hand, bowed his head
over them and kissed them with a sense of her gracious purity and his
own unworthiness. He spread one of the big gray blankets over her, and
tucked her in, while she sighed in delightful languor, looking up at
him all the time.

"I'll sit here beside you for a while," he said. "I want to smoke a
bit."

She stole a slim, brown hand out from beneath the cover and snuggled it
in his, and he leaned forward, closing her lids down with his lips. Her
utter weariness was manifest, for she fell asleep almost instantly, her
fingers twined about his in a childlike grip.

At times a great desire to feel her in his arms, to have her on his
breast, surged over him, for he had lived long apart from women, and
the solitude of the night seemed to mock him. He was a strong man, and
in his veins ran the blood of wayward forebears ho were wont to possess
that which they conquered in the lists of love, mingled with which was
the blood of spirited Southern women who had on occasion loved not
wisely, according to Kentucky rumor, but only too well. Nevertheless,
they were honest men and women, if over-sentimental, and had
transmitted to him a heritage of chivalry and a high sense of honor and
courage. Strange to say, this little, simple half-breed girl had
revived this honor and courage, even when he tried most stubbornly to
smother it. If only her love was like her blood, he might have had no
scruples; or if her blood were as pure as her love--even then it would
be easier; but, as it was, he must give her up to-night, and for all
time. Her love had placed a barrier between them greater and more
insurmountable than her blood.

He sat for a long time with the dwindling firelight playing about him,
his manhood and his desires locked in a grim struggle, wondering at the
hold this forest elf had gained upon him, wondering how it was that she
had stolen into his heart and head and taken such utter possession of
him. It would be no easy task to shut her out of his mind and put her
away from him. And she...?

He gently withdrew his fingers from her grasp, and, seeking the other
side of the wickiup, covered himself over without disturbing her, and
fell asleep.

It was early dawn when Necia crept to him.

"I dreamed you had gone away," she said, shivering violently and
drawing close. "Oh, it was a terrible awakening--"

"I was too tired to dream," he said.

"So I had to come and see if you were really here."

He quickly rekindled the fire, and they made a hasty breakfast. Before
the warmth of the rising sun had penetrated the cold air they had
climbed the ridge and obtained a wondrous view of broken country, the
hills alight with the morning rays, the valleys misty and mystical.
They made good progress on the summit, which was paved with barren rock
and sparsely carpeted with short moss, while there was never a hint of
insects to annoy them. Merrily they swung along, buoyed up by an
unnatural exaltation; yet now and then, as they drew near their
destination, the young man had a chilling premonition of evil to come,
and wondered if he had not been foolhardy to undertake this rash
enterprise.

"I wish Stark was not one of Lee's party," he said once. "He may
misunderstand our being together this way."

"But when he learns that we love each other, that will explain
everything."

"I'm not so sure. He doesn't know you as Lee and Poleon and your father
do. I think we had better say nothing at all about--you and me--to any
one."

"But why?" questioned the girl, stopping abruptly. "They will know it,
anyhow, when they see us. I can't conceal it."

"I am wiser in this than you are," the soldier insisted, "and we
mustn't act like lovers; trust this to me."

"Oh, I won't play that!" cried Necia, petulantly. "If all this is going
to end when we get to Lee's cabin, we'll stay right here forever."

He was not sure of all the logic he advanced in convincing her, but she
yielded finally, saying:

"Well, I suppose you know best, and, anyhow, littles should always
mind."

They clung to the divide for several hours, then descended into the bed
of a stream, which they followed until it joined a larger one a couple
of miles below, and there, sheltered in a grove of whispering firs,
they found Lee's cabin nestling in a narrow, forked valley. Evidently
the miner had selected a point on the main creek just below the
confluence of the feeders as a place in which to prospect, and Burrell
fell to wondering which one of these smaller streams supplied the run
of gold.

"There's no one here," said Necia, gleefully. "We've beat them in!
We've beat them in!"

They had been walking rapidly since dawn, and, although Burrell's watch
showed two o'clock, she refused to halt for lunch, declaring that the
others might arrive at any moment; so down they went to the lower end
of "No Creek" Lee's location, where Burrell blazed a smooth spot on the
down-stream side of a tree and wrote thereon at Necia's dictation. When
he had finished, she signed her name, and he witnessed it, then paced
off four hundred and forty steps, where he squared a spruce-tree, which
she marked: "Lower centre end stake of No. I below discovery. Necia
Gale, locator." She was vastly excited and immensely elated at her
good-fortune in acquiring the claim next to Lee's, and chattered like a
magpie, filling the glades with resounding echoes and dancing about in
the bright sunlight that filtered through the branches.

"Now you stake the one below mine," she said. "It's just as good, and
maybe better--nobody can tell." But he shook his head.

"I'm not going to stake anything," said he.

"You must!" she cried, quickly, the sparkle dying from her eyes. "You
said you would, or I never would have brought you."

"I merely said I would come with you," he corrected. "I did not promise
to take up a claim, for I don't think I ought to do so. If I were a
civilian, it would be different, but this is government land, and I am
a part of the government, as it were. Then, too, in addition to the
question of my right to do it, there would be the certainty of making
enemies of your people, old "No Creek" and the rest, and I can't afford
that now. With you it is different, for you are entitled to this
ground. After Lee's friends have shared in his discovery I may change
my mind."

All arguments and pleading were in vain; he remained obdurate and
insisted on her locating two other claims for herself, one on each of
the smaller creeks where they came together above the house.

"But nobody ever stakes more than one claim on a gulch," objected the
girl. "It's a custom of the miners."

"Then we'll call each one of these branches a different and separate
creek," he said. "The gold was carried down one of those smaller
streams, and we won't take any chances on which one it was. When a
fellow plays a big game he should play to win, and, as this means such
a great deal to you, we won't overlook any bets."

Necia consented, and when her three claims had been properly located
the couple returned to the cabin to get lunch and to await with some
foreboding the coming of the others and what of good or ill it might
bring.




CHAPTER VII

THE MAGIC OF BEN STARK


Before the party came in sight, the sound of their voices reached the
cabin, and Burrell rose nervously and sauntered to the door. Uncertain
how this affair might terminate, he chose to get first look at his
enemies, if they should prove to be such, realizing the advantage that
goes to a man who stands squarely on both feet.

The trail came through the brush at the rear, and he heard Lee say:

"This here's the place, boys--the shack ain't fifty yards away."

"Likely looking gulch," Gale was heard to reply, in his deep
tones--there was a crackle of dead brush, a sound as of a man tripping
and falling heavily, then oaths in a voice that made the Lieutenant
start.

"Ha, ha!" laughed Doret. "You mus' be tired, Meestaire R-r-unnion.
Better you pick up your feet. Dat's free tarn' you've-"

They emerged into the open behind the house to pause in line back of
Lee, who was staring at the stove-pipe of his cabin, from which came a
wisp of smoke. It seemed to Burrell that they held their position for a
long time. Then he heard Lee say:

"Well, I'll be damned! Somebody's here ahead of us."

"We've been beaten," growled Stark, angrily, pushing past him and
coming round the corner, an ugly look in his eyes.

Burrell was standing at ease in the door, smoking, one forearm resting
on the jamb, his wide shoulders nearly filling the entrance.

"Good-afternoon," he nodded, pleasantly.

Lee answered him unintelligibly; Stark said nothing, but Runnion's
exclamation was plain.

"It's that damned blue-belly!"

"When did YOU get here?" said Stark, after a pause.

"A few hours ago."

"How did you come?" asked Lee.

"Black Bear Creek," said the soldier, curtly, at which Runnion broke
into profanity.

"Better hush," Burrell admonished him; "there's a lady inside," and at
that instant Necia showed her laughing face under his arm, while the
trader uttered her name in amazement.

"Lunch is ready," she said. "We've been expecting you for quite a
while."

"Ba Gar! Dat's fonny t'ing for sure," said Poleon. "Who tol' you 'bout
dis strike--eh?"

"Mother; I made her," the girl answered.

"Take off your packs and come in," Burrell invited, but Stark strode
forward.

"Hold on a minute. This don't look good to me. You say your mother told
you. I suppose you're Old Man Gale's other daughter--eh?"

Necia nodded.

"What time of day was it when you learned about this?"

"Cut that out," roughly interjected Gale. "Do you think I
double-crossed you?"

The other turned upon him.

"It looks that way, and I intend to find out. You said yesterday you
hadn't told anybody--"

"I didn't think about the woman," said the trader, a trifle
disconcerted, whereupon Runnion gave vent to an ironical sneer.

"But here's your girl and this man ahead of us. I suppose there's
others on the way, too."

"Nonsense!" Burrell cut in. "Don't quarrel about this. Miss Gale got
wind of your secret, and beat you at your own game, so that ends it;
but there's plenty of ground left for all of you, and no harm done.
Nobody knows of this strike from us, I can assure you."

"I call it dam' sleeck work," chuckled the Canadian, slipping out of
his straps. "De nex' tam' I go stampedin' I tak' you 'long, Necia."

"Me, too," said Lee. "An' now I'm goin' to tear into some of them beans
I smell a bilin' in yonder."

The others followed, although Stark and Runnion looked black and had
little to say. It was an uncomfortable meal--every one was ill at ease;
Gale, in particular, was quiet, and ate less than any of them. His eyes
sought Stark's face frequently, and once the blood left his cheeks and
his eyes blazed as he observed the gambler eying Necia, gazing at her
with the same boldness he would have used in scanning a horse.

"You are a mighty good-looking girl for a 'blood,'" remarked Stark, at
last.

"Thank you," she replied, simply, and the soldier's vague dislike of
the man crystallized into hate on the instant. There was a tone back of
his words that seemed aimed at the trader, Meade thought, but Gale
showed no sign of it, so the meal was finished in silence, after which
the five belated prospectors went out to make their locations, for the
fear of interruption was upon them now.

First they went down-stream, and, according to their agreement, the
trader staked first, followed by Poleon and Stark, thus throwing
Runnion's claim more than a mile distant from Lee's discovery. From
here they went up the creek to find the girl's other locations, one on
each branch, at which Stark sneeringly remarked that she had pre-empted
enough ground for a full-grown white woman.

Runnion's displeasure was even more open, and he fell into foul-mouthed
mutterings, addressing himself to Poleon and Stark while the trader was
out of earshot.

"This affair don't smell right, and I still think it's a frame-up."

"Bah!" exclaimed Doret.

"The old man sent the girl on ahead of us to blanket all the good
ground. That's what he did!"

"Dat's fool talk," declared the Frenchman.

"I'm not so sure," Stark broke in. "You remember he hung back and
wanted to go slow from the start; and didn't he ask us to camp early
last night? Looks now as if he did it just to give her time to get in
first. He admitted that he knew the Black Bear trail, and if he lied
about keeping his mouth shut to the squaw, he'd lie about other--"

"Wait wan minnit," interrupted Poleon, his voice as soft as a woman's.
"I tol' you dat _I_ know all 'bout dis Black Bear Creek, too--you
'member, eh? Wal, mebbe you t'ink I'm traitor, too. Wat? W'y don' you
spik out?"

The three of them were alone, and only the sound of Gale's axe came to
them; but at the light in the Canadian's face Runnion hastily
disclaimed any such thought on his part, and Stark shrugged his denial.

"I don' know you feller' at all," continued Poleon, "but Ole Man Gale,
he's my frien', so I guess you don' better talk no more lak' dat."

"Don't get sore," said Stark. "I simply say it looks bad." But the
other had turned his back and was walking on.

There are men quite devoid of the ability to read the human face, and
Runnion was of this species. Moreover, malice was so bitter in his
mouth that he must have it out, so when they paused to blaze the next
stake he addressed himself to Stark loud enough for Poleon to hear.

"That Lieutenant is more of a man than I thought he was."

"How so?" inquired the older man.

"Well, it takes nerve to steal a girl for one night and then face the
father; but the old man don't seem to mind it any more than she does. I
guess he knows what it means, all right."

Stark laughed raucously. "I thought of that myself," he said.

"That's probably how Gale got his squaw," concluded Runnion, with a
sneer.

It seemed a full minute before the Frenchman gave sign that he had
heard, then a strange cry broke from his throat and he began to tremble
as if with cold. He was no longer the singer of songs or the man who
was forever a boy; the mocking anger of a moment ago was gone; in its
place was a consuming fury that sucked the blood from beneath his tan,
leaving him the pallor of ashes, while his mouth twitched and his head
rolled slightly from side to side like a palsied old man's. The red of
his lips was blanched, leaving two white streaks against a faded, muddy
background, through which came strange and frightful oaths in a bastard
tongue. Runnion drew back, fearful, and the older man ceased chopping
and let his axe hang loosely in his hand. But evidently Poleon meant no
violence, for he allowed the passion to run from him freely until it
had spent its vigor, then said to Runnion:

"M'sieu, eider you are brave man or dam' fool."

"What do you mean, Frenchy?" said the man addressed, uneasily.

"Somebody goin' die for w'at you say jus' now. Mebbe it's goin' be you,
m'sieu; mebbe it's goin' be him; I can't tell yet, but I'm hope an'
pray it's goin' be you, biccause I t'ink w'at you say is a lie, an'
nobody can spik dose kin' of lie 'bout Necia Gale."

He went crashing blindly through the underbrush, his head wagging, his
shoulders slumped loosely forward like those of a drunken man, his lips
framing words they could not understand.

When he had disappeared Runnion drew a deep breath.

"I guess I've framed something for Mister Burrell this time."

"You go about it queer," said Stark. "I'd rather tackle a gang-saw than
a man like Poleon Doret. Your frame-up may work double."

"Huh! No chance. The soldier was out all night alone with that
half-breed girl, and anybody can see she's crazy about him. What's the
answer?"

"Well, she's mighty pretty," agreed the other, "most too pretty for a
mixed blood, but you can't make that Frenchman believe she's wrong."

"Why, he believes it now," chuckled Runnion, "or at least he's jealous,
and that's just as good. Those two will have trouble before dark. I
wish they would--then I'd have a chance."

"Have you got your eye on her, too?"

"Sure! Do you blame me?"

"No, but she's too good for you."

"Then she's too good for them. I think I'll enter the running."

"Better stay out," the gambler advised; "you'll have sore feet before
you finish. As a matter of fact, I don't like her father any better
than you like her lovers--"

"Well, it's mutual. I can see Gale hates you like poison."

"--and I don't intend to see him and his tribe hog all the best ground
hereabouts."

"They've already done it. You can't stop them."

Before answering, Stark listened for the trader, but evidently Gale had
finished his task and returned to the shack, for there was neither sign
nor sound of him.

"Yes, I can stop them," said Stark. "I want the ground that girl has
staked, and I'm going to get it. It lies next to Lee's, and it's sure
to be rich; ours is so far away it may not be worth the recorder's
fees. This creek may be as spotted as a coach-dog, so I don't intend to
take any chances."

"She made her locations legally," said Runnion.

"You leave that to me. When will the other boys he here?"

"To-morrow morning. I told them to follow about four hours behind, and
not to run in on us till we had finished. They'll camp a few miles down
the creek, and be in early."

"You couldn't get but three, eh?"

"That's all I could find who would agree to give up half."

"Can we count on them?"

"Huh!" the other grunted. "They worked with me and Soapy on the Skagway
trail."

"Good. Five against three, not counting the girl and the Lieutenant,"
Stark mused. "Well, that will do it." He outlined his plan, then the
two returned to the cabin to find Lee cooking supper. Poleon was there
with the others, but, except for his silence, he showed no sign of what
had taken place that afternoon.

Stark developed a loquacious mood after supper, devoting himself
entirely to Necia, in whom he seemed to take great interest. He was an
engaging talker, with a peculiar knack of suggestion in
story-telling--an unconscious halting and elusiveness that told more
than words could express--and, knowing his West so well, he fascinated
the girl, who hung upon his tales with flattering eagerness.

Poleon had finished several pipes, and now sat in the shadows in the
open doorway, apparently tired and dejected, though his eyes shone like
diamonds and roved from one to the other. Half unconsciously he heard
Stark saying:

"This girl was about your size, but not so dark. However, you remind me
of her in some ways--that's why it puts her in my mind, I suppose. She
was about your age at the time--nineteen."

"Oh, I'm not eighteen yet," said Necia.

"Well, she was a fine woman, anyhow, the best that ever set foot in
Chandon, and there was a great deal of talk when she chose young
Bennett over the Gaylord man, for Bennett had been running second best
from the start, and everybody thought it was settled between her and
the other one. However, they were married quietly."

The story did not interest the Canadian; his mind was in too great
agitation to care for dead tales; his heart burned within him too
fiercely, and he felt too great a desire to put his hands to work. As
he watched Burrell and Runnion bend over the table looking at a little
can of gold-dust that Lee had taken from under his bunk, his eyes grew
red and bloodshot beneath his hat-brim. Which one of the two would it
be, he wondered. From the corner of his eye he saw Gale rise from Lee's
bed, where he had stretched himself to smoke, and take his six-shooter
from his belt, then remove the knotted bandanna from his neck, and
begin to clean the gun, his head bowed over it earnestly, his face in
the shadow. He had ever been a careful and methodical man, reflected
Poleon, and evidently would not go to sleep with his fire-arm in bad
condition.

"Nobody imagined that Gaylord would cause trouble," Stark was saying,
"for he didn't seem to be a jealous sort, just stupid and kind of
heavy-witted; but one night he took advantage of Bennett's absence and
sneaked up to the house." The story-teller paused, and Necia, who was
under the spell of his recital, urged him on:

"Yes, yes. What happened then? Go on." But Stark stared gloomily at his
hands, and held his silence for a full minute, the tale appearing to
have awakened more than a fleeting interest in him.

"It was one of the worst killings that ever happened in those parts,"
he continued. "Bennett came back to find his wife murdered and the kid
gone."

"Oh!" said the girl, in a shocked voice.

"Yes, there was the deuce of a time. The town rose up in a body, and
we--you see, I happened to be there--we followed the man for weeks. We
trailed him and the kid clear over into the Nevada desert where we lost
them."

"Poor man!"

"Poor man?" The story-teller raised his eyes and laughed sinisterly. "I
don't see where that comes in."

"And you never caught him?"

"No. Not yet."

"He died of thirst in the desert, maybe, he and the little one."

"That's what we thought at the time, but I don't believe it now."

"How so?"

"Well, I've crossed his trail since then. No. Gaylord is alive to-day,
and so is the girl. Some time we'll meet--" His voice gave out, and he
stared again at the floor.

"Couldn't the little girl be traced?" said Necia. "What was her name?"

Stark made to speak, but the word was never uttered, for there came a
deafening roar that caused Lee's candle to leap and flicker and the air
inside the cabin to strike the occupants like a blow. Instantly there
was confusion, and each man sprang to his feet crying out affrightedly,
for the noise had come with utter unexpectedness.

"My God, I've killed him!" cried Gale, and with one jump he cleared
half the room and was beside Stark, while his revolver lay on the floor
where he had been sitting.

"What is it?" exclaimed Burrell; but there was no need to ask, for
powder-smoke was beginning to fill the room and the trader's face gave
answer. It was whiter than that of his daughter, who had crouched
fearfully against the wall, and he shook like a man with ague. But
Stark stood unhurt, and more composed than any of them; following the
first bound from his chair, he had relapsed into his customary quiet.
There had blazed up one momentary flash of suspicion and anger, but it
died straightway, for no man could have beheld the trader and not felt
contrition. His condition was pitiable, and the sight of a strong man
overcome is not pleasant; when it was seen that no harm had been done
the others strove to make light of the accident.

"Get together, all of you! It's nothing to be excited over," said Stark.

"How did it happen?" Runnion finally asked Gale, who had sunk limply
upon the edge of the bunk; but when the old man undertook to answer his
words were unintelligible, and he shook his head helplessly.

Stark laid his finger on the hole that the bullet had bored in the log
close to where he was sitting, and laughed.

"Never mind, old man, it missed me by six inches. You know there never
was a bullet that could kill me. I'm six-shooter proof."

"Wha'd I tell you?" triumphantly ejaculated Lee, turning his one eye
upon the Lieutenant. "You laughed at me, didn't you?"

"I'm beginning to believe it myself," declared the soldier.

"It's a cinch," said Stark, positively,

Doret, of all in the cabin, had said nothing. Seated apart from the
others, he had seen the affair from a distance, as it were, and now
stepped to the bed to lay his hand on Gale's shoulder.

"Brace up, John! Sacré bleu! Your face look lak' flour. Come outside
an' get li'l' air."

"It will do you good, father," urged Necia.

The trader silently rose, picked up his hat, and shambled out into the
night behind the Frenchman.

"The old man takes it hard," said Lee, shaking his head, and Burrell
remarked:

"I've seen things like that in army quarters, and the fellow who
accidentally discharges his gun invariably gets a greater shock than
his companion."

"I call it damned careless, begging your pardon, Miss Necia," said
Runnion.

Poleon led his friend down the trail for half a mile without speaking,
till Gale had regained a grip of himself and muttered, finally:

"I never did such a thing before, Poleon, never in all my life."

The young man turned squarely and faced him, the starlight illumining
their faces dimly.

"Why?" said Doret.

"Why?" echoed Gale, with a start. "Well, because I'm careful, I
suppose."

"Why?" insisted the Frenchman.

"I--I--I--What do you mean?"

"Don' lie wit' me, John. I'm happen to be watch you underneat' my hat
w'en you turn roun' for see if anybody lookin'."

"You saw?"

"Yes."

"I thought you were asleep," said Gale.




CHAPTER VIII

THE KNIFE


In every community, be it never so small, there are undesirable
citizens; and, while the little party was still at breakfast on the
following morning, three such members of society came around the cabin
and let fall their packs, greeting the occupants boisterously.

"Well, well!" said Lee, coming to the door. "You're travellin' kind of
early, ain't you?"

"Yes--early and late," one of them laughed, while the other two
sprawled about as if to rest.

"How far are you goin'?"

"Not far," the spokesman answered.

Now in the North there is one formality that must be observed with
friend or enemy, and, though Lee knew these men for what they were, he
said:

"Better have some breakfast, anyhow."

"We just ate." There was an uncomfortable pause, then the speaker
continued: "Look here. It's no use to flush around. We want a piece of
this creek."

"What are you goin' to do with it?"

"Cut that out, Lee. We're on."

"Who wised you up to this?" inquired the miner, angrily, for he had
other friends besides those present whom he wished to profit by this
strike, and he had hoped to keep out this scum.

"Never mind who put us Jerry. We're here, ain't we?"

Stark spoke up. "You can't keep news of a gold strike when the wind
blows, Lee. It travels on the breeze."

The harm was done, and there was no use in concealment, so Lee
reluctantly told them of his discovery and warned them of the stakes
already placed.

"And see here, you fellers," he concluded, "I've been forty years at
this game and never had a creek named after me, but this one is goin'
to be called '"No Creek" Lee Creek' or I fight. Does it go?"

"Sure, that's a good name, and we'll vote for it."

"Then go as far as you like," said the miner, dismissing them curtly.

"I'll step along with the boys and show them where our upper stakes
are," volunteered Stark, and Runnion offered to do the same, adding
that it were best to make sure of no conflict so early in the game. The
five disappeared into the woods, leaving the others at the cabin to
make preparations for the homeward trip.

"That man who did the talking is a tin-horn gambler who drifted in a
month ago, the same as Runnion, and the others ain't much better," said
Gale, when they had gone. "Seems like the crooks always beat the
straight men in."

"Never knowed it to fail," Lee agreed. "There's a dozen good men in
camp I'd like to see in on this find, but it'll be too late 'gin we get
back."

"Dose bum an' saloon feller got all de bes' claims at Klondike," said
Poleon. "I guess it's goin' be de same here."

"I don't like the look of this," observed the Lieutenant, thoughtfully.
"I'm afraid there's some kind of a job on foot."

"There's nothing they can do," Gale answered. "We've got our ground
staked out, and it's up to them to choose what's left."

They were nearly ready to set out for Flambeau when the five men
returned.

"Before you go," said Stark, "I think we'd better organize our mining
district. There are enough present to do it."

"We can make the kind of laws we want before the gang comes along,"
Runnion chimed in, "and elect a recorder who will give us a square
deal."

"I'll agree if we give Lee the job," said Gale. "It's coming to him as
the discoverer, and I reckon the money will be handy, seeing the hard
luck he's played in."

"That's agreeable to me," Stark replied, and proceeded forthwith to
call a miners' meeting, being himself straightway nominated as chairman
by one of the strangers. There was no objection, so he went in, as did
Lee, who was made secretary, with instructions to write out the
business of the meeting, together with the by-laws as they were passed.

The group assembled in the cleared space before the cabin to make rules
and regulations governing the district, for it is a custom in all
mining sections removed from authority for the property holders thus to
make local laws governing the size of claims, the amount of assessment
work, the size of the recorder's fees, the character of those who may
hold mines, and such other questions as arise to affect their personal
or property interests. In the days prior to the establishment of courts
and the adoption of a code of laws for Alaska, the entire country was
governed in this way, even to the adjudication of criminal actions. It
was the primitive majority rule that prevails in every new land, and
the courts later recognized and approved the laws so made and
administered, even when they differed in every district, and even when
these statutes were often grotesque and ridiculous. As a whole,
however, they were direct in their effect and worked no hardship; in
fact, government by miners' meeting is looked upon to this day, by
those who lived under it, as vastly superior to the complicated
machinery which later took its place.

The law permits six or more people to organize a mining district and
adopt articles of government, so this instance was quite ordinary and
proper.

Lee had come by his learning slowly, and he wrote after the fashion of
a school-boy, who views his characters from every angle and follows
their intricacies with corresponding movements of the tongue, hence the
business of the meeting progressed slowly.

It was of wondrous interest to Necia to be an integral part of such
important matters, and she took pride in voting on every question; but
Burrell, who observed the proceedings from neutral ground, could not
shake off the notion that all was not right. Things moved too smoothly.
It looked as if there had been a rehearsal. Poleon and the trader,
however, seemed not to notice it, and Lee was wallowing to the waist in
his own troubles, so the young man kept his eyes open and waited.

The surprise came when they had completed the organization of the
district and had nearly finished adopting by-laws. It was so boldly
attempted and so crude in its working-out that it seemed almost
laughable to the soldier, until he saw these men were in deadly earnest
and animated by the cruelest of motives. Moreover, it showed the first
glimpse of Stark's spite against the trader, which the Lieutenant had
divined.

Runnion moved the adoption of a rule that no women be allowed to locate
mining claims, and one of the strangers seconded it.

"What's that?" said Lee, raising his one eye from the note-book in
which he was transcribing.

"It isn't right to let women in on a man's game," said Runnion.

"That's my idea," echoed the seconder.

"I s'pose this is aimed at my girl," said Gale, springing to his feet.
"I might have known you bums were up to some crooked work."

Poleon likewise rose and ranged himself with the trader.

"Ba Gar! I don' stan' for dat," said he, excitedly. "You want for jump
Necia's claims, eh?"

"As long as I'm chairman we'll have no rough work," declared Stark,
glaring at them. "If you want trouble, you two, I reckon you can have
it, but, whether you do or not, the majority is going to rule, and
we'll make what laws we want to."

He took no pains now to mask his dislike of Gale, who began to move
towards him in his dogged, resolute way. Necia, observing them,
hastened to her father's side, for that which she sensed in the bearing
of both men quite overcame her indignation at this blow against herself.

"No, no, don't have any trouble," she pleaded, as she clung to the
trader. "For my sake, daddy, sit down." Then she whispered fiercely
into his ear: "Can't you see he's trying to make you fight? There's too
many of them. Wait! Wait!"

Burrell attempted to speak, but Stark, who was presiding, turned upon
him fiercely:

"Now this is one time when you can't butt in, Mr. Soldier Man. This is
our business. Is that plain?"

The Lieutenant realized that he had no place in this discussion, and
yet their move was so openly brazen that he could restrain himself with
difficulty. A moment later he saw the futility of interference, when
Stark continued, addressing the trader:

"This isn't aimed at you in particular, Gale, nor at your girl, for a
motion to disqualify her isn't necessary. She isn't old enough to hold
mining property."

"She's eighteen," declared the trader.

"Not according to her story."

"Well, I can keep her claims for her till she gets of age."

"We've just fixed it so you can't," grinned Runnion, cunningly. "No man
can hold more than one claim on a creek. You voted for that yourself."

Too late, Gale saw the trick by which Stark had used him to rob his own
daughter. If he and his two friends had declined to be a part of this
meeting, the others could not have held it, and before another assembly
could have been called the creek would have been staked from end to
end, from rim to rim, by honest men, over whom no such action could
pass; but, as it was, his own votes had been used to sew him up in a
mesh of motions and resolutions.

"No Creek" Lee had the name of a man slow in speech and action, and one
who roused himself to anger deliberately, much as a serpent stings
itself into a painful fury; but now it was apparent that he was boiling
over, for he stammered and halted and blurted explosively.

"You're a bunch of rascals, all of you, tryin' to down a pore girl and
get her ground; but who put ye wise to this thing, in the first place?
Who found this gold? Just because there's enough of you to vote that
motion through, that don't make it legal, not by a damned sight, and it
won't hold, because I won't write it in the book. You--you--" He glared
at them malevolently, searching his mind for an epithet sufficiently
vile, and, finding it, spat it out--"dressmakers!"

So this was why both Stark and Runnion had gone up the creek with the
three new men, thought Burrell. No doubt they had deliberately arranged
the whole thing so that the new arrivals could immediately relocate
each of Necia's claims--the pick of all the ground outside Lee's
discovery, and the surest to be valuable--and that Stark would share in
the robbery. He or Runnion, or both of them, had broken Lee's oath of
secrecy even before leaving camp, which accounted for the presence of
these thugs; and now, as he revolved the situation rapidly in his mind,
the soldier looked up at a sudden thought. Poleon had begun to speak,
and from his appearance it seemed possible that he might not cease with
words; moreover, it was further evident that they were all intent on
the excited Frenchman and had no eyes for the Lieutenant. Carefully
slipping around the corner of the cabin, and keeping the house between
him and the others, Burrell broke into a swift run, making the utmost
possible speed for fear they should miss him and guess his purpose, or,
worse yet, finish their discussion and adjourn before he could complete
his task. He was a light man on his feet, and he dodged through the
forest, running more carelessly the farther he went, visiting first the
upper claims, then, making a wide detour of the cabin, he came back to
the initial stake of Necia's lower claim, staggering from his
exertions, his lungs bursting from the strain. He had covered nearly a
mile, but, even so, he laughed grimly as he walked back towards the
cabin, for it was a game worth playing, and he was glad to take a hand
on the side of the trader and the girl. Coming within earshot, he heard
the meeting vote to adjourn. It could not have terminated more
opportunely had he held a stopwatch on it.

From the look of triumph on Runnion's face, the Lieutenant needed no
glance at Gale or Poleon or Necia to know that the will of the majority
had prevailed, and that the girl's importunities had restrained her
advocates from a resort to violence. She looked very forlorn, like a
little child just robbed and deceived, with the shock of its first
great disillusionment still fresh in its eyes.

Runnion addressed the other conspirators loudly.

"Well, boys, there are three good claims open for relocation. I'm sorry
I can't stake one of them."

"They won't lie open long," said one of the undesirable citizens,
starting to turn down-stream while his two companions made for the
opposite direction. But Burrell stopped them.

"Too late, boys. Your little game went wrong. Now! Now! Don't get
excited. Whew! I had quite a run."

Gale paused in his tracks and looked at the young man queerly.

"What do you mean?"

"I've jumped those claims myself."

"YOU jumped them!" cried Necia.

"Sure! I changed my mind about staking."

"It's a lie!" cried Runnion, at which Burrell whirled on him.

"I've been waiting for this, Runnion--ever since you came back. Now--"

"I mean you haven't had time," the other temporized, hurriedly.

"Oh, that sounds better! If you don't believe me take a look for
yourself; you'll find my notice just beneath Miss Gale's." Then to "No
Creek" Lee he continued, "Kindly record them for me so there will be no
question of priority."

"I'll be damned if I do!" said the belligerent recorder. "You're
worse'n these crooks. That ground belongs to Necia Gale."

Up to this time Stark had remained silent, his impassive face betraying
not a shadow of chagrin, for he was a good loser; but now he spoke at
large.

"Anybody who thinks the American army is asleep is crazy." Then to
Burrell, "You certainly are a nice young man to double-cross your
friends like that."

"You're no friend of mine," Meade retorted.

"I? What do you mean?"

"I double-crossed you, Stark, nobody else."

The Kentuckian glared at him with a look like that which Runnion had
seen in his face on that first day at the trading-post. The thought of
these five men banded together to rob this little maid had caused a
giddiness to rise up in him, and his passions were beginning to whirl
and dance.

"There's no use mouthing words about it," said he. "These thugs are
your tools, and you tried to steal that ground because it's sure to be
rich."

Stark exclaimed angrily, but the other gave him no time to break in.

"Now, don't get rough, because THAT is my game, and I'd be pleased
enough to take you back a prisoner." Then turning to Lee, he said:
"Don't make me force you to record my locations. I staked those claims
for Miss Gale, and I'll deed them to her when she turns eighteen."

Poleon Doret called to Runnion: "M'sieu, you 'member w'at I tol' you
yestidday? I'm begin for t'ink it's goin' be you."

The man paled in his anger, but said nothing. Necia clapped her hands
gleefully.

Seeing that the game had gone against him, Stark got his feelings under
control quickly, and shrugged his shoulders as he turned away.

"You're in the wrong, Lieutenant," he remarked; "but I don't want any
trouble. You've got the law with you." Then to Runnion and the others
he said, "Well, I'm ready to hit the trail."

When they had shouldered their packs and disappeared down the valley,
Gale held out his hand to the soldier. "Young man, I reckon you and I
will be friends."

"Thank you," said Burrell, taking the offer of friendship which he knew
was genuine at last.

"I'm in on that!" said "No Creek" Lee; "you're all right!"

Poleon had been watching Stark's party disappear, but now he turned and
addressed the young soldier.

"You mak' some enemies to-day, M'sieu."

"That's right," agreed Lee. "Ben Stark will never let up on you now."

"Very well, that is his privilege."

"You don't savvy what it means to get him down on you," insisted Lee.
"He'll frame things up to suit himself, then pick a row with you. He's
the quickest man on a trigger in the West, but he won't never make no
open play, only just devil the life out of you with little things till
you flare up, then he'll down you. That's how he killed the gold
commissioner back in British Columbia."

Necia had said little so far, but the look in her eyes repaid the
soldier for his undertaking in her behalf, and for any mischief that
might ensue from it. She came forward and laid her hands upon his.

"Promise that you won't have trouble with him," she begged, anxiously,
"for it's all my fault, and I'd--I'd always blame myself if any hurt
came to you. Promise! Won't you?"

"Don't worry, daughter," reassured Gale. "There's nothing Stark can do,
and whatever happens we're with the Lieutenant. He's our kind of
people."

Burrell liked this grizzled old fellow with the watchful eyes, and was
glad now that he could grip his hand and face him squarely with no
guilt upon his conscience.

By this time Doret had finished with their blankets, and the four set
out for town, but instead of following the others they accepted Necia
as guide and chose the trail to Black Bear Creek. They had not gone far
before she took occasion to lag behind with the Lieutenant.

"I couldn't thank you before all those people--they would have read our
secret--but you know how I feel, don't you, Meade?"

"Why! It was a simple thing--"

"It was splendid when you defied them. My, what a fierce you are! Oh,
boy! What if something should happen to you over this!"

"But there's no chance. It's all done, and you'll have your fine
dresses and be able to hold your nose just as high as you want."

"Whatever I get I will owe to you. I--I've been thinking.
Suppose--well, suppose you keep two of those claims; they are sure to
be rich--"

"Why, Necia!" he exclaimed.

"They're yours, and I have no right to them under the law. Of course it
would be very handsome of you to give me one--the poorest."

"You ought to have your ears boxed," he laughed at her.

"I don't see why. You--you--may be very poor, for all I know."

"I am," he declared, "but not poor enough to take payment for a favor."

"Well, then, if they are really mine to do with as I please, I'll sell
one to you--"

"Thanks. I couldn't avail myself of the offer," he said, with mock
hauteur.

"If you were a business man instead of a fighting person you would
listen to my proposition before you declined it. I'll make the price
right, and you may pay me when we get behind yonder clump of bushes."
She pouted her lips invitingly, but he declared she was a minor and as
such her bargain would not hold.

It was evidently her mood to re-enter the land of whims and travel
again, as they had on the way from town, but he knew that for him such
a thing could not be, for his eyes had cleared since then. He knew that
he could never again wander through the happy valley, for he vowed this
maid should be no plaything for him or for any other man, and as there
could be no honorable end to this affair, it must terminate at once.
Just how this was to be consummated he had not determined as yet, nor
did he like to set about its solution, it hurt him so to think of
losing her. However, she was very young, only a child, and in time
would come to count him but a memory, no doubt; while as for him--well,
it would be hard to forget her, but he could and would. He reasoned
glibly that this was the only honest course, and his reasoning
convinced him; then, all of a sudden, the pressure of her warm lips
came upon him and the remembrance upset every premise and process of
his logic. Nevertheless, he was honest in his stubborn determination to
conclude the affair, and finally decided to let time show him the way.

She seemed to be very happy, her mood being in marked contrast to that
of Poleon and the trader, both of whom had fallen silent and gloomy,
and in whom the hours wrought no change. The latter had tacitly
acknowledged his treachery towards Stark on the previous night, but
beyond that he would not go, offering no motive, excuse, or
explanation, choosing to stand in the eyes of his friend as an intended
murderer, notwithstanding which Poleon let the matter drop--for was not
his friend a good man? Had he not been tried in a hundred ways? The
young Frenchman knew there must have been strong reason for Gale's
outburst, and was content to trust him without puzzling his mind to
discover the cause of it.

Now, a secret must either grow or die--there is no fallow age for
it--and this one had lived with Gale for fifteen years, until it had
made an old man of him. It weighed him down until the desire to be rid
of it almost became overpowering at times; but his caution was
ingrained and powerful, and so it was that he resisted the temptation
to confide in his partner, although the effort left him tired and
inert. The only one to whom he could talk was Alluna--she understood,
and though she might not help, the sound of his own voice at least
always afforded him some relief.

As to Poleon, no one had ever seen him thus. Never in all his life of
dream and song and romance had he known a heavy heart until now, for if
at times he had wept like a girl, it was at the hurts of others. He had
loved a bit and gambled much, with equal misfortune, and the next day
he had forgotten. He had lived the free, clean life of a man who wins
joyously or goes down with defiance in his throat, but this venomous
thing that Runnion had planted in him had seeped and circulated through
his being until every fibre was penetrated with a bitter poison. Most
of his troubles could be grappled with bare hands, but here was one
against which force would not avail, hence he was unhappy.

The party reached Flambeau on the following day, sufficiently ahead of
Stark and his men for Lee to make known his find to his friends, and by
sunset the place was depopulated, while a line of men could be seen
creeping slowly up the valleys.

Gale found Alluna in charge of the store, but no opportunity of talking
alone with her occurred until late in the evening, after Necia had put
the two little ones to bed and had followed them wearily. Then he told
his squaw. She took the news better than he expected, and showed no
emotion such as other women would have displayed, even when he told her
of the gunshot. Instead, she inquired:

"Why did you try it there before all those others?"

"Well, when I heard him talking, the wish to kill him was more than I
could stand, and it came on me all at once, so that I was mad, I
suppose. I never did the like before." He half shuddered at the memory.

"I am sorry," she said.

"Yes! So am I."

"Sorry that you failed, for you will never have as good a chance again.
What was the matter with your aim? I have seen you hit a knot-hole,
shooting from the hip."

"The man is charmed," declared Gale. "He's bullet-proof."

"There are people," she agreed, "that a gunshot will not injure. There
was a man like that among my people--my father's enemy--but he was not
proof against steel."

"Your old man knifed him, eh?"

She nodded.

"Ugh!" the man shivered. "I couldn't do that. A gun is a straight man's
friend, but a knife is the weapon of traitors. I couldn't drive it
home."

"Does this man suspect?"

"No."

"Then it is child's play. We will lay a trap."

"No, by God!" Gale interrupted her hotly. "I tried that kind of work,
and it won't do. I'm no murderer."

"Those are only words," said the woman, quietly. "To kill your enemy is
the law."

The only light in the room came from the stove, a great iron cylinder
made from a coal-oil tank that lay on a rectangular bed of sand held
inside of four timbers, with a door in one end to take whole lengths of
cord-wood, and which, being open, lit the space in front, throwing the
sides and corners of the place into blacker mystery.

When he made no answer the squaw slipped out into the shadows, leaving
him staring into the flames, to return a moment later bearing something
in her hands, which she placed in his. It was a knife in a scabbard,
old and worn.

"There is no magic that can turn bright steel," she said, then squatted
again in the dimness outside of the firelight. Gale slid the case from
the long blade and held it in his palm, letting the firelight flicker
on it. He balanced it and tested the feel of its handle against his
palm, then tried the edge of it with his thumb-nail, and found it honed
like a razor.

"A child could kill with it," said Alluna. "Both edges of the blade are
so thin that a finger's weight will bury it. One should hold the wrist
firmly till it pierces through the coat, that is all--after that the
flesh takes it easily, like butter."

The glancing, glinting light flashing from the deadly thing seemed to
fascinate the man, for he held it a long while silently. Then he spoke.

"For fifteen years I've been a haunted man, with a soul like a dark and
dismal garret peopled with bats and varmints that flap and flutter all
the time. I used to figger that if I killed this man I'd kill that
memory, too, and those flitting, noiseless things would leave me, but
the thought of doing it made me afraid every time, so I ran away, which
never did no good--you can't outfoot a memory--and I knew all the while
that we'd meet sooner or later. Now that the day is here at last, I'm
not ready for it. I'd like to run away again if there was any place to
run to, but I've followed frontiers till I've seen them disappear one
by one; I've retreated till my back is against the Circle, and there
isn't any further land to go to. All the time I've prayed and planned
for this meeting, and yet--I'm undecided."

"Kill him!" said Alluna.

"God knows I've always hated trouble, whereas it's what he lives on.
I've always wanted to die in bed, while he's been a killer all his life
and the smoke hangs forever in his eyes. Only for an accident we might
have lived here all our days and never had a 'run-in,' which makes me
wonder if I hadn't better let things go on as they are."

"Kill him! It is the law," repeated Alluna, stubbornly, but he put her
aside with a slow shake of the head and arose as if very tired.

"No! I don't think I can do it--not in cold blood, anyhow. Good-night!
I'm going to sleep on it." He crossed to the door of his room, but as
he went she noted that he slipped the knife and scabbard inside the
bosom of his shirt.




CHAPTER IX

THE AWAKENING


Early the next morning Corporal Thomas came into the store and found
Necia tending it while Gale was out. Ever since the day she had
questioned him about Burrell, this old man had taken every occasion to
talk with the girl, and when he asked her this morning about the
reports concerning Lee's strike, she told him of her trip, and all that
had occurred.

"You see, I'm a mine-owner now," she concluded. "If it hadn't been a
secret I would have told you before I went so you could have been one
of the first."

"I'm goin', anyhow," he said, "if the Lieutenant will let me and if
it's not too late."

Then she told him of the trail by Black Bear Creek which would save him
several hours.

"So that's how you and he made it?" he observed, gazing at her
shrewdly. "I supposed you went with your father?"

"Oh, no! We beat him in," she said, and fell to musing at the memory of
those hours passed alone with Meade, while her eyes shone and her
cheeks glowed. The Corporal saw the look, and it bore out a theory he
had formed during the past month, so, as he lingered, he set about a
task that had lain in his mind for some time. As a rule he was not a
careful man in his speech, and the delicacy of this manoeuvre taxed his
ingenuity to the utmost, for he loved the girl and feared to say too
much.

"The Lieutenant is a smart young fellow," he began; "and it was slick
work jumpin' all those claims. It's just like him to befriend a girl
like you--I've seen him do it before--"

"What!" exclaimed Necia, "befriend other girls?"

"Or things just like it. He's always doing favors that get him into
trouble."

"This couldn't cause him trouble, could it, outside of Stark's and
Runnion's grudge?"

"No, I reckon not," assented the Corporal, groping blindly for some way
of expressing what he wished to say. "Except, of course, it might cause
a lot of talk at headquarters when it's known what he's done for you
and how he done it. I heard something about it down the street this
morning, so I'm afraid it will get to St. Michael's, and then to his
folks." He realized that he was not getting on well, for the task was
harder than he had imagined.

"I don't understand," said Necia. "He hasn't done anything that any man
wouldn't do under the same circumstances."

"No man's got a right to make folks talk about a nice girl," said the
Corporal; "and the feller that told me about it said he reckoned you
two was in love." He hurried along now without offering her a chance to
speak. "Of course, that had to be caught up quick; you're too fine a
girl for that."

"Too fine?" Necia laughed.

"I mean you're too fine and good to let him put you in wrong, just as
he's too fine a fellow and got too much ahead of him to make what his
people would call a messy alliance."

"Would his people object to--to such a thing?" questioned the girl.
They were alone in the store, and so they could talk freely. "I'm just
supposing, you know."

"Oh, Lord! Would they object?" Corporal Thomas laughed in a highly
artificial manner that made Necia bridle and draw herself up
indignantly.

"Why should they, I'd like to know? I'm just as pretty as other girls,
and I'm just as good. I know just as much as they do, too,
except--about certain things."

"You sure are all of that and more, too," the Corporal declared,
heartily, "but if you knowed more about things outside you'd understand
why it ain't possible. I can't tell you without hurtin' your feelin's,
and I like you too much for that, Miss Necia. Seems as if I'm almost a
daddy to you, and I've only knowed you for a few weeks--"

"Go ahead and tell me; I won't be offended," insisted the girl. "You
must. I don't know much about such things, for I've lived all my life
with men like father and Poleon, and the priests at the Mission, who
treat me just like one of themselves. But somebody will want to marry
me some day, I suppose, so I ought to know what is wrong with me." She
flushed up darkly under her brown cheeks.

The feeling came over Corporal Thomas that he had hurt a helpless
animal of some gentle kind; that he was bungling his work, and that he
was not of the calibre to go into the social amenities. He began to
perspire uncomfortably, but went on, doggedly:

"I'm goin' to tell you a story, not because it applies to Lieutenant
Burrell, or because he's in love with you, which of course he ain't any
more than you be with him--"

"Of course," said the girl.

"--but just to show you what I mean. It was a good long spell ago, when
I was at Fort Supply, which was the frontier in them days like this is
now. We freighted in from Dodge City with bull teams, and it was sure
the fringe of the frontier; no women--no society--nothin' much except a
fort, a lot of Injuns, and a few officials with their wives and
families. Now them kind of places is all right for married men, but
they're tough sleddin' for single ones, and after a while a feller gets
awful careless about himself; he seems to go backward and run down
mighty quick when he gets away from civilization and his people and
restaurants and such things; he gets plumb reckless and forgetful of
what's what. Well, there was a captain with us, a young feller that
looked like the Lieutenant here, and a good deal the same
sort--high-tempered and chivalrious and all that sort of thing; a West
Pointer, too, good family and all that, and, what's more, a captain at
twenty-five. Now, our head freighter was married to a squaw, or
leastways he had been, but in them days nobody thought much of it any
more than they do up here now, and particularly because he'd had a
government contract for a long while, ran a big gang of men and
critters, and had made a lot of money. Likewise he had a girl, who
lived at the fort, and was mighty nice to look at, and restful to the
eye after a year or so of cactus-trees and mesquite and buffalo-grass.
She was twice as nice and twice as pretty as the women at the post, and
as for money--well, her dad could have bought and sold all the officers
in a lump; but they and their wives looked down on her, and she didn't
mix with them none whatever. To make it short, the captain married her.
Seemed like he got disregardful of everything, and the hunger to have a
woman just overpowered him. She'd been courted by every single man for
four hundred miles around. She was pretty and full of fire, and they
was both of an age to love hard, so Jefferson swore he'd make the other
women take her; but soldierin' is a heap different from any other
profession, and the army has got its own traditions. The plan wouldn't
work. By-and-by the captain got tired of trying, and gave up the
attempt--just devoted himself to her--and then we was transferred, all
but him. We shifted to a better post, but Captain Jefferson was changed
to another company and had to stay at Supply. Gee! it was a rotten
hole! Influence had been used, and there he stuck, while the new
officers cut him out completely, just like the others had done, so I
was told, and it drifted on that way for a long time, him forever
makin' an uphill fight to get his wife reco'nized and always quittin'
loser. His folks back East was scandalized and froze him cold, callin'
him a squaw-man; and the story went all through the army, till his
brother officers had to treat him cold in order to keep enough warmth
at home to live by, one thing leading to another till he finally
resented it openly. After that he didn't last long. They made it so
unpleasant that he quit the service--crowded him out, that's all. He
was a born soldier, too, and didn't know nothing else nor care for
nothing else; as fine a man as I ever served under, but it soured him
so that a rattlesnake couldn't have lived with him. He tried to go into
some kind of business after he quit the army, but he wasn't cut out for
it, and never made good as long as I knew of him. The last time I seen
him was down on the border, and he had sure grown cultus. He had quit
the squaw, who was livin' with a greaser in Tucson--"

"And do you think I'm like that woman?" said Necia, in a queer,
strained voice. She had listened intently to the Corporal's story, but
he had purposely avoided her eyes and could not tell how she was taking
it.

"No! You're different, but the army is just the same. I told you this
to show you how it is out in the States. It don't apply to you, of
course--"

"Of course!" agreed Necia again. "But what would happen to Lieutenant
Burrell if--if--well, if he should do something like that? There are
many half-breed girls, I dare say, like this other girl, or--like me."

She did not flush now as before; instead, her cheeks were pale.

"It would go a heap worse with him than it did with Captain Jefferson,"
said the Corporal, "for he's got more ahead of him and he comes from
better stock. Why, his family is way up! They're all soldiers, and
they're strong at headquarters; they're mighty proud, too, and they
wouldn't stand for his doing such a thing, even if he wanted to. But he
wouldn't try; he's got too much sense, and loves the army too well for
that. No, sir! He'll go a long ways, that boy will, if he's let alone."

"I never thought of myself as an Indian," said Necia, dully. "In this
country it's a person's heart that counts."

"That's how it ought to be," said the Corporal, heartily; "and I'm
mighty sorry if I've hurt you, little girl. I'm a rough old rooster,
and I never thought but what you understood all this. Up here folks
look at it right, but outside it's mighty different; even yet you don't
half understand."

"I'm glad I'm what I am!" cried the girl. "There's nothing in my blood
to be ashamed of, and I'm white in here!" She struck her bosom
fiercely. "If a man loves me he'll take me no matter what it means to
him."

"Right for you," assented the other; "and if I was younger myself, I'd
sure have a lot of nice things to say to you. If I'd 'a' had somebody
like you I'd 'a' let liquor alone, maybe, and amounted to something,
but all I'm good for now is to give advice and draw my pay." He slid
down from the counter where he had been sitting. "I'm goin' to hunt up
the Lieutenant and get him to let me off. Mebbe I can stake a claim and
sell it."

The moment he was gone the girl's composure vanished and she gave vent
to her feelings.

"It's a lie! It's a lie!" she cried, aloud, and with her fists she beat
the boards in front of her. "He loves me! I know he does!" Then she
began, to tremble, and sobbed: "I'm just like other girls."

She was still wrestling with herself when Gale returned, and he started
at the look in her face as she approached him.

"Why did you marry my mother?" she asked. "Why? Why did you do it?"

He saw that she was in a rage, and answered, bluntly, "I didn't."

She shrank at this. "Then why didn't you? Shame! Shame! That makes me
worse than I thought I was. Oh, why did you ever turn squaw-man? Why
did you make me a breed?"

"Look here! What ails you?" said the trader.

"What ails me?" she mocked. "Why, I'm neither white nor red; I'm not
even a decent Indian. I'm a--a--" She shuddered. "You made me what I
am. You didn't do me the justice even to marry my mother."

"Somebody's been saying things about you," said Gale, quietly, taking
her by the shoulders. "Who is it? Tell me who it is."

"No, no! It's not that! Nobody has said anything to my face; they're
afraid of you, I suppose, but God knows what they think and say to my
back."

"I'll--" began the trader, but she interrupted him.

"I've just begun to realize what I am. I'm not respectable. I'm not
like other women, and never can be. I'm a squaw--a squaw!"

"You're not!" he cried.

"It's a nice word, isn't it?"

"What's wrong with it?"

"No honest man can marry me. I'm a vagabond! The best I can get is my
bed and board, like my mother."

"By God! Who offered you that?" Gale's face was whiter than hers now,
but she disregarded him and abandoned herself to the tempest of emotion
that swept her along.

"He can play with me, but nothing more, and when he is gone another one
can have me, and then another and another and another--as long as I can
cook and wash and work. In time my man will beat me, just like any
other squaw, I suppose, but I can't marry; I can't be a wife to a
decent man."

She was in the clutch of an hysteria that made her writhe beneath
Gale's hand, choking and sobbing, until he loosed her; then she leaned
exhau

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