The Magnetic North by Elizabeth Robins

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CHAPTER I

WINTER CAMP ON THE YUKON

"To labour and to be content with that a man hath is a sweet life; but
he that findeth a treasure is above them both."--_Ecclesiasticus_.

Of course they were bound for the Klondyke. Every creature in the
North-west was bound for the Klondyke. Men from the South too, and men
from the East, had left their ploughs and their pens, their factories,
pulpits, and easy-chairs, each man like a magnetic needle suddenly set
free and turning sharply to the North; all set pointing the self-same
way since that July day in '97, when the _Excelsior_ sailed into San
Francisco harbour, bringing from the uttermost regions at the top of
the map close upon a million dollars in nuggets and in gold-dust.

Some distance this side of the Arctic Circle, on the right bank of the
Yukon, a little detachment of that great army pressing northward, had
been wrecked early in the month of September.

They had realised, on leaving the ocean-going ship that landed them at
St. Michael's Island (near the mouth of the great river), that they
could not hope to reach Dawson that year. But instead of "getting cold
feet," as the phrase for discouragement ran, and turning back as
thousands did, or putting in the winter on the coast, they determined,
with an eye to the spring rush, to cover as many as possible of the
seventeen hundred miles of waterway before navigation closed.

They knew, in a vague way, that winter would come early, but they had
not counted on the big September storm that dashed their heavy-laden
boats against the floe-ice, ultimately drove them ashore, and nearly
cost the little party their lives. On that last day of the long
struggle up the stream, a stiff north-easter was cutting the middle
reach of the mighty river, two miles wide here, into a choppy and
dangerous sea.

Day by day, five men in the two little boats, had kept serious eyes on
the shore. Then came the morning when, out of the monotonous cold and
snow-flurries, something new appeared, a narrow white rim forming on
the river margin--the first ice!

"Winter beginning to show his teeth," said one man, with an effort at
jocosity.

Day by day, nearer came the menace; narrower and swifter still ran the
deep black water strip between the encroaching ice-lines. But the
thought that each day's sailing or rowing meant many days nearer the
Klondyke, seemed to inspire a superhuman energy. Day by day each man
had felt, and no man yet had said, "We must camp to-night for eight
months." They had looked landward, shivered, and held on their way.

But on this particular morning, when they took in sail, they realised
it was to be that abomination of desolation on the shore or death. And
one or other speedily.

Nearer the white teeth gleamed, fiercer the gale, swifter the current,
sweeping back the boats. The _Mary C._ was left behind, fighting for
life, while it seemed as if no human power could keep the _Tulare_ from
being hurled against the western shore. Twice, in spite of all they
could do, she was driven within a few feet of what looked like certain
death. With a huge effort, that last time, her little crew had just got
her well in mid-stream, when a heavy roller breaking on the starboard
side drenched the men and half filled the cockpit. Each rower, still
pulling for dear life with one hand, bailed the boat with the other;
but for all their promptness a certain amount of the water froze solid
before they could get it out.

"Great luck, if we're going to take in water like this," said the
cheerful Kentuckian, shipping his oar and knocking off the ice--"great
luck that all the stores are so well protected."

"Protected!" snapped out an anxious, cast-iron-looking man at the
rudder.

"Yes, protected. How's water to get through the ice-coat that's over
everything?"

The cast-iron steersman set his jaw grimly. They seemed to be
comparatively safe now, with half a mile of open water between them and
the western shore.

But they sat as before, stiff, alert, each man in his ice jacket that
cracked and crunched as he bent to his oar. Now right, now left, again
they eyed the shore.

Would it be--could it be there they would have to land? And if they
did...?

Lord, how it blew!

"Hard a-port!" called out the steersman. There, just ahead, was a great
white-capped "roller" coming--coming, the biggest wave they had
encountered since leaving open sea.

But MacCann, the steersman, swung the boat straight into the crested
roller, and the _Tulare_ took it gamely, "bow on." All was going well
when, just in the boiling middle of what they had thought was foaming
"white-cap," the boat struck something solid, shivered, and went
shooting down, half under water; recovered, up again, and seemed to
pause in a second's doubt on the very top of the great wave. In that
second that seemed an eternity one man's courage snapped.

Potts threw down his oar and swore by----and by----he wouldn't pull
another----stroke on the----Yukon.

While he was pouring out the words, the steersman sprang from the
tiller, and seized Potts' oar just in time to save the boat from
capsizing. Then he and the big Kentuckian both turned on the distracted
Potts.

"You infernal quitter!" shouted the steersman, and choked with fury.
But even under the insult of that "meanest word in the language," Potts
sat glaring defiantly, with his half-frozen hands in his pockets.

"It ain't a river, anyhow, this ain't," he said. "It's plain, simple
Hell and water."

The others had no time to realise that Potts was clean out of his
senses for the moment, and the Kentuckian, still pulling like mad,
faced the "quitter" with a determination born of terror.

"If you can't row, take the rudder! Damnation! Take that rudder! Quick,
_or we'll kill you_!" And he half rose up, never dropping his oar.

Blindly, Potts obeyed.

The _Tulare_ was free now from the clinging mass at the bow, but they
knew they had struck their first floe.

Farther on they could see other white-caps bringing other ice masses
down. But there was no time for terrors ahead. The gale was steadily
driving them in shore again. Boat and oars alike were growing unwieldy
with their coating of ever-increasing ice, and human strength was no
match for the storm that was sweeping down from the Pole.

Lord, how it blew!

"There's a cove!" called out the Kentuckian. "Throw her in!" he shouted
to Potts. Sullenly the new steersman obeyed.

Rolling in on a great surge, the boat suddenly turned in a boiling
eddy, and the first thing anybody knew was that the _Tulare_ was on her
side and her crew in the water. Potts was hanging on to the gunwale and
damning the others for not helping him to save the boat.

She wasn't much of a boat when finally they got her into quiet water;
but the main thing was they had escaped with their lives and rescued a
good proportion of their winter provisions. All the while they were
doing this last, the Kentuckian kept turning to look anxiously for any
sign of the others, in his heart bitterly blaming himself for having
agreed to Potts' coming into the _Tulare_ that day in place of the
Kentuckian's own "pardner." When they had piled the rescued provisions
up on the bank, and just as they were covering the heap of bacon,
flour, and bean-bags, boxes, tools, and utensils with a tarpaulin, up
went a shout, and the two missing men appeared tramping along the
ice-encrusted shore.

Where was the _Mary C._? Well, she was at the bottom of the Yukon, and
her crew would like some supper.

They set up a tent, and went to bed that first night extremely well
pleased at being alive on any terms.

But people get over being glad about almost anything, unless misfortune
again puts an edge on the circumstance. The next day, not being in any
immediate danger, the boon of mere life seemed less satisfying.

In detachments they went up the river several miles, and down about as
far. They looked in vain for any sign of the _Mary C._. They prospected
the hills. From the heights behind the camp they got a pretty fair idea
of the surrounding country. It was not reassuring.

"As to products, there seems to be plenty of undersized timber, plenty
of snow and plenty of river, and, as far as I can see, just nothing
else."

"Well, there's oodles o' blueberries," said the Boy, his inky-looking
mouth bearing witness to veracity; "and there are black and red
currants in the snow, and rose-apples--"

"Oh, yes," returned the other, "it's a sort of garden of Eden!"

A little below here it was four miles from bank to bank of the main
channel, but at this point the river was only about two miles wide, and
white already with floating masses of floe-ice going on a swift current
down towards the sea, four hundred miles away.

The right bank presented to the mighty river a low chain of hills,
fringed at the base with a scattered growth of scrubby spruce, birch,
willow, and cotton-wood. Timber line was only two hundred feet above
the river brink; beyond that height, rocks and moss covered with
new-fallen snow.

But if their side seemed cheerless, what of the land on the left bank?
A swamp stretching endlessly on either hand, and back from the icy
flood as far as eye could see, broken only by sloughs and an occasional
ice-rimmed tarn.

"We've been travelling just eight weeks to arrive at this," said the
Kentuckian, looking at the desolate scene with a homesick eye.

"We're not only pretty far from home," grumbled another, "we're still
thirteen hundred miles away from the Klondyke."

These unenlivening calculations were catching.

"We're just about twenty-five hundred miles from the nearest railroad
or telegraph, and, now that winter's down on us, exactly eight months
from anywhere in the civilised world."

They had seen no sign of even savage life, no white trader, nothing to
show that any human foot had ever passed that way before.

In that stillness that was like the stillness of death, they went up
the hillside, with footsteps muffled in the clinging snow; and sixty
feet above the great river, in a part of the wood where the timber was
least unpromising, they marked out a site for their winter quarters.

Then this queer little company--a Denver bank-clerk, an ex-schoolmaster
from Nova Scotia, an Irish-American lawyer from San Francisco, a
Kentucky "Colonel" who had never smelt powder, and "the Boy" (who was
no boy at all, but a man of twenty-two)--these five set to work felling
trees, clearing away the snow, and digging foundations for a couple of
log-cabins--one for the Trio, as they called themselves, the other for
the Colonel and the Boy.

These two had chummed from the hour they met on the steamer that
carried them through the Golden Gate of the Pacific till--well, till
the end of my story.

The Colonel was a big tanned fellow, nearly forty--eldest of the
party--whom the others used to guy discreetly, because you couldn't
mention a place anywhere on the known globe, except the far north,
which he had not personally inspected. But for this foible, as the
untravelled considered it, he was well liked and a little
feared--except by the Boy, who liked him "first-rate," and feared him
not at all. They had promptly adopted each other before they discovered
that it was necessary to have one or more "pardners." It seemed, from
all accounts, to be true, that up there at the top of the world a man
alone is a man lost, and ultimately the party was added to as
aforesaid.

Only two of them knew anything about roughing it. Jimmie O'Flynn of
'Frisco, the Irish-American lawyer, had seen something of frontier
life, and fled it, and MacCann, the Nova Scotian schoolmaster, had
spent a month in one of the Caribou camps, and on the strength of that,
proudly accepted the nickname of "the Miner."

Colonel George Warren and Morris Burnet, the Boy, had the best outfits;
but this fact was held to be more than counter-balanced by the value of
the schoolmaster's experience at Caribou, and by the extraordinary
handiness of Potts, the Denver clerk, who had helped to build the
shelter on deck for the disabled sick on the voyage up. This young man
with the big mouth and lazy air had been in the office of a bank ever
since he left school, and yet, under pressure, he discovered a natural
neat-handedness and a manual dexterity justly envied by some of his
fellow-pioneers. His outfit was not more conspicuously meagre than
O'Flynn's, yet the Irishman was held to be the moneyed man of his
party. Just why was never fully developed, but it was always said,
"O'Flynn represents capital"; and O'Flynn, whether on that account, or
for a subtler and more efficient reason, always got the best of
everything that was going without money and without price.

On board ship O'Flynn, with his ready tongue and his golden
background--"representing capital"--was a leading spirit. Potts the
handy-man was a talker, too, and a good second. But, once in camp, Mac
the Miner was cock of the walk, in those first days, quoted "Caribou,"
and ordered everybody about to everybody's satisfaction.

In a situation like this, the strongest lean on the man who has ever
seen "anything like it" before. It was a comfort that anybody even
_thought_ he knew what to do under such new conditions. So the others
looked on with admiration and a pleasant confidence, while Mac boldly
cut a hole in the brand-new tent, and instructed Potts how to make a
flange out of a tin plate, with which to protect the canvas from the
heat of the stove-pipe. No more cooking now in the bitter open.
Everyone admired Mac's foresight when he said:

"We must build rock fireplaces in our cabins, or we'll find our one
little Yukon stove burnt out before the winter is over--before we have
a chance to use it out prospecting." And when Mac said they must pool
their stores, the Colonel and the Boy agreed as readily as O'Flynn,
whose stores consisted of a little bacon, some navy beans, and a
demijohn of whisky. O'Flynn, however, urged that probably every man had
a little "mite o' somethin'" that he had brought specially for
himself--somethin' his friends had given him, for instance. There was
Potts, now. They all knew how the future Mrs. Potts had brought a
plum-cake down to the steamer, when she came to say good-bye, and made
Potts promise he wouldn't unseal the packet till Christmas. It wouldn't
do to pool Potts' cake--never! There was the Colonel, the only man that
had a sack of coffee. He wouldn't listen when they had told him tea was
the stuff up here, and--well, perhaps other fellows didn't miss coffee
as much as a Kentuckian, though he _had_ heard--Never mind; they
wouldn't pool the coffee. The Boy had some preserved fruit that he
seemed inclined to be a hog about--

"Oh, look here. I haven't touched it!" "Just what I'm sayin'. You're
hoardin' that fruit."

It was known that Mac had a very dacint little medicine-chest. Of
course, if any fellow was ill, Mac wasn't the man to refuse him a
little cold pizen; but he must be allowed to keep his own medicine
chest--and that little pot o' Dundee marmalade. As for O'Flynn, he
would look after the "dimmi-john."

But Mac was dead against the whisky clause. Alcohol had been the curse
of Caribou, and in _this_ camp spirits were to be for medicinal
purposes only. Whereon a cloud descended on Mr. O'Flynn, and his health
began to suffer; but the precious demi-john was put away "in stock"
along with the single bottles belonging to the others. Mac had taken an
inventory, and no one in those early days dared touch anything without
his permission.

They had cut into the mountain-side for a level foundation, and were
hard at it now hauling logs.

"I wonder," said the Boy, stopping a moment in his work, and looking at
the bleak prospect round him--"I wonder if we're going to see anybody
all winter."

"Oh, sure to," Mac thought; "Indians, anyhow."

"Well, I begin to wish they'd mosy along," said Potts; and the sociable
O'Flynn backed him up.

It was towards noon on the sixth day after landing (they had come to
speak of this now as a voluntary affair), when they were electrified by
hearing strange voices; looked up from their work, and saw two white
men seated on a big cake of ice going down the river with the current.
When they recovered sufficiently from their astonishment at the
spectacle, they ran down the hillside, and proposed to help the
"castaways" to land. Not a bit of it.

"_Land_ in that place! What you take us for? Not much! We're going to
St. Michael's."

They had a small boat drawn up by them on the ice, and one man was
dressed in magnificent furs, a long sable overcoat and cap, and wearing
quite the air of a North Pole Nabob.

"Got any grub?" Mac called out.

"Yes; want some?"

"Oh no; I thought you--"

"You're not going to try to live through the winter _there?_"

"Yes."

"Lord! you _are_ in a fix!"

"That's we thought about you."

But the travellers on the ice-raft went by laughing and joking at the
men safe on shore with their tents and provisions. It made some of them
visibly uneasy. _Would_ they win through? Were they crazy to try it?
They had looked forward eagerly to the first encounter with their kind,
but this vision floating by on the treacherous ice, of men who rather
dared the current and the crash of contending floes than land where
_they_ were, seemed of evil augury. The little incident left a
curiously sinister impression on the camp.

Even Mac was found agreeing with the others of his Trio that, since
they had a grand, tough time in front of them, it was advisable to get
through the black months ahead with as little wear and tear as
possible. In spite of the Trio's superior talents, they built a small
ramshackle cabin with a tumble-down fireplace, which served them so ill
that they ultimately spent all their waking hours in the more
comfortable quarters of the Colonel and the Boy. It had been agreed
that these two, with the help, or, at all events, the advice, of the
others, should build the bigger, better cabin, where the stores should
be kept and the whole party should mess--a cabin with a solid outside
chimney of stone and an open fireplace, generous of proportion and
ancient of design, "just like down South."

The weather was growing steadily colder; the ice was solid now many
feet out from each bank of the river. In the middle of the flood the
clotted current still ran with floe-ice, but it was plain the river was
settling down for its long sleep.

Not silently, not without stress and thunder. The handful of dwellers
on the shore would be waked in the night by the shock and crash of
colliding floes, the sound of the great winds rushing by, and--"Hush!
What's that?" Tired men would start up out of sleep and sit straight to
listen. Down below, among the ice-packs, the noise as of an old-time
battle going on--tumult and crashing and a boom! boom! like
cannonading.

Then one morning they woke to find all still, the conflict over, the
Yukon frozen from bank to bank. No sound from that day on; no more
running water for a good seven months.

Winter had come.

While the work went forward they often spoke of the only two people
they had thus far seen. Both Potts and O'Flynn had been heard to envy
them.

Mac had happened to say that he believed the fellow in furs was an
Englishman--a Canadian, at the very least. The Americans chaffed him,
and said, "That accounts for it," in a tone not intended to flatter.
Mac hadn't thought of it before, but he was prepared to swear now that
if an Englishman--they were the hardiest pioneers on earth--or a
Canadian was in favour of lighting out, "it must be for some good
reason."

"Oh yes; we all know that reason."

The Americans laughed, and Mac, growing hot, was goaded into vaunting
the Britisher and running down the Yankee.

"Yankee!" echoed the Kentuckian. "And up in Nova Scotia they let this
man teach school! Doesn't know the difference yet between the little
corner they call New England and all the rest of America."

"All the rest of America!" shouted Mac. "The cheeky way you people of
the States have of gobbling the Continent (in _talk_), just as though
the British part of it wasn't the bigger half!"

"Yes; but when you think _which_ half, you ought to be obliged to any
fellow for forgetting it." And then they referred to effete monarchical
institutions, and by the time they reached the question of the kind of
king the Prince of Wales would make, Mac was hardly a safe man to argue
with.

There was one bond between him and the Kentucky Colonel: they were both
religious men; and although Mac was blue Presbyterian and an inveterate
theologian, somehow, out here in the wilderness, it was more possible
to forgive a man for illusions about the Apostolic Succession and
mistaken views upon Church government. The Colonel, at all events, was
not so lax but what he was ready to back up the Calvinist in an
endeavour to keep the Sabbath (with a careful compromise between church
and chapel) and help him to conduct a Saturday-night Bible-class.

But if the Boy attended the Bible-class with fervour and aired his
heresies with uncommon gusto, if he took with equal geniality Colonel
Warren's staid remonstrance and Mac's fiery objurgation, Sunday morning
invariably found him more "agnostic" than ever, stoutly declining to
recognise the necessity for "service." For this was an occasion when
you couldn't argue or floor anybody, or hope to make Mac "hoppin' mad,"
or have the smallest kind of a shindy. The Colonel read the lessons,
Mac prayed, and they all sang, particularly O'Flynn. Now, the Boy
couldn't sing a note, so there was no fair division of entertainment,
wherefore he would go off into the woods with his gun for company, and
the Catholic O'Flynn, and even Potts, were in better odour than he
"down in camp" on Sundays. So far you may travel, and yet not escape
the tyranny of the "outworn creeds."

The Boy came back a full hour before service on the second Sunday with
a couple of grouse and a beaming countenance. Mac, who was cook that
week, was the only man left in the tent. He looked agreeably surprised
at the apparition.

"Hello!" says he more pleasantly than his Sunday gloom usually
permitted. "Back in time for service?"

"I've found a native," says the Boy, speaking as proudly as any
Columbus. "He's hurt his foot, and he's only got one eye, but he's
splendid. Told me no end of things. He's coming here as fast as his
foot will let him--he and three other Indians--Esquimaux, I mean. They
haven't had anything to eat but berries and roots for seven days."

The Boy was feverishly overhauling the provisions behind the stove.

"Look here," says Mac, "hold on there. I don't know that we've come all
this way to feed a lot o' dirty savages."

"But they're starving." Then, seeing that that fact did not produce the
desired impression: "My savage is an awfully good fellow. He--he's a
converted savage, seems to be quite a Christian." Then, hastily
following up his advantage: "He's been taught English by the Jesuits at
the mission forty miles above us, on the river. He can give us a whole
heap o' tips."

Mac was slowly bringing out a small panful of cold boiled beans.

"There are four of them," said the Boy--"big fellows, almost as big as
our Colonel, and _awful_ hungry."

Mac looked at the handful of beans and then at the small sheet-iron
stove.

"There are more cooking," says he not over-cordially.

"The one that talks good English is the son of the chief. You can see
he's different from the others. Knows a frightful lot. He's taught me
some of his language already. The men with him said 'Kaiomi' to
everything I asked, and that means 'No savvy.' Says he'll teach
me--he'll teach all of us--how to snow-shoe."

"We know how to snow-shoe."

"Oh, I mean on those long narrow snow-shoes that make you go so fast
you always trip up! He'll show us how to steer with a pole, and how to
make fish-traps and--and everything."

Mac began measuring out some tea.

"He's got a team of Esquimaux dogs--calls 'em Mahlemeuts, and he's got
a birch-bark canoe, and a skin kyak from the coast." Then with an
inspiration: "His people are the sort of Royal Family down there,"
added the Boy, thinking to appeal to the Britisher's monarchical
instincts.

Mac had meditatively laid his hand on a side of bacon, the Boy's eyes
following.

"He's asked us--_all_ of us, and we're five--up to visit him at Pymeut,
the first village above us here." Mac took up a knife to cut the bacon.
"And--good gracious! why, I forgot the grouse; they can have the
grouse!"

"No, they can't," said Mac firmly; "they're lucky to get bacon."

The Boy's face darkened ominously. When he looked like that the elder
men found it was "healthiest to give him his head." But the young face
cleared as quickly as it had clouded. After all, the point wasn't worth
fighting for, since grouse would take time to cook, and--here were the
natives coming painfully along the shore.

The Boy ran out and shouted and waved his cap. The other men of the
camp, who had gone in the opposite direction, across the river ice to
look at an air-hole, came hurrying back and reached camp about the same
time as the visitors.

"Thought you said they were big fellows!" commented Mac, who had come
to the door for a glimpse of the Indians as they toiled up the <DW72>.

"Well, so they are!"

"Why, the Colonel would make two of any one of them."

"The Colonel! Oh well, you can't expect anybody else to be quite as big
as that. I was in a hurry, but I suppose what I meant was, they could
eat as much as the Colonel."

"How do you know?"

"Well, just look how broad they are. It doesn't matter to your stomach
whether you're big up and down, or big to and fro."

"It's their furs make 'em look like that. They're the most awful little
runts I ever saw!"

"Well, I reckon _you'd_ think they were big, too--big as Nova
Scotia--if _you'd_ found 'em--come on 'em suddenly like that in the
woods--"

"Which is the...?"

"Oh, the son of the chief is in the middle, the one who is taking off
his civilised fur-coat. He says his father's got a heap of pelts (you
could get things for your collection, Mac), and he's got two
reindeer-skin shirts with hoods--'parkis,' you know, like the others
are wearing--"

They were quite near now.

"How do," said the foremost native affably.

"How do." The Boy came forward and shook hands as though he hadn't seen
him for a month. "This," says he, turning first to Mac and then to the
other white men, "this is Prince Nicholas of Pymeut. Walk right in, all
of you, and have something to eat."

The visitors sat on the ground round the stove, as close as they could
get without scorching, and the atmosphere was quickly heavy with their
presence. When they slipped back their hoods it was seen that two of
the men wore the "tartar tonsure," after the fashion of the coast.

"Where do you come from?" inquired the Colonel of the man nearest him,
who simply blinked and was dumb.

"This is the one that talks English," said the Boy, indicating Nicholas,
"and he lives at Pymeut, and he's been converted."

"How far is Pymeut?"

"We sleep Pymeut to-night," says Nicholas.

"Which way?"

The native jerked his head up the river.

"Many people there?"

He nodded.

"White men, too?"

He shook his head.

"How far to the nearest white men?"

Nicholas's mind wandered from the white man's catechism and fixed
itself on his race's immemorial problem: how far it was to the nearest
thing to eat.

"I thought you said he could speak English."

"So he can, first rate. He and I had a great pow-wow, didn't we,
Nicholas?"

Nicholas smiled absently, and fixed his one eye on the bacon that Mac
was cutting on the deal box into such delicate slices.

"He'll talk all right," said the Boy, "when he's had some breakfast."

Mac had finished the cutting, and now put the frying-pan on an open
hole in the little stove.

"Cook him?" inquired Nicholas.

"Yes. Don't you cook him?"

"Take heap time, cook him."

"You couldn't eat it raw!"

Nicholas nodded emphatically.

Mac said "No," but the Boy was curious to see if they would really eat
it uncooked.

"Let them have _some_ of it raw while the rest is frying"; and he
beckoned the visitors to the deal box. They made a dart forward,
gathered up the fat bacon several slices at a time, and pushed it into
their mouths.

"Ugh!" said the Colonel under his breath.

Mac quickly swept what was left into the frying-pan, and began to cut a
fresh lot.

The Boy divided the cold beans, got out biscuits, and poured the tea,
while silence and a strong smell of ancient fish and rancid seal
pervaded the little tent.

O'Flynn put a question or two, but Nicholas had gone stone-deaf. There
was no doubt about it, they had been starving.

After a good feed they sat stolidly by the fire, with no sign of
consciousness, save the blinking of beady eyes, till the Colonel
suggested a smoke. Then they all grinned broadly, and nodded with great
vigour. Even those who had no other English understood "tobacco."

When he had puffed awhile, Nicholas took his pipe out of his mouth,
and, looking at the Boy, said:

"You no savvy catch fish in winter?"

"Through the ice? No. How you do it?"

"Make hole--put down trap--heap fish all winter."

"You get enough to live on?" asked the Colonel.

"They must have dried fish, too, left over from the summer," said Mac.

Nicholas agreed. "And berries and flour. When snow begin get soft,
Pymeuts all go off--" He motioned with his big head towards the hills.

"What do you get there?" Mac was becoming interested.

"Caribou, moose--"

"Any furs?"

"Yes; trap ermun, marten--"

"Lynx, too, I suppose, and fox?"

Nicholas nodded. "All kinds. Wolf--muskrat, otter--wolverine--all
kinds."

"You got some skins now?" asked the Nova Scotian.

"Y--yes. More when snow get soft. You come Pymeut--me show."

"Where have ye been just now?" asked O'Flynn.

"St. Michael."

"How long since ye left there?"

"Twelve sleeps."

"He means thirteen days."

Nicholas nodded.

"They couldn't possibly walk that far in--"

"Oh yes," says the Boy; "they don't follow the windings of the river,
they cut across the portage, you know."

"Snow come--no trail--big mountains--all get lost."

"What did you go to St. Michael's for?"

"Oh, me pilot. Me go all over. Me leave N. A. T. and T. boat St.
Michael's last trip."

"Then you're in the employ of the great North American Trading and
Transportation Company?"

Nicholas gave that funny little duck of the head that meant yes.

"That's how you learnt English," says the Colonel.

"No; me learn English at Holy Cross. Me been baptize."

"At that Jesuit mission up yonder?"

"Forty mile."

"Well," says Potts, "I guess you've had enough walking for one winter."

Nicholas seemed not to follow this observation. The Boy interpreted:

"You heap tired, eh? You no go any more long walk till ice go out, eh?"

Nicholas grinned.

"Me go Ikogimeut--all Pymeut go."

"What for?"

"Big feast."

"Oh, the Russian mission there gives a feast?"

"No. Big Innuit feast."

"When?"

"Pretty quick. Every year big feast down to Ikogimeut when Yukon ice
get hard, so man go safe with dog-team."

"Do many people go?"

"All Innuit go, plenty Ingalik go."

"How far do they come?"

"All over; come from Koserefsky, come from Anvik--sometime Nulato."

"Why, Nulato's an awful distance from Ikogimeut."

"Three hundred and twenty miles," said the pilot, proud of his general
information, and quite ready, since he had got a pipe between his
teeth, to be friendly and communicative.

"What do you do at Ikogimeut when you have these--" "Big fire--big
feed--tell heap stories--big dance. Oh, heap big time!"

"Once every year, eh, down at Ikogimeut?"

"Three times ev' year. Ev' village, and"--he lowered his voice, not
with any hit of reverence or awe, but with an air of making a sly and
cheerful confidence--"and when man die."

"You make a feast and have a dance when a friend dies?"

"If no priests. Priests no like. Priests say, 'Man no dead; man gone
up.'" Nicholas pondered the strange saying, and slowly shook his head.

"In that the priests are right," said Mac grudgingly.

It was anything but politic, but for the life of him the Boy couldn't
help chipping in:

"You think when man dead he stay dead, eh, and you might as well make a
feast?"

Nicholas gave his quick nod. "We got heap muskeetah, we cold, we
hungry. We here heap long time. Dead man, he done. Why no big feast? Oh
yes, heap big feast."

The Boy was enraptured. He would gladly have encouraged these pagan
deliverances on the part of the converted Prince, but the Colonel was
scandalised, and Mac, although in his heart of hearts not ill-satisfied
at the evidence of the skin-deep Christianity of a man delivered over
to the corrupt teaching of the Jesuits, found in this last fact all the
stronger reason for the instant organisation of a good Protestant
prayer-meeting. Nicholas of Pymeut must not be allowed to think it was
only Jesuits who remembered the Sabbath day to keep it holy.

And the three "pore benighted heathen" along with him, if they didn't
understand English words, they should have an object-lesson, and Mac
would himself pray the prayers they couldn't utter for themselves. He
jumped up, motioned the Boy to put on more wood, cleared away the
granite-ware dishes, filled the bean-pot and set it back to simmer,
while the Colonel got out Mac's Bible and his own Prayer-Book.

The Boy did his stoking gloomily, reading aright these portents. Almost
eclipsed was joy in this "find" of his (for he regarded the precious
Nicholas as his own special property). It was all going to end in
his--the Boy's--being hooked in for service. As long as the Esquimaux
were there _he_ couldn't, of course, tear himself away. And here was
the chance they'd all been waiting for. Here was a native chock-full of
knowledge of the natural law and the immemorial gospel of the North,
who would be gone soon--oh, very soon, if Mac and the Colonel went on
like this--and they were going to choke off Nicholas's communicativeness
with--a service!

"It's Sunday, you know," says the Colonel to the Prince, laying open
his book, "and we were just going to have church. You are accustomed to
going to church at Holy Cross, aren't you?"

"When me kid me go church."

"You haven't gone since you grew up? They still have church there,
don't they?"

"Oh, Father Brachet, him have church."

"Why don't you go?"

Nicholas was vaguely conscious of threatened disapproval.

"Me ... me must take up fish-traps."

"Can't you do that another day?"

It seemed not to have occurred to Nicholas before. He sat and
considered the matter.

"Isn't Father Brachet," began the Colonel gravely--"he doesn't like it,
does he, when you don't come to church?"

"He take care him church; him know me take care me fish-trap."

But Nicholas saw plainly out of his one eye that he was not growing in
popularity. Suddenly that solitary organ gleamed with self-justification.

"Me bring fish to Father Brachet and to Mother Aloysius and the
Sisters."

Mac and the Colonel exchanged dark glances.

"Do Mother Aloysius and the Sisters live where Father Brachet does?"

"Father Brachet, and Father Wills, and Brother Paul, and Brother
Etienne, all here." The native put two fingers on the floor. "Big white
cross in middle"--he laid down his pipe to personate the
cross--"here"--indicating the other side--"here Mother Aloysius and the
Sisters."

"I thought," says Mac, "we'd be hearing of a convent convenient."

"Me help Father Brachet," observed Nicholas proudly. "Me show him boys
how make traps, show him girls how make mucklucks." "_What_!" gasps the
horrified Mac, "Father Brachet has got a family?"

"Famly?" inquired Nicholas. "Kaiomi"; and he shook his head
uncertainly.

"You say Father Brachet has got boys, and"--as though this were a yet
deeper brand of iniquity--"_girls_?"

Nicholas, though greatly mystified, nodded firmly.

"I suppose he thinks away off up here nobody will ever know. Oh, these
Jesuits!"

"How many children has this shameless priest?"

"Father Brachet, him got seventeen boys, and--me no savvy how much
girl--twelve girl ... twenty girl ..."

The Boy, who had been splitting with inward laughter, exploded at this
juncture.

"He keeps a native school, Mac."

"Yes," says Nicholas, "teach boy make table, chair, potatoes grow--all
kinds. Sisters teach girl make dinner, wash--all kinds. Heap good
people up at Holy Cross."

"Divil a doubt of it," says O'Flynn.

But this blind belauding of the children of Loyola only fired Mac the
more to give the heathen a glimpse of the true light. In what darkness
must they grope when a sly, intriguing Jesuit (it was well known they
were all like that) was for them a type of the "heap good man"--a
priest, forsooth, who winked at Sabbath-breaking because he and his
neighbouring nuns shared in the spoil!

Well, they must try to have a truly impressive service. Mac and the
Colonel telegraphed agreement on this head. Savages were said to be
specially touched by music.

"I suppose when you were a kid the Jesuits taught you chants and so
on," said the Colonel, kindly.

"Kaiomi," answered Nicholas after reflection.

"You can sing, can't you?" asks O'Flynn.

"Sing? No, me dance!"

The Boy roared with delight.

"Why, yes, I never thought of that. You fellows do the songs, and
Nicholas and I'll do the dances."

Mac glowered angrily. "Look here: if you don't mind being blasphemous
for yourself, don't demoralise the natives."

"Well, I like that! Didn't Miriam dance before the Lord? Why shouldn't
Nicholas and me?"

The Colonel cleared his throat, and began to read the lessons for the
day. The natives sat and watched him closely. They really behaved very
well, and the Boy was enormously proud of his new friends. There was a
great deal at stake. The Boy felt he must walk warily, and he already
regretted those light expressions about dancing before the Lord. All
the fun of the winter might depend on a friendly relation between
Pymeut and the camp. It was essential that the Esquimaux should not
only receive, but make, a good impression.

The singing "From Greenland's icy mountains to India's coral strand"
seemed to please them; but when, after the Colonel's "Here endeth the
second lesson," Mac said, in sepulchral tones, "Let us pray," the
visitors seemed to think it was time to go home.

"No," said Mac sternly, "they mustn't go in the middle of the meeting";
and he proceeded to kneel down.

But Nicholas was putting on his fur coat, and the others only waited to
follow him out. The Boy, greatly concerned lest, after all, the visit
should end badly, dropped on his knees to add the force of his own
example, and through the opening phrases of Mac's prayer the agnostic
was heard saying, in a loud stage-whisper, "Do like me--down! Look
here! Suppose you ask us come big feast, and in the middle of your
dance we all go home--.

"Oh no," remonstrated Nicholas.

"Very well. These friends o' mine no like man go home in the middle.
They heap mad at me when I no stay. You savvy?"

"Me savvy," says Nicholas slowly and rather depressed.

"Kneel down, then," says the Boy. And first Nicholas, and then the
others, went on their knees.

Alternately they looked in the Boy's corner where the grub was, and
then over their shoulders at the droning Mac and back, catching the
Boy's eye, and returning his reassuring nods and grins.

Mac, who had had no innings up to this point, was now embarked upon a
most congenial occupation. Wrestling with the Lord on behalf of the
heathen, he lost count of time. On and on the prayer wound its slow
way; involution after involution, coil after coil, like a snake, the
Boy thought, lazing in the sun. Unaccustomed knees grew sore.

"Hearken to the cry of them that walk in darkness, misled by wolves in
sheep's clothing--_wolves_, Lord, wearing the sign of the Holy Cross--"

O'Flynn shuffled, and Mac pulled himself up. No light task this of
conveying to the Creator, in covert terms, a due sense of the iniquity
of the Jesuits, without, at the same time, stirring O'Flynn's bile, and
seeing him get up and stalk out of meeting, as had happened once
before.

O'Flynn was not deeply concerned about religious questions, but "there
were limits." The problem was how to rouse the Lord without rousing
O'Flynn--a piece of negotiation so delicate, calling for a skill in
pious invective so infinitely absorbing to Mac's particular cast of
mind, that he was quickly stone-blind and deaf to all things else.

"Not all the heathen are sunk in iniquity; but they are weak, tempted,
and they weary, Lord!"

"Amen," said the Boy, discreetly. "How long?" groaned Mac--"Oh Lord,
how long?" But it was much longer than he realised. The Boy saw the
visitors shifting from one knee to another, and feared the worst. But
he sympathised deeply with their predicament. To ease his own legs, he
changed his position, and dragged a corner of the sailcloth down off
the little pile of provisions, and doubled it under his knees.

The movement revealed the bag of dried apples within arm's length.
Nicholas was surreptitiously reaching for his coat. No doubt about it,
he had come to the conclusion that this was the fitting moment to
depart. A look over his shoulder showed Mac absorbed, and taking fresh
breath at "Sixthly, Oh Lord." The Boy put out a hand, and dragged the
apple-bag slowly, softly towards him. The Prince dropped the sleeve of
his coat, and fixed his one eye on his friend. The Boy undid the neck
of the sack, thrust in his hand, and brought out a fistfull. Another
look at Mac--still hard at it, trying to spare O'Flynn's feelings
without mincing matters with the Almighty.

The Boy winked at Nicholas, made a gesture, "Catch!" and fired a bit of
dried apple at him, at the same time putting a piece in his own mouth
to show him it was all right.

Nicholas followed suit, and seemed pleased with the result. He showed
all his strong, white teeth, and ecstatically winked his one eye back
at the Boy, who threw him another bit and then a piece to each of the
others.

The Colonel had "caught on," and was making horrible frowns at the Boy.
Potts and O'Flynn looked up, and in dumbshow demanded a share. No? Very
well, they'd tell Mac. So the Boy had to feed them, too, to keep them
quiet. And still Mac prayed the Lord to catch up this slip he had made
here on the Yukon with reference to the natives. In the midst of a
powerful peroration, he happened to open his eyes a little, and they
fell on the magnificent great sable collar of Prince Nicholas's coat.

Without any of the usual slowing down, without the accustomed warning
of a gradual descent from the high themes of heaven to the things of
common earth, Mac came down out of the clouds with a bump, and the
sudden, business-like "Amen" startled all the apple-chewing
congregation.

Mac stood up, and says he to Nicholas:

"Where did you get that coat?"

Nicholas, still on his knees, stared, and seemed in doubt if this were
a part of the service.

"Where did you get that coat?" repeated Mac.

The Boy had jumped up nimbly. "I told you his father has a lot of
furs."

"Like this?"

"No," says Nicholas; "this belong white man."

"Ha," says Mac excitedly, "I thought I'd seen it before. Tell us how
you got it."

"Me leave St. Michael; me got ducks, reindeer meat--oh, _plenty_
kow-kow! [Footnote: Food] Two sleeps away St. Michael me meet Indian.
Heap hungry. Him got bully coat." Nicholas picked it up off the floor.
"Him got no kow-kow. Him say, 'Give me duck, give me back-fat. You take
coat, him too heavy.' Me say, 'Yes.'"

"But how did he get the coat?"

"Him say two white men came down river on big ice."

"Yes, yes--"

"Men sick." He tapped his forehead. "Man no sick, he no go down with
the ice"; and Nicholas shuddered. "Before Ikogimeut, ice jam. Indian
see men jump one big ice here, more big ice here, and one... go down.
Indian"--Nicholas imitated throwing out a line--"man tie mahout
round--but--big ice come--" Nicholas dashed his hands together, and
then paused significantly. "Indian sleep there. Next day ice hard.
Indian go little way out to see. Man dead. Him heap good coat," he
wound up unemotionally, and proceeded to put it on.

"And the other white man--what became of him?"

Nicholas shrugged: "Kaiomi," though it was plain he knew well enough
the other lay under the Yukon ice.

"And that--_that_ was the end of the fellows who went by jeering at
us!"

"We'd better not crow yet," said Mac. And they bade Prince Nicholas and
his heathen retinue good-bye in a mood chastened not by prayer alone.

CHAPTER II

HOUSE-WARMING

"There is a sort of moral climate in a household."--JOHN MORLEY.

No idle ceremony this, but the great problem of the dwellers in the
country of the Yukon.

The Colonel and the Boy made up their minds that, whatever else they
had or had not, they would have a warm house to live in. And when they
had got it, they would have a "Blow-out" to celebrate the achievement.

"We'll invite Nicholas," says the Boy. "I'll go to Pymeut myself, and
let him know we are going to have 'big fire, big feed. Oh, heap big
time!'"

If the truth were told, it had been a difficult enough matter to keep
away from Pymeut since the hour Nicholas had vanished in that
direction; but until winter quarters were made, and until they were
proved to be warm, there was no time for the amenities of life.

The Big Cabin (as it was quite seriously called, in contradistinction
to the hut of the Trio) consisted of a single room, measuring on the
outside sixteen feet by eighteen feet.

The walls of cotton-wood logs soared upward to a level of six feet, and
this height was magnificently increased in the middle by the angle of
the mildly gable roof. But before the cabin was breast-high the Boy had
begun to long for a window.

"Sorry we forgot the plate-glass," says Mac.

"Wudn't ye like a grrand-piana?" asks O'Flynn.

"What's the use of goin' all the way from Nova Scotia to Caribou," says
the Boy to the Schoolmaster-Miner, "if you haven't learned the way to
make a window like the Indians, out of transparent skin?"

Mac assumed an air of elevated contempt.

"I went to mine, not to learn Indian tricks."

"When the door's shut it'll be dark as the inside of a cocoa-nut."

"You ought to have thought of that before you left the sunny South,"
said Potts.

"It'll be dark all winter, window or no window," Mac reminded them.

"Never mind," said the Colonel, "when the candles give out we'll have
the fire-light. Keep all the spruce knots, boys!"

But one of the boys was not pleased. The next day, looking for a
monkey-wrench under the tarpaulin, he came across the wooden box a
California friend had given him at parting, containing a dozen tall
glass jars of preserved fruit. The others had growled at the extra bulk
and weight, when the Boy put the box into the boat at St. Michael's,
but they had now begun to look kindly on it and ask when it was to be
opened. He had answered firmly:

"Not before Christmas," modifying this since Nicholas's visit to "Not
before the House-Warming." But one morning the Boy was found pouring
the fruit out of the jars into some empty cans.

"What you up to?"

"Wait an' see." He went to O'Flynn, who was dish-washer that week, got
him to melt a couple of buckets of snow over the open-air campfire and
wash the fruit-jars clean.

"Now, Colonel," says the Boy, "bring along that buck-saw o' yours and
lend a hand."

They took off the top log from the south wall of the cabin, measured a
two-foot space in the middle, and the Colonel sawed out the superfluous
spruce intervening. While he went on doing the same for the other logs
on that side, the Boy roughly chiselled a moderately flat sill. Then
one after another he set up six of the tall glass jars in a row, and
showed how, alternating with the other six bottles turned upside down,
the thick belly of one accommodating itself to the thin neck of the
other, the twelve made a very decent rectangle of glass. When they had
hoisted up, and fixed in place, the logs on each side, and the big
fellow that went all across on top; when they had filled the
inconsiderable cracks between the bottles with some of the mud-mortar
with which the logs were to be chinked, behold a double glass window
fit for a king!

The Boy was immensely pleased.

"Oh, that's an old dodge," said Mac depreciatingly. "Why, they did that
at Caribou!"

"Then, why in--Why didn't you suggest it?"

"You wait till you know more about this kind o' life, and you won't go
in for fancy touches."

Nevertheless, the man who had mined at Caribou seemed to feel that some
contribution from him was necessary to offset the huge success of that
window. He did not feel called upon to help to split logs for the roof
of the Big Cabin, but he sat cutting and whittling away at a little
shelf which he said was to be nailed up at the right of the Big Cabin
door. Its use was not apparent, but no one dared call it a "fancy
touch," for Mac was a miner, and had been to Caribou.

When the shelf was nailed up, its maker brought forth out of his
medicine-chest a bottle of Perry Davis's Pain-killer.

"Now at Caribou," says he, "they haven't got any more thermometers
kicking round than we have here, but they discovered that when Perry
Davis congeals you must keep a sharp look-out for frost-bite, and when
Perry Davis freezes solid, you'd better mind your eye and stay in your
cabin, if you don't want to die on the trail." With which he tied a
string round Perry Davis's neck, set the bottle up on the shelf, and
secured it firmly in place. They all agreed it was a grand advantage to
have been to Caribou!

But Mac knew things that he had probably not learned there, about
trees, and rocks, and beasts, and their manners and customs and family
names. If there were more than a half-truth in the significant lament
of a very different man, "I should be a poet if only I knew the names
of things," then, indeed, Samuel MacCann was equipped to make a mark in
literature.

From the time he set foot on the volcanic shore of St Michael's Island,
Mac had begun his "collection."

Nowadays, when he would spend over "that truck of his" hours that might
profitably (considering his talents) be employed in helping to fortify
the camp against the Arctic winter, his companions felt it little use
to remonstrate.

By themselves they got on rapidly with work on the roof, very much
helped by three days' unexpectedly mild weather. When the split logs
had been marshalled together on each side of the comb, they covered
them with dried moss and spruce boughs.

Over all they laid a thick blanket of the earth which had been dug out
to make a level foundation. The cracks in the walls were chinked with
moss and mud-mortar. The floor was the naked ground, "to be carpeted
with skins by-and-by," so Mac said; but nobody believed Mac would put a
skin to any such sensible use.

The unreasonable mildness of three or four days and the little surface
thaw, came to an abrupt end in a cold rain that turned to sleet as it
fell. Nobody felt like going far afield just then, even after game, but
they had set the snare that Nicholas told the Boy about on that first
encounter in the wood. Nicholas, it seemed, had given him a noose made
of twisted sinew, and showed how it worked in a running loop. He had
illustrated the virtue of this noose when attached to a pole balanced
in the crotch of a tree, caught over a horizontal stick by means of a
small wooden pin tied to the snare. A touch at the light end of the
suspended pole (where the baited loop dangles) loosens the pin, and the
heavy end of the pole falls, hanging ptarmigan or partridge in the air.

For some time after rigging this contrivance, whenever anyone reported
"tracks," Mac and the Boy would hasten to the scene of action, and set
a new snare, piling brush on each side of the track that the game had
run in, so barring other ways, and presenting a line of least
resistance straight through the loop.

In the early days Mac would come away from these preparations saying
with dry pleasure:

"Now, with luck, we may get a _Xema Sabinii_," or some such fearful
wildfowl.

"Good to eat?" the Boy would ask, having had his disappointments ere
now in moments of hunger for fresh meat, when Mac, with the nearest
approach to enthusiasm he permitted himself, had brought in some
miserable little hawk-owl or a three-toed woodpecker to add, not to the
larder, but to the "collection."

"No, you don't _eat_ Sabine gulls," Mac would answer pityingly.

But those snares never seemed to know what they were there for. The
first one was set expressly to catch one of the commonest birds that
fly--Mac's _Lagopus albus_, the beautiful white Arctic grouse, or at
the very least a _Bonasa umbellus_, which, being interpreted, is ruffed
ptarmigan. The tracks had been bird tracks, but the creature that swung
in the air next day was a baby hare. The Schoolmaster looked upon the
incident as being in the nature of a practical joke, and resented it.
But the others were enchanted, and professed thereafter a rooted
suspicion of the soundness of the Schoolmaster's Natural History, which
nobody actually felt. For he had never yet pretended to know anything
that he didn't know well; and when Potts would say something
disparaging of Mac's learning behind his back (which was against the
unwritten rules of the game) the Colonel invariably sat on Potts.

"Knows a darned sight too much? No, he _don't_, sir; that's just the
remarkable thing about Mac. He isn't trying to carry any more than he
can swing."

At the same time it is to be feared that none of his companions really
appreciated the pedagogue's learning. Nor had anyone but the Boy
sympathised with his resolution to make a Collection. What they wanted
was eatable game, and they affected no intelligent interest in knowing
the manners and customs of the particular species that was sending up
appetising odours from the pot.

They even applauded the rudeness of the Boy, who one day responded to
Mac's gravely jubilant "Look here! I've got the _Parus Hudsonicus_!"--

"Poor old man! What do you do for it?"

And when anybody after that was indisposed, they said he might be
sickening for an attack of Parus Hudsonicus, and in that case it was a
bad look-out.

Well for Mac that he wouldn't have cared a red cent to impress the
greatest naturalist alive, let alone a lot of fellows who didn't know a
titmouse from a disease.

Meanwhile work on the Big Cabin had gone steadily forward. From the
outside it looked finished now, and distinctly imposing. From what were
left of the precious planks out of the bottom of the best boat they had
made the door--two by four, and opening directly in front of that
masterpiece, the rock fireplace. The great stone chimney was the pride
of the camp and the talk before the winter was done of all "the Lower
River."

Spurred on partly by the increased intensity of the cold, partly by the
Colonel's nonsense about the way they did it "down South," Mac roused
himself, and turned out a better piece of masonry for the Big Cabin
than he had thought necessary for his own. But everybody had a share in
the glory of that fireplace. The Colonel, Potts, and the Boy selected
the stone, and brought it on a rude litter out of a natural quarry from
a place a mile or more away up on the bare mountain-side. O'Flynn mixed
and handed up the mud-mortar, while Mac put in some brisk work with it
before it stiffened in the increasing cold.

Everybody was looking forward to getting out of the tent and into the
warm cabin, and the building of the fireplace stirred enthusiasm. It
was two and a half feet deep, three and a half feet high, and four feet
wide, and when furnished with ten-inch hack logs, packed in glowing
ashes and laid one above another, with a roaring good blaze in front of
birch and spruce, that fire would take a lot of beating, as the Boy
admitted, "even in the tat-pine Florida country."

But no fire on earth could prevent the cabin from being swept through,
the moment the door was opened, by a fierce and icy air-current. The
late autumnal gales revealed the fact that the sole means of
ventilation had been so nicely contrived that whoever came in or went
out admitted a hurricane of draught that nearly knocked him down. Potts
said it took a good half-hour, after anyone had opened the door, to
heat the place up again.

"What! You cold?" inquired the usual culprit. The Boy had come in to
put an edge on his chopper. "It's stopped snowin', an' you better come
along with me, Potts. Swing an axe for a couple of hours--that'll warm
you."

"I've got rheumatism in my shoulder to-day," says Potts, hugging the
huge fire closer.

"And you've got something wrong with your eyes, eh, Mac?"

Potts narrowed his and widened the great mouth; but he had turned his
head so Mac couldn't see him.

The Nova Scotian only growled and refilled his pipe. Up in the woods
the Boy repeated the conversation to the Colonel, who looked across at
O'Flynn several yards away, and said: "Hush!"

"Why must I shut up? Mac's _eyes_ do look rather queer and bloodshot. I
should think he'd rather feel we lay it to his eyes than know we're
afraid he's peterin' out altogether."

"I never said I was afraid--"

"No, you haven't _said_ much." "I haven't opened my head about it."

"No, but you've tried hard enough for five or six days to get Mac to
the point where he would come out and show us how to whip-saw. You
haven't _said_ anything, but you've--you've got pretty dignified each
time you failed, and we all know what that means."

"We ought to have begun sawing boards for our bunks and swing-shelf a
week back, before this heavy snowfall. Besides, there's enough
fire-wood now; we're only marking time until--"

"Until Mac's eyes get all right. I understand."

Again the Colonel had made a sound like "Sh!" and went on swinging his
axe.

They worked without words till the Boy's tree came down. Then he
stopped a moment, and wiped his face.

"It isn't so cold to-day, not by a long shot, for all Potts's howling
about his rheumatics."

"It isn't cold that starts that kind of pain."

"No, siree. I'm not much of a doctor, but I can see Potts's rheumatism
doesn't depend on the weather."

"Never you mind Potts."

"I don't mind Potts. I only mind Mac. What's the matter with Mac,
anyway?"

"Oh, he's just got cold feet. Maybe he'll thaw out by-and-by."

"Did you ever think what Mac's like? With that square-cut jaw and
sawed-off nose, everything about him goin' like this"--the Boy
described a few quick blunt angles in the air--"well, sir, he's the
livin' image of a monkey-wrench. I'm comin' to think he's as much like
it inside as he is out. He can screw up for a prayer-meetin', or he can
screw down for business--when he's a mind, but, as Jimmie over there
says, 'the divil a different pace can you put him through.' I _like_
monkey-wrenches! I'm only sayin' they aren't as limber as willa-trees."

No response from the Colonel, who was making the chips fly. It had cost
his great body a good many aches and bruises, but he was a capital
axeman now, and not such a bad carpenter, though when the Boy said as
much he had answered:

"Carpenter! I'm just a sort of a well-meanin' wood-butcher"; and deeply
he regretted that in all his young years on a big place in the country
he had learnt so little about anything but horses and cattle.

On the way back to dinner they spoke again of this difficulty of the
boards. O'Flynn whistled "Rory O'More" with his pleasant air of
detachment.

"You and the others would take more interest in the subject," said the
Boy a little hotly, "if we hadn't let you fellows use nearly all the
boat-planks for _your_ bunks, and now we haven't got any for our own."

"_Let_ us use 'em! Faith! we had a right to'm."

"To boards out of _our_ boat!"

"And ye can have the loan o' the whip-saw to make more, whenever the
fancy takes ye."

"Loan o' the whip-saw! Why, it's mine," says the Colonel.

"Divil a bit of it, man!" says O'Flynn serenely. "Everything we've got
belongs to all of us, except a sack o' coffee, a medicine-chest, and a
dimmi-john. And it's mesilf that's afraid the dimmi-john--"

"What's the use of my having bought a whip-saw?" interrupted the
Colonel, hurriedly. "What's the good of it, if the only man that knows
how to use it--"

"Is more taken up wid bein' a guardjin angel to his pardner's
dimmi-john--"

The Colonel turned and frowned at the proprietor of the dimmi-john. The
Boy had dropped behind to look at some marten tracks in the
fresh-fallen snow.

"I'll follow that trail after dinner," says he, catching up the others
in time to hear O'Flynn say:

"If it wusn't that ye think only a feller that's been to Caribou can
teach ye annything it's Jimmie O'Flynn that 'ud show ye how to play a
chune on that same whip-saw."

"Will you show us after dinner?"

"Sure I will."

And he was as good as his word.

This business of turning a tree into boards without the aid of a
saw-mill is a thing many placer-miners have to learn; for, even if they
are disposed to sleep on the floor, and to do without shelves, they
can't do sluicing without sluice-boxes, and they can't make those long,
narrow boxes without boards.

So every party that is well fitted out has a whip-saw.

"Furrst ye dig a pit," O'Flynn had said airily, stretched out before
the fire after dinner. "Make it about four feet deep, and as long as
ye'd like yer boards. When ye've done that I'll come and take a hand."

The little job was not half finished when the light tailed. Two days
more of soil-burning and shovelling saw it done.

"Now ye sling a couple o' saplings acrost the durrt ye've chucked out.
R-right! Now ye roll yer saw-timber inter the middle. R-right! An' on
each side ye want a log to stand on. See? Wid yer 'guide-man' on top
sthradlin' yer timberr, watchin' the chalk-line and doin' the pull-up,
and the otherr fellerr in the pit lookin' afther the haul-down, ye'll
be able to play a chune wid that there whip-saw that'll make the
serryphims sick o' plain harps." O'Flynn superintended it all, and even
Potts had the curiosity to come out and see what they were up to. Mac
was "kind o' dozin'" by the fire.

When the frame was finished O'Flynn helped to put the trial-log in
place, having marked it off with charcoal to indicate inch and a
quarter planks. Then the Colonel, down in the pit, and O'Flynn on top
of the frame, took the great two-handled saw between them, and began
laboriously, one drawing the big blade up, and the other down,
vertically through the log along the charcoal line.

"An' _that's_ how it's done, wid bits of yer arrums and yer back that
have niver been called on to wurruk befure. An' whin ye've been at it
an hour ye'll find it goes betther wid a little blasphemin';" and he
gave his end of the saw to the reluctant Potts.

Potts was about this time as much of a problem to his pardners as was
the ex-schoolmaster. If the bank clerk had surprised them all by his
handiness on board ship, and by making a crane to swing the pots over
the fire, he surprised them all still more in these days by an apparent
eclipse of his talents. It was unaccountable. Potts's carpentering,
Potts's all-round cleverness, was, like "payrock in a pocket," as the
miners say, speedily worked out, and not a trace of it afterwards to be
found.

But less and less was the defection of the Trio felt. The burly
Kentucky stock-farmer was getting his hand in at "frontier" work,
though he still couldn't get on without his "<DW65>," as the Boy said,
slyly indicating that it was he who occupied this exalted post. These
two soon had the bunks made out of the rough planks they had sawed with
all a green-horn's pains. They put in a fragrant mattress of spring
moss, and on that made up a bed of blankets and furs.

More boards were laboriously turned out to make the great swing-shelf
to hang up high in the angle of the roof, where the provisions might be
stored out of reach of possible marauders.

The days were very short now, bringing only about five hours of pallid
light, so little of which struggled through the famous bottle-window
that at all hours they depended chiefly on the blaze from the great
fireplace. There was still a good deal of work to be done indoors,
shelves to be put up on the left as you entered (whereon the
granite-ware tea-service, etc., was kept), a dinner-table to be made,
and three-legged stools. While these additions--"fancy touches," as the
Trio called them--were being made, Potts and O'Flynn, although
occasionally they went out for an hour or two, shot-gun on shoulder,
seldom brought home anything, and for the most part were content with
doing what they modestly considered their share of the cooking and
washing. For the rest, they sat by the fire playing endless games of
euchre, seven-up and bean poker, while Mac, more silent than ever,
smoked and read Copps's "Mining Laws" and the magazines of the previous
August.

Nobody heard much in those days of Caribou. The Colonel had gradually
slipped into the position of Boss of the camp. The Trio were still just
a trifle afraid of him, and he, on his side, never pressed a dangerous
issue too far.

But this is a little to anticipate.

One bitter gray morning, that had reduced Perry Davis to a solid lump
of ice, O'Flynn, the Colonel, and the Boy were bringing into the cabin
the last of the whip-sawed boards. The Colonel halted and looked
steadily up the river.

"Is that a beast or a human?" said he.

"It's a man," the Boy decided after a moment--"no, two men, single
file, and--yes--Colonel, it's dogs. Hooray! a dog-team at last!"

They had simultaneously dropped the lumber. The Boy ran on to tell the
cook to prepare more grub, and then pelted after O'Flynn and the
Colonel, who had gone down to meet the newcomers--an Indian driving
five dogs, which were hitched tandem to a low Esquimaux sled, with a
pack and two pairs of web-foot snow-shoes lashed on it, and followed by
a white man. The Indian was a fine fellow, younger than Prince
Nicholas, and better off in the matter of eyes. The white man was a
good deal older than either, with grizzled hair, a worn face, bright
dark eyes, and a pleasant smile.

"I had heard some white men had camped hereabouts," says he. "I am glad
to see we have such substantial neighbours." He was looking up at the
stone chimney, conspicuous a long way off.

"We didn't know we had any white neighbours," said the Colonel in his
most grand and gracious manner. "How far away are you, sir?"

"About forty miles above."

As he answered he happened to be glancing at the Boy, and observed his
eagerness cloud slightly. Hadn't Nicholas said it was "about forty
miles above" that the missionaries lived?

"But to be only forty miles away," the stranger went on,
misinterpreting the fading gladness, "is to be near neighbours in this
country."

"We aren't quite fixed yet," said the Colonel, "but you must come in
and have some dinner with us. We can promise you a good fire, anyhow."

"Thank you. You have chosen a fine site." And the bright eyes with the
deep crow's-feet raying out from the corners scanned the country in so
keen and knowing a fashion that the Boy, with hope reviving, ventured:

"Are--are you a prospector?"

"No. I am Father Wills from Holy Cross."

"Oh!" And the Boy presently caught up with the Indian, and walked on
beside him, looking back every now and then to watch the dogs or
examine the harness. The driver spoke English, and answered questions
with a tolerable intelligence. "Are dogs often driven without reins?"

The Indian nodded.

The Colonel, after the stranger had introduced himself, was just a
shade more reserved, but seemed determined not to be lacking in
hospitality. O'Flynn was overflowing, or would have been had the Jesuit
encouraged him. He told their story, or, more properly, his own, and
how they had been wrecked.

"And so ye're the Father Superior up there?" says the Irishman, pausing
to take breath.

"No. Our Superior is Father Brachet. That's a well-built cabin!"

The dogs halted, though they had at least five hundred yards still to
travel before they would reach the well-built cabin.

"_Mush!_" shouted the Indian.

The dogs cleared the ice-reef, and went spinning along so briskly over
the low hummocks that the driver had to run to keep up with them.

The Boy was flying after when the priest, having caught sight of his
face, called out: "Here! Wait! Stop a moment!" and hurried forward.

He kicked through the ice-crust, gathered up a handful of snow, and
began to rub it on the Boy's right cheek.

"What in the name of--" The Boy was drawing back angrily.

"Keep still," ordered the priest; "your cheek is frozen"; and he
applied more snow and more friction. "You ought to watch one another in
such weather as this. When a man turns dead-white like that, he's
touched with frost-bite." After he had restored the circulation: "There
now, don't go near the fire, or it will begin to hurt."

"Thank you," said the Boy, a little shame-faced. "It's all right now, I
suppose?"

"I think so," said the priest. "You'll lose the skin, and you may be a
little sore--nothing to speak of," with which he fell back to the
Colonel's side.

The dogs had settled down into a jog-trot now, but were still well on
in front.

"Is 'mush' their food?" asked the Boy.

"_Mush?_ No, fish."

"Why does your Indian go on like that about mush, then?"

"Oh, that's the only word the dogs know, except--a--certain expressions
we try to discourage the Indians from using. In the old days the
dog-drivers used to say 'mahsh.' Now you never hear anything but
swearing and 'mush,' a corruption of the French-Canadian _marche_." He
turned to the Colonel: "You'll get over trying to wear cheechalko boots
here--nothing like mucklucks with a wisp of straw inside for this
country."

"I agree wid ye. I got me a pair in St. Michael's," says O'Flynn
proudly, turning out his enormous feet. "Never wore anything so
comf'table in me life."

"You ought to have drill parkis too, like this of mine, to keep out the
wind."

They were going up the <DW72> now, obliquely to the cabin, close behind
the dogs, who were pulling spasmodically between their little rests.

Father Wills stooped and gathered up some moss that the wind had swept
almost bare of snow. "You see that?" he said to O'Flynn, while the Boy
stopped, and the Colonel hurried on. "Wherever you find that growing no
man need starve."

The Colonel looked back before entering the cabin and saw that the Boy
seemed to have forgotten not alone the Indian, but the dogs, and was
walking behind with the Jesuit, face upturned, smiling, as friendly as
you please.

Within a different picture.

Potts and Mac were having a row about something, and the Colonel struck
in sharply on their growling comments upon each other's character and
probable destination.

"Got plenty to eat? Two hungry men coming in. One's an Indian, and you
know what that means, and the other's a Catholic priest." It was this
bomb that he had hurried on to get exploded and done with before the
said priest should appear on the scene.

"A _what_?" Mac raised his heavy eyes with fight in every wooden
feature.

"A Jesuit priest is what I said."

"He won't eat his dinner here."

"That is exactly what he will do."

"Not by--" Whether it was the monstrous proposition that had unstrung
Mac, he was obliged to steady himself against the table with a shaking
hand. But he set those square features of his like iron, and, says he,
"No Jesuit sits down to the same table with me."

"That means, then, that you'll eat alone."

"Not if I know it."

The Colonel slid in place the heavy wooden bar that had never before
been requisitioned to secure the door, and he came and stood in the
middle of the cabin, where he could let out all his inches. Just
clearing the swing-shelf, he pulled his great figure up to its full
height, and standing there like a second Goliath, he said quite softly
in that lingo of his childhood that always came back to his tongue's
tip in times of excitement: "Just as shuah as yo' bohn that priest will
eat his dinner to-day in my cabin, sah; and if yo' going t' make any
trouble, just say so now, and we'll get it ovah, and the place cleaned
up again befoh our visitors arrive."

"Mind what you're about, Mac," growled Potts. "You know he could lick
the stuffin' out o' you."

The ex-schoolmaster produced some sort of indignant sound in his throat
and turned, as if he meant to go out. The Colonel came a little nearer.
Mac flung up his head and squared for battle.

Potts, in a cold sweat, dropped a lot of tinware with a rattle, while
the Colonel said, "No, no. We'll settle this after the people go, Mac."
Then in a whisper: "Look here: I've been trying to shield you for ten
days. Don't give yourself away now--before the first white neighbour
that comes to see us. You call yourself a Christian. Just see if you
can't behave like one, for an hour or two, to a fellow-creature that's
cold and hungry. Come, _you're_ the man we've always counted on! Do the
honours, and take it out of me after our guests are gone."

Mac seemed in a haze. He sat down heavily on some beanbags in the
corner; and when the newcomers were brought in and introduced, he "did
the honours" by glowering at them with red eyes, never breaking his
surly silence.

"Well!" says Father Wills, looking about, "I must say you're very
comfortable here. If more people made homes like this, there'd be fewer
failures." They gave him the best place by the fire, and Potts dished
up dinner. There were only two stools made yet. The Boy rolled his
section of sawed spruce over near the priest, and prepared to dine at
his side.

"No, no," said Father Wills firmly. "You shall sit as far away from
this splendid blaze as you can get, or you will have trouble with that
cheek." So the Boy had to yield his place to O'Flynn, and join Mac over
on the bean-bags.

"Why didn't you get a parki when you were at St. Michael's?" said the
priest as this change was being effected.

"We had just as much--more than we could carry. Besides, I thought we
could buy furs up river; anyway, I'm warm enough."

"No you are not," returned the priest smiling. "You must get a parki
with a hood."

"I've got an Arctic cap; it rolls down over my ears and goes all round
my neck--just leaves a little place in front for my eyes."

"Yes; wear that if you go on the trail; but the good of the parki hood
is, that it is trimmed all round with long wolf-hair. You see"--he
picked his parki up off the floor and showed it to the company--"those
long hairs standing out all round the face break the force of the wind.
It is wonderful how the Esquimaux hood lessens the chance of
frost-bite."

While the only object in the room that he didn't seem to see was Mac,
he was most taken up with the fireplace.

The Colonel laid great stress on the enormous services of the
delightful, accomplished master-mason over there on the beanbags, who
sat looking more than ever like a monkey-wrench incarnate.

But whether that Jesuit was as wily as the Calvinist thought, he had
quite wit enough to overlook the great chimney-builder's wrathful
silence.

He was not the least "professional," talked about the country and how
to live here, saying incidentally that he had spent twelve years at the
mission of the Holy Cross. The Yukon wasn't a bad place to live in, he
told them, if men only took the trouble to learn how to live here.
While teaching the Indians, there was a great deal to learn from them
as well.

"You must all come and see our schools," he wound up.

"We'd like to awfully," said the Boy, and all but Mac echoed him. "We
were so afraid," he went on, "that we mightn't see anybody all winter
long."

"Oh, you'll have more visitors than you want."

"_Shall_ we, though?" Then, with a modified rapture: "Indians, I
suppose, and--and missionaries."

"Traders, too, and miners, and this year cheechalkos as well. You are
directly on the great highway of winter travel. Now that there's a good
hard crust on the snow you will have dog-trains passing every week, and
sometimes two or three."

It was good news!

"We've already had one visitor before you," said the Boy, looking
wonderfully pleased at the prospect the priest had opened out. "You
must know Nicholas of Pymeut, don't you?"

"Oh yes; we all know Nicholas"; and the priest smiled.

"We _like_ him," returned the Boy as if some slighting criticism had
been passed upon his friend.

"Of course you do; so do we all"; and still that look of quiet
amusement on the worn face and a keener twinkle glinting in the eyes.

"We're afraid he's sick," the Boy began.

Before the priest could answer, "He was educated at Howly Cross, he
_says_," contributed O'Flynn.

"Oh, he's been to Holy Cross, among other places."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, Nicholas is a most impartial person. He was born at Pymeut, but
his father, who is the richest and most intelligent man in his tribe,
took Nicholas to Ikogimeut when the boy was only six. He was brought up
in the Russian mission there, as the father had been before him, and
was a Greek--in religion--till he was fourteen. There was a famine that
year down yonder, so Nicholas turned Catholic and came up to us. He was
at Holy Cross some years, when business called him to Anvik, where he
turned Episcopalian. At Eagle City, I believe, he is regarded as a
pattern Presbyterian. There are those that say, since he has been a
pilot, Nicholas makes six changes a trip in his religious convictions."

Father Wills saw that the Colonel, to whom he most frequently addressed
himself, took his pleasantry gravely. "Nicholas is not a bad fellow,"
he added. "He told me you had been kind to him."

"If you believe that about his insincerity," said the Colonel, "are you
not afraid the others you spend your life teaching may turn out as
little credit to you--to Christianity?"

The priest glanced at the listening Indian. "No," said he gravely; "I
do not think _all_ the natives are like Nicholas. Andrew here is a true
son of the Church. But even if it were otherwise, _we_, you know"--the
Jesuit rose from the table with that calm smile of his--"we simply do
the work without question. The issue is not in our hands." He made the
sign of the cross and set back his stool.

"Come, Andrew," he said; "we must push on."

The Indian repeated the priest's action, and went out to see to the
dogs.

"Oh, are you going right away?" said the Colonel politely, and O'Flynn
volubly protested.

"We thought," said the Boy, "you'd sit awhile and smoke and--at least,
of course, I don't mean smoke exactly--but--"

The Father smiled and shook his head.

"Another time I would stay gladly."

"Where are you going now?"

"Andrew and I are on our way to the _Oklahoma_, the steamship frozen in
the ice below here."

"How far?" asked the Boy.

"About seven miles below the Russian mission, and a mile or so up the
Kuskoquim Slough."

"Wrecked there?"

"Oh no. Gone into winter quarters."

"In a slew?" for it was so Father Wills pronounced s-l-o-u-g-h.

"Oh, that's what they call a blind river up in this country. They come
into the big streams every here and there, and cheechalkos are always
mistaking them for the main channel. Sometimes they're wider and deeper
for a mile or so than the river proper, but before you know it they
land you in a marsh. This place I'm going to, a little way up the
Kuskoquim, out of danger when the ice breaks up, has been chosen for a
new station by the N. A. T. and T. Company--rival, you know, to the
old-established Alaska Commercial, that inherited the Russian fur
monopoly and controlled the seal and salmon trade so long. Well, the
younger company runs the old one hard, and they've sent this steamer
into winter quarters loaded with provisions, ready to start for Dawson
the instant the ice goes out."

"Why, then, it's the very boat that'll be takin' us to the Klondyke."

"You just goin' down to have a look at her?" asked Potts enviously.

"No. I go to get relief for the Pymeuts."

"What's the matter with 'em?"

"Epidemic all summer, starvation now."

"Guess you won't find _any_body's got such a lot he wants to give it
away to the Indians."

"Our Father Superior has given much," said the priest gently; "but we
are not inexhaustible at Holy Cross. And the long winter is before us.
Many of the supply steamers have failed to get in, and the country is
flooded with gold-seekers. There'll be wide-spread want this
year--terrible suffering all up and down the river."

"The more reason for people to hold on to what they've got. A white
man's worth more 'n an Indian."

The priest's face showed no anger, not even coldness.

"White men have got a great deal out of Alaska and as yet done little
but harm here. The government ought to help the natives, and we believe
the Government will. All we ask of the captain of the _Oklahoma_ is to
sell us, on fair terms, a certain supply, we assuming part of the risk,
and both of us looking to the Government to make it good."

"Reckon you'll find that steamer-load down in the ice is worth its
weight in gold," said Potts.

"One must always try," replied the Father.

He left the doorpost, straightened his bowed back, and laid a hand on
the wooden latch.

"But Nicholas--when you left Pymeut was he--" began the Boy.

"Oh, he is all right," the Father smiled and nodded. "Brother Paul has
been looking after Nicholas's father. The old chief has enough food,
but he has been very ill. By the way, have you any letters you want to
send out?"

"Oh, if we'd only known!" was the general chorus; and Potts flew to
close and stamp one he had hardly more than begun to the future Mrs.
Potts.

The Boy had thoughtlessly opened the door to have a look at the dogs.

"Shut that da--Don't keep the door open!" howled Potts, trying to hold
his precious letter down on the table while he added "only two words."
The Boy slammed the door behind him.

"With all our trouble, the cabin isn't really warm," said the Colonel
apologetically. "In a wind like this, if the door is open, we have to
hold fast to things to keep them from running down the Yukon. It's a
trial to anybody's temper."

"Why don't you build a false wall?"

"Well, I don't know; we hadn't thought of it."

"You'd find it correct this draught"; and the priest explained his
views on the subject while Potts's letter was being addressed. Andrew
put his head in.

"Ready, Father!"

As the priest was pocketing the letter the Boy dashed in, put on the
Arctic cap he set such store by, and a fur coat and mittens.

"Do you mind if I go a little way with you?" he said.

"Of course not," answered the priest. "I will send him back in half an
hour," he said low to the Colonel. "It's a hitter day."

It was curious how already he had divined the relation of the elder man
to the youngest of that odd household.

The moment they had gone Mac, with an obvious effort, pulled himself up
out of his corner, and, coming towards the Colonel at the fireplace, he
said thickly:

"You've put an insult upon me, Warren, and that's what I stand from no
man. Come outside."

The Colonel looked at him.

"All right, Mac; but we've just eaten a rousing big dinner. Even
Sullivan wouldn't accept that as the moment for a round. We'll both
have forty winks, hey? and Potts shall call us, and O'Flynn shall be
umpire. You can have the Boy's bunk."

Mac was in a haze again, and allowed himself to be insinuated into bed.

The others got rid of the dinner things, and "sat round" for an hour.

"Doubt if he sleeps long," says Potts a little before two; "that's what
he's been doing all morning."

"We haven't had any fresh meat for a week," returns the Colonel
significantly. "Why don't you and O'Flynn go down to meet the Boy, and
come round by the woods? There'll be full moon up by four o'clock; you
might get a brace of grouse or a rabbit or two."

O'Flynn was not very keen about it; but the Jesuit's visit had stirred
him up, and he offered less opposition to the unusual call to activity
than the Colonel expected.

When at last he was left alone with the sleeping man, the Kentuckian
put on a couple more logs, and sat down to wait. At three he got up,
swung the crane round so that the darting tongues of flame could lick
the hot-water pot, and then he measured out some coffee. In a quarter
of an hour the cabin was full of the fragrance of good Mocha.

The Colonel sat and waited. Presently he poured out a little coffee,
and drank it slowly, blissfully, with half-closed eyes. But when he had
set the granite cup down again, he stood up alert, like a man ready for
business. Mac had been asleep nearly three hours. The others wouldn't
be long now.

Well, if they came prematurely, they must go to the Little Cabin for
awhile. The Colonel shot the bar across door and jamb for the second
time that day. Mac stirred and lifted himself on his elbow, but he
wasn't really awake.

"Potts," he said huskily.

The Colonel made no sound. "Potts, measure me out two fingers, will
you? Cabin's damn cold."

No answer.

Mac roused himself, muttering compliments for Potts. When he had
bundled himself out over the side of the bunk, he saw the Colonel
seemingly dozing by the fire.

He waited a moment. Then, very softly, he made his way to the farther
end of the swing-shelf.

The Colonel opened one eye, shut it, and shuffled in a sleepy sort of
way. Mac turned sharply back to the fire.

The Colonel opened his eyes and yawned.

"I made some cawfee a little while back. Have some?"

"No."

"Better; it's A 1."

"Where's Potts?"

"Gone out for a little. Back soon." He poured out some of the strong,
black decoction, and presented it to his companion. "Just try it.
Finest cawfee in the world, sir."

Mac poured it down without seeming to bother about tasting it.

They sat quite still after that, till the Colonel said meditatively:

"You and I had a little account to settle, didn't we?"

"I'm ready."

But neither moved for several moments.

"See here, Mac: you haven't been ill or anything like that, have you?"

"No." There was no uncertain note in the answer; if anything, there was
in it more than the usual toneless decision. Mac's voice was
machine-made--as innocent of modulation as a buzz-saw, and with the
same uncompromising finality as the shooting of a bolt. "I'm ready to
stand up against any man."

"Good!" interrupted the Colonel. "Glad o' that, for I'm just longing to
see you stand up--"

Mac was on his feet in a flash.

"You had only to say so, if you wanted to see me stand up against any
man alive. And when I sit down again it's my opinion one of us two
won't be good-lookin' any more."

He pushed back the stools.

"I thought maybe it was only necessary to mention it," said the Colonel
slowly. "I've been wanting for a fortnight to see you stand up"--Mac
turned fiercely--"against Samuel David MacCann."

"Come on! I'm in no mood for monkeyin'!"

"Nor I. I realise, MacCann, we've come to a kind of a crisis. Things in
this camp are either going a lot better, or a lot worse, after to-day."

"There's nothing wrong, if you quit asking dirty Jesuits to sit down
with honest men."

"Yes; there's something worse out o' shape than that."

Mac waited warily.

"When we were stranded here, and saw what we'd let ourselves in for,
there wasn't one of us that didn't think things looked pretty much like
the last o' pea time. There was just one circumstance that kept us from
throwing up the sponge; _we had a man in camp."_

The Colonel paused.

Mac stood as expressionless as the wooden crane.

"A man we all believed in, who was going to help us pull through."
"That was you, I s'pose." Mac's hard voice chopped out the sarcasm.

"You know mighty well who it was. The Boy's all right, but he's young
for this kind o' thing--young and heady. There isn't much wrong with me
that I'm aware of, except that I don't know shucks. Potts's petering
out wasn't altogether a surprise, and nobody expected anything from
O'Flynn till we got to Dawson, when a lawyer and a fella with capital
behind him may come in handy. But there was one man--who had a head on
him, who had experience, and who"--he leaned over to emphasise the
climax--"who had _character_. It was on that man's account that I
joined this party."

Mac put his hands in his pockets and leaned against the wall. His face
began to look a little more natural. The long sleep or the coffee had
cleared his eyes.

"Shall I tell you what I heard about that man last night?" asked the
Colonel gravely.

Mac looked up, but never opened his lips.

"You remember you wouldn't sit here--"

"The Boy was always in and out. The cabin was cold."

"I left the Boy and O'Flynn at supper-time and went down to the Little
Cabin to--"

"To see what I was doin'--to spy on me."

"Well, all right--maybe I was spying, too. Incidentally I wanted to
tell you the cabin was hot as blazes, and get you to come to supper. I
met Potts hurrying up for his grub, and I said, 'Where's Mac? Isn't he
coming?' and your pardner's answer was: 'Oh, let him alone. He's got a
flask in his bunk, swillin' and gruntin'; he's just in hog-heaven.'"

"Damn that sneak!"

"The man he was talkin' about, Mac, was the man we had all built our
hopes on."

"I'll teach Potts--"

"You can't, Mac. Potts has got to die and go to heaven--perhaps to
hell, before he'll learn any good. But you're a different breed. Teach
MacCann."

Mac suddenly sat down on the stool with his head in his hands.

"The Boy hasn't caught on," said the Colonel presently, "but he said
something this morning to show he was wondering about the change that's
come over you."

"That I don't split wood all day, I suppose, when we've got enough for
a month. Potts doesn't either. Why don't you go for Potts?"

"As the Boy said, I don't care about Potts. It's Mac that matters."

"Did the Boy say that?" He looked up.

The Colonel nodded.

"After you had made that chimney, you know, you were a kind of hero in
his eyes."

Mac looked away. "The cabin's been cold," he muttered.

"We are going to remedy that."

"I didn't bring any liquor into camp. You must admit that I didn't
intend--"

"I do admit it."

"And when O'Flynn said that about keeping his big demijohn out of the
inventory and apart from the common stores, I sat on him."

"So you did."

"I knew it was safest to act on the 'medicinal purposes' principle."

"So it is."

"But I wasn't thinking so much of O'Flynn. I was thinking of ... things
that had happened before ... for ... I'd had experience. Drink was the
curse of Caribou. It's something of a scourge up in Nova Scotia ... I'd
had experience."

"You did the very best thing possible under the circumstances." Mac was
feeling about after his self-respect, and must be helped to get hold of
it. "I realise, too, that the temptation is much greater in cold
countries," said the Kentuckian unblushingly. "Italians and Greeks
don't want fiery drinks half as much as Russians and
Scandinavians--haven't the same craving as Nova Scotians and
cold-country people generally, I suppose. But that only shows,
temperance is of more vital importance in the North."

"That's right! It's not much in my line to shift blame, even when I
don't deserve it; but you know so much you might as well know ... it
wasn't I who opened that demijohn first."

"But you don't mind being the one to shut it up--do you?"

"Shut it up?"

"Yes; let's get it down and--" The Colonel swung it off the shelf. It
was nearly empty, and only the Boy's and the Colonel's single bottles
stood unbroached. Even so, Mac's prolonged spree was something of a
mystery to the Kentuckian. It must be that a very little was too much
for Mac. The Colonel handed the demijohn to his companion, and lit the
solitary candle standing on its little block of wood, held in place
between three half-driven nails.

"What's that for?"

"Don't you want to seal it up?"

"I haven't got any wax."

"I have an inch or so." The Colonel produced out of his pocket the only
piece in camp.

Mac picked up a billet of wood, and drove the cork in flush with the
neck. Then, placing upright on the cork the helve of the hammer, he
drove the cork down a quarter of an inch farther.

"Give me your wax. What's for a seal?" They looked about. Mac's eye
fell on a metal button that hung by a thread from the old militia
jacket he was wearing. He put his hand up to it, paused, glanced
hurriedly at the Colonel, and let his fingers fall.

"Yes, yes," said the Kentuckian, "that'll make a capital seal."

"No; something of yours, I think, Colonel. The top of that tony
pencil-case, hey?"

The Colonel produced his gold pencil, watched Mac heat the wax, drop it
into the neck of the demijohn, and apply the initialled end of the
Colonel's property. While Mac, without any further waste of words, was
swinging the wicker-bound temptation up on the shelf again, they heard
voices.

"They're coming back," says the Kentuckian hurriedly. "But we've
settled our little account, haven't we, old man?"

Mac jerked his head in that automatic fashion that with him meant
genial and whole-hearted agreement.

"And if Potts or O'Flynn want to break that seal--"

"I'll call 'em down," says Mac. And the Colonel knew the seal was safe.

      *       *       *       *       *

"By-the-by, Colonel," said the Boy, just as he was turning in that
night, "I--a--I've asked that Jesuit chap to the House-Warming."

"Oh, you did, did you?"

"Yes."

"Well, you'd just better have a talk with Mac about it."

"Yes. I've been tryin' to think how I'd square Mac. Of course, I know
I'll have to go easy on the raw."

"I reckon you just will."

"If Monkey-wrench screws down hard on me, you'll come to the rescue,
won't you, Colonel?"

"No I'll side with Mac on that subject. Whatever he says, goes!"

"Humph! _that_ Jesuit's all right."

Not a word out of the Colonel.

CHAPTER III

TWO NEW SPISSIMENS

Medwjedew (zu Luka). Tag' mal--wer bist du? Ich
kenne dich nicht.

Luka. Kennst du denn sonst alle Leute?

Medwjedew. In meinem Revier muss ich jeden kennen und dich kenn'ich
nicht....

Luka. Das kommt wohl daher Onkelchen, dass dein Revier nicht die ganze
Erde umfasst ... 's ist da noch ein Endchen draussen geblieben....

One of the curious results of what is called wild life, is a blessed
release from many of the timidities that assail the easy liver in the
centres of civilisation. Potts was the only one in the white camp who
had doubts about the wisdom of having to do with the natives.

However, the agreeable necessity of going to Pymeut to invite Nicholas
to the Blow-out was not forced upon the Boy. They were still hard at
it, four days after the Jesuit had gone his way, surrounding the Big
Cabin with a false wall, that final and effectual barrier against
Boreas--finishing touch warranted to convert a cabin, so cold that it
drove its inmates to drink, into a dwelling where practical people,
without cracking a dreary joke, might fitly celebrate a House-Warming.

In spite of the shortness of the days, Father Wills's suggestion was
being carried out with a gratifying success. Already manifest were the
advantages of the stockade, running at a foot's distance round the
cabin to the height of the eaves, made of spruce saplings not even
lopped of their short bushy branches, but planted close together, after
burning the ground cleared of snow. A second visitation of mild
weather, and a further two days' thaw, made the Colonel determine to
fill in the space between the spruce stockade and the cabin with
"burnt-out" soil closely packed down and well tramped in. It was
generally conceded, as the winter wore on, that to this contrivance of
the "earthwork" belonged a good half of the credit of the Big Cabin,
and its renown as being the warmest spot on the lower river that
terrible memorable year of the Klondyke Rush.

The evergreen wall with the big stone chimney shouldering itself up to
look out upon the frozen highway, became a conspicuous feature in the
landscape, welcome as the weeks went on to many an eye wearied with
long looking for shelter, and blinded by the snow-whitened waste.

An exception to what became a rule was, of all men, Nicholas. When the
stockade was half done, the Prince and an equerry appeared on the
horizon, with the second team the camp had seen, the driver much
concerned to steer clear of the softened snow and keep to that part of
the river ice windswept and firm, if roughest of all. Nicholas regarded
the stockade with a cold and beady eye.

No, he hadn't time to look at it. He had promised to "mush." He wasn't
even hungry.

It did little credit to his heart, but he seemed more in haste to leave
his new friends than the least friendly of them would have expected.

"Oh, wait a sec.," urged the deeply disappointed Boy. "I wanted awf'ly
to see how your sled is made. It's better 'n Father Wills'."

"Humph!" grunted Nicholas scornfully; "him no got Innuit sled."

"Mac and I are goin' to try soon's the stockade's done--"

"Goo'-bye," interrupted Nicholas.

But the Boy paid no attention to the word of farewell. He knelt down in
the snow and examined the sled carefully.

"Spruce runners," he called out to Mac, "and--jee! they're shod with
ivory! _Jee!_ fastened with sinew and wooden pegs. Hey?"--looking up
incredulously at Nicholas--"not a nail in the whole shebang, eh?"

"Nail?" says Nicholas. "Huh, no _nail!_" as contemptuously as though
the Boy had said "bread-crumbs."

"Well, she's a daisy! When you comin' back?"

"Comin' pretty quick; goin' pretty quick. Goo'-bye! _Mush!_" shouted
Nicholas to his companion, and the dogs got up off their haunches.

But the Boy only laughed at Nicholas's struggles to get started. He
hung on to the loaded sled, examining, praising, while the dogs, after
the merest affectation of trying to make a start, looked round at him
over their loose collars and grinned contentedly.

"Me got to mush. Show nex' time. Mush!"

"What's here?" the Boy shouted through the "mushing"; and he tugged at
the goodly load, so neatly disposed under an old reindeer-skin
sleeping-bag, and lashed down with raw hide.

That? Oh, that was fish. _"Fish!_ Got so much fish at starving Pymeut
you can go hauling it down river? Well, sir, _we_ want fish. We _must_
have fish. Hey?" The Boy appealed to the others.

"Yes."

"R-right y'arre!"

"I reckon we just do!"

But Nicholas had other views.

"No, me take him--" He hitched his body in the direction of Ikogimeut.

"Bless my soul! you've got enough there for a regiment. You goin' to
sell him? Hey?"

Nicholas shook his head.

"Oh, come off the roof!" advised the Boy genially.

"You ain't carryin' it about for your health, I suppose?" said Potts.

"The people down at Ikogimeut don't need it like us. We're white
duffers, and can't get fish through the ice. You sell _some_ of it to
us." But Nicholas shook his head and shuffled along on his snow-shoes,
beckoning the dog-driver to follow.

"Or trade some fur--fur tay," suggested O'Flynn.

"Or for sugar," said Mac.

"Or for tobacco," tempted the Colonel.

And before that last word Nicholas's resolve went down. Up at the cabin
he unlashed the load, and it quickly became manifest that Nicholas was
a dandy at driving a bargain. He kept on saying shamelessly:

"More--more shuhg. Hey? Oh yes, me give heap fish. No nuff shuhg."

If it hadn't been for Mac (his own clear-headed self again, and by no
means to be humbugged by any Prince alive) the purchase of a portion of
that load of frozen fish, corded up like so much wood, would have laid
waste the commissariat.

But if the white men after this passage did not feel an absolute
confidence in Nicholas's fairness of mind, no such unworthy suspicion
of them found lodgment in the bosom of the Prince. With the exception
of some tobacco, he left all his ill-gotten store to be kept for him by
his new friends till he should return. When was that to be? In five
sleeps he would be back.

"Good! We'll have the stockade done by then. What do you say to our big
chimney, Nicholas?"

He emitted a scornful "Peeluck!"

"What! Our chimney no good?"

He shrugged: "Why you have so tall hole your house? How you cover him
up?"

"We don't want to cover him up."

"Humph! winter fin' you tall hole. Winter come down--bring in
snow--drive fire out." He shivered in anticipation of what was to
happen. "Peeluck!"

The white men laughed.

"What you up to now? Where you going?"

Well, the fact was, Nicholas had been sent by his great ally, the
Father Superior of Holy Cross, on a mission, very important, demanding
despatch.

"Father Brachet--him know him heap better send Nicholas when him want
man go God-damn quick. Me no stop--no--no stop."

He drew on his mittens proudly, unjarred by remembrance of how his good
resolution had come to grief.

"Where you off to now?"

"Me ketchum Father Wills--me give letter." He tapped his
deerskin-covered chest. "Ketchum _sure_ 'fore him leave Ikogimeut."

"You come back with Father Wills?"

Nicholas nodded.

"Hooray! we'll all work like sixty!" shouted the Boy, "and by Saturday
(that's five sleeps) we'll have the wall done and the house warm, and
you and"--he caught himself up; not thus in public would he break the
news to Mac--"you'll be back in time for the big Blow-Out." To clinch
matters, he accompanied Nicholas from the cabin to the river trail,
explaining: "You savvy? Big feast--all same Indian. Heap good grub. No
prayer-meetin'--you savvy?--no church this time. Big fire, big feed.
All kinds--apples, shuhg, bacon--no cook him, you no like," he added,
basely truckling to the Prince's peculiar taste.

Nicholas rolled his single eye in joyful anticipation, and promised
faithfully to grace the scene.

      *       *       *       *       *

This was all very fine ... but Father Wills! The last thing at night
and the first thing in the morning the Boy looked the problem in the
face, and devised now this, now that, adroit and disarming fashion of
breaking the news to Mac.

But it was only when the daring giver of invitations was safely in bed,
and Mac equally safe down in the Little Cabin, that it seemed possible
to broach the subject. He devised scenes in which, airily and
triumphantly, he introduced Father Wills, and brought Mac to the point
of pining for Jesuit society; but these scenes were actable only under
conditions of darkness and of solitude. The Colonel refused to have
anything to do with the matter.

"Our first business, as I see it, is to keep peace in the camp, and
hold fast to a good understanding with one another. It's just over
little things like this that trouble begins. Mac's one of us; Father
Wills is an outsider. I won't rile Mac for the sake of any Jesuit
alive. No, sir; this is _your_ funeral, and you're obliged to attend."

Before three of Nicholas's five sleeps were accomplished, the Boy began
to curse the hour he had laid eyes on Father Wills. He began even to
speculate desperately on the good priest's chances of tumbling into an
air-hole, or being devoured by a timely wolf. But no, life was never so
considerate as that. Yet he could neither face being the cause of the
first serious row in camp, nor endure the thought of having his
particular guest--drat him!--flouted, and the whole House-Warming
turned to failure and humiliation.

Indeed, the case looked desperate. Only one day more now before he
would appear--be flouted, insulted, and go off wounded, angry, leaving
the Boy with an irreconciliable quarrel against Mac, and the
House-Warming turned to chill recrimination and to wretchedness.

But until the last phantasmal hope went down before the logic of events
it was impossible not to cling to the idea of melting Mac's Arctic
heart. There was still one course untried.

Since there was so little left to do to the stockade, the Boy announced
that he thought he'd go up over the hill for a tramp. Gun in hand and
grub in pocket, he marched off to play his last trump-card. If he could
bring home a queer enough bird or beast for the collection, there was
still hope. To what lengths might Mac not go if one dangled before him
the priceless bait of a golden-tipped emperor goose, dressed in
imperial robes of rose-flecked snow? Or who, knowing Mac, would not
trust a _Xema Sabinii_ to play the part of a white-winged angel of
peace? Failing some such heavenly messenger, there was nothing for it
but that the Boy should face the ignominy of going forth to meet the
Father on the morrow, and confess the humiliating truth. It wasn't fair
to let him come expecting hospitality, and find--. Visions arose of Mac
receiving the bent and wayworn missionary with the greeting: "There is
no corner by the fire, no place in the camp for a pander to the Scarlet
Woman." The thought lent impassioned fervour to the quest for goose or
gull.

It was pretty late when he got back to camp, and the men were at
supper. No, he hadn't shot anything.

"What's that bulging in your pocket?"

"Sort o' stone."

"Struck it rich?"

"Don't give me any chin-music, boys; give me tea. I'm dog-tired."

But when Mac got up first, as usual, to go down to the Little Cabin to
"wood up" for the night, "I'll walk down with you," says the Boy,
though it was plain he was dead-beat.

He helped to revive the failing fire, and then, dropping on the section
of sawed wood that did duty for a chair, with some difficulty and a
deal of tugging he pulled "the sort o' stone" out of the pocket of his
duck shooting-jacket.

"See that?" He held the thing tightly clasped in his two red, chapped
hands.

Mac bent down, shading his eyes from the faint flame flicker.

"What is it?" "Piece o' tooth."

"By the Lord Harry! so it is." He took the thing nearer the faint
light. "Fossil! Where'd you get it?"

"Over yonder--by a little frozen river."

"How far? Any more? Only this?"

The Boy didn't answer. He went outside, and returned instantly, lugging
in something brown and whitish, weather-stained, unwieldy.

"I dropped this at the door as I came along home. Thought it might do
for the collection."

Mac stared with all his eyes, and hurriedly lit a candle. The Boy
dropped exhausted on a ragged bit of burlap by the bunks. Mac knelt
down opposite, pouring liberal libation of candle-grease on the
uncouth, bony mass between them.

"Part of the skull!" he rasped out, masking his ecstasy as well as he
could.

"Mastodon?" inquired the Boy.

Mac shook his head.

"I'll bet my boots," says Mac, "it's an _Elephas primigenius;_ and if
I'm right, it's 'a find,' young man. Where'd you stumble on him?"

"Over yonder." The Boy leaned his head against the lower bunk.

"Where?" "Across the divide. The bones have been dragged up on to some
rocks. I saw the end of a tusk stickin' up out of the snow, and I
scratched down till I found--" He indicated the trophy between them on
the floor.

"Tusk? How long?"

"'Bout nine feet." "We'll go and get it to-morrow."

No answer from the Boy.

"Early, hey?"

"Well--a--it's a good ways."

"What if it is?"

"Oh, I don't mind. I'd do more 'n that for you, Mac."

There was something unnatural in such devotion. Mac looked up. But the
Boy was too tired to play the big fish any longer. "I wonder if you'll
do something for me." He watched with a sinking heart Mac's sharp
uprising from the worshipful attitude. It was not like any other
mortal's gradual, many-jointed getting-up; it was more like the sudden
springing out of the big blade of a clasp-knife.

"What's your game?"

"Oh, I ain't got any game," said the Boy desperately; "or, if I have,
there's mighty little fun in it. However, I don't know as I want to
walk ten hours again in this kind o' weather with an elephant on my
back just for--for the poetry o' the thing." He laid his chapped hands
on the side board of the bunk and pulled himself up on his legs.

"What's your game?" repeated Mac sternly, as the Boy reached the door.

"What's the good o' talkin'?" he answered; but he paused, turned, and
leaned heavily against the rude lintel.

"Course, I know you'd be shot before you'd do it, but what I'd _like_,
would be to hear you say you wouldn't kick up a hell of a row if Father
Wills happens in to the House-Warmin'."

Mac jerked his set face, fire-reddened, towards the fossil-finder; and
he, without waiting for more, simply opened the door, and heavily
footed it back to the Big Cabin.

      *       *       *       *       *

Next morning when Mac came to breakfast he heard that the Boy had had
his grub half an hour before the usual time, and was gone off on some
tramp again. Mac sat and mused.

O'Flynn came in with a dripping bucket, and sat down to breakfast
shivering.

"Which way'd he go?"

"The Boy? Down river."

"Sure he didn't go over the divide?"

O'Flynn was sure. He'd just been down to the water-hole, and in the
faint light he'd seen the Boy far down on the river-trail "leppin" like
a hare in the direction of the Roosian mission."

"Goin' to meet ... a ... Nicholas?"

"Reckon so," said the Colonel, a bit ruffled. "Don't believe he'll run
like a hare very far with his feet all blistered."

"Did you know he'd discovered a fossil elephant?"

"No."

"Well, he has. I must light out, too, and have a look at it."

"Do; it'll be a cheerful sort of House-Warming with one of you off
scouring the country for more blisters and chilblains, and another
huntin' antediluvian elephants." The Colonel spoke with uncommon
irascibility. The great feast-day had certainly not dawned
propitiously.

When breakfast was done Mac left the Big Cabin without a word; but,
instead of going over the divide across the treeless snow-waste to the
little frozen river, where, turned up to the pale northern dawn, were
lying the bones of a beast that had trampled tropic forests, in that
other dawn of the Prime, the naturalist, turning his back on _Elephas
primigenius,_ followed in the track of the Boy down the great river
towards Ikogimeut.

      *       *       *       *       *

On the low left bank of the Yukon a little camp. On one side, a big
rock hooded with snow. At right angles, drawn up one on top of the
other, two sleds covered with reindeer-skins held down by stones. In
the corner formed by the angle of rocks and sleds, a small A-tent, very
stained and old. Burning before it on a hearth of greenwood, a little
fire struggling with a veering wind.

Mac had seen from far off the faint blue banners of smoke blowing now
right, now left, then tossed aloft in the pallid sunshine. He looked
about sharply for the Boy, as he had been doing this two hours. There
was the Jesuit bending over the fire, bettering the precarious position
of a saucepan that insisted on sitting lop-sided, looking down into the
heart of coals. Nicholas was holding up the tent-flap.

"Hello! How do!" he sang out, recognising Mac. The priest glanced up
and nodded pleasantly. Two Indians, squatting on the other side of the
fire, scrambled away as the shifting wind brought a cloud of stifling
smoke into their faces. "Where's the Boy?" demanded Mac, arresting the
stampede.

Nicholas's dog-driver stared, winked, and wiped his weeping,
smoke-reddened eyes.

"Is he in there?" Mac looked towards the tent.

Andrew nodded between coughs.

"What's he doing in there? Call him out," ordered Mac.

"He no walk."

Mac's hard face took on a look of cast-iron tragedy.

The wind, veering round again, had brought the last words to the priest
on the other side of the fire.

"Oh, it'll be all right by-and-by," he said cheerfully.

"But knocking up like that just for blisters?"

"Blisters? No; cold and general weakness. That's why we delayed--"

Without waiting to hear more Mac strode over to the tent, and as he
went in, Nicholas came out. No sign of the Boy--nobody, nothing. What?
Down in the corner a small, yellow face lying in a nest of fur. Bright,
dark eyes stared roundly, and as Mac glowered astonished at the
apparition, a mouth full of gleaming teeth opened, smiling, to say in a
very small voice:

"Farva!"

Astonished as Mac was, disappointed and relieved all at once, there was
something arresting in the appeal.

"I'm not your father," he said stiffly. "Who're you? Hey? You speak
English?"

The child stared at him fixedly, but suddenly, for no reason on earth,
it smiled again. Mac stood looking down at it, seeming lost in thought.
Presently the small object stirred, struggled about feebly under the
encompassing furs, and, freeing itself, held out its arms. The mites of
hands fluttered at his sleeve and made ineffectual clutches.

"What do you want?" To his own vast astonishment Mac lifted the little
thing out of its warm nest. It was woefully thin, and seemed, even to
his inexperience, to be insufficiently clothed, though the beaded
moccasins on its tiny feet were new and good.

"Why, you're only about as big as a minute," he said gruffly. "What's
the matter--sick?" It suddenly struck him as very extraordinary that he
should have taken up the child, and how extremely embarrassing it would
be if anyone came in and caught him. Clutching the small morsel
awkwardly, he fumbled with the furs preparatory to getting rid, without
delay, of the unusual burden. While he was straightening the things,
Father Wills appeared at the flap, smoking saucepan in hand. The
instant the cold air struck the child it began to cough.

"Oh, you mustn't do that!" said the priest to Mac with unexpected
severity. "Kaviak must lie in bed and keep warm." Down on the floor
went the saucepan. The child was caught away from the surprised Mac,
and the furs so closely gathered round the small shrunken body that
there was once more nothing visible but the wistful yellow face and
gleaming eyes, still turned searchingly on its most recent
acquaintance.

But the priest, without so much as a glance at the new-comer, proceeded
to feed Kaviak out of the saucepan, blowing vigorously at each spoonful
before administering.

"He's pretty hungry," commented Mac. "Where'd you find him?"

"In a little village up on the Kuskoquim. Kaviak's an Esquimaux from
Norton Sound, aren't you, Kaviak?" But the child was wholly absorbed,
it seemed, in swallowing and staring at Mac. "His family came up there
from the coast in a bidarra only last summer--all dead now. Everybody
else in the village--and there isn't but a handful--all ailing and all
hungry. I was tramping across an igloo there a couple of days ago, and
I heard a strange little muffled sound, more like a snared rabbit than
anything else. But the Indian with me said no, everybody who had lived
there was dead, and he was for hurrying on. They're superstitious, you
know, about a place where people have died. But I crawled in, and found
this little thing lying in a bundle of rags with its hands bound and
dried grass stuffed in its mouth. It was too weak to stir or do more
than occasionally to make that muffled noise that I'd heard coming up
through the smoke-hole."

"What you goin' to do with him?"

"Well, I hardly know. The Sisters will look after him for a while, if I
get him there alive."

"Why shouldn't you?"

Kaviak supplied the answer straightway by choking and falling into an
appalling fit of coughing.

"I've got some stuff that'll be good for that," said Mac, thinking of
his medicine-chest. "I'll give you some when we get back to camp."

The priest nodded, taking Mac's unheard of civility as a matter of
course.

"The ice is very rough; the jolting makes him cough awfully."

The Jesuit had fastened his eyes on Mac's woollen muffler, which had
been loosened during the ministering to Kaviak and had dropped on the
ground. "Do you need that scarf?" he asked, as though he suspected Mac
of wearing it for show. "Because if you didn't you could wrap it round
Kaviak while I help the men strike camp." And without waiting to see
how his suggestion was received, he caught up the saucepan, lifted the
flap, and vanished.

"Farva," remarked Kaviak, fixing melancholy eyes on Mac.

"I ain't your father," muttered the gentleman so addressed. He picked
up his scarf and hung it round his own neck.

"Farva!" insisted Kaviak. They looked at each other.

"You cold? That it, hey?" Mac knelt down and pulled away the furs. "God
bless me! you only got this one rag on? God bless me!" He pulled off
his muffler and wound the child in it mummy-wise, round and round,
muttering the while in a surly way. When it was half done he
stopped--thought profoundly with a furrow cutting deep into his square
forehead between the straight brows. Slowly he pulled his gloves out of
his pocket, and turned out from each beaver gauntlet an inner mitten of
knitted wool. "Here," he said, and put both little moccasined feet into
one of the capacious mittens. Much pleased with his ingenuity, he went
on winding the long scarf until the yellow little Esquimaux bore a
certain whimsical resemblance to one of the adorable Delia Robbia
infants. But Mac's sinewy hands were exerting a greater pressure than
he realized. The morsel made a remonstrant squeaking, and squirmed
feebly.

"Oh, oh! Too tight? Beg your pardon," said Mac hastily, as though not
only English, but punctilious manners were understanded of Kaviak. He
relaxed the woollen bandage till the morsel lay contented again within
its folds.

Nicholas came in for Kaviak, and for the furs, that he might pack them
both in the Father's sled. Already the true son of the Church was
undoing the ropes that lashed firm the canvas of the tent.

"Where's the Boy?" said Mac suddenly. "The young fellow that's with us.
You know, the one that found you that first Sunday and brought you to
camp. Where is he?"

Nicholas paused an instant with Kaviak on his shoulder.

"Kaiomi--no savvy."

"You not seen him to-day?"

"No. He no up--?" With the swaddled child he made a gesture up the
river towards the white camp.

"No, he came down this morning to meet you."

Nicholas shook his head, and went on gathering up the furs. As he and
Mac came out, Andrew was undoing the last fastening that held the
canvas to the stakes. In ten minutes they were on the trail, Andrew
leading, with Father Wills' dogs, Kaviak lying in the sled muffled to
the eyes, still looking round out of the corners--no, strangely enough,
the Kaviak eye had no corners, but fixedly he stared sideways at Mac.
"Farva," seeming not to take the smallest notice, trudged along on one
side of him, the priest on the other, and behind came Nicholas and the
other Indians with the second sled. It was too windy to talk much even
had they been inclined.

The only sounds were the _Mush! Mush!_ of the drivers, the grate and
swish of the runners over the ice, and Kaviak's coughing.

Mac turned once and frowned at him. It was curious that the child
seemed not to mind these menacing looks, not in the smallest degree.

By-and-by the order of march was disturbed.

Kaviak's right runner, catching at some obstacle, swerved and sent the
sled bumping along on its side, the small head of the passenger
narrowly escaping the ice. Mac caught hold of the single-tree and
brought the racing dogs to an abrupt halt. The priest and he righted
the sled, and Mac straddling it, tucked in a loosened end of fur. When
all was again in running order, Mac was on the same side as Father
Wills. He still wore that look of dour ill-temper, and especially did
he glower at the unfortunate Kaviak, seized with a fresh fit of
coughing that filled the round eyes with tears.

"Don't you get kind o' tired listenin' to that noise? Suppose I was to
carry--just for a bit--. This is the roughest place on the trail. Hi!
Stop!" he called to Andrew. The priest had said nothing; but divining
what Mac would be at, he helped him to undo the raw-hide lashing, and
when Kaviak was withdrawn he wrapped one of the lighter fur things
round him.

It was only when Mac had marched off, glowering still, and sternly
refusing to meet Kaviak's tearful but grateful eyes--it was only then,
bending over the sled and making fast the furs, that Father Wills, all
to himself, smiled a little.

It wasn't until they were in sight of the smoke from the Little Cabin
that Mac slackened his pace. He had never for a moment found the trail
so smooth that he could return his burden to the sled. Now, however, he
allowed Nicholas and the priest to catch up with him.

"You carry him the rest of the way," he commanded, and set his burden
in Nicholas's arms. Kaviak was ill-pleased, but Mac, falling behind
with the priest, stalked on with eyes upon the ground.

"I've got a boy of my own," he jerked out presently, with the air of a
man who accounts confidentially for some weakness.

"Really!" returned the priest; "they didn't tell me."

"I haven't told them yet."

"Oh, all right."

"Why is he called that heathen name?"

"Kaviak? Oh, it's the name of his tribe. His people belong to that
branch of the Innuits known as Kaviaks."

"Humph! Then he's only Kaviak as I'm MacCann. I suppose you've
christened him?"

"Well, not yet--no. What shall we call him? What's your boy's name?"
"Robert Bruce." They went on in silence till Mac said, "It's on account
of my boy I came up here."

"Oh!"

"It didn't use to matter if a man _was_ poor and self-taught, but in
these days of competition it's different. A boy must have chances if
he's going to fight the battle on equal terms. Of course, some boys
ain't worth botherin' about. But my boy--well, he seems to have
something in him."

The priest listened silently, but with that look of brotherliness on
his face that made it so easy to talk to him.

"It doesn't really matter to those other fellows." Mac jerked his hand
towards the camp. "It's never so important to men--who stand alone--but
I've _got_ to strike it rich over yonder." He lifted his head, and
frowned defiantly in the general direction of the Klondyke, thirteen
hundred miles away. "It's my one chance," he added half to himself. "It
means everything to Bob and me. Education, scientific education, costs
like thunder."

"In the United States?"

"Oh, I mean to send my boy to the old country. I want Bob to be
thorough."

The priest smiled, but almost imperceptibly.

"How old is he?"

"Oh, 'bout as old as this youngster." Mac spoke with calculated
indifference.

"Six or thereabouts?"

"No; four and a half. But he's bigger--"

"Of course."

"And you can see already--he's got a lot in him."

Father Wills nodded with a conviction that brought Mac nearer
confession than he had ever been in his life.

"You see," he said quite low, and as if the words were dragged out with
pincers, "the fact is--my married life--didn't pan out very well. And
I--ran away from home as a little chap--after a lickin'--and never went
back. But there's one thing I mean to make a success of--that's my
boy."

"Well, I believe you will, if you feel like that."

"Why, they've gone clean past the camp trail," said Mac sharply, "all
but Nicholas--and what in thunder?--he's put the kid back on the
sled--"

"Yes, I told my men we'd be getting on. But they were told to leave you
the venison--"

"What! You goin' straight on? Nonsense!" Mac interrupted, and began to
shout to the Indians.

"No; I _meant_ to stop; just tell your friends so," said the
unsuspecting Father; "but with a sick child--"

"What can you do for him that we can't? And to break the journey may
make a big difference. We've got some condensed milk left--and--"

"Ah yes, but we are more accustomed to--it's hardly fair to burden a
neighbour. No, we'll be getting on."

"If those fellers up there make a row about your bringing in a
youngster"--he thrust out his jaw--"they can settle the account with
me. I've got to do something for that cough before the kid goes on."

"Well," said the priest; and so wily are these Jesuits that he never
once mentioned that he was himself a qualified doctor in full and
regular practice. He kept his eyes on the finished stockade and the
great chimney, wearing majestically its floating plume of smoke.

"Hi!" Mac called between his hands to the Indians, who had gone some
distance ahead. "Hi!" He motioned them back up the hill trail.

O'Flynn had come out of the Little Cabin, and seemed to be laboriously
trundling something along the footpath. He got so excited when he heard
the noise and saw the party that, inadvertently, he let his burden
slide down the icy <DW72>, bumping and bouncing clumsily from one
impediment to another.

"Faith, look at 'im! Sure, that fossle can't resthrain his j'y at
seein' ye back. Mac, it's yer elephunt. I was takin' him in to the sate
of honour be the foir. We thought it 'ud be a pleasant surprise fur ye.
Sure, ye'r more surprised to see 'im leppin' down the hill to meet ye,
like a rale Irish tarrier."

Mac was angry, and didn't conceal the fact. As he ran to stop the thing
before it should be dashed to pieces, the priest happened to glance
back, and saw coming slowly along the river trail a solitary figure
that seemed to make its way with difficulty.

"It looks as though you'd have more than you bargained for at the
House-Warming," he said.

O'Flynn came down the hill babbling like a brook.

"Good-day to ye, Father. The blessin's o' Heaven on ye fur not kapin'
us starvin' anny longer. There's Potts been swearin', be this and be
that, that yourself and the little divvle wudn't be at the Blow-Out at
ahl, at ahl."

"You mean the Boy hasn't come back?" called out Mac. He leaned _Elephas
primigenius_ against a tuft of willow banked round with snow, and
turned gloomily as if to go back down the river again.

"Who's this?" They all stood and watched the limping traveller.

"Why it's--of course. I didn't know him with that thing tied over his
cap"; and Mac went to meet him.

The Boy bettered his pace.

"How did I miss you?" demanded Mac.

"Well," said the Boy, looking rather mischievous, "I can't think how it
happened on the way down, unless you passed when I 'd gone uphill a
piece after some tracks. I was lyin' under the Muff a few miles down
when you came back, and you--well, I kind o' thought you seemed to have
your hands full." Mac looked rigid and don't-you-try-to-chaff-me-sir.
"Besides," the Boy went on, "I couldn't cover the ground like you and
Father Wills."

"What's the matter with you?"

"Oh, nothin' to howl about. But see here, Mac."

"Well?"

"Soon's I can walk I'll go and get you the rest o' that elephant."

There was no more said till they got up to the others, who had waited
for the Indians to come back, and had unpacked Kaviak to spare him the
jolting uphill.

O'Flynn was screaming with excitement as he saw that the bundle
Nicholas was carrying had a head and two round eyes.

"The saints in glory be among us! What's that? Man alive, what _is_ it,
be the Siven?"

"That," answered Mac with a proprietary air, "is a little Esquimaux
boy, and I'm bringing him in to doctor his cold."

"Glory be! An Esquimer! And wid a cowld! Sure, he can have some o' my
linnyeemint. Well, y'arre a boss collector, Mac! Faith, ye bang the
Jews! And me thinkin' ye'd be satisfied wid yer elephunt. Not him, be
the Siven! It's an Esquimer he must have to finish off his collection,
wan wid the rale Arctic cowld in his head, and two eyes that goes
snappin' through ye like black torpeders. Two spissimens in wan day!
Yer growin' exthravagant, Mac. Why, musha, child, if I don't think yer
the dandy Spissimen o' the lot!"

CHAPTER IV

THE BLOW-OUT

"How good it is to invite men to the pleasant feast."

Comfortable as rock fireplace and stockade made the cabin now, the
Colonel had been feeling all that morning that the official
House-Warming was fore-doomed to failure. Nevertheless, as he was cook
that week, he could not bring himself to treat altogether lightly his
office of Master of the Feast. There would probably be no guests. Even
their own little company would likely be incomplete, but t here was to
be a spread that afternoon, "anyways."

Even had the Colonel needed any keeping up to the mark, the office
would have been cheerfully undertaken by O'Flynn or by Potts, for whom
interest in the gustatory aspect of the occasion was wholly undimmed by
the threatened absence of Mac and the "little divvle."

"There'll be the more for us," said Potts enthusiastically.

O'Flynn's argument seemed to halt upon a reservation. He looked over
the various contributions to the feast, set out on a board in front of
the water-bucket, and, "It's mate I'm wishin' fur," says he.

"We've got fish."

"That's only mate on Fridays. We've had fish fur five days stiddy, an'
befure that, bacon three times a day wid sivin days to the week, an'
not enough bacon ayther, begob, whin all's said and done! Not enough to
be fillin', and plenty to give us the scurrvy. May the divil dance on
shorrt rations!"

"No scurvy in this camp for a while yet," said the Colonel, throwing
some heavy objects into a pan and washing them vigorously round and
round.

"Pitaties!" O'Flynn's eyes dwelt lovingly on the rare food. "Ye've
hoarded 'em too long, man, they've sprouted."

"That won't prevent you hoggin' more'n your share, I'll bet," said
Potts pleasantly.

"I don't somehow like wasting the sprouts," observed the Colonel
anxiously. "It's such a wonderful sight--something growing." He had cut
one pallid slip, and held it tenderly between knife and thumb.

"Waste 'em with scurvy staring us in the face? Should think not. Mix
'em with cold potaters in a salad."

"No. Make slumgullion," commanded O'Flynn.

"What's that?" quoth the Colonel.

"Be the Siven! I only wonder I didn't think of it befure. Arre ye
listening, Kentucky? Ye take lots o' wathur, an' if ye want it rich, ye
take the wathur ye've boiled pitaties or cabbage in--a vegetable stock,
ye mind--and ye add a little flour, salt, and pepper, an' a tomater if
ye're in New York or 'Frisco, and ye boil all that together with a few
fish-bones or bacon-rin's to make it rale tasty."

"Yes--well?"

"Well, an' that's slumgullion."

"Don't sound heady enough for a 'Blow-Out,'" said the Colonel. "We'll
sober up on slumgullion to-morrow."

"Anyhow, it's mate I'm wishin' fur," sighed O'Flynn, subsiding among
the tin-ware. "What's the good o' the little divvle and his thramps, if
he can't bring home a burrud, or so much as the scut iv a rabbit furr
the soup?"

"Well, he's contributed a bottle of California apricots, and we'll have
boiled rice."

"An' punch, glory be!"

"Y-yes," answered the Colonel. "I've been thinkin' a good deal about
the punch."

"So's myself," said O'Flynn frankly; but Potts looked at the Colonel
suspiciously through narrowed eyes.

"There's very little whiskey left, and I propose to brew a mild bowl--"

"To hell with your mild bowls!"

"A good enough punch, sah, but one that--that--a--well, that the whole
kit and boodle of us can drink. Indians and everybody, you know ...
Nicholas and Andrew may turn up. I want you two fellas to suppoht me
about this. There are reasons foh it, sah"--he had laid a hand on
Potts' shoulder and fixed O'Flynn with his eye--"and"--speaking very
solemnly--"yoh neither o' yoh gentlemen that need mo' said on the
subject."

Whereupon, having cut the ground from under their feet, he turned
decisively, and stirred the mush-pot with a magnificent air and a
newly-whittled birch stick.

To give the Big Cabin an aspect of solid luxury, they had spread the
Boy's old buffalo "robe" on the floor, and as the morning wore on Potts
and O'Flynn made one or two expeditions to the Little Cabin, bringing
back selections out of Mac's hoard "to decorate the banquet-hall," as
they said. On the last trip Potts refused to accompany his pardner--no,
it was no good. Mac evidently wouldn't be back to see, and the laugh
would be on them "takin' so much trouble for nothin'." And O'Flynn
wasn't to be long either, for dinner had been absurdly postponed
already.

When the door opened the next time, it was to admit Mac, Nicholas with
Kaviak in his arms, O'Flynn gesticulating like a windmill, and, last of
all, the Boy.

Kaviak was formally introduced, but instead of responding to his hosts'
attentions, the only thing he seemed to care about, or even see, was
something that in the hurly-burly everybody else overlooked--the
decorations. Mac's stuffed birds and things made a remarkably good
show, but the colossal success was reserved for the minute shrunken
skin of the baby white hare set down in front of the great fire for a
hearthrug. If the others failed to appreciate that joke, not so Kaviak.
He gave a gurgling cry, struggled down out of Nicholas's arms, and
folded the white hare to his breast.

"Where are the other Indians?" said Mac.

"Looking after the dogs," said Father Wills; and as the door opened,
"Oh yes, give us that," he said to Andrew. "I thought"--he turned to
the Colonel--"maybe you'd like to try some Yukon reindeer."

"Hooray!"

"Mate? Arre ye sayin' mate, or is an angel singin'?"

"Now I _know_ that man's a Christian," soliloquised Potts.

"Look here: it'll take a little time to cook," said Mac, "and it's
worth waitin' for. Can you let us have a pail o' hot water in the
meantime?"

"Y-yes," said the Colonel, looking as if he had enough to think about
already.

"Yes, we always wash them first of all," said Father Wills, noticing
how Mac held the little heathen off at arm's length. "Nicholas used to
help with that at Holy Cross." He gave the new order with the old
authoritative gesture.

"And where's the liniment I lent you that you're so generous with?" Mac
arraigned O'Flynn. "Go and get it."

Under Nicholas's hands Kaviak was forced to relinquish not only the
baby hare, but his own elf locks. He was closely sheared, his moccasins
put off, and his single garment dragged unceremoniously wrong side out
over his head and bundled out of doors.

"Be the Siven! he's got as manny bones as a skeleton!"

"Poor little codger!" The Colonel stood an instant, skillet in hand
staring.

"What's that he's got round his neck?" said the Boy, moving nearer.

Kaviak, seeing the keen look menacing his treasure, lifted a shrunken
yellow hand and clasped tight the dirty shapeless object suspended from
a raw-hide necklace.

Nicholas seemed to hesitate to divest him of this sole remaining
possession.

"You must get him to give it up," said Father Wills, "and burn it."

Kaviak flatly declined to fall in with as much as he understood of this
arrangement.

"What is it, anyway?" the Boy pursued.

"His amulet, I suppose." As Father Wills proceeded to enforce his
order, and pulled the leather string over the child's head, Kaviak rent
the air with shrieks and coughs. He seemed to say as well as he could,
"I can do without my parki and my mucklucks, but I'll take my death
without my amulet."

Mac insinuated himself brusquely between the victim and his
persecutors. He took the dirty object away from the priest with scant
ceremony, in spite of the whisper, "Infection!" and gave it back to the
wrathful owner.

"You talk his language, don't you?" Mac demanded of Nicholas.

The Pymeut pilot nodded.

"Tell him, if he'll lend the thing to me to wash, he shall have it
back."

Nicholas explained.

Kaviak, with streaming eyes and quivering lips, reluctantly handed it
over, and watched Mac anxiously till overwhelmed by a yet greater
misfortune in the shape of a bath for himself.

"How shall I clean this thing thoroughly?" Mac condescended to ask
Father Wills. The priest shrugged.

"He'll have forgotten it to-morrow."

"He shall have it to-morrow," said Mac.

With his back to Kaviak, the Boy, O'Flynn, and Potts crowding round
him, Mac ripped open the little bird-skin pouch, and took out three
objects--an ivory mannikin, a crow's feather, and a thing that Father
Wills said was a seal-blood plug.

"What's it for?" "Same as the rest. It's an amulet; only as it's used
to stop the flow of blood from the wound of a captive seal, it is
supposed to be the best of all charms for anyone who spits blood."

"I'll clean 'em all after the Blow-Out," said Mac, and he went out,
buried the charms in the snow, and stuck up a spruce twig to mark the
spot.

Meanwhile, to poor Kaviak it was being plainly demonstrated what an
awful fate descended on a person so unlucky as to part with his amulet.
He stood straight up in the bucket like a champagne-bottle in a cooler,
and he could not have resented his predicament more if he had been set
in crushed ice instead of warm water. Under the remorseless hands of
Nicholas he began to splutter and choke, to fizz, and finally explode
with astonishment and wrath. It was quite clear Nicholas was trying to
drown him. He took the treatment so to heart, that he kept on howling
dismally for some time after he was taken out, and dried, and
linimented and dosed by Mac, whose treachery about the amulet he seemed
to forgive, since "Farva" had had the air of rescuing him from the
horrors he had endured in that water-bucket, where, for all Kaviak
knew, he might have stayed till he succumbed to death. The Boy
contributed a shirt of his own, and helped Mac to put it on the
incredibly thin little figure. The shirt came down to Kaviak's heels,
and had to have the sleeves rolled up every two minutes. But by the
time the reindeer-steak was nearly done Kaviak was done, too, and
O'Flynn had said, "That Spissimen does ye credit, Mac."

Said Spissimen was now staring hungrily out of the Colonel's bunk,
holding towards Mac an appealing hand, with half a yard of shirt-sleeve
falling over it.

Mac pretended not to see, and drew up to the table the one remaining
available thing to sit on, his back to his patient.

When the dogs had been fed, and the other Indians had come in, and
squatted on the buffalo-skin with Nicholas, the first course was sent
round in tin cups, a nondescript, but warming, "camp soup."

"Sorry we've got so few dishes, gentlemen," the Colonel had said.
"We'll have to ask some of you to wait till others have finished."

"Farva," remarked Kaviak, leaning out of the bunk and sniffing the
savoury steam.

"He takes you for a priest," said Potts, with the cheerful intention of
stirring Mac's bile. But not even so damning a suspicion as that could
cool the collector's kindness for his new Spissimen.

"You come here," he said. Kaviak didn't understand. The Boy got up,
limped over to the bunk, lifted the child out, and brought him to Mac's
side.

"Since there ain't enough cups," said Mac, in self-justification, and
he put his own, half empty, to Kaviak's lips. The Spissimen imbibed
greedily, audibly, and beamed. Mac, with unimpaired gravity, took no
notice of the huge satisfaction this particular remedy was giving his
patient, except to say solemnly, "Don't bubble in it."

The next course was fish a la Pymeut.

"You're lucky to be able to get it," said the Father, whether with
suspicion or not no man could tell. "I had to send back for some by a
trader and couldn't get enough."

"We didn't see any trader," said the Boy to divert the current.

"He may have gone by in the dusk; he was travelling hotfoot."

"Thought that steamship was chockful o' grub. What did you want o'
fish?"

"Yes; they've got plenty of food, but--"

"They don't relish parting with it," suggested Potts.

"They haven't much to think about except what they eat; they wanted to
try our fish, and were ready to exchange. I promised I would send a
load back from Ikogimeut if they'd--" He seemed not to care to finish
the sentence.

"So you didn't do much for the Pymeuts after all?"

"I did something," he said almost shortly. Then, with recovered
serenity, he turned to the Boy: "I promised I'd bring back any news."
"Yes."

"Well?"

Everybody stopped eating and hung on the priest's words.

"Captain Rainey's heard there's a big new strike--"

"In the Klondyke?"

"On the American side this time."

"Hail Columbia!"

"Whereabouts?"

"At a place called Minook."

"Where's that?"

"Up the river by the Ramparts."

"How far?"

"Oh, a little matter of six or seven hundred miles from here."

"Glory to God!"

"Might as well be six or seven thousand."

"And very probably isn't a bona-fide strike at all," said the priest,
"but just a stampede--a very different matter."

"Well, I tell you straight: I got no use for a gold-mine in Minook at
this time o' year."

"Nop! Venison steak's more in my line than grub-stake just about now."

Potts had to bestir himself and wash dishes before he could indulge in
his "line." When the grilled reindeer did appear, flanked by
really-truly potatoes and the Colonel's hot Kentucky biscuit, there was
no longer doubt in any man's mind but what this Blow-Out was being a
success.

"Colonel's a daisy cook, ain't he?" the Boy appealed to Father Wills.

The Jesuit assented cordially.

"My family meant _me_ for the army," he said. "Seen much service,
Colonel?"

The Kentuckian laughed.

"Never wasted a day soldiering in my life."

"Oh!"

"Maybe you're wonderin'," said Potts, "why he's a Colonel!"

The Jesuit made a deprecatory gesture, politely disclaiming any such
rude curiosity.

"He's from Kentucky, you see;" and the smile went round. "Beyond that,
we can't tell you why he's a Colonel unless it's because he ain't a
Judge;" and the boss of the camp laughed with the rest, for the Denver
man had scored.

By the time they got to the California apricots and boiled rice
everybody was feeling pretty comfortable. When, at last, the table was
cleared, except for the granite-ware basin full of punch, and when all
available cups were mustered and tobacco-pouches came out, a remarkably
genial spirit pervaded the company--with three exceptions.

Potts and O'Flynn waited anxiously to sample the punch before giving
way to complete satisfaction, and Kaviak was impervious to
considerations either of punch or conviviality, being wrapped in
slumber on a corner of the buffalo-skin, between Mac's stool and the
natives, who also occupied places on the floor.

Upon O'Flynn's first draught he turned to his next neighbour:

"Potts, me bhoy, 'tain't s' bad."

"I'll bet five dollars it won't make yer any happier."

"Begob, I'm happy enough! Gentlemen, wud ye like I should sing ye a
song?"

"Yes."

"Yes," and the Colonel thumped the table for order, infinitely relieved
that the dinner was done, and the punch not likely to turn into a
_casus belli_. O'Flynn began a ditty about the Widdy Malone that woke
up Kaviak and made him rub his round eyes with astonishment. He sat up,
and hung on to the back of Mac's coat to make sure he had some
anchorage in the strange new waters he had so suddenly been called on
to navigate.

The song ended, the Colonel, as toast-master, proposed the health
of--he was going to say Father Wills, but felt it discreeter to name no
names. Standing up in the middle of the cabin, where he didn't have to
stoop, he lifted his cup till it knocked against the swing-shelf, and
called out, "Here's to Our Visitors, Neighbours, and Friends!"
Whereupon he made a stately circular bow, which ended by his offering
Kaviak his hand, in the manner of one who executes a figure in an
old-fashioned dance. The smallest of "Our Visitors," still keeping hold
of Mac, presented the Colonel with the disengaged half-yard of flannel
undershirt on the other side, and the speech went on, very flowery,
very hospitable, very Kentuckian.

When the Colonel sat down there was much applause, and O'Flynn, who had
lent his cup to Nicholas, and didn't feel he could wait till it came
back, began to drink punch out of the dipper between shouts of:

"Hooray! Brayvo! Here's to the Kurrnul! God bless him! That's rale
oratry, Kurrnul! Here's to Kentucky--and ould Ireland."

Father Wills stood up, smiling, to reply.

_"Friends"_ (the Boy thought the keen eyes rested a fraction of a
moment longer on Mac than on the rest),--_"I think in some ways this is
the pleasantest House-Warming I ever went to. I won't take up time
thanking the Colonel for the friendly sentiments he's expressed, though
I return them heartily. I must use these moments you are good enough to
give me in telling you something of what I feel is implied in the
founding of this camp of yours.

"Gentlemen, the few white dwellers in the Yukon country have not looked
forward"_ (his eyes twinkled almost wickedly) _"with that pleasure you
might expect in exiles, to the influx of people brought up here by the
great Gold Discovery. We knew what that sort of craze leads to. We knew
that in a barren land like this, more and more denuded of wild game
every year, more and more the prey of epidemic disease--we knew that
into this sorely tried and hungry world would come a horde of men, all
of them ignorant of the conditions up here, most of them ill-provided
with proper food and clothing, many of them (I can say it without
offence in this company)--many of them men whom the older, richer
communities were glad to get rid of. Gentlemen, I have ventured to take
you into our confidence so far, because I want to take you still
farther--to tell you a little of the intense satisfaction with which we
recognise that good fortune has sent us in you just the sort of
neighbours we had not dared to hope for. It means more to us than you
realise. When I heard a few weeks ago that, in addition to the
boat-loads that had already got some distance up the river beyond Holy
Cross--"_

"Going to Dawson?"

"Oh, yes, Klondyke mad--"

"They'll be there before us, boys!"

"Anyways, they'll get to Minook."

The Jesuit shook his head. "It isn't so certain. They probably made
only a couple of hundred miles or so before the Yukon went to sleep."

"Then if grub gives out they'll be comin' back here?" suggested Potts.

_"Small doubt of it,"_ agreed the priest. _"And when I heard there were
parties of the same sort stranded at intervals all along the Lower
River--"_

"You sure?"

He nodded.

_"And when Father Orloff of the Russian mission told us that he was
already having trouble with the two big rival parties frozen in the ice
below Ikogimeut--"_

"Gosh! Wonder if any of 'em were on our ship?"

_"Well, gentlemen, I do not disguise from you that, when I heard of the
large amount of whiskey, the small amount of food, and the low type of
manners brought in by these gold-seekers, I felt my fears justified.
Such men don't work, don't contribute anything to the decent social
life of the community, don't build cabins like this. When I came down
on the ice the first time after you'd camped, and I looked up and saw
your solid stone chimney"_ (he glanced at Mac), _"I didn't know what a
House-Warming it would make; but already, from far off across the ice
and snow, that chimney warmed my heart. Gentlemen, the fame of it has
gone up the river and down the river. Father Orloff is coming to see it
next week, and so are the white traders from Anvik and Andreiefsky, for
they've heard there's nothing like it in the Yukon. Of course, I know
that you gentlemen have not come to settle permanently. I know that
when the Great White Silence, as they call the long winter up here, is
broken by the thunder of the ice rushing down to the sea, you, like the
rest, will exchange the snow-fields for the gold-fields, and pass out
of our ken. Now, I'm not usually prone to try my hand at prophecy; but
I am tempted to say, even on our short acquaintance, that I am
tolerably sure that, while we shall be willing enough to spare most of
the new-comers to the Klondyke, we shall grudge to the gold-fields the
men who built this camp and warmed this cabin."_ (His eye rested
reflectively on Mac.) _"I don't wish to sit down leaving an impression
of speaking with entire lack of sympathy of the impulse that brings men
up here for gold. I believe that, even with the sort in the two camps
below Ikogimeut--drinking, quarrelling, and making trouble with the
natives at the Russian mission--I believe that even with them, the gold
they came up here for is a symbol--a fetich, some of us may think. When
such men have it in their hands, they feel dimly that they are laying
tangible hold at last on some elusive vision of happiness that has
hitherto escaped them. Behind each man braving the Arctic winter up
here, is some hope, not all ignoble; some devotion, not all
unsanctified. Behind most of these men I seem to see a wife or child, a
parent, or some dear dream that gives that man his share in the Eternal
Hope. Friends, we call that thing we look for by different names; but
we are all seekers after treasure, all here have turned our backs on
home and comfort, hunting for the Great Reward--each man a new Columbus
looking for the New World. Some of us looking north, some south,
some"_--he hesitated the briefest moment, and then with a faint smile,
half sad, half triumphant, made a little motion of his head--_"some of
us ... looking upwards."_

But quickly, as though conscious that, if he had raised the moral tone
of the company, he had not raised its spirits, he hurried on:

_"Before I sit down, gentlemen, just one word more. I must congratulate
you on having found out so soon, not only the wisdom, but the pleasure
of looking at this Arctic world with intelligent eyes, and learning
some of her wonderful lessons. It is so that, now the hardest work is
finished, you will keep up your spirits and avoid the disease that
attacks all new-comers who simply eat, sleep, and wait for the ice to
go out. When I hear cheechalkos complaining of boredom up here in this
world of daily miracles, I think of the native boy in the
history-class, who, called on to describe the progress of civilisation,
said: 'In those days men had as many wives as they liked, and that was
called polygamy. Now they have only one wife, and that's called
monotony.'"_

While O'Flynn howled with delight, the priest wound up:

_"Gentlemen, if we find monotony up here, it's not the country's fault,
but a defect in our own civilisation."_ Wherewith he sat down amid
cheers.

"Now, Colonel, is Mac goin' to recite some Border ballads?" inquired
the Boy, "or will he make a speech, or do a Highland fling?"

The Colonel called formally upon Mr. MacCann.

Mac was no sooner on his legs than Kaviak, determined not to lose his
grasp of the situation, climbed upon the three-legged stool just
vacated, and resumed his former relations with the friendly coat-tail.

Everybody laughed but Mac, who pretended not to know what was going on
behind his back.

"Gentlemen," he began harshly, with the air of one about to launch a
heavy indictment, "there's one element largely represented here by
numbers and by interests"--he turned round suddenly toward the natives,
and almost swung Kaviak off into space--"one element not explicitly
referred to in the speeches, either of welcome or of thanks. But,
gentlemen, I submit that these hitherto unrecognised Natives are our
real hosts, and a word about them won't be out of place. I've been told
to-day that, whether in Alaska, Greenland, or British America, they
call themselves _Innuits,_ which means human beings. They believed, no
doubt, that they were the only ones in the world. I've been thinking a
great deal about these Esquimaux of late--"

"Hear, hear!"

"About their origin and their destiny." (Mac was beginning to enjoy
himself. The Boy was beginning to be bored and to drum softly with his
fingers.) "Now, gentlemen, Buffon says that the poles were the first
portions of the earth's crust to cool. While the equator, and even the
tropics of Cancer and of Capricorn, were still too boiling hot to
support life, up here in the Arctic regions there was a carboniferous
era goin' on--"

"Where's the coal, then?" sneered Potts.

"It's bein' discovered ... all over ... ask him" (indicating Father
Wills, who smiled assent). "Tropical forests grew where there are
glayshers now, and elephants and mastodons began life here."

"Jimminy Christmas!" interrupted the Boy, sitting up very straight. "Is
that Buffer you quoted a good authority?"

"First-rate," Mac snapped out defiantly.

"Good Lord! then the Garden o' Eden was up here."

"Hey?"

"Course! _This_ was the cradle o' the human race. Blow the Ganges! Blow
the Nile! It was our Yukon that saw the first people, 'cause of course
the first people lived in the first place got ready for 'em."

"That don't follow. Read your Bible."

"If I'm not right, how did it happen there were men here when the North
was first discovered?"

"Sh!"

"Mac's got the floor."

"Shut up!"

But the Boy thumped the table with one hand and arraigned the
schoolmaster with the other.

"Now, Mac, I put it to you as a man o' science: if the race had got a
foothold in any other part o' the world, what in Sam Hill could make
'em come up here?"

"_We're_ here."

"Yes, tomfools after gold. They never dreamed there was gold. No,
Sir_ee!_ the only thing on earth that could make men stay here, would
be that they were born here, and didn't know any better. Don't the
primitive man cling to his home, no matter what kind o' hole it is?
He's _afraid_ to leave it. And these first men up here, why, it's plain
as day--they just hung on, things gettin' worse and worse, and colder
and colder, and some said, as the old men we laugh at say at home, 'The
climate ain't what it was when I was a boy,' and nobody believed 'em,
but everybody began to dress warmer and eat fat, and--"

"All that Buffon says is--"

"Yes--and they invented one thing after another to meet the new
conditions--kaiaks and bidarras and ivory-tipped harpoons"--he was
pouring out his new notions at the fastest express rate--"and the
animals that couldn't stand it emigrated, and those that stayed behind
got changed--"

"Dry up."

"One at a time."

"Buffon--"

"Yes, yes, Mac, and the hares got white, and the men, playin' a losin'
game for centuries, got dull in their heads and stunted in their
legs--always cramped up in a kaiak like those fellas at St. Michael's.
And, why, it's clear as crystal--they're survivals! The Esquimaux are
the oldest race in the world."

"Who's makin' this speech?"

"Order!"

"Order!"

"Well, see here: _do_ you admit it, Mac? Don't you see there were just
a few enterprisin' ones who cleared out, or, maybe, got carried away in
a current, and found better countries and got rich and civilised, and
became our forefathers? Hey, boys, ain't I right?"

"You sit down."

"You'll get chucked out."

"Buffon--"

Everybody was talking at once.

"Why, it goes on still," the Boy roared above the din. "People who
stick at home, and are patient, and put up with things, they're doomed.
But look at the fellas that come out o' starvin' attics and stinkin'
pigsties to America. They live like lords, and they look at life like
men."

Mac was saying a great deal about the Ice Age and the first and second
periods of glaciation, but nobody could hear what.

_"Prince_ Nicholas? Well, I should smile. He belongs to the oldest
family in the world. Hoop-la!" The Boy jumped up on his stool and
cracked his head against the roof; but he only ducked, rubbed his wild,
long hair till it stood out wilder than ever, and went on: "Nicholas's
forefathers were kings before Caesar; they were here before the
Pyramids--"

The Colonel came round and hauled the Boy down. Potts was egging the
miscreant on. O'Flynn, poorly disguising his delight in a scrimmage,
had been shouting: "Ye'll spoil the Blow-Out, ye meddlin' jackass!
Can't ye let Mac make his spache? No; ye must ahlways be huntin' round
fur harrum to be doin' or throuble to make."

In the turmoil and the contending of many voices Nicholas began to
explain to his friends that it wasn't a real fight, as it had every
appearance of being, and the visitors were in no immediate danger of
their lives. But Kaviak feared the worst, and began to weep forlornly.

"The world is dyin' at top and bottom!" screamed the Boy, writhing
under the Colonel's clutch. "The ice will spread, the beasts will turn
white, and we'll turn yella, and we'll all dress in skins and eat fat
and be exactly like Kaviak, and the last man'll be found tryin' to warm
his hands at the Equator, his feet on an iceberg and his nose in a
snowstorm. Your old Buffer's got a long head, Mac. Here's to Buffer!"
Whereupon he subsided and drank freely of punch.

"Well," said the Colonel, severely, "you've had a Blow-Out if nobody
else has!"

"Feel better?" inquired Potts, tenderly.

"Now, Mac, you shall have a fair field," said the Colonel, "and if the
Boy opens his trap again--"

"I'll punch 'im," promised O'Flynn, replenishing the disturber's cup.

But Mac wouldn't be drawn. Besides, he was feeding Kaviak. So the
Colonel filled in the breach with "My old Kentucky Home," which he sang
with much feeling, if not great art.

This performance restored harmony and a gentle reflectiveness.

Father Wills told about his journey up here ten years before and of a
further expedition he'd once made far north to the Koyukuk.

"But Nicholas knows more about the native life and legends than anyone
I ever met, except, of course, Yagorsha."

"Who's Yag----?" began the Boy.

"Oh, that's the Village Story-teller." He was about to speak of
something else, but, lifting his eyes, he caught Mac's sudden glance of
grudging attention. The priest looked away, and went on: "There's a
story-teller in every settlement. He has always been a great figure in
the native life, I believe, but now more than ever."

"Why's that?"

"Oh, battles are over and blood-feuds are done, but the need for a
story-teller abides. In most villages he is a bigger man than the
chief--they're all 'ol' chiefs,' the few that are left--and when they
die there will be no more. So the tribal story-teller comes to be the
most important character"--the Jesuit smiled in that shrewd and gentle
way of his--"that is, of course, after the Shaman, as the Russians call
him, the medicine-man, who is a teller of stories, too, in his more
circumscribed fashion. But it's the Story-teller who helps his people
through the long winter--helps them to face the terrible new enemies,
epidemic disease and famine. He has always been their best defence
against that age-old dread they all have of the dark. Yes, no one
better able to send such foes flying than Yagorsha of Pymeut. Still,
Nicholas is a good second." The Prince of Pymeut shook his head.

"Tell them 'The White Crow's Last Flight,'" urged the priest.

But Nicholas was not in the vein, and when they all urged him overmuch,
he, in self-defence, pulled a knife out of his pocket and a bit of
walrus ivory about the size of his thumb, and fell to carving.

"What you makin'?"

"Button," says Nicholas; "me heap hurry get him done."

"It looks more like a bird than a button," remarked the Boy.

"Him bird--him button," replied the imperturbable one.

"Half the folk-lore of the North has to do with the crow (or raven),"
the priest went on. "Seeing Kaviak's feather reminded me of a native
cradle-song that's a kind of a story, too. It's been roughly
translated."

"Can you say it?"

"I used to know how it went."

He began in a deep voice:

  "'The wind blows over the Yukon.
  My husband hunts deer on the Koyukun mountains.
  Ahmi, ahmi, sleep, little one.

  There is no wood for the fire,
  The stone-axe is broken, my husband carries the other.
  Where is the soul of the sun? Hid in the dam of the beaver, waiting the
  spring-time.
  Ahmi, ahmi, sleep little one, wake not!

  Look not for ukali, old woman.
  Long since the cache was emptied, the crow lights no more on the ridge
  pole.
  Long since, my husband departed. Why does he wait in the mountains?
  Ahmi, ahmi, sleep little one, softly.

  Where, where, where is my own?
  Does he lie starving on the hillside? Why does he linger?
  Comes he not soon I must seek him among the mountains.
  Ahmi, ahmi, little one, sleep sound.

  Hush! hush! hush! The crow cometh laughing.
  Red is his beak, his eyes glisten, the false one!
  "Thanks for a good meal to Kuskokala the Shaman--
  On the far mountain quietly lieth your husband."
  Ahmi, ahmi, sleep little one, wake not.

  "Twenty deers' tongues tied to the pack on his shoulders;
  Not a tongue in his mouth to call to his wife with.
  Wolves, foxes, and ravens are tearing and fighting for morsels.
  Tough and hard are the sinews; not so the child in your bosom."
  Ahmi, ahmi, sleep little one, wake not!

  Over the mountain slowly staggers the hunter.
  Two bucks' thighs on his shoulders.
  Twenty deers' tongues in his belt.
  "Go, gather wood, kindle a fire, old woman!"
  Off flew the crow--liar, cheat and deceiver.
  Wake, oh sleeper, awake! welcome your father!

  He brings you back fat, marrow, venison fresh from the mountain
  Tired and worn, yet he's carved you a toy of the deer's horn,
  While he was sitting and waiting long for the deer on the hillside.
  Wake! see the crow! hiding himself from the arrow;
  Wake, little one, wake! here is your father safe home.'"

"Who's 'Kuskokala the Shaman'?" the Boy inquired.

"Ah, better ask Nicholas," answered the priest.

But Nicholas was absorbed in his carving.

Again Mr. O'Flynn obliged, roaring with great satisfaction:

  "'I'm a stout rovin' blade, and what matther my name,
  For I ahlways was wild, an' I'll niver be tame;
  An' I'll kiss putty gurrls wheriver I go,
  An' what's that to annyone whether or no.

    _Chorus._

  "'Ogedashin, den thashin, come, boys! let us drink;
  'Tis madness to sorra, 'tis folly to think.
  For we're ahl jolly fellows wheriver we go--
  Ogedashin, den thashin, na boneen sheen lo!'"

Potts was called on. No, he couldn't sing, but he could show them a
trick or two. And with his grimy euchre-deck he kept his word, showing
that he was not the mere handy-man, but the magician of the party. The
natives, who know the cards as we know our A B C's, were enthralled,
and began to look upon Potts as a creature of more than mortal skill.

Again the Boy pressed Nicholas to dance. "No, no;" and under his
breath: "You come Pymeut."

Meanwhile, O'Flynn, hugging the pleasant consciousness that he had
distinguished himself--his pardner, too--complained that the only
contribution Mac or the Boy had made was to kick up a row. What steps
were they going to take to retrieve their characters and minister to
the public entertainment?

"I've supplied the decorations," said Mac in a final tone.

"Well, and the Bhoy? What good arre ye, annyway?"

"Hard to say," said the person addressed; but, thinking hard: "Would
you like to see me wag my ears?" Some languid interest was manifested
in this accomplishment, but it fell rather flat after Potts' splendid
achievements with the euchre-deck.

"No, ye ain't good fur much as an enthertainer," said O'Flynn frankly.

Kaviak had begun to cry for more punch, and Mac was evidently growing a
good deal perplexed as to the further treatment for his patient.

"Did ye be tellin' some wan, Father, that when ye found that Esquimer
he had grass stuffed in his mouth? Sure, he'll be missin' that grass.
Ram somethin' down his throat."

"Was it done to shorten his sufferings?" the Colonel asked in an
undertone.

"No," answered the priest in the same low voice; "if they listen long
to the dying, the cry gets fixed in their imagination, and they hear it
after the death, and think the spirit haunts the place. Their fear and
horror of the dead is beyond belief. They'll turn a dying man out of
his own house, and not by the door, but through a hole in the roof. Or
they pull out a log to make an opening, closing it up quick, so the
spirit won't find his way back."

Kaviak continued to lament.

"Sorry we can't offer you some blubber, Kaviak."

"'Tain't that he's missin'; he's got an inexhaustible store of his own.
His mistake is offerin' it to us."

"I know what's the matter with that little shaver," said the Boy. "He
hasn't got any stool, and you keep him standin' on those legs of his
like matches."

"Let him sit on the buffalo-skin there," said Mac gruffly.

"Don't you s'pose he's thought o' the buffalo-skin? But he'd hate it. A
little fella likes to be up where he can see what's goin' on. He'd feel
as lost 'way down there on the buffalo as a puppy in a corn-brake."

The Boy was standing up, looking round.

"I know. Elephas! come along, Jimmie!" In spite of remonstrance, they
rushed to the door and dragged in the "fossle." When Nicholas and his
friends realised what was happening, they got up grunting and
protesting. "Lend a hand, Andrew," the Boy called to the man nearest.

"No--no!" objected the true son of the Church, with uncommon fervour.

"You, then, Nicholas."

_"Oo,_ ha, _oo!_ No touch! No touch!"

"What's up? You don't know what this is."

"Huh! Nicholas know plenty well. Nicholas no touch bones of dead
devils." This view of the "fossle" so delighted the company that,
acting on a sudden impulse, they pushed the punch-bowl out of the way,
and, with a whoop, hoisted the huge thing on the table. Then the Boy
seized the whimpering Kaviak, and set him high on the throne. So
surprised was the topmost Spissimen that he was as quiet for a moment
as the one underneath him, staring about, blinking. Then, looking down
at Mac's punch-cup, he remembered his grievance, and took up the wail
where he had left it off.

"Nuh, nuh! don't you do that," said the Boy with startling suddenness.
"If you make that noise, I'll have to make a worse one. If you cry,
Kaviak, I'll have to sing. Hmt, hmt! don't you do it." And as Kaviak,
in spite of instructions, began to bawl, the Boy began to do a
plantation jig, crooning monotonously:

  "'Grashoppah sett'n on de swee' p'tater vine,
  Swee' p'tater vine, swee' p'tater vine;
  Grasshoppah--'"

He stopped as suddenly as he'd begun. "_Now_, will you be good?"

Kaviak drew a breath with a catch in it, looked round, and began as
firmly as ever:

"Weh!--eh!--eh!"

"Sh--sh!" The Boy clapped his hands, and lugubriously intoned:

  "'Dey's de badger and de bah,
  En de funny lil hah,
  En de active lil flea,
  En de lil armadillah
  Dat sleeps widouter pillah,
  An dey all gottah mate but me--ee--ee!'

"Farva!" Kaviak gasped.

"Say, do a <DW65> breakdown," solicited Potts.

"Ain't room; besides, I can't do it with blisters."

They did the impossible--they made room, and turned back the
buffalo-skin. Only the big Colonel, who was most in the way of all,
sat, not stirring, staring in the fire. Such a look on the absent,
tender face as the great masters, the divinest poets cannot often
summon, but which comes at the call of some foolish old nursery jingle,
some fragment of half-forgotten folk-lore, heard when the world was
young--when all hearing was music, when all sight was "pictures," when
every sense brought marvels that seemed the everyday way of the
wonderful, wonderful world.

For an obvious reason it is not through the utterances of the greatest
that the child receives his first intimations of the beauty and the
mystery of things. These come in lowly guise with familiar everyday
voices, but their eloquence has the incommunicable grace of infancy,
the promise of the first dawn, the menace of the first night.

"Do you remember the thing about the screech-owl and the weather
signs?" said the Colonel, roused at last by the jig on his toes and the
rattle of improvised "bones" almost in his face.

"Reckon I do, honey," said the Boy, his feet still flying and flapping
on the hard earthen floor.

  "_'Wen de screech-owl light on de gable en'
  En holler, Who--ool oh--oh!'_"

He danced up and hooted in Kaviak's face.

  "_'Den yo' bettah keep yo eyeball peel,
  Kase 'e bring bad luck t' yo'.
  Oh--oh! oh-oh!'_"

Then, sinking his voice, dancing slowly, and glancing anxiously under the
table:

  "_'Wen de ole black cat widdee yalla eyes
  Slink round like she atterah mouse,
  Den yo' bettah take keer yo'self en frien's,
  Kase deys sholy a witch en de house.'_"

An awful pause, a shiver, and a quick change of scene, indicated by a
gurgling whoop, ending in a quacking:

  "_'Wen de puddle-duck'e leave de pon',
  En start t' comb e fedder,
  Den yo' bettah take yo' omberel,
  Kase deys gwine tubbee wet wedder.'_"

"Now comes the speckly rooster," the Colonel prompted.

The Boy crowed long and loud:

  "_'Effer ole wile rooster widder speckly tail
  Commer crowin' befoh de do',
  En yo got some comp'ny a'ready,
  Yo's gwinter have some mo'.'_"

Then he grunted, and went on all fours. "Kaviak!" he called, "you take
warnin'----

  "_'Wen yo' see a pig agoin' along--'_"

Look here: Kaviak's never seen a pig! I call it a shame.

  _"'Wen yo' see a pig agoin' along
  Widder straw en de sider 'is mouf,
  It'll be a tuhble winter,
  En yo' bettuh move down Souf.'"_

He jumped up and dashed into a breakdown, clattering the bones, and
screeching:

  _"'Squirl he got a bushy tail,
  Possum's tail am bah,
  Raccoon's tail am ringed all roun'--
  Touch him ef yo dah!
  Rabbit got no tail at all,
  Cep a little bit o' bunch o' hah.'"_

The group on the floor, undoubtedly, liked that part of the
entertainment that involved the breakdown, infinitely the best of all,
but simultaneously, at its wildest moment, they all turned their heads
to the door. Mac noticed the movement, listened, and then got up,
lifted the latch, and cautiously looked out. The Boy caught a glimpse
of the sky over Mac's shoulder.

"Jimminy Christmas!" He stopped, nearly breathless. "It can't be a
fire. Say, boys! they're havin' a Blow-Out up in heaven."

The company crowded out. The sky was full of a palpitant light. An
Indian appeared from round the stockade; he was still staring up at the
stone chimney.

"Are we on fire?"

"How-do." He handed Father Wills a piece of dirty paper.

"Hah! Yes. All right. Andrew!"

Andrew needed no more. He bustled away to harness the dogs. The white
men were staring up at the sky. "What's goin' on in heaven, Father?
S'pose you call this the Aurora Borealis--hey?"

"Yes," said the priest; "and finer than we often get it. We are not far
enough north for the great displays."

He went in to put on his parki.

Mac, after looking out, had shut the door and stayed behind with
Kaviak.

On Father Will's return Farva, speaking apparently less to the priest
than to the floor, muttered: "Better let him stop where he is till his
cold's better."

The Colonel came in.

"Leave the child here!" ejaculated the priest.

"--till he's better able to travel."

"Why not?" said the Colonel promptly.

"Well, it would be a kindness to keep him a few days. I'll _have_ to
travel fast tonight."

"Then it's settled." Mac bundled Kaviak into the Boy's bunk.

When the others were ready to go out again, Farva caught up his fur
coat and went along with them.

The dogs were not quite ready. The priest was standing a little
absentmindedly, looking up. The pale green streamers were fringed with
the tenderest rose colour, and from the corona uniting them at the
zenith, they shot out across the heavens, with a rapid circular and
lateral motion, paling one moment, flaring up again the next.

"Wonder what makes it," said the Colonel.

"Electricity," Mac snapped out promptly.

The priest smiled.

"One mystery for another."

He turned to the Boy, and they went on together, preceding the others,
a little, on the way down the trail towards the river.

"I think you must come and see us at Holy Cross--eh? Come soon;" and
then, without waiting for an answer: "The Indians think these flitting
lights are the souls of the dead at play. But Yagorsha says that long
ago a great chief lived in the North who was a mighty hunter. It was
always summer up here then, and the big chief chased the big game from
one end of the year to another, from mountain to mountain and from
river to sea. He killed the biggest moose with a blow of his fist, and
caught whales with his crooked thumb for a hook. One long day in summer
he'd had a tremendous chase after a wonderful bird, and he came home
without it, deadbeat and out of temper. He lay down to rest, but the
sunlight never winked, and the unending glare maddened him. He rolled,
and tossed, and roared, as only the Yukon roars when the ice rushes
down to the sea. But he couldn't sleep. Then in an awful fury he got
up, seized the day in his great hands, tore it into little bits, and
tossed them high in the air. So it was dark. And winter fell on the
world for the first time. During months and months, just to punish this
great crime, there was no bright sunshine; but often in the long night,
while the chief was wearying for summer to come again, he'd be
tantalised by these little bits of the broken day that flickered in the
sky. Coming, Andrew?" he called back.

The others trooped down-hill, dogs, sleds, and all. There was a great
hand-shaking and good-byeing.

Nicholas whispered:

"You come Pymeut?"

"I should just pretty nearly think I would."

"You dance heap good. Buttons no all done." He put four little ivory
crows into the Boy's hands. They were rudely but cleverly carved, with
eyes outlined in ink, and supplied under the breast with a neat
inward-cut shank.

"Mighty fine!" The Boy examined them by the strange glow that
brightened in the sky.

"You keep."

"Oh no, can't do that."

"_Yes!_" Nicholas spoke peremptorily. "Yukon men have big feast, must
bring present. Me no got reindeer, me got button." He grinned.
"Goo'-bye." And the last of the guests went his way.

      *       *       *       *       *

It was only habit that kept the Colonel toasting by the fire before he
turned in, for the cabin was as warm to-night as the South in
mid-summer.

  _"Grasshoppah sett'n on a swee' p'tater vine,"_

The Boy droned sleepily as he untied the leathern thongs that kept up
his muckluck legs--

  _"Swee' p'tater vine, swee' p'ta--"_

"All those othahs"--the Colonel waved a hand in the direction of
Pymeut--"I think we dreamed 'em, Boy. You and me playing the Big Game
with Fohtune. Foolishness! Klondyke? Yoh crazy. Tell me the river's
hard as iron and the snow's up to the windah? Don' b'lieve a wo'd of
it. We're on some plantation, Boy, down South, in the niggah quawtaws."

The Boy was turning back the covers, and balancing a moment on the side
of the bunk.

 _"Sett'n on a swee' p'tater vine, swee' p'ta--"_

"Great Caesar's ghost!" He jumped up, and stood staring down at the
sleeping Kaviak.

"Ah--a--didn't you know? He's been left behind for a few days."

"Yes, I can see he's left behind. No, Colonel, I reckon we're in the
Arctic regions all right when it comes to catchin' Esquimers in your
bed!"

He pulled the furs over Kaviak and himself, and curled down to sleep.

CHAPTER V

THE SHAMAN.

"For my part, I have ever believed and do now know, that there are
witches."--_Religio Medici._

The Boy had hoped to go to Pymeut the next day, but his feet refused to
carry him. Mac took a diagram and special directions, and went after
the rest of elephas, conveying the few clumsy relics home, bit by bit,
with a devotion worthy of a pious pilgrim.

For three days the Boy growled and played games with Kaviak, going
about at first chiefly on hands and knees.

On the fifth day after the Blow-Out, "You comin' long to Pymeut this
mornin'?" he asked the Colonel.

"What's the rush?"

"_Rush!_ Good Lord! it's 'most a week since they were here. And it's
stopped snowin', and hasn't thought of sleetin' yet or anything else
rambunksious. Come on, Colonel."

But Father Wills had shown the Colonel the piece of dirty paper the
Indian had brought on the night of the Blow-Out.

"_Trouble threatened. Pymeuts think old chief dying not of consumption,
but of a devil. They've sent a dogteam to bring the Shaman down over
the ice. Come quickly.--_PAUL."

"Reckon we'd better hold our horses till we hear from Holy Cross."

"Hear what?"

The Colonel didn't answer, but the Boy didn't wait to listen. He
swallowed his coffee scalding hot, rolled up some food and stuff for
trading, in a light reindeer skin blanket, lashed it packwise on his
back, shouldered his gun, and made off before the Trio came in to
breakfast.

The first sign that he was nearing a settlement, was the appearance of
what looked like sections of rude wicker fencing, set up here and there
in the river and frozen fast in the ice. High on the bank lay one of
the long cornucopia-shaped basket fish-traps, and presently he caught
sight of something in the bleak Arctic landscape that made his heart
jump, something that to Florida eyes looked familiar.

"Why, if it doesn't make me think of John Fox's cabin on Cypress
Creek!" he said to himself, formulating an impression that had vaguely
haunted him on the Lower River in September; wondering if the Yukon
flooded like the Caloosahatchee, and if the water could reach as far up
as all that.

He stopped to have a good look at this first one of the Pymeut caches,
for this modest edifice, like a Noah's Ark on four legs, was not a
habitation, but a storehouse, and was perched so high, not for fear of
floods, but for fear of dogs and mice. This was manifest from the fact
that there were fish-racks and even ighloos much nearer the river.

The Boy stopped and hesitated; it was a sore temptation to climb up and
see what they had in that cache. There was an inviting plank all ready,
with sticks nailed on it transversely to prevent the feet from
slipping. But the Boy stopped at the rude ladder's foot, deciding that
this particular mark of interest on the part of a stranger might be
misinterpreted. It would, perhaps, be prudent to find Nicholas first of
all. But where was Nicholas?--where was anybody?

The scattered, half-buried huts were more like earth-mounds,
snow-encrusted, some with drift-logs propped against the front face
looking riverwards.

While he was cogitating how to effect an entrance to one of these, or
to make his presence known, he saw, to his relief, the back of a
solitary Indian going in the direction of an ighloo farther up the
river.

"Hi, hi!" he shouted, and as the figure turned he made signs. It
stopped.

"How-do?" the Boy called out when he got nearer. "You talk English?"

The native laughed. A flash of fine teeth and sparkling eyes lit up a
young, good-looking face. This boy seemed promising.

"How d'ye do? You know Nicholas?"

"Yes."

The laugh was even gayer. It seemed to be a capital joke to know
Nicholas.

"Where is he?"

The figure turned and pointed, and then: "Come. I show you."

This was a more highly educated person than Nicholas, thought the
visitor, remarking the use of the nominative scorned of the Prince.

They walked on to the biggest of the underground dwellings.

"Is this where the King hangs out? Nicholas' father lives here?"

"No. This is the Kazhga."

"Oh, the Kachime. Ain't you comin' in?"

"Oh no."

"Why?"

His guide had a fit of laughter, and then turned to go.

"Say, what's your name?"

The answer sounded like "Muckluck."

And just then Nicholas crawled out of the tunnel-like opening leading
into the council-house. He jumped up, beaming at the sight of his
friend.

"Say, Nicholas, who's this fella that's always laughing, no matter what
you say? Calls himself 'Muckluck.'"

The individual referred to gave way to another spasm of merriment,
which infected Nicholas.

"My sister--this one," he explained.

"Oh-h!" The Boy joined in the laugh, and pulled off his Arctic cap with
a bow borrowed straight from the Colonel.

"Princess Muckluck, I'm proud to know you."

"Name no Muckluck," began Nicholas; "name Mahk----"

"Mac? Nonsense! Mac's a man's name--she's Princess Muckluck. Only,
how's a fella to tell, when you dress her like a man?"

The Princess still giggled, while her brother explained.

"No like man. See?" He showed how the skirt of her deerskin parki,
reaching, like her brother's, a little below the knee, was shaped round
in front, and Nicholas's own--all men's parkis were cut straight
across.

"I see. How's your father?"

Nicholas looked grave; even Princess Muckluck stopped laughing.

"Come," said Nicholas, and the Boy followed him on all fours into the
Kachime.

Entering on his stomach, he found himself in a room about sixteen by
twenty feet, two-thirds underground, log-walls chinked with moss, a
roof of poles sloping upwards, tent-like, but leaving an opening in the
middle for a smoke-hole some three feet square, and covered at present
by a piece of thin, translucent skin. With the sole exception of the
smoke-hole, the whole thing was so covered with earth, and capped with
snow, that, expecting a mere cave, one was surprised at the wood-lining
within. The Boy was still more surprised at the concentration, there,
of malignant smells.

He gasped, and was for getting out again as fast as possible, when the
bearskin flap fell behind him over the Kachime end of the
entrance-tunnel.

Through the tobacco-smoke and the stifling air he saw, vaguely, a grave
gathering of bucks sitting, or, rather, lounging and squatting, on the
outer edge of the wide sleeping-bench that ran all round the room,
about a foot and a half from the hewn-log floor.

Their solemn, intent faces were lit grotesquely by the uncertain glow
of two seal-oil lamps, mounted on two posts, planted one in front of
the right sleeping-bench, the other on the left.

The Boy hesitated. Was it possible he could get used to the atmosphere?
Certainly it was warm in here, though there was no fire that he could
see. Nicholas was talking away very rapidly to the half-dozen grave and
reverend signiors, they punctuating his discourse with occasional
grunts and a well-nigh continuous coughing. Nicholas wound up in
English.

"Me tell you: he heap good friend. You ketch um tobacco?" he inquired
suddenly of his guest. Fortunately, the Boy had remembered to "ketch"
that essential, and his little offering was laid before the
council-men. More grunts, and room made for the visitor on the
sleeping-bench next the post that supported one of the lamps, a clay
saucer half-full of seal-oil, in which a burning wick of twisted moss
gave forth a powerful odour, a fair amount of smoke, and a faint light.

The Boy sat down, still staring about him, taking note of the well-hewn
logs, and of the neat attachment of the timbers by a saddle-joint at
the four corners of the roof.

"Who built this?" he inquired of Nicholas.

"Ol' father, an' ... heap ol' men gone dead."

"Gee! Well, whoever did it was on to his job," he said. "I don't seen a
nail in the whole sheebang."

"No, no nail."

The Boy remembered Nicholas's sled, and, looking again at the
disproportionately small hands of the men about him, corrected his
first impression that they were too feminine to be good for much.

A dirty old fellow, weak and sickly in appearance, began to talk
querulously. All the others listened with respect, smoking and making
inarticulate noises now and then. When that discourse was finished, a
fresh one was begun by yet another coughing councillor.

"What's it all about?" the Boy asked.

"Ol' Chief heap sick," said the buck on the Boy's right.

"Ol' Chief, ol' father, b'long me," Nicholas observed with pride.

"Yes; but aren't the Holy Cross people nursing him?"

"Brother Paul gone; white medicine no good."

They all shook their heads and coughed despairingly.

"Then try s'm' other--some yella-brown, Esquimaux kind," hazarded the
Boy lightly, hardly noticing what he was saying till he found nearly
all the eyes of the company fixed intently upon him. Nicholas was
translating, and it was clear the Boy had created a sensation.

"Father Wills no like," said one buck doubtfully. "He make cross-eyes
when Shaman come."

"Oh yes, medicine-man," said the Boy, following the narrative eagerly.

"Shaman go way," volunteered an old fellow who hitherto had held his
peace; "all get sick"--he coughed painfully--"heap Pymeuts die."

"Father Wills come." Nicholas took up the tale afresh. "Shaman come.
Father Wills heap mad. He no let Shaman stay."

"No; him say, 'Go! plenty quick, plenty far. Hey, you! _Mush!_'"

They smoked awhile in silence broken only by coughs.

"Shaman say, 'Yukon Inua plenty mad.'"

"Who is Yukon Inua? Where does he live?"

"Unner Yukon ice," whispered Nicholas. "Oh, the river spirit?... Of
course."

"Him heap strong. Long time"--he motioned back into the ages with one
slim brown hand--"fore Holy Cross here, Yukon Inua take good care
Pymeuts."

"No tell Father Wills?"

"No."

Then in a low guttural voice: "Shaman come again."

"Gracious! When?"

"To-night."

"Jiminny Christmas!"

They sat and smoked and coughed. By-and-by, as if wishing thoroughly to
justify their action, Nicholas resumed:

"You savvy, ol' father try white medicine--four winter, four summer. No
good. Ol' father say, 'Me well man? Good friend Holy Cross, good friend
Russian mission. Me ol'? me sick? Send for Shaman.'"

The entire company grunted in unison.

"You no tell?" Nicholas added with recurrent anxiety.

"No, no; they shan't hear through me. I'm safe."

Presently they all got up, and began removing and setting back the hewn
logs that formed the middle of the floor. It then appeared that,
underneath, was an excavation about two feet deep. In the centre,
within a circle of stones, were the charred remains of a fire, and here
they proceeded to make another.

As soon as it began to blaze, Yagorsha the Story-teller took the cover
off the smoke-hole, so the company was not quite stifled.

A further diversion was created by several women crawling in, bringing
food for the men-folk, in old lard-cans or native wooden kantaks. These
vessels they deposited by the fire, and with an exchange of grunts went
out as they had come.

Nicholas wouldn't let the Boy undo his pack.

"No, we come back," he said, adding something in his own tongue to the
company, and then crawled out, followed by the Boy. Their progress was
slow, for the Boy's "Canadian webfeet" had been left in the Kachime,
and he sank in the snow at every step. Twice in the dusk he stumbled
over an ighloo, or a sled, or some sign of humanity, and asked of the
now silent, preoccupied Nicholas, "Who lives here?" The answer had
been, "Nobody; all dead."

The Boy was glad to see approaching, at last, a human figure. It came
shambling through the snow, with bent head and swaying, jerking gait,
looked up suddenly and sheered off, flitting uncertainly onward, in the
dim light, like a frightened ghost.

"Who is that?"

"Shaman. Him see in dark all same owl. Him know you white man."

The Boy stared after him. The bent figure of the Shaman looked like a
huge bat flying low, hovering, disappearing into the night.

"Those your dogs howling?" the visitor asked, thinking that for sheer
dismalness Pymeut would be hard to beat.

Nicholas stopped suddenly and dropped down; the ground seemed to open
and swallow him. The Boy stooped and saw his friend's feet disappearing
in a hole. He seized one of them. "Hold on; wait for me!"

Nicholas kicked, but to no purpose; he could make only such progress as
his guest permitted.

Presently a gleam. Nicholas had thrust away the flap at the tunnel's
end, and they stood in the house of the Chief of the Pymeuts, that
native of whom Father Wills had said, "He is the richest and most
intelligent man of his tribe."

The single room seemed very small after the spaciousness of the
Kachime, but it was the biggest ighloo in the settlement.

A fire burnt brightly in the middle of the earthen floor, and over it
was bending Princess Muckluck, cooking the evening meal. She nodded,
and her white teeth shone in the blaze. Over in the corner, wrapped in
skins, lay a man on the floor groaning faintly. The salmon, toasting on
sticks over wood coals, smelt very appetising.

"Why, your fish are whole. Don't you clean 'em first?" asked the
visitor, surprised out of his manners.

"No," said Nicholas; "him better no cut."

They sat down by the fire, and the Princess waited on them. The Boy
discovered that it was perfectly true. Yukon salmon broiled in their
skins over a birch fire are the finest eating in the world, and any
"other way" involves a loss of flavour.

He was introduced for the first time to the delights of reindeer
"back-fat," and found even that not so bad.

"You are lucky, Nicholas, to have a sister--such a nice one, too"--(the
Princess giggled)--"to keep house for you."

Nicholas understood, at least, that politeness was being offered, and
he grinned.

"I've got a sister myself. I'll show you her picture some day. I care
about her a lot. I've come up here to make a pile so that we can buy
back our old place in Florida."

He said this chiefly to the Princess, for she evidently had profited
more by her schooling, and understood things quite like a Christian.

"Did you ever eat an orange, Princess?" he continued.

"Kind o' fish?"

"No, fruit; a yella ball that grows on a tree."

"Me know," said Nicholas; "me see him in boxes St. Michael's. Him
bully."

"Yes. Well, we had a lot of trees all full of those yella balls, and we
used to eat as many as we liked. We don't have much winter down where I
live--summer pretty nearly all the time."

"I'd like go there," said the girl.

"Well, will you come and see us, Muckluck? When I've found a gold-mine
and have bought back the Orange Grove, my sister and me are goin' to
live together, like you and Nicholas."

"She look like you?"

"No; and it's funny, too, 'cause we're twins."

"Twins! What's twins?"

"Two people born at the same time."

"No!" ejaculated Nicholas.

"Why, yes, and they always care a heap about each other when they're
twins."

But Muckluck stared incredulously.

"_Two_ at the same time!" she exclaimed. "It's like that, then, in your
country?"

The Boy saw not astonishment alone, but something akin to disgust in
the face of the Princess. He felt, vaguely, he must justify his
twinship.

"Of course; there's nothing strange about it; it happens quite often."

"_Often?_"

"Yes; people are very much pleased. Once in a while there are even
three--"

"All at the same time!" Her horror turned into shrieks of laughter.
"Why, your women are like our dogs! Human beings and seals never have
more than one at a time!"

The old man in the corner began to moan and mutter feverishly. Nicholas
went to him, bent down, and apparently tried to soothe him. Muckluck
gathered up the supper-things and set them aside.

"You were at the Holy Cross school?" asked the Boy.

"Six years--with Mother Aloysius and the Sisters. They very good."

"So you're a Catholic, then?"

"Oh yes."

"You speak the best English I've heard from a native."

"I love Sister Winifred. I want to go back--unless"--she regarded the
Boy with a speculative eye--"unless I go your country."

The sick man began to talk deliriously, and lifted up a terrible old
face with fever-bright eyes glaring through wisps of straight gray
hair. No voice but his was heard for some time in the ighloo, then, "I
fraid," said Muckluck, crouching near the fire, but with head turned
over shoulder, staring at the sick man.

"No wonder," said the Boy, thinking such an apparition enough to
frighten anybody.

"Nicholas 'fraid, too," she whispered, "when the devil talks."

"The devil?"

"Yes. Sh! You hear?"

The delirious chatter went on, rising to a scream. Nicholas came
hurrying back to the fire with a look of terror in his face.

"Me go get Shaman."

"No; he come soon." Muckluck clung to him.

They both crouched down by the fire.

"You 'fraid he'll die before the Shaman gets here?"

"Oh no," said Muckluck soothingly, but her face belied her words.

The sick man called hoarsely. Nicholas got him some water, and propped
him up to drink. He glared over the cup with wild eyes, his teeth
chattering against the tin. The Boy, himself, felt a creep go down his
spine.

Muckluck moved closer to him.

"Mustn't say he die," she whispered. "If Nicholas think he die, he drag
him out--leave him in the snow." "Never!"

"Sh!" she made him a sign to be quiet. The rambling fever-talk went on,
Nicholas listening fascinated. "No Pymeut," she whispered, "like live
in ighloo any more if man die there."

"You mean, if they know a person's dying they haul him out o'
doors--and _leave_ him a night like this?"

"If not, how get him out ... after?"

"Why, carry him out."

"_Touch_ him? Touch _dead_ man?" She shuddered. "Oh, no. Bad, bad! I no
think he die," she resumed, raising her voice. But Nicholas rejoined
them, silent, looking very grave. Was he contemplating turning the poor
old fellow out? The Boy sat devising schemes to prevent the barbarism
should it come to that. The wind had risen; it was evidently going to
be a rough night.

With imagination full of sick people turned out to perish, the Boy
started up as a long wail came, muffled, but keen still with anguish,
down through the snow and the earth, by way of the smoke-hole, into the
dim little room.

"Oh, Nicholas! what was that?"

"What?"

"Wait! Listen! There, that! Why, it's a child crying."

"No, him Chee."

"Let's go and bring him in."

"Bring dog in here?"

"Dog! That's no dog."

"Yes, him dog; him my Chee."

"Making a human noise like that?"

Nicholas nodded. The only sounds for some time were the doleful
lamenting of the Mahlemeut without, and the ravings of the Pymeut Chief
within.

The Boy was conscious of a queer, dream-like feeling. All this had been
going on up here for ages. It had been like this when Columbus came
over the sea. All the world had changed since then, except the
steadfast North. The Boy sat up suddenly, and rubbed his eyes. With
that faculty on the part of the unlearned that one is tempted to call
"American," a faculty for assimilating the grave conclusions of the
doctors, and importing them light-heartedly into personal experience,
he realised that what met his eyes here in Nicholas' house was one of
the oldest pictures humanity has presented. This was what was going on
by the Yukon, when King John, beside that other river, was yielding
Magna Charta to the barons. While the Caesars were building Rome the
Pymeut forefathers were building just such ighloos as this. While
Pheidias wrought his marbles, the men up here carved walrus-ivory, and,
in lieu of Homer, recited "The Crow's Last Flight" and "The Legend of
the Northern Lights."

Nicholas had risen again, his mouth set hard, his small hands shaking.
He unrolled an old reindeer-skin full of holes, and examined it. At
this the girl, who had been about to make up the fire, threw down the
bit of driftwood and hid her face.

The sick man babbled on.

Faint under the desolate sound another--sibilant, clearer, uncannily
human. Nicholas had heard, too, for he threw down the tattered
deerskin, and went to the other side of the fire. Voices in the tunnel.
Nicholas held back the flap and gravely waited there, till one Pymeut
after another crawled in. They were the men the Boy had seen at the
Kachime, with one exception--a vicious-looking old fellow, thin, wiry,
with a face like a smoked chimpanzee and eyes of unearthly brightness.
He was given the best place by the fire, and held his brown claws over
the red coals while the others were finding their places.

The Boy, feeling he would need an interpreter, signed to Muckluck to
come and sit by him. Grave as a judge she got up, and did as she was
bid.

"That the Shaman?" whispered the Boy.

She nodded. It was plain that this apparition, however hideous, had
given her great satisfaction.

"Any more people coming?"

"Got no more now in Pymeut."

"Where is everybody?"

"Some sick, some dead."

The old Chief rambled on, but not so noisily.

"See," whispered Muckluck, "devil 'fraid already. He begin to speak
small."

The Shaman never once looked towards the sufferer till he himself was
thoroughly warm. Even then he withdrew from the genial glow, only to
sit back, humped together, blinking, silent. The Boy began to feel
that, if he did finally say something it would be as surprising as to
hear an aged monkey break into articulate speech.

Nicholas edged towards the Shaman, presenting something in a birch-bark
dish.

"What's that?"

"A deer's tongue," whispered Muckluck.

The Boy remembered the Koyukun song, "Thanks for a good meal to
Kuskokala, the Shaman."

Nicholas seemed to be haranguing the Shaman deferentially, but with
spirit. He pulled out from the bottom of his father's bed three fine
marten-skins, shook them, and dangled them before the Shaman. They
produced no effect. He then took a box of matches and a plug of the
Boy's tobacco out of his pocket, and held the lot towards the Shaman,
seeming to say that to save his life he couldn't rake up another
earthly thing to tempt his Shamanship. Although the Shaman took the
offerings his little black eyes glittered none the less rapaciously, as
they flew swiftly round the room, falling at last with a vicious snap
and gleam upon the Boy. Then it was that for the first time he spoke.

"Nuh! nuh!" interrupted Muckluck, chattering volubly, and evidently
commending the Boy to the Shaman. Several of the old bucks laughed.

"He say Yukon Inua no like you."

"He think white men bring plague, bring devils."

"Got some money?" whispered Muckluck.

"Not here."

The Boy saw the moment when he would be turned out. He plunged his
hands down into his trousers pockets and fished up a knife, his
second-best one, fortunately.

"Tell him I'm all right, and he can give this to Yukon Inua with my
respects."

Muckluck explained and held up the shining object, blades open,
corkscrew curling attractively before the covetous eyes of the Shaman.
When he could endure the temptation no longer his two black claws shot
out, but Nicholas intercepted the much-envied object, while, as it
seemed, he drove a more advantageous bargain. Terms finally settled,
the Shaman seized the knife, shut it, secreted it with a final grunt,
and stood up.

Everyone made way for him. He jerked his loosely-jointed body over to
the sick man, lifted the seal-oil lamp with his shaky old hands, and
looked at the patient long and steadily. When he had set the lamp down
again, with a grunt, he put his black thumb on the wick and squeezed
out the light. When he came back to the fire, which had burnt low, he
pulled open his parki and drew out an ivory wand, and a long eagle's
feather with a fluffy white tuft of some sort at the end. He deposited
these solemnly, side by side, on the ground, about two feet apart.

Turning round to the dying fire, he took a stick, and with Nicholas's
help gathered the ashes up and laid them over the smouldering brands.

The ighloo was practically dark. No one dared speak save the yet
unabashed devil in the sick man, who muttered angrily. It was curious
to see how the coughing of the others, which in the Kachime had been
practically constant, was here almost silenced. Whether this was
achieved through awe and respect for the Shaman, or through nervous
absorption in the task he had undertaken, who shall say?

The Boy felt rather than saw that the Shaman had lain down between the
ivory wand and the eagle's feather. Each man sat as still as death,
listening, staring, waiting.

Presently a little jet of flame sprang up out of the ashes. The Shaman
lifted his head angrily, saw it was no human hand that had dared turn
on the light, growled, and pulled something else from under his
inexhaustible parki. The Boy peered curiously. The Shaman seemed to be
shutting out the offensive light by wrapping himself up in something,
head and all.

"What's he doing now?" the Boy ventured to whisper under cover of the
devil's sudden loud remonstrance, the sick man at this point breaking
into ghastly groans.

"He puts on the Kamlayka. Sh!"

The Shaman, still enveloped head and body, began to beat softly,
keeping time with the eagle's feather. You could follow the faint gleam
of the ivory wand, but on what it fell with that hollow sound no eye
could see. Now, at intervals, he uttered a cry, a deep bass
danger-note, singularly unnerving. Someone answered in a higher key,
and they kept this up in a kind of rude, sharply-timed duet, till one
by one the whole group of natives was gathered into the swing of it,
swept along involuntarily, it would seem, by some magnetic attraction
of the rhythm.

_"Ung hi yah! ah-ha-yah! yah-yah-yah!"_ was the chorus to that deep,
recurrent cry of the Shaman. Its accompanying drum-note was muffled
like far-off thunder, conjured out of the earth by the ivory wand.

Presently a scream of terror from the bundle of skins and bones in the
corner.

"Ha!" Muckluck clasped her hands and rocked back and forth.

"They'll frighten the old man to death if he's conscious," said the
Boy, half rising.

She pulled him down.

"No, no; frighten devil." She was shaking with excitement and with
ecstacy.

The sick man cried aloud. A frenzy seemed to seize the Shaman. He
raised his voice in a series of blood-curdling shrieks, then dropped
it, moaning, whining, then bursting suddenly into diabolic laughter,
bellowing, whispering, ventriloquising, with quite extraordinary skill.
The dim and foetid cave might indeed be full of devils.

If the hideous outcry slackened, but an instant, you heard the sick man
raving with the preternatural strength of delirium, or of mad
resentment. For some time it seemed a serious question as to who would
come out ahead. Just as you began to feel that the old Chief was at the
end of his tether, and ready to give up the ghost, the Shaman, rising
suddenly with a demoniac yell, flung himself down on the floor in a
convulsion. His body writhed horribly; he kicked and snapped and
quivered.

The Boy was for shielding Muckluck from the crazy flinging out of legs
and arms; but she leaned over, breathless, to catch what words might
escape the Shaman during the fit, for these were omens of deep
significance.

When at last the convulsive movements quieted, and the Shaman lay like
one dead, except for an occasional faint twitch, the Boy realised for
the first time that the sick man, too, was dumb. Dead? The only sound
now was the wind up in the world above. Even the dog was still.

The silence was more horrible than the hell-let-loose of a few minutes
before.

The dim group sat there, motionless, under the spell of the stillness
even more than they had been under the spell of the noise. At last a
queer, indescribable scratching and scraping came up out of the bowels
of the earth.

How does the old devil manage to do that? thought the Boy. But the
plain truth was that his heart was in his mouth, for the sound came
from the opposite direction, behind the Boy, and not near the Shaman at
all. It grew louder, came nearer, more inexplicable, more awful. He
felt he could not bear it another minute, sprang up, and stood there,
tense, waiting for what might befall. Were _all_ the others dead, then?

Not a sound in the place, only that indescribable stirring of something
in the solid earth under his feet.

The Shaman had his knife. A ghastly sensation of stifling came over the
Boy as he thought of a struggle down there under the earth and the
snow.

On came the horrible underground thing. Desperately the Boy stirred the
almost extinct embers with his foot, and a faint glow fell on the
terror-frozen faces of the natives, fell on the bear-skin flap. _It
moved!_ A huge hand came stealing round. A hand? The skeleton of a
hand--white, ghastly, with fingers unimaginably long. No mortal in
Pymeut had a hand like that--no mortal in all the world!

A crisp, smart sound, and a match blazed. A tall, lean figure rose up
from behind the bear-skin and received the sudden brightness full in
his face, pale and beautiful, but angry as an avenging angel's. For an
instant the Boy still thought it a spectre, the delusion of a
bewildered brain, till the girl cried out, "Brother Paul!" and fell
forward on the floor, hiding her face in her hands.

"Light! make a light!" he commanded. Nicholas got up, dazed but
obedient, and lit the seal-oil lamp.

The voice of the white man, the call for light, reached the Shaman. He
seemed to shiver and shrink under the folds of the Kamlayka. But
instead of getting up and looking his enemy in the face, he wriggled
along on his belly, still under cover of the Kamlayka, till he got to
the bear-skin, pushed it aside with a motion of the hooded head, and
crawled out like some snaky symbol of darkness and superstition fleeing
before the light.

"Brother Paul!" sobbed the girl, "don't, _don't_ tell Sister Winifred."

He took no notice of her, bending down over the motionless bundle in
the corner.

"You've killed him, I suppose?"

"Brother Paul--" began Nicholas, faltering.

"Oh, I heard the pandemonium." He lifted his thin white face to the
smoke-hole. "It's all useless, useless. I might as well go and leave
you to your abominations. But instead, go _you_, all of you--go!" He
flung out his long arms, and the group broke and scuttled, huddling
near the bear-skin, fighting like rats to get out faster than the
narrow passage permitted.

The Boy turned from watching the instantaneous flight, the scuffle, and
the disappearance, to find the burning eyes of the Jesuit fixed
fascinated on his face. If Brother Paul had appeared as a spectre in
the ighloo, it was plain that he looked upon the white face present at
the diabolic rite as dream or devil. The Boy stood up. The lay-brother
started, and crossed himself.

"In Christ's name, what--who are you?"

"I--a--I come from the white camp ten miles below."

"And you were _here_--you allowed this? Ah-h!" He flung up his arms,
the pale lips moved convulsively, but no sound came forth.

"I--you think I ought to have interfered?" began the Boy.

"I think--" the Brother began bitterly, checked himself, knelt down,
and felt the old man's pulse.

Nicholas at the bear-skin was making the Boy signs to come.

The girl was sobbing with her face on the ground. Again Nicholas
beckoned, and then disappeared. There seemed to be nothing to do but to
follow his host. When the bear-skin had dropped behind the Boy, and he
crawled after Nicholas along the dark passage, he heard the muffled
voice of the girl praying: "Oh, Mary, Mother of God, don't let him tell
Sister Winifred."

CHAPTER VI

A PENITENTIAL JOURNEY

  "... Certain London parishes still receive L12 per annum
   for fagots to burn heretics."--JOHN RICHARD GREEN.

The Boy slept that night in the Kachime beside a very moody, restless
host. Yagorsha dispensed with the formality of going to bed, and seemed
bent on doing what he could to keep other people awake. He sat
monologuing under the seal lamp till the Boy longed to throw the dish
of smouldering oil at his head. But strangely enough, when, through
sheer fatigue, his voice failed and his chin fell on his broad chest, a
lad of fourteen or so, who had also had difficulty to keep awake, would
jog Yagorsha's arm, repeating interrogatively the last phrase used,
whereon the old Story-Teller would rouse himself and begin afresh, with
an iteration of the previous statement. If the lad failed to keep him
going, one or other of the natives would stir uneasily, lift a head
from under his deerskin, and remonstrate. Yagorsha, opening his eyes
with a guilty start, would go on with the yarn. When morning came, and
the others waked, Yagorsha and the lad slept.

Nicholas and all the rest who shared the bench at night, and the fire
in the morning, seemed desperately depressed and glum. A heavy cloud
hung over Pymeut, for Pymeut was in disgrace.

About sunset the women came in with the kantaks and the lard-cans.
Yagorsha sat up and rubbed his eyes. He listened eagerly, while the
others questioned the women. The old Chief wasn't dead at all. No, he
was much better. Brother Paul had been about to all the house-bound
sick people, and given everybody medicine, and flour, and a terrible
scolding. Oh yes, he was angrier than anybody had ever been before.
Some natives from the school at Holy Cross were coming for him
tomorrow, and they were all going down river and across the southern
portage to the branch mission at Kuskoquim.

"Down river? Sure?"

Yes, sure. Brother Paul had not waited to come with those others, being
so anxious to bring medicine and things to Ol' Chief quick; and this
was how he was welcomed back to the scene of his labours. A Devil's
Dance was going on! That was what he called it.

"You savvy?" said Nicholas to his guest. "Brother Paul go plenty soon.
You wait."

I'll have company back to camp, was the Boy's first thought, and
then--would there be any fun in that after all? It was plain Brother
Paul was no such genial companion as Father Wills.

And so it was that he did not desert Nicholas, although Brother Paul's
companions failed to put in an appearance on the following morning.
However, on the third day after the incident of the Shaman (who seemed
to have vanished into thin air), Brother Paul shook the snow of Pymeut
from his feet, and with three Indians from the Holy Cross school and a
dog-team, he disappeared from the scene. Not till he had been gone some
time did Nicholas venture to return to the parental roof.

They found Muckluck subdued but smiling, and the old man astonishingly
better. It looked almost as if he had turned the corner, and was
getting well.

There was certainly something very like magic in such a recovery, but
it was quickly apparent that this aspect of the case was not what
occupied Nicholas, as he sat regarding his parent with a keen and
speculative eye. He asked him some question, and they discussed the
point volubly, Muckluck following the argument with close attention.
Presently it seemed that father and son were taking the guest into
consideration. Muckluck also turned to him now and then, and by-and-by
she said: "I think he go."

"Go where?"

"Holy Cross," said the old man eagerly.

"Brother Paul," Nicholas explained. "He go _down_ river. We get Holy
Cross--more quick."

"I see. Before he can get back. But why do you want to go?"

"See Father Brachet."

"Sister Winifred say: 'Always tell Father Brachet; then everything all
right,'" contributed Muckluck.

"You tell Pymeut belly solly," the old Chief said.

"Nicholas know he not able tell all like white man," Muckluck
continued. "Nicholas say you good--hey? you good?"

"Well--a--pretty tollable, thank you."

"You go with Nicholas; you make Father Brachet unnerstan'--forgive.
Tell Sister Winifred--" She stopped, perplexed, vaguely distrustful at
the Boy's chuckling.

"You think we can explain it all away, hey?" He made a gesture of happy
clearance. "Shaman and everything, hey?"

"Me no can," returned Nicholas, with engaging modesty. "_You_--" He
conveyed a limitless confidence.

"Well, I'll be jiggered if I don't try. How far is it?"

"Go slow--one sleep."

"Well, we won't go slow. We've got to do penance. When shall we start?"

"Too late now. Tomalla," said the Ol' Chief.

      *       *       *       *       *

They got up very early--it seemed to the Boy like the middle of the
night--stole out of the dark Kachime, and hurried over the hard crust
that had formed on the last fall of snow, down the bleak, dim <DW72> to
the Ol' Chief's, where they were to breakfast.

Not only Muckluck was up and doing, but the Ol' Chief seemed galvanised
into unwonted activity. He was doddering about between his bed and the
fire, laying out the most imposing parkis and fox-skins, fur blankets,
and a pair of seal-skin mittens, all of which, apparently, he had had
secreted under his bed, or between it and the wall.

They made a sumptuous breakfast of tea, the last of the bacon the Boy
had brought, and slapjacks.

The Boy kept looking from time to time at the display of furs. Father
Wills was right; he ought to buy a parki with a hood, but he had meant
to have the priest's advice, or Mac's, at least, before investing. Ol'
Chief watching him surreptitiously, and seeing he was no nearer making
an offer, felt he should have some encouragement. He picked up the
seal-skin mittens and held them out.

"Present," said Ol' Chief. "You tell Father Brachet us belly solly."

"Oh, I'll handle him without gloves," said the Boy, giving back the
mittens. But Ol' Chief wouldn't take them. He was holding up the
smaller of the two parkis.

"You no like?"

"Oh, very nice."

"You no buy?"

"You go sleep on trail," said Nicholas, rising briskly. "You die, no
parki."

The Boy laughed and shook his head, but still Ol' Chief held out the
deer-skin shirt, and caressed the wolf-fringe of the hood.

"Him cheap."

"How cheap?"

"Twenty-fi' dollah."

"Don't know as I call that cheap."

"Yes," said Nicholas. "St. Michael, him fifty dollah."

The Boy looked doubtful.

"I saw a parki there at the A. C. Store about like this for twenty."

"A. C. parki, peeluck," Nicholas said contemptuously. Then patting the
one his father held out, "You wear _him_ fifty winter."

"Lord forbid! Anyhow, I've only got about twenty dollars' worth of
tobacco and stuff along with me."

"Me come white camp," Nicholas volunteered. "Me get more fi' dollah."

"Oh, will you? Now, that's very kind of you." But Nicholas, impervious
to irony, held out the parki. The Boy laughed, and took it. Nicholas
stooped, picked up the fur mittens, and, laying them on the Boy's arm,
reiterated his father's "Present!" and then departed to the Kachime to
bring down the Boy's pack.

The Princess meanwhile had withdrawn to her own special corner, where
in the daytime appeared only a roll of plaited mats, and a little,
cheap, old hat-box, which she evidently prized most of all she had in
the world.

"You see? Lock!"

The Boy expressed surprise and admiration.

"No! Really! I call that fine."

"I got present for Father Brachet"; and turning over the rags and
nondescript rubbish of the hat-box, she produced an object whose use
was not immediately manifest. A section of walrus ivory about six
inches long had been cut in two. One of these curved halves had been
mounted on four ivory legs. In the upper flat side had been stuck, at
equal distances from the two ends and from each other, two delicate
branches of notched ivory, standing up like horns. Between these sat an
ivory mannikin, about three inches long, with a woeful countenance and
with arms held out like one beseeching mercy.

"It's fine," said the Boy, "but--a--what's it for? Just look pretty?"

"Wait, I show you." She dived into the hat-box, and fished up a bit of
battered pencil. With an air of pride, she placed the pencil across the
outstretched hands of the ivory suppliant, asking the Boy in dumb-show,
was not this a pen-rest that might be trusted to melt the heart of the
Holy Father?

"This way, too." She illustrated how anyone embarrassed by the
possession of more than one pencil could range them in tiers on the
ivory horns above the head of the Woeful One.

"I call that scrumptious! And he looks as if he was saying he was sorry
all the time."

She nodded, delighted that the Boy comprehended the subtle symbolism.

"One more!" she said, showing her dazzling teeth. Like a child playing
a game, she half shut the hat-box and hugged it lovingly. Then with
eyes sparkling, slowly the small hand crept in--was thrust down the
side and drew out with a rapturous "Ha!" a gaudy advertisement card,
setting forth the advantages of smoking "Kentucky Leaf" She looked at
it fondly. Then slowly, regretfully, all the fun gone now, she passed
it to the Boy.

"For Sister Winifred!" she said, like one who braces herself to make
some huge renunciation. "You tell her I send with my love, and I always
say my prayers. I very good. Hey? You tell Sister Winifred?"

"_Sure_," said the Boy.

The Ol' Chief was pulling the other parki over his head. Nicholas
reappeared with the visitor's effects. Under the Boy's eyes, he calmly
confiscated all the tea and tobacco. But nothing had been touched in
the owner's absence.

"Look here: just leave me enough tea to last till I get home. I'll make
it up to you."

Nicholas, after some reflection, agreed. Then he bustled about,
gathered together an armful of things, and handed the Boy a tea-kettle
and an axe.

"You bring--dogs all ready. Mush!" and he was gone.

To the Boy's surprise, while he and Muckluck were getting the food and
presents together, the lively Ol' Chief--so lately dying--made off, in
a fine new parki, on all fours, curious, no doubt, to watch the
preparations without.

But not a bit of it. The Ol' Chief's was a more intimate concern in the
expedition. When the Boy joined him, there he was sitting up in
Nicholas's sled, appallingly emaciated, but brisk as you please,
ordering the disposition of the axe and rifle along either side, the
tea-kettle and grub between his feet, showing how the deer-skin
blankets should be wrapped, and especially was he dictatorial about the
lashing of the mahout.

"How far's he comin'?" asked the Boy, astonished.

"All the way," said Muckluck. "He want to be _sure_."

Several bucks came running down from the Kachime, and stood about,
coughed and spat, and offered assistance or advice. When at last Ol'
Chief was satisfied with the way the raw walrus-hide was laced and
lashed, Nicholas cracked his whip and shouted, "Mush! God-damn! Mush!"

"Good-bye, Princess. We'll take care of your father, though I'm sure he
oughtn't to go."

"Oh yes," answered Muckluck confidently; then lower, "Shaman make all
well quick. Hey? Goo'-bye."

"Good-bye."

"Don't forget tell Sister Winifred I say my p--" But the Boy had to run
to keep up with the sled.

For some time he kept watching the Ol' Chief with unabated
astonishment, wondering if he'd die on the way. But, after all, the
open-air cure was tried for his trouble in various other parts of the
world--why not here?

There was no doubt about it, Nicholas had a capital team of dogs, and
knew how to drive them. Two-legged folk often had to trot pretty
briskly to keep up. Pymeut was soon out of sight.

"Nicholas, what'll you take for a couple o' your dogs?"

"No sell."

"Pay you a good long price."

"No sell."

"Well, will you help me to get a couple?"

"Me try"; but he spoke dubiously.

"What do they cost?"

"Good leader cost hunder and fifty in St. Michael."

"You don't mean dollahs?"

"Mean dollahs."

"Come off the roof!"

But Nicholas seemed to think there was no need.

"You mean that if I offer you a hundred and fifty dollahs for your
leader, straight off, this minute, you won't take it?"

"No, no take," said the Prince, stolidly.

And his friend reflected. Nicholas without a dog-team would be
practically a prisoner for eight months of the year, and not only that,
but a prisoner in danger of starving to death. After all, perhaps a
dog-team in such a country _was_ priceless, and the Ol' Chief was
travelling in truly royal style.

However, it was stinging cold, and running after those expensive dogs
was an occupation that palled. By-and-by, "How much is your sled
worth?" he asked Ol' Chief.

"Six sables," said the monarch.

      *       *       *       *       *

It was a comfort to sight a settlement off there on the point.

"What's this place?"

"Fish-town."

"Pymeuts there?"

"No, all gone. Come back when salmon run."

Not a creature there, as Nicholas had foretold--a place built wilfully
on the most exposed point possible, bleak beyond belief. If you open
your mouth at this place on the Yukon, you have to swallow a hurricane.
The Boy choked, turned his back to spit out the throttling blast, and
when he could catch his breath inquired:

"This a good place for a village?"

"Bully. Wind come, blow muskeetah--"

Nicholas signified a remote destination with his whip.

"B'lieve you! This kind o' thing would discourage even a mosquito."

In the teeth of the blast they went past the Pymeut Summer Resort.
Unlike Pymeut proper, its cabins were built entirely above ground, of
logs unchinked, its roofs of watertight birch-bark.

A couple of hours farther on Nicholas permitted a halt on the edge of a
struggling little grove of dwarfed cotton-wood.

The kettle and things being withdrawn from various portions of the Ol'
Chief's person, he, once more warmly tucked up and tightly lashed down,
drew the edge of the outer coverlid up till it met the wolf-skin fringe
of his parki hood, and relapsed into slumber.

Nicholas chopped down enough green wood to make a hearth.

"What! bang on the snow?"

Nicholas nodded, laid the logs side by side, and on them built a fire
of the seasoned wood the Boy had gathered. They boiled the kettle, made
tea, and cooked some fish.

Ol' Chief waked up just in time to get his share. The Boy, who had kept
hanging about the dogs with unabated interest, had got up from the fire
to carry them the scraps, when Nicholas called out quite angrily, "No!
no feed dogs," and waved the Boy off.

"What! It's only some of my fish. Fish is what they eat, ain't it?"

"No feed now; wait till night."

"What for? They're hungry."

"You give fish--dogs no go any more."

Peremptorily he waved the Boy off, and fell to work at packing up. Not
understanding Nicholas's wisdom, the Boy was feeling a little sulky and
didn't help. He finished up the fish himself, then sat on his heels by
the fire, scorching his face while his back froze, or wheeling round
and singeing his new parki while his hands grew stiff in spite of
seal-skin mittens.

No, it was no fun camping with the temperature at thirty degrees below
zero--better to be trotting after those expensive and dinnerless dogs;
and he was glad when they started again.

But once beyond the scant shelter of the cottonwood, it was evident the
wind had risen. It was blowing straight out of the north and into their
faces. There were times when you could lean your whole weight against
the blast.

After sunset the air began to fill with particles of frozen snow. They
did not seem to fall, but continually to whirl about, and present
stinging points to the travellers' faces. Talking wasn't possible even
if you were in the humour, and the dead, blank silence of all nature,
unbroken hour after hour, became as nerve-wearing as the cold and
stinging wind. The Boy fell behind a little. Those places on his heels
that had been so badly galled had begun to be troublesome again. Well,
it wouldn't do any good to holla about it--the only thing to do was to
harden one's foolish feet. But in his heart he felt that all the
time-honoured conditions of a penitential journey were being complied
with, except on the part of the arch sinner. Ol' Chief seemed to be
getting on first-rate.

The dogs, hardly yet broken in to the winter's work, were growing
discouraged, travelling so long in the eye of the wind. And Nicholas,
in the kind of stolid depression that had taken possession of him,
seemed to have forgotten even to shout "Mush!" for a very long time.

By-and-by Ol' Chief called out sharply, and Nicholas seemed to wake up.
He stopped, looked back, and beckoned to his companion.

The Boy came slowly on.

"Why you no push?"

"Push what?"

"Handle-bar."

He went to the sled and illustrated, laying his hands on the
arrangement at the back that stood out like the handle behind a baby's
perambulator. The Boy remembered. Of course, there were usually two men
with each sled. One ran ahead and broke trail with snow-shoes, but that
wasn't necessary today, for the crust bore. But the other man's
business was to guide the sled from behind and keep it on the trail.

"Me gottah drive, you gottah push. Dogs heap tired."

Nicholas spoke severely. The Boy stared a moment at what he mentally
called "the nerve of the fella," laughed, and took hold, swallowing
Nicholas's intimation that he, after all, was far more considerate of
the dogs than the person merely sentimental, who had been willing to
share his dinner with them.

"How much farther?"

"Oh, pretty quick now."

The driver cracked his whip, called out to the dogs, and suddenly
turned off from the river course. Unerringly he followed an invisible
trail, turning sharply up a slough, and went zig-zagging on without
apparent plan. It was better going when they got to a frozen lake, and
the dogs seemed not to need so much encouragement. It would appear an
impossible task to steer accurately with so little light; but once on
the other side of the lake it was found that Nicholas had hit a
well-beaten track as neatly as a thread finds the needle's eye.

Far off, out of the dimness, came a sound--welcome because it was
something to break the silence but hardly cheerful in itself.

"Hear that, Nicholas?"

"Mission dogs."

Their own had already thrown up their noses and bettered the pace.

The barking of the dogs had not only announced the mission to the
travellers, but to the mission a stranger at the gates.

Before anything could be seen of the settlement, clumsy, fur-clad
figures had come running down the <DW72> and across the ice, greeting
Nicholas with hilarity.

Indian or Esquimaux boys they seemed to be, who talked some jargon
understanded of the Pymeut pilot. The Boy, lifting tired eyes, saw
something white glimmering high in the air up on the right river bank.
In this light it refused to form part of any conceivable plan, but hung
there in the air detached, enigmatic, spectral. Below it, more on
humanity's level, could be dimly distinguished, now, the Mission
Buildings, apparently in two groups with an open space in the middle.
Where are the white people? wondered the Boy, childishly impatient.
Won't they come and welcome us? He followed the Esquimaux and Indians
from the river up to the left group of buildings. With the heathen
jargon beating on his ears, he looked up suddenly, and realized what
the white thing was that had shone out so far. In the middle of the
open space a wooden cross stood up, encrusted with frost crystals, and
lifting gleaming arms out of the gloom twenty feet or so above the
heads of the people.

"Funny thing for an Agnostic," he admitted to himself, "but I'm right
glad to see a Christian sign." And as he knocked at the door of the big
two-story log-house on the left he defended himself. "It's the
swing-back of the pendulum after a big dose of Pymeut and heathen
tricks. I welcome it as a mark of the white man." He looked over his
shoulder a little defiantly at the Holy Cross. Recognition of what the
high white apparition was had given him a queer jolt, stirring
unsuspected things in imagination and in memory. He had been accustomed
to see that symbol all his life, and it had never spoken to him before.
Up here it cried aloud and dominated the scene. "Humph!" he said to
himself, "to look at you a body'd think 'The Origin' had never been
written, and Spencer and Huxley had never been born.' He knocked again,
and again turned about to scan the cross.

"Just as much a superstition, just as much a fetich as Kaviak's
seal-plug or the Shaman's eagle feather. With long looking at a couple
of crossed sticks men grow as dazed, as hypnotized, as Pymeuts watching
a Shaman's ivory wand. All the same, I'm not sure that faith in 'First
Principles' would build a house like this in the Arctic Regions, and
it's convenient to find it here--if only they'd open the door."

He gave another thundering knock, and then nearly fell backwards into
the snow, for Brother Paul stood on the threshold holding up a lamp.

"I--a--oh! How do you do? Can I come in?"

Brother Paul, still with the look of the Avenging Angel on his pale,
young face, held the door open to let the Boy come in. Then, leaning
out into the night and lifting the lamp high, "Is that Nicholas?" he
said sternly.

But the Pymeuts and the school-boys had vanished. He came in and set
down the lamp.

"We--a--we heard you were going down river," said the Boy, tamely, for
he had not yet recovered himself after such an unexpected blow.

"Are you cold? Are you wet?" demanded Brother Paul, standing erect,
unwelcoming, by the table that held the lamp.

The Boy pulled himself together.

"Look here"--he turned away from the comforting stove and confronted
the Jesuit--"those Pymeuts are not only cold and wet and sick too, but
they're sorry. They've come to ask forgiveness."

"It's easily done."

Such scorn you would hardly expect from a follower of the meek
Galilean.

"No, not easily done, a penance like this. I know, for I've just
travelled that thirty miles with 'em over the ice from Pymeut."

"You? Yes, it amuses you."

The sombre eyes shone with a cold, disconcerting light.

"Well, to tell you the truth, I've been better amused."

The Boy looked down at his weary, wounded feet. And the others--where
were his fellow pilgrims? It struck him as comic that the upshot of the
journey should be that he was doing penance for the Pymeuts, but he
couldn't smile with that offended archangel in front of him.

"Thirty miles over the ice, in the face of a norther, hasn't been so
'easy' even for me. And I'm not old, nor sick--no, nor frightened,
Brother Paul."

He flung up his head, but his heart failed him even while he made the
boast. Silently, for a moment, they confronted each other.

"Where are you bound for?"

"I--a--" The Boy had a moment of wondering if he was expected to answer
"Hell," and he hesitated.

"Are you on your way up the river?"

"No--I" (was the man not going to let them rest their wicked bones
there a single night?)--"a--I--"

The frozen river and the wind-racked wood were as hospitable as the
beautiful face of the brother. Involuntarily the Boy shivered.

"I came to see the Father Superior."

He dropped back into a chair.

"The Father Superior is busy."

"I'll wait."

"And very tired."

"So'm I."

"--worn out with the long raging of the plague. I have waited till he
is less harassed to tell him about the Pymeuts' deliberate depravity.
Nicholas, too!--one of our own people, one of the first pupils of the
school, a communicant in the church; distinguished by a thousand
kindnesses. And this the return!"

"The return is that he takes his backsliding so to heart, he can't rest
without coming to confess and to beg the Father Superior--"

"I shall tell the Father Superior what I heard and saw. He will agree
that, for the sake of others who are trying to resist temptation, an
example should be made of Nicholas and of his father."

"And yet you nursed the old man and were kind to him, I believe, after
the offense."

"I--I thought you had killed him. But even you must see that we cannot
have a man received here as Nicholas was--the most favoured child of
the mission--who helps to perpetuate the degrading blasphemies of his
unhappy race. It's nothing to you; you even encourage--"

"'Pon my soul--" But Brother Paul struck in with an impassioned
earnestness:

"We spend a life-time making Christians of these people; and such as
you come here, and in a week undo the work of years."

"I--_I?_"

"It's only eighteen months since I myself came, but already I've
seen--" The torrent poured out with never a pause. "Last summer some
white prospectors bribed our best native teacher to leave us and become
a guide. He's a drunken wreck now somewhere up on the Yukon Flats. You
take our boys for pilots, you entice our girls away with trinkets--"

"Great Caesar! _I_ don't."

But vain was protest. For Brother Paul the visitor was not a particular
individual. He stood there for the type of the vicious white
adventurer.

The sunken eyes of the lay-brother, burning, impersonal, saw not a
particular young man and a case compounded of mixed elements, but--The
Enemy! against whom night and day he waged incessant warfare.

"The Fathers and Sisters wear out their lives to save these people. We
teach them with incredible pains the fundamental rules of civilization;
we teach them how to save their souls alive." The Boy had jumped up and
laid his hand on the door-knob. "_You_ come. You teach them to smoke--"

The Boy wheeled round.

"I don't smoke."

"... and to gamble."

"Nicholas taught _me_ to gamble. Brother Paul, I swear--"

"Yes, and to swear and get drunk, and so find the shortest way to
hell."

"Father Brachet! Father Wills!" a voice called without.

The door-knob turned under the Boy's hand, and before he could more
than draw back, a whiff of winter blew into the room, and a creature
stood there such as no man looks to find on his way to an Arctic gold
camp. A girl of twenty odd, with the face of a saint, dressed in the
black habit of the Order of St. Anne.

"Oh, Brother Paul! you are wanted--wanted quickly. I think Catherine is
worse; don't wait, or she'll die without--" And as suddenly as she came
the vision vanished, carrying Brother Paul in the wake of her streaming
veil.

The Boy sat down by the stove, cogitating how he should best set about
finding Nicholas to explain the failure of their mission.... What was
that? Voices from the other side. The opposite door opened and a man
appeared, with Nicholas and his father close behind, looking anything
but cast down or decently penitential.

"How do you do?" The white man's English had a strong French accent. He
shook hands with great cordiality. "We have heard of you from Father
Wills also. These Pymeut friends of ours say you have something to tell
me."

He spoke as though this something were expected to be highly
gratifying, and, indeed, the cheerfulness of Nicholas and his father
would indicate as much.

As the Boy, hesitating, did not accept the chair offered, smiling, the
Jesuit went on:

"Will you talk of zis matter--whatever it is--first, or will you first
go up and wash, and have our conference after supper?"

"No, thank you--a--Are you the Father Superior?"

He bowed a little ceremoniously, but still smiling.

"I am Father Brachet."

"Oh, well, Nicholas is right. The first thing to do is to explain why
we're here."

Was it the heat of the stove after the long hours of cold that made him
feel a little dizzy? He put up his hand to his head.

"I have told zem to take hot water upstairs," the Father was saying,
"and I zink a glass of toddy would be a good sing for you." He slightly
emphasised the "you," and turned as if to supplement the original
order.

"No, no!" the Boy called after him, choking a little, half with
suppressed merriment, half with nervous fatigue. "Father Brachet, if
you're kind to us, Brother Paul will never forgive you. We're all in
disgrace."

"Hein! What?"

"Yes, we're all desperately wicked."

"No, no," objected Nicholas, ready to go back on so tactless an
advocate.

"And Brother Paul has just been saying--"

"What is it, what is it?"

The Father Superior spoke a little sharply, and himself sat down in the
wooden armchair he before had placed for his white guest.

The three culprits stood in front of him on a dead level of iniquity.

"You see, Father Brachet, Ol' Chief has been very ill--"

"I know. Much as we needed him here, Paul insisted on hurrying back to
Pymeut"--he interrupted himself as readily as he had interrupted the
Boy--"but ze Ol' Chief looks lively enough."

"Yes; he--a--his spirits have been raised by--a--what you will think an
unwarrantable and wicked means."

Nicholas understood, at least, that objectionable word "wicked"
cropping up again, and he was not prepared to stand it from the Boy.

He grunted with displeasure, and said something low to his father.

"Brother Paul found them--found _us_ having a seance with the Shaman."

Father Brachet turned sharply to the natives.

"Ha! you go back to zat."

Nicholas came a step forward, twisting his mittens and rolling his eye
excitedly.

"Us no wicked. Shaman say he gottah scare off--" He waved his arm
against an invisible army. Then, as it were, stung into plain speaking:
"Shaman say _white man_ bring sickness--bring devils--"

"Maybe the old Orang Outang's right."

The Boy drew a tired breath, and sat down without bidding in one of the
wooden chairs. What an idiot he'd been not to take the hot grog and the
hot bath, and leave these people to fight their foolishness out among
themselves! It didn't concern him. And here was Nicholas talking away
comfortably in his own tongue, and the Father was answering. A native
opened the door and peeped in cautiously.

Nicholas paused.

"Hein!" said Father Brachet, "what is it!"

The Indian came in with two cups of hot tea and a cracker in each
saucer. He stopped at the priest's side.

"You get sick, too. Please take. Supper little late." He nodded to
Nicholas, and gave the white stranger the second cup. As he was going
out: "Same man here in July. You know"--he tapped himself on the left
side--"man with sore heart."

"Yansey?" said the priest quickly. "Well, what about Yansey?"

"He is here."

"But no! Wiz zose ozzers?"

"No, I think they took the dogs and deserted him. He's just been
brought in by our boys; they are back with the moose-meat. Sore heart
worse. He will die."

"Who's looking after him?"

"Brother Paul"; and he padded out of the room in his soft native shoes.

"Then Brother Paul has polished off Catherine," thought the Boy, "and
he won't waste much time over a sore heart. It behoves us to hurry up
with our penitence." This seemed to be Nicholas's view as well. He was
beginning again in his own tongue.

"You know we like best for you to practise your English," said the
priest gently; "I expect you speak very well after working so long on
ze John J. Healy."

"Yes," Nicholas straightened himself. "Me talk all same white man now."
(He gleamed at the Boy: "Don't suppose I need you and your perfidious
tongue.") "No; us Pymeuts no wicked!"

Again he turned away from the priest, and challenged the Boy to repeat
the slander. Then with an insinuating air, "Shaman no say you wicked,"
he reassured the Father. "Shaman say Holy Cross all right. Cheechalko
no good; Cheechalko bring devils; Cheechalko all same _him_," he wound
up, flinging subterfuge to the winds, and openly indicating his
faithless ambassador.

"Strikes me I'm gettin' the worst of this argument all round. Brother
Paul's been sailing into me on pretty much the same tack."

"No," said Nicholas, firmly; "Brother Paul no unnerstan'. _You_
unnerstan'." He came still nearer to the Father, speaking in a
friendly, confidential tone. "You savvy! Plague come on steamboat up
from St. Michael. One white man, he got coast sickness. Sun shining.
Salmon run big. Yukon full o' boats. Two days: no canoe on river. Men
all sit in tent like so." He let his mittens fall on the floor,
crouched on his heels, and rocked his head in his hands. Springing up,
he went on with slow, sorrowful emphasis: "Men begin die--"

"Zen we come," said the Father, "wiz nurses and proper medicine--"

Nicholas gave the ghost of a shrug, adding the damaging fact: "Sickness
come to Holy Cross."

The Father nodded.

"We've had to turn ze schools into wards for our patients," he
explained to the stranger. "We do little now but nurse ze sick and
prepare ze dying. Ze Muzzer Superieure has broken down after heroic
labours. Paul, I fear, is sickening too. Yes, it's true: ze disease
came to us from Pymeut."

In the Father's mind was the thought of contagion courageously faced in
order to succour "the least of these my brethren." In Nicholas's mind
was the perplexing fact that these white men could bring sickness, but
not stay it. Even the heap good people at Holy Cross were not saved by
their deaf and impotent God.

"Fathers sick, eight Sisters sick, boy die in school, three girl die.
Holy Cross people kind--" Again he made that almost French motion of
the shoulders. "Shaman say, 'Peeluck!' No good be kind to devils; scare
'em--make 'em run."

"Nicholas," the priest spoke wearily, "I am ashamed of you. I sought
you had learned better. Zat old Shaman--he is a rare old rogue. What
did you give him?"

Nicholas' mental processes may not have been flattering, but their
clearness was unmistakable. If Father Brachet was jealous of the rival
holy man's revenue, it was time to bring out the presents.

Ol' Chief had a fine lynx-skin over his arm. He advanced at a word from
Nicholas, and laid it down before the Father.

"No!" said Father Brachet, with startling suddenness; "take it away and
try to understand."

Nicholas approached trembling, but no doubt remembering how necessary
it had been to add to the Shaman's offering before he would consent to
listen with favour to Pymeut prayers, he pulled out of their respective
hiding--places about his person a carved ivory spoon and an embroidered
bird-skin pouch, advanced boldly under the fire of the Superior's keen
eyes and sharp words, and laid the further offering on the lynx-skin at
his feet.

"Take zem away," said the priest, interrupting his brief homily and
standing up. "Don't you understand yet zat we are your friends wizzout
money and wizzout price? We do not want zese sings. Shaman takes
ivories from ze poor, furs from ze shivering, and food from zem zat
starve. And he gives nossing in return--nossing! Take zese sings away;
no one wants zem at Holy Cross."

Ol' Chief wiped his eyes pathetically. Nicholas, the picture of
despair, turned in a speechless appeal to his despised ambassador.
Before anyone could speak, the door-knob rattled rudely, and the big
bullet-head of a white man was put in.

"Pardon, mon Pere; cet homme qui vient de Minook--faudrait le coucher
de suite--mais ou, mon Dieu, ou?"

While the Superior cogitated, "How-do, Brother Etienne?" said Nicholas,
and they nodded.

Brother Etienne brought the rest of his heavy body half inside the
door. He wore aged, weather-beaten breeches, and a black sweater over
an old hickory shirt.

"Ses compagnons l'ont laisse, la, je crois. Mais ca ne durera pas
longtemps."

"Faudra bien qu'il reste ici--je ne vois pas d'autre moyen," said the
Father. "Enfin--on verra. Attendez quelques instants."

"C'est bien." Brother Etienne went out.

Ol' Chief was pulling the Boy's sleeve during the little colloquy, and
saying, "You tell." But the Boy got up like one who means to make an
end.

"You haven't any time or strength for this--"

"Oh yes," said Father Brachet, smiling, and arresting the impetuous
movement. "Ziz is--part of it."

"Well," said the Boy, still hesitating, "they _are_ sorry, you know,
_really_ sorry."

"You sink so?" The question rang a little sceptically.

"Yes, I do, and I'm in a position to know. You'd forgive them if you'd
seen, as I did, how miserable and overwhelmed they were when Brother
Paul--when--I'm not saying it's the highest kind of religion that
they're so almighty afraid of losing your good opinion, but it--it
gives you a hold, doesn't it?" And then, as the Superior said nothing,
only kept intent eyes on the young face, the Boy wound up a little
angrily: "Unless, of course, you're like Brother Paul, ready to throw
away the power you've gained--"

"Paul serves a great and noble purpose--but--zese questions are--a--not
in his province." Still he bored into the young face with those kind
gimlets, his good little eyes, and--

"You are--one of us?" he asked, "of ze Church?"

"No, I--I'm afraid I'm not of any Church."

"Ah!"

"And I ought to take back 'afraid.' But I'm telling you the truth when
I say there never were honester penitents than the Pymeuts. The whole
Kachime's miserable. Even the girl, Ol' Chief's daughter she cried like
anything when she thought Sister--"

"Winifred?"

"Sister Winifred would be disappointed in her."

"Ah, yes; Sister Winifred has zem--" he held out his hand, spread the
fingers apart, and slowly, gently closed them. "Comme ca."

"But what's the good of it if Brother Paul--"

"Ah, it is not just zere Paul comes in. But I tell you, my son, Paul
does a work here no ozzer man has done so well."

"He is a flint--a fanatic."

"Fanatique!" He flung out an expressive hand. "It is a name, my son. It
often means no more but zat a man is in earnest. Out of such a 'flint'
we strike sparks, and many a generous fire is set alight. We all do
what we can here at Holy Cross, but Paul will do what we cannot."

"Well, give _me_--" He was on the point of saying "Father Wills," but
changed it to "a man who is tolerant."

"Tolerant? Zere are plenty to be tolerant, my son. Ze world is full.
But when you find a man zat can _care_, zat can be 'fanatique'--ah! It
is"--he came a little nearer--"it is but as if I would look at you and
say, 'He has earnest eyes! He will go far _whatever_ road he follow.'"
He drew off, smiling shrewdly. "You may live, my son, to be yourself
called 'fanatique.' Zen you will know how little--"

"I!" the Boy broke in. "You are pretty wide of the mark this time."

"Ah, perhaps! But zere are more trails zan ze Yukon for a fanatique.
You have zere somesing to show me?"

"I promised the girl that cried so--I promised her to bring the Sister
this." He had pulled out the picture. In spite of the careful wrapping,
it had got rather crumpled. The Father looked at it, and then a swift
glance passed between him and the Boy.

"You could see it was like pulling out teeth to part with it. Can it go
up there till the Sister sends for it?"

Father Brachet nodded, and the gorgeous worldling, counselling all men
to "Smoke Kentucky Leaf!" was set up in the high place of honour on the
mantel-shelf, beside a print of the Madonna and the Holy Child.
Nicholas cheered up at this, and Ol' Chief stopped wiping his eyes.
While the Boy stood at the mantel with his back to Father Brachet,
acting on a sudden impulse, he pulled the ivory pen-rest out of his
shirt, and stuck its various parts together, saying as he did so, "She
sent an offering to you, too. If the Ol' Chief an' I fail to convince
you of our penitence, we're all willin' to let this gentleman plead for
us." Whereupon he wheeled round and held up the Woeful One before the
Father's eyes.

The priest grasped the offering with an almost convulsive joy, and
instantly turned his back that the Pymeuts might not see the laugh that
twisted up his humorous old features. The penitents looked at each
other, and telegraphed in Pymeut that after all the Boy had come up to
time. The Father had refused the valuable lynx-skin and Nicholas'
superior spoon, but was ready, it appeared, to look with favour on
anything the Boy offered.

But very seriously the priest turned round upon the Pymeuts. "I will
just say a word to you before we wash and go in to supper." With a
kindly gravity he pronounced a few simple sentences about the
gentleness of Christ with the ignorant, but how offended the Heavenly
Father was when those who knew the true God descended to idolatrous
practices, and how entirely He could be depended upon to punish wicked
people.

Ol' Chief nodded vigorously and with sudden excitement. "Me jus' like
God."

"Hein?"

"Oh, yes. Me no stan' wicked people. When me young me kill two ol'
squaws--_witches!_" With an outward gesture of his lean claws he swept
these wicked ones off the face of the earth, like a besom of the Lord.

A sudden change had passed over the tired face of the priest. "Go, go!"
he called out, driving the Pymeuts forth as one shoos chickens out of a
garden. "Go to ze schoolhouse and get fed, for it's all you seem able
to get zere."

But the perplexed flight of the Pymeuts was arrested. Brother Paul and
Brother Etienne blocked the way with a stretcher. They all stood back
to let the little procession come in. Nobody noticed them further, but
the Pymeuts scuttled away the instant they could get by. The Boy,
equally forgotten, sat down in a corner, while the three priests
conferred in low-voiced French over the prostrate figure.

"Father Brachet," a weak voice came up from the floor.

Brother Paul hurried out, calling Brother Etienne softly from the door.

"I am here." The Superior came from the foot of the pallet, and knelt
down near the head.

"You--remember what you said last July?"

"About--"

"About making restitution."

"Yes."

"Well, I can do it now."

"I am glad."

"I've brought you the papers. That's why--I--_had_ to come. Will
you--take them--out of my--"

The priest unbuckled a travel-stained buckskin miner's belt and laid it
on the floor. All the many pockets were empty save the long one in the
middle. He unbuttoned the flap and took out some soiled, worn-looking
papers. "Are zese in proper form?" he asked, but the man seemed to have
dropped into unconsciousness. Hurriedly the priest added: "Zere is no
time to read zem. Ah! Mr.--will you come and witness zis last will and
testament?"

The Boy got up and stood near. The man from Minook opened his eyes.

"Here!" The priest had got writing materials, and put a pen into the
slack hand, with a block of letter-paper under it.

"I--I'm no lawyer," said the faint voice, "but I think it's all--in
shape. Anyhow--you write--and I'll sign." He half closed his eyes, and
the paper slipped from under his hand. The Boy caught it, and set down
the faint words:--"will and bequeath to John M. Berg, Kansas City, my
right and title to claim No. 11 Above, Little Minook, Yukon Ramparts--"

And the voice fell away into silence. They waited a moment, and the
Superior whispered:

"Can you sign it?"

The dull eyes opened. "Didn't I--?"

Father Brachet held him up; the Boy gave him the pen and steadied the
paper. "Thank you, Father. Obliged to you, too." He turned his dimming
eyes upon the Boy, who wrote his name in witness. "You--going to
Minook?"

"I hope so."

The Father went to the writing-table, where he tied up and sealed the
packet.

"Anybody that's going to Minook will have to hustle." The slang of
everyday energy sounded strangely from dying lips--almost a whisper,
and yet like a far-off bugle calling a captive to battle.

The Boy leaned down to catch the words, yet fainter:

"Good claims going like hot cakes."

"How much," the Boy asked, breathless, "did you get out of yours?"

"Waiting till summer. Nex' summer--" The eyelids fell.

"So it isn't a fake after all." The Boy stood up. "The camp's all
right!"

"You'll see. It will out-boom the Klondyke."

"Ha! How long have you been making the trip?"

"Since August."

The wild flame of enterprise sunk in the heart of the hearer.

"Since _August_?"

"No cash for steamers; we had a canoe. She went to pieces up by--" The
weak voice fell down into that deep gulf that yawns waiting for man's
last word.

"But there is gold at Minook, you're sure? You've seen it?"

The Father Superior locked away the packet and stood up. But the Boy
was bending down fascinated, listening at the white lips. "There is
gold there?" he repeated.

Out of the gulf came faintly back like an echo:

"Plenty o' gold there--plenty o' gold."

"Jee-rusalem!" He stood up and found himself opposite the contemplative
face of the priest.

"We have neglected you, my son. Come upstairs to my room."

They went out, the old head bent, and full of thought; the young head
high, and full of dreams. Oh, to reach this Minook, where there was
"plenty of gold, plenty of gold," before the spring floods brought
thousands. What did any risk matter? Think of the Pymeuts doing their
sixty miles over the ice just to apologise to Father Brachet for being
Pymeuts. This other, this white man's penance might, would involve a
greater mortification of the flesh. What then? The reward was
proportionate--"plenty of gold." The faint whisper filled the air.

A little more hardship, and the long process of fortune-building is
shortened to a few months. No more office grind. No more anxiety for
those one loves.

Gold, plenty of gold, while one is young and can spend it gaily--gold
to buy back the Orange Grove, to buy freedom and power, to buy wings,
and to buy happiness!

On the stairs they passed Brother Paul and the native.

"Supper in five minutes, Father."

The Superior nodded.

"There is a great deal to do," the native went on hurriedly to Paul.
"We've got to bury Catherine to-morrow--"

"And this man from Minook," agreed Paul, pausing with his hand on the
door.

CHAPTER VII

KAVIAK'S CRIME

  "My little son, who look'd from thoughtful eyes,
   And moved and spoke in quiet grown-up wise,
   Having my law the seventh time disobey'd,
   I struck him, and dismiss'd
   With hard words and unkiss'd...."

Even with the plague and Brother Paul raging at the mission--even with
everyone preoccupied by the claims of dead and dying, the Boy would
have been glad to prolong his stay had it not been for "nagging"
thoughts of the Colonel. As it was, with the mercury rapidly rising and
the wind fallen, he got the Pymeuts on the trail next day at noon,
spent what was left of the night at the Kachime, and set off for camp
early the following day. He arrived something of a wreck, and with an
enormous respect for the Yukon trail.

It did him good to sight the big chimney, and still more to see the big
Colonel putting on his snow-shoes near the bottom of the hill, where
the cabin trail met the river trail. When the Boss o' the camp looked
up and saw the prodigal coming along, rather groggy on his legs, he
just stood still a moment. Then he kicked off his web-feet, turned back
a few paces uphill, and sat down on a spruce stump, folded his arms,
and waited. Was it the knapsack on his back that bowed him so?

"Hello, Kentucky!"

But the Colonel didn't look up till the Boy got quite near, chanting in
his tuneless voice:

   "'Grasshoppah sett'n on a swee' p'tater vine,
     Swee' p'tater vine, swee' p'tater vine--'"

"What's the matter, hey, Colonel? Sorry as all that to see me back?"

"Reckon it's the kind o' sorrah I can bear," said the Colonel. "We
thought you were dead."

"You ought t' known me better. Were you just sendin' out a rescue-party
of one?"

The Colonel nodded. "That party would have started before, but I cut my
foot with the axe the day you left. Where have you been, in the name o'
the nation?"

"Pymeut an' Holy Cross."

"Holy Cross? Holy Moses! _You?_"

"Yes; and do you know, one thing I saw there gave me a serious nervous
shock."

"That don't surprise me. What was it?"

"Sheets. When I came to go to bed--a real bed, Colonel, on legs--I
found I was expected to sleep between sheets, and I just about
fainted."

"That the only shock you had?"

"No, I had several. I saw an angel. I tell you straight, Colonel--you
can bank on what I'm sayin'--that Jesuit outfit's all right."

"Oh, you think so?" The rejoinder came a little sharply.

"Yes, sir, I just do. I think I'd be bigoted not to admit it."

"So, you'll be thick as peas in a pod with the priests now?"

"Well, I'm the one that can afford to be. They won't convert _me!_ And,
from my point o' view, it don't matter what a man is s' long's he's a
decent fella."

The Colonel's only answer was to plunge obliquely uphill.

"Say, Boss, wait for me."

The Colonel looked back. The Boy was holding on to a scrub willow that
put up wiry twigs above the snow.

"Feel as if I'd never get up the last rungs o' this darn ice-ladder!"

"Tired? H'm! Something of a walk to Holy Cross even on a nice mild day
like this." The Colonel made the reflection with obvious satisfaction,
took off his knapsack, and sat down again. The Boy did the same. "The
very day you lit out Father Orloff came up from the Russian mission."

"What's he like?"

"Oh, little fella in petticoats, with a beard an' a high pot-hat, like
a Russian. And that same afternoon we had a half-breed trader fella
here, with two white men. Since that day we haven't seen a human
creature. We bought some furs of the trader. Where'd you get yours?"

"Pymeut. Any news about the strike?"

"Well, the trader fella was sure it was all gammon, and told us stories
of men who'd sacrificed everything and joined a stampede, and got
sold--sold badly. But the two crazy whites with him--miners from
Dakotah--they were on fire about Minook. Kept on bragging they hadn't
cold feet, and swore they'd get near to the diggins as their dogs'd
take 'em. The half-breed said they might do a hundred miles more, but
probably wouldn't get beyond Anvik."

"Crazy fools! I tell you, to travel even thirty miles on the Yukon in
winter, even with a bully team and old Nick to drive 'em, and not an
extra ounce on your back--I tell you, Colonel, it's no joke."

"B'lieve you, sonny."

It wasn't thirty seconds before sonny was adding: "Did that half-breed
think it was any use our trying to get dogs?"

"Ain't to be had now for love or money."

"Lord, Colonel, if we had a team--"

"Yes, I know. We'll probably owe our lives to the fact that we
haven't."

It suddenly occurred to the Boy that, although he had just done a
pretty good tramp and felt he'd rather die than go fifty feet further,
it was the Colonel who was most tired.

"How's everybody?"

"Oh, I s'pose we might all of us be worse off."

"What's the matter?"

He was so long answering that the Boy's eyes turned to follow the
serious outward gaze of the older man, even before he lifted one hand
and swept it down the hill and out across the dim, grey prospect.

"This," said the Colonel.

Their eyes had dropped down that last stretch of the steep snow <DW72>,
across the two miles of frozen river, and ran half round the wide
horizon-line, like creatures in a cage. Whether they liked it or
whether they didn't, for them there was no way out.

"It's the awful stillness." The Colonel arraigned the distant
ice-plains.

They sat there looking, listening, as if they hoped their protest might
bring some signal of relenting. No creature, not even a crystal-coated
willow-twig, nothing on all the ice-bound earth stirred by as much as a
hair; no mark of man past or present broke the grey monotony; no sound
but their two voices disturbed the stillness of the world. It was a
quiet that penetrated, that pricked to vague alarm. Already both knew
the sting of it well.

"It's the kind of thing that gets on a fella's nerves," said the
Colonel. "I don't know as I ever felt helpless in any part of the world
before. But a man counts for precious little up here. Do you notice how
you come to listen to the silence?"

"Oh, yes, I've noticed."

"Stop." Again he lifted his hand, and they strained their ears. "I've
done that by the hour since you left and the daft gold-diggers went up
trail after you. The other fellas feel it, too. Don't know what we'd
have done without Kaviak. Think we ought to keep that kid, you know."

"I could get on without Kaviak if only we had some light. It's this
villainous twilight that gets into my head. All the same, you know"--he
stood up suddenly--"we came expecting to stand a lot, didn't we?"

The elder man nodded. "Big game, big stakes. It's all right."

Eventless enough after this, except for the passing of an Indian or
two, the days crawled by.

The Boy would get up first in the morning, rake out the dead ashes, put
on a couple of back-logs, bank them with ashes, and then build the fire
in front. He broke the ice in the water-bucket, and washed; filled
coffee-pot and mush-kettle with water (or ice), and swung them over the
fire; then he mixed the corn-bread, put it in the Dutch oven, covered
it with coals, and left it to get on with its baking. Sometimes this
part of the programme was varied by his mixing a hoe-cake on a board,
and setting it up "to do" in front of the fire. Then he would call the
Colonel--

  "'Wake up Massa,
     De day am breakin';
   Peas in de pot, en de
   Hoe-cake bakin''"--

for it was the Colonel's affair to take up proceedings at this
point--make the coffee and the mush and keep it from burning, fry the
bacon, and serve up breakfast.

Saturday brought a slight variation in the early morning routine. The
others came straggling in, as usual, but once a week Mac was sure to be
first, for he had to get Kaviak up. Mac's view of his whole duty to man
seemed to centre in the Saturday scrubbing of Kaviak. Vainly had the
Esquimer stood out against compliance with this most repulsive of
foreign customs. He seemed to be always ready with some deep-laid
scheme for turning the edge of Mac's iron resolution. He tried hiding
at the bottom of the bed. It didn't work. The next time he crouched far
back under the lower bunk. He was dragged out. Another Saturday he
embedded himself, like a moth, in a bundle of old clothes. Mac shook
him out. He had been very sanguine the day he hid in the library. This
was a wooden box nailed to the wall on the right of the door. Most of
the bigger books--Byron, Wordsworth, Dana's "Mineralogy," and two
Bibles--he had taken out and concealed in the lower bunk very
skilfully, far back behind the Colonel's feet. Copps's "Mining" and the
two works on "Parliamentary Law" piled at the end of the box served as
a pillow. After climbing in and folding himself up into an incredibly
small space, Kaviak managed with superhuman skill to cover himself
neatly with a patchwork quilt of

Question: Summarize the above passage in exactly 500 words and give a brief outlook on it.