Smoke Bellew by London, Jack - Chapter 12

XII. Wonder of Woman


"Just the same, I notice you ain't tumbled over yourself to get
married," Shorty remarked, continuing a conversation that had lapsed
some few minutes before.

Smoke, sitting on the edge of the sleeping-robe and examining the feet
of a dog he had rolled snarling on its back in the snow, did not
answer. And Shorty, turning a steaming moccasin propped on a stick
before the fire, studied his partner's face keenly.

"Cock your eye up at that there aurora borealis," Shorty went on.
"Some frivolous, eh? Just like any shilly-shallyin', shirt-dancing
woman. The best of them is frivolous, when they ain't foolish. And
they's cats, all of 'em, the littlest an' the biggest, the nicest and
the otherwise. They're sure devourin' lions an' roarin' hyenas when
they get on the trail of a man they've cottoned to."

Again the monologue languished. Smoke cuffed the dog when it
attempted to snap his hand, and went on examining its bruised and
bleeding pads.

"Huh!" pursued Shorty. "Mebbe I couldn't 'a' married if I'd a mind
to! An' mebbe I wouldn't 'a' been married without a mind to, if I
hadn't hiked for tall timber. Smoke, d'you want to know what saved
me? I'll tell you. My wind. I just kept a-runnin'. I'd like to see
any skirt run me outa breath."

Smoke released the animal and turned his own steaming, stick-propped
moccasins. "We've got to rest over to-morrow and make moccasins," he
vouchsafed. "That little crust is playing the devil with their feet."

"We oughta keep goin' somehow," Shorty objected. "We ain't got grub
enough to turn back with, and we gotta strike that run of caribou or
them white Indians almighty soon or we'll be eatin' the dogs, sore
feet an' all. Now who ever seen them white Indians anyway? Nothin'
but hearsay. An' how can a Indian be white? A black white man'd be
as natural. Smoke, we just oughta travel to-morrow. The country's
plumb dead of game. We ain't seen even a rabbit-track in a week, you
know that. An' we gotta get out of this dead streak into somewhere
that meat's runnin'."

"They'll travel all the better with a day's rest for their feet and
moccasins all around," Smoke counseled. "If you get a chance at any
low divide, take a peep over at the country beyond. We're likely to
strike open rolling country any time now. That's what La Perle told
us to look for."

"Huh! By his own story, it was ten years ago that La Perle come
through this section, an' he was that loco from hunger he couldn't
know what he did see. Remember what he said of whoppin' big flags
floatin' from the tops of the mountains? That shows how loco HE was.
An' he said himself he never seen any white Indians--that was Anton's
yarn. An', besides, Anton kicked the bucket two years before you an'
me come to Alaska. But I'll take a look to-morrow. An' mebbe I might
pick up a moose. What d' you say we turn in?"

Smoke spent the morning in camp, sewing dog-moccasins and repairing
harnesses. At noon he cooked a meal for two, ate his share, and began
to look for Shorty's return. An hour later he strapped on his
snow-shoes and went out on his partner's trail. The way led up the
bed of the stream, through a narrow gorge that widened suddenly into a
moose-pasture. But no moose had been there since the first snow of
the preceding fall. The tracks of Shorty's snow-shoes crossed the
pasture and went up the easy slope of a low divide. At the crest
Smoke halted. The tracks continued down the other slope. The first
spruce-trees, in the creek bed, were a mile away, and it was evident
that Shorty had passed through them and gone on. Smoke looked at his
watch, remembered the oncoming darkness, the dogs, and the camp, and
reluctantly decided against going farther. But before he retraced his
steps he paused for a long look. All the eastern sky-line was
saw-toothed by the snowy backbone of the Rockies. The whole mountain
system, range upon range, seemed to trend to the northwest, cutting
athwart the course to the open country reported by La Perle. The
effect was as if the mountains conspired to thrust back the traveler
toward the west and the Yukon. Smoke wondered how many men in the
past, approaching as he had approached, had been turned aside by that
forbidding aspect. La Perle had not been turned aside, but, then, La
Perle had crossed over from the eastern slope of the Rockies.

Until midnight Smoke maintained a huge fire for the guidance of
Shorty. And in the morning, waiting with camp broken and dogs
harnessed for the first break of light, Smoke took up the pursuit. In
the narrow pass of the canyon, his lead-dog pricked up its ears and
whined. Then Smoke came upon the Indians, six of them, coming toward
him. They were traveling light, without dogs, and on each man's back
was the smallest of pack outfits. Surrounding Smoke, they immediately
gave him several matters for surprise. That they were looking for him
was clear. That they talked no Indian tongue of which he knew a word
was also quickly made clear. They were not white Indians, though they
were taller and heavier than the Indians of the Yukon basin. Five of
them carried the old-fashioned, long-barreled Hudson Bay Company
musket, and in the hands of the sixth was a Winchester rifle which
Smoke knew to be Shorty's.

Nor did they waste time in making him a prisoner. Unarmed himself,
Smoke could only submit. The contents of the sled were distributed
among their own packs, and he was given a pack composed of his and
Shorty's sleeping-furs. The dogs were unharnessed, and when Smoke
protested, one of the Indians, by signs, indicated a trail too rough
for sled-travel. Smoke bowed to the inevitable, cached the sled
end-on in the snow on the bank above the stream, and trudged on with
his captors. Over the divide to the north they went, down to the
spruce-trees which Smoke had glimpsed the preceding afternoon. They
followed the stream for a dozen miles, abandoning it when it trended
to the west and heading directly eastward up a narrow tributary.

The first night was spent in a camp which had been occupied for
several days. Here was cached a quantity of dried salmon and a sort
of pemmican, which the Indians added to their packs. From this camp a
trail of many snow-shoes led off--Shorty's captors, was Smoke's
conclusion; and before darkness fell he succeeded in making out the
tracks Shorty's narrower snow-shoes had left. On questioning the
Indians by signs, they nodded affirmation and pointed to the north.

Always, in the days that followed, they pointed north; and always the
trail, turning and twisting through a jumble of upstanding peaks,
trended north. Everywhere, in this bleak snow-solitude, the way
seemed barred, yet ever the trail curved and coiled, finding low
divides and avoiding the higher and untraversable chains. The
snow-fall was deeper than in the lower valleys, and every step of the
way was snow-shoe work. Furthermore, Smoke's captors, all young men,
traveled light and fast; and he could not forbear the prick of pride
in the knowledge that he easily kept up with them. They were
travel-hardened and trained to snow-shoes from infancy; yet such was
his condition that the traverse bore no more of ordinary hardship to
him than to them.

In six days they gained and crossed the central pass, low in
comparison with the mountains it threaded, yet formidable in itself
and not possible for loaded sleds. Five days more of tortuous
winding, from lower altitude to lower altitude, brought them to the
open, rolling, and merely hilly country La Perle had found ten years
before. Smoke knew it with the first glimpse, on a sharp cold day,
the thermometer forty below zero, the atmosphere so clear that he
could see a hundred miles. Far as he could see rolled the open
country. High in the east the Rockies still thrust their snowy
ramparts heavenward. To the south and west extended the broken ranges
of the projecting spur-system they had crossed. And in this vast
pocket lay the country La Perle had traversed--snow-blanketed, but
assuredly fat with game at some time in the year, and in the summer a
smiling, forested, and flowered land.

Before midday, traveling down a broad stream, past snow-buried willows
and naked aspens, and across heavily timbered flats of spruce, they
came upon the site of a large camp, recently abandoned. Glancing as
he went by, Smoke estimated four or five hundred fires, and guessed
the population to be in the thousands. So fresh was the trail, and so
well packed by the multitude, that Smoke and his captors took off
their snow-shoes and in their moccasins struck a swifter pace. Signs
of game appeared and grew plentiful--tracks of wolves and lynxes that
without meat could not be. Once, one of the Indians cried out with
satisfaction and pointed to a large area of open snow, littered with
fang-polished skulls of caribou, trampled and disrupted as if an army
had fought upon it. And Smoke knew that a big killing had been made
by the hunters since the last snow-flurry.

In the long twilight no sign was manifested of making camp. They held
steadily on through a deepening gloom that vanished under a sky of
light--great, glittering stars half veiled by a greenish vapor of
pulsing aurora borealis. His dogs first caught the noises of the
camp, pricking their ears and whining in low eagerness. Then it came
to the ears of the humans, a murmur, dim with distance, but not
invested with the soothing grace that is common to distant murmurs.
Instead, it was in a high, wild key, a beat of shrill sound broken by
shriller sounds--the long wolf-howling of many wolf-dogs, a screaming
of unrest and pain, mournful with hopelessness and rebellion. Smoke
swung back the crystal of his watch and by the feel of finger-tips on
the naked hands made out eleven o'clock. The men about him quickened.
The legs that had lifted through a dozen strenuous hours lifted in a
still swifter pace that was half a run and mostly a running jog.
Through a dark spruce-flat they burst upon an abrupt glare of light
from many fires and upon an abrupt increase of sound. The great camp
lay before them.

And as they entered and threaded the irregular runways of the
hunting-camp, a vast tumult, as in a wave, rose to meet them and
rolled on with them--cries, greetings, questions and answers, jests
and jests thrust back again, the snapping snarl of wolf-dogs rushing
in furry projectiles of wrath upon Smoke's stranger dogs, the scolding
of squaws, laughter, the whimpering of children and wailing of
infants, the moans of the sick aroused afresh to pain, all the
pandemonium of a camp of nerveless, primitive wilderness folk.

Striking with clubs and the butts of guns, Smoke's party drove back
the attacking dogs, while his own dogs, snapping and snarling, awed by
so many enemies, shrank in among the legs of their human protectors,
and bristled along stiff-legged in menacing prance.

They halted in the trampled snow by an open fire, where Shorty and two
young Indians, squatted on their hams, were broiling strips of caribou
meat. Three other young Indians, lying in furs on a mat of
spruce-boughs, sat up. Shorty looked across the fire at his partner,
but with a sternly impassive face, like those of his companions, made
no sign and went on broiling the meat.

"What's the matter?" Smoke demanded, half in irritation. "Lost your
speech?"

The old familiar grin twisted on Shorty's face. "Nope," he answered.
"I'm a Indian. I'm learnin' not to show surprise. When did they
catch you?"

"Next day after you left."

"Hum," Shorty said, the light of whimsy dancing in his eyes. "Well,
I'm doin' fine, thank you most to death. This is the bachelors'
camp." He waved his hand to embrace its magnificence, which consisted
of a fire, beds of spruce-boughs laid on top of the snow, flies of
caribou skin, and wind-shields of twisted spruce and willow withes.
"An' these are the bachelors." This time his hand indicated the young
men, and he spat a few spoken gutturals in their own language that
brought the white flash of acknowledgment from eyes and teeth.
"They're glad to meet you, Smoke. Set down an' dry your moccasins,
an' I'll cook up some grub. I'm gettin' the hang of the lingo pretty
well, ain't I? You'll have to come to it, for it looks as if we'll be
with these folks a long time. They's another white man here. Got
caught six years ago. He's a Irishman they picked up over Great Slave
Lake way. Danny McCan is what he goes by. He's settled down with a
squaw. Got two kids already, but he'll skin out if ever the chance
opens up. See that low fire over there to the right? That's his
camp."

Apparently this was Smoke's appointed domicile, for his captors left
him and his dogs, and went on deeper into the big camp. While he
attended to his foot-gear and devoured strips of hot meat, Shorty
cooked and talked.

"This is a sure peach of a pickle, Smoke--you listen to me. An' we
got to go some to get out. These is the real, blowed-in-the-glass,
wild Indians. They ain't white, but their chief is. He talks like a
mouthful of hot mush, an' if he ain't full-blood Scotch they ain't no
such thing as Scotch in the world. He's the hi-yu, skookum top-chief
of the whole caboodle. What he says goes. You want to get that from
the start-off. Danny McCan's been tryin' to get away from him for six
years. Danny's all right, but he ain't got go in him. He knows a way
out--learned it on huntin' trips--to the west of the way you an' me
came. He ain't had the nerve to tackle it by his lonely. But we can
pull it off, the three of us. Whiskers is the real goods, but he's
mostly loco just the same."

"Who's Whiskers?" Smoke queried, pausing in the wolfing-down of a hot
strip of meat.

"Why, he's the top geezer. He's the Scotcher. He's gettin' old, an'
he's sure asleep now, but he'll see you to-morrow an' show you clear
as print what a measly shrimp you are on his stompin'-grounds. These
grounds belong to him. You got to get that into your noodle. They
ain't never been explored, nor nothin', an' they're hisn. An' he
won't let you forget it. He's got about twenty thousand square miles
of huntin' country here all his own. He's the white Indian, him an'
the skirt. Huh! Don't look at me that way. Wait till you see her.
Some looker, an' all white, like her dad--he's Whiskers. An' say,
caribou! I've saw 'em. A hundred thousan' of good running meat in
the herd, an' ten thousan' wolves an' cats a-followin' an' livin' off
the stragglers an' the leavin's. We leave the leavin's. The herd's
movin' to the east, an' we'll be followin' 'em any day now. We eat
our dogs, an' what we don't eat we smoke 'n cure for the spring before
the salmon-run gets its sting in. Say, what Whiskers don't know about
salmon an' caribou nobody knows, take it from me."


"Here comes Whiskers lookin' like he's goin' somewheres," Shorty
whispered, reaching over and wiping greasy hands on the coat of one of
the sled-dogs.

It was morning, and the bachelors were squatting over a breakfast of
caribou-meat, which they ate as they broiled. Smoke glanced up and
saw a small and slender man, skin-clad like any savage, but
unmistakably white, striding in advance of a sled team and a following
of a dozen Indians. Smoke cracked a hot bone, and while he sucked out
the steaming marrow gazed at his approaching host. Bushy whiskers and
yellowish gray hair, stained by camp smoke, concealed most of the
face, but failed wholly to hide the gaunt, almost cadaverous, cheeks.
It was a healthy leanness, Smoke decided, as he noted the wide flare
of the nostrils and the breadth and depth of chest that gave
spaciousness to the guaranty of oxygen and life.

"How do you do," the man said, slipping a mitten and holding out his
bare hand. "My name is Snass," he added, as they shook hands.

"Mine's Bellew," Smoke returned, feeling peculiarly disconcerted as he
gazed into the keen-searching black eyes.

"Getting plenty to eat, I see."

Smoke nodded and resumed his marrow-bone, the purr of Scottish speech
strangely pleasant in his ears.

"Rough rations. But we don't starve often. And it's more natural
than the hand-reared meat of the cities."

"I see you don't like cities," Smoke laughed, in order to be saying
something; and was immediately startled by the transformation Snass
underwent.

Quite like a sensitive plant, the man's entire form seemed to wilt and
quiver. Then the recoil, tense and savage, concentered in the eyes,
in which appeared a hatred that screamed of immeasurable pain. He
turned abruptly away, and, recollecting himself, remarked casually
over his shoulder:

"I'll see you later, Mr. Bellew. The caribou are moving east, and I'm
going ahead to pick out a location. You'll all come on to-morrow."

"Some Whiskers, that, eh?" Shorty muttered, as Snass pulled on at the
head of his outfit.

Again Shorty wiped his hands on the wolf-dog, which seemed to like it
as it licked off the delectable grease.

Later on in the morning Smoke went for a stroll through the camp, busy
with its primitive pursuits. A big body of hunters had just returned,
and the men were scattering to their various fires. Women and
children were departing with dogs harnessed to empty toboggan-sleds,
and women and children and dogs were hauling sleds heavy with meat
fresh from the killing and already frozen. An early spring cold-snap
was on, and the wildness of the scene was painted in a temperature of
thirty below zero. Woven cloth was not in evidence. Furs and
soft-tanned leather clad all alike. Boys passed with bows in their
hands, and quivers of bone-barbed arrows; and many a skinning-knife of
bone or stone Smoke saw in belts or neck-hung sheaths. Women toiled
over the fires, smoke-curing the meat, on their backs infants that
stared round-eyed and sucked at lumps of tallow. Dogs, full-kin to
wolves, bristled up to Smoke to endure the menace of the short club he
carried and to whiff the odor of this newcomer whom they must accept
by virtue of the club.

Segregated in the heart of the camp, Smoke came upon what was
evidently Snass's fire. Though temporary in every detail, it was
solidly constructed and was on a large scale. A great heap of bales
of skins and outfit was piled on a scaffold out of reach of the dogs.
A large canvas fly, almost half-tent, sheltered the sleeping- and
living-quarters. To one side was a silk tent--the sort favored by
explorers and wealthy big-game hunters. Smoke had never seen such a
tent, and stepped closer. As he stood looking, the flaps parted and a
young woman came out. So quickly did she move, so abruptly did she
appear, that the effect on Smoke was as that of an apparition. He
seemed to have the same effect on her, and for a long moment they
gazed at each other.

She was dressed entirely in skins, but such skins and such
magnificently beautiful fur-work Smoke had never dreamed of. Her
parka, the hood thrown back, was of some strange fur of palest silver.
The mukluks, with walrus-hide soles, were composed of the
silver-padded feet of many lynxes. The long-gauntleted mittens, the
tassels at the knees, all the varied furs of the costume, were pale
silver that shimmered in the frosty light; and out of this shimmering
silver, poised on slender, delicate neck, lifted her head, the rosy
face blonde as the eyes were blue, the ears like two pink shells, the
light chestnut hair touched with frost-dust and coruscating
frost-glints.

All this and more, as in a dream, Smoke saw; then, recollecting
himself, his hand fumbled for his cap. At the same moment the
wonder-stare in the girl's eyes passed into a smile, and, with
movements quick and vital, she slipped a mitten and extended her hand.

"How do you do," she murmured gravely, with a queer, delightful
accent, her voice, silvery as the furs she wore, coming with a shock
to Smoke's ears, attuned as they were to the harsh voices of the camp
squaws.

Smoke could only mumble phrases that were awkwardly reminiscent of his
best society manner.

"I am glad to see you," she went on slowly and gropingly, her face a
ripple of smiles. "My English you will please excuse. It is not
good. I am English like you," she gravely assured him. "My father he
is Scotch. My mother she is dead. She is French, and English, and a
little Indian, too. Her father was a great man in the Hudson Bay
Company. Brrr! It is cold." She slipped on her mitten and rubbed
her ears, the pink of which had already turned to white. "Let us go
to the fire and talk. My name is Labiskwee. What is your name?"

And so Smoke came to know Labiskwee, the daughter of Snass, whom Snass
called Margaret.

"Snass is not my father's name," she informed Smoke. "Snass is only
an Indian name."

Much Smoke learned that day, and in the days that followed, as the
hunting-camp moved on in the trail of the caribou. These were real
wild Indians--the ones Anton had encountered and escaped from long
years before. This was nearly the western limit of their territory,
and in the summer they ranged north to the tundra shores of the
Arctic, and eastward as far as the Luskwa. What river the Luskwa was
Smoke could not make out, nor could Labiskwee tell him, nor could
McCan. On occasion Snass, with parties of strong hunters, pushed east
across the Rockies, on past the lakes and the Mackenzie and into the
Barrens. It was on the last traverse in that direction that the silk
tent occupied by Labiskwee had been found.

"It belonged to the Millicent-Adbury expedition," Snass told Smoke.

"Oh! I remember. They went after musk-oxen. The rescue expedition
never found a trace of them."

"I found them," Snass said. "But both were dead."

"The world still doesn't know. The word never got out."

"The word never gets out," Snass assured him pleasantly.

"You mean if they had been alive when you found them--?"

Snass nodded. "They would have lived on with me and my people."

"Anton got out," Smoke challenged.

"I do not remember the name. How long ago?"

"Fourteen or fifteen years," Smoke answered.

"So he pulled through, after all. Do you know, I've wondered about
him. We called him Long Tooth. He was a strong man, a strong man."

"La Perle came through here ten years ago."

Snass shook his head.

"He found traces of your camps. It was summer time."

"That explains it," Snass answered. "We are hundreds of miles to the
north in the summer."

But, strive as he would, Smoke could get no clew to Snass's history in
the days before he came to live in the northern wilds. Educated he
was, yet in all the intervening years he had read no books, no
newspapers. What had happened in the world he knew not, nor did he
show desire to know. He had heard of the miners on the Yukon, and of
the Klondike strike. Gold-miners had never invaded his territory, for
which he was glad. But the outside world to him did not exist. He
tolerated no mention of it.

Nor could Labiskwee help Smoke with earlier information. She had been
born on the hunting-grounds. Her mother had lived for six years
after. Her mother had been very beautiful--the only white woman
Labiskwee had ever seen. She said this wistfully, and wistfully, in a
thousand ways, she showed that she knew of the great outside world on
which her father had closed the door. But this knowledge was secret.
She had early learned that mention of it threw her father into a rage.

Anton had told a squaw of her mother, and that her mother had been a
daughter of a high official in the Hudson Bay Company. Later, the
squaw had told Labiskwee. But her mother's name she had never
learned.

As a source of information, Danny McCan was impossible. He did not
like adventure. Wild life was a horror, and he had had nine years of
it. Shanghaied in San Francisco, he had deserted the whaleship at
Point Barrow with three companions. Two had died, and the third had
abandoned him on the terrible traverse south. Two years he had lived
with the Eskimos before raising the courage to attempt the south
traverse, and then, within several days of a Hudson Bay Company post,
he had been gathered in by a party of Snass's young men. He was a
small, stupid man, afflicted with sore eyes, and all he dreamed or
could talk about was getting back to his beloved San Francisco and his
blissful trade of bricklaying.

"You're the first intelligent man we've had," Snass complimented Smoke
one night by the fire. "Except old Four Eyes. The Indians named him
so. He wore glasses and was short-sighted. He was a professor of
zoology." (Smoke noted the correctness of the pronunciation of the
word.) "He died a year ago. My young men picked him up strayed from
an expedition on the upper Porcupine. He was intelligent, yes; but he
was also a fool. That was his weakness--straying. He knew geology,
though, and working in metals. Over on the Luskwa, where there's
coal, we have several creditable hand-forges he made. He repaired our
guns and taught the young men how. He died last year, and we really
missed him. Strayed--that's how it happened--froze to death within a
mile of camp."

It was on the same night that Snass said to Smoke:

"You'd better pick out a wife and have a fire of your own. You will be
more comfortable than with those young bucks. The maidens' fires--a
sort of feast of the virgins, you know--are not lighted until full
summer and the salmon, but I can give orders earlier if you say the
word."

Smoke laughed and shook his head.

"Remember," Snass concluded quietly, "Anton is the only one that ever
got away. He was lucky, unusually lucky."

Her father had a will of iron, Labiskwee told Smoke.

"Four Eyes used to call him the Frozen Pirate--whatever that
means--the Tyrant of the Frost, the Cave Bear, the Beast Primitive,
the King of the Caribou, the Bearded Pard, and lots of such things.
Four Eyes loved words like these. He taught me most of my English.
He was always making fun. You could never tell. He called me his
cheetah-chum after times when I was angry. What is cheetah? He
always teased me with it."

She chattered on with all the eager naivete of a child, which Smoke
found hard to reconcile with the full womanhood of her form and face.

Yes, her father was very firm. Everybody feared him. He was terrible
when angry. There were the Porcupines. It was through them, and
through the Luskwas, that Snass traded his skins at the posts and got
his supplies of ammunition and tobacco. He was always fair, but the
chief of the Porcupines began to cheat. And after Snass had warned
him twice, he burned his log village, and over a dozen of the
Porcupines were killed in the fight. But there was no more cheating.
Once, when she was a little girl, there was one white man killed while
trying to escape. No, her father did not do it, but he gave the order
to the young men. No Indian ever disobeyed her father.

And the more Smoke learned from her, the more the mystery of Snass
deepened.

"And tell me if it is true," the girl was saying, "that there was a
man and a woman whose names were Paolo and Francesca and who greatly
loved each other?"

Smoke nodded.

"Four Eyes told me all about it," she beamed happily. "And so he
did not make it up, after all. You see, I was not sure. I asked
father, but, oh, he was angry. The Indians told me he gave poor Four
Eyes an awful talking to. Then there were Tristan and Iseult--two
Iseults. It was very sad. But I should like to love that way. Do
all the young men and women in the world do that? They do not here.
They just get married. They do not seem to have time. I am English,
and I will never marry an Indian--would you? That is why I have not
lighted my maiden's fire. Some of the young men are bothering father
to make me do it. Libash is one of them. He is a great hunter. And
Mahkook comes around singing songs. He is funny. To-night, if you
come by my tent after dark, you will hear him singing out in the cold.
But father says I can do as I please, and so I shall not light my
fire. You see, when a girl makes up her mind to get married, that is
the way she lets young men know. Four Eyes always said it was a fine
custom. But I noticed he never took a wife. Maybe he was too old.
He did not have much hair, but I do not think he was really very old.
And how do you know when you are in love?--like Paolo and Francesca, I
mean."

Smoke was disconcerted by the clear gaze of her blue eyes. "Why, they
say," he stammered, "those who are in love say it, that love is dearer
than life. When one finds out that he or she likes somebody better
than everybody else in the world--why, then, they know they are in
love. That's the way it goes, but it's awfully hard to explain. You
just know it, that's all."

She looked off across the camp-smoke, sighed, and resumed work on the
fur mitten she was sewing. "Well," she announced with finality, "I
shall never get married anyway."


"Once we hit out we'll sure have some tall runnin'," Shorty said
dismally.

"The place is a big trap," Smoke agreed.

From the crest of a bald knob they gazed out over Snass's snowy
domain. East, west, and south they were hemmed in by the high peaks
and jumbled ranges. Northward, the rolling country seemed
interminable; yet they knew, even in that direction, that half a dozen
transverse chains blocked the way.

"At this time of the year I could give you three days' start," Snass
told Smoke that evening. "You can't hide your trail, you see. Anton
got away when the snow was gone. My young men can travel as fast as
the best white man; and, besides, you would be breaking trail for
them. And when the snow is off the ground, I'll see to it that you
don't get the chance Anton had. It's a good life. And soon the world
fades. I have never quite got over the surprise of finding how easy
it is to get along without the world."

"What's eatin' me is Danny McCan," Shorty confided to Smoke. "He's a
weak brother on any trail. But he swears he knows the way out to the
westward, an' so we got to put up with him, Smoke, or you sure get
yours."

"We're all in the same boat," Smoke answered.

"Not on your life. It's a-comin' to you straight down the pike."

"What is?"

"You ain't heard the news?"

Smoke shook his head.

"The bachelors told me. They just got the word. To-night it comes
off, though it's months ahead of the calendar."

Smoke shrugged his shoulders.

"Ain't interested in hearin'?" Shorty teased.

"I'm waiting to hear."

"Well, Danny's wife just told the bachelors," Shorty paused
impressively. "An' the bachelors told me, of course, that the
maidens' fires is due to be lighted to-night. That's all. Now how do
you like it?"

"I don't get your drift, Shorty."

"Don't, eh? Why, it's plain open and shut. They's a skirt after you,
an' that skirt is goin' to light a fire, an' that skirt's name is
Labiskwee. Oh, I've been watchin' her watch you when you ain't
lookin'. She ain't never lighted her fire. Said she wouldn't marry a
Indian. An' now, when she lights her fire, it's a cinch it's my poor
old friend Smoke."

"It sounds like a syllogism," Smoke said, with a sinking heart
reviewing Labiskwee's actions of the past several days.

"Cinch is shorter to pronounce," Shorty returned. "An' that's always
the way--just as we're workin' up our get-away, along comes a skirt to
complicate everything. We ain't got no luck. Hey! Listen to that,
Smoke!"

Three ancient squaws had halted midway between the bachelors' camp and
the camp of McCan, and the oldest was declaiming in shrill falsetto.

Smoke recognized the names, but not all the words, and Shorty
translated with melancholy glee.

"Labiskwee, the daughter of Snass, the Rainmaker, the Great Chief,
lights her first maiden's fire to-night. Maka, the daughter of Owits,
the Wolf-Runner--"

The recital ran through the names of a dozen maidens, and then the
three heralds tottered on their way to make announcement at the next
fires.

The bachelors, who had sworn youthful oaths to speak to no maidens,
were uninterested in the approaching ceremony, and to show their
disdain they made preparations for immediate departure on a mission
set them by Snass and upon which they had planned to start the
following morning. Not satisfied with the old hunters' estimates of
the caribou, Snass had decided that the run was split. The task set
the bachelors was to scout to the north and west in quest of the
second division of the great herd.

Smoke, troubled by Labiskwee's fire-lighting, announced that he would
accompany the bachelors. But first he talked with Shorty and with
McCan.

"You be there on the third day, Smoke," Shorty said. "We'll have the
outfit an' the dogs."

"But remember," Smoke cautioned, "if there is any slip-up in meeting
me, you keep on going and get out to the Yukon. That's flat. If you
make it, you can come back for me in the summer. If I get the chance,
I'll make it, and come back for you."

McCan, standing by his fire, indicated with his eyes a rugged mountain
where the high western range out-jutted on the open country.

"That's the one," he said. "A small stream on the south side. We go
up it. On the third day you meet us. We'll pass by on the third day.
Anywhere you tap that stream you'll meet us or our trail."

But the chance did not come to Smoke on the third day. The bachelors
had changed the direction of their scout, and while Shorty and McCan
plodded up the stream with their dogs, Smoke and the bachelors were
sixty miles to the northeast picking up the trail of the second
caribou herd. Several days later, through a dim twilight of falling
snow, they came back to the big camp. A squaw ceased from wailing by
a fire and darted up to Smoke. Harsh tongued, with bitter, venomous
eyes, she cursed him, waving her arms toward a silent, fur-wrapped
form that still lay on the sled which had hauled it in.

What had happened, Smoke could only guess, and as he came to McCan's
fire he was prepared for a second cursing. Instead, he saw McCan
himself industriously chewing a strip of caribou meat.

"I'm not a fightin' man," he whiningly explained. "But Shorty got
away, though they're still after him. He put up a hell of a fight.
They'll get him, too. He ain't got a chance. He plugged two bucks
that'll get around all right. An' he croaked one square through the
chest."

"Yes, I know," Smoke answered. "I just met the widow."

"Old Snass'll be wantin' to see you," McCan added. "Them's his
orders. Soon as you come in you was to go to his fire. I ain't
squealed. You don't know nothing. Keep that in mind. Shorty went
off on his own along with me."

At Snass's fire Smoke found Labiskwee. She met him with eyes that
shone with such softness and tenderness as to frighten him.

"I'm glad you did not try to run away," she said. "You see, I--" She
hesitated, but her eyes didn't drop. They swam with a light
unmistakable. "I lighted my fire, and of course it was for you. It
has happened. I like you better than everybody else in the world.
Better than my father. Better than a thousand Libashes and Mahkooks.
I love. It is very strange. I love as Francesca loved, as Iseult
loved. Old Four Eyes spoke true. Indians do not love this way. But
my eyes are blue, and I am white. We are white, you and I."

Smoke had never been proposed to in his life, and he was unable to
meet the situation. Worse, it was not even a proposal. His
acceptance was taken for granted. So thoroughly was it all arranged
in Labiskwee's mind, so warm was the light in her eyes, that he was
amazed that she did not throw her arms around him and rest her head on
his shoulder. Then he realized, despite her candor of love, that she
did not know the pretty ways of love. Among the primitive savages
such ways did not obtain. She had had no chance to learn.

She prattled on, chanting the happy burden of her love, while he
strove to grip himself in the effort, somehow, to wound her with the
truth. This, at the very first, was the golden opportunity.

"But, Labiskwee, listen," he began. "Are you sure you learned from
Four Eyes all the story of the love of Paolo and Francesca?"

She clasped her hands and laughed with an immense certitude of
gladness. "Oh! There is more! I knew there must be more and more of
love! I have thought much since I lighted my fire. I have--"

And then Snass strode in to the fire through the falling snowflakes,
and Smoke's opportunity was lost.

"Good evening," Snass burred gruffly. "Your partner has made a mess
of it. I am glad you had better sense."

"You might tell me what's happened," Smoke urged.

The flash of white teeth through the stained beard was not pleasant.
"Certainly, I'll tell you. Your partner has killed one of my people.
That sniveling shrimp, McCan, deserted at the first shot. He'll never
run away again. But my hunters have got your partner in the
mountains, and they'll get him. He'll never make the Yukon basin. As
for you, from now on you sleep at my fire. And there'll be no more
scouting with the young men. I shall have my eye on you."

Smoke's new situation at Snass's fire was embarrassing. He saw more
of Labiskwee than ever. In its sweetness and innocence, the frankness
of her love was terrible. Her glances were love glances; every look
was a caress. A score of times he nerved himself to tell her of Joy
Gastell, and a score of times he discovered that he was a coward. The
damnable part of it was that Labiskwee was so delightful. She was
good to look upon. Despite the hurt to his self-esteem of every
moment spent with her, he pleasured in every such moment. For the
first time in his life he was really learning woman, and so clear was
Labiskwee's soul, so appalling in its innocence and ignorance, that he
could not misread a line of it. All the pristine goodness of her sex
was in her, uncultured by the conventionality of knowledge or the
deceit of self-protection. In memory he reread his Schopenhauer and
knew beyond all cavil that the sad philosopher was wrong. To know
woman, as Smoke came to know Labiskwee, was to know that all
woman-haters were sick men.

Labiskwee was wonderful, and yet, beside her face in the flesh burned
the vision of the face of Joy Gastell. Joy had control, restraint,
all the feminine inhibitions of civilization, yet, by the trick of his
fancy and the living preachment of the woman before him, Joy Gastell
was stripped to a goodness at par with Labiskwee's. The one but
appreciated the other, and all women of all the world appreciated by
what Smoke saw in the soul of Labiskwee at Snass's fire in the
snow-land.

And Smoke learned about himself. He remembered back to all he knew of
Joy Gastell, and he knew that he loved her. Yet he delighted in
Labiskwee. And what was this feeling of delight but love? He could
demean it by no less a name. Love it was. Love it must be. And he
was shocked to the roots of his soul by the discovery of this
polygamous strain in his nature. He had heard it argued, in the San
Francisco studios, that it was possible for a man to love two women,
or even three women, at a time. But he had not believed it. How
could he believe it when he had not had the experience? Now it was
different. He did truly love two women, and though most of the time
he was quite convinced that he loved Joy Gastell more, there were
other moments when he felt with equal certainty that he loved
Labiskwee more.

"There must be many women in the world," she said one day. "And women
like men. Many women must have liked you. Tell me."

He did not reply.

"Tell me," she insisted.

"I have never married," he evaded.

"And there is no one else? No other Iseult out there beyond the
mountains?"

Then it was that Smoke knew himself a coward. He lied. Reluctantly
he did it, but he lied. He shook his head with a slow indulgent
smile, and in his face was more of fondness than he dreamed as he
noted Labiskwee's swift joy-transfiguration.

He excused himself to himself. His reasoning was jesuitical beyond
dispute, and yet he was not Spartan enough to strike this child-woman
a quivering heart-stroke.

Snass, too, was a perturbing factor in the problem. Little escaped
his black eyes, and he spoke significantly.

"No man cares to see his daughter married," he said to Smoke. "At
least, no man of imagination. It hurts. The thought of it hurts, I
tell you. Just the same, in the natural order of life, Margaret must
marry some time."

A pause fell; Smoke caught himself wondering for the thousandth time
what Snass's history must be.

"I am a harsh, cruel man," Snass went on. "Yet the law is the law,
and I am just. Nay, here with this primitive people, I am the law and
the justice. Beyond my will no man goes. Also, I am a father, and
all my days I have been cursed with imagination."

Whither his monologue tended, Smoke did not learn, for it was
interrupted by a burst of chiding and silvery laughter from
Labiskwee's tent, where she played with a new-caught wolf-cub. A
spasm of pain twitched Snass's face.

"I can stand it," he muttered grimly. "Margaret must be married, and
it is my fortune, and hers, that you are here. I had little hopes of
Four Eyes. McCan was so hopeless I turned him over to a squaw who had
lighted her fire twenty seasons. If it hadn't been you, it would have
been an Indian. Libash might have become the father of my
grandchildren."

And then Labiskwee came from her tent to the fire, the wolf-cub in her
arms, drawn as by a magnet, to gaze upon the man, in her eyes the love
that art had never taught to hide.

* * * * * *

"Listen to me," said McCan. "The spring thaw is here, an' the crust
is comin' on the snow. It's the time to travel, exceptin' for the
spring blizzards in the mountains. I know them. I would run with no
less a man than you."

"But you can't run," Smoke contradicted. "You can keep up with no
man. Your backbone is limber as thawed marrow. If I run, I run
alone. The world fades, and perhaps I shall never run. Caribou meat
is very good, and soon will come summer and the salmon."

Said Snass: "Your partner is dead. My hunters did not kill him.
They found the body, frozen in the first of the spring storms in the
mountains. No man can escape. When shall we celebrate your
marriage?"

And Labiskwee: "I watch you. There is trouble in your eyes, in your
face. Oh, I do know all your face. There is a little scar on your
neck, just under the ear. When you are happy, the corners of your
mouth turn up. When you think sad thoughts they turn down. When you
smile there are three and four wrinkles at the corners of your eyes.
When you laugh there are six. Sometimes I have almost counted seven.
But I cannot count them now. I have never read books. I do not know
how to read. But Four Eyes taught me much. My grammar is good. He
taught me. And in his own eyes I have seen the trouble of the hunger
for the world. He was often hungry for the world. Yet here was good
meat, and fish in plenty, and the berries and the roots, and often
flour came back for the furs through the Porcupines and the Luskwas.
Yet was he hungry for the world. Is the world so good that you, too,
are hungry for it? Four Eyes had nothing. But you have me." She
sighed and shook her head. "Four Eyes died still hungry for the
world. And if you lived here always would you, too, die hungry for
the world? I am afraid I do not know the world. Do you want to run
away to the world?"

Smoke could not speak, but by his mouth-corner lines was she
convinced.

Minutes of silence passed, in which she visibly struggled, while Smoke
cursed himself for the unguessed weakness that enabled him to speak
the truth about his hunger for the world while it kept his lips tight
on the truth of the existence of the other woman.

Again Labiskwee sighed.

"Very well. I love you more than I fear my father's anger, and he is
more terrible in anger than a mountain storm. You told me what love
is. This is the test of love. I shall help you to run away back to
the world."


Smoke awakened softly and without movement. Warm small fingers
touched his cheek and slid gently to a pressure on his lips. Fur,
with the chill of frost clinging in it, next tingled his skin, and the
one word, "Come," was breathed in his ear. He sat up carefully and
listened. The hundreds of wolf-dogs in the camp had lifted their
nocturnal song, but under the volume of it, close at hand, he could
distinguish the light, regular breathing of Snass.

Labiskwee tugged gently at Smoke's sleeve, and he knew she wished him
to follow. He took his moccasins and German socks in his hand and
crept out into the snow in his sleeping moccasins. Beyond the glow
from the dying embers of the fire, she indicated to him to put on his
outer foot-gear, and while he obeyed, she went back under the fly
where Snass slept.

Feeling the hands of his watch Smoke found it was one in the morning.
Quite warm it was, he decided, not more than ten below zero.
Labiskwee rejoined him and led him on through the dark runways of the
sleeping camp. Walk lightly as they could, the frost crunched crisply
under their moccasins, but the sound was drowned by the clamor of the
dogs, too deep in their howling to snarl at the man and woman who
passed.

"Now we can talk," she said, when the last fire had been left half a
mile behind.

And now, in the starlight, facing him, Smoke noted for the first time
that her arms were burdened, and, on feeling, discovered she carried
his snowshoes, a rifle, two belts of ammunition, and his
sleeping-robes.

"I have everything fixed," she said, with a happy little laugh. "I
have been two days making the cache. There is meat, even flour,
matches, and skees, which go best on the hard crust and, when they
break through, the webs will hold up longer. Oh, I do know
snow-travel, and we shall go fast, my lover."

Smoke checked his speech. That she had been arranging his escape was
surprise enough, but that she had planned to go with him was more than
he was prepared for. Unable to think immediate action, he gently, one
by one, took her burdens from her. He put his arm around her and
pressed her close, and still he could not think what to do.

"God is good," she whispered. "He sent me a lover."

Yet Smoke was brave enough not to suggest his going alone. And before
he spoke again he saw all his memory of the bright world and the
sun-lands reel and fade.

"We will go back, Labiskwee," he said. "You will be my wife, and we
shall live always with the Caribou People."

"No! no!" She shook her head; and her body, in the circle of his arm,
resented his proposal. "I know. I have thought much. The hunger for
the world would come upon you, and in the long nights it would devour
your heart. Four Eyes died of hunger for the world. So would you
die. All men from the world hunger for it. And I will not have you
die. We will go on across the snow mountains on the south traverse."

"Dear, listen," he urged. "We must go back."

She pressed her mitten against his lips to prevent further speech.
"You love me. Say that you love me."

"I do love you, Labiskwee. You are my wonderful sweetheart."

Again the mitten was a caressing obstacle to utterance.

"We shall go on to the cache," she said with decision. "It is three
miles from here. Come."

He held back, and her pull on his arm could not move him. Almost was
he tempted to tell her of the other woman beyond the south traverse.

"It would be a great wrong to you to go back," she said. "I--I am only
a wild girl, and I am afraid of the world; but I am more afraid for
you. You see, it is as you told me. I love you more than anybody
else in the world. I love you more than myself. The Indian language
is not a good language. The English language is not a good language.
The thoughts in my heart for you, as bright and as many as the
stars--there is no language for them. How can I tell you them? They
are there--see?"

As she spoke she slipped the mitten from his hand and thrust the hand
inside the warmth of her parka until it rested against her heart.
Tightly and steadily she pressed his hand in its position. And in the
long silence he felt the beat, beat of her heart, and knew that every
beat of it was love. And then, slowly, almost imperceptibly, still
holding his hand, her body began to incline away from his and toward
the direction of the cache. Nor could he resist. It was as if he
were drawn by her heart itself that so nearly lay in the hollow of his
hand.

So firm was the crust, frozen during the night after the previous
day's surface-thaw, that they slid along rapidly on their skees.

"Just here, in the trees, is the cache," Labiskwee told Smoke.

The next moment she caught his arm with a startle of surprise. The
flames of a small fire were dancing merrily, and crouched by the fire
was McCan. Labiskwee muttered something in Indian, and so lashlike
was the sound that Smoke remembered she had been called "cheetah" by
Four Eyes.

"I was minded you'd run without me," McCan explained when they came
up, his small peering eyes glimmering with cunning. "So I kept an eye
on the girl, an' when I seen her caching skees an' grub, I was on.
I've brought my own skees an' webs an' grub. The fire? Sure, an' it
was no danger. The camp's asleep an' snorin', an' the waitin' was
cold. Will we be startin' now?"

Labiskwee looked swift consternation at Smoke, as swiftly achieved a
judgement on the matter, and spoke. And in the speaking she showed,
child-woman though she was in love, the quick decisiveness of one who
in other affairs of life would be no clinging vine.

"McCan, you are a dog," she hissed, and her eyes were savage with
anger. "I know it is in your heart to raise the camp if we do not
take you. Very well. We must take you. But you know my father. I
am like my father. You will do your share of the work. You will
obey. And if you play one dirty trick, it would be better for you if
you had never run."

McCan looked up at her, his small pig-eyes hating and cringing, while
in her eyes, turned to Smoke, the anger melted into luminous softness.

"Is it right, what I have said?" she queried.

Daylight found them in the belt of foothills that lay between the
rolling country and the mountains. McCan suggested breakfast, but
they held on. Not until the afternoon thaw softened the crust and
prevented travel would they eat.

The foothills quickly grew rugged, and the stream, up whose frozen bed
they journeyed, began to thread deeper and deeper canyons. The signs
of spring were less frequent, though in one canyon they found foaming
bits of open water, and twice they came upon clumps of dwarf willow
upon which were the first hints of swelling buds.

Labiskwee explained to Smoke her knowledge of the country and the way
she planned to baffle pursuit. There were but two ways out, one west,
the other south. Snass would immediately dispatch parties of young
men to guard the two trails. But there was another way south. True,
it did no more than penetrate half-way into the high mountains, then,
twisting to the west and crossing three divides, it joined the regular
trail. When the young men found no traces on the regular trail they
would turn back in the belief that the escape had been made by the
west traverse, never dreaming that the runaways had ventured the
harder and longer way around.

Glancing back at McCan, in the rear, Labiskwee spoke in an undertone
to Smoke. "He is eating," she said. "It is not good."

Smoke looked. The Irishman was secretly munching caribou suet from
the pocketful he carried.

"No eating between meals, McCan," he commanded. "There's no game in
the country ahead, and the grub will have to be whacked in equal
rations from the start. The only way you can travel with us is by
playing fair."

By one o'clock the crust had thawed so that the skees broke through,
and before two o'clock the web-shoes were breaking through. Camp was
made and the first meal eaten. Smoke took stock of the food. McCan's
supply was a disappointment. So many silver fox-skins had he stuffed
in the bottom of the meat bag that there was little space left for
meat.

"Sure an' I didn't know there was so many," he explained. "I done it
in the dark. But they're worth good money. An' with all this
ammunition we'll be gettin' game a-plenty."

"The wolves will eat you a-plenty," was Smoke's hopeless comment,
while Labiskwee's eyes flashed their anger.

Enough food for a month, with careful husbanding and appetites that
never blunted their edge, was Smoke's and Labiskwee's judgment. Smoke
apportioned the weight and bulk of the packs, yielding in the end to
Labiskwee's insistence that she, too, should carry a pack.

Next day the stream shallowed out in a wide mountain valley, and they
were already breaking through the crust on the flats when they gained
the harder surface of the slope of the divide.

"Ten minutes later and we wouldn't have got across the flats," Smoke
said, when they paused for breath on the bald crest of the summit.
"We must be a thousand feet higher here."

But Labiskwee, without speaking, pointed down to an open flat among
the trees. In the midst of it, scattered abreast, were five dark
specks that scarcely moved.

"The young men," said Labiskwee.

"They are wallowing to their hips," Smoke said. "They will never gain
the hard footing this day. We have hours the start of them. Come on,
McCan. Buck up. We don't eat till we can't travel."

McCan groaned, but there was no caribou suet in his pocket, and he
doggedly brought up the rear.

In the higher valley in which they now found themselves, the crust did
not break till three in the afternoon, at which time they managed to
gain the shadow of a mountain where the crust was already freezing
again. Once only they paused to get out McCan's confiscated suet,
which they ate as they walked. The meat was frozen solid, and could
be eaten only after thawing over a fire. But the suet crumbled in
their mouths and eased the palpitating faintness in their stomachs.

Black darkness, with an overcast sky, came on after a long twilight at
nine o'clock, when they made camp in a clump of dwarf spruce. McCan
was whining and helpless. The day's march had been exhausting, but in
addition, despite his nine years' experience in the arctic, he had
been eating snow and was in agony with his parched and burning mouth.
He crouched by the fire and groaned, while they made the camp.

Labiskwee was tireless, and Smoke could not but marvel at the life in
her body, at the endurance of mind and muscle. Nor was her
cheerfulness forced. She had ever a laugh or a smile for him, and her
hand lingered in caress whenever it chanced to touch his. Yet,
always, when she looked at McCan, her face went hard and pitiless and
her eyes flashed frostily.

In the night came wind and snow, and through a day of blizzard they
fought their way blindly, missing the turn of the way that led up a
small stream and crossed a divide to the west. For two more days they
wandered, crossing other and wrong divides, and in those two days they
dropped spring behind and climbed up into the abode of winter.

"The young men have lost our trail, an' what's to stop us restin' a
day?" McCan begged.

But no rest was accorded. Smoke and Labiskwee knew their danger.
They were lost in the high mountains, and they had seen no game nor
signs of game. Day after day they struggled on through an iron
configuration of landscape that compelled them to labyrinthine canyons
and valleys that led rarely to the west. Once in such a canyon, they
could only follow it, no matter where it led, for the cold peaks and
higher ranges on either side were unscalable and unendurable. The
terrible toil and the cold ate up energy, yet they cut down the size
of the ration they permitted themselves.

One night Smoke was awakened by a sound of struggling. Distinctly he
heard a gasping and strangling from where McCan slept. Kicking the
fire into flame, by its light he saw Labiskwee, her hands at the
Irishman's throat and forcing from his mouth a chunk of partly chewed
meat. Even as Smoke saw this, her hand went to her hip and flashed
with the sheath-knife in it.

"Labiskwee!" Smoke cried, and his voice was peremptory.

The hand hesitated.

"Don't," he said, coming to her side.

She was shaking with anger, but the hand, after hesitating a moment
longer, descended reluctantly to the sheath. As if fearing she could
not restrain herself, she crossed to the fire and threw on more wood.
McCan sat up, whimpering and snarling, between fright and rage
spluttering an inarticulate explanation.

"Where did you get it?" Smoke demanded.

"Feel around his body," Labiskwee said.

It was the first word she had spoken, and her voice quivered with the
anger she could not suppress.

McCan strove to struggle, but Smoke gripped him cruelly and searched
him, drawing forth from under his armpit, where it had been thawed by
the heat of his body, a strip of caribou meat. A quick exclamation
from Labiskwee drew Smoke's attention. She had sprung to McCan's pack
and was opening it. Instead of meat, out poured moss, spruce-needles,
chips--all the light refuse that had taken the place of the meat and
given the pack its due proportion minus its weight.

Again Labiskwee's hand went to her hip, and she flew at the culprit
only to be caught in Smoke's arms, where she surrendered herself,
sobbing with the futility of her rage.

"Oh, lover, it is not the food," she panted. "It is you, your life.
The dog! He is eating you, he is eating you!"

"We will yet live," Smoke comforted her. "Hereafter he shall carry
the flour. He can't eat that raw, and if he does I'll kill him
myself, for he will be eating your life as well as mine." He held her
closer. "Sweetheart, killing is men's work. Women do not kill."

"You would not love me if I killed the dog?" she questioned in
surprise.

"Not so much," Smoke temporized.

She sighed with resignation. "Very well," she said. "I shall not
kill him."


The pursuit by the young men was relentless. By miracles of luck, as
well as by deduction from the topography of the way the runaways must
take, the young men picked up the blizzard-blinded trail and clung to
it. When the snow flew, Smoke and Labiskwee took the most improbable
courses, turning east when the better way opened south or west,
rejecting a low divide to climb a higher. Being lost, it did not
matter. Yet they could not throw the young men off. Sometimes they
gained days, but always the young men appeared again. After a storm,
when all trace was lost, they would cast out like a pack of hounds,
and he who caught the later trace made smoke signals to call his
comrades on.

Smoke lost count of time, of days and nights and storms and camps.
Through a vast mad phantasmagoria of suffering and toil he and
Labiskwee struggled on, with McCan somehow stumbling along in the
rear, babbling of San Francisco, his everlasting dream. Great peaks,
pitiless and serene in the chill blue, towered about them. They fled
down black canyons with walls so precipitous that the rock frowned
naked, or wallowed across glacial valleys where frozen lakes lay far
beneath their feet. And one night, between two storms, a distant
volcano glared the sky. They never saw it again, and wondered whether
it had been a dream.

Crusts were covered with yards of new snow, that crusted and were
snow-covered again. There were places, in canyon- and pocket-drifts,
where they crossed snow hundreds of feet deep, and they crossed tiny
glaciers, in drafty rifts, wind-scurried and bare of any snow. They
crept like silent wraiths across the faces of impending avalanches, or
roused from exhausted sleep to the thunder of them. They made
fireless camps above timber-line, thawing their meat-rations with the
heat of their bodies ere they could eat. And through it all Labiskwee
remained Labiskwee. Her cheer never vanished, save when she looked at
McCan, and the greatest stupor of fatigue and cold never stilled the
eloquence of her love for Smoke.

Like a cat she watched the apportionment of the meager ration, and
Smoke could see that she grudged McCan every munch of his jaws. Once,
she distributed the ration. The first Smoke knew was a wild harangue
of protest from McCan. Not to him alone, but to herself, had she
given a smaller portion than to Smoke. After that, Smoke divided the
meat himself. Caught in a small avalanche one morning after a night
of snow, and swept a hundred yards down the mountain, they emerged
half-stifled and unhurt, but McCan emerged without his pack in which
was all the flour. A second and larger snow-slide buried it beyond
hope of recovery. After that, though the disaster had been through no
fault of his, Labiskwee never looked at McCan, and Smoke knew it was
because she dared not.

It was a morning, stark still, clear blue above, with white sun-dazzle
on the snow. The way led up a long, wide slope of crust. They moved
like weary ghosts in a dead world. No wind stirred in the stagnant,
frigid calm. Far peaks, a hundred miles away, studding the backbone
of the Rockies up and down, were as distinct as if no more than five
miles away.

"Something is going to happen," Labiskwee whispered. "Don't you feel
it?--here, there, everywhere? Everything is strange."

"I feel a chill that is not of cold," Smoke answered. "Nor is it of
hunger."

"It is in your head, your heart," she agreed excitedly. "That is the
way I feel it."

"It is not of my senses," Smoke diagnosed. "I sense something, from
without, that is tingling me with ice; it is a chill of my nerves."

A quarter of an hour later they paused for breath.

"I can no longer see the far peaks," Smoke said.

"The air is getting thick and heavy," said Labiskwee. "It is hard to
breathe."

"There be three suns," McCan muttered hoarsely, reeling as he clung to
his staff for support.

There was a mock sun on either side of the real sun.

"There are five," said Labiskwee; and as they looked, new suns formed
and flashed before their eyes.

"By Heaven, the sky is filled with suns beyant all countin'," McCan
cried in fear.

Which was true, for look where they would, half the circle of the sky
dazzled and blazed with new suns forming.

McCan yelped sharply with surprise and pain. "I'm stung!" he cried
out, then yelped again.

Then Labiskwee cried out, and Smoke felt a prickling stab on his cheek
so cold that it burned like acid. It reminded him of swimming in the
salt sea and being stung by the poisonous filaments of Portuguese
men-of-war. The sensations were so similar that he automatically
brushed his cheek to rid it of the stinging substance that was not
there.

And then a shot rang out, strangely muffled. Down the slope were the
young men, standing on their skees, and one after another opened fire.

"Spread out!" Smoke commanded. "And climb for it! We're almost to
the top. They're a quarter of a mile below, and that means a couple
of miles the start of them on the down-going of the other side."

With faces prickling and stinging from invisible atmospheric stabs,
the three scattered widely on the snow surface and toiled upward. The
muffled reports of the rifles were weird to their ears.

"Thank the Lord," Smoke panted to Labiskwee, "that four of them are
muskets, and only one a Winchester. Besides, all these suns spoil
their aim. They are fooled. They haven't come within a hundred feet
of us."

"It shows my father's temper," she said. "They have orders to kill."

"How strange you talk," Smoke said. "Your voice sounds far away."

"Cover your mouth," Labiskwee cried suddenly. "And do not talk. I
know what it is. Cover your mouth with your sleeve, thus, and do not
talk."

McCan fell first, and struggled wearily to his feet. And after that
all fell repeatedly ere they reached the summit. Their wills exceeded
their muscles, they knew not why, save that their bodies were
oppressed by a numbness and heaviness of movement. From the crest,
looking back, they saw the young men stumbling and falling on the
upward climb.

"They will never get here," Labiskwee said. "It is the white death.
I know it, though I have never seen it. I have heard the old men
talk. Soon will come a mist--unlike any mist or fog or frost-smoke
you ever saw. Few have seen it and lived."

McCan gasped and strangled.

"Keep your mouth covered," Smoke commanded.

A pervasive flashing of light from all about them drew Smoke's eyes
upward to the many suns. They were shimmering and veiling. The air
was filled with microscopic fire-glints. The near peaks were being
blotted out by the weird mist; the young men, resolutely struggling
nearer, were being engulfed in it. McCan had sunk down, squatting, on
his skees, his mouth and eyes covered by his arms.

"Come on, make a start," Smoke ordered.

"I can't move," McCan moaned.

His doubled body set up a swaying motion. Smoke went toward him
slowly, scarcely able to will movement through the lethargy that
weighed his flesh. He noted that his brain was clear. It was only
the body that was afflicted.

"Let him be," Labiskwee muttered harshly.

But Smoke persisted, dragging the Irishman to his feet and facing him
down the long slope they must go. Then he started him with a shove,
and McCan, braking and steering with his staff, shot into the sheen of
diamond-dust and disappeared.

Smoke looked at Labiskwee, who smiled, though it was all she could do
to keep from sinking down. He nodded for her to push off, but she
came near to him, and side by side, a dozen feet apart, they flew down
through the stinging thickness of cold fire.

Brake as he would, Smoke's heavier body carried him past her, and he
dashed on alone, a long way, at tremendous speed that did not slacken
till he came out on a level, crusted plateau. Here he braked till
Labiskwee overtook him, and they went on, again side by side, with
diminishing speed which finally ceased. The lethargy had grown more
pronounced. The wildest effort of will could move them no more than
at a snail's pace. They passed McCan, again crouched down on his
skees, and Smoke roused him with his staff in passing.

"Now we must stop," Labiskwee whispered painfully, "or we will die.
We must cover up--so the old men said."

She did not delay to untie knots, but began cutting her pack-lashings.
Smoke cut his, and, with a last look at the fiery death-mist and the
mockery of suns, they covered themselves over with the sleeping-furs
and crouched in each other's arms. They felt a body stumble over them
and fall, then heard feeble whimpering and blaspheming drowned in a
violent coughing fit, and knew it was McCan who huddled against them
as he wrapped his robe about him.

Their own lung-strangling began, and they were racked and torn by a
dry cough, spasmodic and uncontrollable. Smoke noted his temperature
rising in a fever, and Labiskwee suffered similarly. Hour after hour
the coughing spells increased in frequency and violence, and not till
late afternoon was the worst reached. After that the mend came
slowly, and between spells they dozed in exhaustion.

McCan, however, steadily coughed worse, and from his groans and howls
they knew he was in delirium. Once, Smoke made as if to throw the
robes back, but Labiskwee clung to him tightly.

"No," she begged. "It is death to uncover now. Bury your face here,
against my parka, and breathe gently and do no talking--see, the way I
am doing."

They dozed on through the darkness, though the decreasing fits of
coughing of one invariably aroused the other. It was after midnight,
Smoke judged, when McCan coughed his last. After that he emitted low
and bestial moanings that never ceased.

Smoke awoke with lips touching his lips. He lay partly in Labiskwee's
arms, his head pillowed on her breast. Her voice was cheerful and
usual. The muffled sound of it had vanished.

"It is day," she said, lifting the edge of the robes a trifle. "See,
O my lover. It is day; we have lived through; and we no longer cough.
Let us look at the world, though I could stay here thus forever and
always. This last hour has been sweet. I have been awake, and I have
been loving you."

"I do not hear McCan," Smoke said. "And what has become of the young
men that they have not found us?"

He threw back the robes and saw a normal and solitary sun in the sky.
A gentle breeze was blowing, crisp with frost and hinting of warmer
days to come. All the world was natural again. McCan lay on his
back, his unwashed face, swarthy from camp-smoke, frozen hard as
marble. The sight did not affect Labiskwee.

"Look!" she cried. "A snow bird! It is a good sign."

There was no evidence of the young men. Either they had died on the
other side of the divide or they had turned back.

There was so little food that they dared not eat a tithe of what they
needed, nor a hundredth part of what they desired, and in the days
that followed, wandering through the lone mountain-land, the sharp
sting of life grew blunted and the wandering merged half into a dream.
Smoke would become abruptly conscious, to find himself staring at the
never-ending hated snow-peaks, his senseless babble still ringing in
his ears. And the next he would know, after seeming centuries, was
that again he was roused to the sound of his own maunderings.
Labiskwee, too, was light-headed most of the time. In the main their
efforts were unreasoned, automatic. And ever they worked toward the
west, and ever they were baffled and thrust north or south by
snow-peaks and impassable ranges.

"There is no way south," Labiskwee said. "The old men know. West,
only west, is the way."

The young men no longer pursued, but famine crowded on the trail.

Came a day when it turned cold, and a thick snow, that was not snow
but frost crystals of the size of grains of sand, began to fall. All
day and night it fell, and for three days and nights it continued to
fall. It was impossible to travel until it crusted under the spring
sun, so they lay in their furs and rested, and ate less because they
rested. So small was the ration they permitted that it gave no
appeasement to the hunger pang that was much of the stomach, but more
of the brain. And Labiskwee, delirious, maddened by the taste of her
tiny portion, sobbing and mumbling, yelping sharp little animal cries
of joy, fell upon the next day's portion and crammed it into her
mouth.

Then it was given to Smoke to see a wonderful thing. The food between
her teeth roused her to consciousness. She spat it out, and with a
great anger struck herself with her clenched fist on the offending
mouth.

It was given to Smoke to see many wonderful things in the days yet to
come. After the long snow-fall came on a great wind that drove the
dry and tiny frost-particles as sand is driven in a sand-storm. All
through the night the sand-frost drove by, and in the full light of a
clear and wind-blown day, Smoke looked with swimming eyes and reeling
brain upon what he took to be the vision of a dream. All about
towered great peaks and small, lone sentinels and groups and councils
of mighty Titans. And from the tip of every peak, swaying,
undulating, flaring out broadly against the azure sky, streamed
gigantic snow-banners, miles in length, milky and nebulous, ever
waving lights and shadows and flashing silver from the sun.

"Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord," Smoke
chanted, as he gazed upon these dusts of snow wind-driven into
sky-scarves of shimmering silken light.

And still he gazed, and still the bannered peaks did not vanish, and
still he considered that he dreamed, until Labiskwee sat up among the
furs.

"I dream, Labiskwee," he said. "Look. Do you, too, dream within my
dream?"

"It is no dream," she replied. "This have the old men told me. And
after this will blow the warm winds, and we shall live and win west."

Smoke shot a snow-bird, and they divided it. Once, in a valley where
willows budded standing in the snow, he shot a snowshoe rabbit.
Another time he got a lean, white weasel. This much of meat they
encountered, and no more, though, once, half-mile high and veering
toward the west and the Yukon, they saw a wild-duck wedge drive by.

"It is summer in the lower valleys," said Labiskwee. "Soon it will be
summer here."

Labiskwee's face had grown thin, but the bright, large eyes were
brighter and larger, and when she looked at him she was transfigured
by a wild, unearthly beauty.

The days lengthened, and the snow began to sink. Each day the crust
thawed, each night it froze again; and they were afoot early and late,
being compelled to camp and rest during the midday hours of thaw when
the crust could not bear their weight. When Smoke grew snow-blind,
Labiskwee towed him on a thong tied to her waist. And when she was so
blinded, she towed behind a thong to his waist. And starving, in a
deeper dream, they struggled on through an awakening land bare of any
life save their own.

Exhausted as he was, Smoke grew almost to fear sleep, so fearful and
bitter were the visions of that mad, twilight land. Always were they
of food, and always was the food, at his lips, snatched away by the
malign deviser of dreams. He gave dinners to his comrades of the old
San Francisco days, himself, with whetting appetite and jealous eye,
directing the arrangements, decorating the table with crimson-leafed
runners of the autumn grape. The guests were dilatory, and while he
greeted them and all sparkled with their latest cleverness, he was
frantic with desire for the table. He stole to it, unobserved, and
clutched a handful of black ripe olives, and turned to meet still
another guest. And others surrounded him, and the laugh and play of
wit went on, while all the time, hidden in his closed hand, was this
madness of ripe olives.

He gave many such dinners, all with the same empty ending. He
attended Gargantuan feasts, where multitudes fed on innumerable
bullocks roasted whole, prying them out of smoldering pits and with
sharp knives slicing great strips of meat from the steaming carcasses.
He stood, with mouth agape, beneath long rows of turkeys which
white-aproned shopmen sold. And everybody bought save Smoke, mouth
still agape, chained by a leadenness of movement to the pavement. A
boy again, he sat with spoon poised high above great bowls of bread
and milk. He pursued shy heifers through upland pastures and
centuries of torment in vain effort to steal from them their milk, and
in noisome dungeons he fought with rats for scraps and refuse. There
was no food that was not a madness to him, and he wandered through
vast stables, where fat horses stood in mile-long rows of stalls, and
sought but never found the bran-bins from which they fed.

Once, only, he dreamed to advantage. Famishing, shipwrecked or
marooned, he fought with the big Pacific surf for rock-clinging
mussels, and carried them up the sands to the dry flotsam of the
spring tides. Of this he built a fire, and among the coals he laid
his precious trove. He watched the steam jet forth and the locked
shells pop apart, exposing the salmon-colored meat. Cooked to a
turn--he knew it; and this time there was no intruding presence to
whisk the meal away. At last--so he dreamed within the dream--the
dream would come true. This time he would eat. Yet in his certitude
he doubted, and he was steeled for the inevitable shift of vision
until the salmon-colored meat, hot and savory, was in his mouth. His
teeth closed upon it. He ate! The miracle had happened! The shock
aroused him. He awoke in the dark, lying on his back, and heard
himself mumbling little piggish squeals and grunts of joy. His jaws
were moving, and between his teeth meat was crunching. He did not
move, and soon small fingers felt about his lips, and between them was
inserted a tiny sliver of meat. And in that he would eat no more,
rather than that he was angry, Labiskwee cried and in his arms sobbed
herself to sleep. But he lay on awake, marveling at the love and the
wonder of woman.


The time came when the last food was gone. The high peaks receded,
the divides became lower, and the way opened promisingly to the west.
But their reserves of strength were gone, and, without food, the time
quickly followed when they lay down at night and in the morning did
not arise. Smoke weakly gained his feet, collapsed, and on hands and
knees crawled about the building of a fire. But try as she would
Labiskwee sank back each time in an extremity of weakness. And Smoke
sank down beside her, a wan sneer on his face for the automatism that
had made him struggle for an unneeded fire. There was nothing to
cook, and the day was warm. A gentle breeze sighed in the
spruce-trees, and from everywhere, under the disappearing snow, came
the trickling music of unseen streamlets.

Labiskwee lay in a stupor, her breathing so imperceptible that often
Smoke thought her dead. In the afternoon the chattering of a squirrel
aroused him. Dragging the heavy rifle, he wallowed through the crust
that had become slush. He crept on hands and knees, or stood upright
and fell forward in the direction of the squirrel that chattered its
wrath and fled slowly and tantalizingly before him. He had not the
strength for a quick shot, and the squirrel was never still. At times
Smoke sprawled in the wet snow-melt and cried out of weakness. Other
times the flame of his life flickered, and blackness smote him. How
long he lay in the last faint he did not know, but he came to,
shivering in the chill of evening, his wet clothing frozen to the
re-forming crust. The squirrel was gone, and after a weary struggle
he won back to the side of Labiskwee. So profound was his weakness
that he lay like a dead man through the night, nor did dreams disturb
him.

The sun was in the sky, the same squirrel chattering through the
trees, when Labiskwee's hand on Smoke's cheek awakened him.

"Put your hand on my heart, lover," she said, her voice clear but
faint and very far away. "My heart is my love, and you hold it in
your hand."

A long time seemed to go by, ere she spoke again.

"Remember always, there is no way south. That is well known to the
Caribou People. West--that is the way--and you are almost there--and
you will make it."

And Smoke drowsed in the numbness that is near to death, until once
more she aroused him.

"Put your lips on mine," she said. "I will die so."

"We will die together, sweetheart," was his answer.

"No." A feeble flutter of her hand checked him, and so thin was her
voice that scarcely did he hear it, yet did he hear all of it. Her
hand fumbled and groped in the hood of her parka, and she drew forth a
pouch that she placed in his hand. "And now your lips, my lover.
Your lips on my lips, and your hand on my heart."

And in that long kiss darkness came upon him again, and when again he
was conscious he knew that he was alone and he knew that he was to
die. He was wearily glad that he was to die.

He found his hand resting on the pouch. With an inward smile at the
curiosity that made him pull the draw-string, he opened it. Out
poured a tiny flood of food. There was no particle of it that he did
not recognize, all stolen by Labiskwee from Labiskwee--bread-fragments
saved far back in the days ere McCan lost the flour; strips and
strings of caribou-meat, partly gnawed; crumbles of suet; the hind-leg
of the snowshoe rabbit, untouched; the hind-leg and part of the
fore-leg of the white weasel; the wing dented still by her reluctant
teeth, and the leg of the snow-bird--pitiful remnants, tragic
renunciations, crucifixions of life, morsels stolen from her terrible
hunger by her incredible love.

With maniacal laughter Smoke flung it all out on the hardening
snow-crust and went back into the blackness.

He dreamed. The Yukon ran dry. In its bed, among muddy pools of
water and ice-scoured rocks, he wandered, picking up fat nugget-gold.
The weight of it grew to be a burden to him, till he discovered that
it was good to eat. And greedily he ate. After all, of what worth
was gold that men should prize it so, save that it was good to eat?

He awoke to another sun. His brain was strangely clear. No longer
did his eyesight blur. The familiar palpitation that had vexed him
through all his frame was gone. The juices of his body seemed to
sing, as if the spring had entered in. Blessed well-being had come to
him. He turned to awaken Labiskwee, and saw, and remembered. He
looked for the food flung out on the snow. It was gone. And he knew
that in delirium and dream it had been the Yukon nugget-gold. In
delirium and dream he had taken heart of life from the life sacrifice
of Labiskwee, who had put her heart in his hand and opened his eyes to
woman and wonder.

He was surprised at the ease of his movements, astounded that he was
able to drag her fur-wrapped body to the exposed thawed gravel-bank,
which he undermined with the ax and caved upon her.


Three days, with no further food, he fought west. In the mid third
day he fell beneath a lone spruce beside a wide stream that ran open
and which he knew must be the Klondike. Ere blackness conquered him,
he unlashed his pack, said good-by to the bright world, and rolled
himself in the robes.

Chirping, sleepy noises awoke him. The long twilight was on. Above
him, among the spruce boughs, were ptarmigan. Hunger bit him into
instant action, though the action was infinitely slow. Five minutes
passed before he was able to get his rifle to his shoulder, and a
second five minutes passed ere he dared, lying on his back and aiming
straight upward, to pull the trigger. It was a clean miss. No bird
fell, but no bird flew. They ruffled and rustled stupidly and
drowsily. His shoulder pained him. A second shot was spoiled by the
involuntary wince he made as he pulled trigger. Somewhere, in the
last three days, though he had no recollection how, he must have
fallen and injured it.

The ptarmigan had not flown. He doubled and redoubled the robe that
had covered him, and humped it in the hollow between his right arm and
his side. Resting the butt of the rifle on the fur, he fired again,
and a bird fell. He clutched it greedily and found that he had shot
most of the meat out of it. The large-caliber bullet had left little
else than a mess of mangled feathers. Still the ptarmigan did not
fly, and he decided that it was heads or nothing. He fired only at
heads. He reloaded and reloaded the magazine. He missed; he hit; and
the stupid ptarmigan, that were loath to fly, fell upon him in a rain
of food--lives disrupted that his life might feed and live. There had
been nine of them, and in the end he clipped the head of the ninth,
and lay and laughed and wept he knew not why.

The first he ate raw. Then he rested and slept, while his life
assimilated the life of it. In the darkness he awoke, hungry, with
strength to build a fire. And until early dawn he cooked and ate,
crunching the bones to powder between his long-idle teeth. He slept,
awoke in the darkness of another night, and slept again to another
sun.

He noted with surprise that the fire crackled with fresh fuel and that
a blackened coffee-pot steamed on the edge of the coals. Beside the
fire, within arm's length, sat Shorty, smoking a brown-paper cigarette
and intently watching him. Smoke's lips moved, but a throat paralysis
seemed to come upon him, while his chest was suffused with the menace
of tears. He reached out his hand for the cigarette and drew the
smoke deep into his lungs again and again.

"I have not smoked for a long time," he said at last, in a low calm
voice. "For a very long time."

"Nor eaten, from your looks," Shorty added gruffly.

Smoke nodded and waved his hand at the ptarmigan feathers that lay all
about.

"Not until recently," he returned. "Do you know, I'd like a cup of
coffee. It will taste strange. Also flapjacks and a strip of bacon."

"And beans?" Shorty tempted.

"They would taste heavenly. I find I am quite hungry again."

While the one cooked and the other ate, they told briefly what had
happened to them in the days since their separation.

"The Klondike was breakin' up," Shorty concluded his recital, "an' we
just had to wait for open water. Two polin' boats, six other men--you
know 'em all, an' crackerjacks--an' all kinds of outfit. An' we've
sure been a-comin'--polin', linin' up, and portagin'. But the
falls'll stick 'em a solid week. That's where I left 'em a-cuttin' a
trail over the tops of the bluffs for the boats. I just had a sure
natural hunch to keep a-comin'. So I fills a pack with grub an'
starts. I knew I'd find you a-driftin' an' all in."

Smoke nodded, and put forth his hand in a silent grip. "Well, let's
get started," he said.

"Started hell!" Shorty exploded. "We stay right here an' rest you up
an' feed you up for a couple of days."

Smoke shook his head.

"If you could just see yourself," Shorty protested.

And what he saw was not nice. Smoke's face, wherever the skin showed,
was black and purple and scabbed from repeated frost-bite. The cheeks
were fallen in, so that, despite the covering of beard, the upper rows
of teeth ridged the shrunken flesh. Across the forehead and about the
deep-sunk eyes, the skin was stretched drum-tight, while the scraggly
beard, that should have been golden, was singed by fire and filthy
with camp-smoke.

"Better pack up," Smoke said. "I'm going on."

"But you're feeble as a kid baby. You can't hike. What's the rush?"

"Shorty, I am going after the biggest thing in the Klondike, and I
can't wait. That's all. Start packing. It's the biggest thing in
the world. It's bigger than lakes of gold and mountains of gold,
bigger than adventure, and meat-eating, and bear-killing."

Shorty sat with bulging eyes. "In the name of the Lord, what is it?"
he queried huskily. "Or are you just simple loco?"

"No, I'm all right. Perhaps a fellow has to stop eating in order to
see things. At any rate, I have seen things I never dreamed were in
the world. I know what a woman is,--now.

Shorty's mouth opened, and about the lips and in the light of the eyes
was the whimsical advertisement of the sneer forthcoming.

"Don't, please," Smoke said gently. "You don't know. I do."

Shorty gulped and changed his thought. "Huh! I don't need no hunch
to guess HER name. The rest of 'em has gone up to the drainin' of
Surprise Lake, but Joy Gastell allowed she wouldn't go. She's
stickin' around Dawson, waitin' to see if I come back with you. An'
she sure swears, if I don't, she'll sell her holdin's an' hire a army
of gun-fighters, an' go into the Caribou Country an' knock the
everlastin' stuffin' outa old Snass an' his whole gang. An' if you'll
hold your horses a couple of shakes, I reckon I'll get packed up an'
ready to hike along with you."