Love of Life And Other Stories

Part 2 out of 3

the marvel he had never seen.

"Yes," I answered, "it is true talk that you have heard. There is
no snow in that country, and its name is California."

"Cal-ee-forn-ee-yeh," he mumbled twice and thrice, listening
intently to the sound of the syllables as they fell from his lips.
He nodded his head in confirmation. "Yes, it is the same country
of which Yamikan made talk."

I recognized the adventure of Yamikan as one likely to occur in the
early days when Alaska first passed into the possession of the
United States. Such a murder case, occurring before the instalment
of territorial law and officials, might well have been taken down
to the United States for trial before a Federal court.

"When Yamikan is in this country where there is no snow," old
Ebbits continued, "he is taken to large house where many men make
much talk. Long time men talk. Also many questions do they ask
Yamikan. By and by they tell Yamikan he have no more trouble.
Yamikan does not understand, for never has he had any trouble. All
the time have they given him warm place to sleep and plenty grub.

"But after that they give him much better grub, and they give him
money, and they take him many places in white man's country, and he
see many strange things which are beyond the understanding of
Ebbits, who is an old man and has not journeyed far. After two
years, Yamikan comes back to this village, and he is head man, and
very wise until he dies.

"But before he dies, many times does he sit by my fire and make
talk of the strange things he has seen. And Bidarshik, who is my
son, sits by the fire and listens; and his eyes are very wide and
large because of the things he hears. One night, after Yamikan has
gone home, Bidarshik stands up, so, very tall, and he strikes his
chest with his fist, and says, 'When I am a man, I shall journey in
far places, even to the land where there is no snow, and see things
for myself.'"

"Always did Bidarshik journey in far places," Zilla interrupted
proudly.

"It be true," Ebbits assented gravely. "And always did he return
to sit by the fire and hunger for yet other and unknown far
places."

"And always did he remember the salt lake as big as the sky and the
country under the sun where there is no snow," quoth Zilla.

"And always did he say, 'When I have the full strength of a man, I
will go and see for myself if the talk of Yamikan be true talk,'"
said Ebbits.

"But there was no way to go to the white man's country," said
Zilla.

"Did he not go down to the salt lake that is big as the sky?"
Ebbits demanded.

"And there was no way for him across the salt lake," said Zilla.

"Save in the white man's fire-boat which is of iron and is bigger
than twenty steamboats on the Yukon," said Ebbits. He scowled at
Zilla, whose withered lips were again writhing into speech, and
compelled her to silence. "But the white man would not let him
cross the salt lake in the fire-boat, and he returned to sit by the
fire and hunger for the country under the sun where there is no
snow.'"

"Yet on the salt lake had he seen the fire-boat of iron that did
not sink," cried out Zilla the irrepressible.

"Ay," said Ebbits, "and he saw that Yamikan had made true talk of
the things he had seen. But there was no way for Bidarshik to
journey to the white man's land under the sun, and he grew sick and
weary like an old man and moved not away from the fire. No longer
did he go forth to kill meat - "

"And no longer did he eat the meat placed before him," Zilla broke
in. "He would shake his head and say, 'Only do I care to eat the
grub of the white man and grow fat after the manner of Yamikan.'"

"And he did not eat the meat," Ebbits went on. "And the sickness
of Bidarshik grew into a great sickness until I thought he would
die. It was not a sickness of the body, but of the head. It was a
sickness of desire. I, Ebbits, who am his father, make a great
think. I have no more sons and I do not want Bidarshik to die. It
is a head-sickness, and there is but one way to make it well.
Bidarshik must journey across the lake as large as the sky to the
land where there is no snow, else will he die. I make a very great
think, and then I see the way for Bidarshik to go.

"So, one night when he sits by the fire, very sick, his head
hanging down, I say, 'My son, I have learned the way for you to go
to the white man's land.' He looks at me, and his face is glad.
'Go,' I say, 'even as Yamikan went.' But Bidarshik is sick and
does not understand. 'Go forth,' I say, 'and find a white man,
and, even as Yamikan, do you kill that white man. Then will the
soldier white men come and get you, and even as they took Yamikan
will they take you across the salt lake to the white man's land.
And then, even as Yamikan, will you return very fat, your eyes full
of the things you have seen, your head filled with wisdom.'

"And Bidarshik stands up very quick, and his hand is reaching out
for his gun. 'Where do you go?' I ask. 'To kill the white man,'
he says. And I see that my words have been good in the ears of
Bidarshik and that he will grow well again. Also do I know that my
words have been wise.

"There is a white man come to this village. He does not seek after
gold in the ground, nor after furs in the forest. All the time
does he seek after bugs and flies. He does not eat the bugs and
flies, then why does he seek after them? I do not know. Only do I
know that he is a funny white man. Also does he seek after the
eggs of birds. He does not eat the eggs. All that is inside he
takes out, and only does he keep the shell. Eggshell is not good
to eat. Nor does he eat the eggshells, but puts them away in soft
boxes where they will not break. He catch many small birds. But
he does not eat the birds. He takes only the skins and puts them
away in boxes. Also does he like bones. Bones are not good to
eat. And this strange white man likes best the bones of long time
ago which he digs out of the ground.

"But he is not a fierce white man, and I know he will die very
easy; so I say to Bidarshik, 'My son, there is the white man for
you to kill.' And Bidarshik says that my words be wise. So he
goes to a place he knows where are many bones in the ground. He
digs up very many of these bones and brings them to the strange
white man's camp. The white man is made very glad. His face
shines like the sun, and he smiles with much gladness as he looks
at the bones. He bends his head over, so, to look well at the
bones, and then Bidarshik strikes him hard on the head, with axe,
once, so, and the strange white man kicks and is dead.

"'Now,' I say to Bidarshik, 'will the white soldier men come and
take you away to the land under the sun, where you will eat much
and grow fat.' Bidarshik is happy. Already has his sickness gone
from him, and he sits by the fire and waits for the coming of the
white soldier men.

"How was I to know the way of the white man is never twice the
same?" the old man demanded, whirling upon me fiercely. "How was I
to know that what the white man does yesterday he will not do to-
day, and that what he does to-day he will not do to-morrow?"
Ebbits shook his head sadly. "There is no understanding the white
man. Yesterday he takes Yamikan to the land under the sun and
makes him fat with much grub. To-day he takes Bidarshik and - what
does he do with Bidarshik? Let me tell you what he does with
Bidarshik.

"I, Ebbits, his father, will tell you. He takes Bidarshik to
Cambell Fort, and he ties a rope around his neck, so, and, when his
feet are no more on the ground, he dies."

"Ai! ai!" wailed Zilla. "And never does he cross the lake large as
the sky, nor see the land under the sun where there is no snow."

"Wherefore," old Ebbits said with grave dignity, "there be no one
to hunt meat for me in my old age, and I sit hungry by my fire and
tell my story to the White Man who has given me grub, and strong
tea, and tobacco for my pipe."

"Because of the lying and very miserable white people," Zilla
proclaimed shrilly.

"Nay," answered the old man with gentle positiveness. "Because of
the way of the white man, which is without understanding and never
twice the same."

THE STORY OF KEESH

KEESH lived long ago on the rim of the polar sea, was head man of
his village through many and prosperous years, and died full of
honors with his name on the lips of men. So long ago did he live
that only the old men remember his name, his name and the tale,
which they got from the old men before them, and which the old men
to come will tell to their children and their children's children
down to the end of time. And the winter darkness, when the north
gales make their long sweep across the ice-pack, and the air is
filled with flying white, and no man may venture forth, is the
chosen time for the telling of how Keesh, from the poorest IGLOO in
the village, rose to power and place over them all.

He was a bright boy, so the tale runs, healthy and strong, and he
had seen thirteen suns, in their way of reckoning time. For each
winter the sun leaves the land in darkness, and the next year a new
sun returns so that they may be warm again and look upon one
another's faces. The father of Keesh had been a very brave man,
but he had met his death in a time of famine, when he sought to
save the lives of his people by taking the life of a great polar
bear. In his eagerness he came to close grapples with the bear,
and his bones were crushed; but the bear had much meat on him and
the people were saved. Keesh was his only son, and after that
Keesh lived alone with his mother. But the people are prone to
forget, and they forgot the deed of his father; and he being but a
boy, and his mother only a woman, they, too, were swiftly
forgotten, and ere long came to live in the meanest of all the
IGLOOS.

It was at a council, one night, in the big IGLOO of Klosh-Kwan, the
chief, that Keesh showed the blood that ran in his veins and the
manhood that stiffened his back. With the dignity of an elder, he
rose to his feet, and waited for silence amid the babble of voices.

"It is true that meat be apportioned me and mine," he said. "But
it is ofttimes old and tough, this meat, and, moreover, it has an
unusual quantity of bones."

The hunters, grizzled and gray, and lusty and young, were aghast.
The like had never been known before. A child, that talked like a
grown man, and said harsh things to their very faces!

But steadily and with seriousness, Keesh went on. "For that I know
my father, Bok, was a great hunter, I speak these words. It is
said that Bok brought home more meat than any of the two best
hunters, that with his own hands he attended to the division of it,
that with his own eyes he saw to it that the least old woman and
the last old man received fair share."

"Na! Na!" the men cried. "Put the child out!" "Send him off to
bed!" "He is no man that he should talk to men and graybeards!"

He waited calmly till the uproar died down.

"Thou hast a wife, Ugh-Gluk," he said, "and for her dost thou
speak. And thou, too, Massuk, a mother also, and for them dost
thou speak. My mother has no one, save me; wherefore I speak. As
I say, though Bok be dead because he hunted over-keenly, it is just
that I, who am his son, and that Ikeega, who is my mother and was
his wife, should have meat in plenty so long as there be meat in
plenty in the tribe. I, Keesh, the son of Bok, have spoken."

He sat down, his ears keenly alert to the flood of protest and
indignation his words had created.

"That a boy should speak in council!" old Ugh-Gluk was mumbling.

"Shall the babes in arms tell us men the things we shall do?"
Massuk demanded in a loud voice. "Am I a man that I should be made
a mock by every child that cries for meat?"

The anger boiled a white heat. They ordered him to bed, threatened
that he should have no meat at all, and promised him sore beatings
for his presumption. Keesh's eyes began to flash, and the blood to
pound darkly under his skin. In the midst of the abuse he sprang
to his feet.

"Hear me, ye men!" he cried. "Never shall I speak in the council
again, never again till the men come to me and say, 'It is well,
Keesh, that thou shouldst speak, it is well and it is our wish.'
Take this now, ye men, for my last word. Bok, my father, was a
great hunter. I, too, his son, shall go and hunt the meat that I
eat. And be it known, now, that the division of that which I kill
shall be fair. And no widow nor weak one shall cry in the night
because there is no meat, when the strong men are groaning in great
pain for that they have eaten overmuch. And in the days to come
there shall be shame upon the strong men who have eaten overmuch.
I, Keesh, have said it!"

Jeers and scornful laughter followed him out of the IGLOO, but his
jaw was set and he went his way, looking neither to right nor left.

The next day he went forth along the shore-line where the ice and
the land met together. Those who saw him go noted that he carried
his bow, with a goodly supply of bone-barbed arrows, and that
across his shoulder was his father's big hunting-spear. And there
was laughter, and much talk, at the event. It was an unprecedented
occurrence. Never did boys of his tender age go forth to hunt,
much less to hunt alone. Also were there shaking of heads and
prophetic mutterings, and the women looked pityingly at Ikeega, and
her face was grave and sad.

"He will be back ere long," they said cheeringly.

"Let him go; it will teach him a lesson," the hunters said. "And
he will come back shortly, and he will be meek and soft of speech
in the days to follow."

But a day passed, and a second, and on the third a wild gale blew,
and there was no Keesh. Ikeega tore her hair and put soot of the
seal-oil on her face in token of her grief; and the women assailed
the men with bitter words in that they had mistreated the boy and
sent him to his death; and the men made no answer, preparing to go
in search of the body when the storm abated.

Early next morning, however, Keesh strode into the village. But he
came not shamefacedly. Across his shoulders he bore a burden of
fresh-killed meat. And there was importance in his step and
arrogance in his speech.

"Go, ye men, with the dogs and sledges, and take my trail for the
better part of a day's travel," he said. "There is much meat on
the ice - a she-bear and two half-grown cubs."

Ikeega was overcome with joy, but he received her demonstrations in
manlike fashion, saying: "Come, Ikeega, let us eat. And after
that I shall sleep, for I am weary."

And he passed into their IGLOO and ate profoundly, and after that
slept for twenty running hours.

There was much doubt at first, much doubt and discussion. The
killing of a polar bear is very dangerous, but thrice dangerous is
it, and three times thrice, to kill a mother bear with her cubs.
The men could not bring themselves to believe that the boy Keesh,
single-handed, had accomplished so great a marvel. But the women
spoke of the fresh-killed meat he had brought on his back, and this
was an overwhelming argument against their unbelief. So they
finally departed, grumbling greatly that in all probability, if the
thing were so, he had neglected to cut up the carcasses. Now in
the north it is very necessary that this should be done as soon as
a kill is made. If not, the meat freezes so solidly as to turn the
edge of the sharpest knife, and a three-hundred-pound bear, frozen
stiff, is no easy thing to put upon a sled and haul over the rough
ice. But arrived at the spot, they found not only the kill, which
they had doubted, but that Keesh had quartered the beasts in true
hunter fashion, and removed the entrails.

Thus began the mystery of Keesh, a mystery that deepened and
deepened with the passing of the days. His very next trip he
killed a young bear, nearly full-grown, and on the trip following,
a large male bear and his mate. He was ordinarily gone from three
to four days, though it was nothing unusual for him to stay away a
week at a time on the ice-field. Always he declined company on
these expeditions, and the people marvelled. "How does he do it?"
they demanded of one another. "Never does he take a dog with him,
and dogs are of such great help, too."

"Why dost thou hunt only bear?" Klosh-Kwan once ventured to ask
him.

And Keesh made fitting answer. "It is well known that there is
more meat on the bear," he said.

But there was also talk of witchcraft in the village. "He hunts
with evil spirits," some of the people contended, "wherefore his
hunting is rewarded. How else can it be, save that he hunts with
evil spirits?"

"Mayhap they be not evil, but good, these spirits," others said.
"It is known that his father was a mighty hunter. May not his
father hunt with him so that he may attain excellence and patience
and understanding? Who knows?"

None the less, his success continued, and the less skilful hunters
were often kept busy hauling in his meat. And in the division of
it he was just. As his father had done before him, he saw to it
that the least old woman and the last old man received a fair
portion, keeping no more for himself than his needs required. And
because of this, and of his merit as a hunter, he was looked upon
with respect, and even awe; and there was talk of making him chief
after old Klosh-Kwan. Because of the things he had done, they
looked for him to appear again in the council, but he never came,
and they were ashamed to ask.

"I am minded to build me an IGLOO," he said one day to Klosh-Kwan
and a number of the hunters. "It shall be a large IGLOO, wherein
Ikeega and I can dwell in comfort."

"Ay," they nodded gravely.

"But I have no time. My business is hunting, and it takes all my
time. So it is but just that the men and women of the village who
eat my meat should build me my IGLOO."

And the IGLOO was built accordingly, on a generous scale which
exceeded even the dwelling of Klosh-Kwan. Keesh and his mother
moved into it, and it was the first prosperity she had enjoyed
since the death of Bok. Nor was material prosperity alone hers,
for, because of her wonderful son and the position he had given
her, she came to he looked upon as the first woman in all the
village; and the women were given to visiting her, to asking her
advice, and to quoting her wisdom when arguments arose among
themselves or with the men.

But it was the mystery of Keesh's marvellous hunting that took
chief place in all their minds. And one day Ugh-Gluk taxed him
with witchcraft to his face.

"It is charged," Ugh-Gluk said ominously, "that thou dealest with
evil spirits, wherefore thy hunting is rewarded."

"Is not the meat good?" Keesh made answer. "Has one in the village
yet to fall sick from the eating of it? How dost thou know that
witchcraft be concerned? Or dost thou guess, in the dark, merely
because of the envy that consumes thee?"

And Ugh-Gluk withdrew discomfited, the women laughing at him as he
walked away. But in the council one night, after long
deliberation, it was determined to put spies on his track when he
went forth to hunt, so that his methods might be learned. So, on
his next trip, Bim and Bawn, two young men, and of hunters the
craftiest, followed after him, taking care not to be seen. After
five days they returned, their eyes bulging and their tongues a-
tremble to tell what they had seen. The council was hastily called
in Klosh-Kwan's dwelling, and Bim took up the tale.

"Brothers! As commanded, we journeyed on the trail of Keesh, and
cunningly we journeyed, so that he might not know. And midway of
the first day he picked up with a great he-bear. It was a very
great bear."

"None greater," Bawn corroborated, and went on himself. "Yet was
the bear not inclined to fight, for he turned away and made off
slowly over the ice. This we saw from the rocks of the shore, and
the bear came toward us, and after him came Keesh, very much
unafraid. And he shouted harsh words after the bear, and waved his
arms about, and made much noise. Then did the bear grow angry, and
rise up on his hind legs, and growl. But Keesh walked right up to
the bear."

"Ay," Bim continued the story. "Right up to the bear Keesh walked.
And the bear took after him, and Keesh ran away. But as he ran he
dropped a little round ball on the ice. And the bear stopped and
smelled of it, then swallowed it up. And Keesh continued to run
away and drop little round balls, and the bear continued to swallow
them up."

Exclamations and cries of doubt were being made, and Ugh-Gluk
expressed open unbelief.

"With our own eyes we saw it," Bim affirmed.

And Bawn - "Ay, with our own eyes. And this continued until the
bear stood suddenly upright and cried aloud in pain, and thrashed
his fore paws madly about. And Keesh continued to make off over
the ice to a safe distance. But the bear gave him no notice, being
occupied with the misfortune the little round balls had wrought
within him."

"Ay, within him," Bim interrupted. "For he did claw at himself,
and leap about over the ice like a playful puppy, save from the way
he growled and squealed it was plain it was not play but pain.
Never did I see such a sight!"

"Nay, never was such a sight seen," Bawn took up the strain. "And
furthermore, it was such a large bear."

"Witchcraft," Ugh-Gluk suggested.

"I know not," Bawn replied. "I tell only of what my eyes beheld.
And after a while the bear grew weak and tired, for he was very
heavy and he had jumped about with exceeding violence, and he went
off along the shore-ice, shaking his head slowly from side to side
and sitting down ever and again to squeal and cry. And Keesh
followed after the bear, and we followed after Keesh, and for that
day and three days more we followed. The bear grew weak, and never
ceased crying from his pain."

"It was a charm!" Ugh-Gluk exclaimed. "Surely it was a charm!"

"It may well be."

And Bim relieved Bawn. "The bear wandered, now this way and now
that, doubling back and forth and crossing his trail in circles, so
that at the end he was near where Keesh had first come upon him.
By this time he was quite sick, the bear, and could crawl no
farther, so Keesh came up close and speared him to death."

"And then?" Klosh-Kwan demanded.

"Then we left Keesh skinning the bear, and came running that the
news of the killing might be told."

And in the afternoon of that day the women hauled in the meat of
the bear while the men sat in council assembled. When Keesh
arrived a messenger was sent to him, bidding him come to the
council. But he sent reply, saying that he was hungry and tired;
also that his IGLOO was large and comfortable and could hold many
men.

And curiosity was so strong on the men that the whole council,
Klosh-Kwan to the fore, rose up and went to the IGLOO of Keesh. He
was eating, but he received them with respect and seated them
according to their rank. Ikeega was proud and embarrassed by
turns, but Keesh was quite composed.

Klosh-Kwan recited the information brought by Bim and Bawn, and at
its close said in a stern voice: "So explanation is wanted, O
Keesh, of thy manner of hunting. Is there witchcraft in it?"

Keesh looked up and smiled. "Nay, O Klosh-Kwan. It is not for a
boy to know aught of witches, and of witches I know nothing. I
have but devised a means whereby I may kill the ice-bear with ease,
that is all. It be headcraft, not witchcraft."

"And may any man?"

"Any man."

There was a long silence. The men looked in one another's faces,
and Keesh went on eating.

"And . . . and . . . and wilt thou tell us, O Keesh?" Klosh-Kwan
finally asked in a tremulous voice.

"Yea, I will tell thee." Keesh finished sucking a marrow-bone and
rose to his feet. "It is quite simple. Behold!"

He picked up a thin strip of whalebone and showed it to them. The
ends were sharp as needle-points. The strip he coiled carefully,
till it disappeared in his hand. Then, suddenly releasing it, it
sprang straight again. He picked up a piece of blubber.

"So," he said, "one takes a small chunk of blubber, thus, and thus
makes it hollow. Then into the hollow goes the whalebone, so,
tightly coiled, and another piece of blubber is fitted over the
whale-bone. After that it is put outside where it freezes into a
little round ball. The bear swallows the little round ball, the
blubber melts, the whalebone with its sharp ends stands out
straight, the bear gets sick, and when the bear is very sick, why,
you kill him with a spear. It is quite simple."

And Ugh-Gluk said "Oh!" and Klosh-Kwan said "Ah!" And each said
something after his own manner, and all understood.

And this is the story of Keesh, who lived long ago on the rim of
the polar sea. Because he exercised headcraft and not witchcraft,
he rose from the meanest IGLOO to be head man of his village, and
through all the years that he lived, it is related, his tribe was
prosperous, and neither widow nor weak one cried aloud in the night
because there was no meat.

THE UNEXPECTED

IT is a simple matter to see the obvious, to do the expected. The
tendency of the individual life is to be static rather than
dynamic, and this tendency is made into a propulsion by
civilization, where the obvious only is seen, and the unexpected
rarely happens. When the unexpected does happen, however, and when
it is of sufficiently grave import, the unfit perish. They do not
see what is not obvious, are unable to do the unexpected, are
incapable of adjusting their well-grooved lives to other and
strange grooves. In short, when they come to the end of their own
groove, they die.

On the other hand, there are those that make toward survival, the
fit individuals who escape from the rule of the obvious and the
expected and adjust their lives to no matter what strange grooves
they may stray into, or into which they may be forced. Such an
individual was Edith Whittlesey. She was born in a rural district
of England, where life proceeds by rule of thumb and the unexpected
is so very unexpected that when it happens it is looked upon as an
immorality. She went into service early, and while yet a young
woman, by rule-of-thumb progression, she became a lady's maid.

The effect of civilization is to impose human law upon environment
until it becomes machine-like in its regularity. The objectionable
is eliminated, the inevitable is foreseen. One is not even made
wet by the rain nor cold by the frost; while death, instead of
stalking about grewsome and accidental, becomes a prearranged
pageant, moving along a well-oiled groove to the family vault,
where the hinges are kept from rusting and the dust from the air is
swept continually away.

Such was the environment of Edith Whittlesey. Nothing happened.
It could scarcely be called a happening, when, at the age of
twenty-five, she accompanied her mistress on a bit of travel to the
United States. The groove merely changed its direction. It was
still the same groove and well oiled. It was a groove that bridged
the Atlantic with uneventfulness, so that the ship was not a ship
in the midst of the sea, but a capacious, many-corridored hotel
that moved swiftly and placidly, crushing the waves into submission
with its colossal bulk until the sea was a mill-pond, monotonous
with quietude. And at the other side the groove continued on over
the land - a well-disposed, respectable groove that supplied hotels
at every stopping-place, and hotels on wheels between the stopping-
places.

In Chicago, while her mistress saw one side of social life, Edith
Whittlesey saw another side; and when she left her lady's service
and became Edith Nelson, she betrayed, perhaps faintly, her ability
to grapple with the unexpected and to master it. Hans Nelson,
immigrant, Swede by birth and carpenter by occupation, had in him
that Teutonic unrest that drives the race ever westward on its
great adventure. He was a large-muscled, stolid sort of a man, in
whom little imagination was coupled with immense initiative, and
who possessed, withal, loyalty and affection as sturdy as his own
strength.

"When I have worked hard and saved me some money, I will go to
Colorado," he had told Edith on the day after their wedding. A
year later they were in Colorado, where Hans Nelson saw his first
mining and caught the mining-fever himself. His prospecting led
him through the Dakotas, Idaho, and eastern Oregon, and on into the
mountains of British Columbia. In camp and on trail, Edith Nelson
was always with him, sharing his luck, his hardship, and his toil.
The short step of the house-reared woman she exchanged for the long
stride of the mountaineer. She learned to look upon danger clear-
eyed and with understanding, losing forever that panic fear which
is bred of ignorance and which afflicts the city-reared, making
them as silly as silly horses, so that they await fate in frozen
horror instead of grappling with it, or stampede in blind self-
destroying terror which clutters the way with their crushed
carcasses.

Edith Nelson met the unexpected at every turn of the trail, and she
trained her vision so that she saw in the landscape, not the
obvious, but the concealed. She, who had never cooked in her life,
learned to make bread without the mediation of hops, yeast, or
baking-powder, and to bake bread, top and bottom, in a frying-pan
before an open fire. And when the last cup of flour was gone and
the last rind of bacon, she was able to rise to the occasion, and
of moccasins and the softer-tanned bits of leather in the outfit to
make a grub-stake substitute that somehow held a man's soul in his
body and enabled him to stagger on. She learned to pack a horse as
well as a man, - a task to break the heart and the pride of any
city-dweller, and she knew how to throw the hitch best suited for
any particular kind of pack. Also, she could build a fire of wet
wood in a downpour of rain and not lose her temper. In short, in
all its guises she mastered the unexpected. But the Great
Unexpected was yet to come into her life and put its test upon her.

The gold-seeking tide was flooding northward into Alaska, and it
was inevitable that Hans Nelson and his wife should he caught up by
the stream and swept toward the Klondike. The fall of 1897 found
them at Dyea, but without the money to carry an outfit across
Chilcoot Pass and float it down to Dawson. So Hans Nelson worked
at his trade that winter and helped rear the mushroom outfitting-
town of Skaguay.

He was on the edge of things, and throughout the winter he heard
all Alaska calling to him. Latuya Bay called loudest, so that the
summer of 1898 found him and his wife threading the mazes of the
broken coast-line in seventy-foot Siwash canoes. With them were
Indians, also three other men. The Indians landed them and their
supplies in a lonely bight of land a hundred miles or so beyond
Latuya Bay, and returned to Skaguay; but the three other men
remained, for they were members of the organized party. Each had
put an equal share of capital into the outfitting, and the profits
were to he divided equally. In that Edith Nelson undertook to cook
for the outfit, a man's share was to be her portion.

First, spruce trees were cut down and a three-room cabin
constructed. To keep this cabin was Edith Nelson's task. The task
of the men was to search for gold, which they did; and to find
gold, which they likewise did. It was not a startling find, merely
a low-pay placer where long hours of severe toil earned each man
between fifteen and twenty dollars a day. The brief Alaskan summer
protracted itself beyond its usual length, and they took advantage
of the opportunity, delaying their return to Skaguay to the last
moment. And then it was too late. Arrangements had been made to
accompany the several dozen local Indians on their fall trading
trip down the coast. The Siwashes had waited on the white people
until the eleventh hour, and then departed. There was no course
left the party but to wait for chance transportation. In the
meantime the claim was cleaned up and firewood stocked in.

The Indian summer had dreamed on and on, and then, suddenly, with
the sharpness of bugles, winter came. It came in a single night,
and the miners awoke to howling wind, driving snow, and freezing
water. Storm followed storm, and between the storms there was the
silence, broken only by the boom of the surf on the desolate shore,
where the salt spray rimmed the beach with frozen white.

All went well in the cabin. Their gold-dust had weighed up
something like eight thousand dollars, and they could not but be
contented. The men made snowshoes, hunted fresh meat for the
larder, and in the long evenings played endless games of whist and
pedro. Now that the mining had ceased, Edith Nelson turned over
the fire-building and the dish-washing to the men, while she darned
their socks and mended their clothes.

There was no grumbling, no bickering, nor petty quarrelling in the
little cabin, and they often congratulated one another on the
general happiness of the party. Hans Nelson was stolid and easy-
going, while Edith had long before won his unbounded admiration by
her capacity for getting on with people. Harkey, a long, lank
Texan, was unusually friendly for one with a saturnine disposition,
and, as long as his theory that gold grew was not challenged, was
quite companionable. The fourth member of the party, Michael
Dennin, contributed his Irish wit to the gayety of the cabin. He
was a large, powerful man, prone to sudden rushes of anger over
little things, and of unfailing good-humor under the stress and
strain of big things. The fifth and last member, Dutchy, was the
willing butt of the party. He even went out of his way to raise a
laugh at his own expense in order to keep things cheerful. His
deliberate aim in life seemed to be that of a maker of laughter.
No serious quarrel had ever vexed the serenity of the party; and,
now that each had sixteen hundred dollars to show for a short
summer's work, there reigned the well-fed, contented spirit of
prosperity.

And then the unexpected happened. They had just sat down to the
breakfast table. Though it was already eight o'clock (late
breakfasts had followed naturally upon cessation of the steady work
at mining) a candle in the neck of a bottle lighted the meal.
Edith and Hans sat at each end of the table. On one side, with
their backs to the door, sat Harkey and Dutchy. The place on the
other side was vacant. Dennin had not yet come in.

Hans Nelson looked at the empty chair, shook his head slowly, and,
with a ponderous attempt at humor, said: "Always is he first at
the grub. It is very strange. Maybe he is sick."

"Where is Michael?" Edith asked.

"Got up a little ahead of us and went outside," Harkey answered.

Dutchy's face beamed mischievously. He pretended knowledge of
Dennin's absence, and affected a mysterious air, while they
clamored for information. Edith, after a peep into the men's bunk-
room, returned to the table. Hans looked at her, and she shook her
head.

"He was never late at meal-time before," she remarked.

"I cannot understand," said Hans. "Always has he the great
appetite like the horse."

"It is too bad," Dutchy said, with a sad shake of his head.

They were beginning to make merry over their comrade's absence.

"It is a great pity!" Dutchy volunteered.

"What?" they demanded in chorus.

"Poor Michael," was the mournful reply.

"Well, what's wrong with Michael?" Harkey asked.

"He is not hungry no more," wailed Dutchy. "He has lost der
appetite. He do not like der grub."

"Not from the way he pitches into it up to his ears," remarked
Harkey.

"He does dot shust to be politeful to Mrs. Nelson," was Dutchy's
quick retort. "I know, I know, and it is too pad. Why is he not
here? Pecause he haf gone out. Why haf he gone out? For der
defelopment of der appetite. How does he defelop der appetite? He
walks barefoots in der snow. Ach! don't I know? It is der way der
rich peoples chases after der appetite when it is no more and is
running away. Michael haf sixteen hundred dollars. He is rich
peoples. He haf no appetite. Derefore, pecause, he is chasing der
appetite. Shust you open der door und you will see his barefoots
in der snow. No, you will not see der appetite. Dot is shust his
trouble. When he sees der appetite he will catch it und come to
preak-fast."

They burst into loud laughter at Dutchy's nonsense. The sound had
scarcely died away when the door opened and Dennin came in. All
turned to look at him. He was carrying a shot-gun. Even as they
looked, he lifted it to his shoulder and fired twice. At the first
shot Dutchy sank upon the table, overturning his mug of coffee, his
yellow mop of hair dabbling in his plate of mush. His forehead,
which pressed upon the near edge of the plate, tilted the plate up
against his hair at an angle of forty-five degrees. Harkey was in
the air, in his spring to his feet, at the second shot, and he
pitched face down upon the floor, his "My God!" gurgling and dying
in his throat.

It was the unexpected. Hans and Edith were stunned. They sat at
the table with bodies tense, their eyes fixed in a fascinated gaze
upon the murderer. Dimly they saw him through the smoke of the
powder, and in the silence nothing was to be heard save the drip-
drip of Dutchy's spilled coffee on the floor. Dennin threw open
the breech of the shot-gun, ejecting the empty shells. Holding the
gun with one hand, he reached with the other into his pocket for
fresh shells.

He was thrusting the shells into the gun when Edith Nelson was
aroused to action. It was patent that he intended to kill Hans and
her. For a space of possibly three seconds of time she had been
dazed and paralysed by the horrible and inconceivable form in which
the unexpected had made its appearance. Then she rose to it and
grappled with it. She grappled with it concretely, making a cat-
like leap for the murderer and gripping his neck-cloth with both
her hands. The impact of her body sent him stumbling backward
several steps. He tried to shake her loose and still retain his
hold on the gun. This was awkward, for her firm-fleshed body had
become a cat's. She threw herself to one side, and with her grip
at his throat nearly jerked him to the floor. He straightened
himself and whirled swiftly. Still faithful to her hold, her body
followed the circle of his whirl so that her feet left the floor,
and she swung through the air fastened to his throat by her hands.
The whirl culminated in a collision with a chair, and the man and
woman crashed to the floor in a wild struggling fall that extended
itself across half the length of the room.

Hans Nelson was half a second behind his wife in rising to the
unexpected. His nerve processed and mental processes were slower
than hers. His was the grosser organism, and it had taken him half
a second longer to perceive, and determine, and proceed to do. She
had already flown at Dennin and gripped his throat, when Hans
sprang to his feet. But her coolness was not his. He was in a
blind fury, a Berserker rage. At the instant he sprang from his
chair his mouth opened and there issued forth a sound that was half
roar, half bellow. The whirl of the two bodies had already
started, and still roaring, or bellowing, he pursued this whirl
down the room, overtaking it when it fell to the floor.

Hans hurled himself upon the prostrate man, striking madly with his
fists. They were sledge-like blows, and when Edith felt Dennin's
body relax she loosed her grip and rolled clear. She lay on the
floor, panting and watching. The fury of blows continued to rain
down. Dennin did not seem to mind the blows. He did not even
move. Then it dawned upon her that he was unconscious. She cried
out to Hans to stop. She cried out again. But he paid no heed to
her voice. She caught him by the arm, but her clinging to it
merely impeded his effort.

It was no reasoned impulse that stirred her to do what she then
did. Nor was it a sense of pity, nor obedience to the "Thou shalt
not" of religion. Rather was it some sense of law, an ethic of her
race and early environment, that compelled her to interpose her
body between her husband and the helpless murderer. It was not
until Hans knew he was striking his wife that he ceased. He
allowed himself to be shoved away by her in much the same way that
a ferocious but obedient dog allows itself to be shoved away by its
master. The analogy went even farther. Deep in his throat, in an
animal-like way, Hans's rage still rumbled, and several times he
made as though to spring back upon his prey and was only prevented
by the woman's swiftly interposed body.

Back and farther back Edith shoved her husband. She had never seen
him in such a condition, and she was more frightened of him than
she had been of Dennin in the thick of the struggle. She could not
believe that this raging beast was her Hans, and with a shock she
became suddenly aware of a shrinking, instinctive fear that he
might snap her hand in his teeth like any wild animal. For some
seconds, unwilling to hurt her, yet dogged in his desire to return
to the attack, Hans dodged back and forth. But she resolutely
dodged with him, until the first glimmerings of reason returned and
he gave over.

Both crawled to their feet. Hans staggered back against the wall,
where he leaned, his face working, in his throat the deep and
continuous rumble that died away with the seconds and at last
ceased. The time for the reaction had come. Edith stood in the
middle of the floor, wringing her hands, panting and gasping, her
whole body trembling violently.

Hans looked at nothing, but Edith's eyes wandered wildly from
detail to detail of what had taken place. Dennin lay without
movement. The overturned chair, hurled onward in the mad whirl,
lay near him. Partly under him lay the shot-gun, still broken open
at the breech. Spilling out of his right hand were the two
cartridges which he had failed to put into the gun and which he had
clutched until consciousness left him. Harkey lay on the floor,
face downward, where he had fallen; while Dutchy rested forward on
the table, his yellow mop of hair buried in his mush-plate, the
plate itself still tilted at an angle of forty-five degrees. This
tilted plate fascinated her. Why did it not fall down? It was
ridiculous. It was not in the nature of things for a mush-plate to
up-end itself on the table, even if a man or so had been killed.

She glanced back at Dennin, but her eyes returned to the tilted
plate. It was so ridiculous! She felt a hysterical impulse to
laugh. Then she noticed the silence, and forgot the plate in a
desire for something to happen. The monotonous drip of the coffee
from the table to the floor merely emphasized the silence. Why did
not Hans do something? say something? She looked at him and was
about to speak, when she discovered that her tongue refused its
wonted duty. There was a peculiar ache in her throat, and her
mouth was dry and furry. She could only look at Hans, who, in
turn, looked at her.

Suddenly the silence was broken by a sharp, metallic clang. She
screamed, jerking her eyes back to the table. The plate had fallen
down. Hans sighed as though awakening from sleep. The clang of
the plate had aroused them to life in a new world. The cabin
epitomized the new world in which they must thenceforth live and
move. The old cabin was gone forever. The horizon of life was
totally new and unfamiliar. The unexpected had swept its wizardry
over the face of things, changing the perspective, juggling values,
and shuffling the real and the unreal into perplexing confusion.

"My God, Hans!" was Edith's first speech.

He did not answer, but stared at her with horror. Slowly his eyes
wandered over the room, for the first time taking in its details.
Then he put on his cap and started for the door.

"Where are you going?" Edith demanded, in an agony of
apprehension.

His hand was on the door-knob, and he half turned as he answered,
"To dig some graves."

"Don't leave me, Hans, with - " her eyes swept the room - "with
this."

"The graves must be dug sometime," he said.

"But you do not know how many," she objected desperately. She
noted his indecision, and added, "Besides, I'll go with you and
help."

Hans stepped back to the table and mechanically snuffed the candle.
Then between them they made the examination. Both Harkey and
Dutchy were dead - frightfully dead, because of the close range of
the shot-gun. Hans refused to go near Dennin, and Edith was forced
to conduct this portion of the investigation by herself.

"He isn't dead," she called to Hans.

He walked over and looked down at the murderer.

"What did you say?" Edith demanded, having caught the rumble of
inarticulate speech in her husband's throat.

"I said it was a damn shame that he isn't dead," came the reply.

Edith was bending over the body.

"Leave him alone," Hans commanded harshly, in a strange voice.

She looked at him in sudden alarm. He had picked up the shot-gun
dropped by Dennin and was thrusting in the shells.

"What are you going to do?" she cried, rising swiftly from her
bending position.

Hans did not answer, but she saw the shot-gun going to his
shoulder. She grasped the muzzle with her hand and threw it up.

"Leave me alone!" he cried hoarsely.

He tried to jerk the weapon away from her, but she came in closer
and clung to him.

"Hans! Hans! Wake up!" she cried. "Don't be crazy!"

"He killed Dutchy and Harkey!" was her husband's reply; "and I am
going to kill him."

"But that is wrong," she objected. "There is the law."

He sneered his incredulity of the law's potency in such a region,
but he merely iterated, dispassionately, doggedly, "He killed
Dutchy and Harkey."

Long she argued it with him, but the argument was one-sided, for he
contented himself with repeating again and again, "He killed Dutchy
and Harkey." But she could not escape from her childhood training
nor from the blood that was in her. The heritage of law was hers,
and right conduct, to her, was the fulfilment of the law. She
could see no other righteous course to pursue. Hans's taking the
law in his own hands was no more justifiable than Dennin's deed.
Two wrongs did not make a right, she contended, and there was only
one way to punish Dennin, and that was the legal way arranged by
society. At last Hans gave in to her.

"All right," he said. "Have it your own way. And to-morrow or
next day look to see him kill you and me."

She shook her head and held out her hand for the shot-gun. He
started to hand it to her, then hesitated.

"Better let me shoot him," he pleaded.

Again she shook her head, and again he started to pass her the gun,
when the door opened, and an Indian, without knocking, came in. A
blast of wind and flurry of snow came in with him. They turned and
faced him, Hans still holding the shot-gun. The intruder took in
the scene without a quiver. His eyes embraced the dead and wounded
in a sweeping glance. No surprise showed in his face, not even
curiosity. Harkey lay at his feet, but he took no notice of him.
So far as he was concerned, Harkey's body did not exist.

"Much wind," the Indian remarked by way of salutation. "All well?
Very well?"

Hans, still grasping the gun, felt sure that the Indian attributed
to him the mangled corpses. He glanced appealingly at his wife.

"Good morning, Negook," she said, her voice betraying her effort.
"No, not very well. Much trouble."

"Good-by, I go now, much hurry", the Indian said, and without
semblance of haste, with great deliberation stepping clear of a red
pool on the floor, he opened the door and went out.

The man and woman looked at each other.

"He thinks we did it," Hans gasped, "that I did it."

Edith was silent for a space. Then she said, briefly, in a
businesslike way:

"Never mind what he thinks. That will come after. At present we
have two graves to dig. But first of all, we've got to tie up
Dennin so he can't escape."

Hans refused to touch Dennin, but Edith lashed him securely, hand
and foot. Then she and Hans went out into the snow. The ground
was frozen. It was impervious to a blow of the pick. They first
gathered wood, then scraped the snow away and on the frozen surface
built a fire. When the fire had burned for an hour, several inches
of dirt had thawed. This they shovelled out, and then built a
fresh fire. Their descent into the earth progressed at the rate of
two or three inches an hour.

It was hard and bitter work. The flurrying snow did not permit the
fire to burn any too well, while the wind cut through their clothes
and chilled their bodies. They held but little conversation. The
wind interfered with speech. Beyond wondering at what could have
been Dennin's motive, they remained silent, oppressed by the horror
of the tragedy. At one o'clock, looking toward the cabin, Hans
announced that he was hungry.

"No, not now, Hans," Edith answered. "I couldn't go back alone
into that cabin the way it is, and cook a meal."

At two o'clock Hans volunteered to go with her; but she held him to
his work, and four o'clock found the two graves completed. They
were shallow, not more than two feet deep, but they would serve the
purpose. Night had fallen. Hans got the sled, and the two dead
men were dragged through the darkness and storm to their frozen
sepulchre. The funeral procession was anything but a pageant. The
sled sank deep into the drifted snow and pulled hard. The man and
the woman had eaten nothing since the previous day, and were weak
from hunger and exhaustion. They had not the strength to resist
the wind, and at times its buffets hurled them off their feet. On
several occasions the sled was overturned, and they were compelled
to reload it with its sombre freight. The last hundred feet to the
graves was up a steep slope, and this they took on all fours, like
sled-dogs, making legs of their arms and thrusting their hands into
the snow. Even so, they were twice dragged backward by the weight
of the sled, and slid and fell down the hill, the living and the
dead, the haul-ropes and the sled, in ghastly entanglement.

"To-morrow I will put up head-boards with their names," Hans said,
when the graves were filled in.

Edith was sobbing. A few broken sentences had been all she was
capable of in the way of a funeral service, and now her husband was
compelled to half-carry her back to the cabin.

Dennin was conscious. He had rolled over and over on the floor in
vain efforts to free himself. He watched Hans and Edith with
glittering eyes, but made no attempt to speak. Hans still refused
to touch the murderer, and sullenly watched Edith drag him across
the floor to the men's bunk-room. But try as she would, she could
not lift him from the floor into his bunk.

"Better let me shoot him, and we'll have no more trouble," Hans
said in final appeal.

Edith shook her head and bent again to her task. To her surprise
the body rose easily, and she knew Hans had relented and was
helping her. Then came the cleansing of the kitchen. But the
floor still shrieked the tragedy, until Hans planed the surface of
the stained wood away and with the shavings made a fire in the
stove.

The days came and went. There was much of darkness and silence,
broken only by the storms and the thunder on the beach of the
freezing surf. Hans was obedient to Edith's slightest order. All
his splendid initiative had vanished. She had elected to deal with
Dennin in her way, and so he left the whole matter in her hands.

The murderer was a constant menace. At all times there was the
chance that he might free himself from his bonds, and they were
compelled to guard him day and night. The man or the woman sat
always beside him, holding the loaded shot-gun. At first, Edith
tried eight-hour watches, but the continuous strain was too great,
and afterwards she and Hans relieved each other every four hours.
As they had to sleep, and as the watches extended through the
night, their whole waking time was expended in guarding Dennin.
They had barely time left over for the preparation of meals and the
getting of firewood.

Since Negook's inopportune visit, the Indians had avoided the
cabin. Edith sent Hans to their cabins to get them to take Dennin
down the coast in a canoe to the nearest white settlement or
trading post, but the errand was fruitless. Then Edith went
herself and interviewed Negook. He was head man of the little
village, keenly aware of his responsibility, and he elucidated his
policy thoroughly in few words.

"It is white man's trouble", he said, "not Siwash trouble. My
people help you, then will it be Siwash trouble too. When white
man's trouble and Siwash trouble come together and make a trouble,
it is a great trouble, beyond understanding and without end.
Trouble no good. My people do no wrong. What for they help you
and have trouble?"

So Edith Nelson went back to the terrible cabin with its endless
alternating four-hour watches. Sometimes, when it was her turn and
she sat by the prisoner, the loaded shot-gun in her lap, her eyes
would close and she would doze. Always she aroused with a start,
snatching up the gun and swiftly looking at him. These were
distinct nervous shocks, and their effect was not good on her.
Such was her fear of the man, that even though she were wide awake,
if he moved under the bedclothes she could not repress the start
and the quick reach for the gun.

She was preparing herself for a nervous break-down, and she knew
it. First came a fluttering of the eyeballs, so that she was
compelled to close her eyes for relief. A little later the eyelids
were afflicted by a nervous twitching that she could not control.
To add to the strain, she could not forget the tragedy. She
remained as close to the horror as on the first morning when the
unexpected stalked into the cabin and took possession. In her
daily ministrations upon the prisoner she was forced to grit her
teeth and steel herself, body and spirit.

Hans was affected differently. He became obsessed by the idea that
it was his duty to kill Dennin; and whenever he waited upon the
bound man or watched by him, Edith was troubled by the fear that
Hans would add another red entry to the cabin's record. Always he
cursed Dennin savagely and handled him roughly. Hans tried to
conceal his homicidal mania, and he would say to his wife: "By and
by you will want me to kill him, and then I will not kill him. It
would make me sick." But more than once, stealing into the room,
when it was her watch off, she would catch the two men glaring
ferociously at each other, wild animals the pair of them, in Hans's
face the lust to kill, in Dennin's the fierceness and savagery of
the cornered rat. "Hans!" she would cry, "wake up!" and he would
come to a recollection of himself, startled and shamefaced and
unrepentant.

So Hans became another factor in the problem the unexpected had
given Edith Nelson to solve. At first it had been merely a
question of right conduct in dealing with Dennin, and right
conduct, as she conceived it, lay in keeping him a prisoner until
he could be turned over for trial before a proper tribunal. But
now entered Hans, and she saw that his sanity and his salvation
were involved. Nor was she long in discovering that her own
strength and endurance had become part of the problem. She was
breaking down under the strain. Her left arm had developed
involuntary jerkings and twitchings. She spilled her food from her
spoon, and could place no reliance in her afflicted arm. She
judged it to be a form of St. Vitus's dance, and she feared the
extent to which its ravages might go. What if she broke down? And
the vision she had of the possible future, when the cabin might
contain only Dennin and Hans, was an added horror.

After the third day, Dennin had begun to talk. His first question
had been, "What are you going to do with me?" And this question he
repeated daily and many times a day. And always Edith replied that
he would assuredly be dealt with according to law. In turn, she
put a daily question to him, - "Why did you do it?" To this he
never replied. Also, he received the question with out-bursts of
anger, raging and straining at the rawhide that bound him and
threatening her with what he would do when he got loose, which he
said he was sure to do sooner or later. At such times she cocked
both triggers of the gun, prepared to meet him with leaden death if
he should burst loose, herself trembling and palpitating and dizzy
from the tension and shock.

But in time Dennin grew more tractable. It seemed to her that he
was growing weary of his unchanging recumbent position. He began
to beg and plead to be released. He made wild promises. He would
do them no harm. He would himself go down the coast and give
himself up to the officers of the law. He would give them his
share of the gold. He would go away into the heart of the
wilderness, and never again appear in civilization. He would take
his own life if she would only free him. His pleadings usually
culminated in involuntary raving, until it seemed to her that he
was passing into a fit; but always she shook her head and denied
him the freedom for which he worked himself into a passion.

But the weeks went by, and he continued to grow more tractable.
And through it all the weariness was asserting itself more and
more. "I am so tired, so tired," he would murmur, rolling his head
back and forth on the pillow like a peevish child. At a little
later period he began to make impassioned pleas for death, to beg
her to kill him, to beg Hans to put him our of his misery so that
he might at least rest comfortably.

The situation was fast becoming impossible. Edith's nervousness
was increasing, and she knew her break-down might come any time.
She could not even get her proper rest, for she was haunted by the
fear that Hans would yield to his mania and kill Dennin while she
slept. Though January had already come, months would have to
elapse before any trading schooner was even likely to put into the
bay. Also, they had not expected to winter in the cabin, and the
food was running low; nor could Hans add to the supply by hunting.
They were chained to the cabin by the necessity of guarding their
prisoner.

Something must be done, and she knew it. She forced herself to go
back into a reconsideration of the problem. She could not shake
off the legacy of her race, the law that was of her blood and that
had been trained into her. She knew that whatever she did she must
do according to the law, and in the long hours of watching, the
shot-gun on her knees, the murderer restless beside her and the
storms thundering without, she made original sociological
researches and worked out for herself the evolution of the law. It
came to her that the law was nothing more than the judgment and the
will of any group of people. It mattered not how large was the
group of people. There were little groups, she reasoned, like
Switzerland, and there were big groups like the United States.
Also, she reasoned, it did not matter how small was the group of
people. There might be only ten thousand people in a country, yet
their collective judgment and will would be the law of that
country. Why, then, could not one thousand people constitute such
a group? she asked herself. And if one thousand, why not one
hundred? Why not fifty? Why not five? Why not - two?

She was frightened at her own conclusion, and she talked it over
with Hans. At first he could not comprehend, and then, when he
did, he added convincing evidence. He spoke of miners' meetings,
where all the men of a locality came together and made the law and
executed the law. There might be only ten or fifteen men
altogether, he said, but the will of the majority became the law
for the whole ten or fifteen, and whoever violated that will was
punished.

Edith saw her way clear at last. Dennin must hang. Hans agreed
with her. Between them they constituted the majority of this
particular group. It was the group-will that Dennin should be
hanged. In the execution of this will Edith strove earnestly to
observe the customary forms, but the group was so small that Hans
and she had to serve as witnesses, as jury, and as judges - also as
executioners. She formally charged Michael Dennin with the murder
of Dutchy and Harkey, and the prisoner lay in his bunk and listened
to the testimony, first of Hans, and then of Edith. He refused to
plead guilty or not guilty, and remained silent when she asked him
if he had anything to say in his own defence. She and Hans,
without leaving their seats, brought in the jury's verdict of
guilty. Then, as judge, she imposed the sentence. Her voice
shook, her eyelids twitched, her left arm jerked, but she carried
it out.

"Michael Dennin, in three days' time you are to be hanged by the
neck until you are dead."

Such was the sentence. The man breathed an unconscious sigh of
relief, then laughed defiantly, and said, "Thin I'm thinkin' the
damn bunk won't be achin' me back anny more, an' that's a
consolation."

With the passing of the sentence a feeling of relief seemed to
communicate itself to all of them. Especially was it noticeable in
Dennin. All sullenness and defiance disappeared, and he talked
sociably with his captors, and even with flashes of his old-time
wit. Also, he found great satisfaction in Edith's reading to him
from the Bible. She read from the New Testament, and he took keen
interest in the prodigal son and the thief on the cross.

On the day preceding that set for the execution, when Edith asked
her usual question, "Why did you do it?" Dennin answered, "'Tis
very simple. I was thinkin' - "

But she hushed him abruptly, asked him to wait, and hurried to
Hans's bedside. It was his watch off, and he came out of his
sleep, rubbing his eyes and grumbling.

"Go," she told him, "and bring up Negook and one other Indian.
Michael's going to confess. Make them come. Take the rifle along
and bring them up at the point of it if you have to."

Half an hour later Negook and his uncle, Hadikwan, were ushered
into the death chamber. They came unwillingly, Hans with his rifle
herding them along.

"Negook," Edith said, "there is to be no trouble for you and your
people. Only is it for you to sit and do nothing but listen and
understand."

Thus did Michael Dennin, under sentence of death, make public
confession of his crime. As he talked, Edith wrote his story down,
while the Indians listened, and Hans guarded the door for fear the
witnesses might bolt.

He had not been home to the old country for fifteen years, Dennin
explained, and it had always been his intention to return with
plenty of money and make his old mother comfortable for the rest of
her days.

"An' how was I to be doin' it on sixteen hundred?" he demanded.
"What I was after wantin' was all the goold, the whole eight
thousan'. Thin I cud go back in style. What ud be aisier, thinks
I to myself, than to kill all iv yez, report it at Skaguay for an
Indian-killin', an' thin pull out for Ireland? An' so I started in
to kill all iv yez, but, as Harkey was fond of sayin', I cut out
too large a chunk an' fell down on the swallowin' iv it. An'
that's me confession. I did me duty to the devil, an' now, God
willin', I'll do me duty to God."

"Negook and Hadikwan, you have heard the white man's words," Edith
said to the Indians. "His words are here on this paper, and it is
for you to make a sign, thus, on the paper, so that white men to
come after will know that you have heard."

The two Siwashes put crosses opposite their signatures, received a
summons to appear on the morrow with all their tribe for a further
witnessing of things, and were allowed to go.

Dennin's hands were released long enough for him to sign the
document. Then a silence fell in the room. Hans was restless, and
Edith felt uncomfortable. Dennin lay on his back, staring straight
up at the moss-chinked roof.

"An' now I'll do me duty to God," he murmured. He turned his head
toward Edith. "Read to me," he said, "from the book;" then added,
with a glint of playfulness, "Mayhap 'twill help me to forget the
bunk."

The day of the execution broke clear and cold. The thermometer was
down to twenty-five below zero, and a chill wind was blowing which
drove the frost through clothes and flesh to the bones. For the
first time in many weeks Dennin stood upon his feet. His muscles
had remained inactive so long, and he was so out of practice in
maintaining an erect position, that he could scarcely stand.

He reeled back and forth, staggered, and clutched hold of Edith
with his bound hands for support.

"Sure, an' it's dizzy I am," he laughed weakly.

A moment later he said, "An' it's glad I am that it's over with.
That damn bunk would iv been the death iv me, I know."

When Edith put his fur cap on his head and proceeded to pull the
flaps down over his ears, he laughed and said:

"What are you doin' that for?"

"It's freezing cold outside", she answered.

"An' in tin minutes' time what'll matter a frozen ear or so to poor
Michael Dennin?" he asked.

She had nerved herself for the last culminating ordeal, and his
remark was like a blow to her self-possession. So far, everything
had seemed phantom-like, as in a dream, but the brutal truth of
what he had said shocked her eyes wide open to the reality of what
was taking place. Nor was her distress unnoticed by the Irishman.

"I'm sorry to be troublin' you with me foolish spache," he said
regretfully. "I mint nothin' by it. 'Tis a great day for Michael
Dennin, an' he's as gay as a lark."

He broke out in a merry whistle, which quickly became lugubrious
and ceased.

"I'm wishin' there was a priest," he said wistfully; then added
swiftly, "But Michael Dennin's too old a campaigner to miss the
luxuries when he hits the trail."

He was so very weak and unused to walking that when the door opened
and he passed outside, the wind nearly carried him off his feet.
Edith and Hans walked on either side of him and supported him, the
while he cracked jokes and tried to keep them cheerful, breaking
off, once, long enough to arrange the forwarding of his share of
the gold to his mother in Ireland.

They climbed a slight hill and came out into an open space among
the trees. Here, circled solemnly about a barrel that stood on end
in the snow, were Negook and Hadikwan, and all the Siwashes down to
the babies and the dogs, come to see the way of the white man's
law. Near by was an open grave which Hans had burned into the
frozen earth.

Dennin cast a practical eye over the preparations, noting the
grave, the barrel, the thickness of the rope, and the diameter of
the limb over which the rope was passed.

"Sure, an' I couldn't iv done better meself, Hans, if it'd been for
you."

He laughed loudly at his own sally, but Hans's face was frozen into
a sullen ghastliness that nothing less than the trump of doom could
have broken. Also, Hans was feeling very sick. He had not
realized the enormousness of the task of putting a fellow-man out
of the world. Edith, on the other hand, had realized; but the
realization did not make the task any easier. She was filled with
doubt as to whether she could hold herself together long enough to
finish it. She felt incessant impulses to scream, to shriek, to
collapse into the snow, to put her hands over her eyes and turn and
run blindly away, into the forest, anywhere, away. It was only by
a supreme effort of soul that she was able to keep upright and go
on and do what she had to do. And in the midst of it all she was
grateful to Dennin for the way he helped her.

"Lind me a hand," he said to Hans, with whose assistance he managed
to mount the barrel.

He bent over so that Edith could adjust the rope about his neck.
Then he stood upright while Hans drew the rope taut across the
overhead branch.

"Michael Dennin, have you anything to say?" Edith asked in a clear
voice that shook in spite of her.

Dennin shuffled his feet on the barrel, looked down bashfully like
a man making his maiden speech, and cleared his throat.

"I'm glad it's over with," he said. "You've treated me like a
Christian, an' I'm thankin' you hearty for your kindness."

"Then may God receive you, a repentant sinner," she said.

"Ay," he answered, his deep voice as a response to her thin one,
"may God receive me, a repentant sinner."

"Good-by, Michael," she cried, and her voice sounded desperate.

She threw her weight against the barrel, but it did not overturn.

"Hans! Quick! Help me!" she cried faintly.

She could feel her last strength going, and the barrel resisted
her. Hans hurried to her, and the barrel went out from under
Michael Dennin.

She turned her back, thrusting her fingers into her ears. Then she
began to laugh, harshly, sharply, metallically; and Hans was
shocked as he had not been shocked through the whole tragedy.
Edith Nelson's break-down had come. Even in her hysteria she knew
it, and she was glad that she had been able to hold up under the
strain until everything had been accomplished. She reeled toward
Hans.

"Take me to the cabin, Hans," she managed to articulate.

"And let me rest," she added. "Just let me rest, and rest, and
rest."

With Hans's arm around her, supporting her weight and directing her
helpless steps, she went off across the snow. But the Indians
remained solemnly to watch the working of the white man's law that
compelled a man to dance upon the air.

BROWN WOLF

SHE had delayed, because of the dew-wet grass, in order to put on
her overshoes, and when she emerged from the house found her
waiting husband absorbed in the wonder of a bursting almond-bud.
She sent a questing glance across the tall grass and in and out
among the orchard trees.

"Where's Wolf?" she asked.

"He was here a moment ago." Walt Irvine drew himself away with a
jerk from the metaphysics and poetry of the organic miracle of
blossom, and surveyed the landscape. "He was running a rabbit the
last I saw of him."

"Wolf! Wolf! Here Wolf!" she called, as they left the clearing
and took the trail that led down through the waxen-belled manzanita
jungle to the county road.

Irvine thrust between his lips the little finger of each hand and
lent to her efforts a shrill whistling.

She covered her ears hastily and made a wry grimace.

"My! for a poet, delicately attuned and all the rest of it, you can
make unlovely noises. My ear-drums are pierced. You outwhistle -
"

"Orpheus."

"I was about to say a street-arab," she concluded severely.

"Poesy does not prevent one from being practical - at least it
doesn't prevent ME. Mine is no futility of genius that can't sell
gems to the magazines."

He assumed a mock extravagance, and went on:

"I am no attic singer, no ballroom warbler. And why? Because I am
practical. Mine is no squalor of song that cannot transmute
itself, with proper exchange value, into a flower-crowned cottage,
a sweet mountain-meadow, a grove of red-woods, an orchard of
thirty-seven trees, one long row of blackberries and two short rows
of strawberries, to say nothing of a quarter of a mile of gurgling
brook. I am a beauty-merchant, a trader in song, and I pursue
utility, dear Madge. I sing a song, and thanks to the magazine
editors I transmute my song into a waft of the west wind sighing
through our redwoods, into a murmur of waters over mossy stones
that sings back to me another song than the one I sang and yet the
same song wonderfully - er - transmuted."

"O that all your song-transmutations were as successful!" she
laughed.

"Name one that wasn't."

"Those two beautiful sonnets that you transmuted into the cow that
was accounted the worst milker in the township."

"She was beautiful - " he began,

"But she didn't give milk," Madge interrupted.

"But she WAS beautiful, now, wasn't she?" he insisted.

"And here's where beauty and utility fall out," was her reply.
"And there's the Wolf!"

From the thicket-covered hillside came a crashing of underbrush,
and then, forty feet above them, on the edge of the sheer wall of
rock, appeared a wolf's head and shoulders. His braced fore paws
dislodged a pebble, and with sharp-pricked ears and peering eyes he
watched the fall of the pebble till it struck at their feet. Then
he transferred his gaze and with open mouth laughed down at them.

"You Wolf, you!" and "You blessed Wolf!" the man and woman called
out to him.

The ears flattened back and down at the sound, and the head seemed
to snuggle under the caress of an invisible hand.

They watched him scramble backward into the thicket, then proceeded
on their way. Several minutes later, rounding a turn in the trail
where the descent was less precipitous, he joined them in the midst
of a miniature avalanche of pebbles and loose soil. He was not
demonstrative. A pat and a rub around the ears from the man, and a
more prolonged caressing from the woman, and he was away down the
trail in front of them, gliding effortlessly over the ground in
true wolf fashion.

In build and coat and brush he was a huge timber-wolf; but the lie
was given to his wolfhood by his color and marking. There the dog
unmistakably advertised itself. No wolf was ever colored like him.
He was brown, deep brown, red-brown, an orgy of browns. Back and
shoulders were a warm brown that paled on the sides and underneath
to a yellow that was dingy because of the brown that lingered in
it. The white of the throat and paws and the spots over the eyes
was dirty because of the persistent and ineradicable brown, while
the eyes themselves were twin topazes, golden and brown.

The man and woman loved the dog very much; perhaps this was because
it had been such a task to win his love. It had been no easy
matter when he first drifted in mysteriously out of nowhere to
their little mountain cottage. Footsore and famished, he had
killed a rabbit under their very noses and under their very
windows, and then crawled away and slept by the spring at the foot
of the blackberry bushes. When Walt Irvine went down to inspect
the intruder, he was snarled at for his pains, and Madge likewise
was snarled at when she went down to present, as a peace-offering,
a large pan of bread and milk.

A most unsociable dog he proved to be, resenting all their
advances, refusing to let them lay hands on him, menacing them with
bared fangs and bristling hair. Nevertheless he remained, sleeping
and resting by the spring, and eating the food they gave him after
they set it down at a safe distance and retreated. His wretched
physical condition explained why he lingered; and when he had
recuperated, after several days' sojourn, he disappeared.

And this would have been the end of him, so far as Irvine and his
wife were concerned, had not Irvine at that particular time been
called away into the northern part of the state. Riding along on
the train, near to the line between California and Oregon, he
chanced to look out of the window and saw his unsociable guest
sliding along the wagon road, brown and wolfish, tired yet
tireless, dust-covered and soiled with two hundred miles of travel.

Now Irvine was a man of impulse, a poet. He got off the train at
the next station, bought a piece of meat at a butcher shop, and
captured the vagrant on the outskirts of the town. The return trip
was made in the baggage car, and so Wolf came a second time to the
mountain cottage. Here he was tied up for a week and made love to
by the man and woman. But it was very circumspect love-making.
Remote and alien as a traveller from another planet, he snarled
down their soft-spoken love-words. He never barked. In all the
time they had him he was never known to bark.

To win him became a problem. Irvine liked problems. He had a
metal plate made, on which was stamped: RETURN TO WALT IRVINE,
GLEN ELLEN, SONOMA COUNTY, CALIFORNIA. This was riveted to a
collar and strapped about the dog's neck. Then he was turned
loose, and promptly he disappeared. A day later came a telegram
from Mendocino County. In twenty hours he had made over a hundred
miles to the north, and was still going when captured.

He came back by Wells Fargo Express, was tied up three days, and
was loosed on the fourth and lost. This time he gained southern
Oregon before he was caught and returned. Always, as soon as he
received his liberty, he fled away, and always he fled north. He
was possessed of an obsession that drove him north. The homing
instinct, Irvine called it, after he had expended the selling price
of a sonnet in getting the animal back from northern Oregon.

Another time the brown wanderer succeeded in traversing half the
length of California, all of Oregon, and most of Washington, before
he was picked up and returned "Collect." A remarkable thing was
the speed with which he travelled. Fed up and rested, as soon as
he was loosed he devoted all his energy to getting over the ground.
On the first day's run he was known to cover as high as a hundred
and fifty miles, and after that he would average a hundred miles a
day until caught. He always arrived back lean and hungry and
savage, and always departed fresh and vigorous, cleaving his way
northward in response to some prompting of his being that no one
could understand.

But at last, after a futile year of flight, he accepted the
inevitable and elected to remain at the cottage where first he had
killed the rabbit and slept by the spring. Even after that, a long
time elapsed before the man and woman succeeded in patting him. It
was a great victory, for they alone were allowed to put hands on
him. He was fastidiously exclusive, and no guest at the cottage
ever succeeded in making up to him. A low growl greeted such
approach; if any one had the hardihood to come nearer, the lips
lifted, the naked fangs appeared, and the growl became a snarl - a
snarl so terrible and malignant that it awed the stoutest of them,
as it likewise awed the farmers' dogs that knew ordinary dog-
snarling, but had never seen wolf-snarling before.

He was without antecedents. His history began with Walt and Madge.
He had come up from the south, but never a clew did they get of the
owner from whom he had evidently fled. Mrs. Johnson, their nearest
neighbor and the one who supplied them with milk, proclaimed him a
Klondike dog. Her brother was burrowing for frozen pay-streaks in
that far country, and so she constituted herself an authority on
the subject.

But they did not dispute her. There were the tips of Wolf's ears,
obviously so severely frozen at some time that they would never
quite heal again. Besides, he looked like the photographs of the
Alaskan dogs they saw published in magazines and newspapers. They
often speculated over his past, and tried to conjure up (from what
they had read and heard) what his northland life had been. That
the northland still drew him, they knew; for at night they
sometimes heard him crying softly; and when the north wind blew and
the bite of frost was in the air, a great restlessness would come
upon him and he would lift a mournful lament which they knew to be
the long wolf-howl. Yet he never barked. No provocation was great
enough to draw from him that canine cry.

Long discussion they had, during the time of winning him, as to
whose dog he was. Each claimed him, and each proclaimed loudly any
expression of affection made by him. But the man had the better of
it at first, chiefly because he was a man. It was patent that Wolf
had had no experience with women. He did not understand women.
Madge's skirts were something he never quite accepted. The swish
of them was enough to set him a-bristle with suspicion, and on a
windy day she could not approach him at all.

On the other hand, it was Madge who fed him; also it was she who
ruled the kitchen, and it was by her favor, and her favor alone,
that he was permitted to come within that sacred precinct. It was
because of these things that she bade fair to overcome the handicap
of her garments. Then it was that Walt put forth special effort,
making it a practice to have Wolf lie at his feet while he wrote,
and, between petting and talking, losing much time from his work.
Walt won in the end, and his victory was most probably due to the
fact that he was a man, though Madge averred that they would have
had another quarter of a mile of gurgling brook, and at least two
west winds sighing through their redwoods, had Wait properly
devoted his energies to song-transmutation and left Wolf alone to
exercise a natural taste and an unbiassed judgment.

"It's about time I heard from those triolets", Walt said, after a
silence of five minutes, during which they had swung steadily down
the trail. "There'll be a check at the post-office, I know, and
we'll transmute it into beautiful buckwheat flour, a gallon of
maple syrup, and a new pair of overshoes for you."

"And into beautiful milk from Mrs. Johnson's beautiful cow," Madge
added. "To-morrow's the first of the month, you know."

Walt scowled unconsciously; then his face brightened, and he
clapped his hand to his breast pocket.

"Never mind. I have here a nice beautiful new cow, the best milker
in California."

"When did you write it?" she demanded eagerly. Then,
reproachfully, "And you never showed it to me."

"I saved it to read to you on the way to the post-office, in a spot
remarkably like this one," he answered, indicating, with a wave of
his hand, a dry log on which to sit.

A tiny stream flowed out of a dense fern-brake, slipped down a
mossy-lipped stone, and ran across the path at their feet. From
the valley arose the mellow song of meadow-larks, while about them,
in and out, through sunshine and shadow, fluttered great yellow
butterflies.

Up from below came another sound that broke in upon Walt reading
softly from his manuscript. It was a crunching of heavy feet,
punctuated now and again by the clattering of a displaced stone.
As Walt finished and looked to his wife for approval, a man came
into view around the turn of the trail. He was bare-headed and
sweaty. With a handkerchief in one hand he mopped his face, while
in the other hand he carried a new hat and a wilted starched collar
which he had removed from his neck. He was a well-built man, and
his muscles seemed on the point of bursting out of the painfully
new and ready-made black clothes he wore.

"Warm day," Walt greeted him. Walt believed in country democracy,
and never missed an opportunity to practise it.

The man paused and nodded.

"I guess I ain't used much to the warm," he vouchsafed half
apologetically. "I'm more accustomed to zero weather."

"You don't find any of that in this country," Walt laughed.

"Should say not," the man answered. "An' I ain't here a-lookin'
for it neither. I'm tryin' to find my sister. Mebbe you know
where she lives. Her name's Johnson, Mrs. William Johnson."

"You're not her Klondike brother!" Madge cried, her eyes bright
with interest, "about whom we've heard so much?"

"Yes'm, that's me," he answered modestly. "My name's Miller, Skiff
Miller. I just thought I'd s'prise her."

"You are on the right track then. Only you've come by the foot-
path." Madge stood up to direct him, pointing up the canyon a
quarter of a mile. "You see that blasted redwood? Take the little
trail turning off to the right. It's the short cut to her house.
You can't miss it."

"Yes'm, thank you, ma'am," he said. He made tentative efforts to
go, but seemed awkwardly rooted to the spot. He was gazing at her
with an open admiration of which he was quite unconscious, and
which was drowning, along with him, in the rising sea of
embarrassment in which he floundered.

"We'd like to hear you tell about the Klondike," Madge said.
"Mayn't we come over some day while you are at your sister's? Or,
better yet, won't you come over and have dinner with us?"

"Yes'm, thank you, ma'am," he mumbled mechanically. Then he caught
himself up and added: "I ain't stoppin' long. I got to be pullin'
north again. I go out on to-night's train. You see, I've got a
mail contract with the government."

When Madge had said that it was too bad, he made another futile
effort to go. But he could not take his eyes from her face. He
forgot his embarrassment in his admiration, and it was her turn to
flush and feel uncomfortable.

It was at this juncture, when Walt had just decided it was time for
him to be saying something to relieve the strain, that Wolf, who
had been away nosing through the brush, trotted wolf-like into
view.

Skiff Miller's abstraction disappeared. The pretty woman before
him passed out of his field of vision. He had eyes only for the
dog, and a great wonder came into his face.

"Well, I'll be damned!" he enunciated slowly and solemnly.

He sat down ponderingly on the log, leaving Madge standing. At the
sound of his voice, Wolf's ears had flattened down, then his mouth
had opened in a laugh. He trotted slowly up to the stranger and
first smelled his hands, then licked them with his tongue.

Skiff Miller patted the dog's head, and slowly and solemnly
repeated, "Well, I'll be damned!"

"Excuse me, ma'am," he said the next moment "I was just s'prised
some, that was all."

"We're surprised, too," she answered lightly. "We never saw Wolf
make up to a stranger before."

"Is that what you call him - Wolf?" the man asked.

Madge nodded. "But I can't understand his friendliness toward you
- unless it's because you're from the Klondike. He's a Klondike
dog, you know."

"Yes'm," Miller said absently. He lifted one of Wolf's fore legs
and examined the foot-pads, pressing them and denting them with his
thumb. "Kind of SOFT," he remarked. "He ain't been on trail for a
long time."

"I say," Walt broke in, "it is remarkable the way he lets you
handle him."

Skiff Miller arose, no longer awkward with admiration of Madge, and
in a sharp, businesslike manner asked, "How long have you had him?"

But just then the dog, squirming and rubbing against the newcomer's
legs, opened his mouth and barked. It was an explosive bark, brief
and joyous, but a bark.

"That's a new one on me," Skiff Miller remarked.

Walt and Madge stared at each other. The miracle had happened.
Wolf had barked.

"It's the first time he ever barked," Madge said.

"First time I ever heard him, too," Miller volunteered.

Madge smiled at him. The man was evidently a humorist.

"Of course," she said, "since you have only seen him for five
minutes."

Skiff Miller looked at her sharply, seeking in her face the guile
her words had led him to suspect.

"I thought you understood," he said slowly. "I thought you'd
tumbled to it from his makin' up to me. He's my dog. His name
ain't Wolf. It's Brown."

"Oh, Walt!" was Madge's instinctive cry to her husband.

Walt was on the defensive at once.

"How do you know he's your dog?" he demanded.

"Because he is," was the reply.

"Mere assertion," Walt said sharply.

In his slow and pondering way, Skiff Miller looked at him, then
asked, with a nod of his head toward Madge:

"How d'you know she's your wife? You just say, 'Because she is,'
and I'll say it's mere assertion. The dog's mine. I bred 'm an'
raised 'm, an' I guess I ought to know. Look here. I'll prove it
to you."

Skiff Miller turned to the dog. "Brown!" His voice rang out
sharply, and at the sound the dog's ears flattened down as to a
caress. "Gee!" The dog made a swinging turn to the right. "Now
mush-on!" And the dog ceased his swing abruptly and started
straight ahead, halting obediently at command.

"I can do it with whistles", Skiff Miller said proudly. "He was my
lead dog."

"But you are not going to take him away with you?" Madge asked
tremulously.

The man nodded.

"Back into that awful Klondike world of suffering?"

He nodded and added: "Oh, it ain't so bad as all that. Look at
me. Pretty healthy specimen, ain't I?"

"But the dogs! The terrible hardship, the heart-breaking toil, the
starvation, the frost! Oh, I've read about it and I know."

"I nearly ate him once, over on Little Fish River," Miller
volunteered grimly. "If I hadn't got a moose that day was all that
saved 'm."

"I'd have died first!" Madge cried.

"Things is different down here", Miller explained. "You don't have
to eat dogs. You think different just about the time you're all
in. You've never ben all in, so you don't know anything about it."

"That's the very point," she argued warmly. "Dogs are not eaten in
California. Why not leave him here? He is happy. He'll never
want for food - you know that. He'll never suffer from cold and
hardship. Here all is softness and gentleness. Neither the human
nor nature is savage. He will never know a whip-lash again. And
as for the weather - why, it never snows here."

"But it's all-fired hot in summer, beggin' your pardon," Skiff
Miller laughed.

"But you do not answer," Madge continued passionately. "What have
you to offer him in that northland life?"

"Grub, when I've got it, and that's most of the time," came the
answer.

"And the rest of the time?"

"No grub."

"And the work?"

"Yes, plenty of work," Miller blurted out impatiently. "Work
without end, an' famine, an' frost, an all the rest of the miseries
- that's what he'll get when he comes with me. But he likes it.
He is used to it. He knows that life. He was born to it an'
brought up to it. An' you don't know anything about it. You don't
know what you're talking about. That's where the dog belongs, and
that's where he'll be happiest."

"The dog doesn't go," Walt announced in a determined voice. "So
there is no need of further discussion."

"What's that?" Skiff Miller demanded, his brows lowering and an
obstinate flush of blood reddening his forehead.

"I said the dog doesn't go, and that settles it. I don't believe
he's your dog. You may have seen him sometime. You may even
sometime have driven him for his owner. But his obeying the
ordinary driving commands of the Alaskan trail is no demonstration
that he is yours. Any dog in Alaska would obey you as he obeyed.
Besides, he is undoubtedly a valuable dog, as dogs go in Alaska,
and that is sufficient explanation of your desire to get possession
of him. Anyway, you've got to prove property."

Skiff Miller, cool and collected, the obstinate flush a trifle
deeper on his forehead, his huge muscles bulging under the black
cloth of his coat, carefully looked the poet up and down as though
measuring the strength of his slenderness.

The Klondiker's face took on a contemptuous expression as he said
finally, "I reckon there's nothin' in sight to prevent me takin'
the dog right here an' now."

Walt's face reddened, and the striking-muscles of his arms and
shoulders seemed to stiffen and grow tense. His wife fluttered
apprehensively into the breach.

"Maybe Mr. Miller is right", she said. "I am afraid that he is.
Wolf does seem to know him, and certainly he answers to the name of
'Brown.' He made friends with him instantly, and you know that's
something he never did with anybody before. Besides, look at the
way he barked. He was just bursting with joy Joy over what?
Without doubt at finding Mr. Miller."

Walt's striking-muscles relaxed, and his shoulders seemed to droop
with hopelessness.

"I guess you're right, Madge," he said. "Wolf isn't Wolf, but
Brown, and he must belong to Mr. Miller."

"Perhaps Mr. Miller will sell him," she suggested. "We can buy
him."

Skiff Miller shook his head, no longer belligerent, but kindly,
quick to be generous in response to generousness.

"I had five dogs," he said, casting about for the easiest way to
temper his refusal. "He was the leader. They was the crack team
of Alaska. Nothin' could touch 'em. In 1898 I refused five
thousand dollars for the bunch. Dogs was high, then, anyway; but
that wasn't what made the fancy price. It was the team itself.
Brown was the best in the team. That winter I refused twelve
hundred for 'm. I didn't sell 'm then, an' I ain't a-sellin' 'm
now. Besides, I think a mighty lot of that dog. I've ben lookin'
for 'm for three years. It made me fair sick when I found he'd ben
stole - not the value of him, but the - well, I liked 'm like hell,
that's all, beggin' your pardon. I couldn't believe my eyes when I
seen 'm just now. I thought I was dreamin'. It was too good to be
true. Why, I was his wet-nurse. I put 'm to bed, snug every
night. His mother died, and I brought 'm up on condensed milk at
two dollars a can when I couldn't afford it in my own coffee. He
never knew any mother but me. He used to suck my finger regular,
the darn little cuss - that finger right there!"

And Skiff Miller, too overwrought for speech, held up a fore finger
for them to see.

"That very finger," he managed to articulate, as though it somehow
clinched the proof of ownership and the bond of affection.

He was still gazing at his extended finger when Madge began to
speak.

"But the dog," she said. "You haven't considered the dog."

Skiff Miller looked puzzled.

"Have you thought about him?" she asked.

"Don't know what you're drivin' at," was the response.

"Maybe the dog has some choice in the matter," Madge went on.
"Maybe he has his likes and desires. You have not considered him.
You give him no choice. It has never entered your mind that
possibly he might prefer California to Alaska. You consider only
what you like. You do with him as you would with a sack of
potatoes or a bale of hay."

This was a new way of looking at it, and Miller was visibly
impressed as he debated it in his mind. Madge took advantage of
his indecision.

"If you really love him, what would be happiness to him would be
your happiness also," she urged.

Skiff Miller continued to debate with himself, and Madge stole a
glance of exultation to her husband, who looked back warm approval.

"What do you think?" the Klondiker suddenly demanded.

It was her turn to be puzzled. "What do you mean?" she asked.

"D'ye think he'd sooner stay in California?"

She nodded her head with positiveness. "I am sure of it."

Skiff Miller again debated with himself, though this time aloud, at
the same time running his gaze in a judicial way over the mooted
animal.

"He was a good worker. He's done a heap of work for me. He never
loafed on me, an' he was a joe-dandy at hammerin' a raw team into
shape. He's got a head on him. He can do everything but talk. He

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