CHAPTER I  THE ENCOUNTER
 Gagleam with the lights of anchored ships, then up at the crenelated mountains, black against the sky. He drank the cool air burdened with its taints of the sea, while the blood of his boyhood leaped within him.
 
“Oh, it’s fine—fine,” he murmured, “and this is my country—my country, after all, Dex. It’s in my veins, this hunger for the North. I grow. I expand.”
 
“Careful you don’t bust,” warned Dextry. “I’ve seen men get plumb drunk on mountain air. Don’t expand too strong in one spot.” He went back abruptly to his pipe, its villanous fumes promptly averting any danger of the air’s too tonic quality.
 
“Gad! What a smudge!” sniffed the younger man. “You ought to be in quarantine.”
 
“I’d ruther smell like a man than talk like a kid. You desecrate the hour of meditation with rhapsodies on nature when your æsthetics ain’t honed up to the beauties of good tobacco.”
 
The other laughed, inflating his deep chest. In the gloom he stretched his muscles restlessly, as though an excess of vigor filled him.
 
They were lounging upon the dock, while before them lay the Santa Maria ready for her midnight sailing. Behind slept Unalaska, quaint, antique, and Russian, rusting amid the fogs of Bering Sea. Where, a week before, mild-eyed natives had dried their cod among the old bronze cannon, now a frenzied horde of gold-seekers paused in their rush to the new El Dorado. They had come like a locust cloud, thousands strong, settling on the edge of the Smoky Sea, waiting the going of the ice that barred them from their Golden Fleece—from Nome the new, where men found fortune in a night.
 
The mossy hills back of the village were ridged with graves of those who had died on the out-trip the fall before, when a plague had gripped the land—but what of that? Gold glittered in the sands, so said the survivors; therefore men came in armies. Glenister and Dextry had left Nome the autumn previous, the young man raving with fever. Now they returned to their own land.
 
“This air whets every animal instinct in me,” Glenister broke out again. “Away from the cities I turn savage. I feel the old primitive passions—the fret for fighting.”her more than a din, and yet she stayed, crouched against the wall.
 
Dextry swung at a dim target, and, missing it, was whirled off his balance. Instantly his antagonist grappled with him, and they fell to the floor, while a third man shuffled about them. The girl throttled a scream.
 
“I’m goin’ to kick ’im, Bill,” the man panted hoarsely. “Le’ me fix ’im.” He swung his heavy shoe, and Bill cursed with stirring eloquence.
 
“Ow! You’re kickin’ me! I’ve got ’im, safe enough. Tackle the big un.”
 
Bill’s ally then started towards the others, his body bent, his arms flexed yet hanging loosely. He crouched beside the girl, ignoring her, while she heard the breath wheezing from his lungs; then silently he leaped. Glenister had hurled a man from him, then stepped back to avoid the others, when he was seized from behind and felt the man’s arms wrapped about his neck, the sailor’s legs locked about his thighs. Now came the girl’s first knowledge of real fighting. The two spun back and forth so closely entwined as to be indistinguishable, the others holding off. For what seemed many minutes they struggled, the young man striving to reach his adversary, till they crashed against the wall near her and she heard her champion’s breath coughing in his throat at the tightening grip of the sailor. Fright held her paralyzed, for she had never seen men thus. A moment and Glenister would be down beneath their stamping feet—they Would kick his life out with their heavy shoes. At thought of it, the necessity of action smote her like a blow in the face. Her terror fell away, her shaking muscles stiffened, and before realizing what she did she had acted.
 
The seaman’s back was to her. She reached out and gripped him by the hair, while her fingers, tense as talons, sought his eyes. Then the first loud sound of the battle arose. The man yelled in sudden terror; and the others as suddenly fell back. The next instant she felt a hand upon her shoulder and heard Dextry’s voice.
 
“Are ye hurt? No? Come on, then, or we’ll get left.” He spoke quietly, though his breath was loud, and, glancing down, she saw the huddled form of the sailor whom he had fought.
 
“That’s all right—he ain’t hurt. It’s a Jap trick I learned. Hurry up!”
 
They ran swiftly down the wharf, followed by Glenister and by the groans of the sailors in whom the lust for combat had been quenched. As they scrambled up the Santa Maria’s gang-plank, a strip of water widened between the boat and the pier.
 
“Close shave, that,” panted Glenister, feeling his throat gingerly, “but I wouldn’t have missed it for a spotted pup.”
 
“I’ve been through b’iler explosions and snow-slides, not to mention a triflin’ jail-delivery, but fer real sprightly diversions I don’t recall nothin’ more pleasin’ than this.” Dextry’s enthusiasm was boylike.
 
“What kind of men are you?” the girl laughed nervously, but got no answer.
 
They led her to their deck cabin, where they switched on the electric light, blinking at each other and at their unknown guest.
 
They saw a graceful and altogether attractive figure in a trim, short skirt and long, tan boots. But what Glenister first saw was her eyes; large and gray, almost brown under the electric light. They were active eyes, he thought, and they flashed swift, comprehensive glances at the two men. Her hair had fallen loose and crinkled to her waist, all agleam. Otherwise she showed no sign of her recent ordeal.
 
Glenister had been prepared for the type of beauty that follows the frontier; beauty that may stun, but that has the polish and chill of a new-ground bowie. Instead, this girl with the calm, reposeful face struck a note almost painfully different from her surroundings, suggesting countless pleasant things that had been strange to him for the past few years.
 
Pure admiration alone was patent in the older man’s gaze.
 
“I make oration,” said he, “that you’re the gamest little chap I ever fought over, Mexikin, Injun, or white. What’s the trouble?”
 
“I suppose you think I’ve done something dreadful, don’t you?” she said. “But I haven’t. I had to get away from the Ohio to-night for—certain reasons. I’ll tell you all about it to-morrow. I haven’t stolen anything, nor poisoned the crew—really I haven’t.” She smiled at them, and Glenister found it impossible not to smile with her, though dismayed by her feeble explanation.
 
“Well, I’ll wake up the steward and find a place for you to go,” he said at length. “You’ll have to double up with some of the women, though; it’s awfully crowded aboard.”
 
She laid a detaining hand on his arm. He thought he felt her tremble.
 
“No, no! I don’t want you to do that. They mustn’t see me to-night. I know I’m acting strangely and all that, but it’s happened so quickly I haven’t found myself yet. I’ll tell you to-morrow, though, really. Don’t let any one see me or it will spoil everything. Wait till to-morrow, please.”
 
She was very white, and spoke with eager intensity.
 
“Help you? Why, sure Mike!” assured the impulsive Dextry, “an’, see here, Miss—you take your time on explanations. We don’t care a cuss what you done. Morals ain’t our long suit, ’cause ‘there’s never a law of God or man runs north of Fifty-three,’ as the poetry man remarked, an’ he couldn’t have spoke truer if he’d knowed what he was sayin’. Everybody is privileged to ‘look out’ his own game up here. A square deal an’ no questions asked.”
 
She looked somewhat doubtful at this till she caught the heat of Glenister’s gaze. Some boldness of his look brought home to her the actual situation, and a stain rose in her cheek. She noted him more carefully; noted his heavy shoulders and ease of bearing, an ease and looseness begotten of perfect muscular control. Strength was equally suggested in his face, she thought, for he carried a marked young countenance, with thrusting chin, aggressive thatching brows, and mobile mouth that whispered all the changes from strength to abandon. Prominent was a look of reckless energy. She considered him handsome in a heavy, virile, perhaps too purely physical fashion.
 
“You want to stowaway?” he asked.
 
“I’ve had a right smart experience in that line,” said Dextry, “but I never done it by proxy. What’s your plan?”
 
“She will stay here to-night,” said Glenister quickly. “You and I will go below. Nobody will see her.”
 
“I can’t let you do that,” she objected. “Isn’t there some place where I can hide?” But they reassured her and left.
 
When they had gone, she crouched trembling upon her seat for a long time, gazing fixedly before her. “I’m afraid!” she whispered; “I’m afraid. What am I getting into? Why do men look so at me? I’m frightened. Oh, I’m sorry I undertook it.” At last she rose wearily. The close cabin oppressed her; she felt the need of fresh air. So, turning out the lights, she stepped forth into the night. Figures loomed near the rail and she slipped astern, screening herself behind a life-boat, where the cool breeze fanned her face.
 
The forms she had seen approached, speaking earnestly. Instead of passing, they stopped abreast of her hiding-place; then, as they began to talk, she saw that her retreat was cut off and that she must not stir.
 
“What brings her here?” Glenister was echoing a question of Dextry’s. “Bah! What brings them all? What brought ‘the Duchess,’ and Cherry Malotte, and all the rest?”
 
“No, no,” said the old man. “She ain’t that kind—she’s too fine, too delicate—too pretty.”
 
“That’s just it—too pretty! Too pretty to be alone—or anything except what she is.”
 
Dextry growled sourly. “This country has plumb ruined you, boy. You think they’re all alike—an’ I don’t know but they are—all but this girl. Seems like she’s different, somehow—but I can’t tell.”
 
Glenister spoke musingly:
 
“I had an ancestor who buccaneered among the Indies, a long time ago—so I’m told. Sometimes I think I have his disposition. He comes and whispers things to me in the night. Oh, he was a devil, and I’ve got his blood in me—untamed and hot—I can hear him saying something now—something about the spoils of war. Ha, ha! Maybe he’s right. I fought for her to-night—Dex—the way he used to fight for his sweethearts along the Mexicos. She’s too beautiful to be good—and ‘there’s never a law of God or man runs north of Fifty-three.’ ”
 
They moved on, his vibrant, cynical laughter stabbing the girl till she leaned against the yawl for support.
 
She held herself together while the blood beat thickly in her ears, then fled to the cabin, hurling herself into her berth, where she writhed silently, beating the pillow with hands into which her nails had bitten, staring the while into the darkness with dry and aching eyes.
 
“Mebbe you’ll have a chance.”
 
“How so?”
 
“Well, it’s this way. I met Mexico Mullins this mornin’. You mind old Mexico, don’t you? The feller that relocated Discovery Claim on Anvil Creek last summer?”
 
“You don’t mean that ‘tin-horn’ the boys were going to lynch for claim-jumping?”
 
“Identical! Remember me tellin’ you about a good turn I done him once down Guadalupe way?”
 
“Greaser shooting-scrape, wasn’t it?”
 
“Yep! Well, I noticed first off that he’s gettin’ fat; high-livin’ fat, too, all in one spot, like he was playin’ both ends ag’in the centre. Also he wore di’mon’s fit to handle with ice-tongs.
 
“Says I, lookin’ at his side elevation, ‘What’s accented your middle syllable so strong, Mexico?’
 
“ ‘Prosperity, politics, an’ the Waldorf-Astorier,’ says he. It seems Mex hadn’t forgot old days. He claws me into a corner an’ says, ‘Bill, I’m goin’ to pay you back for that Moralez deal.’
 
“ ‘It ain’t comin’ to me,’ says I. ‘That’s a bygone!’
 
“ ‘Listen here,’ says he, an’, seein’ he was in earnest, I let him run on.
 
“ ‘How much do you value that claim o’ yourn at?’
 
“ ‘Hard tellin’,’ says I. ‘If she holds out like she run last fall, there’d ought to be a million clear in her.’
 
“ ‘How much ’ll you clean up this summer?’
 
“ ‘ ’Bout four hundred thousand, with luck.’
 
“ ‘Bill,’ says he, ‘there’s hell a-poppin’ an’ you’ve got to watch that ground like you’d watch a rattle-snake. Don’t never leave ’em get a grip on it or you’re down an’ out.’
 
“He was so plumb in earnest it scared me up, ’cause Mexico ain’t a gabby man.
 
“ ‘What do you mean?’ says I.
 
“ ‘I can’t tell you nothin’ more. I’m puttin’ a string on my own neck, sayin’ this much. You’re a square man, Bill, an’ I’m a gambler, but you saved my life oncet, an’ I wouldn’t steer you wrong. For God’s sake, don’t let ’em jump your ground, that’s all.’
 
“ ‘Let who jump it? Congress has give us judges an’ courts an’ marshals—’ I begins.
 
“ ‘That’s just it. How you goin’ to buck that hand? Them’s the best cards in the deck. There’s a man comin’ by the name of McNamara. Watch him clost. I can’t tell you no more. But don’t never let ’em get a grip on your ground.’ That’s all he’d say.”
 
“Bah! He’s crazy! I wish somebody would try to jump the Midas; we’d enjoy the exercise.”
 
The siren of the Santa Maria interrupted, its hoarse warning throbbing up the mountain.
 
“We’ll have to get aboard,” said Dextry.
 
“Sh-h! What’s that?” the other whispered.
 
At first the only sound they heard was a stir from the deck of the steamer. Then from the water below them came the rattle of rowlocks and a voice cautiously muffled.
 
“Stop! Stop there!”
 
A skiff burst from the darkness, grounding on the beach beneath. A figure scrambled out and up the ladder leading to the wharf. Immediately a second boat, plainly in pursuit of the first one, struck on the beach behind it.
 
As the escaping figure mounted to their level the watchers perceived with amazement that it was a young woman. Breath sobbed from her lungs, and, stumbling, she would have fallen but for Glenister, who ran forward and helped her to her feet.
 
“Don’t let them get me,” she panted.
 
He turned to his partner in puzzled inquiry, but found that the old man had crossed to the head of the landing ladder up which the pursuers were climbing.
 
“Just a minute—you there! Back up or I’ll kick your face in.” Dextry’s voice was sharp and unexpected, and in the darkness he loomed tall and menacing to those below.
 
“Get out of the way. That woman’s a runaway,” came from the one highest on the ladder.
 
“So I jedge.”
 
“She broke qu—”
 
“Shut up!” broke in another. “Do you want to advertise it? Get out of the way, there, ye damn fool! Climb up, Thorsen.” He spoke like a bucko mate, and his words stirred the bile of Dextry.
 
Thorsen grasped the dock floor, trying to climb up, but the old miner stamped on his fingers and the sailor loosened his hold with a yell, carrying the under men with him to the beach in his fall.
 
“This way! Follow me!” shouted the mate, making up the bank for the shore end of the wharf.
 
“You’d better pull your freight, miss,” Dextry remarked; “they’ll be here in a minute.”
 
“Yes, yes! Let us go! I must get aboard the Santa Maria. She’s leaving now. Come, come!”
 
Glenister laughed, as though there were a humorous touch in her remark, but did not stir.
 
“I’m gettin’ awful old an’ stiff to run,” said Dextry, removing his mackinaw, “but I allow I ain’t too old for a little diversion in the way of a rough-house when it comes nosin’ around.” He moved lightly, though the girl could see in the half-darkness that his hair was silvery.
 
“What do you mean?” she questioned, sharply.
 
“You hurry along, miss; we’ll toy with ’em till you’re aboard.” They stepped across to the dock-house, backing against it. The girl followed.
 
Again came the warning blast from the steamer, and the voice of an officer:
 
“Clear away that stern line!”
 
“Oh, we’ll be left!” she breathed, and somehow it struck Glenister that she feared this more than the men whose approaching feet he heard.
 
“You can make it all right,” he urged her, roughly. “You’ll get hurt if you stay here. Run along and don’t mind us. We’ve been thirty days on shipboard, and were praying for something to happen.” His voice was boyishly glad, as if he exulted in the fray that was to come; and no sooner had he spoken than the sailors came out of the darkness upon them.
 
During the space of a few heart-beats there was only a tangle of whirling forms with the sound of fist on flesh, then the blot split up and forms plunged outward, falling heavily. Again the sailors rushed, attempting to clinch. They massed upon Dextry only to grasp empty air, for he shifted with remarkable agility, striking bitterly, as an old wolf snaps. It was baffling work, however, for in the darkness his blows fell short or overreached.
 
Glenister, on the other hand, stood carelessly, beating the men off as they came to him. He laughed gloatingly, deep in his throat, as though the encounter were merely some rough sport. The girl shuddered, for the desperate silence of the attacking men terrified
CHAPTER II  THE STOWAWAY
 SHE awoke to the throb of the engines, and, gazing cautiously through her stateroom window, saw a glassy, level sea, with the sun brightly agleam on it.
 
So this was Bering? She had clothed it always with the mystery of her school-days, thinking of it as a weeping, fog-bound stretch of gray waters. Instead, she saw a flat, sunlit main, with occasional sea-parrots flapping their fat bodies out of the ship’s course. A glistening head popped up from the waters abreast, and she heard the cry of “seal!”
 
Dressing, the girl noted minutely the personal articles scattered about the cabin, striving to derive therefrom some fresh hint of the characteristics of the owners. First, there was an elaborate, copper-backed toilet-set, all richly ornamented and leather-bound. The metal was magnificently hand-worked and bore Glenister’s initial. It spoke of elegant extravagance, and seemed oddly out of place in an Arctic miner’s equipment, as did also a small set of De Maupassant.
 
Next, she picked up Kipling’s Seven Seas, marked liberally, and felt that she had struck a scent. The roughness and brutality of the poems had always chilled her, though she had felt vaguely their splendid pulse and swing. This was the girl’s first venture from a sheltered life. She had not rubbed elbows with the world enough to find that Truth may be rough, unshaven, and garbed in homespun. The book confirmed her analysis of the junior partner.
 
Pendent from a hook was a worn and blackened holster from which peeped the butt of a large Colt’s revolver, showing evidence of many years’ service. It spoke mutely of the white-haired Dextry, who, before her inspection was over, knocked at the door, and, when she admitted him, addressed her cautiously:
 
“The boy’s down forrad, teasin’ grub out of a flunky. He’ll be up in a minute. How’d ye sleep?”
 
“Very well, thank you,” she lied, “but I’ve been thinking that I ought to explain myself to you.”
 
“Now, see here,” the old man interjected, “there ain’t no explanations needed till you feel like givin’ them up. You was in trouble—that’s unfortunate; we help you—that’s natural; no questions asked—that’s Alaska.”
 
“Yes—but I know you must think—”
 
“What bothers me,” the other continued irrelevantly, “is how in blazes we’re goin’ to keep you hid. The steward’s got to make up this room, and somebody’s bound to see us packin’ grub in.”
 
“I don’t care who knows if they won’t send me back. They wouldn’t do that, would they?” She hung anxiously on his words.
 
“Send you back? Why, don’t you savvy that this boat is bound for Nome? There ain’t no turnin’ back on gold stampedes, and this is the wildest rush the world ever saw. The captain wouldn’t turn back—he couldn’t—his cargo’s too precious and the company pays five thousand a day for this ship. No, we ain’t puttin’ back to unload no stowaways at five thousand per. Besides, we passengers wouldn’t let him—time’s too precious.” They were interrupted by the rattle of dishes outside, and Dextry was about to open the door when his hand wavered uncertainly above the knob, for he heard the hearty greeting of the ship’s captain.
 
“Well, well, Glenister, where’s all the breakfast going?”
 
“Oo!” whispered the old man—“that’s Cap’ Stephens.”
 
“Dextry isn’t feeling quite up to form this morning,” replied Glenister easily.
 
“Don’t wonder! Why weren’t you aboard sooner last night? I saw you—‘most got left, eh? Served you right if you had.” Then his voice dropped to the confidential: “I’d advise you to cut out those women. Don’t misunderstand me, boy, but they’re a bad lot on this boat. I saw you come aboard. Take my word for it—they’re a bad lot. Cut ’em out. Guess I’ll step inside and see what’s up with Dextry.”
 
The girl shrank into her corner, gazing apprehensively at the other listener.
 
“Well—er—he isn’t up yet,” they heard Glenister stammer; “better come around later.”
 
“Nonsense; it’s time he was dressed.” The master’s voice was gruffly good-natured. “Hello, Dextry! Hey! Open up for inspection.” He rattled the door.
 
There was nothing to be done. The old miner darted an inquiring glance at his companion, then, at her nod, slipped the bolt, and the captain’s blue bulk filled the room.
 
His grizzled, close-bearded face was genially wrinkled till he spied the erect, gray figure in the corner, when his cap came off involuntarily. There his courtesy ended, however, and the smile died coldly from his face. His eyes narrowed, and the good-fellowship fell away, leaving him the stiff and formal officer.
 
“Ah,” he said, “not feeling well, eh? I thought I had met all of our lady passengers. Introduce me, Dextry.”
 
Dextry squirmed under his cynicism.
 
“Well—I—ah—didn’t catch the name myself.”
 
“What?”
 
“Oh, there ain’t much to say. This is the lady we brought aboard last night—that’s all.”
 
“Who gave you permission?”
 
“Nobody. There wasn’t time.”
 
“There wasn’t time, eh? Which one of you conceived the novel scheme of stowing away ladies in your cabin? Whose is she? Quick! Answer me.” Indignation was vibrant in his voice.
 
“Oh!” the girl cried—her eyes widening darkly. She stood slim and pale and slightly trembling.
 
His words had cut her bitterly, though through it all he had scrupulously avoided addressing her.
 
The captain turned to Glenister, who had entered and closed the door.
 
“Is this your work? Is she yours?”
 
“No,” he answered quietly, while Dextry chimed in:
 
“Better hear details, captain, before you make breaks like that. We helped the lady side-step some sailors last night and we most got left doing it. It was up to her to make a quick get-away, so we helped her aboard.”
 
“A poor story! What was she running away from?” He still addressed the men, ignoring her completely, till, with hoarse voice, she broke in:
 
“You mustn’t talk about me that way—I can answer your questions. It’s true—I ran away. I had to. The sailors came after me and fought with these men. I had to get away quickly, and your friends helped me on here from gentlemanly kindness, because they saw me unprotected. They are still protecting me. I can’t explain how important it is for me to reach Nome on the first boat, because it isn’t my secret. It was important enough to make me leave my uncle at Seattle at an hour’s notice when we found there was no one else who could go. That’s all I can say. I took my maid with me, but the sailors caught her just as she was following me down the ship’s ladder. She had my bag of clothes when they seized her. I cast off the rope and rowed ashore as fast as I could, but they lowered another boat and followed me.”
 
The captain eyed her sharply, and his grim lines softened a bit, for she was clean-cut and womanly, and utterly out of place. He took her in, shrewdly, detail by detail, then spoke directly to her:
 
“My dear young lady—the other ships will get there just as quickly as ours, maybe more quickly. To-morrow we strike the ice-pack and then it is all a matter of luck.”
 
“Yes, but the ship I left won’t get there.”
 
At this the commander started, and, darting a great, thick-fingered hand at her, spoke savagely:
 
“What’s that? What ship? Which one did you come from? Answer me.”
 
“The Ohio,” she replied, with the effect of a hand-grenade. The master glared at her.
 
“The Ohio! Good God! You dare to stand there and tell me that?” He turned and poured his rage upon the others.
 
“She says the Ohio, d’ye hear? You’ve ruined me! I’ll put you in irons—all of you. The Ohio!”
 
“What d’ye mean? What’s up?”
 
“What’s up? There’s small-pox aboard the Ohio! This girl has broken quarantine. The health inspectors bottled up the boat at six o’clock last night! That’s why I pulled out of Unalaska ahead of time, to avoid any possible delay. Now we’ll all be held up when we get to Nome. Great Heavens! do you realize what this means—bringing this hussy aboard?”
 
His eyes burned and his voice shook, while the two partners stared at each other in dismay. Too well they knew the result of a small-pox panic aboard this crowded troop-ship. Not only was every available cabin bulging with passengers, but the lower decks were jammed with both humanity and live stock all in the most unsanitary conditions. The craft, built for three hundred passengers, was carrying triple her capacity; men and women were stowed away like cattle. Order and a half-tolerable condition were maintained only by the efforts of the passengers themselves, who held to the thought that imprisonment and inconvenience would last but a few days longer. They had been aboard three weeks and every heart was aflame with the desire to reach Nome—to reach it ahead of the pressing horde behind.
 
What would be the temper of this gold-frenzied army if thrown into quarantine within sight of their goal? The impatient hundreds would have to lie packed in their floating prison, submitting to the foul disease. Long they must lie thus, till a month should have passed after the disappearance of the last symptom. If the disease recurred sporadically, that might mean endless weeks of maddening idleness. It might even be impossible to impose the necessary restraint; there would be violence, perhaps mutiny.
 
The fear of the sickness was nothing to Dextry and Glenister, but of their mine they thought with terror. What would happen in their absence, where conditions were as unsettled as in this new land; where titles were held only by physical possession of the premises? During the long winter of their absence, ice had held their treasure inviolate, but with the warming summer the jewel they had fought for so wearily would lie naked and exposed to the first comer. The Midas lay in the valley of the richest creek, where men had schemed and fought and slain for the right to inches. It was the fruit of cheerless, barren years of toil, and if they could not guard it—they knew the result.
 
The girl interrupted their distressing reflections.
 
“Don’t blame these men, sir,” she begged the captain. “I am the only one at fault. Oh! I had to get away. I have papers here that must be delivered quickly.” She laid a hand upon her bosom. “They couldn’t be trusted to the unsettled mail service. It’s almost life and death. And I assure you there is no need of putting me in quarantine. I haven’t the small-pox. I wasn’t even exposed to it.”
 
“There’s nothing else to do,” said Stephens. “I’ll isolate you in the deck smoking-cabin. God knows what these madmen on board will do when they hear about it, though. They’re apt to tear you to shreds. They’re crazy!”
 
Glenister had been thinking rapidly.
 
“If you do that, you’ll have mutiny in an hour. This isn’t the crowd to stand that sort of thing.”
 
“Bah! Let ’em try it. I’ll put ’em down.” The officer’s square jaws clicked.
 
“Maybe so; but what then? We reach Nome and the Health Inspector hears of small-pox suspects, then we’re all quarantined for thirty days; eight hundred of us. We’ll lie at Egg Island all summer while your company pays five thousand a day for this ship. That’s not all. The firm is liable in damages for your carelessness in letting disease aboard.”
 
“My carelessness!” The old man ground his teeth.
 
“Yes; that’s what it amounts to. You’ll ruin your owners, all right. You’ll tie up your ship and lose your job, that’s a cinch!”
 
Captain Stephens wiped the moisture from his brow angrily.
 
“My carelessness! Curse you—you say it well. Don’t you realize that I am criminally liable if I don’t take every precaution?” He paused for a moment, considering. “I’ll hand her over to the ship’s doctor.”
 
“See here, now,” Glenister urged. “We’ll be in Nome in a week—before the young lady would have time to show symptoms of the disease, even if she were going to have it—and a thousand to one she hasn’t been exposed, and will never show a trace of it. Nobody knows she’s aboard but we three. Nobody will see her get off. She’ll stay in this cabin, which will be just as effectual as though you isolated her in any other part of the boat. It will avoid a panic—you’ll save your ship and your company—no one will be the wiser—then if the girl comes down with small-pox after she gets ashore, she can go to the pest-house and not jeopardize the health of all the people aboard this ship. You go up forrad to your bridge, sir, and forget that you stepped in to see old Bill Dextry this morning. We’ll take care of this matter all right. It means as much to us as it does to you. We’ve got to be on Anvil Creek before the ground thaws or we’ll lose the Midas. If you make a fuss, you’ll ruin us all.”
 
For some moments they watched him breathlessly as he frowned in indecision, then—
 
“You’ll have to look out for the steward,” he said, and the girl sank to a stool while two great tears rolled down her cheeks. The captain’s eyes softened and his voice was gentle as he laid his hand on her head.
 
“Don’t feel hurt over what I said, miss. You see, appearances don’t tell much, hereabouts—most of the pretty ones are no good. They’ve fooled me many a time, and I made a mistake. These men will help you through; I can’t. Then when you get to Nome, make your sweetheart marry you the day you land. You are too far north to be alone.”
 
He stepped out into the passage and closed the door carefully.
CHAPTER III
“WELL, bein’ as me an’ Glenister is gougin’ into the bowels of Anvil Creek all last summer, we don’t really get the fresh-grub habit fastened on us none. You see, the gamblers down-town cop out the few aigs an’ green vegetables that stray off the ships, so they never get out as far as the Creek none; except, maybe, in the shape of anecdotes.
 
“We don’t get intimate with no nutriments except hog-boosum an’ brown beans, of which luxuries we have unstinted measure, an’ bein’ as this is our third year in the country we hanker for bony fido grub, somethin’ scan’lous. Yes, ma’am—three years without a taste of fresh fruit nor meat nor nuthin’—except pork an’ beans. Why, I’ve et bacon till my immortal soul has growed a rind.
 
“When it comes time to close down the claim, the boy is sick with the fever an’ the only ship in port is a Point Barrow whaler, bound for Seattle. After I book our passage, I find they have nothin’ aboard to eat except canned salmon, it bein’ the end of a two years’ cruise, so when I land in the States after seventeen days of a fish diet, I am what you might call sated with canned grub, and have added salmon to the list of things concernin’ which I am goin’ to economize.
 
“Soon’s ever I get the boy into a hospital, I gallop up to the best restarawnt in town an’ prepare for the huge pot-latch. This here, I determine, is to be a gormandizin’ jag which shall live in hist’ry, an’ wharof in later years the natives of Puget Sound shall speak with bated breath.
 
“First, I call for five dollars’ worth of pork an’ beans an’ then a full-grown platter of canned salmon. When the waiter lays ’em out in front of me, I look them vittles coldly in their disgustin’ visages, an’ say in sarcastic accents:
 
“ ‘Set there, damn you! an’ watch me eat real grub,’ which I proceed to do, cleanin’ the menu from soda to hock. When I have done my worst, I pile bones an’ olive seeds an’ peelin’s all over them articles of nourishment, stick toothpicks into ’em, an’ havin’ offered ’em what other indignities occur to me, I leave the place.”
 
Dextry and the girl were leaning over the stern-rail, chatting idly in the darkness. It was the second night out and the ship lay dead in the ice-pack. All about them was a flat, floe-clogged sea, leprous and mottled in the deep twilight that midnight brought in this latitude. They had threaded into the ice-field as long as the light lasted, following the lanes of blue water till they closed, then drifting idly till others appeared; worming out into leagues of open sea, again creeping into the shifting labyrinth till darkness rendered progress perilous.
 
Occasionally they had passed herds of walrus huddled sociably upon ice-pans, their wet hides glistening in the sunlight. The air had been clear and pleasant, while away on all quarters they had seen the smoke of other ships toiling through the barrier. The spring fleet was knocking at the door of the Golden North.
 
Chafing at her imprisonment, the girl had asked the old man to take her out on deck under the shelter of darkness; then she had led him to speak of his own past experiences, and of Glenister’s; which he had done freely. She was frankly curious about them, and she wondered at their apparent lack of interest in her own identity and her secret mission. She even construed their silence as indifference, not realizing that these Northmen were offering her the truest evidence of camaraderie.
 
The frontier is capable of no finer compliment than this utter disregard of one’s folded pages. It betokens that highest faith in one’s fellow-man, the belief that he should be measured by his present deeds, not by his past. It says, translated: “This is God’s free country where a man is a man, nothing more. Our land is new and pure, our faces are to the front. If you have been square, so much the better; if not, leave behind the taints of artificial things and start again on the level—that’s all.”
 
It had happened, therefore, that since the men had asked her no questions, she had allowed the hours to pass and still hesitated to explain further than she had explained to Captain Stephens. It was much easier to let things continue as they were; and there was, after all, so little that she was at liberty to tell them.
 
In the short time since meeting them, the girl had grown to like Dextry, with his blunt chivalry and boyish, whimsical philosophy, but she avoided Glenister, feeling a shrinking, hidden terror of him, ever since her eavesdropping of the previous night. At the memory of that scene she grew hot, then cold—hot with anger, icy at the sinister power and sureness which had vibrated in his voice. What kind of life was she entering where men spoke of strange women with this assurance and hinted thus of ownership? That he was handsome and unconscious of it, she acknowledged, and had she met him in her accustomed circle of friends, garbed in the conventionalities, she would perhaps have thought of him as a striking man, vigorous and intelligent; but here he seemed naturally to take on the attributes of his surroundings, acquiring a picturesque negligée of dress and morals, and suggesting rugged, elemental, chilling potentialities. While with him—and he had sought her repeatedly that day—she was uneasily aware of his strong personality tugging at her; aware of the unbridled passionate flood of a nature unbrooking of delay and heedless of denial. This it was that antagonized her and set her every mental sinew in rigid resistance.
 
During Dextry’s garrulous ramblings, Glenister emerged from the darkness and silently took his place beside her, against the rail.
 
“What portent do you see that makes you stare into the night so anxiously?” he inquired.
 
“I am wishing for a sight of the midnight sun or the aurora borealis,” she replied.
 
“Too late for one an’ too fur south for the other,” Dextry interposed. “We’ll see the sun further north, though.”
 
“Have you ever heard the real origin of the Northern Lights?” the young man inquired.
 
“Naturally, I never have,” she answered.
 
“Well, here it is. I have it from the lips of a great hunter of the Tananas. He told it to me when I was sick, once, in his cabin, and inasmuch as he is a wise Indian and has a reputation for truth, I have no doubt that it is scrupulously correct.
 
“In the very old days, before the white man or corned beef had invaded this land, the greatest tribe in all the North was the Tananas. The bravest hunter of these was Itika, the second chief. He could follow a moose till it fell exhausted in the snow and he had many belts made from the claws of the brown bear which is deadly wicked and, as every one knows, inhabited by the spirits of ‘Yabla-men,’ or devils.
 
“One winter a terrible famine settled over the Tanana Valley. The moose departed from the gulches and the caribou melted from the hills like mist. The dogs grew gaunt and howled all night, the babies cried, the women became hollow-eyed and peevish.
 
“Then it was that Itika decided to go hunting over the saw-tooth range which formed the edge of the world. They tried to dissuade him, saying it was certain death because a pack of monstrous white wolves, taller than the moose and swifter than the eagle, was known to range these mountains, running madly in chase. Always, on clear, cold nights, could be seen the flashing of the moonbeams from their gleaming hungry sides, and although many hunters had crossed the passes in other years, they never returned, for the pack slew them.
 
“Nothing could deter Itika, however, so he threaded his way up through the range and, night coming, burrowed into a drift to sleep in his caribou-skin. Peering out into the darkness, he saw the flashing lights a thousand times brighter than ever before. The whole heavens were ablaze with shifting streamers that raced and writhed back and forth in wild revel. Listening, he heard the hiss and whine of dry snow under the feet of the pack, and a distant noise as of rushing winds, although the air was deathly still.
 
“With daylight, he proceeded through the range, till he came out above a magnificent valley. Descending the slope, he entered a forest of towering spruce, while on all sides the snow was trampled with tracks as wide as a snow-shoe. There came to him a noise which, as he proceeded, increased till it filled the woods. It was a frightful din, as though a thousand wolves were howling with the madness of the kill. Cautiously creeping nearer, he found a monstrous white animal struggling beneath a spruce which had fallen upon it in such fashion as to pinion it securely.
 
“All brave men are tender-hearted, so Itika set to work with his axe and cleared away the burden, regardless of the peril to himself. When he had released it, the beast arose and instead of running away addressed him in the most polite and polished Indian, without a trace of accent.
 
“ ‘You have saved my life. Now, what can I do for you?’
 
“ ‘I want to hunt in this valley. My people are starving,’ said Itika, at which the wolf was greatly pleased and rounded up the rest of the pack to help in the kill.
 
“Always thereafter when Itika came to the valley of the Yukon the giant drove hunted with him. To this day they run through the mountains on cold, clear nights, in a multitude, while the light of the moon flickers from their white sides, flashing up into the sky in weird, fantastic figures. Some people call it Northern Lights, but old Isaac assured me earnestly, toothlessly, and with the light of ancient truth, as I lay snow-blind in his lodge, that it is nothing more remarkable than the spirit of Itika and the great white wolves.”
 
“What a queer legend!” she said. “There must be many of them in this country. I feel that I am going to like the North.”
 
“Perhaps you will,” Glenister replied, “although it is not a woman’s land.”
 
“Tell me what led you out here in the first place. You are an Eastern man. You have had advantages, education—and yet you choose this. You must love the North.”
 
“Indeed I do! It calls to a fellow in some strange way that a gentler country never could. When once you’ve lived the long, lazy June days that never end, and heard geese honking under a warm, sunlit midnight; or when once you’ve hit the trail on a winter morning so sharp and clear that the air stings your lungs, and the whole white, silent world glistens like a jewel; yes—and when you’ve seen the dogs romping in harness till the sled runners ring; and the distant mountain-ranges come out like beautiful carvings, so close you can reach them—well, there’s something in it that brings you back—that’s all, no matter where you’ve lost yourself. It means health and equality and unrestraint. That’s what I like best, I dare say—the utter unrestraint.
 
“When I was a school-boy, I used to gaze at the map of Alaska for hours. I’d lose myself in it. It wasn’t anything but a big, blank corner in the North then, with a name, and mountains, and mystery. The word ‘Yukon’ suggested to me everything unknown and weird—hairy mastodons, golden river bars, savage Indians with bone arrow-heads and seal-skin trousers. When I left college I came as fast as ever I could—the adventure, I suppose....
 
“The law was considered my destiny. How the shades of old Choate and Webster and Patrick Henry must have wailed when I forswore it. I’ll bet Blackstone tore his whiskers.”
 
“I think you would have made a success,” said the girl, but he laughed.
 
“Well, anyhow, I stepped out, leaving the way to the United States Supreme bench unobstructed, and came North. I found it was where I belonged. I fitted in. I’m not contented—don’t think that. I’m ambitious, but I prefer these surroundings to the others—that’s all. I’m realizing my desires. I’ve made a fortune—now I’ll see what else the world has.”
 
He suddenly turned to her. “See here,” he abruptly questioned, “what’s your name?”
 
She started, and glanced towards where Dextry had stood, only to find that the old frontiersman had slipped away during the tale.
 
“Helen Chester,” she replied.
 
“Helen Chester,” he repeated, musingly. “What a pretty name! It seems almost a pity to change it—to marry, as you will.”
 
“I am not going to Nome to get married.”
 
He glanced at her quickly.
 
“Then you won’t like this country. You are two years too early; you ought to wait till there are railroads and telephones, and tables d’hôte, and chaperons. It’s a man’s country yet.”
 
“I don’t see why it isn’t a woman’s country, too. Surely we can take a part in taming it. Yonder on the Oregon is a complete railroad, which will be running from the coast to the mines in a few weeks. Another ship back there has the wire and poles and fixings for a telephone system, which will go up in a night. As to tables d’hôte, I saw a real French count in Seattle with a monocle. He’s bringing in a restaurant outfit, imported snails, and pâté de foies gras. All that’s wanting is the chaperon. In my flight from the Ohio I left mine. The sailors caught her. You see I am not far ahead of schedule.”
 
“What part are you going to take in this taming process?” he asked.
 
She paused long before replying, and when she did her answer sounded like a jest.
 
“I herald the coming of the law,” she said.
 
“The law! Bah! Red tape, a dead language, and a horde of shysters! I’m afraid of law in this land; we’re too new and too far away from things. It puts too much power in too few hands. Heretofore we men up here have had recourse to our courage and our Colt’s, but we’ll have to unbuckle them both when the law comes. I like the court that hasn’t any appeal.” He laid hand upon his hip.
 
“The Colt’s may go, but the courage never will,” she broke in.
 
“Perhaps. But I’ve heard rumors already of a plot to prostitute the law. In Unalaska a man warned Dextry, with terror in his eye, to beware of it; that beneath the cloak of Justice was a drawn dagger whetted for us fellows who own the rich diggings. I don’t think there’s any truth in it, but you can’t tell.”
 
“The law is the foundation—there can’t be any progress without it. There is nothing here now but disorder.”
 
“There isn’t half the disorder you think there is. There weren’t any crimes in this country till the tender-feet arrived. We didn’t know what a thief was. If you came to a cabin you walked in without knocking. The owner filled up the coffee-pot and sliced into the bacon; then when he’d started your meal, he shook hands and asked your name. It was just the same whether his cache was full or whether he’d packed his few pounds of food two hundred miles on his back. That was hospitality to make your Southern article look pretty small. If there was no one at home, you ate what you needed. There was but one unpardonable breach of etiquette—to fail to leave dry kindlings. I’m afraid of the transitory stage we’re coming to—that epoch of chaos between the death of the old and the birth of the new. Frankly, I like the old way best. I love the license of it. I love to wrestle with nature; to snatch, and guard, and fight for what I have. I’ve been beyond the law for years and I want to stay there, where life is just what it was intended to be—a survival of the fittest.”
 
His large hands, as he gripped the bulwark, were tense and corded, while his rich voice issued softly from his chest with the hint of power unlimited behind it. He stood over her, tall, virile, and magnetic. She saw now why he had so joyously hailed the fight of the previous night; to one of his kind it was as salt air to the nostrils. Unconsciously she approached him, drawn by the spell of his strength.
 
“My pleasures are violent and my hate is mighty bitter in my mouth. What I want, I take. That’s been my way in the old life, and I’m too selfish to give it up.”
 
He was gazing out upon the dimly lucent miles of ice; but now he turned towards her, and, doing so, touched her warm hand next his on the rail.
 
She was staring up at him unaffectedly, so close that the faint odor from her hair reached him. Her expression was simply one of wonder and curiosity at this type, so different from any she had known. But the man’s eyes were hot and blinded with the sight of her, and he felt only her beauty heightened in the dim light, the brush of her garments, and the small, soft hand beneath his. The thrill from the touch of it surged over him—mastered him.
 
“What I want—I take,” he repeated, and then suddenly he reached forth and, taking her in his arms, crushed her to him, kissing her softly, fiercely, full upon the lips. For an instant she lay gasping and stunned against his breast, then she tore her fist free and, with all her force, struck him full in the face.
 
It was as though she beat upon a stone. With one movement he forced her arm to her side, smiling into her terrified eyes; then, holding her like iron, he kissed her again and again upon the mouth, the eyes, the hair—and released her.
 
“I am going to love you—Helen,” said he.
 
“And may God strike me dead if I ever stop hating you!” she cried, her voice coming thick and hoarse with passion.
 
Turning, she walked proudly forward towards her cabin, a trim, straight, haughty figure; and he did not know that her knees were shaking and weak.
CHAPTER IV  THE KILLING

FOR four days the Santa Maria felt blindly through the white fields, drifting north with the spring tide that sets through Behring Strait, till, on the morning of the fifth, open water showed to the east. Creeping through, she broke out into the last stage of the long race, amid the cheers of her weary passengers; and the dull jar of her engines made welcome music to the girl in the deck state-room.
 
Soon they picked up a mountainous coast which rose steadily into majestic, barren ranges, still white with the melting snows; and at ten in the evening under a golden sunset, amid screaming whistles, they anchored in the roadstead of Nome. Before the rumble of her chains had ceased or the echo from the fleet’s salute had died from the shoreward hills, the ship was surrounded by a swarm of tiny craft clamoring about her iron sides, while an officer in cap and gilt climbed the bridge and greeted Captain Stephens. Tugs with trailing lighters circled discreetly about, awaiting the completion of certain formalities. These over, the uniformed gentleman dropped back into his skiff and rowed away.
 
“A clean bill of health, captain,” he shouted, saluting the commander.
 
“Thank ye, sir,” roared the sailor, and with that the row-boats swarmed inward pirate-like, boarding the steamer from all quarters.
 
As the master turned, he looked down from his bridge to the deck below, full into the face of Dextry, who had been an intent witness of the meeting. With unbending dignity, Captain Stephens let his left eyelid droop slowly, while a boyish grin spread widely over his face. Simultaneously, orders rang sharp and fast from the bridge, the crew broke into feverish life, the creak of booms and the clank of donkey-hoists arose.
 
“We’re here, Miss Stowaway,” said Glenister, entering the girl’s cabin. “The inspector passed us and it’s time for you to see the magic city. Come, it’s a wonderful sight.”
 
This was the first time they had been alone since the scene on the after-deck, for, besides ignoring Glenister, she had managed that he should not even see her except in Dextry’s presence. Although he had ever since been courteous and considerate, she felt the leaping emotions that were hidden within him and longed to leave the ship, to fly from the spell of his personality. Thoughts of him made her writhe, and yet when he was near she could not hate him as she willed—he overpowered her, he would not be hated, he paid no heed to her slights. This very quality reminded her how willingly and unquestioningly he had fought off the sailors from the Ohio at a word from her. She knew he would do so again, and more, and it is hard to be bitter to one who would lay down his life for you, even though he has offended—particularly when he has the magnetism that sweeps you away from your moorings.
 
“There’s no danger of being seen,” he continued. “The crowd’s crazy, and, besides, we’ll go ashore right away. You must be mad with the confinement—it’s on my nerves, too.”
 
As they stepped outside, the door of an adjacent cabin opened, framing an angular, sharp-featured woman, who, catching sight of the girl emerging from Glenister’s state-room, paused with shrewdly narrowed eyes, flashing quick, malicious glances from one to the other. They came later to remember with regret this chance encounter, for it was fraught with grave results for them both.
 
“Good-evening, Mr. Glenister,” the lady said with acid cordiality.
 
“Howdy, Mrs. Champian?” He moved away.
 
She followed a step, staring at Helen.
 
“Are you going ashore to-night or wait for morning?”
 
“Don’t know yet, I’m sure.” Then aside to the girl he muttered, “Shake her, she’s spying on us.”
 
“Who is she?” asked Miss Chester, a moment later.
 
“Her husband manages one of the big companies. She’s an old cat.”
 
Gaining her first view of the land, the girl cried out, sharply. They rode on an oily sea, tinted like burnished copper, while on all sides, amid the faint rattle and rumble of machinery, scores of ships were belching cargoes out upon living swarms of scows, tugs, stern-wheelers, and dories. Here and there Eskimo oomiaks, fat, walrus-hide boats, slid about like huge, many-legged water-bugs. An endless, ant-like stream of tenders, piled high with freight, plied to and from the shore. A mile distant lay the city, stretched like a white ribbon between the gold of the ocean sand and the dun of the moss-covered tundra. It was like no other in the world. At first glance it seemed all made of new white canvas. In a week its population had swelled from three to thirty thousand. It now wandered in a slender, sinuous line along the coast for miles, because only the beach afforded dry camping ground. Mounting to the bank behind, one sank knee-deep in moss and water, and, treading twice in the same tracks, found a bog of oozing, icy mud. Therefore, as the town doubled daily in size, it grew endwise like a string of dominoes, till the shore from Cape Nome to Penny River was a long reach of white, glinting in the low rays of the arctic sunset like foamy breakers on a tropic island.
 
“That’s Anvil Creek up yonder,” said Glenister. “There’s where the Midas lies. See!” He indicated a gap in the buttress of mountains rolling back from the coast. “It’s the greatest creek in the world. You’ll see gold by the mule-load, and hillocks of nuggets. Oh, I’m glad to get back. This is life. That stretch of beach is full of gold. These hills are seamed with quartz. The bed-rock of that creek is yellow. There’s gold, gold, gold, everywhere—more than ever was in old Solomon’s mines—and there’s mystery and peril and things unknown.”
 
“Let us make haste,” said the girl. “I have something I must do to-night. After that, I can learn to know these things.”
 
Securing a small boat, they were rowed ashore, the partners plying their ferryman with eager questions. Having arrived five days before, he was exploding with information and volunteered the fruits of his ripe experience till Dextry stated that they were “sourdoughs” themselves, and owned the Midas, whereupon Miss Chester marvelled at the awe which sat upon the man and the wondering stare with which he devoured the partners, to her own utter exclusion.
 
“Sufferin’ cats! Look at the freight!” ejaculated Dextry. “If a storm come up it would bust the community!”
 
The beach they neared was walled and crowded to the high-tide mark with ramparts of merchandise, while every incoming craft deposited its quota upon whatever vacant foot was close at hand, till bales, boxes, boilers, and baggage of all kinds were confusedly intermixed in the narrow space. Singing longshoremen trundled burdens from the lighters and piled them on the heap, while yelling, cursing crowds fought over it all, selecting, sorting, loading.
 
There was no room for more, yet hourly they added to the mass. Teams splashed through the lapping surf or stuck in the deep sand between hillocks of goods. All was noise, profanity, congestion, and feverish hurry. This burning haste rang in the voice of the multitude, showed in its violence of gesture and redness of face, permeated the atmosphere with a magnetic, electrifying energy.
 
“It’s somethin’ fierce ashore,” said the oarsman. “I been up fer three days an’ nights steady—there ain’t no room, nor time, nor darkness to sleep in. Ham an’ eggs is a dollar an’ a half, an’ whiskey’s four bits a throw.” He wailed the last, sadly, as a complaint unspeakable.
 
“Any trouble doin’?” inquired the old man.
 
“You know it!” the other cried, colloquially. “There was a massacree in the Northern last night.”
 
“Gamblin’ row?”
 
“Yep. Tin-horn called ‘Missou’ done it.”
 
“Sho!” said Dextry. “I know him. He’s a bad actor.” All three men nodded sagely, and the girl wished for further light, but they volunteered no explanation.
 
Leaving the skiff, they plunged into turmoil. Dodging through the tangle, they came out into fenced lots where tents stood wall to wall and every inch was occupied. Here and there was a vacant spot guarded jealously by its owner, who gazed sourly upon all men with the forbidding eye of suspicion. Finding an eddy in the confusion, the men stopped.
 
“Where do you want to go?” they asked Miss Chester.
 
There was no longer in Glenister’s glance that freedom with which he had come to regard the women of the North. He had come to realize dully that here was a girl driven by some strong purpose into a position repellent to her. In a man of his type, her independence awoke only admiration and her coldness served but to inflame him the more. Delicacy, in Glenister, was lost in a remarkable singleness of purpose. He could laugh at her loathing, smile under her abuse, and remain utterly ignorant that anything more than his action in seizing her that night lay at the bottom of her dislike. He did not dream that he possessed characteristics abhorrent to her; and he felt a keen reluctance at parting.
 
She extended both hands.
 
“I can never thank you enough for what you have done—you two; but I shall try. Good-bye!”
 
Dextry gazed doubtfully at his own hand, rough and gnarly, then taking hers as he would have handled a robin’s egg, waggled it limply.
 
“We ain’t goin’ to turn you adrift this-a-way. Whatever your destination is, we’ll see you to it.”
 
“I can find my friends,” she assured him.
 
“This is the wrong latitude in which to dispute a lady, but knowin’ this camp from soup to nuts, as I do, I su’gests a male escort.”
 
“Very well! I wish to find Mr. Struve, of Dunham & Struve, lawyers.”
 
“I’ll take you to their offices,” said Glenister. “You see to the baggage, Dex. Meet me at the Second Class in half an hour and we’ll run out to the Midas.” They pushed through the tangle of tents, past piles of lumber, and emerged upon the main thoroughfare, which ran parallel to the shore.
 
Nome consisted of one narrow street, twisted between solid rows of canvas and half-erected frame buildings, its every other door that of a saloon. There were fair-looking blocks which aspired to the dizzy height of three stories, some sheathed in corrugated iron, others gleaming and galvanized. Lawyers’ signs, doctors’, surveyors’, were in the upper windows. The street was thronged with men from every land—Helen Chester heard more dialects than she could count. Laplanders in quaint, three-cornered, padded caps idled past. Men with the tan of the tropics rubbed elbows with yellow-haired Norsemen, and near her a carefully groomed Frenchman with riding-breeches and monocle was in pantomime with a skin-clad Eskimo. To her left was the sparkling sea, alive with ships of every class. To her right towered timberless mountains, unpeopled, unexplored, forbidding, and desolate—their hollows inlaid with snow. On one hand were the life and the world she knew; on the other, silence, mystery, possible adventure.
 
The roadway where she stood was a crush of sundry vehicles from bicycles to dog-hauled water-carts, and on all sides men were laboring busily, the echo of hammers mingling with the cries of teamsters and the tinkle of music within the saloons.
 
“And this is midnight!” exclaimed Helen, breathlessly. “Do they ever rest?”
 
“There isn’t time—this is a gold stampede. You haven’t caught the spirit of it yet.”
 
They climbed the stairs in a huge, iron-sheeted building to the office of Dunham & Struve, and in answer to their knock, a red-faced, white-haired, tousled man, in shirt-sleeves and stocking-feet, opened the door.
 
“What d’ye wan’?” he bawled, his legs wavering uncertainly. His eyes were heavy and bloodshot, his lips loose, and his whole person exhaled alcoholic fumes like a gust from a still-house. Hanging to the knob, he strove vainly to solve the mystery of his suspenders—hiccoughing intermittently.
 
“Humph! Been drunk ever since I left?” questioned Glenister.
 
“Somebody mus’ have tol’ you,” the lawyer replied. There was neither curiosity, recognition, nor resentment in his voice. In fact, his head drooped so that he paid no attention to the girl, who had shrunk back at sight of him. He was a young man, with marks of brilliancy showing through the dissipation betrayed by his silvery hair and coarsened features.
 
“Oh, I don’t know what to do,” lamented the girl.
 
“Anybody else here besides you?” asked her escort of the lawyer.
 
“No. I’m runnin’ the law business unassisted. Don’t need any help. Dunham’s in Wash’n’ton, D. C, the lan’ of the home, the free of the brave. What can I do for you?”
 
He made to cross the threshold hospitably, but tripped, plunged forward, and would have rolled down the stairs had not Glenister gathered him up and borne him back into the office, where he tossed him upon a bed in a rear room.
 
“Now what, Miss Chester?” asked the young man, returning.
 
“Isn’t that dreadful?” she shuddered. “Oh, and I must see him to-night!” She stamped impatiently. “I must see him alone.”
 
“No, you mustn’t,” said Glenister, with equal decision. “In the first place, he wouldn’t know what you were talking about, and in the second place—I know Struve. He’s too drunk to talk business and too sober to—well, to see you alone.”
 
“But I must see him,” she insisted. “It’s what brought me here. You don’t understand.”
 
“I understand more than he could. He’s in no condition to act on any important matter. You come around to-morrow when he’s sober.”
 
“It means so much,” breathed the girl. “The beast!”
 
Glenister noted that she had not wrung her hands nor even hinted at tears, though plainly her disappointment and anxiety were consuming her.
 
“Well, I suppose I’ll have to wait, but I don’t know where to go—some hotel, I suppose.”
 
“There aren’t any. They’re building two, but to-night you couldn’t hire a room in Nome for money. I was about to say ‘love or money.’ Have you no other friends here—no women? Then you must let me find a place for you. I have a friend whose wife will take you in.”
 
She rebelled at this. Was she never to have done with this man’s favors? She thought of returning to the ship, but dismissed that. She undertook to decline his aid, but he was half-way down the stairs and paid no attention to her beginning—so she followed him.
 
It was then that Helen Chester witnessed her first tragedy of the frontier, and through it came to know better the man whom she disliked and with whom she had been thrown so fatefully. Already she had thrilled at the spell of this country, but she had not learned that strength and license carry blood and violence as corollaries.
 
Emerging from the doorway at the foot of the stairs, they drifted slowly along the walk, watching the crowd. Besides the universal tension, there were laughter and hope and exhilaration in the faces. The enthusiasm of this boyish multitude warmed one. The girl wished to get into this spirit—to be one of them. Then suddenly from the babble at their elbows came a discordant note, not long nor loud, only a few words, penetrating and harsh with the metallic quality lent by passion.
 
Helen glanced over her shoulder to find that the smiles of the throng were gone and that its eyes were bent on some scene in the street, with an eager interest she had never seen mirrored before. Simultaneously Glenister spoke:
 
“Come away from here.”
 
With the quickened eye of experience he foresaw trouble and tried to drag her on, but she shook off his grasp impatiently, and, turning, gazed absorbed at the spectacle which unfolded itself before her. Although not comprehending the play of events, she felt vaguely the quick approach of some crisis, yet was unprepared for the swiftness with which it came.
 
Her eyes had leaped to the figures of two men in the street from whom the rest had separated like oil from water. One was slim and well dressed; the other bulky, mackinawed, and lowering of feature. It was the smaller who spoke, and for a moment she misjudged his bloodshot eyes and swaying carriage to be the result of alcohol, until she saw that he was racked with fury.
 
“Make good, I tell you, quick! Give me that bill of sale, you ——.”
 
The unkempt man swung on his heel with a growl and walked away, his course leading him towards Glenister and the girl. With two strides he was abreast of them; then, detecting the flashing movement of the other, he whirled like a wild animal. His voice had the snarl of a beast in it.
 
“Ye had to have it, didn’t ye? Well, there!”
 
The actions of both men were quick as light, yet to the girl’s taut senses they seemed theatrical and deliberate. Into her mind was seared forever the memory of that second, as though the shutter of a camera had snapped, impressing upon her brain the scene, sharp, clear-cut, and vivid. The shaggy back of the large man almost brushing her, the rage-drunken, white-shirted man in the derby hat, the crowd sweeping backward like rushes before a blast, men with arms flexed and feet raised in flight, the glaring yellow sign of the “Gold Belt Dance Hall” across the way—these were stamped upon her retina, and then she was jerked violently backward, two strong arms crushed her down upon her knees against the wall, and she was smothered in the arms of Roy Glenister.
 
“My God! Don’t move! We’re in line!”
 
He crouched over her, his cheek against her hair, his weight forcing her down into the smallest compass, his arms about her, his body forming a living shield against the flying bullets. Over them the big man stood, and the sustained roar of his gun was deafening. In an instant they heard the thud and felt the jar of lead in the thin boards against which they huddled. Again the report echoed above their heads, and they saw the slender man in the street drop his weapon and spin half round as though hit with some heavy hand. He uttered a cry and, stooping for his gun, plunged forward, burying his face in the sand.
 
The man by Glenister’s side shouted curses thickly, and walked towards his prostrate enemy, firing at every step. The wounded man rolled to his side, and, raising himself on his elbow, shot twice, so rapidly that the reports blended—but without checking his antagonist’s approach. Four more times the relentless assailant fired deliberately, his last missile sent as he stood over the body which twitched and shuddered at his feet, its garments muddy and smeared. Then he turned and retraced his steps. Back within arm’s-length of the two who pressed against the building he came, and as he went by they saw his coarse and sullen features drawn and working pallidly, while the breath whistled through his teeth. He held his course to the door they had just quitted, then as he turned he coughed bestially, spitting out a mouthful of blood. His knees wavered. He vanished within the portals and, in the sickly silence that fell, they heard his hob-nailed boots clumping slowly up the stairs.
 
Noise awoke and rioted down the thoroughfare. Men rushed forth from every quarter, and the ghastly object in the dirt was hidden by a seething mass of miners.
 
Glenister raised the girl, but her head rolled limply, and she would have slipped to her knees again had he not placed his arm about her waist. Her eyes were staring and horror-filled.
 
“Don’t be frightened,” said he, smiling at her reassuringly; but his own lips shook and the sweat stood out like dew on him; for they had both been close to death. There came a surge and swirl through the crowd, and Dextry swooped upon them like a hawk.
 
“Be ye hurt? Holy Mackinaw! When I see ’em blaze away I yells at ye fit to bust my throat. I shore thought you was gone. Although I can’t say but this killin’ was a sight for sore eyes—so neat an’ genteel—still, as a rule, in these street brawls it’s the innocuous bystander that has flowers sent around to his house afterwards.”
 
“Look at this,” said Glenister. Breast-high in the wall against which they had crouched, not three feet apart, were bullet holes.
 
“Them’s the first two he unhitched,” Dextry remarked, jerking his head towards the object in the street. “Must have been a new gun an’ pulled hard—throwed him to the right. See!”
 
Even to the girl it was patent that, had she not been snatched as she was, the bullet would have found her.
 
“Come away quick,” she panted, and they led her into a near-by store, where she sank upon a seat and trembled until Dextry brought her a glass of whiskey.
 
“Here, Miss,” he said. “Pretty tough go for a ‘cheechako.’ I’m afraid you ain’t gettin’ enamoured of this here country a whole lot.”
 
For half an hour he talked to her, in his whimsical way, of foreign things, till she was quieted. Then the partners arose to go. Although Glenister had arranged for her to stop with the wife of the merchant for the rest of the night, she would not.
 
“I can’t go to bed. Please don’t leave me! I’m too nervous. I’ll go mad if you do. The strain of the last week has been too much for me. If I sleep I’ll see the faces of those men again.”
 
Dextry talked with his companion, then made a purchase which he laid at the lady’s feet.
 
“Here’s a pair of half-grown gum boots. You put ’em on an’ come with us. We’ll take your mind off of things complete. An’ as fer sweet dreams, when you get back you’ll make the slumbers of the just seem as restless as a riot, or the antics of a mountain-goat which nimbly leaps from crag to crag, and—well, that’s restless enough. Come on!”
 
As the sun slanted up out of Behring Sea, they marched back towards the hills, their feet ankle-deep in the soft fresh moss, while the air tasted like a cool draught and a myriad of earthy odors rose up and encircled them. Snipe and reed birds were noisy in the hollows and from the misty tundra lakes came the honking of brant. After their weary weeks on shipboard, the dewy freshness livened them magically, cleansing from their memories the recent tragedy, so that the girl became herself again.
 
“Where are we going?” she asked, at the end of an hour, pausing for breath.
 
“Why, to the Midas, of course,” they said; and one of them vowed recklessly, as he drank in the beauty of her clear eyes and the grace of her slender, panting form, that he would gladly give his share of all its riches to undo what he had done one night on the Santa Maria.
CHAPTER V  WHEREIN A MAN APPEARS
IN the lives of countries there are crises where, for a breath, destinies lie in the laps of the gods and are jumbled, heads or tails. Thus are marked distinctive cycles like the seven ages of a man, and though, perhaps, they are too subtle to be perceived at the time, yet, having swung past the shadowy milestones, the epochs disclose themselves.
 
Such a period in the progress of the Far Northwest was the nineteenth day of July, although to those concerned in the building of this new empire the day appealed only as the date of the coming of the law. All Nome gathered on the sands as lighters brought ashore Judge Stillman and his following. It was held fitting that the Senator should be the ship to safeguard the dignity of the first court and to introduce Justice into this land of the wild.
 
The interest awakened by His Honor was augmented by the fact that he was met on the beach by a charming girl, who flung herself upon him with evident delight.
 
“That’s his niece,” said some one. “She came up on the first boat—name’s Chester—swell looker, eh?”
 
Another new-comer attracted even more notice than the limb of the law; a gigantic, well-groomed man, with keen, close-set eyes, and that indefinable easy movement and polished bearing that come from confidence, health, and travel. Unlike the others, he did not dally on the beach nor display much interest in his surroundings; but, with purposeful frown strode through the press, up into the heart of the city. His companion was Struve’s partner, Dunham, a middle-aged, pompous man. They went directly to the offices of Dunham & Struve, where they found the white-haired junior partner.
 
“Mighty glad to meet you, Mr. McNamara,” said Struve. “Your name is a household word in my part of the country. My people were mixed up in Dakota politics somewhat, so I’ve always had a great admiration for you and I’m glad you’ve come to Alaska. This is a big country and we need big men.”
 
“Did you have any trouble?” Dunham inquired when the three had adjourned to a private room.
 
“Trouble,” said Struve, ruefully; “well, I wonder if I did. Miss Chester brought me your instructions O. K. and I got busy right off. But, tell me this—how did you get the girl to act as messenger?”
 
“There was no one else to send,” answered McNamara. “Dunham intended sailing on the first boat, but he was detained in Washington with me, and the Judge had to wait for us at Seattle. We were afraid to trust a stranger for fear he might get curious and examine the papers. That would have meant—” He moved his hand eloquently.
 
Struve nodded. “I see. Does she know what was in the documents?”
 
“Decidedly not. Women and business don’t mix. I hope you didn’t tell her anything.”
 
“No; I haven’t had a chance. She seemed to take a dislike to me for some reason. I haven’t seen her since the day after she got here.”
 
“The Judge told her it had something to do with preparing the way for his court,” said Dunham, “and that if the papers were not delivered before he arrived it might cause a lot of trouble—litigation, riots, bloodshed, and all that. He filled her up on generalities till the girl was frightened to death and thought the safety of her uncle and the whole country depended on her.”
 
“Well,” continued Struve, “it’s dead easy to hire men to jump claims and it’s dead easy to buy their rights afterwards, particularly when they know they haven’t got any—but what course do you follow when owners go gunning for you?”
 
McNamara laughed.
 
“Who did that?”
 
“A benevolent, silver-haired old Texan pirate by the name of Dextry. He’s one half owner in the Midas and the other half mountain-lion; as peaceable, you’d imagine, as a benediction, but with the temperament of a Geronimo. I sent Galloway out to relocate the claim, and he got his notices up in the night when they were asleep, but at 6 A.M. he came flying back to my room and nearly hammered the door down. I’ve seen fright in varied forms and phases, but he had them all, with some added starters.
 
“ ‘Hide me out, quick!’ he panted.
 
“ ‘What’s up?’ I asked.
 
“ ‘I’ve stirred up a breakfast of grizzly bear, small-pox, and sudden death and it don’t set well on my stummick. Let me in.’
 
“I had to keep him hidden three days, for this gentle-mannered old cannibal roamed the streets with a cannon in his hand, breathing fire and pestilence.”
 
“Anybody else act up?” queried Dunham.
 
“No; all the rest are Swedes and they haven’t got the nerve to fight. They couldn’t lick a spoon if they tried. These other men are different, though. There are two of them, the old one and a young fellow. I’m a little afraid to mix it up with them, and if their claim wasn’t the best in the district, I’d say let it alone.”
 
“I’ll attend to that,” said McNamara.
 
Struve resumed:
 
“Yes, gentlemen, I’ve been working pretty hard and also pretty much in the dark so far. I’m groping for light. When Miss Chester brought in the papers I got busy instanter. I clouded the title to the richest placers in the region, but I’m blamed if I quite see the use of it. We’d be thrown out of any court in the land if we took them to law. What’s the game—blackmail?”
 
“Humph!” ejaculated McNamara. “What do you take me for?”
 
“Well, it does seem small for Alec McNamara, but I can’t see what else you’re up to.”
 
“Within a week I’ll be running every good mine in the Nome district.”
 
McNamara’s voice was calm but decisive, his glance keen and alert, while about him clung such a breath of power and confidence that it compelled belief even in the face of this astounding speech.
 
In spite of himself, Wilton Struve, lawyer, rake, and gentlemanly adventurer, felt his heart leap at what the other’s daring implied. The proposition was utterly past belief, and yet, looking into the man’s purposeful eyes, he believed.
 
“That’s big—awful big—too big,” the younger man murmured. “Why, man, it means you’ll handle fifty thousand dollars a day!”
 
Dunham shifted his feet in the silence and licked his dry lips.
 
“Of course it’s big, but Mr. McNamara’s the biggest man that ever came to Alaska,” he said.
 
“And I’ve got the biggest scheme that ever came north, backed by the biggest men in Washington,” continued the politician. “Look here!” He displayed a type-written sheet bearing parallel lists of names and figures. Struve gasped incredulously.
 
“Those are my stockholders and that is their share in the venture. Oh, yes; we’re incorporated—under the laws of Arizona—secret, of course; it would never do for the names to get out. I’m showing you this only because I want you to be satisfied who’s behind me.”
 
“Lord! I’m satisfied,” said Struve, laughing nervously. “Dunham was with you when you figured the scheme out and he met some of your friends in Washington and New York. If he says it’s all right, that settles it. But say, suppose anything went wrong with the company and it leaked out who those stockholders are?”
 
“There’s no danger. I have the books where they will be burned at the first sign. We’d have had our own land laws passed but for Sturtevant of Nevada, damn him. He blocked us in the Senate. However, my plan is this.” He rapidly outlined his proposition to the listeners, while a light of admiration grew and shone in the reckless face of Struve.
 
“By heavens! you’re a wonder!” he cried, at the close, “and I’m with you body and soul. It’s dangerous—that’s why I like it.”
 
“Dangerous?” McNamara shrugged his shoulders. “Bah! Where is the danger? We’ve got the law—or rather, we are the law. Now, let’s get to work.”
 
It seemed that the Boss of North Dakota was no sluggard. He discarded coat and waistcoat and tackled the documents which Struve laid before him, going through them like a whirlwind. Gradually he infected the others with his energy, and soon behind the locked doors of Dunham & Struve there were only haste and fever and plot and intrigue.
 
 
 
As Helen Chester led the Judge towards the flamboyant, three-storied hotel she prattled to him light-heartedly. The fascination of a new land already held her fast, and now she felt, in addition, security and relief. Glenister saw them from a distance and strode forward to greet them.
 
He beheld a man of perhaps threescore years, benign of aspect save for the eyes, which were neither clear nor steady, but had the trick of looking past one. Glenister thought the mouth, too, rather weak and vacillating; but the clean-shaven face was dignified by learning and acumen and was wrinkled in pleasant fashion.
 
“My niece has just told me of your service to her,” the old gentleman began. “I am happy to know you, sir.”
 
“Besides being a brave knight and assisting ladies in distress, Mr. Glenister is a very great and wonderful man,” Helen explained, lightly. “He owns the Midas.”
 
“Indeed!” said the old man, his shifting eyes now resting full on the other with a flash of unmistakable interest. “I hear that is a wonderful mine. Have you begun work yet?”
 
“No. We’ll commence sluicing day after to-morrow. It has been a late spring. The snow in the gulch was deep and the ground thaws slowly. We’ve been building houses and doing dead work, but we’ve got our men on the ground, waiting.”
 
“I am greatly interested. Won’t you walk with us to the hotel? I want to hear more about these wonderful placers.”
 
“Well, they are great placers,” said the miner, as the three walked on together; “nobody knows how great because we’ve only scratched at them yet. In the first place the ground is so shallow and the gold is so easy to get, that if nature didn’t safeguard us in the winter we’d never dare leave our claims for fear of ‘snipers.’ They’d run in and rob us.”
 
“How much will the Anvil Creek mines produce this summer?” asked the Judge.
 
“It’s hard to tell, sir; but we expect to average five thousand a day from the Midas alone, and there are other claims just as good.”
 
“Your title is all clear, I dare say, eh?”
 
“Absolutely, except for one jumper, and we don’t take him seriously. A fellow named Galloway relocated us one night last month, but he didn’t allege any grounds for doing so, and we could never find trace of him. If we had, our title would be as clean as snow again.” He said the last with a peculiar inflection.
 
“You wouldn’t use violence, I trust?”
 
“Sure! Why not? It has worked all right heretofore.”
 
“But, my dear sir, those days are gone. The law is here and it is the duty of every one to abide by it.”
 
“Well, perhaps it is; but in this country we consider a man’s mine as sacred as his family. We didn’t know what a lock and key were in the early times and we didn’t have any troubles except famine and hardship. It’s different now, though. Why, there have been more claims jumped around here this spring than in the whole length and history of the Yukon.”
 
They had reached the hotel, and Glenister paused, turning to the girl as the Judge entered. When she started to follow, he detained her.
 
“I came down from the hills on purpose to see you. It has been a long week—”
 
“Don’t talk that way,” she interrupted, coldly. “I don’t care to hear it.”
 
“See here—what makes you shut me out and wrap yourself up in your haughtiness? I’m sorry for what I did that night—I’ve told you so repeatedly. I’ve wrung my soul for that act till there’s nothing left but repentance.”
 
“It is not that,” she said, slowly. “I have been thinking it over during the past month, and now that I have gained an insight into this life I see that it wasn’t an unnatural thing for you to do. It’s terrible to think of, but it’s true. I don’t mean that it was pardonable,” she continued, quickly, “for it wasn’t, and I hate you when I think about it, but I suppose I put myself into a position to invite such actions. No; I’m sufficiently broad-minded not to blame you unreasonably, and I think I could like you in spite of it, just for what you have done for me; but that isn’t all. There is something deeper. You saved my life and I’m grateful, but you frighten me, always. It is the cruelty in your strength, it is something away back in you—lustful, and ferocious, and wild, and crouching.”
 
He smiled wryly.
 
“It is my local color, maybe—absorbed from this country. I’ll try to change, though, if you want me to. I’ll let them rope and throw and brand me. I’ll take on the graces of civilization and put away revenge and ambition and all the rest of it, if it will make you like me any better. Why, I’ll even promise not to violate the person of our claim-jumper if I catch him; and Heaven knows that means that Samson has parted with his locks.”
 
“I think I could like you if you did,” she said, “but you can’t do it. You are a savage.”
 
 
 
There are no clubs nor marts where men foregather for business in the North—nothing but the saloon, and this is all and more than a club. Here men congregate to drink, to gamble, and to traffic.
 
It was late in the evening when Glenister entered the Northern and passed idly down the row of games, pausing at the crap-table, where he rolled the dice when his turn came. Moving to the roulette-wheel, he lost a stack of whites, but at the faro “lay-out” his luck was better, and he won a gold coin on the “high-card.” Whereupon he promptly ordered a round of drinks for the men grouped about him, a formality always precedent to overtures of general friendship.
 
As he paused, glass in hand, his eyes were drawn to a man who stood close by, talking earnestly. The aspect of the stranger challenged notice, for he stood high above his companions with a peculiar grace of attitude in place of the awkwardness common in men of great stature. Among those who were listening intently to the man’s carefully modulated tones, Glenister recognized Mexico Mullins, the ex-gambler who had given Dextry the warning at Unalaska. As he further studied the listening group, a drunken man staggered uncertainly through the wide doors of the saloon and, gaining sight of the tall stranger, blinked, then approached him, speaking with a loud voice:
 
“Well, if ’tain’t ole Alec McNamara! How do, ye ole pirate!”
 
McNamara nodded and turned his back coolly upon the new-comer.
 
“Don’t turn your dorsal fin to me; I wan’ to talk to ye.”
 
McNamara continued his calm discourse till he received a vicious whack on the shoulder; then he turned for a moment to interrupt his assailant’s garrulous profanity:
 
“Don’t bother me. I am engaged.”
 
“Ye won’ talk to me, eh? Well, I’m goin’ to talk to you, see? I guess you’d listen if I told these people all I know about you. Turn around here.”
 
His voice was menacing and attracted general notice. Observing this, McNamara addressed him, his words dropping clear, concise, and cold:
 
“Don’t talk to me. You are a drunken nuisance. Go away before something happens to you.”
 
Again he turned away, but the drunken man seized and whirled him about, repeating his abuse, encouraged by this apparent patience.
 
“Your pardon for an instant, gentlemen.” McNamara laid a large white and manicured hand upon the flannel sleeve of the miner and gently escorted him through the entrance to the sidewalk, while the crowd smiled.
 
As they cleared the threshold, however, he clenched his fist without a word and, raising it, struck the sot fully and cruelly upon the jaw. His victim fell silently, the back of his head striking the boards with a hollow thump; then, without even observing how he lay, McNamara re-entered the saloon and took up his conversation where he had been interrupted. His voice was as evenly regulated as his movements, betraying not a sign of anger, excitement, or bravado. He lit a cigarette, extracted a note-book, and jotted down certain memoranda supplied him by Mexico Mullins.
 
All this time the body lay across the threshold without a sign of life. The buzz of the roulette-wheel was resumed and the crap-dealer began his monotonous routine. Every eye was fixed on the nonchalant man at the bar, but the unconscious creature outside the threshold lay unheeded, for in these men’s code it behooves the most humane to practise a certain aloofness in the matter of private brawls.
 
Having completed his notes, McNamara shook hands gravely with his companions and strode out through the door, past the bulk that sprawled across his path, and, without pause or glance, disappeared.
 
A dozen willing, though unsympathetic, hands laid the drunkard on the roulette-table, where the bartender poured pitcher upon pitcher of water over him.
 
“He ain’t hurt none to speak of,” said a bystander; then added, with enthusiasm:
 
“But say! There’s a man in this here camp!”
CHAPTER VI  AND A MINE IS JUMPED
“Who’s your new shift boss?” Glenister inquired of his partner, a few days later, indicating a man in the cut below, busied in setting a line of sluices.
 
“That’s old ‘Slapjack’ Simms, friend of mine from up Dawson way.”
 
Glenister laughed immoderately, for the object was unusually tall and loose-jointed, and wore a soiled suit of yellow mackinaw. He had laid off his coat, and now the baggy, bilious trousers hung precariously from his angular shoulders by suspenders of alarming frailty. His legs were lost in gum boots, also loose and cavernous, and his entire costume looked relaxed and flapping, so that he gave the impression of being able to shake himself out of his raiment, and to rise like a burlesque Aphrodite. His face was overgrown with a grizzled tangle that looked as though it had been trimmed with button-hole scissors, while above the brush heap grandly soared a shiny, dome-like head.
 
“Has he always been bald?”
 
“Naw! He ain’t bald at all. He shaves his nob. In the early days he wore a long flowin’ mane which was inhabited by crickets, tree-toads, and such fauna. It got to be a hobby with him finally, so that he growed superstitious about goin’ uncurried, and would back into a corner with both guns drawed if a barber came near him. But once Hank—that’s his real name—undertook to fry some slapjacks, and in givin’ the skillet a heave, the dough lit among his forest primeval, jest back of his ears, soft side down. Hank polluted the gulch with langwidge which no man had ought to keep in himself without it was fumigated. Disreppitableness oozed out through him like sweat through an ice-pitcher, an’ since then he’s been known as Slapjack Simms, an’ has kept his head shingled smooth as a gun bar’l. He’s a good miner, though; ain’t none better—an’ square as a die.”
 
Sluicing had begun on the Midas. Long sinuous lengths of canvas hose wound down the creek bottom from the dam, like gigantic serpents, while the roll of gravel through the flumes mingled musically with the rush of waters, the tinkle of tools, and the song of steel on rock. There were four “strings” of boxes abreast, and the heaving line of shovellers ate rapidly into the creek bed, while teams with scrapers splashed through the tail races in an atmosphere of softened profanity. In the big white tents which sat back from the bluffs, fifty men of the night shift were asleep; for there is no respite here—no night, no Sunday, no halt, during the hundred days in which the Northland lends herself to pillage.
 
The mine lay cradled between wonderful, mossy, willow-mottled mountains, while above and below the gulch was dotted with tents and huts, and everywhere, from basin to hill crest, men dug and blasted, punily, patiently, while their tracks grew daily plainer over the face of this inscrutable wilderness.
 
A great contentment filled the two partners as they looked on this scene. To wrest from reluctant earth her richest treasures, to add to the wealth of the world, to create—here was satisfaction.
 
“We ain’t robbin’ no widders an’ orphans doin’ it, neither,” Dextry suddenly remarked, expressing his partner’s feelings closely. They looked at each other and smiled with that rare understanding that exceeds words.
 
Descending into the cut, the old man filled a gold-pan with dirt taken from under the feet of the workers, and washed it in a puddle, while the other watched his dexterous whirling motions. When he had finished, they poked the stream of yellow grains into a pile, then, with heads together, guessed its weight, laughing again delightedly, in perfect harmony and contentment.
 
“I’ve been waitin’ a turrible time fer this day,” said the elder. “I’ve suffered the plagues of prospectin’ from the Mexicos to the Circle, an’ yet I don’t begretch it none, now that I’ve struck pay.”
 
While they spoke, two miners struggled with a bowlder they had unearthed, and having scraped and washed it carefully, staggered back to place it on the cleaned bed-rock behind. One of them slipped, and it crashed against a brace which held the sluices in place. These boxes stand more than a man’s height above the bed-rock, resting on supporting posts and running full of water. Should a sluice fall, the rushing stream carries out the gold which has lodged in the riffles and floods the bed-rock, raising havoc. Too late the partners saw the string of boxes sway and bend at the joint. Then, before they could reach the threatened spot to support it, Slapjack Simms, with a shriek, plunged flapping down into the cut and seized the flume. His great height stood him in good stead now, for where the joint had opened, water poured forth in a cataract. He dived under the breach unhesitatingly and, stooping, lifted the line as near to its former level as possible, holding the entire burden upon his naked pate. He gesticulated wildly for help, while over him poured the deluge of icy, muddy water. It entered his gaping waistband, bulging out his yellow trousers till they were fat and full and the seams were bursting, while his yawning boot-tops became as boiling springs. Meanwhile he chattered forth profanity in such volume that the ear ached under it as must have ached the heroic Slapjack under the chill of the melting snow. He was relieved quickly, however, and emerged triumphant, though blue and puckered, his wilderness of whiskers streaming like limber stalactites, his boots loosely “squishing,” while oaths still poured from him in such profusion that Dextry whispered:
 
“Ain’t he a ring-tailed wonder? It’s plumb solemn an’ reverent the way he makes them untamed cuss-words sit up an’ beg. It’s a privilege to be present. That’s a gift, that is.”
 
“You’d better get some dry clothes,” they suggested, and Slapjack proceeded a few paces towards the tents, hobbling as though treading on pounded glass.
 
“Ow—w!” he yelled. “These blasted boots is full of gravel.”
 
He seated himself and tugged at his foot till the boot came away with a sucking sound, then, instead of emptying the accumulation at random, he poured the contents into Dextry’s empty gold-pan, rinsing it out carefully. The other boot he emptied likewise. They held a surprising amount of sediment, because the stream that had emerged from the crack in the sluices had carried with it pebbles, sand, and all the concentration of the riffles at this point. Standing directly beneath the cataract, most of it had dived fairly into his inviting waistband, following down the lines of least resistance into his boot-legs and boiling out at the knees.
 
“Wash that,” he said. “You’re apt to get a prospect.”
 
With artful passes Dextry settled it in the pan bottom and washed away the gravel, leaving a yellow, glittering pile which raised a yell from the men who had lingered curiously.
 
“He pans forty dollars to the boot-leg,” one shouted.
 
“How much do you run to the foot, Slapjack?”
 
“He’s a reg’lar free-milling ledge.”
 
“No, he ain’t—he’s too thin. He’s nothing but a stringer, but he’ll pay to work.”
 
The old miner grinned toothlessly.
 
“Gentlemen, there ain’t no better way to save fine gold than with undercurrents an’ blanket riffles. I’ll have to wash these garments of mine an’ clean up the soapsuds ’cause there’s a hundred dollars in gold-dust clingin’ to my person this minute.” He went dripping up the bank, while the men returned to their work singing.
 
After lunch Dextry saddled his bronco.
 
“I’m goin’ to town for a pair of gold-scales, but I’ll be back by supper, then we’ll clean up between shifts. She’d ought to give us a thousand ounces, the way that ground prospects.” He loped down the gulch, while his partner returned to the pit, the flashing shovel blades, and the rumbling undertone of the big workings that so fascinated him.
 
It was perhaps four o’clock when he was aroused from his labors by a shout from the bunk-tent, where a group of horsemen had clustered. As Glenister drew near, he saw among them Wilton Struve, the lawyer, and the big, well-dressed tenderfoot of the Northern—McNamara—the man of the heavy hand. Struve straightway engaged him.
 
“Say, Glenister, we’ve come out to see about the title to this claim.”
 
“What about it?”
 
“Well, it was relocated about a month ago.” He paused.
 
“Yes. What of that?”
 
“Galloway has commenced suit.”
 
“The ground belongs to Dextry and me. We discovered it, we opened it up, we’ve complied with the law, and we’re going to hold it.” Glenister spoke with such conviction and heat as to nonplus Struve, but McNamara, who had sat his horse silently until now, answered:
 
“Certainly, sir; if your title is good you will be protected, but the law has arrived in Alaska and we’ve got to let it take its course. There’s no need of violence—none whatever—but, briefly, the situation is this: Mr. Galloway has commenced action against you; the court has enjoined you from working and has appointed me as receiver to operate the mine until the suit is settled. It’s an extraordinary procedure, of course, but the conditions are extraordinary in this country. The season is so short that it would be unjust to the rightful owner if the claim lay idle all summer—so, to avoid that, I’ve been put in charge, with instructions to operate it and preserve the proceeds subject to the court’s order. Mr. Voorhees here is the United States Marshal. He will serve the papers.”
 
Glenister threw up his hand in a gesture of restraint.
 
“Hold on! Do you mean to tell me that any court would recognize such a claim as Galloway’s?”
 
“The law recognizes everything. If his grounds are no good, so much the better for you.”
 
“You can’t put in a receiver without notice to us. Why, good Lord! we never heard of a suit being commenced. We’ve never even been served with a summons and we haven’t had a chance to argue in our own defence.”
 
“I have just said that this is a remarkable state of affairs and unusual action had to be taken,” McNamara replied, but the young miner grew excited.
 
“Look here—this gold won’t get away. It’s safe in the ground. We’ll knock off work and let the claim lie idle till the thing is settled. You can’t really expect us to surrender possession of our mine on the mere allegation of some unknown man. That’s ridiculous. We won’t do it. Why, you’ll have to let us argue our case, at least, before you try to put us off.”
 
Voorhees shook his head. “We’ll have to follow instructions. The thing for you to do is to appear before the court to-morrow and have the receiver dismissed. If your title is as good as you say it is, you won’t have any trouble.”
 
“You’re not the only ones to suffer,” added McNamara. “We’ve taken possession of all the mines below here.” He nodded down the gulch. “I’m an officer of the court and under bond—”
 
“How much?”
 
“Five thousand dollars for each claim.”
 
“What! Why, heavens, man, the poorest of these mines is producing that much every day!”
 
While he spoke, Glenister was rapidly debating what course to follow.
 
“The place to argue this thing is before Judge Stillman,” said Struve—but with little notion of the conflict going on within Glenister. The youth yearned to fight—not with words nor quibbles nor legal phrases, but with steel and blows. And he felt that the impulse was as righteous as it was natural, for he knew this process was unjust, an outrage. Mexico Mullins’s warning recurred to him. And yet—. He shifted slowly as he talked till his back was to the door of the big tent. They were watching him carefully, for all their apparent languor and looseness in saddle; then as he started to leap within and rally his henchmen, his mind went back to the words of Judge Stillman and his niece. Surely that old man was on the square. He couldn’t be otherwise with her beside him, believing in him; and a suspicion of deeper plots behind these actions was groundless. So far, all was legal, he supposed, with his scant knowledge of law; though the methods seemed unreasonable. The men might be doing what they thought to be right. Why be the first to resist? The men on the mines below had not done so. The title to this ground was capable of such easy proof that he and Dex need have no uneasiness. Courts do not rob honest people nowadays, he argued, and moreover, perhaps the girl’s words were true, perhaps she would think more of him if he gave up the old fighting ways for her sake. Certainly armed resistance to her uncle’s first edict would not please her. She had said he was too violent, so he would show her he could lay his savagery aside. She might smile on him approvingly, and that was Worth taking a chance for—anyway it would mean but a few days’ delay in the mine’s run. As he reasoned he heard a low voice speaking within the open door. It was Slapjack Simms.
 
“Step aside, lad. I’ve got the big uncovered.”
 
Glenister saw the men on horseback snatch at their holsters, and, just in time, leaped at his foreman, for the old man had moved out into the open, a Winchester at shoulder, his cheek cuddling the stock, his eyes cold and narrow. The young man flung the barrel up and wrenched the weapon from his hands.
 
“None of that, Hank!” he cried, sharply. “I’ll say when to shoot.” He turned to look into the muzzles of guns held in the hands of every horseman—every horseman save one, for Alec McNamara sat unmoved, his handsome features, nonchalant and amused, nodding approval. It was at him that Hank’s weapon had been levelled.
 
“This is bad enough at the best. Don’t let’s make it any worse,” said he.
 
Slapjack inhaled deeply, spat with disgust, and looked over his boss incredulously.
 
“Well, of all the different kinds of damn fools,” he snorted, “you are the kindest.” He marched past the marshal and his deputies down to the cut, put on his coat, and vanished down the trail towards town, not deigning a backward glance either at the mine or at the man unfit to fight for.
CHAPTER VII  THE “BRONCO KID’S” EAVESDROPPING
LATE in July it grows dark as midnight approaches, so that the many lights from doorway and window seem less garish and strange than they do a month earlier. In the Northern there was good business doing. The new bar fixtures, which had cost a king’s ransom, or represented the one night’s losings of a Klondike millionaire, shone rich, dark, and enticing, while the cut glass sparkled with iridescent hues, reflecting, in a measure, the prismatic moods, the dancing spirits of the crowd that crushed past, halting at the gambling games, or patronizing the theatre in the rear. The old bar furniture, brought down by dog team from “Up River,” was established at the rear extremity of the long building, just inside the entrance to the dance-hall, where patrons of the drama might, with a modicum of delay and inconvenience, quaff as deeply of the beaker as of the ballet.
 
Now, however, the show had closed, the hall had been cleared of chairs and canvas, exposing a glassy, tempting surface, and the orchestra had moved to the stage. They played a rollicking, blood-stirring two-step, while the floor swam with dancers.
 
At certain intervals the musicians worked feverishly up to a crashing crescendo, supported by the voices of the dancers, until all joined at the top note in a yell, while the drummer fired a .44 Colt into a box of wet sawdust beside his chair—all in time, all in the swinging spirit of the tune.
 
The men, who were mostly young, danced like college boys, while the women, who were all young and good dancers, floated through the measures with the ease of rose-leaves on a summer stream. Faces were flushed, eyes were bright, and but rarely a voice sounded that was not glad. Most of the noise came from the men, and although one caught, here and there, a hint of haggard lines about the girlish faces, and glimpsed occasional eyes that did not smile, yet as a whole the scene was one of genuine enjoyment.
 
Suddenly the music ceased and the couples crowded to the bar. The women took harmless drinks; the men, mostly whiskey. Rarely was the choice of potations criticised, though occasionally some ruddy eschewer of sobriety insisted that his lady “take the same,” avowing that “hootch,” having been demonstrated beneficial in his case, was good for her also. Invariably the lady accepted without dispute, and invariably the man failed to note her glance at the bartender, or the silent substitution by that capable person of ginger-ale for whiskey or of plain water for gin. In turn, the mixers collected one dollar from each man, flipping to the girl a metal percentage-check which she added to her store. In the curtained boxes overhead, men bought bottles with foil about the corks, and then subterfuge on the lady’s part was idle, but, on the other hand, she was able to pocket for each bottle a check redeemable at five dollars.
 
A stranger, straight from the East, would have remarked first upon the good music, next upon the good looks of the women, and then upon the shabby clothes of the men—for some of them were in “mukluk,” others in sweaters with huge initials and winged emblems, and all were collarless.
 
Outside in the main gambling-room there were but few women. Men crowded in dense masses about the faro lay-out, the wheel, craps, the Klondike game, pangingi, and the card-tables. They talked of business, of home, of women, bought and sold mines, and bartered all things from hams to honor. The groomed and clean, the unkempt and filthy jostled shoulder to shoulder, equally affected by the license of the gold-fields and the exhilaration of the New. The mystery of the North had touched them all. The glad, bright wine of adventure filled their veins, and they spoke mightily of things they had resolved to do, or recounted with simple diffidence the strange stories of their accomplishment.
 
The “Bronco Kid,” familiar from Atlin to Nome as the best “bank” dealer on the Yukon, worked the shift from eight till two. He was a slender man of thirty, dexterous in movement, slow to smile, soft of voice, and known as a living flame among women. He had dealt the biggest games of the early days, and had no enemies. Yet, though many called him friend, they wondered inwardly.
 
It was a strong play the Kid had to-night, for Swede Sam, of Dawson, ventured many stacks of yellow chips, and he was a quick, aggressive gambler. A Jew sat at the king end with ten neatly creased one-thousand-dollar bills before him, together with piles of smaller currency. He adventured viciously and without system, while outsiders to the number of four or five cut in sporadically with small bets. The game was difficult to follow; consequently the lookout, from his raised dais, was leaning forward, chin in hand, while the group was hedged about by eager on-lookers.
 
Faro is a closed book to most people, for its intricacies are confusing. Lucky is he who has never persevered in solving its mysteries nor speculated upon the “systems” of beating it. From those who have learned it, the game demands practice, dexterity, and coolness. The dealer must run the cards, watch the many shifting bets, handle the neatly piled checks, figure, lightning-like, the profits and losses. It was his unerring, clock like regularity in this that had won the Kid his reputation. This night his powers were taxed. He dealt silently, scowlingly, his long white fingers nervously caressing the cards.
 
This preoccupation prevented his noticing the rustle and stir of a new-comer who had crowded up behind him, until he caught the wondering glances of those in front and saw that the Israelite was staring past him, his money forgotten, his eyes beady and sharp, his ratlike teeth showing in a grin of admiration. Swede Sam glared from under his unkempt shock and felt uncertainly towards the open collar of his flannel shirt where a kerchief should have been. The men who were standing gazed at the new-comer, some with surprise, others with a half smile of recognition.
 
Bronco glanced quickly over his shoulder, and as he did so the breath caught in his throat—but for only an instant. A girl stood so close beside him that the lace of her gown brushed his sleeve. He was shuffling at the moment and dropped a card, then nodded to her, speaking quietly, as he stooped to regain the pasteboard:
 
“Howdy, Cherry?”
 
She did not answer—only continued to look at the “lay-out.” “What a woman!” he thought. She was not too tall, with smoothly rounded bust and hips, and long waist, all well displayed by her perfectly fitting garments. Her face was oval, the mouth rather large, the eyes of dark, dark-blue, prominently outlined under thin, silken lids. Her dull-gold hair was combed low over the ears, and her smile showed rows of sparkling teeth before it dived into twin dimples. Strangest of all, it was an innocent face, the face and smile of a school-girl.
 
The Kid finished his shuffling awkwardly and slid the cards into the box. Then the woman spoke:
 
“Let me have your place, Bronco.”
 
The men gasped, the Jew snickered, the lookout straightened in his chair.
 
“Better not. It’s a hard game,” said the Kid, but her voice was imperious as she commanded him:
 
“Hurry up. Give me your place.”
 
Bronco arose, whereupon she settled in his chair, tucked in her skirts, removed her gloves, and twisted into place the diamonds on her hands.
 
“What the devil’s this?” said the lookout, roughly. “Are you drunk, Bronco? Get out of that chair, miss.”
 
She turned to him slowly. The innocence had fled from her features and the big eyes flashed warningly. A change had coarsened her like a puff of air on a still pool. Then, while she stared at him, her lids drooped dangerously and her lip curled.
 
“Throw him out, Bronco,” she said, and her tones held the hardness of a mistress to her slave.
 
“That’s all right,” the Kid reassured the lookout. “She’s a better dealer than I am. This is Cherry Malotte.”
 
Without noticing the stares this evoked, the girl commenced. Her hands, beautifully soft and white, flashed over the board. She dealt rapidly, unfalteringly, with the finish of one bred to the cards, handling chips and coppers with the peculiar mannerisms that spring from long practice. It was seen that she never looked at her check-rack, but, when a bet required paying, picked up a stack without turning her head; and they saw further that she never reached twice, nor took a large pile and sized it up against its mate, removing the extra disks, as is the custom. When she stretched forth her hand she grasped the right number unerringly. This is considered the acme of professional finish, and the Bronco Kid smiled delightedly as he saw the wonder spread from the lookout to the spectators and heard the speech of the men who stood on chairs and tables for sight of the woman dealer.
 
For twenty minutes she continued, until the place became congested, and never once did the lookout detect an error.
 
While she was busy, Glenister entered the front-door and pushed his way back towards the theatre. He was worried and distrait, his manner perturbed and unnatural. Silently and without apparent notice he passed friends who greeted him.
 
“What ails Glenister to-night?” asked a by-stander. “He acts funny.”
 
“Ain’t you heard? Why, the Midas has been jumped. He’s in a bad way—all broke up.”
 
The girl suddenly ceased without finishing the deck, and arose.
 
“Don’t stop,” said the Kid, while a murmur of dismay came from the spectators. She only shook her head and drew on her gloves with a show of ennui.
 
Gliding through the crowd, she threaded about aimlessly, the recipient of many stares though but few greetings, speaking with no one, a certain dignity serving her as a barrier even here. She stopped a waiter and questioned him.
 
“He’s up-stairs in a gallery box.”
 
“Alone?”
 
“Yes’m. Anyhow, he was a minute ago, unless some of the rustlers has broke in on him.”
 
A moment later Glenister, watching the scene below, was aroused from his gloomy absorption by the click of the box door and the rustle of silken skirts.
 
“Go out, please,” he said, without turning. “I don’t want company.” Hearing no answer, he began again, “I came here to be alone”—but there he ceased, for the girl had come forward and laid her two hot hands upon his cheeks.
 
“Boy,” she breathed—and he arose swiftly.
 
“Cherry! When did you come?”
 
“Oh, days ago,” she said, impatiently, “from Dawson. They told me you had struck it. I stood it as long as I could—then I came to you. Now, tell me about yourself. Let me see you first, quick!”
 
She pulled him towards the light and gazed upward, devouring him hungrily with her great, languorous eyes.
 
She held to his coat lapels, standing close beside him, her warm breath beating up into his face.
 
“Well,” she said, “kiss me!”
 
He took her wrists in his and loosed her hold, then looked down on her gravely and said:
 
“No—that’s all over. I told you so when I left Dawson.”
 
“All over! Oh no, it isn’t, boy. You think so, but it isn’t—it can’t be. I love you too much to let you go.”
 
“Hush!” said he. “There are people in the next box.”
 
“I don’t care! Let them hear,” she cried, with feminine recklessness. “I’m proud of my love for you. I’ll tell it to them—to the whole world.”
 
“Now, see here, little girl,” he said, quietly, “we had a long talk in Dawson and agreed that it was best to divide our ways. I was mad over you once, as a good many other men have been, but I came to my senses. Nothing could ever result from it, and I told you so.”
 
“Yes, yes—I know. I thought I could give you up, but I didn’t realize till you had gone how I wanted you. Oh, it’s been a torture to me every day for the past two years.” There was no semblance now to the cold creature she had appeared upon entering the gambling-hall. She spoke rapidly, her whole body tense with emotion, her voice shaken with passion. “I’ve seen men and men and men, and they’ve loved me, but I never cared for anybody in the world till I saw you. They ran after me, but you were cold. You made me come to you. Perhaps that was it. Anyhow, I can’t stand it. I’ll give up everything—I’ll do anything just to be where you are. What do you think of a woman who will beg? Oh, I’ve lost my pride—I’m a fool—a fool—but I can’t help it.”
 
“I’m sorry you feel this way,” said Glenister. “It isn’t my fault, and it isn’t of any use.”
 
For an instant she stood quivering, while the light died out of her face; then, with a characteristic change, she smiled till the dimples laughed in her cheeks. She sank upon a seat beside him and pulled together the curtains, shutting out the sight below.
 
“Very well”—then she put his hand to her cheek and cuddled it. “I’m glad to see you just the same, and you can’t keep me from loving you.”
 
With his other hand he smoothed her hair, while, unknown to him and beneath her lightness, she shrank and quivered at his touch like a Barbary steed under the whip.
 
“Things are very bad with me,” he said. “We’ve had our mine jumped.”
 
“Bah! You know what to do. You aren’t a cripple—you’ve got five fingers on your gun hand.”
 
“That’s it! They all tell me that—all the old-timers; but I don’t know what to do. I thought I did—but I don’t. The law has come into this country and I’ve tried to meet it half-way. They jumped us and put in a receiver—a big man—by the name of McNamara. Dex wasn’t there and I let them do it. When the old man learned of it he nearly went crazy. We had our first quarrel. He thought I was afraid—”
 
“Not he,” said the girl. “I know him and he knows you.”
 
“That was a week ago. We’ve hired the best lawyer in Nome—Bill Wheaton—and we’ve tried to have the injunction removed. We’ve offered bond in any sum, but the Judge refuses to accept it. We’ve argued for leave to appeal, but he won’t give us the right. The more I look into it the worse it seems, for the court wasn’t convened in accordance with law, we weren’t notified to appear in our own behalf, we weren’t allowed a chance to argue our own case—nothing. They simply slapped on a receiver, and now they refuse to allow us redress. From a legal stand-point, it’s appalling, I’m told; but what’s to be done? What’s the game? That’s the thing. What are they up to? I’m nearly out of my mind, for it’s all my fault. I didn’t think it meant anything like this or I’d have made a fight for possession and stood them off at least. As it is, my partner’s sore and he’s gone to drinking—first time in twelve years. He says I gave the claim away, and now it’s up to me and the Almighty to get it back. If he gets full he’ll drive a four-horse wagon into some church, or go up and pick the Judge to pieces with his fingers to see what makes him go round.”
 
“What’ve they got against you and Dextry—some grudge?” she questioned.
 
“No, no! We’re not the only ones in trouble; they’ve jumped the rest of the good mines and put this McNamara in as receiver on all of them, but that’s small comfort. The Swedes are crazy; they’ve hired all the lawyers in town, and are murdering more good American language than would fill Bering Strait. Dex is in favor of getting our friends together and throwing the receiver off. He wants to kill somebody, but we can’t do that. They’ve got the soldiers to fall back on. We’ve been warned that the troops are instructed to enforce the court’s action. I don’t know what the plot is, for I can’t believe the old Judge is crooked—the girl wouldn’t let him.”
 
“Girl?”
 
Cherry Malotte leaned forward where the light shone on the young man’s worried face.
 
“The girl? What girl? Who is she?”
 
Her voice had lost its lazy caress, her lips had thinned. Never was a woman’s face more eloquent, mused Glenister as he noted her. Every thought fled to this window to peer forth, fearful, lustful, hateful, as the case might be. He had loved to play with her in the former days, to work upon her passions and watch the changes, to note her features mirror every varying emotion from tenderness to flippancy, from anger to delight, and, at his bidding, to see the pale cheeks glow with love’s fire, the eyes grow heavy, the dainty lips invite kisses. Cherry was a perfect little spoiled animal, he reflected, and a very dangerous one.
 
“What girl?” she questioned again, and he knew beforehand the look that went with it.
 
“The girl I intend to marry,” he said, slowly, looking her between the eyes.
 
He knew he was cruel—he wanted to be—it satisfied the clamor and turmoil within him, while he also felt that the sooner she knew and the colder it left her the better. He could not note the effect of the remark on her, however, for, as he spoke, the door of the box opened and the head of the Bronco Kid appeared, then retired instantly with apologies.
 
“Wrong stall,” he said, in his slow voice. “Looking for another party.” Nevertheless, his eyes had covered every inch of them—noted the drawn curtains and the breathless poise of the woman—while his ears had caught part of Glenister’s speech.
 
“You won’t marry her,” said Cherry, quietly. “I don’t know who she is, but I won’t let you marry her.”
 
She rose and smoothed her skirts.
 
“It’s time nice people were going now.” She said it with a sneer at herself. “Take me out through this crowd. I’m living quietly and I don’t want these beasts to follow me.”
 
As they emerged from the theatre the morning air was cool and quiet, while the sun was just rising. The Bronco Kid lighted a cigar as they passed, nodding silently at their greeting. His eyes followed them, while his hands were so still that the match burned through to his fingers-then when they had gone his teeth met and ground savagely through the tobacco so that the cigar fell, while he muttered:
 
“So that’s the girl you intend to marry? We’ll see, by God!”
CHAPTER VIII  DEXTRY MAKES A CALL
THE water front had a strong attraction for Helen Chester, and rarely did a fair day pass without finding her in some quiet spot from which she could watch the shifting life along its edge, the ships at anchor, and the varied incidents of the surf.
 
This morning she sat in a dory pulled high up on the beach, bathed in the bright sunshine, and staring at the rollers, while lines of concentration wrinkled her brow. The wind had blown for some days till the ocean beat heavily across the shallow bar, and now, as it became quieter, longshoremen were launching their craft, preparing to resume their traffic.
 
Not until the previous day had the news of her friends’ misfortune come to her, and although she had heard no hint of fraud, she began to realize that they were involved in a serious tangle. To the questions which she anxiously put to her uncle he had replied that their difficulty arose from a technicality in the mining laws which another man had been shrewd enough to profit by. It was a complicated question, he said, and one requiring time to thrash out to an equitable settlement. She had undertaken to remind him of the service these men had done her, but, with a smile, he interrupted; he could not allow such things to influence his judicial attitude, and she must not endeavor to prejudice him in the discharge of his duty. Recognizing the justice of this, she had desisted.
 
For many days the girl had caught scattered talk between the Judge and McNamara, and between Struve and his associates, but it all seemed foreign and dry, and beyond the fact that it bore on the litigation over the Anvil Creek mines, she understood nothing and cared less, particularly as a new interest had but recently come into her life, an interest in the form of a man—McNamara.
 
He had begun with quiet, half-concealed admiration of her, which had rapidly increased until his attentions had become of a singularly positive and resistless character.
 
Judge Stillman was openly delighted, while the court of one like Alec McNamara could but flatter any girl. In his presence, Helen felt herself rebelling at his suit, yet as distance separated them she thought ever more kindly of it. This state of mind contrasted oddly with her feelings towards the other man she had met, for in this country there were but two. When Glenister was with her she saw his love lying nakedly in his eyes and it exercised some spell which drew her to him in spite of herself, but when he had gone, back came the distrust, the terror of the brute she felt was there behind it all. The one appealed to her while present, the other pled strongest while away. Now she was attempting to analyze her feelings and face the future squarely, for she realized that her affairs neared a crisis, and this, too, not a month after meeting the men. She wondered if she would come to love her uncle’s friend. She did not know. Of the other she was sure—she never could.
 
Busied with these reflections, she noticed the familiar figure of Dextry wandering aimlessly. He was not unkempt, and yet his air gave her the impression of prolonged sleeplessness. Spying her, he approached and seated himself in the sand against the boat, while at her greeting he broke into talk as if he was needful only of her friendly presence to stir his confidential chords into active vibration.
 
“We’re in turrible shape, miss,” he said. “Our claim’s jumped. Somebody run in and talked the boy out of it while I was gone, and now we can’t get ’em off. He’s been tryin’ this here new law game that you-all brought in this summer. I’ve been drunk—that’s what makes me look so ornery.”
 
He said the last, not in the spirit of apology, for rarely does your frontiersman consider that his self-indulgences require palliation, but rather after the manner of one purveying news of mild interest, as he would inform you that his surcingle had broken or that he had witnessed a lynching.
 
“What made them jump your claim?”
 
“I don’t know. I don’t know nothin’ about it, because, as I remarked previous, I ’ain’t follered the totterin’ footsteps of the law none too close. Nor do I intend to. I simply draws out of the game fer a spell, and lets the youngster have his fling; then if he can’t make good, I’ll take the cards and finish it for him.
 
“It’s like the time I was ranchin’ with an Englishman up in Montana. This here party claimed the misfortune of bein’ a younger son, whatever that is, and is grubstaked to a ranch by his people back home. Havin’ acquired an intimate knowledge of the West by readin’ Bret Harte, and havin’ assim’lated the secrets of ranchin’ by correspondence school, he is fitted, ample, to teach us natives a thing or two—and he does it. I am workin’ his outfit as foreman, and it don’t take long to show me that he’s a good-hearted feller, in spite of his ridin’-bloomers an’ pinochle eye-glass. He ain’t never had no actual experience, but he’s got a Henry Thompson Seton book that tells him all about everything from field-mice to gorrillys.
 
“We’re troubled a heap with coyotes them days, and finally this party sends home for some Rooshian wolf-hounds. I’m fer pizenin’ a sheep carcass, but he says:
 
“ ‘No, no, me deah man; that’s not sportsman-like; we’ll hunt ’em. Ay, hunt ’em! Only fawncy the sport we’ll have, ridin’ to hounds!’
 
“ ‘We will not,’ says I. ‘I ain’t goin’ to do no Simon Legree stunts. It ain’t man’s size. Bein’ English, you don’t count, but I’m growed up.’
 
“Nothin’ would do him but those Uncle Tom’s Cabin dogs, however, and he had ’em imported clean from Berkshire or Sibeery or thereabouts, four of ’em, great, big, blue ones. They was as handsome and imposin’ as a set of solid-gold teeth, but somehow they didn’t seem to savvy our play none. One day the cook rolled a rain bar’l down-hill from the kitchen, and when them blooded critters saw it comin’ they throwed down their tails and tore out like rabbits. After that I couldn’t see no good in ’em with a spy-glass.
 
“ ‘They ’ain’t got no grit. What makes you think they can fight?’ I asked one day.
 
“ ‘Fight?’ says H’Anglish. ‘My deah man, they’re full-blooded. Cost seventy pun each. They’re dreadful creatures when they’re roused—they’ll tear a wolf to pieces like a rag—kill bears—anything. Oh! Rully, perfectly dreadful!’
 
“Well, it wasn’t a week later that he went over to the east line with me to mend a barb wire. I had my pliers and a hatchet and some staples. About a mile from the house we jumped up a little brown bear that scampered off when he seen us, but bein’ agin’ a bluff where he couldn’t get away, he climbed a cotton-wood. H’Anglish was simply frothin’ with excitement.
 
“ ‘What a misfortune! Neyther gun nor hounds.’
 
“ ‘I’ll scratch his back and talk pretty to him,’ says I, ‘while you run back and get a Winchester and them ferocious bull-dogs.’
 
“ ‘Wolf-hounds,’ says he, with dignity, ‘full-blooded, seventy pun each. They’ll rend the poor beast limb from limb. I hate to do it, but it’ll be good practice for them.’
 
“ ‘They may be good renders,’ says I, ‘but don’t forgit the gun.’
 
“Well, I throwed sticks at the critter when he tried to unclimb the tree, till finally the boss got back with his dogs. They set up an awful holler when they see the bear—first one they’d ever smelled, I reckon—and the little feller crawled up in some forks and watched things, cautious, while they leaped about, bayin’ most fierce and blood-curdlin’.
 
“ ‘How you goin’ to get him down?’ says I.
 
“I’ll shoot him in the lower jaw,’ says the Britisher, ‘so he cawn’t bite the dogs. It’ll give ’em cawnfidence.’
 
“He takes aim at Mr. Bear’s chin and misses it three times runnin’, he’s that excited.
 
“ ‘Settle down, H’Anglish,’ says I. ‘He ’ain’t got no double chins. How many shells left in your gun?’
 
“When he looks he finds there’s only one more, for he hadn’t stopped to fill the magazine, so I cautions him.
 
“ ‘You’re shootin’ too low. Raise her.’
 
“He raised her all right, and caught Mr. Bruin in the snout. What followed thereafter was most too quick to notice, for the poor bear let out a bawl, dropped off his limb into the midst of them ragin’, tur’ble, seventy-pun hounds, an’ hugged ’em to death, one after another, like he was doin’ a system of health exercises. He took ’em to his boosum as if he’d just got back off a long trip, then, droppin’ the last one, he made at that younger son an’ put a gold fillin’ in his leg. Yes, sir; most chewed it off. H’Anglish let out a Siberian-wolf holler hisself, an’ I had to step in with the hatchet and kill the brute though I was most dead from laughin’.”
 
“That’s how it is with me an’ Glenister,” the old man concluded. “When he gets tired experimentin’ with this new law game of hisn, I’ll step in an’ do business on a common-sense basis.”
 
“You talk as if you wouldn’t get fair play,” said Helen.
 
“We won’t,” said he, with conviction. “I look on all lawyers with suspicion, even to old bald-face—your uncle, askin’ your pardon an’ gettin’ it, bein’ as I’m a friend an’ he ain’t no real relation of yours, anyhow. No, sir; they’re all crooked.”
 
Dextry held the Western distrust of the legal profession—comprehensive, unreasoning, deep.
 
“Is the old man all the kin you’ve got?” he questioned, when she refused to discuss the matter.
 
“He is—in a way. I have a brother, or I hope I have, somewhere. He ran away when we were both little tads and I haven’t seen him since. I heard about him, indirectly, at Skagway—three years ago—during the big rush to the Klondike, but he has never been home. When father died, I went to live with Uncle Arthur—some day, perhaps, I’ll find my brother. He’s cruel to hide from me this way, for there are only we two left and I’ve loved him always.”
 
She spoke sadly and her mood blended well with the gloom of her companion, so they stared silently out over the heaving green waters.
 
“It’s a good thing me an’ the kid had a little piece of money ahead,” Dextry resumed later, reverting to the thought that lay uppermost in his mind, “ ‘cause we’d be up against it right if we hadn’t. The boy couldn’t have amused himself none with these court proceedings, because they come high. I call ’em luxuries, like brandied peaches an’ silk undershirts.”
 
“I don’t trust these Jim Crow banks no more than I do lawyers, neither. No, sirree! I bought a iron safe an’ hauled it out to the mine. She weighs eighteen hundred, and we keep our money locked up there. We’ve got a feller named Johnson watchin’ it now. Steal it? Well, hardly. They can’t bust her open without a stick of ‘giant’ which would rouse everybody in five miles, an’ they can’t lug her off bodily—she’s too heavy. No; it’s safer there than any place I know of. There ain’t no abscondin’ cashiers an’ all that. To-morrer I’m goin’ back to live on the claim an’ watch this receiver man till the thing’s settled.”
 
When the girl arose to go, he accompanied her up through the deep sand of the lane-like street to the main, muddy thoroughfare of the camp. As yet, the planked and gravelled pavements, which later threaded the town, were unknown, and the incessant traffic had worn the road into a quagmire of chocolate-colored slush, almost axle-deep, with which the store fronts, show-windows, and awnings were plentifully shot and spattered from passing teams. Whenever a wagon approached, pedestrians fled to the shelter of neighboring doorways, watching a chance to dodge out again. When vehicles passed from the comparative solidity of the main street out into the morasses that constituted the rest of the town, they adventured perilously, their horses plunging, snorting, terrified, amid an atmosphere of profanity. Discouraged animals were down constantly, and no foot-passenger, even with rubber boots, ventured off the planks that led from house to house.
 
To avoid a splashing team, Dextry pulled his companion close in against the entrance to the Northern saloon, standing before her protectingly.
 
Although it was late in the afternoon the Bronco Kid had just arisen and was now loafing preparatory to the active duties of his profession. He was speaking with the proprietor when Dextry and the girl sought shelter just without the open door, so he caught a fair though fleeting glimpse of her as she flashed a curious look inside. She had never been so close to a gambling-hall before, and would have liked to peer in more carefully had she dared, but her companion moved forward. At the first look the Bronco Kid had broken off in his speech and stared at her as though at an apparition. When she had vanished, he spoke to Reilly:
 
“Who’s that?”
 
Reilly shrugged his shoulders, then without further question the Kid turned back towards the empty theatre and out of the back door.
 
He moved nonchalantly till he was outside, then with the speed of a colt ran down the narrow planking between the buildings, turned parallel to the front street, leaped from board to board, splashed through puddles of water till he reached the next alley. Stamping the mud from his shoes and pulling down his sombrero, he sauntered out into the main thoroughfare.
 
Dextry and his companion had crossed to the other side and were approaching, so the gambler gained a fair view of them. He searched every inch of the girl’s face and figure, then, as she made to turn her eyes in his direction, he slouched away. He followed, however, at a distance, till he saw the man leave her, then on up to the big hotel he shadowed her. A half-hour later he was drinking in the Golden Gate bar-room with an acquaintance who ministered to the mechanical details behind the hotel counter.
 
“Who’s the girl I saw come in just now?” he inquired.
 
“I guess you mean the Judge’s niece.”
 
Both men spoke in the dead, restrained tones that go with their callings.
 
“What’s her name?”
 
“Chester, I think. Why? Look good to you, Kid?”
 
Although the other neither spoke nor made sign, the bartender construed his silence as acquiescence and continued, with a conscious glance at his own reflection while he adjusted his diamond scarf-pin: “Well, she can have me! I’ve got it fixed to meet her.”
 
“Bah! I guess not,” said the Kid, suddenly, with an inflection that startled the other from his preening. Then, as he went out, the man mused:
 
“Gee! Bronco’s got the worst eye in the camp! Makes me creep when he throws it on me with that muddy look. He acted like he was jealous.”
 
 
 
At noon the next day, as he prepared to go to the claim, Dextry’s partner burst in upon him. Glenister was dishevelled, and his eyes shone with intense excitement.
 
“What d’ you think they’ve done now?” he cried, as greeting.
 
“I dunno. What is it?”
 
“They’ve broken open the safe and taken our money.”
 
“What!”
 
The old man in turn was on his feet, the grudge which he had felt against Glenister in the past few days forgotten in this common misfortune.
 
“Yes, by Heaven, they’ve swiped our money—our tents, tools, teams, books, hose, and all of our personal property—everything! They threw Johnson off and took the whole works. I never heard of such a thing. I went out to the claim and they wouldn’t let me go near the workings. They’ve got every mine on Anvil Creek guarded the same way, and they aren’t going to let us come around even when they clean up. They told me so this morning.”
 
“But, look here,” demanded Dextry, sharply, “the money in that safe belongs to us. That’s money we brought in from the States. The court ’ain’t got no right to it. What kind of a damn law is that?”
 
“Oh, as to law, they don’t pay any attention to it any more,” said Glenister, bitterly. “I made a mistake in not killing the first man that set foot on the claim. I was a sucker, and now we’re up against a stiff game. The Swedes are in the same fix, too. This last order has left them groggy.”
 
“I don’t understand it yet,” said Dextry.
 
“Why, it’s this way. The Judge has issued what he calls an order enlarging the powers of the receiver, and it authorizes McNamara to take possession of everything on the claims—tents, tools, stores, and personal property of all kinds. It was issued last night without notice to our side, so Wheaton says, and they served it this morning early. I went out to see McNamara, and when I got there I found him in our private tent with the safe broken open.”
 
“ ‘What does this mean?’ I said. And then he showed me the new order.
 
“ ‘I’m responsible to the court for every penny of this money,’ said he, ‘and for every tool on the claim. In view of that I can’t allow you to go near the workings.’
 
“ ‘Not go near the workings?’ said I. ‘Do you mean you won’t let us see the clean-ups from our own mine? How do we know we’re getting a square deal if we don’t see the gold weighed?’
 
“ ‘I’m an officer of the court and under bond,’ said he, and the smiling triumph in his eyes made me crazy.
 
“ ‘You’re a lying thief,’ I said, looking at him square. ‘And you’re going too far. You played me for a fool once and made it stick, but it won’t work twice.’
 
“He looked injured and aggrieved and called in Voorhees, the marshal. I can’t grasp the thing at all; everybody seems to be against us, the Judge, the marshal, the prosecuting attorney—everybody. Yet they’ve done it all according to law, they claim, and have the soldiers to back them up.”
 
“It’s just as Mexico Mullins said,” Dextry stormed; “there’s a deal on of some kind. I’m goin’ up to the hotel an’ call on the Judge myself. I ’ain’t never seen him nor this McNamara, either. I allus want to look a man straight in the eyes once, then I know what course to foller in my dealings.”
 
“You’ll find them both,” said Glenister, “for McNamara rode into town behind me.”
 
The old prospector proceeded to the Golden Gate Hotel and inquired for Judge Stillman’s room. A boy attempted to take his name, but he seized him by the scruff of the neck and sat him in his seat, proceeding unannounced to the suite to which he had been directed. Hearing voices, he knocked, and then, without awaiting a summons, walked in.
 
The room was fitted like an office, with desk, table, type-writer, and law-books. Other rooms opened from it on both sides. Two men were talking earnestly—one gray-haired, smooth-shaven, and clerical, the other tall, picturesque, and masterful. With his first glance the miner knew that before him were the two he had come to see, and that in reality he had to deal with but one, the big man who shot at him the level glances.
 
“We are engaged,” said the Judge, “very busily engaged, sir. Will you call again in half an hour?”
 
Dextry looked him over carefully from head to foot, then turned his back on him and regarded the other. Neither he nor McNamara spoke, but their eyes were busy and each instinctively knew that here was a foe.
 
“What do you want?” McNamara inquired, finally.
 
“I just dropped in to get acquainted. My name is Dextry—Joe Dextry—from everywhere west of the Missouri—an’ your name is McNamara, ain’t it? This here, I reckon, is your little French poodle—eh?” indicating Stillman.
 
“What do you mean?” said McNamara, while the Judge murmured indignantly.
 
“Just what I say. However, that ain’t what I want to talk about. I don’t take no stock in such truck as judges an’ lawyers an’ orders of court. They ain’t intended to be took serious. They’re all right for children an’ Easterners an’ non compos mentis people, I s’pose, but I’ve always been my own judge, jury, an’ hangman, an’ I aim to continue workin’ my legislatif, executif, an’ judicial duties to the end of the string. You look out! My pardner is young an’ seems to like the idee of lettin’ somebody else run his business, so I’m goin’ to give him rein and let him amuse himself for a while with your dinky little writs an’ receiverships. But don’t go too far—you can rob the Swedes, ’cause Swedes ain’t entitled to have no money, an’ some other crook would get it if you didn’t, but don’t play me an’ Glenister fer Scandinavians. It’s a mistake. We’re white men, an’ I’m apt to come romancin’ up here with one of these an’ bust you so you won’t hold together durin’ the ceremonies.”
 
With his last words he made the slightest shifting movement, only a lifting shrug of the shoulder, yet in his palm lay a six-shooter. He had slipped it from his trousers band with the ease of long practice and absolute surety. Judge Stillman gasped and backed against the desk, but McNamara idly swung his leg as he sat sidewise on the table. His only sign of interest was a quickening of the eyes, a fact of which Dextry made mental note.
 
“Yes,” said the miner, disregarding the alarm of the lawyer, “you can wear this court in your vest-pocket like a Waterbury, if you want to, but if you don’t let me alone, I’ll uncoil its main-spring. That’s all.”
 
He replaced his weapon and, turning, walked out the door.
CHAPTER IX  SLUICE ROBBERS
“WE must have money,” said Glenister a few days later. “When McNamara jumped our safe he put us down and out. There’s no use fighting in this court any longer, for the Judge won’t let us work the ground ourselves, even if we give bond, and he won’t grant an appeal. He says his orders aren’t appealable. We ought to send Wheaton out to ’Frisco and have him take the case to the higher courts. Maybe he can get a writ of supersedeas.”
 
“I don’t rec’nize the name, but if it’s as bad as it sounds it’s sure horrible. Ain’t there no cure for it?”
 
“It simply means that the upper court would take the case away from this one.”
 
“Well, let’s send him out quick. Every day means ten thousand dollars to us. It ’ll take him a month to make the round trip, so I s’pose he ought to leave to-morrow on the Roanoke.”
 
“Yes, but where’s the money to do it with? McNamara has ours. My God! What a mess we’re in! What fools we’ve been, Dex! There’s a conspiracy here. I’m beginning to see it now that it’s too late. This man is looting our country under color of law, and figures on gutting all the mines before we can throw him off. That’s his game. He’ll work them as hard and as long as he can, and Heaven only knows what will become of the money. He must have big men behind him in order to fix a United States judge this way. Maybe he has the ’Frisco courts corrupted, too.”
 
“If he has, I’m goin’ to kill him,” said Dextry. “I’ve worked like a dog all my life, and now that I’ve struck pay I don’t aim to lose it. If Bill Wheaton can’t win out accordin’ to law, I’m goin’ to proceed accordin’ to justice.”
 
During the past two days the partners had haunted the court-room where their lawyer, together with the counsel for the Scandinavians, had argued and pleaded, trying every possible professional and unprofessional artifice in search of relief from the arbitrary rulings of the court, while hourly they had become more strongly suspicious of some sinister plot—some hidden, powerful understanding back of the Judge and the entire mechanism of justice. They had fought with the fury of men who battle for life, and had grown to hate the lines of Stillman’s vacillating face, the bluster of the district-attorney, and the smirking confidence of the clerks, for it seemed that they all worked mechanically, like toys, at the dictates of Alec McNamara. At last, when they had ceased, beaten and exhausted, they were too confused with technical phrases to grasp anything except the fact that relief was denied them; that their claims were to be worked by the receiver; and, as a crowning defeat, they learned that the Judge would move his court to St. Michael’s and hear no cases until he returned, a month later.
 
Meanwhile, McNamara hired every idle man he could lay hand upon, and ripped the placers open with double shifts. Every day a stream of yellow dust poured into the bank and was locked in his vaults, while those mine-owners who attempted to witness the clean-ups were ejected from their claims. The politician had worked with incredible swiftness and system, and a fortnight after landing he had made good his boast to Struve, and was in charge of every good claim in the district, the owners were ousted, their appeals argued and denied, and the court gone for thirty days, leaving him a clear field for his operations. He felt a contempt for most of his victims, who were slow-witted Swedes, grasping neither the purport nor the magnitude of his operation, and as to those litigants who were discerning enough to see its enormity, he trusted to his organization to thwart them.
 
The two partners had come to feel that they were beating against a wall, and had also come squarely to face the proposition that they were without funds wherewith to continue their battle. It was maddening for them to think of the daily robbery that they suffered, for the Midas turned out many ounces of gold at every shift; and more maddening to realize the receiver’s shrewdness in crippling them by his theft of the gold in their safe. That had been his crowning stroke.
 
“We MUST get money quick,” said Glenister. “Do you think we can borrow?”
 
“Borrow?” sniffed Dextry. “Folks don’t lend money in Alaska.”
 
They relapsed into a moody silence.
 
“I met a feller this mornin’ that’s workin’ on the Midas,” the old man resumed. “He came in town fer a pair of gum boots, an’ he says they’ve run into awful rich ground—so rich that they have to clean up every morning when the night shift goes off ’cause the riffles clog with gold.”
 
“Think of it!” Glenister growled. “If we had even a part of one of those clean-ups we could send Wheaton outside.”
 
In the midst of his bitterness a thought struck him. He made as though to speak, then closed his mouth; but his partner’s eyes were on him, filled with a suppressed but growing fire. Dextry lowered his voice cautiously:
 
“There’ll be twenty thousand dollars in them sluices to-night at midnight.”
 
Glenister stared back while his pulse pounded at something that lay in the other’s words.
 
“It belongs to us,” the young man said. “There wouldn’t be anything wrong about it, would there?”
 
Dextry sneered. “Wrong! Right! Them is fine an’ soundin’ titles in a mess like this. What do they mean? I tell you, at midnight to-night Alec McNamara will have twenty thousand dollars of our money—”
 
“God! What would happen if they caught us?” whispered the younger, following out his thought. “They’d never let us get off the claim alive. He couldn’t find a better excuse to shoot us down and get rid of us. If we came up before this Judge for trial, we’d go to Sitka for twenty years.”
 
“Sure! But it’s our only chance. I’d ruther die on the Midas in a fair fight than set here bitin’ my hangnails. I’m growin’ old and I won’t never make another strike. As to bein’ caught—them’s our chances. I won’t be took alive—I promise you that—and before I go I’ll get my satisfy. Castin’ things up, that’s about all a man gets in this vale of tears, jest satisfaction of one kind or another. It ’ll be a fight in the open, under the stars, with the clean, wet moss to lie down on, and not a scrappin’-match of freak phrases and law-books inside of a stinkin’ court-room. The cards is shuffled and in the box, pardner, and the game is started. If we’re due to win, we’ll win. If we’re due to lose, we’ll lose. These things is all figgered out a thousand years back. Come on, boy. Are you game?”
 
“Am I game?” Glenister’s nostrils dilated and his voice rose a tone. “Am I game? I’m with you till the big cash-in, and Lord have mercy on any man that blocks our game to-night.”
 
“We’ll need another hand to help us,” said Dextry. “Who can we get?”
 
At that moment, as though in answer, the door opened with the scant ceremony that friends of the frontier are wont to observe, admitting the attenuated, flapping, dome-crowned figure of Slapjack Simms, and Dextry fell upon him with the hunger of a wolf.
 
 
 
It was midnight and over the dark walls of the valley peered a multitude of stars, while away on the southern horizon there glowed a subdued effulgence as though from hidden fires beneath the Gold God’s caldron, or as though the phosphorescence of Bering had spread upward into the skies. Although each night grew longer, it was not yet necessary to light the men at work in the cuts. There were perhaps two hours in which it was difficult to see at a distance, but the dawn came early, hence no provision had been made for torches.
 
Five minutes before the hour the night-shift boss lowered the gates in the dam, and, as the rush from the sluices subsided, his men quit work and climbed the bluff to the mess tent. The dwellings of the Midas, as has already been explained, sat back from the creek at a distance of a city block, the workings being thus partially hidden under the brow of the steep bank.
 
It is customary to leave a watchman in the pit during the noon and midnight hours, not only to see that strangers preserve a neutral attitude, but also to watch the waste-gates and water supply. The night man of the Midas had been warned of his responsibility, and, knowing that much gold lay in his keeping, was disposed to gaze on the curious-minded with the sourness of suspicion. Therefore, as a man leading a packhorse approached out of the gloom of the creek-trail, his eyes were on him from the moment he appeared. The road wound along the gravel of the bars and passed in proximity to the flumes. However, the wayfarer paid no attention to them, and the watchman detected an explanatory weariness in his slow gait.
 
“Some prospector getting in from a trip,” he thought.
 
The stranger stopped, scratched a match, and, as he undertook to light his pipe, the observer caught the mahogany shine of a negro’s face. The match sputtered out and then came impatient blasphemy as he searched for another.
 
“Evenin’, sah! You-all oblige me with a match?” He addressed the watcher on the bank above, and, without waiting a reply, began to climb upward.
 
No smoker on the trail will deny the luxury of a light to the most humble, so as the negro gained his level the man reached forth to accommodate him. Without warning, the black man leaped forward with the ferocity of an animal and struck the other a fearful blow. The watchman sank with a faint, startled cry, and the African dragged him out of sight over the brow of the bank, where he rapidly tied him hand and foot, stuffing a gag into his mouth. At the same moment two other figures rounded the bend below and approached. They were mounted and leading a third saddle-horse, as well as other pack-animals. Reaching the workings, they dismounted. Then began a strange procedure, for one man clambered upon the sluices and, with a pick, ripped out the riffles. This was a matter of only a few seconds; then, seizing a shovel, he transferred the concentrates which lay in the bottom of the boxes into canvas sacks which his companion held. As each bag was filled, it was tied and dumped into the cut. They treated but four boxes in this way, leaving the lower two-thirds of the flume untouched, for Anvil Creek gold is coarse and the heart of the clean-up lies where it is thrown in. Gathering the sacks together, they lashed them upon the pack-animals, then mounted the second string of sluices and began as before. Throughout it all they worked with feverish haste and in unbroken silence, every moment flashing quick glances at the figure of the lookout who stood on the crest above, half dimmed in the shadow of a willow clump. Judging by their rapidity and sureness, they were expert miners.
 
From the tent came the voices of the night shift at table, and the faint rattle of dishes, while the canvas walls glowed from the lights within like great fire-flies hidden in the grass. The foreman, finishing his meal, appeared at the door of the mess tent, and, pausing to accustom his eyes to the gloom, peered perfunctorily towards the creek. The watchman detached himself from the shadow, moving out into plain sight, and the boss turned back. The two men below were now working on the sluices which lay close under the bank and were thus hidden from the tent.
 
 
 
McNamara’s description of Anvil Creek’s riches had fired Helen Chester with the desire to witness a clean-up, so they had ridden out from town in time for supper at the claim. She had not known whither he led her, only understanding that provision for her entertainment would be made with the superintendent’s wife. Upon recognizing the Midas, she had endeavored to question him as to why her friends had been dispossessed, and he had answered, as it seemed, straight and true.
 
The ground was in dispute, he said—another man claimed it—and while the litigation pended he was in charge for the court, to see that neither party received injury. He spoke adroitly, and it satisfied her to have the proposition resolved into such simplicity.
 
She had come prepared to spend the night and witness the early morning operation, so the receiver made the most of his opportunity. He showed her over the workings, explaining the many things that were strange to her. Not only was he in himself a fascinating figure to any woman, but wherever he went men regarded him deferentially, and nothing affects a woman’s judgment more promptly than this obvious sign of power. He spent the evening with her, talking of his early days and the things he had done in the West, his story matching the picturesqueness of her canvas-walled quarters with their rough furnishings of skins and blankets. Being a keen observer as well as a finished raconteur, he had woven a spell of words about the girl, leaving her in a state of tumult and indecision when at last, towards midnight, he retired to his own tent. She knew to what end all this was working, and yet knew not what her answer would be when the question came which lay behind it all. At moments she felt the wonderful attraction of the man, and still there was some distrust of him which she could not fathom. Again her thoughts reverted to Glenister, the impetuous, and she compared the two, so similar in some ways, so utterly opposed in others.
 
It was when she heard the night shift at their meal that she threw a silken shawl about her head, stepped into the cool night, and picked her way down towards the roar of the creek. “A breath of air and then to bed,” she thought. She saw the tall figure of the watchman and made for him. He seemed oddly interested in her approach, watching her very closely, almost as though alarmed. It was doubtless because there were so few women out here, or possibly on account of the lateness of the hour. Away with conventions! This was the land of instinct and impulse. She would talk to him. The man drew his hat more closely about his face and moved off as she came up. Glenister had been in her thoughts a moment since, and she now noted that here was another with the same great, square shoulders and erect head. Then she saw with a start that this one was a negro. He carried a Winchester and seemed to watch her carefully, yet with indecision.
 
To express her interest and to break the silence, she questioned him, but at the sound of her voice he stepped towards her and spoke roughly.
 
“What!”
 
Then he paused, and stammered in a strangely altered and unnatural voice:
 
“Yass’m. I’m the watchman.”
 
She noted two other darkies at work below and was vaguely surprised, not so much at their presence, as at the manner in which they moved, for they seemed under stress of some great haste, running hither and yon. She saw horses standing in the trail and sensed something indefinably odd and alarming in the air. Turning to the man, she opened her mouth to speak, when from the rank grass under her feet came a noise which set her a-tingle, and at which her suspicions leaped full to the solution. It was the groan of a man. Again he gave voice to his pain, and she knew that she stood face to face with something sinister. Tales of sluice robbers had come to her, and rumors of the daring raids into which men were lured by the yellow sheen—and yet this was incredible. A hundred men lay within sound of her voice; she could hear their laughter; one was whistling a popular refrain. A quarter-mile away on every hand were other camps; a scream from her would bring them all. Nonsense, this was no sluice robbery—and then the man in the bushes below moaned for the third time.
 
“What is that?” she said.
 
Without reply the negro lowered the muzzle of his rifle till it covered her breast and at the same time she heard the double click of the hammer.
 
“Keep still and don’t move,” he warned. “We’re desperate and we can’t take any chances, Miss.”
 
“Oh, you are stealing the gold—”
 
She was wildly frightened, yet stood still while the lookout anxiously divided his attention between her and the tents above until his companions signalled him that they were through and the horses were loaded. Then he spoke:
 
“I don’t know what to do with you, but I guess I’ll tie you up.”
 
“What!” she said.
 
“I’m going to tie and gag you so you can’t holler.”
 
“Oh, don’t you dare!” she cried, fiercely. “I’ll stand right here till you’ve gone and I won’t scream. I promise.” She looked up at him appealingly, at which he dipped his head, so that she caught only a glimpse of his face, and then backed away.
 
“All right! Don’t try it, because I’ll be hidden in those bushes yonder at the bend and I’ll keep you covered till the others are gone.” He leaped down the bank, ran to the cavalcade, mounted quickly, and the three lashed their horses into a run, disappearing up the trail around the sharp curve. She heard the blows of their quirts as they whipped the packhorses.
 
They were long out of sight before the girl moved or made sound, although she knew that none of the three had paused at the bend. She only stood and gazed, for as they galloped off she had heard the scrap of a broken sentence. It was but one excited word, sounding through the rattle of hoofs—her own name—“Helen”; and yet because of it she did not voice the alarm, but rather began to piece together, bit by bit, the strange points of this adventure. She recalled the outlines of her captor with a wrinkle of perplexity. Her fright disappeared entirely, giving place to intense excitement. “No, no—it can’t be—and yet I wonder if it is!” she cried. “Oh, I wonder if it could be!” She opened her lips to cry aloud, then hesitated. She started towards the tents, then paused, and for many moments after the hoof-beats had died out she stayed undecided. Surely she wished to give the signal, to force the fierce pursuit. What meant this robbery, this defiance of the law, of her uncle’s edicts and of McNamara? They were common thieves, criminals, outlaws, these men, deserving punishment, and yet she recalled a darker night, when she herself had sobbed and quivered with the terrors of pursuit and two men had shielded her with their bodies.
 
She turned and sped towards the tents, bursting in through the canvas door; instantly every man rose to his feet at sight of her pallid face, her flashing eyes, and rumpled hair.
 
“Sluice robbers!” she cried, breathlessly. “Quick! A hold-up! The watchman is hurt!”
 
A roar shook the night air, and the men poured out past her, while the day shift came tumbling forth from every quarter in various stages of undress.
 
“Where? Who did it? Where did they go?”
 
McNamara appeared among them, fierce and commanding, seeming to grasp the situation intuitively, without explanation from her.
 
“Come on, men. We’ll run ’em down. Get out the horses. Quick!”
 
He was mounted even as he spoke, and others joined him. Then turning, he waved his long arm up the valley towards the mountains. “Divide into squads of five and cover the hills! Run down to Discovery, one of you, and telephone to town for Voorhees and a posse.”
 
As they made ready to ride away, the girl cried:
 
“Stop! Not that way. They went down the gulch—three negroes.”
 
She pointed out of the valley, towards the dim glow on the southern horizon, and the cavalcade rode away into the gloom.
CHAPTER X  THE WIT OF AN ADVENTURESS
UP creek the three negroes fled, past other camps, to where the stream branched. Here they took to the right and urged their horses along a forsaken trail to the head-waters of the little tributary and over the low saddle. They had endeavored to reach unfrequented paths as soon as possible in order that they might pass unnoticed. Before quitting the valley they halted their heaving horses, and, selecting a stagnant pool, scoured the grease paint from their features as best they could. Their ears were strained for sounds of pursuit, but, as the moments passed and none came, the tension eased somewhat and they conversed guardedly. As the morning light spread they crossed the moss-capped summit of the range, but paused again, and, removing two saddles, hid them among the rocks. Slapjack left the others here and rode southward down the Dry Creek Trail towards town, while the partners shifted part of the weight from the overloaded packmules to the remaining saddle-animals and continued eastward along the barren comb of hills on foot, leading the five horses.
 
“It don’t seem like we’ll get away this easy,” said Dextry, scanning the back trail. “If we do, I’ll be tempted to foller the business reg’lar. This grease paint on my face makes me smell like a minstrel man. I bet we’ll get some bully press notices to-morrow.”
 
“I wonder what Helen was doing there,” Glenister answered, irrelevantly, for he had been more shaken by his encounter with her than at his part in the rest of the enterprise, and his mind, which should have been busied with the flight, held nothing but pictures of her as she stood in the half darkness under the fear of his Winchester. “What if she ever learned who that black ruffian was!” He quailed at the thought.
 
“Say, Dex, I am going to marry that girl.”
 
“I dunno if you be or not,” said Dextry. “Better watch McNamara.”
 
“What!” The younger man stopped and stared. “What do you mean?”
 
“Go on. Don’t stop the horses. I ain’t blind. I kin put two an’ two together.”
 
“You’ll never put those two together. Nonsense! Why, the man’s a rascal. I wouldn’t let him have her. Besides, it couldn’t be. She’ll find him out. I love her so much that—oh, my feelings are too big to talk about.” He moved his hands eloquently. “You can’t understand.”
 
“Um-m! I s’pose not,” grunted Dextry, but his eyes were level and held the light of the past.
 
“He may be a rascal,” the old man continued, after a little; “I’ll put in with you on that; but he’s a handsome devil, and, as for manners, he makes you look like a logger. He’s a brave man, too. Them three qualities are trump-cards and warranted to take most any queen in the human deck—red, white, or yellow.”
 
“If he dares,” growled Glenister, while his thick brows came forward and ugly lines hardened in his face.
 
In the gray of the early morning they descended the foot-hills into the wide valley of the Nome River and filed out across the rolling country to the river bluffs where, cleverly concealed among the willows, was a rocker. This they set up, then proceeded to wash the dirt from the sacks carefully, yet with the utmost speed, for there was serious danger of discovery. It was wonderful, this treasure of the richest ground since the days of ’49, and the men worked with shining eyes and hands a-tremble. The gold was coarse, and many ragged, yellow lumps, too large to pass through the screen, rolled in the hopper, while the aprons bellied with its weight. In the pans which they had provided there grew a gleaming heap of wet, raw gold.
 
Shortly, by divergent routes, the partners rode unnoticed into town, and into the excitement of the hold-up news, while the tardy still lingered over their breakfasts. Far out in the roadstead lay the Roanoke, black smoke pouring from her stack. A tug was returning from its last trip to her.
 
Glenister forced his lathered horse down to the beach and questioned the longshoremen who hung about.
 
“No; it’s too late to get aboard—the last tender is on its way back,” they informed him. “If you want to go to the ‘outside’ you’ll have to wait for the fleet. That only means another week, and—there she blows now.”
 
A ribbon of white mingled with the velvet from the steamer’s funnel and there came a slow, throbbing, farewell blast.
 
Glenister’s jaw clicked and squared.
 
“Quick! You men!” he cried to the sailors. “I want the lightest dory on the beach and the strongest oarsmen in the crowd. I’ll be back in five minutes. There’s a hundred dollars in it for you if we catch that ship.”
 
He whirled and spurred up through the mud of the streets. Bill Wheaton was snoring luxuriously when wrenched from his bed by a dishevelled man who shook him into wakefulness and into a portion of his clothes, with a storm of excited instructions. The lawyer had neither time nor opportunity for expostulation, for Glenister snatched a valise and swept into it a litter of documents from the table.
 
“Hurry up, man,” he yelled, as the lawyer dived frantically about his office in a rabbit-like hunt for items. “My Heavens! Are you dead? Wake up! The ship’s leaving.” With sleep still in his eyes Wheaton was dragged down the street to the beach, where a knot had assembled to witness the race. As they tumbled into the skiff, willing hands ran it out into the surf on the crest of a roller. A few lifting heaves and they were over the bar with the men at the oars bending the white ash at every swing.
 
“I guess I didn’t forget anything,” gasped Wheaton as he put on his coat. “I got ready yesterday, but I couldn’t find you last night, so I thought the deal was off.”
 
Glenister stripped off his coat and, facing the bow, pushed upon the oars at every stroke, thus adding his strength to that of the oarsmen. They crept rapidly out from the beach, eating up the two miles that lay towards the ship. He urged the men with all his power till the sweat soaked through their clothes and, under their clinging shirts, the muscles stood out like iron. They had covered half the distance when Wheaton uttered a cry and Glenister desisted from his work with a curse. The Roanoke was moving slowly.
 
The rowers rested, but the young man shouted at them to begin again, and, seizing a boat-hook, stuck it into the arms of his coat. He waved this on high while the men redoubled their efforts. For many moments they hung in suspense, watching the black hull as it gathered speed, and then, as they were about to cease their effort, a puff of steam burst from its whistle and the next moment a short toot of recognition reached them. Glenister wiped the moisture from his brow and grinned at Wheaton.
 
A quarter of an hour later, as they lay heaving below the ship’s steel sides, he thrust a heavy buckskin sack into the lawyer’s hand.
 
“There’s money to win the fight, Bill. I don’t know how much, but it’s enough. God bless you. Hurry back!”
 
A sailor cast them a whirling rope, up which Wheaton clambered; then, tying the gripsack to its end, they sent it after.
 
“Important!” the young man yelled at the officer on the bridge. “Government business.” He heard a muffled clang in the engine-room, the thrash of the propellers followed, and the big ship glided past.
 
As Glenister dragged himself up the beach, upon landing, Helen Chester called to him, and made room for him beside her. It had never been necessary to call him to her side before; and equally unfamiliar was the abashment, or perhaps physical weariness, that led the young man to sink back in the warm sand with a sigh of relief. She noted that, for the first time, the audacity was gone from his eyes.
 
“I watched your race,” she began. “It was very exciting and I cheered for you.”
 
He smiled quietly.
 
“What made you keep on after the ship started? I should have given up—and cried.”
 
“I never give up anything that I want,” he said.
 
“Have you never been forced to? Then it is because you are a man. Women have to sacrifice a great deal.”
 
Helen expected him to continue to the effect that he would never give her up—it was in accordance with his earlier presumption—but he was silent; and she was not sure that she liked him as well thus as when he overwhelmed her with the boldness of his suit. For Glenister it was delightful, after the perils of the night, to rest in the calm of her presence and to feel dumbly that she was near. She saw him secretly caress a fold of her dress.
 
If only she had not the memory of that one night on the ship. “Still, he is trying to make amends in the best way he can,” she thought. “Though, of course, no woman could care for a man who would do such a thing.” Yet she thrilled at the thought of how he had thrust his body between her and danger; how, but for his quick, insistent action, she would have failed in escaping from the pest ship, failed in her mission, and met death on the night of her landing. She owed him much.
 
“Did you hear what happened to the good ship Ohio?” she asked.
 
“No; I’ve been too busy to inquire. I was told the health officers quarantined her when she arrived, that’s all.”
 
“She was sent to Egg Island with every one aboard. She has been there more than a month now and may not get away this summer.”
 
“What a disappointment for the poor devils on her!”
 
“Yes, and only for what you did, I should be one of them,” Helen remarked.
 
“I didn’t do much,” he said. “The fighting part is easy. It’s not half so hard as to give up your property and lie still while—”
 
“Did you do that because I asked you to—because I asked you to put aside the old ways?” A wave of compassion swept over her.
 
“Certainly,” he answered. “It didn’t come easy, but—”
 
“Oh, I thank you,” said she. “I know it is all for the best. Uncle Arthur wouldn’t do anything wrong, and Mr. McNamara is an honorable man.”
 
He turned towards her to speak, but refrained. He could not tell her what he felt certain of. She believed in her own blood and in her uncle’s friends—and it was not for him to speak of McNamara. The rules of the game sealed his lips.
 
She was thinking again, “If only you had not acted as you did.” She longed to help him now in his trouble as he had helped her, but what could she do? The law was such a confusing, intricate, perplexing thing.
 
“I spent last night at the Midas,” she told him, “and rode back early this morning. That was a daring hold-up, wasn’t it?”
 
“What hold-up?”
 
“Why, haven’t you heard the news?”
 
“No,” he answered, steadily. “I just got up.”
 
“Your claim was robbed. Three men overcame the watchman at midnight and cleaned the boxes.”
 
His simulation of excited astonishment was perfect and he rained a shower of questions upon her. She noted with approval that he did not look her in the eye, however. He was not an accomplished liar. Now McNamara had a countenance of iron. Unconsciously she made comparison, and the young man at her side did not lose thereby.
 
“Yes, I saw it all,” she concluded, after recounting the details. “The negro wanted to bind me so that I couldn’t give the alarm, but his chivalry prevented. He was a most gallant darky.”
 
“What did you do when they left?”
 
“Why, I kept my word and waited until they were out of sight, then I roused the camp, and set Mr. McNamara and his men right after them down the gulch.”
 
“Down the gulch!” spoke Glenister, off his guard.
 
“Yes, of course. Did you think they went up-stream?” She was looking squarely at him now, and he dropped his eyes. “No, the posse started in that direction, but I put them right.” There was an odd light in her glance, and he felt the blood drumming in his ears.
 
She sent them down-stream! So that was why there had been no pursuit! Then she must suspect—she must know everything! Glenister was stunned. Again his love for the girl surged tumultuously within him and demanded expression. But Miss Chester, no longer feeling sure that she had the situation in hand, had already started to return to the hotel. “I saw the men distinctly,” she told him, before they separated, “and I could identify them all.”
 
At his own house Glenister found Dextry removing the stains of the night’s adventure.
 
“Miss Chester recognized us last night,” he announced.
 
“How do you know?”
 
“She told me so just now, and, what’s more, she sent McNamara and his crowd down the creek instead of up. That’s why we got away so easily.”
 
“Well, well—ain’t she a brick? She’s even with us now. By-the-way, I wonder how much we cleaned up, anyhow—let’s weigh it.” Going to the bed, Dextry turned back the blankets, exposing four moose-skin sacks, wet and heavy, where he had thrown them.
 
“There must have been twenty thousand dollars with what I gave Wheaton,” said Glenister.
 
At that moment, without warning, the door was flung open, and as the young man jerked the blankets into place he whirled, snatched the six-shooter that Dextry had discarded, and covered the entrance.
 
“Don’t shoot, boy!” cried the new-comer, breathlessly. “My, but you’re nervous!”
 
Glenister dropped his gun. It was Cherry Malotte; and, from her heaving breast and the flying colors in her cheeks, the men saw she had been running. She did not give them time to question, but closed and locked the door while the words came tumbling from her:
 
“They’re on to you, boys—you’d better duck out quick. They’re on their way up here now.”
 
“What!”
 
“Who?”
 
“Quick! I heard McNamara and Voorhees, the marshal, talking. Somebody has spotted you for the hold-ups. They’re on their way now, I tell you. I sneaked out by the back way and came here through the mud. Say, but I’m a sight!” She stamped her trimly booted feet and flirted her skirt.
 
“I don’t savvy what you mean,” said Dextry, glancing at his partner warningly. “We ain’t done nothin’.”
 
“Well, it’s all right then. I took a long chance so you could make a get-away if you wanted to, because they’ve got warrants for you for that sluice robbery last night. Here they are now.” She darted to the window, the men peering over her shoulder. Coming up the narrow walk they saw Voorhees, McNamara, and three others.
 
The house stood somewhat isolated and well back on the tundra, so that any one approaching it by the planking had an unobstructed view of the premises. Escape was impossible, for the back door led out into the ankle-deep puddles of the open prairie; and it was now apparent that a sixth man had made a circuit and was approaching from the rear.
 
“My God! They’ll search the place,” said Dextry, and the men looked grimly in each other’s faces.
 
Then in a flash Glenister stripped back the blankets and seized the “pokes,” leaping into the back room. In another instant he returned with them and faced desperately the candid bareness of the little room that they lived and slept in. Nothing could be hidden; it was folly to think of it. There was a loft overhead, he remembered, hopefully, then realized that the pursuers would search there first of all.
 
“I told you he was a hard fighter,” said Dextry, as the quick footsteps grew louder. “He ain’t no fool,neither. ’Stead of our bein’ caught in the mountains, I reckon we’ll shoot it out here. We should have cached that gold somewhere.”
 
He spun the cylinder of his blackened Colt, while his face grew hard and vulture-like.
 
Meanwhile, Cherry Malotte watched the hunted look in Glenister’s face grow wilder and then stiffen into the stubbornness of a man at bay. The posse was at the door now, knocking. The three inside stood rigid and strained. Then Glenister tossed his burden on the bed.
 
“Go into the back room, Cherry; there’s going to be trouble.”
 
“Who’s there?” inquired Dextry through the door, to gain time. Suddenly, without a word, the girl glided to the hot-blast heater, now cold and empty, which stood in a corner of the room. These stoves, used widely in the North, are vertical iron cylinders into which coal is poured from above. She lifted the lid and peered in to find it a quarter full of dead ashes, then turned with shining eyes and parted lips to Glenister. He caught the hint, and in an instant the four sacks were dropped softly into the feathery bottom and the ashes raked over. The daring manœuvre was almost as quick as the flash of woman’s wit that prompted it, and was carried through while the answer to Dextry’s question was still unspoken.
 
Then Glenister opened the door carelessly and admitted the group of men.
 
“We’ve got a search-warrant to look through your house,” said Voorhees.
 
“What are you looking for?”
 
“Gold-dust from Anvil Creek.”
 
“All right—search away.”
 
They rapidly scoured the premises, covering every inch, paying no heed to the girl, who watched them with indifferent eyes, nor to the old man, who glared at their every movement. Glenister was carelessly sarcastic, although he kept his right arm free, while beneath his sang-froid was a thoroughly trained alertness.
 
McNamara directed the search with a manner wholly lacking in his former mock courtesy. It was as though he had been soured by the gall of defeat. The mask had fallen off now, and his character showed—insistent, overbearing, cruel. Towards the partners he preserved a contemptuous silence.
 
The invaders ransacked thoroughly, while a dozen times the hearts of Cherry Malotte and her two companions stopped, then lunged onward, as McNamara or Voorhees approached, then passed the stove. At last Voorhees lifted the lid and peered into its dark interior. At the same instant the girl cried out, sharply, flinging herself from her position, while the marshal jerked his head back in time to see her dash upon Dextry.
 
“Don’t! Don’t!” She cried her appeal to the old man. “Keep cool. You’ll be sorry, Dex—they’re almost through.”
 
The officer had not seen any movement on Dextry’s part, but doubtless her quick eye had detected signs of violence. McNamara emerged, glowering, from the back room at that moment.
 
“Let them hunt,” the girl was saying, while Dextry stared dazedly over her head. “They won’t find anything. Keep cool and don’t act rash.”
 
Voorhees’s duties sat uncomfortably upon him at the best, and, looking at the smouldering eyes of the two men, he became averse to further search in a powdery household whose members itched to shoot him in the back.
 
“It isn’t here,” he reported; but the politician only scowled, then spoke for the first time directly to the partners:
 
“I’ve got warrants for both of you and I’m tempted to take you in, but I won’t. I’m not through yet—not by any means. I’ll get you—get you both.” He turned out of the door, followed by the marshal, who called off his guards, and the group filed back along the walk.
 
“Say, you’re a jewel, Cherry. You’ve saved us twice. You caught Voorhees just in time. My heart hit my palate when he looked into that stove, but the next instant I wanted to laugh at Dextry’s expression.”
 
Impulsively Glenister laid his hands upon her shoulders. At his look and touch her throat swelled, her bosom heaved, and the silken lids fluttered until she seemed choked by a very flood of sweet womanliness. She blushed like a little maid and laughed a timid, broken laugh; then pulling herself together, the merry, careless tone came into her voice and her cheeks grew cool and clear.
 
“You wouldn’t trust me at first, eh? Some day you’ll find that your old friends are the best, after all.”
 
And as she left them she added, mockingly:
 
“Say, you’re a pair of ‘shine’ desperadoes. You need a governess.”
 
 
 
CHAPTER XI  WHEREIN A WRIT AND A RIOT FAIL
A raw, gray day with a driving drizzle from seaward and a leaden rack of clouds drifting low matched the sullen, fitful mood of Glenister.
 
During the last month he had chafed and fretted like an animal in leash for word of Wheaton. This uncertainty, this impotent waiting with folded hands, was maddening to one of his spirit. He could apply himself to no fixed duty, for the sense of his wrong preyed on him fiercely, and he found himself haunting the vicinity of the Midas, gazing at it from afar, grasping hungrily for such scraps of news as chanced to reach him. McNamara allowed access to none but his minions, so the partners knew but vaguely of what happened on their property, even though, under fiction of law, it was being worked for their protection.
 
No steps regarding a speedy hearing of the case were allowed, and the collusion between Judge Stillman and the receiver had become so generally recognized that there were uneasy mutterings and threats in many quarters. Yet, although the politician had by now virtually absorbed all the richest properties in the district and worked them through his hirelings, the people of Nome as a whole did not grasp the full turpitude of the scheme nor the system’s perfect working.
 
Strange to say, Dextry, the fire-eater, had assumed an Oriental patience quite foreign to his peppery disposition, and spent much of his time in the hills prospecting.
 
On this day, as the clouds broke, about noon, close down on the angry horizon a drift of smoke appeared, shortly resolving itself into a steamer. She lay to in the offing, and through his glasses Glenister saw that it was the Roanoke. As the hours passed and no boat put off, he tried to hire a crew, but the longshoremen spat wisely and shook their heads as they watched the surf.
 
“There’s the devil of an undertow settin’ along this beach,” they told him, “and the water’s too cold to drownd in comfortable.” So he laid firm hands upon his impatience.
 
Every day meant many dollars to the watcher, and yet it seemed that nature was resolute in thwarting him, for that night the wind freshened and daylight saw the ship hugging the lee of Sledge Island, miles to the westward, while the surf, white as boiling milk, boomed and thundered against the shore.
 
Word had gone through the street that Bill Wheaton was aboard with a writ, or a subpœna, or an alibi, or whatever was necessary to put the “kibosh” on McNamara, so public excitement grew. McNamara hoarded his gold in the Alaska Bank, and it was taken for granted that there would lie the scene of the struggle. No one supposed for an instant that the usurper would part with the treasure peaceably.
 
On the third morning the ship lay abreast of the town again and a life-boat was seen to make off from her, whereupon the idle population streamed towards the beach.
 
“She’ll make it to the surf all right, but then watch out.”
 
“We’d better make ready to haul ’em out,” said another. “It’s mighty dangerous.” And sure enough, as the skiff came rushing in through the breakers she was caught.
 
She had made it past the first line, soaring over the bar on a foamy roller-crest like a storm-driven gull winging in towards the land. The wiry figure of Bill Wheaton crouched in the stern while two sailors fought with their oars. As they gathered for their rush through the last zone of froth, a great comber rose out of the sea behind them, rearing high above their heads. The crowd at the surf’s edge shouted. The boat wavered, sucked back into the ocean’s angry maw, and with a crash the deluge engulfed them. There remained nothing but a swirling flood through which the life-boat emerged bottom up, amid a tangle of oars, gratings, and gear.
 
Men rushed into the water, and the next roller pounded them back upon the marble-hard sand. There came the sound of splitting wood, and then a group swarmed in waist-deep and bore out a dripping figure. It was a hempen-headed seaman, who shook the water from his mane and grinned when his breath had come.
 
A step farther down the beach the by-standers seized a limp form which the tide rolled to them. It was the second sailor, his scalp split from a blow of the gunwale. Nowhere was Wheaton.
 
Glenister had plunged to the rescue first, a heaving-line about his middle, and although buffeted about he had reached the wreck, only to miss sight of the lawyer utterly. He had time for but a glance when he was drawn outward by the undertow till the line at his waist grew taut, then the water surged over him and he was hurled high up on the beach again. He staggered dizzily back to the struggle, when suddenly a wave lifted the capsized cutter and righted it, and out from beneath shot the form of Wheaton, grimly clutching the life-ropes. They brought him in choking and breathless.
 
“I got it,” he said, slapping his streaming breast. “It’s all right, Glenister. I knew what delay meant so I took a long chance with the surf.” The terrific ordeal he had undergone had blanched him to the lips, his legs wabbled uncertainly, and he would have fallen but for the young man, who thrust an arm about his waist and led him up into the town.
 
“I went before the Circuit Court of Appeals in ’Frisco,” he explained later, “and they issued orders allowing an appeal from this court and gave me a writ of supersedeas directed against old Judge Stillman. That takes the litigation out of his hands altogether, and directs McNamara to turn over the Midas and all the gold he’s got. What do you think of that? I did better than I expected.”
 
Glenister wrung his hand silently while a great satisfaction came upon him. At last this waiting was over and his peaceful yielding to injustice had borne fruit; had proven the better course after all, as the girl had prophesied. He could go to her now with clean hands. The mine was his again. He would lay it at her feet, telling her once more of his love and the change it was working in him. He would make her see it, make her see that beneath the harshness his years in the wild had given him, his love for her was gentle and true and all-absorbing. He would bid her be patient till she saw he had mastered himself, till he could come with his soul in harness.
 
“I am glad I didn’t fight when they jumped us,” he said. “Now we’ll get our property back and all the money they took out—that is, if McNamara hasn’t salted it.”
 
“Yes; all that’s necessary is to file the documents, then serve the Judge and McNamara. You’ll be back on Anvil Creek to-morrow.”
 
Having placed their documents on record at the court-house, the two men continued to McNamara’s office. He met them with courtesy.
 
“I heard you had a narrow escape this morning, Mr. Wheaton. Too bad! What can I do for you?”
 
The lawyer rapidly outlined his position and stated in conclusion:
 
“I filed certified copies of these orders with the clerk of the court ten minutes ago, and now I make formal demand upon you to turn over the Midas to Messrs. Glenister and Dextry, and also to return all the gold-dust in your safe-deposit boxes in accordance with this writ.” He handed his documents to McNamara, who tossed them on his desk without examination.
 
“Well,” said the politician, quietly, “I won’t do it.”
 
Had he been slapped in the face the attorney would not have been more astonished.
 
“Why—you—”
 
“I won’t do it, I said,” McNamara repeated, sharply. “Don’t think for a minute that I haven’t gone into this fight armed for everything. Writs of supersedeas! Bah!” He snapped his fingers.
 
“We’ll see whether you’ll obey or not,” said Wheaton; and when he and Glenister were outside he continued:
 
“Let’s get to the Judge quick.”
 
As they neared the Golden Gate Hotel they spied McNamara entering. It was evident that he had slipped from the rear door of his office and beaten them to the judicial ear.
 
“I don’t like that,” said Glenister. “He’s up to something.”
 
So it appeared, for they were fifteen minutes in gaining access to the magistrate and then found McNamara with him. Both men were astounded at the change in Stillman’s appearance. During the last month his weak face had shrunk and altered until vacillation was betrayed in every line, and he had acquired the habit of furtively watching McNamara’s slightest movement. It seemed that the part he played sat heavily upon him.
 
The Judge examined the papers perfunctorily, and, although his air was deliberate, his fingers made clumsy work of it. At last he said:
 
“I regret that I am forced to doubt the authenticity of these documents.”
 
“My Heavens, man!” Wheaton cried. “They’re certified copies of orders from your superior court. They grant the appeal that you have denied us and take the case out of your hands altogether. Yes—and they order this man to surrender the mine and everything connected with it. Now, sir, we want you to enforce these orders.”
 
Stillman glanced at the silent man in the window and replied:
 
“You will, of course, proceed regularly and make application in court in the proper way, but I tell you now that I won’t do anything in the matter.”
 
Wheaton stared at him fixedly until the old man snapped out:
 
“You say they are certified copies. How do I know they are? The signatures may all be false. Maybe you signed them yourself.”
 
The lawyer grew very white at this and stammered until Glenister drew him out of the room.
 
“Come, come,” he said, “we’ll carry this thing through in open court. Maybe his nerve will go back on him then. McNamara has him hypnotized, but he won’t dare refuse to obey the orders of the Circuit Court of Appeals.”
 
“He won’t, eh? Well, what do you think he’s doing right now?” said Wheaton. “I must think. This is the boldest game I ever played in. They told me things while I was in ’Frisco which I couldn’t believe, but I guess they’re true. Judges don’t disobey the orders of their courts of appeal unless there is power back of them.”
 
They proceeded to the attorney’s office, but had not been there long before Slapjack Simms burst in upon them.
 
“Hell to pay!” he panted. “McNamara’s taking your dust out of the bank.”
 
“What’s that?” they cried.
 
“I goes into the bank just now for an assay on some quartz samples. The assayer is busy, and I walk back into his room, and while I’m there in trots McNamara in a hurry. He don’t see me, as I’m inside the private office, and I overhear him tell them to get his dust out of the vault quick.”
 
“We’ve got to stop that,” said Glenister. “If he takes ours, he’ll take the Swedes’, too. Simms, you run up to the Pioneer Company and tell them about it. If he gets that gold out of there, nobody knows what’ll become of it. Come on, Bill.”
 
He snatched his hat and ran out of the room, followed by the others. That the loose-jointed Slapjack did his work with expedition was evidenced by the fact that the Swedes were close upon their heels as the two entered the bank. Others had followed, sensing something unusual, and the space within the doors filled rapidly. At the disturbance the clerks suspended their work, the barred doors of the safe-deposit vault clanged to, and the cashier laid hand upon the navy Colt’s at his elbow. “What’s the matter?” he cried.
 
“We want Alec McNamara,” said Glenister.
 
The manager of the bank appeared, and Glenister spoke to him through the heavy wire netting.
 
“Is McNamara in there?”
 
No one had ever known Morehouse to lie. “Yes, sir.” He spoke hesitatingly, in a voice full of the slow music of Virginia. “He is in here. What of it?”
 
“We hear he’s trying to move that dust of ours and we won’t stand for it. Tell him to come out and not hide in there like a dog.”
 
At these words the politician appeared beside the Southerner, and the two conversed softly an instant, while the impatience of the crowd grew to anger. Some one cried:
 
“Let’s go in and drag him out,” and the rumble at this was not pleasant. Morehouse raised his hand.
 
“Gentlemen, Mr. McNamara says he doesn’t intend to take any of the gold away.”
 
“Then he’s taken it already.”
 
“No, he hasn’t.”
 
The receiver’s course had been quickly chosen at the interruption. It was not wise to anger these men too much. Although he had planned to get the money into his own possession, he now thought it best to leave it here for the present. He could come back at any time when they were off guard and get it. Beyond the door against which he stood lay three hundred thousand dollars—weighed, sacked, sealed, and ready to move out of the custody of this Virginian whose confidence he had tried so fruitlessly to gain.
 
As McNamara looked into the angry eyes of the lean-faced men beyond the grating, he felt that the game was growing close, and his blood tingled at the thought. He had not planned on a resistance so strong and swift, but he would meet it. He knew that they hungered for his destruction and that Glenister was their leader. He saw further that the man’s hatred now stared at him openly for the first time. He knew that back of it was something more than love for the dull metal over which they wrangled, and then a thought came to him.
 
“Some of your work, eh, Glenister?” he mocked. “Were you afraid to come alone, or did you wait till you saw me with a lady?”
 
At the same instant he opened a door behind him, revealing Helen Chester. “You’d better not walk out with me, Miss Chester. This man might—well, you’re safer here, you know. You’ll pardon me for leaving you.” He hoped he could incite the young man to some rash act or word in the presence of the girl, and counted on the conspicuous heroism of his own position, facing the mob single-handed, one against fifty.
 
“Come out,” said his enemy, hoarsely, upon whom the insult and the sight of the girl in the receiver’s company had acted powerfully.
 
“Of course I’ll come out, but I don’t want this young lady to suffer any violence from your friends,” said McNamara. “I am not armed, but I have the right to leave here unmolested—the right of an American citizen.” With that he raised his arms above his head. “Out of my way!” he cried. Morehouse opened the gate, and McNamara strode through the mob.
 
It is a peculiar thing that although under fury of passion a man may fire even upon the back of a defenceless foe, yet no one can offer violence to a man whose arms are raised on high and in whose glance is the level light of fearlessness. Moreover, it is safer to face a crowd thus than a single adversary.
 
McNamara had seen this psychological trick tried before and now took advantage of it to walk through the press slowly, eye to eye. He did it theatrically, for the benefit of the girl, and, as he foresaw, the men fell away before him—all but Glenister, who blocked him, gun in hand. It was plain that the persecuted miner was beside himself with passion. McNamara came within an arm’s-length before pausing. Then he stopped and the two stared malignantly at each other, while the girl behind the railing heard her heart pounding in the stillness. Glenister raised his hand uncertainly, then let it fall. He shook his head, and stepped aside so that the other brushed past and out into the street.
 
Wheaton addressed the banker:
 
“Mr. Morehouse, we’ve got orders and writs of one kind or another from the Circuit Court of Appeals at ’Frisco directing that this money be turned over to us.” He shoved the papers towards the other. “We’re not in a mood to trifle. That gold belongs to us, and we want it.”
 
Morehouse looked carefully at the papers.
 
“I can’t help you,” he said. “These documents are not directed to me. They’re issued to Mr. McNamara and Judge Stillman. If the Circuit Court of Appeals commands me to deliver it to you I’ll do it, but otherwise I’ll have to keep this dust here till it’s drawn out by order of the court that gave it to me. That’s the way it was put in here, and that’s the way it’ll be taken out.”
 
“We want it now.”
 
“Well, I can’t let my sympathies influence me.”
 
“Then we’ll take it out, anyway,” cried Glenister. “We’ve had the worst of it everywhere else and we’re sick of it. Come on, men.”
 
“Stand back!—all of you!” cried Morehouse. “Don’t lay a hand on that gate. Boys, pick your men.”
 
He called this last to his clerks, at the same instant whipping from behind the counter a carbine, which he cocked. The assayer brought into view a shot-gun, while the cashier and clerks armed themselves. It was evident that the deposits of the Alaska Bank were abundantly safeguarded.
 
“I don’t aim to have any trouble with you-all,” continued the Southerner, “but that money stays here till it’s drawn out right.”
 
The crowd paused at this show of resistance, but Glenister railed at them:
 
“Come on—come on! What’s the matter with you?” And from the light in his eye it was evident that he would not be balked.
 
Helen felt that a crisis was come, and braced herself. These men were in deadly earnest: the white-haired banker, his pale helpers, and those grim, quiet ones outside. There stood brawny, sun-browned men, with set jaws and frowning faces, and yellow-haired Scandinavians in whose blue eyes danced the flame of battle. These had been baffled at every turn, goaded by repeated failure, and now stood shoulder to shoulder in their resistance to a cruel law. Suddenly Helen heard a command from the street and the quick tramp of men, while over the heads before her she saw the glint of rifle barrels. A file of soldiers with fixed bayonets thrust themselves roughly through the crowd at the entrance.
 
“Clear the room!” commanded the officer.
 
“What does this mean?” shouted Wheaton.
 
“It means that Judge Stillman has called upon the military to guard this gold, that’s all. Come, now, move quick.” The men hesitated, then sullenly obeyed, for resistance to the blue of Uncle Sam comes only at the cost of much consideration.
 
“They’re robbing us with our own soldiers,” said Wheaton, when they were outside.
 
“Ay,” said Glenister, darkly. “We’ve tried the law, but they’re forcing us back to first principles. There’s going to be murder here.”
CHAPTER XII  COUNTERPLOTS
GLENISTER had said that the Judge would not dare to disobey the mandates of the Circuit Court of Appeals, but he was wrong. Application was made for orders directing the enforcement of the writs—steps which would have restored possession of the Midas to its owners, as well as possession of the treasure in bank—but Stillman refused to grant them.
 
Wheaton called a meeting of the Swedes and their attorneys, advising a junction of forces. Dextry, who had returned from the mountains, was present. When they had finished their discussion, he said:
 
“It seems like I can always fight better when I know what the other feller’s game is. I’m going to spy on that outfit.”
 
“We’ve had detectives at work for weeks,” said the lawyer for the Scandinavians; “but they can’t find out anything we don’t know already.”
 
Dextry said no more, but that night found him busied in the building adjoining the one wherein McNamara had his office. He had rented a back room on the top floor, and with the help of his partner sawed through the ceiling into the loft and found his way thence to the roof through a hatchway. Fortunately, there was but little space between the two buildings, and, furthermore, each boasted the square fronts common in mining-camps, which projected high enough to prevent observation from across the way. Thus he was enabled, without discovery, to gain the roof adjoining and to cut through into the loft. He crept cautiously in through the opening, and out upon a floor of joists sealed on the lower side, then lit a candle, and, locating McNamara’s office, cut a peep-hole so that by lying flat on the timbers he could command a considerable portion of the room beneath. Here, early the following morning, he camped with the patience of an Indian, emerging in the still of that night stiff, hungry, and atrociously cross. Meanwhile, there had been another meeting of the mine-owners, and it had been decided to send Wheaton, properly armed with affidavits and transcripts of certain court records, back to San Francisco on the return trip of the Santa Maria, which had arrived in port. He was to institute proceedings for contempt of court, and it was hoped that by extraordinary effort he could gain quick action.
 
At daybreak Dextry returned to his post, and it was midnight before he crawled from his hiding-place to see the lawyer and Glenister.
 
“They have had a spy on you all day, Wheaton,” he began, “and they know you’re going out to the States. You’ll be arrested to-morrow morning before breakfast.”
 
“Arrested! What for?”
 
“I don’t just remember what the crime is—bigamy, or mayhem, or attainder of treason, or something—anyway, they’ll get you in jail and that’s all they want. They think you’re the only lawyer that’s wise enough to cause trouble and the only one they can’t bribe.”
 
“Lord! What’ll I do? They’ll watch every lighter that leaves the beach, and if they don’t catch me that way, they’ll search the ship.”
 
“I’ve thought it all out,” said the old man, to whom obstruction acted as a stimulant.
 
“Yes—but how?”
 
“Leave it to me. Get your things together and be ready to duck in two hours.”
 
“I tell you they’ll search the Santa Maria from stem to stern,” protested the lawyer, but Dextry had gone.
 
“Better do as he says. His schemes are good ones,” recommended Glenister, and accordingly the lawyer made preparation.
 
In the mean time the old prospector had begun at the end of Front Street to make a systematic search of the gambling-houses. Although it was very late they were running noisily, and at last he found the man he wanted playing “Black Jack,” the smell of tar in his clothes, the lilt of the sea in his boisterous laughter. Dextry drew him aside.
 
“Mac, there’s only two things about you that’s any good—your silence and your seamanship. Otherwise, you’re a disreppitable, drunken insect.”
 
The sailor grinned.
 
“What is it you want now? If it’s concerning money, or business, or the growed-up side of life, run along and don’t disturb the carousals of a sailorman. If it’s a fight, lemme get my hat.”
 
“I want you to wake up your fireman and have steam on the tug in an hour, then wait for me below the bridge. You’re chartered for twenty-four hours, and—remember, not a word.”
 
“I’m on! Compared to me the Spinks of Egyp’ is as talkative as a phonograph.”
 
The old man next turned his steps to the Northern Theatre. The performance was still in progress, and he located the man he was hunting without difficulty.
 
Ascending the stairs, he knocked at the door of one of the boxes and called for Captain Stephens.
 
“I’m glad I found you, Cap,” said he. “It saved me a trip out to your ship in the dark.”
 
“What’s the matter?”
 
Dextry drew him to an isolated corner. “Me an’ my partner want to send a man to the States with you.”
 
“All right.”
 
“Well—er—here’s the point,” hesitated the miner, who rebelled at asking favors. “He’s our law sharp, an’ the McNamara outfit is tryin’ to put the steel on him.”
 
“I don’t understand.”
 
“Why, they’ve swore out a warrant an’ aim to guard the shore to-morrow. We want you to—”
 
“Mr. Dextry, I’m not looking for trouble. I get enough in my own business.”
 
“But, see here,” argued the other, “we’ve got to send him out so he can make a pow-wow to the big legal smoke in ’Frisco. We’ve been cold-decked with a bum judge. They’ve got us into a corner an’ over the ropes.”
 
“I’m sorry I can’t help you, Dextry, but I got mixed up in one of your scrapes and that’s plenty.”
 
“This ain’t no stowaway. There’s no danger to you,” began Dextry, but the officer interrupted him:
 
“There’s no need of arguing. I won’t do it.”
 
“Oh, you won’t, eh?” said the old man, beginning to lose his temper. “Well, you listen to me for a minute. Everybody in camp knows that me an’ the kid is on the square an’ that we’re gettin’ the bunk passed to us. Now, this lawyer party must get away to-night or these grafters will hitch the horses to him on some phony charge so he can’t get to the upper court. It’ll be him to the bird-cage for ninety days. He’s goin’ to the States, though, an’ he’s goin’—in—your—wagon! I’m talkin’ to you—man to man. If you don’t take him, I’ll go to the health inspector—he’s a friend of mine—an’ I’ll put a crimp in you an’ your steamboat. I don’t want to do that—it ain’t my reg’lar graft by no means—but this bet goes through as she lays. I never belched up a secret before. No, sir; I am the human huntin’-case watch, an’ I won’t open my face unless you press me. But if I should, you’ll see that it’s time for you to hunt a new job. Now, here’s my scheme.” He outlined his directions to the sailor, who had fallen silent during the warning. When he had done, Stephens said:
 
“I never had a man talk to me like that before, sir—never. You’ve taken advantage of me, and under the circumstances I can’t refuse. I’ll do this thing—not because of your threat, but because I heard about your trouble over the Midas—and because I can’t help admiring your blamed insolence.” He went back into his stall.
 
Dextry returned to Wheaton’s office. As he neared it, he passed a lounging figure in an adjacent doorway.
 
“The place is watched,” he announced as he entered. “Have you got a back door? Good! Leave your light burning and we’ll go out that way.” They slipped quietly into an inky, tortuous passage which led back towards Second Street. Floundering through alleys and over garbage heaps, by circuitous routes, they reached the bridge, where, in the swift stream beneath, they saw the lights from Mac’s tug.
 
Steam was up, and when the Captain had let them aboard Dextry gave him instructions, to which he nodded acquiescence. They bade the lawyer adieu, and the little craft slipped its moorings, danced down the current, across the bar, and was swallowed up in the darkness to seaward.
 
“I’ll put out Wheaton’s light so they’ll think he’s gone to bed.”
 
“Yes, and at daylight I’ll take your place in McNamara’s loft,” said Glenister. “There will be doings to-morrow when they don’t find him.”
 
They returned by the way they had come to the lawyer’s room, extinguished his light, went to their own cabin and to bed. At dawn Glenister arose and sought his place above McNamara’s office.
 
To lie stretched at length on a single plank with eye glued to a crack is not a comfortable position, and the watcher thought the hours of the next day would never end. As they dragged wearily past, his bones began to ache beyond endurance, yet owing to the flimsy structure of the building he dared not move while the room below was tenanted. In fact, he would not have stirred had he dared, so intense was his interest in the scenes being enacted beneath him.
 
First had come the marshal, who reported his failure to find Wheaton.
 
“He left his room some time last night. My men followed him in and saw a light in his window until two o’clock this morning. At seven o’clock we broke in and he was gone.”
 
“He must have got wind of our plan. Send deputies aboard the Santa Maria; search her from keel to top-mast, and have them watch the beach close or he’ll put off in a small boat. You look over the passengers that go aboard yourself. Don’t trust any of your men for that, because he may try to slip through disguised. He’s liable to make up like a woman. You understand—there’s only one ship in port, and—he mustn’t get away.”
 
“He won’t,” said Voorhees, with conviction, and the listener overhead smiled grimly to himself, for at that moment, twenty miles offshore, lay Mac’s little tug, hove to in the track of the outgoing steamship, and in her tiny cabin sat Bill Wheaton eating breakfast.
 
As the morning wore by with no news of the lawyer, McNamara’s uneasiness grew. At noon the marshal returned with a report that the passengers were all aboard and the ship about to clear.
 
“By Heavens! He’s slipped through you,” stormed the politician.
 
“No, he hasn’t. He may be hidden aboard somewhere among the coal-bunkers, but I think he’s still ashore and aiming to make a quick run just before she sails. He hasn’t left the beach since daylight, that’s sure. I’m going out to the ship now with four men and search her again. If we don’t bring him off you can bet he’s lying out somewhere in town and we’ll get him later. I’ve stationed men along the shore for two miles.”
 
“I won’t have him get away. If he should reach ’Frisco—Tell your men I’ll give five hundred dollars to the one that finds him.”
 
Three hours later Voorhees returned.
 
“She sailed without him.”
 
The politician cursed. “I don’t believe it. He tricked you. I know he did.”
 
Glenister grinned into a half-eaten sandwich, then turned upon his back and lay thus on the plank, identifying the speakers below by their voices.
 
He kept his post all day. Later in the evening he heard Struve enter. The man had been drinking.
 
“So he got away, eh?” he began. “I was afraid he would. Smart fellow, that Wheaton.”
 
“He didn’t get away,” said McNamara. “He’s in town yet. Just let me land him in jail on some excuse! I’ll hold him till snow flies.” Struve sank into a chair and lit a cigarette with wavering hand.
 
“This ’s a hell of a game, ain’t it, Mac? D’you s’pose we’ll win?”
 
The man overhead pricked up his ears.
 
“Win? Aren’t we winning? What do you call this? I only hope we can lay hands on Wheaton. He knows things. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but more is worse. Lord! If only I had a man for judge in place of Stillman! I don’t know why I brought him.”
 
“That’s right. Too weak. He hasn’t got the backbone of an angleworm. He ain’t half the man that his niece is. There’s a girl for you! Say! What’d we do without her, eh? She’s a pippin!” Glenister felt a sudden tightening of every muscle. What right had that man’s liquor-sodden lips to speak so of her?
 
“She’s a brave little woman all right. Just look how she worked Glenister and his fool partner. It took nerve to bring in those instructions of yours alone; and if it hadn’t been for her we’d never have won like this. It makes me laugh to think of those two men stowing her away in their state-room while they slept between decks with the sheep, and her with the papers in her bosom all the time. Then, when we got ready to do business, why, she up and talks them into giving us possession of their mine without a fight. That’s what I call reciprocating a man’s affection.”
 
Glenister’s nails cut into his flesh, while his face went livid at the words. He could not grasp it at once. It made him sick—physically sick—and for many moments he strove blindly to beat back the hideous suspicion, the horror that the lawyer had aroused. His was not a doubting disposition, and to him the girl had seemed as one pure, mysterious, apart, angelically incapable of deceit. He had loved her, feeling that some day she would return his affection without fail. In her great, unclouded eyes he had found no lurking-place for double-dealing. Now—God! It couldn’t be that all the time she had known!
 
He had lost a part of the lawyer’s speech, but peered through his observation-hole again.
 
McNamara was at the window gazing out into the dark street, his back towards the lawyer, who lolled in the chair, babbling garrulously of the girl. Glenister ground his teeth—a frenzy possessed him to loose his anger, to rip through the frail ceiling with naked hands and fall vindictively upon the two men.
 
“She looked good to me the first time I saw her,” continued Struve. He paused, and when he spoke again a change had coarsened his features. “Say, I’m crazy about her, Mac. I tell you, I’m crazy—and she likes me—I know she does—or, anyway, she would—”
 
“Do you mean that you’re in love with her?” asked the man at the window, without shifting his position. It seemed that utter indifference was in his question, although where the light shone on his hands, tight-clinched behind his back, they were bloodless.
 
“Love her? Well—that depends—ha! You know how it is—” he chuckled, coarsely. His face was gross and bestial. “I’ve got the Judge where I want him, and I’ll have her—”
 
His miserable words died with a gurgle, for McNamara had silently leaped and throttled him where he sat, pinning him to the wall. Glenister saw the big politician shift his fingers slightly on Struve’s throat and then drop his left hand to his side, holding his victim writhing and helpless with his right despite the man’s frantic struggles. McNamara’s head was thrust forward from his shoulders, peering into the lawyer’s face. Struve tore ineffectually at the iron arm which was squeezing his life out, while for endless minutes the other leaned his weight against him, his idle hand behind his back, his legs braced like stone columns, as he watched his victim’s struggles abate.
 
Struve fought and wrenched while his breath caught in his throat with horrid, sickening sounds, but gradually his eyes rolled farther and farther back till they stared out of his blackened visage, straight up towards the ceiling, towards the hole through which Glenister peered. His struggles lessened, his chin sagged, and his tongue protruded, then he sat loose and still. The politician flung him out into the room so that he fell limply upon his face, then stood watching him. Finally, McNamara passed out of the watcher’s vision, returning with a water-bucket. With his foot he rolled the unconscious wretch upon his back, then drenched him. Replacing the pail, he seated himself, lit a cigar, and watched the return of life into his victim. He made no move, even to drag him from the pool in which he lay.
 
Struve groaned and shuddered, twisted to his side, and at last sat up weakly. In his eyes there was now a great terror, while in place of his drunkenness was only fear and faintness—abject fear of the great bulk that sat and smoked and stared at him so fishily. He felt uncertainly of his throat, and groaned again.
 
“Why did you do that?” he whispered; but the other made no sign. He tried to rise, but his knees relaxed; he staggered and fell. At last he gained his feet and made for the door; then, when his hand was on the knob, McNamara spoke through his teeth, without removing his cigar.
 
“Don’t ever talk about her again. She is going to marry me.”
 
When he was alone he looked curiously up at the ceiling over his head. “The rats are thick in this shack,” he mused. “Seems to me I heard a whole swarm of them.”
 
A few moments later a figure crept through the hole in the roof of the house next door and thence down into the street. A block ahead was the slow-moving form of Attorney Struve. Had a stranger met them both he would not have known which of the two had felt at his throat the clutch of a strangler, for each was drawn and haggard and swayed as he went.
 
Glenister unconsciously turned towards his cabin, but at leaving the lighted streets the thought of its darkness and silence made him shudder. Not now! He could not bear that stillness and the company of his thoughts. He dared not be alone. Dextry would be down-town, undoubtedly, and he, too, must get into the light and turmoil. He licked his lips and found that they were cracked and dry.
 
At rare intervals during the past years he had staggered in from a long march where, for hours, he had waged a bitter war with cold and hunger, his limbs clumsy with fatigue, his garments wet and stiff, his mind slack and sullen. At such extreme seasons he had felt a consuming thirst, a thirst which burned and scorched until his very bones cried out feverishly. Not a thirst for water, nor a thirst which eaten snow could quench, but a savage yearning of his whole exhausted system for some stimulant, for some coursing fiery fluid that would burn and strangle. A thirst for whiskey—for brandy! Remembering these occasional ferocious desires, he had become charitable to such unfortunates as were too weak to withstand similar temptations.
 
Now with a shock he caught himself in the grip of a thirst as insistent as though the cold bore down and the weariness of endless heavy miles wrapped him about. It was no foolish wish to drown his thoughts nor to banish the grief that preyed upon him, but only thirst! Thirst!—a crying, trembling, physical lust to quench the fires that burned inside. He remembered that it had been more than a year since he had tasted whiskey. Now the fever of the past few hours had parched his every tissue.
 
As he elbowed in through the crowd at the Northern, those next him made room at the bar, for they recognized the hunger that peers thus from men’s faces. Their manner recalled Glenister to his senses, and he wrenched himself away. This was not some solitary, snow-banked road-house. He would not stand and soak himself, shoulder to shoulder with stevedores and longshoremen. This was something to be done in secret. He had no pride in it. The man on his right raised a glass, and the young man strangled a madness to tear it from his hands. Instead, he hurried back to the theatre and up to a box, where he drew the curtains.
 
“Whiskey!” he said, thickly, to the waiter. “Bring it to me fast. Don’t you hear? Whiskey!”
 
Across the theatre Cherry Malotte had seen him enter and jerk the curtains together. She arose and went to him, entering without ceremony.
 
“What’s the matter, boy?” she questioned.
 
“Ah! I am glad you came. Talk to me.”
 
“Thank you for your few well-chosen remarks,” she laughed. “Why don’t you ask me to spring some good, original jokes? You look like the finish to a six-day go-as-you-please. What’s up?”
 
She talked to him for a moment until the waiter entered; then, when she saw what he bore, she snatched the glass from the tray and poured the whiskey on the floor. Glenister was on his feet and had her by the wrist.
 
“What do you mean?” he said, roughly.
 
“It’s whiskey, boy,” she cried, “and you don’t drink.”
 
“Of course it’s whiskey. Bring me another,” he shouted at the attendant.
 
“What’s the matter?” Cherry insisted. “I never saw you act so. You know you don’t drink. I won’t let you. It’s booze—booze, I tell you, fit for fools and brawlers. Don’t drink it, Roy. Are you in trouble?”
 
“I say I’m thirsty—and I will have it! How do you know what it is to smoulder inside, and feel your veins burn dry?”
 
“It’s something about that girl,” the woman said, with quiet conviction. “She’s double-crossed you.”
 
“Well, so she has—but what of it? I’m thirsty. She’s going to marry McNamara. I’ve been a fool.” He ground his teeth and reached for the drink with which the boy had returned.
 
“McNamara is a crook, but he’s a man, and he never drank a drop in his life.” The girl said it, casually, evenly, but the other stopped the glass half-way to his lips.
 
“Well, what of it? Go on. You’re good at W. C. T. U. talk. Virtue becomes you.”
 
She flushed, but continued, “It simply occurred to me that if you aren’t strong enough to handle your own throat, you’re not strong enough to beat a man who has mastered his.”
 
Glenister looked at the whiskey a moment, then set it back on the tray.
 
“Bring two lemonades,” he said, and with a laugh which was half a sob Cherry Malotte leaned forward and kissed him.
 
“You’re too good a man to drink. Now, tell me all about it.”
 
“Oh, it’s too long! I’ve just learned that the girl is in, hand and glove, with the Judge and McNamara—that’s all. She’s an advance agent—their lookout. She brought in their instructions to Struve and persuaded Dex and me to let them jump our claim. She got us to trust in the law and in her uncle. Yes, she hypnotized my property out of me and gave it to her lover, this ward politician. Oh, she’s smooth, with all her innocence! Why, when she smiles she makes you glad and good and warm, and her eyes are as honest and clear as a mountain pool, but she’s wrong—she’s wrong—and—great God! how I love her!” He dropped his face into his hands.
 
When she had pled with him for himself a moment before Cherry Malotte was genuine and girlish but now as he spoke thus of the other woman a change came over her which he was too disturbed to note. She took on the subtleness that masked her as a rule, and her eyes were not pleasant.
 
“I could have told you all that and more.”
 
“More! What more?” he questioned.
 
“Do you remember when I warned you and Dextry that they were coming to search your cabin for the gold? Well, that girl put them on to you. I found it out afterwards. She keeps the keys to McNamara’s safety vault where your dust lies, and she’s the one who handles the Judge. It isn’t McNamara at all.” The woman lied easily, fluently, and the man believed her.
 
“Do you remember when they broke into your safe and took that money?”
 
“Yes.”
 
“Well, what made them think you had ten thousand in there?”
 
“I don’t know.”
 
“I do. Dextry told her.”
 
Glenister arose. “That’s all I want to hear now. I’m going crazy. My mind aches, for I’ve never had a fight like this before and it hurts. You see, I’ve been an animal all these years. When I wanted to drink, I drank, and what I wanted, I got, because I’ve been strong enough to take it. This is new to me. I’m going down-stairs now and try to think of something else—then I’m going home.”
 
When he had gone she pulled back the curtains, and, leaning her chin in her hands, with elbows on the ledge, gazed down upon the crowd. The show was over and the dance had begun, but she did not see it, for she was thinking rapidly with the eagerness of one who sees the end of a long and weary search. She did not notice the Bronco Kid beckoning to her nor the man with him, so the gambler brought his friend along and invaded her box. He introduced the man as Mr. Champian.
 
“Do you feel like dancing?” the new-comer inquired.
 
“No; I’d rather look on. I feel sociable. You’re a society man, Mr. Champian. Don’t you know anything of interest? Scandal or the like?”
 
“Can’t say that I do. My wife attends to all that for the family. But I know there’s lots of it. It’s funny to me, the airs some of these people assume up here, just as though we weren’t all equal, north of Fifty-three. I never heard the like.”
 
“Anything new and exciting?” inquired Bronco, mildly interested.
 
“The last I heard was about the Judge’s niece, Miss Chester.”
 
Cherry Malotte turned abruptly, while the Kid slowly lowered the front legs of his chair to the floor.
 
“What was it?” she inquired.
 
“Why, it seems she compromised herself pretty badly with this fellow Glenister coming up on the steamer last spring. Mighty brazen, according to my wife. Mrs. Champian was on the same ship and says she was horribly shocked.”
 
Ah! Glenister had told her only half the tale, thought the girl. The truth was baring itself. At that moment Champian thought she looked the typical creature of the dance-halls, the crafty, jealous, malevolent adventuress.
 
“And the hussy masquerades as a lady,” she sneered.
 
“She is a lady,” said the Kid. He sat bolt upright and rigid, and the knuckles of his clinched hands were very white. In the shadow they did not note that his dark face was ghastly, nor did he say more except to bid Champian good-bye when he left, later on. After the door had closed, however, the Kid arose and stretched his muscles, not languidly, but as though to take out the cramp of long tension. He wet his lips, and his mouth was so dry that the sound caused the girl to look up.
 
“What are you grinning at?” Then, as the light struck his face, she started. “My! How you look! What ails you? Are you sick?” No one, from Dawson down, had seen the Bronco Kid as he looked to-night.
 
“No. I’m not sick,” he answered, in a cracked voice.
 
Then the girl laughed harshly.
 
“Do you love that girl, too? Why, she’s got every man in town crazy.”
 
She wrung her hands, which is a bad sign in a capable person, and as Glenister crossed the floor below in her sight she said, “Ah-h—I could kill him for that!”
 
“So could I,” said the Kid, and left her without adieu.