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The World is Yours

Chapter Six

page 138

Chapter Six

Now the cold weather was near Miss Tinney had put Stewart and Challis at a small table between stove and window, leaving the long table to prospectors, hunters and other flotsam. From there Challis the law-bringer could see a good deal of his domain down the one street of Knife, and Stewart had an uninterrupted view of the long ugly room.

To-day it seemed more desolate than usual, because soon now Tamsin would certainly be home, and then, Stewart felt, there would be more to hope or fear. It was not possible that young Regard would have missed his chance. And so it was not for Stewart that Tamsin would make a home. For the rest of his days he would feed here, where the naked whip-sawn walls had great gaudy advertisements of Dominion Royal Ammunition showing all the animals of the North in Noah's Ark promiscuity and the few fly-specked almanacs with dates of past years torn off made the only other adornments. Coldly aloof, this place asserted that men came here to fill their stomachs and nothing else. After all, thought Stewart bitterly, what else do we come on earth for—the most of us?

"I hope Miss Tinney has something decent to-night," said Challis, pushing his chair about noisily as a summons. "I haven't had a proper feed for two days."

Challis had been searching Indian camps up and down the Kanana, trying to trace the stills from which the Indians were certainly getting drink. The Mounted Police rarely consider this their job, but Stewart knew that Challis was restless. Probably he and the young Policeman had the dullest and emptiest lives on all the Kanana.

"I pumped that old doctor all I knew up at Aroya," said Challis, disconsolately, "but not a chirp could I get out of page 139him. Old beast … sleeping in other men's beds and living in other men's houses all his time. I think he's mad."

"He's saner than most of us," said Stewart, dryly. "He knows how to get something for nothing. A whole bunch of Indians came down on the Indian village in the night. I guess no one in Knife got any sleep for their dogs. They had hootch, too. I could smell it."

"Good egg," said Challis, revived. His fresh boyish face took on a keen almost cruel look.

Stewart thought: "What sort of life is this where a man can only win what he wants through the miseries of others? Challis now, on the track of Kirk Regard, supposing there was anything in that story …"

Miss Tinney came in, slapping down a plate of meat and surrounding it with the little dishes of corn, chips, green salad and pickles. She grew the best vegetables in Knife, although MacDonald ran her a close second; and in a land where turnips grow as large as pumpkins and potatoes as large as turnips, this, the community considered, was saying a great deal.

"I guess the MacDonalds'll be fair sick to come home," she said. "Sour-doughs clean through, those two are. Can't keep 'em off the trail for long. If Tamsin marries young Regard, I reckon she'll go Big Game Guiding with him, too."

Stewart felt his hard dry skin flushing. That idea which had come into his mind suddenly grew. "After all, what harm in telling Challis?" he thought. "Regard had a right to prove himself innocent before he takes Tamsin." With eyes on his plate, he said, carelessly:

"I suppose Regard does mean to take the Patrol over that new cut."

"He's contracted for it, hasn't he? Say, this salad is good!"

"He has contracted now, certainly. But when I gave him their wire on the day he came, he went right up in the page 140air and shouted 'No! No!' as if the devil was after him. Next day, after thinking it over, he came round with an acceptance."

Challis had laid down his knife and fork. His round eyes stared.

"The deuce!" he said, slowly. "Say, what do you know about that?"

"I thought it queer. Likely it was natural. He'd had enough of that trail in once, I take it."

"H'm," said Challis. He continued to eat slowly.

Chewing the notion, thought Stewart, feeling himself panting as though he had made great physical effort. But he controlled himself sternly. Assuredly if Regard was innocent, he had a right to prove it before he took Tamsin.

They finished their meal in silence, and then Challis got up, pulling down his tunic briskly.

"Come along and hunt up that new bunch of Indians, shall we?" he asked.

Grimly Stewart went with him. The thing was said now, but he had to watch the Policeman's reactions, although Challis was still silent as they walked down through the claret-coloured evening together. Suddenly Challis said:

"Not one damn thing is there for me to do up here but look the other way when fellows break the game-laws as they did at Sagish … and putting out hill-fires, and burying Indians…."

Again he was silent.

Stewart thought: "He means to work up that idea about Regard, and he's trying to excuse himself for it."

The Indians' village as they neared it looked lonesome. In bunches the Indians had lately been pulling out for the high country and the winter trails to make their fur, and a vague film of neglect was spreading over the place where empty trails were foul with litter of rusted cans and old rags. The sense of flight was in the air, and the dug-out and canoes of page 141the newcomers, being still loaded, only added to the feeling of migration and farewell.

To Challis with his young healthy horror of decay there was hideous tragedy in these remains of a once proud and mighty nation now brought as low and worthless as the worn-out pots and pans. The place stank, and at Chief Bill Boss's frame-house with the platform Indians were lying everywhere, playing cards, playing Little Sticks, drinking, chewing gum. Challis had been into that house once, and he knew that behind the dirty lace curtains the only furnishings were a broken treadle sewing-machine, a big fly-spotted oleograph of Queen Victoria and a gramophone. Just as well, too, with all those women and babies. How many of the brown glossy young women carrying round-eyed babies went to Chief Bill Boss's account Challis could not guess. An Indian's family is dissection-proof except by the old women when a wedding is in the offing.

Then they could make tragedies, those old crones like the three squatting in the open round a funnel of sewn-together caribou-skins which they were smoking over a fire of dead-wood. Tamsin had once shown Challis a letter written by Dick Dan, the boy who sometimes took her up to Aroya in MacDonald's launch, when the old crones had destroyed his hopes.

"My lover Isbel" (wrote Dick Dan),

"I beny near ver' sad for you. I not ever making marry you now, my lover, because my grandmother saying you my sister. Good-bye. I hope you marry some nice boy.

"Your lover …"

Nothing in it, probably; but the missionaries had been trying to engineer the marriage and the old women would not have their privileges as match-makers abused. Yet everything in the way of humanity was abused here. Up on the platform in the light of lanterns and red pipe-dottles, showed the intent page 142seamed and wooden faces with locks of black hair falling across them; dogs hunting fleas, decayed caribou-horns over the door, and a huddle of big clumsy fellows with the broad flat nostrils and cheekbones, the slanting eyes of a mongol breed.

"Are those the strangers? I never saw their type before," he asked Stewart.

"Loucheux from the North. All Loucheux are mongol and cross-eyed," said Stewart. "They won't stay long with this Siwash crowd."

Among the women leaning on the men Stewart noticed one girl bending forward in the light. She was quite pretty for an Indian, and large brass ear-rings swung either side her plump cheeks. This surprised him because Indians, although excessively fond of gimcracks, like them where they can admire them with their own eyes. "I never saw an Indian girl with ear-rings before," he thought. "And those are more like the kind a sailor wears."

Then suddenly he thought of Olafssen, the lost Swedish sailor who had worn big brass rings in his ears.

The girl moved back into the shadows. Challis had not noticed her and the two men walked away. He said with disappointment:

"Nothing doing here, and they'll be gone by morning, likely."

He went back to his lonely barracks, and Stewart stood a while in the scrub and the dying roses before he turned again towards the village. He was remembering what he had heard of the girl who had come into Dawson without Olafssen. Challis, in common with all the Yukon Police, had received a copy of the record and he had shown it to Stewart. The girl's name was Ooket, and in the description there had been no mention of the ear-rings. Then … Stewart pieced it out, she had been afraid to wear them there. Why? Because they would prove that Olafssen was dead. A girl may leave her page 143man and go with another as this one had evidently done, but she is not likely to take his ear-rings unless he no longer needs them. Stewart remembered that in the telegram Regard had sent he had been surprised to find no mention of the proviso "unless we locate Olafssen." Kirk Regard knew, as Ooket did, that Olafssen would not want his ear-rings any more.

He arrived at that with a sudden jerk that left him giddy. Until he had smoked his pipe through he stood there, and because each man's soul is his own Judgment Seat he suffered considerably. He knew that if he could fasten suspicion on young Regard he would do it; and he knew that this was not in any way for the sake of justice, but solely to part him from Tamsin. He went on at last down the darkened ways. The men were quarrelling now over their cards on the platform. The old women were huddled with shawls over their heads by the drying skins. By another fire that streamed sparks up into the night among the scrub a few young bucks were parcelling up the sticks of dried fish for the winter dog-feed. In and out of the light women moved in their dark clothes.

Stewart edged round the noise and bustle seeking the girl with the ear-rings. He found her at last under a saskatoon bush, her arm round the neck of a big Loucheux, and waited. When she got up and moved away he followed. If she was the girl he thought she was she would not be averse to a bit of flirtation with a white man. He stepped out.

"Good-evening, pretty little girl. I saw you on the platform," he said.

Ooket stared at him with that loftiness of dumb insolence which all Indians have in perfection. He noticed that the holes in her ears were newly pierced and the scars unhealed. He tried again:

"You're lucky to have that big Loucheux to look after you now that Olafssen's dead, Ooket."

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She gave a little squeak and her small puddy thumb went into her mouth. Her face was frightened now, but she said nothing. They stared at each other, and civilization in the one was out-faced, out-matched by centuries of experience and secrecy in the other. She said at last:

"You go being polite to me. Big swell an' all dat. I not liking Kudi so terrible much. Pity … I t'ink it pity. I liking you, big swell."

Stewart gaped. This was Ooket, right enough, from all reports he heard of her, and the little jade was turning the tables on him quickly.

She sidled up and took his hand.

"It's not marry or that sort. I nodings. But I laiking white man all taime. Pity dat, eh? I wantum. Kudi not so terrible much. You more nice, eh?" She stroked his hand with her pudgy fingers. "You nice, big swell."

"Nicer than Olafssen? Or Kirk Regard?"

"Not knowing dem naimes," said Ooket. She giggled. "What you naime?" she asked, reaching up to draw her wet finger down his lean cheek. "I honest-to-God good girl," she coaxed.

Stewart was routed.

"Then you go back to Kudi," he said, hastily, and walked off, hearing her giggle behind him.

As he passed the platform Chief Bill Boss was very noisy, his grey head and thick flabby face dangerous in the lantern-light.

"Too much you win. Too niddle I win. No catching fun, dis," he cried, flinging down the cards, rolling to his feet with immovable face but glittering eyes. "We make oder play," he said. "Little Stick, perhap. I got lotta t'ing to play with, me."

Stewart slipped silently away. With the emotional childishness of the Indian there was nothing that Bill Boss would not stake, and with the swaggering conceit of the Indian he would page 145never allow that another could get the better of him. Ooket could have, thought Stewart ruefully, and went back through the thickening shadows to sit in his quiet shack and wonder what he had gained. Before young Blair came in from a game of dominoes with Challis he had decided upon two things. Undoubtedly Olafssen was dead, and almost certainly Regard shared that knowledge with Ooket. Further than this he would not let himself go. "It's up to Challis now," he thought, sternly.

In the next afternoon the launch came up over the tall seeded rushes and the shrunken river. The air was sharp with fresh snow on the heights, but the sun dazzled warm, although not so warm and dazzling as Tamsin's face when she sprang ashore with young Regard behind her. The men, bronzed and ragged, were tumbling out, and Stewart, wishing that Tamsin had stopped to speak instead of rushing off like that, gave a hand to Mrs. Sheridan as she jumped ashore, and said, conversationally:

"Had a good time?"

"Oh, my! yes." Mrs. Sheridan tittered. Then she pursed her mouth, looking prim. "I guess I'm not the only one had a good time," she said.

Mat Colom climbed out ponderously. His shirt was dirty and torn and there were no buttons left to his waistcoat, but his soft old face was very genial until Aggie cried:

"Mat, you come right along home this minute and be cleaned up. Sakes! If you don't look like you was a bit of the woods yourself."

"The Great Blake he said once: 'When I come home I met a Mighty Devil,'" remarked Mat with a wink at Stewart as he was led away.

Stewart helped the men unload tents and ropes and fishing gear. Sheridan was always silent, but Regard had a good deal to say about the motor and the big fish Tamsin had caught. He seemed to be avoiding MacDonald, who looked old and page 146hard and unhappy. There was a sense of unease, of something withheld.

Stewart went back to his shack believing that MacDonald was upset because Kirk and Tamsin had come to an understanding. He felt that he had forgotten what a splendid-looking fellow young Regard was. He moved beautifully, and if his mouth and skin were rather too much like a girl's he had those black-kinked brows and bold dark eyes to make a man of him. And if he had killed Olafssen and Challis discovered it through Stewart's hints, how was Tamsin going to feel about it? Stewart had enough to keep him occupied to-night without any excursions into Christian Science.

Sagish had returned Mat something of his self-respect, and he actually defied Aggie, who was wanting to know what Mrs. Sheridan had looked like that for.

"Yeah; you can say 'Quit that talk,' but I'll lay Tamsin's been up to something, only you men are that crazy about her you won't tell. Mrs. Sheridan's goin' around like a turkey on a hot plate, wi' her mouth all shut up. I guess I'll go right over after supper an' find out what's happened."

"You'll find out a darn sight more than ever was," retorted Mat, but he went up to the store feeling discouraged. MacDonald had been glum all the way home, and in any but his old friend Mat would have resented this. Wasn't Tamsin surely going to marry Kirk, although naturally MacDonald would miss her?

The Loucheux Indians, as Jasper told him disgustedly, were all about the place like skeeters, and when Mat went into the store he found everyone busy, outfitting, grub-staking with promise of pay in next year's fur, haggling over the heap of pelts which Kirk was helping MacDonald turn over on the floor. Because there has been no Hudson Bay Company in the Yukon since Alexander Campbell made his heroic bid for it and lost it every storekeeper in the country bought furs, although most of these were poorly cured and often trap-page 147marked. MacDonald, stalking about his little world, gaunt and grey, with his mouth in a straight line and his eye hard for a man, chose out marten, mink and wolverine, rejected red fox and wolf, while the Loucheux stood about, grunting like animals, rubbing moccasined feet against calloused ankles, chewing powerful tobacco as intently as animals chew the cud.

For almost three hours Tamsin at the counter thought in blankets, knives, shells and groceries, and spoke in cents and dollars. There was a thin sprinkle of women with the secret wisdom in their slant eyes which long centuries of civilization has mislaid. There were a number of scrofulous children chewing gum and decked with all manner of bright little wool knots over their skin coats. The dim little store smelt of raw skins and tobacco. The requirements of these people were of the wild. There was a harsh sense of coming winter in the close air.

Tamsin and Kirk found time for a word together here and there, and when all was done and the store left to Jasper, Mat went through with the others into the house.

"My! if you ain't a tumultuous vestal all right, Tamsin," he said, admiringly. "Not a mite tired, I surely believe. I did read somewheres that the planets are whippin'-tops for folks to play with, an' you certainly do look like you'd bin playin' with planets. Don't she, Mac?"

He asked it half-wistfully, but MacDonald's nod was grim.

"Come out here a minute," whispered Kirk, and drew Tamsin through the kitchen out on the back porch. Mat's soft bulk heaved in a sigh. Loverin'; that's what they would be at. And why shouldn't they? He looked anxiously at his old friend, searching for some method of approach to what he wanted to say. But long struggles with the Great Blake had overlaid his clarity of mind. He began, filling his pipe with nervous hands:

"You 'member Joel Smith, Mac? Him that poled his raft page 148'bout a thousan' mile up the Yukon 'cause he'd had a difference with the W. P. & Y. Company an' he said he weren't goin' to be browbeat by any steamer that ever snorted. So he poled. Well … I ain't snorted—not really—at Aggie in years."

"Better for you if you did, likely," said MacDonald, indifferently.

"Yeah. Well, Sam Butler says somewheres as definitions are a kind o' scratchin' and gen'ly leave the place sorer. I guess Aggie's a definition, for I've often experyenced just that. It takes a woman to fight a woman. Mebbe that's why the Lord didn't design 'em to live together. I dunno."

"Likely." MacDonald's temper was still cranky. He walked about the room, hung up his old Savage over the door again. Next year at Sagish there might be no Tamsin. Mat sighed.

"Kirk's a good boy, Mac. All I got's to be his, though Aggie don't know it. You 'member how the Eskimo called Sir John Franklin Sir Gallywag, meanin' Man who don't molest our women. I can't jest think where I read that…."

"What the deil are ye talkin' of?" cried MacDonald, turning on him blackly.

"We-ell, I guess Kirk's a real good boy, Mac. I orter know. I trained him, though it took some doin'. I reckon mebbe I can give him a sum down when he marries. All I got's his, Mac … 'cept Aggie."

MacDonald stopped walking; stood with hard thumbs in his leather belt staring down at the soft old body that seemed to shrink a little under his eyes.

"If ye're tryin' tae bribe me ye may as weel ken right noo that I ha' naethin' tae do wi't. I dinna ken what they twa are aboot. They've not troubled tae speak tae me of their arrangements."

The words wrung his heart suddenly as though Tamsin, pink and laughing at her wash-tub, had twisted it in her firm young hands. Mat said, simply:

"Well, what is there to speak about? If you can't see love page 149stickin' out of them half a mile, I can. Mebbe I've had more experyence …"

"See here; you're not a fool. Ye ken that Sheridan wumman'll talk o' that night's wark on the hills, don't ye? Weel, mebbe Kirk thinks he has cut the ground fra under ma feet. I dinna ken. But when he or Tamsin tell me they're going tae mairry I'll ken what tae say tae ye. An' if Kirk dinna tell me I reckon I'll ken what tae say tae him. He's not treated her right, Mat. Weel; that's all I'm sayin' the noo. Gude-night."

When Mat was gone Tamsin came through the curtains from the kitchen, her hair shining round her like a star, her glowing face trying to be grave.

"Feyther, look," she said, solemnly, and stood before him with both thumbs up. Then she ran to him, holding him tight round the neck. "Eh … kiss your Tamsin, for I'm that happy I could bust."

"So ye've fixed it up then?" demanded MacDonald.

"Why … what else?" to Tamsin those intimate kisses in the shack pledged far beyond words. "And I'm sorry we stayed out, dear, but we thought …"

"Whaur's Kirk?"

"I chased him away home. I thought you and I would like to-night just to ourselves, feyther dear."

"And that's cost her something," thought MacDonald, gratefully. Although still sore and unapproving he was relieved. At least there would be no need for talk. "Weel, weel; I'll see him to-morrow, I guess. Are ye too grown-up-feelin' tae sit on ma knee the night, lassie?"

In letting Tamsin out of his arms that night Kirk felt as though something of himself had gone with her, and he felt curiously young and humble and lonely as he walked up the street and turned into the narrow scrub trail leading to the fox farm. She stirred his senses till he burned—but so many women had done that page 150"She's got hold of the real things, an' I haven't," he thought. "I dunno as I want 'em, but I do know I'll never do any good without her now."

He thought of Dierdre looking over her shoulder, drawing him with her cozening eyes into hot, amorous kisses, furtive handlings and pettings. That was the kind of thing he was headed for all his life, and he liked it at the time if he did loathe it always on looking back. It seemed to him so extra-ordinary that a man could loathe and love a thing at the same time. He was all a tumult of longing and distrust and passion and a desperate desire to get somewhere with his feet on rock and out of this bog. He felt that he could not do without Tamsin. He felt that perhaps he could not for long do with her. She might rid him of these terrors and devils and secret miseries. She might presently bore him, and he would treat her ill, and that would shame him and sink him lower than anything had done yet.

"What's a man to do. Life's always layin' traps for us," he groaned, going up between dim wafts of fragrance, dim wisps of smoke, vague wire-netting round the poles, and the sour odour of foxes. He had played lover and ridden away so often that he did not recognize as absolute any pledge except the final one: I Kirk, take thee … No; it couldn't be Dierdre now. He knew at least that much.

As he went up the trail two Indians followed him, noiselessly dipping in and out of the scrub. Sunk in his thoughts he did not hear nor see them, but Challis did and followed in a curiosity not entirely idle. Stewart had put ideas in his head which would not have come of themselves, but being there they stuck. The Indians—a man and woman in mangy furs— did not disclose themselves when Regard went into Colom's house; but a little later they knocked and were admitted, and although Challis waited some time they did not come out. It was very cold in the scrub, and he was hungry and very tired after a long day up-river. Reason told him that the two page 151had probably made a strike somewhere and wanted a grub-stake or perhaps had a silver-fox for sale. Challis yawned, beat his numbed hands together and went away. He felt disconsolately that he never had any luck.

Aggie Colom had gone to probe what information she could from Mrs. Sheridan, and Kirk found Mat alone in a soft heap at the table where his books were spread. The light shone through his scant hair and his big red ears and over his stub hands with the broken nails, and Kirk wondered with a tenderness that was half envy what blind alley of the truth this poor old traveller was shambling down now. Mat said, gladly:

"Sit down, boy. Ain't this a nice homey place when we got it all to ourselves? Not as I wish yer Auntie Ag any harm, for I sure was warned about her. But she was on hand an' I wantin' a woman to run the roadhouse, so I married her and hoped for the best, though I didn't get it. My, my!" he cried, suddenly sitting up as he thought of the venom Aggie would be preparing to spit, "ain't she a calamity, though! Boy, in spite of all the religion I been gettin', I just wonder why I don't snatch her bald-headed sometimes."

"Golly! I wish you would." Kirk laughed, feeling for his pipe. Old Mat and Tamsin; both after the real worthwhileness of life. He sat by him, putting an arm over the fat shoulder and wondering why he so sincerely loved Mat, this you-be-damned-old-sinner-turned-saint. Mat began to talk of Tamsin.

"You hadn't ought of kep' her out all night, boy, MacDonald was real het up about it. But I says: 'He's a good boy an' he sure cain't help lovin' her. I guess she pulls like gravitation. Sam Butler he says as any man can do great things if he knows what they are. She'll show you, boy. She's showin' me, but jest you remember that she's got a temper, too."

"Maybe she could show me," said Kirk, under his breath. He kept his arm about Mat, wishing that there was less page 152tenderness in his own make-up and not knowing that there is usually too much humanity in the man who is driven by his passions. "How's the Truth getting along, old chap?"

"Why … I'm still dippin'. There's the Bible talks of 'a way of escape from a man's troubles' an' I been huntin' for that way. Tamsin says she reckons it's courage. She says there ain't no way o' meetin' a thing but facin' up to it. What do you think, boy?"

"Does she say that?" said Kirk, a little startled.

"She surely do, an' mebbe she's right. But I guess she ain't had experience yet. She's jest a raw girl reely in them ways. The Great Blake he says … here: I'll read it." He read slowly: "'What is the price of experience? Do men buy it for a song? Or wisdom for a dance in the street? No, it is bought with the price of all that a man hath.' I've sung an' danced in the street, but that didn't git me nowheres. Now I'm buyin'. I've give up drink an' cussin' an' women an' gittin' shut of Aggie, an' mebbe I'll be experienced enough some day to find the Truth. What d'you think, boy."

"I'll lay you will. But … a slow game isn't it, uncle?"

"We-ell, I ain't reformed yet, an' that's a fac'. Besides, how's a man always to know he's on the right track? Look at David, now. He pleased God, but I reckon he didn't please Uriah the Hittite."

"Sure thing. Uncle, you do go to the nubbin of things." Kirk sat on the table-edge and laughed. For all old Mat's insecurity of thought there was an atmosphere of security here. Mat, at least, was trying for understanding, and Kirk felt the new impulse quickening in him, taking colour and form as young leaves do. All things lovely and of good repute. If he had not always loved these things he loved them now— in Tamsin. That glory up in the shack … why not believe that he could feel it again—with Tamsin? He rose, eager to go to her, claim her before them all.

"Somebody knocking," said Mat. "Let him in, Kirk."

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Kirk opened the door. Two Indians slid in and closed it. Mat saw Kirk stiffen as if he had been hit, while the girl put a finger in her mouth.

"Wah, wah," said Ooket, desolately. Until she saw him again she had forgotten how desirable the white man was. "I loving you, Kirk."

"Get to hell out of here," said Kirk. His voice had a strange breathless sound, Mat thought. The Loucheux lurched forward with the step of one more used to the wild than the settled camps. He smelt of the wild places, but he had some English in his guttural throat.

"Why gitta hell outa here?" His eyes stared under his low forehead. "You give me sooneahs, you Regard. Heap money you give me."

"Wah! wah!" wailed Ooket. It was hard work being an honest-to-God good girl. Because she had made clear to Kudi her position as a lawful widow it was no right reward that she should have to witness this. And even if she had told Kudi that it was Regard who spoke to her last night, was not that better than letting him think she had picked up an entirely new man?

"Did you hear me tell you to get out?" said Kirk.

Mat looked up at him. His face was hard and dark, but a tremor passed over it and the Loucheux was more at his ease. In his rough-and-tumble days Mat had learned men better than he would ever learn books, and he said now:

"He's got a case, boy, that feller has. Don't you git him too het up. What's he wantin'?"

"Blackmail, I suppose. He hasn't a case."

"Give a howl for Challis, then," said Mat, reasonably. "Here, you!" He lifted himself with a sudden hot feeling that he was big Mat Colom, proprietor of the Tinky-Tink again and Kirk the little large-eyed boy at his knee. "I'm goin' to set the Mounty onter you, nitchie," he said.

"No … don't." Kirk stood, his brows drawn down, page 154trying to think. Ooket had undoubtedly given him away to the Loucheux; but the Police would not believe anything she told them now. She had fed them too many lies. He was safe if he did not lose his head. The Loucheux dragged Ooket forward. Her baby face was frightened and she was between giggles and tears. The large brass rings in her ears bobbed ridiculously under her round wool cap. Mat sat heavily back in his chair, wondering why his body felt so shaking and fat. He said again:

"That feller's got a case, Kirk. Best let him tell it. And the girl knows you. Who is she?"

Kirk did not answer. Ooket spoke as though Kudi were literally jerking the words out of her.

"I honest-to-God good girl. I not knowing terrible lot. I not liking Olafssen that terrible much. I not saying …"

Her sniffling rose to a bellow. She rubbed her face with both pudgy hands, and Kirk noticed the ear-rings that had been Olafssen's with a new shock of dismay. Ooket had not been able to resist taking those rings, but she had had to explain them to her new man. Like a sharp dark picture in his brain he saw the soulless little creature there in the bloody snow among the pines, robbing Olafssen with greedy hands while himself made the trough in the stones, and he realized that they would be proof even to the Police that she had seen Olafssen dead.

"Well, git right along wi' you!" commanded Mat Colom. He sat upright now, his hand clenched on the table. "What's this about Olafssen? Wasn't he the man what disappeared on the trail? Got lost, eh?"

"Aha. Him lost oil right," sobbed Ooket.

"Dat feller kill heem," said the Loucheux, unemotionally. "Stay oil night in Olafssen's camp, dat feller. Olafssen come home an' be kill. Bang!"

"Aha. Kill him oil right," sobbed Ooket.

"Tellin' the truth, I take it, Kirk?" asked Mat Colom.

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"It was his life or mine. He shot first." Kirk lounged up to the Loucheux and laughed in his face. "Listen here, nitchie. You say I shot Olafssen. All right. I say Ooket shot him. In two minutes I call in the Mounty and I say: Here, you take this girl. She killed Olafssen and she's wearing his ear-rings. And they're the proof she killed him."

"Wah! wah!" cried Ooket. Kirk kept his eyes on the man, seeing there a dawning consciousness of the dominant race, a dawning doubt. "I good girl," wailed Ooket, rubbing her hands over her eyes.

"So she is. She had to do it. Now, you be kind to her and take her right out of this place sharp, and then I won't tell the Mounty. Give me those ear-rings, Ooket."

"No, by dam," cried Ooket, piercingly. She was roused now. Kirk stood still with his hand out.

"Give me those ear-rings. Don't you understand they're your death-warrant?" They were his own, but he could bluff her into fear.

"I liking. I not giving. I …"

Kirk made a step and his eyes suddenly blazed.

"Did you hear what I said? Take them out of her ears, you nitchie, and give them to me."

Under his battered plug hat the man was still staring as though hypnotized. He fumbled at Ooket as bidden; but with a shriek of pain she pushed him off, slowly released them and dropped them into Kirk's waiting hand.

"Now … get out," said Kirk.

The man backed to the door. His heavy brain was bemused. There was no trail in the woods he could not follow, but he collapsed under straight attack. Ooket followed, sobbing despairingly:

"Wah! wah! I honest-to-God good …"

Kirk slammed the door on them and turned back into the room. He stood a moment, slipping the ear-rings into his trouser-pocket, and then moved about, stoking up the stove, page 156setting an almanac straight on the wall, whistling a little. A fight of this kind was always exhilaration to him, and he had come out of it well. There could be no more trouble. But he felt somewhat uneasy, seeing Mat Colom humped in his chair like an old idol about to give judgment. He remembered how it had shaken Mat when young Cornell killed Barney at the Tinky-Tink, and hardened himself for what was bound to come. Mat said at last:

"Mebbe you'll give me the rights o' this now, Kirk."

"You've got them. It was just as I said. He was pumping a whole clip at me. I had to stop him."

"Wouldn't disablin' of done, boy?"

"What time had I to think of that?"

"Mightn't you of took a chanst? You're that peart wi' a gun."

"I hadn't time to think, I tell you." Kirk kicked a blazing stick back into the stove. "Besides, I was mad at him," he added under his breath.

Mat nodded. He knew that kind of madness. He went on heavily:

"What was you doin' in that feller's camp, anyways?"

"I got on to the wrong trail … the shorter trail the Patrol want me to take them over this winter."

"Then if they knew you saw Olafssen on that trail, why don't they suspect somethin'?"

"They don't know. They asked me if I'd seen him, of course. I told them I hadn't."

"You … my land, boy," cried Mat, turning in his chair and looking up at the man by the stove. "What in the nation did yer do that for? Why not of told 'em it was his life or yours? Any man'd understand that. But … but …" his toneless old voice began to shake, "it'll look mighty ugly if it comes out now … after all this while."

"It won't come out. What proof have they? Of course I'd have done better to have told, but … I'd been fooling page 157around some with Ooket at Macpherson, and I thought likely they'd suspect … reasons."

Mat nodded heavily. That explained it. And yet …

"I could of wished you'd told 'em, boy. Likely they'd of brought it in self-defence, an' so soon after the war, too, an' you snipin' over there all the time, and all the cases of shell-shock folks is claimin'. It'll take some straightenin' out now, I'm thinkin'."

"It can't be straightened out," said Kirk, impatiently, "and no one is going to try. I've been around it and around it, and I know it can't. I don't care a hoot about Olafssen. It was him or me, and he shot first. But I couldn't expect them to take it as a straight yarn in Dawson now. Forget it, old son, and let's be thankful Auntie Ag didn't turn up in the middle of it. That sure would have let the cat out of the bag."

"Oh, dear! And I been thinkin' yer that happy, boy."

The tremulous old voice broke, and Kirk came over and put an arm about the stooped neck. He felt freer, more cheerful than he had done since he killed Olafssen, for Ooket had been the only leak, and now her bolt was shot. And she was a natural siren, the little devil. He had no fear of her suffering at the hands of that big oaf.

"Dear old chap," he said, patting the fat shoulder. "So I am happy. Why wouldn't I be with you … and Tamsin?" His heart leapt suddenly and warmly to Tamsin. There lay the proper way for a man, and not with such as Ooket who had got him into this.

"But, boy … why, boy …" Mat swung round like a clumsy windmill. "Don't you see … you can't go marryin' Tamsin now, boy."

"I can't what?"

"You can't be that mean to her. Any old time it might come out, dear. Don't you see? You can't have Tamsin livin' on the aidge of that volcaner. It wouldn't be right. You an' me … we can stand it. We're men."

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His old blurred face looked up anxiously. Kirk checked his rising irritation. After all, he thought, it had been a pretty good shock for the old chap. He said, gently:

"Now,. don't you get worryin' about me and Tamsin. That's my business. Forget it as I'm going to. Let's get along with that readin'."

"You can't marry her, Kirk. It ain't right. The Great Blake …"

"Damn your Great Blake." Reaction setting in suddenly warned Kirk that he couldn't stand any more. "That's enough. I'm going to bed. Good-night."

He walked across to the door of his bedroom. Old Mat got up, clutching the table, for it seemed to be swimming away.

"Kirk … now, you listen to me, Kirk. I won't have it. If you bring Tamsin inter this I'm goin' right around to Challis, Kirk. I will so."

"What's that?"

"I'll tell Challis. This can't be hangin' over Tamsin all her life. An' MacDonald trusts us. He trusts us, boy. I told him I'd enquired of the angels like Blake says an' I'd found you was a good boy. I told him just that. D'yer think he'd let you have Tamsin if he knew what we do? Boy, he'd inform agin you that very minute."

"Now," said Kirk, coming into the room, "I've listened to you and you'll listen to me. I'm not going to have any interference here. You seem to forget I'm not a child any more. I'm going to marry Tamsin and you're going to hold your tongue, an' that's all I got to say to you"

To Mat his face looked dark and yet strangely white. He seemed taller, some way, with his head up and his eyes fierce under the dark tilted brows. Mat recognized that here was a man set upon his own ways.

"Tell Challis yerself, then," he said.

"Like hell I will! Come, old chap, I don't want to have to get mad …"

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"Then you'll leave Tamsin if you don't tell Challis. I mean it Kirk. Before God I'll give you up if you kip' on wi' this." He pointed an accusing finger. Fat, bent and broken-hearted as he looked, Kirk yet saw in him something of the mystical power of the old prophets. "Kirk, you're a man what's broke the Law an' you gotta pay for that. An' you gotta pay like a man. I won't have Tamsin payin' for yer as she would if this come out after you'd married her. I'd give you up first, Kirk. Before God."

"You're crazy!"

"I wish I was." Mat collapsed into his chair suddenly. He stared at Kirk. "I wish I was," he repeated, desolately.

"And what about Tamsin? Won't hurt her to have me go off this way, will it?"

With the hot unreason of a young man he forgot that he had been considering this very thing not so long ago. He remembered only that he had seen the Land of Promise and the bright way to it and that this old man stood between as he had stood long ago on the Kluane.

"It surely will hurt her. But she'll git over it. She's that young, an' she has compensations. I dunno as a woman's love do last long wi'out a right smart of stokin'. Seemin'ly not, fr'm all I've observed."

There was silence for a few minutes. Both men were very still. Then Kirk said in a low voice:

"You wouldn't do this to me, Uncle Mat?"

"I have opened my mouth to the Lord an' I can't go back," said Mat. Not for nothing did his mind revert to the tragedy of Jephtha's daughter. He lifted his weary eyes. "You better light out of here before that Injun girl gits after yer again. Likely she'd make trouble." He thought a minute. "If you take Bill Boss's launch an' git down to the Landin' right away you'll catch the steamer from the Kesikat going down ter meet the Dawson boat. The Tahkina will be three days yet. Pack your kit, Kirk."

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"I shall not tell Challis."

"Then pack your kit."

Kirk stood staring as though he saw a world that was not this world. Then he turned abruptly and shut himself into his room.

Mat Colom sat still, his white head drooped on his breast, staring at nothing.