The Man On The Other Bank

: Smoke Bellew

I.



It was before Smoke Bellew staked the farcical town-site of Tra-Lee,

made the historic corner of eggs that nearly broke Swiftwater Bill's

bank account, or won the dog-team race down the Yukon for an even

million dollars, that he and Shorty parted company on the Upper

Klondike. Shorty's task was to return down the Klondike to Dawson

to record some claims they had staked.



Smok , with the dog-team, turned south. His quest was Surprise Lake

and the mythical Two Cabins. His traverse was to cut the headwaters

of the Indian River and cross the unknown region over the mountains

to the Stewart River. Here, somewhere, rumour persisted, was

Surprise Lake, surrounded by jagged mountains and glaciers, its

bottom paved with raw gold. Old-timers, it was said, whose very

names were forgotten in the forests of earlier years, had dived in

the ice-waters of Surprise Lake and fetched lump-gold to the surface

in both hands. At different times, parties of old-timers had

penetrated the forbidding fastness and sampled the lake's golden

bottom. But the water was too cold. Some died in the water, being

pulled up dead. Others died of consumption. And one who had gone

down never did come up. All survivors had planned to return and

drain the lake, yet none had ever gone back. Disaster always

happened. One man fell into an air-hole below Forty Mile; another

was killed and eaten by his dogs; a third was crushed by a falling

tree. And so the tale ran. Surprise Lake was a hoodoo; its

location was unremembered; and the gold still paved its undrained

bottom.



Two Cabins, no less mythical, was more definitely located. 'Five

sleeps,' up the McQuestion River from the Stewart, stood two ancient

cabins. So ancient were they that they must have been built before

ever the first known gold-hunter had entered the Yukon Basin.

Wandering moose-hunters, whom even Smoke had met and talked with,

claimed to have found the two cabins in the old days, but to have

sought vainly for the mine which those early adventurers must have

worked.



"I wish you was goin' with me," Shorty said wistfully, at parting.

"Just because you got the Indian bug ain't no reason for to go

pokin' into trouble. They's no gettin' away from it, that's loco

country you're bound for. The hoodoo's sure on it, from the first

flip to the last call, judgin' from all you an' me has hearn tell

about it."



"It's all right, Shorty. I'll make the round trip and be back in

Dawson in six weeks. The Yukon trail is packed, and the first

hundred miles or so of the Stewart ought to be packed. Old-timers

from Henderson have told me a number of outfits went up last fall

after the freeze-up. When I strike their trail I ought to hit her

up forty or fifty miles a day. I'm likely to be back inside a

month, once I get across."



"Yes, once you get acrost. But it's the gettin' acrost that worries

me. Well, so long, Smoke. Keep your eyes open for that hoodoo,

that's all. An' don't be ashamed to turn back if you don't kill any

meat."







II.



A week later, Smoke found himself among the jumbled ranges south of

Indian River. On the divide from the Klondike he had abandoned the

sled and packed his wolf-dogs. The six big huskies each carried

fifty pounds, and on his own back was an equal burden. Through the

soft snow he led the way, packing it down under his snow-shoes, and

behind, in single file, toiled the dogs.



He loved the life, the deep arctic winter, the silent wilderness,

the unending snow-surface unpressed by the foot of any man. About

him towered icy peaks unnamed and uncharted. No hunter's camp-

smoke, rising in the still air of the valleys, ever caught his eye.

He, alone, moved through the brooding quiet of the untravelled

wastes; nor was he oppressed by the solitude. He loved it all, the

day's toil, the bickering wolf-dogs, the making of the camp in the

long twilight, the leaping stars overhead and the flaming pageant of

the aurora borealis.



Especially he loved his camp at the end of the day, and in it he saw

a picture which he ever yearned to paint and which he knew he would

never forget--a beaten place in the snow, where burned his fire; his

bed, a couple of rabbit-skin robes spread on fresh-chopped spruce-

boughs; his shelter, a stretched strip of canvas that caught and

threw back the heat of the fire; the blackened coffee-pot and pail

resting on a length of log, the moccasins propped on sticks to dry,

the snow-shoes up-ended in the snow; and across the fire the wolf-

dogs snuggling to it for the warmth, wistful and eager, furry and

frost-rimed, with bushy tails curled protectingly over their feet;

and all about, pressed backward but a space, the wall of encircling

darkness.



At such times San Francisco, The Billow, and O'Hara seemed very far

away, lost in a remote past, shadows of dreams that had never

happened. He found it hard to believe that he had known any other

life than this of the wild, and harder still was it for him to

reconcile himself to the fact that he had once dabbled and dawdled

in the Bohemian drift of city life. Alone, with no one to talk to,

he thought much, and deeply, and simply. He was appalled by the

wastage of his city years, by the cheapness, now, of the

philosophies of the schools and books, of the clever cynicism of the

studio and editorial room, of the cant of the business men in their

clubs. They knew neither food nor sleep, nor health; nor could they

ever possibly know the sting of real appetite, the goodly ache of

fatigue, nor the rush of mad strong blood that bit like wine through

all one's body as work was done.



And all the time this fine, wise, Spartan North Land had been here,

and he had never known. What puzzled him was, that, with such

intrinsic fitness, he had never heard the slightest calling whisper,

had not himself gone forth to seek. But this, too, he solved in

time.



"Look here, Yellow-face, I've got it clear!"



The dog addressed lifted first one fore-foot and then the other with

quick, appeasing movements, curled his bush of a tail about them

again, and laughed across the fire.



"Herbert Spencer was nearly forty before he caught the vision of his

greatest efficiency and desire. I'm none so slow. I didn't have to

wait till I was thirty to catch mine. Right here is my efficiency

and desire. Almost, Yellow Face, do I wish I had been born a wolf-

boy and been brother all my days to you and yours."



For days he wandered through a chaos of canyons and divides which

did not yield themselves to any rational topographical plan. It was

as if they had been flung there by some cosmic joker. In vain he

sought for a creek or feeder that flowed truly south toward the

McQuestion and the Stewart. Then came a mountain storm that blew a

blizzard across the riff-raff of high and shallow divides. Above

timber-line, fireless, for two days, he struggled blindly to find

lower levels. On the second day he came out upon the rim of an

enormous palisade. So thickly drove the snow that he could not see

the base of the wall, nor dared he attempt the descent. He rolled

himself in his robes and huddled the dogs about him in the depths of

a snow-drift, but did not permit himself to sleep.



In the morning, the storm spent, he crawled out to investigate. A

quarter of a mile beneath him, beyond all mistake, lay a frozen,

snow-covered lake. About it, on every side, rose jagged peaks. It

answered the description. Blindly, he had found Surprise Lake.



"Well-named," he muttered, an hour later, as he came out upon its

margin. A clump of aged spruce was the only woods. On his way to

it, he stumbled upon three graves, snow-buried, but marked by hand-

hewn head-posts and undecipherable writing. On the edge of the

woods was a small ramshackle cabin. He pulled the latch and

entered. In a corner, on what had once been a bed of spruce-boughs,

still wrapped in mangy furs, that had rotted to fragments, lay a

skeleton. The last visitor to Surprise Lake, was Smoke's

conclusion, as he picked up a lump of gold as large as his doubled

fist. Beside the lump was a pepper-can filled with nuggets of the

size of walnuts, rough-surfaced, showing no signs of wash.



So true had the tale run, that Smoke accepted without question that

the source of the gold was the lake's bottom. Under many feet of

ice and inaccessible, there was nothing to be done, and at mid-day,

from the rim of the palisade, he took a farewell look back and down

at his find.



"It's all right, Mr Lake," he said. "You just keep right on staying

there. I'm coming back to drain you--if that hoodoo doesn't catch

me. I don't know how I got here, but I'll know by the way I go

out."







III.



In a little valley, beside a frozen stream and under beneficent

spruce trees, he built a fire four days later. Somewhere in that

white anarchy he left behind him, was Surprise Lake--somewhere, he

knew not where; for a hundred hours of driftage and struggle through

blinding driving snow, had concealed his course from him, and he

knew not in what direction lay BEHIND. It was as if he had just

emerged from a nightmare. He was not sure that four days or a week

had passed. He had slept with the dogs, fought across a forgotten

number of shallow divides, followed the windings of weird canyons

that ended in pockets, and twice had managed to make a fire and thaw

out frozen moose-meat. And here he was, well-fed and well-camped.

The storm had passed, and it had turned clear and cold. The lay of

the land had again become rational. The creek he was on was natural

in appearance, and trended as it should toward the southwest. But

Surprise Lake was as lost to him as it had been to all its seekers

in the past.



Half a day's journey down the creek brought him to the valley of a

larger stream which he decided was the McQuestion. Here he shot a

moose, and once again each wolf-dog carried a full fifty-pound pack

of meat. As he turned down the McQuestion, he came upon a sled-

trail. The late snows had drifted over, but underneath, it was

well-packed by travel. His conclusion was that two camps had been

established on the McQuestion, and that this was the connecting

trail. Evidently, Two Cabins had been found and it was the lower

camp, so he headed down the stream.



It was forty below zero when he camped that night, and he fell

asleep wondering who were the men who had rediscovered the Two

Cabins, and if he would fetch it next day. At the first hint of

dawn he was under way, easily following the half-obliterated trail

and packing the recent snow with his webbed shoes so that the dogs

should not wallow.



And then it came, the unexpected, leaping out upon him on a bend of

the river. It seemed to him that he heard and felt simultaneously.

The crack of the rifle came from the right, and the bullet, tearing

through and across the shoulders of his drill parka and woollen

coat, pivoted him half around with the shock of its impact. He

staggered on his twisted snow-shoes to recover balance, and heard a

second crack of the rifle. This time it was a clean miss. He did

not wait for more, but plunged across the snow for the sheltering

trees of the bank a hundred feet away. Again and again the rifle

cracked, and he was unpleasantly aware of a trickle of warm moisture

down his back.



He climbed the bank, the dogs floundering behind, and dodged in

among the trees and brush. Slipping out of his snow-shoes, he

wallowed forward at full length and peered cautiously out. Nothing

was to be seen. Whoever had shot at him was lying quiet among the

trees of the opposite bank.



"If something doesn't happen pretty soon," he muttered at the end of

half an hour, "I'll have to sneak away and build a fire or freeze my

feet. Yellow Face, what'd you do, lying in the frost with

circulation getting slack and a man trying to plug you?"



He crawled back a few yards, packed down the snow, danced a jig that

sent the blood back into his feet, and managed to endure another

half hour. Then, from down the river, he heard the unmistakable

jingle of dog-bells. Peering out, he saw a sled round the bend.

Only one man was with it, straining at the gee-pole and urging the

dogs along. The effect on Smoke was one of shock, for it was the

first human he had seen since he parted from Shorty three weeks

before. His next thought was of the potential murderer concealed on

the opposite bank.



Without exposing himself, Smoke whistled warningly. The man did not

hear, and came on rapidly. Again, and more sharply, Smoke whistled.

The man whoa'd his dogs, stopped, and had turned and faced Smoke

when the rifle cracked. The instant afterwards, Smoke fired into

the wood in the direction of the sound. The man on the river had

been struck by the first shot. The shock of the high velocity

bullet staggered him. He stumbled awkwardly to the sled, half-

falling, and pulled a rifle out from under the lashings. As he

strove to raise it to his shoulder, he crumpled at the waist and

sank down slowly to a sitting posture on the sled. Then, abruptly,

as the gun went off aimlessly, he pitched backward and across a

corner of the sled-load, so that Smoke could see only his legs and

stomach.



From below came more jingling bells. The man did not move. Around

the bend swung three sleds, accompanied by half a dozen men. Smoke

cried warningly, but they had seen the condition of the first sled,

and they dashed on to it. No shots came from the other bank, and

Smoke, calling his dogs to follow, emerged into the open. There

were exclamations from the men, and two of them, flinging off the

mittens of their right hands, levelled their rifles at him.



"Come on, you red-handed murderer, you," one of them, a black-

bearded man, commanded, "an' jest pitch that gun of yourn in the

snow."



Smoke hesitated, then dropped his rifle and came up to them.



"Go through him, Louis, an' take his weapons," the black-bearded man

ordered.



Louis, a French-Canadian voyageur, Smoke decided, as were four of

the others, obeyed. His search revealed only Smoke's hunting knife,

which was appropriated.



"Now, what have you got to say for yourself, Stranger, before I

shoot you dead?" the black-bearded man demanded.



"That you're making a mistake if you think I killed that man," Smoke

answered.



A cry came from one of the voyageurs. He had quested along the

trail and found Smoke's tracks where he had left it to take refuge

on the bank. The man explained the nature of his find.



"What'd you kill Joe Kinade for?" he of the black beard asked.



"I tell you I didn't--" Smoke began.



"Aw, what's the good of talkin'. We got you red-handed. Right up

there's where you left the trail when you heard him comin'. You

laid among the trees an' bushwhacked him. A short shot. You

couldn't a-missed. Pierre, go an' get that gun he dropped."



"You might let me tell what happened," Smoke objected.



"You shut up," the man snarled at him. "I reckon your gun'll tell

the story."



All the men examined Smoke's rifle, ejecting and counting the

cartridges, and examining the barrel at muzzle and breech.



"One shot," Blackbeard concluded.



Pierre, with nostrils that quivered and distended like a deer's,

sniffed at the breech.



"Him one fresh shot," he said.



"The bullet entered his back," Smoke said. "He was facing me when

he was shot. You see, it came from the other bank."



Blackbeard considered this proposition for a scant second, and shook

his head.



"Nope. It won't do. Turn him around to face the other bank--that's

how you whopped him in the back. Some of you boys run up an' down

the trail and see if you can see any tracks making for the other

bank."



Their report was, that on that side the snow was unbroken. Not even

a snow-shoe rabbit had crossed it. Blackbeard, bending over the

dead man, straightened up, with a woolly, furry wad in his hand.

Shredding this, he found imbedded in the centre the bullet which had

perforated the body. Its nose was spread to the size of a half-

dollar, its butt-end, steel-jacketed, was undamaged. He compared it

with a cartridge from Smoke's belt.



"That's plain enough evidence, Stranger, to satisfy a blind man.

It's soft-nosed an' steel-jacketed; yourn is soft-nosed and steel-

jacketed. It's thirty-thirty; yourn is thirty-thirty. It's

manufactured by the J. and T. Arms Company; yourn is manufactured by

the J. and T. Arms Company. Now you come along an' we'll go over to

the bank an' see jest how you done it."



"I was bushwhacked myself," Smoke said. "Look at the hole in my

parka."



While Blackbeard examined it, one of the voyageurs threw open the

breech of the dead man's gun. It was patent to all that it had been

fired once. The empty cartridge was still in the chamber.



"A damn shame poor Joe didn't get you," Blackbeard said bitterly.

"But he did pretty well with a hole like that in him. Come on,

you."



"Search the other bank first," Smoke urged.



"You shut up an' come on, an' let the facts do the talkin'."



They left the trail at the same spot he had, and followed it on up

the bank and in among the trees.



"Him dance that place keep him feet warm," Louis pointed out. "That

place him crawl on belly. That place him put one elbow w'en him

shoot--"



"And by God there's the empty cartridge he had done it with!" was

Blackbeard's discovery. "Boys, there's only one thing to do--"



"You might ask me how I came to fire that shot," Smoke interrupted.



"An' I might knock your teeth into your gullet if you butt in again.

You can answer them questions later on. Now, boys, we're decent an'

law-abidin', an' we got to handle this right an' regular. How far

do you reckon we've come, Pierre?"



"Twenty mile I t'ink for sure."



"All right. We'll cache the outfit an' run him an' poor Joe back to

Two Cabins. I reckon we've seen an' can testify to what'll stretch

his neck."







IV.



It was three hours after dark when the dead man, Smoke, and his

captors arrived at Two Cabins. By the starlight, Smoke could make

out a dozen or more recently built cabins snuggling about a larger

and older cabin on a flat by the river bank. Thrust inside this

older cabin, he found it tenanted by a young giant of a man, his

wife, and an old blind man. The woman, whom her husband called

'Lucy,' was herself a strapping creature of the frontier type. The

old man, as Smoke learned afterwards, had been a trapper on the

Stewart for years, and had gone finally blind the winter before.

The camp of Two Cabins, he was also to learn, had been made the

previous fall by a dozen men who arrived in half as many poling-

boats loaded with provisions. Here they had found the blind

trapper, on the site of Two Cabins, and about his cabin they had

built their own. Later arrivals, mushing up the ice with dog-teams,

had tripled the population. There was plenty of meat in camp, and

good low-pay dirt had been discovered and was being worked.



In five minutes, all the men of Two cabins were jammed into the

room. Smoke, shoved off into a corner, ignored and scowled at, his

hands and feet tied with thongs of moosehide, looked on. Thirty-

eight men he counted, a wild and husky crew, all frontiersmen of the

States or voyageurs from Upper Canada. His captors told the tale

over and over, each the centre of an excited and wrathful group.

There were mutterings of "Lynch him now--why wait?" And, once, a

big Irishman was restrained only by force from rushing upon the

helpless prisoner and giving him a beating.



It was while counting the men that Smoke caught sight of a familiar

face. It was Breck, the man whose boat Smoke had run through the

rapids. He wondered why the other did not come and speak to him,

but himself gave no sign of recognition. Later, when with shielded

face Breck passed him a significant wink, Smoke understood.



Blackbeard, whom Smoke heard called Eli Harding, ended the

discussion as to whether or not the prisoner should be immediately

lynched.



"Hold on," Harding roared. "Keep your shirts on. That man belongs

to me. I caught him an' I brought him here. D'ye think I brought

him all the way here to be lynched? Not on your life. I could a-

done that myself when I found him. I brought him here for a fair

an' impartial trial, an' by God, a fair an' impartial trial he's

goin' to get. He's tied up safe an' sound. Chuck him in a bunk

till morning, an' we'll hold the trial right here."







V.



Smoke woke up. A draught, that possessed all the rigidity of an

icicle, was boring into the front of his shoulder as he lay on his

side facing the wall. When he had been tied into the bunk there had

been no such draught, and now the outside air, driving into the

heated atmosphere of the cabin with the pressure of fifty below

zero, was sufficient advertizement that some one from without had

pulled away the moss-chinking between the logs. He squirmed as far

as his bonds would permit, then craned his neck forward until his

lips just managed to reach the crack.



"Who is it?" he whispered.



"Breck," came the answer. "Be careful you don't make a noise. I'm

going to pass a knife in to you."



"No good," Smoke said. "I couldn't use it. My hands are tied

behind me and made fast to the leg of the bunk. Besides, you

couldn't get a knife through that crack. But something must be

done. Those fellows are of a temper to hang me, and, of course, you

know I didn't kill that man."



"It wasn't necessary to mention it, Smoke. And if you did you had

your reasons. Which isn't the point at all. I want to get you out

of this. It's a tough bunch of men here. You've seen them.

They're shut off from the world, and they make and enforce their own

law--by miner's meeting, you know. They handled two men already--

both grub-thieves. One they hiked from camp without an ounce of

grub and no matches. He made about forty miles and lasted a couple

of days before he froze stiff. Two weeks ago they hiked the second

man. They gave him his choice: no grub, or ten lashes for each

day's ration. He stood for forty lashes before he fainted. And now

they've got you, and every last one is convinced you killed Kinade."



"The man who killed Kinade, shot at me, too. His bullet broke the

skin on my shoulder. Get them to delay the trial till some one goes

up and searches the bank where the murderer hid."



"No use. They take the evidence of Harding and the five Frenchmen

with him. Besides, they haven't had a hanging yet, and they're keen

for it. You see, things have been pretty monotonous. They haven't

located anything big, and they got tired of hunting for Surprise

Lake. They did some stampeding the first part of the winter, but

they've got over that now. Scurvy is beginning to show up amongst

them, too, and they're just ripe for excitement."



"And it looks like I'll furnish it," was Smoke's comment. "Say,

Breck, how did you ever fall in with such a God-forsaken bunch?"



"After I got the claims at Squaw Creek opened up and some men to

working, I came up here by way of the Stewart, hunting for Two

Cabins. They'd beaten me to it, so I've been higher up the Stewart.

Just got back yesterday out of grub."



"Find anything?"



"Nothing much. But I think I've got a hydraulic proposition that'll

work big when the country's opened up. It's that, or a gold-

dredger."



"Hold on," Smoke interrupted. "Wait a minute. Let me think."



He was very much aware of the snores of the sleepers as he pursued

the idea that had flashed into his mind.



"Say, Breck, have they opened up the meat-packs my dogs carried?"



"A couple. I was watching. They put them in Harding's cache."



"Did they find anything?"



"Meat."



"Good. You've got to get into the brown canvas pack that's patched

with moosehide. You'll find a few pounds of lumpy gold. You've

never seen gold like it in the country, nor has anybody else.

Here's what you've got to do. Listen."



A quarter of an hour later, fully instructed and complaining that

his toes were freezing, Breck went away. Smoke, his own nose and

one cheek frosted by proximity to the chink, rubbed them against the

blankets for half an hour before the blaze and bite of the returning

blood assured him of the safety of his flesh.







VI.



"My mind's made up right now. There ain't no doubt but what he

killed Kinade. We heard the whole thing last night. What's the

good of goin' over it again? I vote guilty."



In such fashion, Smoke's trial began. The speaker, a loose-jointed,

hard-rock man from Colorado, manifested irritation and disgust when

Harding set his suggestion aside, demanded the proceedings should be

regular, and nominated one, Shunk Wilson, for judge and chairman of

the meeting. The population of Two Cabins constituted the jury,

though, after some discussion, the woman, Lucy, was denied the right

to vote on Smoke's guilt or innocence.



While this was going on, Smoke, jammed into a corner on a bunk,

overheard a whispered conversation between Breck and a miner.



"You haven't fifty pounds of flour you'll sell?" Breck queried.



"You ain't got the dust to pay the price I'm askin'," was the reply.



"I'll give you two hundred."



The man shook his head.



"Three hundred. Three-fifty."





At four hundred, the man nodded, and said: "Come on over to my

cabin an' weigh out the dust."



The two squeezed their way to the door, and slipped out. After a

few minutes Breck returned alone.



Harding was testifying, when Smoke saw the door shoved open

slightly, and in the crack appear the face of the man who had sold

the flour. He was grimacing and beckoning emphatically to one

inside, who arose from near the stove and started to work toward the

door.



"Where are you goin', Sam?" Shunk Wilson demanded.



"I'll be back in a jiffy," Sam explained. "I jes' got to go."



Smoke was permitted to question the witnesses, and he was in the

middle of the cross-examination of Harding, when from without came

the whining of dogs in harness, and the grind and churn of sled-

runners. Somebody near the door peeped out.



"It's Sam an' his pardner an' a dog-team hell-bent down the trail

for Stewart River," the man reported.



Nobody spoke for a long half-minute, but men glanced significantly

at one another, and a general restlessness pervaded the packed room.

Out of the corner of his eye, Smoke caught a glimpse of Breck, Lucy,

and her husband whispering together.



"Come on, you," Shunk Wilson said gruffly to Smoke. "Cut this

questionin' short. We know what you're tryin' to prove--that the

other bank wasn't searched. The witness admits it. We admit it.

It wasn't necessary. No tracks led to that bank. The snow wasn't

broke."



"There was a man on the other bank just the same," Smoke insisted.



"That's too thin for skatin', young man. There ain't many of us on

the McQuestion, an' we got every man accounted for."



"Who was the man you hiked out of camp two weeks ago?" Smoke asked.



"Alonzo Miramar. He was a Mexican. What's that grub-thief got to

do with it?"



"Nothing, except that you haven't accounted for HIM, Mr Judge."



"He went down the river, not up."



"How do you know where he went?"



"Saw him start."



"And that's all you know of what became of him?"



"No, it ain't, young man. I know, we all know, he had four day's

grub an' no gun to shoot meat with. If he didn't make the

settlement on the Yukon he'd croaked long before this."



"I suppose you've got all the guns in this part of the country

accounted for, too," Smoke observed pointedly.



Shunk Wilson was angry.



"You'd think I was the prisoner the way you slam questions into me.

Come on with the next witness. Where's French Louis?"



While French Louis was shoving forward, Lucy opened the door.



"Where you goin'?" Shunk Wilson shouted.



"I reckon I don't have to stay," she answered defiantly. "I ain't

got no vote, an' besides my cabin's so jammed up I can't breathe."



In a few minutes her husband followed. The closing of the door was

the first warning the judge received of it.



"Who was that?" he interrupted Pierre's narrative to ask.



"Bill Peabody," somebody spoke up. "Said he wanted to ask his wife

something and was coming right back."



Instead of Bill, it was Lucy who re-entered, took off her furs, and

resumed her place by the stove.



"I reckon we don't need to hear the rest of the witnesses," was

Shunk Wilson's decision, when Pierre had finished. "We know they

only can testify to the same facts we've already heard. Say,

Sorensen, you go an' bring Bill Peabody back. We'll be votin' a

verdict pretty short. Now, Stranger, you can get up an' say your

say concernin' what happened. In the meantime we'll just be savin'

delay by passin' around the two rifles, the ammunition, an' the

bullets that done the killin'."



Midway in his story of how he had arrived in that part of the

country, and at the point in his narrative where he described his

own ambush and how he had fled to the bank, Smoke was interrupted by

the indignant Shunk Wilson.



"Young man, what sense is there in you testifyin' that way? You're

just takin' up valuable time. Of course you got the right to lie to

save your neck, but we ain't goin' to stand for such foolishness.

The rifle, the ammunition, the bullet that killed Joe Kinade is

against you--What's that? Open the door, somebody!"



The frost rushed in, taking form and substance in the heat of the

room, while through the open door came the whining of dogs that

decreased rapidly with distance.



"It's Sorensen an' Peabody," some one cried, "a-throwin' the whip

into the dawgs an' headin' down river!"



"Now, what the hell--!" Shunk Wilson paused, with dropped jaw, and

glared at Lucy. "I reckon you can explain, Mrs Peabody."



She tossed her head and compressed her lips, and Shunk Wilson's

wrathful and suspicious gaze passed on and rested on Breck.



"An' I reckon that new-comer you've ben chinning with could explain

if HE had a mind to."



Breck, now very uncomfortable, found all eyes centred on him.



"Sam was chewing the rag with him, too, before he hit out," some one

said.



"Look here, Mr Breck," Shunk Wilson continued. "You've ben

interruptin' proceedings, and you got to explain the meanin' of it.

What was you chinnin' about?"



Breck cleared his throat timidly and replied. "I was just trying to

buy some grub."



"What with?"



"Dust, of course."



"Where'd you get it?"



Breck did not answer.



"He's ben snoopin' around up the Stewart," a man volunteered. "I

run across his camp a week ago when I was huntin'. An' I want to

tell you he was almighty secretious about it."



"The dust didn't come from there," Breck said. "That's only a low-

grade hydraulic proposition."



"Bring your poke here an' let's see your dust," Wilson commanded.



"I tell you it didn't come from there."



"Let's see it just the same."



Breck made as if to refuse, but all about him were menacing faces.

Reluctantly, he fumbled in his coat pocket. In the act of drawing

forth a pepper can, it rattled against what was evidently a hard

object.



"Fetch it all out!" Shunk Wilson thundered.



And out came the big nugget, first-size, yellow as no gold any

onlooker had ever seen. Shunk Wilson gasped. Half a dozen,

catching one glimpse, made a break for the door. They reached it at

the same moment, and, with cursing and scuffling, jammed and pivoted

through. The judge emptied the contents of the pepper can on the

table, and the sight of the rough lump-gold sent half a dozen more

toward the door.



"Where are you goin'?" Eli Harding asked, as Shunk started to

follow.



"For my dogs, of course."



"Ain't you goin' to hang him?"



"It'd take too much time right now. He'll keep till we get back, so

I reckon this court is adjourned. This ain't no place for

lingerin'."



Harding hesitated. He glanced savagely at Smoke, saw Pierre

beckoning to Louis from the doorway, took one last look at the lump-

gold on the table, and decided.



"No use you tryin' to get away," he flung back over his shoulder.

"Besides, I'm goin' to borrow your dogs."



"What is it--another one of them blamed stampedes?" the old blind

trapper asked in a queer and petulant falsetto, as the cries of men

and dogs and the grind of the sleds swept the silence of the room.



"It sure is," Lucy answered. "An' I never seen gold like it. Feel

that, old man."



She put the big nugget in his hand. He was but slightly interested.



"It was a good fur-country," he complained, "before them danged

miners come in an' scared back the game."



The door opened, and Breck entered.



"Well," he said, "we four are all that are left in camp. It's forty

miles to the Stewart by the cut-off I broke, and the fastest of them

can't make the round trip in less than five or six days. But it's

time you pulled out, Smoke, just the same."



Breck drew his hunting knife across the other's bonds, and glanced

at the woman.



"I hope you don't object?" he said, with significant politeness.



"If there's goin' to be any shootin'," the blind man broke out, "I

wish somebody'd take me to another cabin first."



"Go on, an' don't mind me," Lucy answered. "If I ain't good enough

to hang a man, I ain't good enough to hold him."



Smoke stood up, rubbing his wrists where the thongs had impeded the

circulation.



"I've got a pack all ready for you," Breck said. "Ten days' grub,

blankets, matches, tobacco, an axe, and a rifle."



"Go to it," Lucy encouraged. "Hit the high places, Stranger. Beat

it as fast as God'll let you."



"I'm going to have a square meal before I start," Smoke said. "And

when I start it will be up the McQuestion, not down. I want you to

go along with me, Breck. We're going to search that other bank for

the man that really did the killing."



"If you'll listen to me, you'll head down for the Stewart and the

Yukon," Breck objected. "When this gang gets back from my low-grade

hydraulic proposition, it will be seeing red."



Smoke laughed and shook his head.



"I can't jump this country, Breck. I've got interests here. I've

got to stay and make good. I don't care whether you believe me or

not, but I've found Surprise Lake. That's where that gold came

from. Besides, they took my dogs, and I've got to wait to get them

back. Also, I know what I'm about. There was a man hidden on that

bank. He came pretty close to emptying his magazine at me."



Half an hour afterward, with a big plate of moose-steak before him

and a big mug of coffee at his lips, Smoke half-started up from his

seat. He had heard the sounds first. Lucy threw open the door.



"Hello, Spike; hello, Methody," she greeted the two frost-rimed men

who were bending over the burden on their sled.



"We just come down from Upper Camp," one said, as the pair staggered

into the room with a fur-wrapped object which they handled with

exceeding gentleness. "An' this is what we found by the way. He's

all in, I guess."



"Put him in the near bunk there," Lucy said. She bent over and

pulled back the furs, disclosing a face composed principally of

large, staring, black eyes, and of skin, dark and scabbed by

repeated frost-bite, tightly stretched across the bones.



"If it ain't Alonzo!" she cried. "You pore, starved devil!"



"That's the man on the other bank," Smoke said in an undertone to

Breck.



"We found it raidin' a cache that Harding must a-made," one of the

men was explaining. "He was eatin' raw flour an' frozen bacon, an'

when we got 'm he was cryin' an' squealin' like a hawk. Look at

him! He's all starved, an' most of him frozen. He'll kick at any

moment."



. . . . .



Half an hour later, when the furs had been drawn over the face of

the still form in the bunk, Smoke turned to Lucy.



"If you don't mind, Mrs Peabody, I'll have another whack at that

steak. Make it thick and not so well done."