"Is it not time to rest?" said the soldier, laughingly, yet with a look of yearning in his misty eyes as he took the girlish figure in his arms. But she only smiled up at him and, releasing his hold, led the way into the forest.

He turned for a moment and shook his fist at the village and those in it, laughing loudly as if from the feel of the blood that leaped within him. Then he joined his companion, and, hand-in-hand, they left the broad reaches of the greater stream behind them and plunged into the untrodden valley.



CHAPTER V

A STORY IS BEGUN

"It's fonny t'ing how two brown eye Was changin' everything— De cloud she's no more on de sky, An' winter's jus' lak' spring Dey mak' my pack so very light, De trail, she's not so long— I'd walk it forty mile to-night For hear her sing wan song But now I'm busy mak' fortune For marry on dat girl, An' if she's tole me yass, dat's soon, Bonheur! I'm own de worl'!"

Poleon Doret sang gayly as the trader came towards him through the open grove of birch, for he was happy this afternoon, and, being much of a dreamer, this fresh enterprise awoke in him a boyish pleasure. Then Necia had teased him as he came away, and begged him, as was always her custom, to take her with him, no matter whence or whither, so long as there was adventure afoot. Well, it would not be long now before he could say yes, and he would take her on a journey far longer than either of them had yet taken—a journey that would never end. Had not the gods looked with favor, at last, upon his long novitiate, and been pleased with the faith he had kept? Had not this discovery of "No Creek" Lee's been providentially arranged for his own especial benefit? A fool could see that this was a mark of celestial approbation, and none but a fool would question the wisdom of the gods. Had he not watched the girl grow from a slip of thirteen and spoken never a word of his love? Had he not served and guarded her with all the gentle chivalry of an olden knight? Of course! And here was his reward, a gift of wealth to crown his service, all for her. Now that she was a woman, and had seen him tried, and knew he was a man, he would bring his burden of prosperity and lay it at her feet, saying:

"Here is another offering, my Necia, and with it go the laughter and the music and the heart of Poleon Doret."

Sacre! It would not take her long to wake up after that! The world was very bright indeed this afternoon, and he burst again into song in company with the voices of the forest people:

"Chante, rossignol, chante! Toi qui a le coeur gai; Tu as le coeur a rire Mai j' l' ai-ta pleurer, Il y a longtemps que j' t'aime Jamais je ne t'oublierai."

[Footnote: "Sing, little bird, oh, sing away! You with the voice so light and gay! Yours is a heart that laughter cheers, Mine is a hearts that's full of tears. Long have I loved, I love her yet; Leave her I can, but not forget."]

"Whew!" said Gale, slipping out of his pack-straps, "the skeeters is bad."

"You bet your gum boots," said Poleon. "Dey're mos' so t'ick as de summer dey kill Johnnie Platt on de Porcupine." Both men wore gauntleted gloves of caribou-skin and head harnesses of mosquito-netting stretched over globelike frames of thin steel bands, which they slipped on over their hats after the manner of divers' helmets, for without protection of some kind the insects would have made travel impossible once the Yukon breezes were left behind or once the trail dipped from the high divides where there was no moss.

"Let's see. It was you that found him, wasn't it?" said Gale.

"Sure t'ing! I'm comin' down for grub in my canoe, w'en I see dis feller on de bank, walkin' lak' he's in beeg horry. 'Ba Gar!' I say, 'dere's man goin' so fast he'll meet hese'f comin' home!' Den he turn roun' an' go tearin' back, wavin' hees arms lak' he's callin' me, till he fall down. Wen I paddle close up, I don' know 'im no more dan stranger, an' me an' Johnnie Platt is trap togeder wan winter. Wat you t'ink of dat?"

"I saw a fellow killed that way at Holy Cross," interpolated the trader.

"'Hello,' I say, 'w'at's de matter?' An' den I see somet'ing 'bout 'im dat look familiar. Hees face she's all swell' up an' bleedin' lak' raw meat." The Frenchman curled his upper lip back from his teeth and shook his head at the remembrance.

"Jesu, dat's 'orrible sight! Dem fly is drive 'im crazee. Hees nose an' ears is look lak' holes in beeg red sponge, an' hees eye are close up tight."

"He died before you got him in, didn't he?"

"Yes. He was good man, too. Some tam' if I ever have bad enemy w'at I like to see catch hell I'm goin' turn 'im loose 'mong dose skeeter-bug."

"Holy Mackinaw!" ejaculated Gale. "Who'd ever think of that? Why, that's worse than dropping water on his skull till he goes crazy, like them Chinamen do."

The Frenchman nodded. "It's de wors' t'ing I know. Dat's w'y I lak' to geeve it to my enemy."

"Imagine fightin' the little devils till they stung you crazy and pizened your eyes shut!"

Gale fell to considering this, while Poleon filled his pipe, and, raising his veil, undertook to smoke. The pests proved too numerous, however, and forced him to give it up.

"Bagosh! Dey're hongry!"

"It will be all right when we get out of the woods," said the elder man.

"I guess you been purty glad for havin' Necia home again, eh?" ventured the other after a while, unable to avoid any longer the subject uppermost in his mind.

"Yes, I'm glad she's through with her schooling."

"She's gettin' purty beeg gal now."

"That's right."

"By-an'-by she's goin' marry on some feller—w'at?"

"I suppose so. She ain't the kind to stay single."

"Ha! Dat's right, too. Mebbe you don' care if she does get marry, eh?"

"Not if she gets a man that will treat her right."

"Wal! Wal! Dere's no trouble 'bout dat," exclaimed Doret, fervently. "No man w'at's livin' could treat her bad. She's too good an' too purty for have bad husban'."

"She is, is she?" Gale turned on him with a strange glare in his eyes. "Them's the kind that get the he-devils. There's something about a good girl that attracts a bad man, particularly if she's pretty; and it goes double, too—the good men get the hellions. A fellow can't get so tough but what he can catch a good woman, and a decent man usually draws a critter that looks like a sled and acts like a timber wolf."

"Necia wouldn't marry on no bad man," said Doret, positively.

"No?" said Gale. "Let me tell you what I saw with my own eyes. I knew a girl once that was just as good and pure as Necia, and just as pretty, too—yes, and a thousand times prettier."

"Ho, ho!" laughed Doret, sceptically.

"She was an Eastern girl, and she come West where men were different to what she'd been used to. Those were early days, and it was a new country, where a person didn't know much about his neighbor's past and cared less; and, although there were a heap of girls thereabouts, they were the kind you'll always find in such communities, while this one was plumb different. Man! Man! But she was different. She was a WOMAN! Two fellows fell in love with her. One of them lived in the same camp as her, and he was a good man, leastways everybody said he was, but he wasn't wise to all the fancy tricks that pretty women hanker after; and, it being his first affair, he was right down buffaloed at the very thought of her, so he just hung around and slept late so that he might dream about her and feel like he was her equal or that she loved back at him. You know! The other fellow came from a neighboring town, and he wasn't the same kind, for he'd knocked around more, and was a better liar, but he wasn't right. No, sir! He was sure a wrong guy, as it came out, but he was handsomer and younger, and the very purity and innocence of the girl drew him, I reckon, being a change from what he had ever mixed up with."

"W'y don' dis good man tak' a shot at him?" asked Poleon, hotly.

"First, he didn't realize what was going on, being too tied up with dreaming, I reckon; and, second, neither man didn't know the other by sight, living as they did in different parts; third, he was an ordinary sort of fellow, and hadn't ever had any trouble, man to man, at that time. Anyhow, the girl up and took the bad one."

"Wat does de good man do, eh?"

"Well, he was all tore up about it, but he went away like a sick quail hides out."

"Dat's too bad."

"He heard about them now and then, and what he heard tore him up worse than the other had, for the girl's husband couldn't wear the harness long, and, having taken away what good there was in her, he made up in deviltry for the time he had lost. She stood it pretty well, and never whimpered, even when her eyes were open and she saw what a prize-package she had drawn. The fact that she was game enough to stand for him and yet keep herself clean without complaint made the man worse. He tried to break her spirit in a thousand ways, tried to make her the same as he was, tried to make her a bad woman, like the others he had known. It appeared like the one pleasure he got was to torture her."

"W'y don' she quit 'im?" said Doret. "Dat ain' wrong for quit a man lak' him."

"She couldn't quit on account of the kid. They had a youngster. Then, too, she had ideas of her own; so she stood it for three years, living worse than a dog, till she saw it wasn't any use—till she saw that he would make a bad woman of her as sure as he would make one of the kid—till he got rough—"

"No! No! You don' mean dat? No man don' hurt no woman," interjected Doret.

"By God! That's just what I mean," the trader answered, while his face had grown so gray as to match his brows. "He beat her."

Poleon broke into French words that accorded well with the trader's harsh voice.

"The woman sent for the other man after that, for he had been living lonely, loving her all the time, and you'd better believe he went."

"Ha! Dat's fine! Dat's dam' fine!" said the other. "I'll bet dere's hell to pay den—w'at?"

"Yes, there was a kind of reckoning." The old man lapsed into moody silence, the younger one waiting eagerly for him to continue, but there came the sound of voices down the trail, and they looked up.

"Here comes Lee," said Gale.

"Wat happen' den? I'm got great interes' 'bout dis woman," insisted Poleon.

"It's a long story, and I just told you this much to show what I said was true about a good girl and a bad man, and to show why I want Necia to get a good one. The sooner it happens the better it will suit me."

Neither man had ever spoken thus openly to the other about Necia before, and although their language was indirect, each knew the other's thought. But there was no time for further talk now, for the others were close upon them. As they came into view, Gale exclaimed:

"Well, if he hasn't brought Runnion along!"

"Humph!" grunted Doret. "I don' t'ink much of dat feller. Wat's de matter wit' 'No Creek,' anyhow?"

The three new arrivals dropped down upon the moss to rest, for the up-trail was heavy and the air sultry inside the forest. Lee was the first to speak.

"Did you get away without bein' seen?" he asked.

"Sure," answered Gale. "Poleon has been here two hours."

"That's good; I don't want nobody taggin' along."

"We came right through the town boldly," announced Stark; "but if they had seen you two they would have suspected something, sure."

Runnion volunteered nothing except oaths at the mosquitoes and at his pack-straps, which were new and cut him already. As no explanation of his presence was offered, neither the trader nor Doret made any comment then, but it came out later, when the old miner dropped far enough behind the others to render conversation possible.

"You decided to take in another one, eh?" Gale asked Lee.

"It wasn't exactly my doin's," replied the miner. "Stark asked me to let Runnion come 'long, bein' as he had grub-staked him, and he seemed so set on it that I ackeressed. You see, it's the first chance I ever had to pay him back for a favor he done me in the Cassiar country. There's plenty of land to go around."

It was Lee's affair, thought the trader, and he might tell whom he liked, so he said no more, but fell to studying the back of the man next in front, who happened to be Stark, observing every move and trick of him, and, during the frequent pauses, making a point of listening and watching him guardedly.

All through the afternoon the five men wound up the valley, following one another's footsteps, emerging from sombre thickets of fir to flounder across wide pastures of "nigger-heads," that wobbled and wriggled and bowed beneath their feet, until at cost of much effort and profanity they gained the firmer footing of the forest. Occasionally they came upon the stream, and found easier going along its gravel bars, till a bend threw them again into the meadows and mesas on either hand. Their course led them far up the big valley to another stream that entered from the right, bearing backward in a great bow towards the Yukon, and always there were dense clouds of mosquitoes above their heads. At one point Stark, hot and irritable, remarked:

"There must be a shorter cut than this, Lee?"

"I reckon there is," the miner replied, "but I've always had a pack to carry, so I chose the level ground ruther than climb the divides."

"S'pose dose people at camp hear 'bout dis strike an' beat us in?" suggested Poleon.

"It wouldn't be easy going for them after they got there," Stark said, sourly. "I, for one, wouldn't stand for it."

"Nor I," agreed Runnion.

"I don't see how you'd help yourself," the trader remarked. "One man's got as good a right as another."

"I guess I'd help myself, all right," Stark laughed, significantly, as did Runnion, who added:

"Lee is entitled to put in anybody he wants on his own discovery, and if anybody tries to get ahead of us there's liable to be trouble."

"I reckon if I don't know no short-cut, nobody else does," Lee remarked, whereupon Doret spoke up reassuringly:

"Dere's no use gettin' scare' lak' dat, biccause nobody knows w'ere Lee's creek she's locate' but John an' me, an' dere's nobody w'at knows he mak' de strike but us four."

"That's right," said Gale; "the only other way across is by Black Bear Creek, and there ain't a half-dozen men ever been up to the head of that stream, much less over the divide, so I don't allow there's any use to fret ourselves."

They went on their way, travelling leisurely until late evening, when they camped at the mouth of the valley up which the miner's cabin lay. They chose a long gravel bar, that curved like a scimitar, and made down upon its outer tip where the breeze tended to thin the plague of insects. They were all old-stagers in the ways of camplife, so there was no lost motion or bickering as to their respective duties. Their preparations were simple. First they built a circle of smudges out of wet driftwood, and inside this Lee kindled a camp-fire of dry sticks, upon which he cooked, protected by the smoke of the others, while Gale went back to the edge of the forest and felled a dozen small firs, the branches of which he clipped. These Poleon and Runnion bore down to the end of the spit for bedding, while Stark chopped a pile of dry wood for the night. Gale noted that the new man swung an axe with the free dexterity of one to whom its feel was familiar, also that he never made a slip nor dulled it on the gravel of the bar, displaying an all-round completeness and a knack of doing things efficiently that won reluctant approval from the trader despite the unreasoning dislike he had taken to him.

Lee was ready for them by the time they had finished their tasks, and, fanned by the breeze that sucked up the stream and lulled by the waters, they ate their scanty supper. Their one-eyed guide had lived so long among mosquitoes and had become so inoculated with their poison that he was in a measure impervious to their sting, hence the insects gathered on his wrinkled, hair-grown hide only to give up in melancholy disgust and fly to other and fuller-blooded feeding-grounds. Camp had been made early, at Gale's suggestion, instead of pushing on a few miles farther, as Lee had intended; and now, when the cool evening fell and the draught quickened, it became possible to lay off gloves and head-gear; so they sat about the fire, talking, smoking, and rubbing their tired feet.

It is at such hours and in the smoke of such fires that men hark backward and bring forth the sacred, time-worn memories they have treasured, to turn them over fondly by the glow of dying embers. It is at such times that men's garrulity asserts itself, for the barriers of caution are let down, as are the gates of remembrance, and it is then that friends and enemies are made, for there are those who cannot listen and others who cannot understand.

"No Creek" Lee, the one-eyed miner who had made this lucky strike, told in simple words of his long and solitary quest, when ill-luck had risen with him at the dawn and misfortune had stalked beside him as he drifted and drank from camp to camp, while the gloom of a settled pessimism soured him, and men began to shun him because of the evil that seemed to follow in his steps.

"I've been rainbow-chasin' forty years," he said, "and never caught nothin' but cramps and epidemics and inflammations. I'm the only miner in Alaska that never made a discovery of gold and never had a creek named after him."

"Is that how you got your name?" asked Runnion.

"It is. I never was no good to myself nor nobody else. I just occupied space. I've been the vermifuge appendix of the body politic; yes, worse'n that—I've been an appendix with a seed in it. I made myself sore, and everybody around me, but I'm at the bat now, and don't you never let that fact escape you."

"How are you going to spend your money?" inquired Stark.

"I'm goin' to eat it up! I've fed on dried and desiccated and other disastrous and dissatisfactory diets till I'm all shrivelled up inside like a dead puff-ball; now it's me for the big feed and the long drink. I'm goin' to 'Frisco and get full of wasteful and exorbitant grub, of one kind and another, like tomatters and French vicious water."

Poleon Doret laughed with the others; he was bubbling with the spirits of a boy whose life is clean, for whom there are no eyes in the black dark that lies beyond a camp-fire, and for whom there are no unforgettable faces in its smoke. When Lee fell silent the trader and Stark resumed their talk, which was mainly of California, it seemed to the Frenchman, who also noted that it was his friend who subtly shaped the topics. In time their stories revived his memory of the conversation in the birch grove that morning, and when there occurred a lapse in the talk he said:

"Say, John, w'at happen' to dat gal we was talkin' 'bout dis mornin'?"

Gale shook his head and turned again to his companion, but the young man's mind was bent on its quest, and he continued:

"Dat was strange tale, for sure."

"What was it?" questioned Runnion.

"John was tell 'bout a feller he knowed w'at marry a good gal jus' to mak' her bad lak' hese'f."

"How's that?" inquired Stark, turning curiously upon the old man; but Gale knocked the ashes from his pipe and replied:

"Oh, it's a long story—happened when I was in Washington State."

Poleon was about to correct him—it was California, he had said—when Gale arose, remarking sleepily that it was time to turn in if they wished to get any rest before the mosquitoes got bad again, then sauntered away from the fire and spread his blanket. The rest followed and made down their beds; then, drawing on gloves and hat-nets, and rolling themselves up in their coverings, fell to snoring. All except the trader, who lay for hours on his back staring up at the stars, as if trying to solve some riddle that baffled him.

They awoke early, and in half an hour had eaten, remade their packs, and were ready to resume their march. As they were about to start, Gale said:

"I reckon we'd better settle right now who has the choice of locations when we get up yonder. I've been on stampedes where it saved a heap of hard feeling."

"I'm agreeable," said Stark. "Then there won't be any misunderstanding."

The others, being likewise old at the game, acquiesced. They knew that in such cases grave trouble has often occurred when two men have cast eyes on the same claim, and have felt the miner's causeless "hunch" that gold lies here or there, or that the ground one of them covets is wanted by the other.

"I'll hold the straws," said Lee, "and every feller will have an even break." Turning his back on the others, he cut four splinters of varying lengths, and, arranging them so that the ends peeped evenly from his big hand, he held them out.

"The longest one has the first choice, and so on," he said, presenting them to Gale, who promptly drew the longest of the four. He turned to Doret, but the Frenchman waved him courteously to Stark, and, when both he and Runnion had made their choice, Lee handed him the remaining one, which was next in length to that of the trader. Stark and Runnion qualified in the order they drew, the latter cursing his evil luck.

"Never min', ole man," laughed Poleon, "de las' shot she's de sure wan."

They took up their burdens again, and filed towards the narrow valley that stretched away into the hazy distances.



CHAPTER VI

THE BURRELL CODE

Not until his dying day will Burrell lose the memory of that march with Necia through the untrodden valley, and yet its incidents were never clear-cut nor distinct when he looked back upon them, but blended into one dreamlike procession, as if he wandered through some calenture where every image was delightfully distorted and each act deliriously unreal, yet all the sweeter from its fleeting unreality. They talked and laughed and sang with a rush of spirits as untamed as the waters in the course they followed. They wandered, hand-in-hand, into a land of illusions, where there was nothing real but love and nothing tangible but joy. The touch of their lips had waked that delight which comes but once in a lifetime and then to but few; it was like the moon-madness of the tropics or the dementia of the forest folk in spring. A gentle frenzy possessed them, rendering them insensible to fatigue and causing them to hurry the more breathlessly that they might sooner rest and sit beside each other. At times they fell into sweet silences where the waters laughed with them and the trees whispered their secret, bowing and nodding in joyous surprise at this invasion; or, again, the breezes romped with them, withdrawing now and then to rush out and greet them at the bends in boisterous pleasure.

They held to the bed of the stream, for its volume was low and enabled them to ford it from bar to bar. Necia had been raised in the open, with the wild places for her playground, and her muscles were like those of a boy, hence the two swung merrily onward, as if in playful contest, while the youth had never occasion to wait for her or to moderate his gait. Indeed, her footing was more sure than his, as he found when she ventured out unhesitatingly upon felled logs that lay across swift, brawling depths. The wilderness had no mystery for her, and no terrors, so she was ever at his side, or in advance, while her eyes, schooled in the tints of the forest, and more active than those of a bird, saw every moving thing, from the flash of a camp-robber's wing through some hidden glade to the inquisitive nodding of a fool hen where it perched high up against the bole of a spruce. They surprised a marten fishing in a drift-wood dam, but she would not let the soldier shoot, and made him pass it by, where it sat amazed till it realized that these were lovers and resumed its fishing. Gradually the stream diminished, and its bowldered bed became more difficult to traverse, until, assuming the airs of a leader, the girl commanded him to lay off his pack, at which he pretended to obey mutinously, though thrilling with the keenest delight at his own submission.

"What are you going to do?" he inquired.

"Mind your own business, sir," she commanded, sternly.

From her belt she drew a little hunting-knife, with which she cut and trimmed a slender birch the thickness of his thumb, whereupon he pretended great fright, and said:

"Please! please! What have I done?"

"A great deal! You are a most bold and stubborn creature."

"All pack animals are stubborn," he declared. "It's the only privilege they have."

"You are much too presumptuous, also, as I discovered in your quarters."

"My only presumption is in loving you."

"That was not presumption," she smiled; "it was pre-emption. You must be punished."

"I shall run away," he threatened. "I shall gallop right off through the woods and—begin to eat grass. I am very wild."

As she talked she drew from her pocket a spool of line, and took a fly-hook from her hat; then, in a trice, she had rigged a fishing-rod, and, creeping out upon a ledge, she whipped the pool below of a half-dozen rainbow trout, which she thrust into his coat while they were still wriggling. Then she as quickly put up her gear, and they resumed their journey, climbing more steeply now, until, when the sun was low, they quit the stream-bed and made through the forest towards the shoulder of an untimbered ridge that ran down into the valley. And there, high up on the edge of the spruce, they selected a mossy shelf and pitched their camp.

They had become so intimate by now as to fall into a whimsical mode of speech, and Necia reverted to a childish habit in her talk that brought many a smile to the youth's face. It had been her fancy as a little girl to speak in adjectives, ignoring many of her nouns, and its quaintness had so amused her father that on rare occasions, when the humor was on him, he also took it up. She now addressed herself to Burrell in the same manner.

"I think we are very smarts to come so far," she said.

"You travel like a deer," he declared, admiringly. "Why, you have tired me down." Removing his pack, he stretched his arms and shook out the ache in his shoulders.

"Which way does our course lie now, Pathfinder?"

"Right up the side of this big, and then along the ridge. In two hours we come to a gully running so"—she indicated an imaginary direction—"which we go down till it joins another stream so, and right there we'll find old 'No Creek's' cabin, so! Won't they be surprised to see us! I think we're very cunning to beat them in, don't you?" She laughed a glad little bubbling laugh, and he cried:

"Oh, girl! How wonderful you are!"

"It's getting very dark and fierce," she chided, "and all the housework must be done."

So he built a fire, then fetched a bucket of water from a rill that trickled down among the rocks near by. He made as if to prepare their meal, but she would have none of it.

"Bigs should never cook," she declared. "That work belongs to littles," then forced him to vacate her domain and turn himself to the manlier duties of chopping wood and boughs.

First, however, she showed him how to place two green foot-logs upon which the teapot and the frying-pan would sit without upsetting, and how long she wished the sticks of cooking-wood. Then she banished him, as it were, and he built a wickiup of spruce tops, under the shelter of which he piled thick, fragrant billows of "Yukon feathers."

Once while he was busy at his task he paused to revel in the colors that lay against hill and valley, and to drink in the splendid isolation of it all. Below lay the bed of Black Bear Creek, silent and sombre in the creeping twilight; beyond, away beyond, across the westward brim of the Yukon basin, the peaks were blue and ivory and gold in the last rays of the sun; while the open slopes behind and all about wore a carpet of fragrant short-lived flowers, nodding as if towards sleep, and over all was the hush of the lonely hills. A gust blew a whiff of the camp smoke towards him, and he turned back to watch Necia kneeling beside the fire like some graceful virgin at her altar rites, while the peculiar acrid out-door odor of burning spruce was like an incense in his nostrils.

He filled his chest deeply and leaned on his axe, for he found himself shaking as if under the spell of some great expectancy.

"Your supper is getting cold," she called to him.

He took a seat beside her on a pile of boughs where the smoke was least troublesome; he had chosen a spot that was sheltered by a lichen-covered ledge, and this low wall behind, with the wickiup joining it, formed an enclosure that lent them a certain air of privacy. They ate ravenously, and drank deep cupfuls of the unflavored tea. By the time they were finished the night had fallen and the air was just cool enough to make the fire agreeable. Burrell heaped on more wood and stretched out beside her.

"This day has been so wonderful," said the girl, "that I shall never go to sleep. I can't bear to end it."

"But you must be weary, little maid," he said, gently; "I am."

"Wait, let me see." She stretched her limbs and moved slightly to try her muscles. "Yes, I am a very tired, but not the kind of tired that makes you want to go to bed. I want to talk, talk, talk, and not about ourselves either, but about sensibles. Tell me about your people—your sister."

He had expected her to ask this, for the subject seemed to have an inexhaustible charm for her. She would sit rapt and motionless as long as he cared to talk of his sister, in her wide, meditative eyes the shadow of a great unvoiced longing. It always seemed to make her grave and thoughtful, he had noticed, so he had tried lately to avoid the topic, and to-night in particular he wanted to do so, for this was no time for melancholy. He had not even allowed himself to think, as yet, and there were reasons why he did not wish her to do so; thought and realization and a readjustment of their relations would come after to-night, but this was the hour of illusion, and it must not be broken; therefore he began to tell her of other people and of his youth, making his tales as fanciful as possible, choosing deliberately to foster the merry humor in which they had been all day. He told her of his father, the crotchety old soldier, whose absurd sense of duty and whose elaborate Southern courtesy had become a byword in the South. He told her household tales that were prized like pieces of the Burrell plate, beautiful heirlooms of sentiment that mark the honor of high-blooded houses; following which there was much to recount of the Meades, from the admiral who fought as a boy in the Bay of Tripoli down to the cousin who was at Annapolis; the while his listener hung upon his words hungrily, her mind so quick in pursuit of his that it spurred him unconsciously, her great, dark eyes half closed in silent laughter or wide with wonder, and in them always the warmth of the leaping firelight blended with the trust of a new-born virginal love.

Without realizing it, the young man drifted further than he had intended, and further than he had ever allowed himself to go before, for in him was a clean and honest pride of birth, like his mother's glory in her forebears, the expression of which he had learned to repress, inasmuch as it was a Dixie-land conceit and had been misunderstood when he went North to the Academy. In some this would have seemed bigoted and feminine, this immoderate admiration for his own blood, this exaggerated appreciation of his family honor, but in this Southern youth it was merely the unconscious commendation of an upright manliness for an upright code. When he had finished, the girl remarked, with honest approval:

"What a fine you are. Those people of yours have all been good men and women, haven't they?"

"Most of them," he admitted, "and I think the reason is that we've been soldiers. The army discipline is good for a man. It narrows a fellow, I suppose, but it keeps him straight."

Then he began to laugh silently.

"What is it?" she said, curiously.

"Oh, nothing! I was just wondering what my strait-laced ancestors would say if they could see me now."

"What do you mean?" the girl asked, in open-eyed wonderment.

"I don't care," he went on, unheeding her question. "They did worse things in their time, from what I hear." He leaned forward to draw her to him.

"Worse things? But we are doing nothing bad," said Necia, holding him off. "There's no wrong in loving."

"Of course not," he assured her.

"I am proud of it," she declared. "It is the finest thing, the greatest thing that has ever come into my life. Why, I simply can't hold it; I want to sing it to the stars and cry it out to the whole world. Don't you?"

"I hardly think we'd better advertise," he said, dryly.

"Why not?"

"Well, I shouldn't care to publish the tale of this excursion of ours, would you?"

"I don't see any reason against it. I have often taken trips with Poleon, and been gone with him for days and days at a time."

"But you were not a woman then," he said, softly.

"No, not until to-day, that's true. Dear, dear! How I did grow all of a sudden! And yet I'm just the same as I was yesterday, and I'll always be the same, just a wild little. Please don't ever let me be a big tame. I don't want to be commonplace and ordinary. I want to be natural—and good."

"You couldn't be like other women," he declared, and there was more tenderness than hunger in his tone now, as she looked up at him trustingly from the shelter of his arms. "It would spoil you to grow up."

"It is so good to be alive and to love you like this!" she continued, dreamily, staring into the fire. "I seem to have come out of a gloomy house into the glory of a warm spring day, for my eyes are blinded and I can't see half the beautifuls I want to, there are so many about me."

"Those are my arms," interjected the soldier, lightly, in an effort to ward off her growing seriousness.

"I've never been afraid of anything, and yet I feel so safe inside them. Isn't it queer?"

The young man became conscious of a vague discomfort, and realized dimly that for hours now he had been smothering with words and caresses a something that had striven with him to be heard, a something that instead of dying grew stronger the more utterly this innocent maid yielded to him. It was as if he had ridden impulse with rough spurs in a fierce desire to distance certain voices, and in the first mad gallop had lost them, but now far back heard them calling again more strongly every moment. A man's honor, if old, may travel feebly, but its pursuit is persistent. It was the talk about his people that had raised this damned uneasiness and indecision, he thought. Why had he ever started it?

"The marvellous part of it all," continued the girl, "is that it will never end. I know I shall love you always. Do you suppose I am really different from other girls?"

"Everything is different to-night—the whole world," he declared, impatiently. "I thought I knew myself, but suddenly I seem strange in my own eyes."

"I've had a big handicap," she said, "but you must help me to overcome it. I want to be like your sister."

He rose and piled more wood upon the fire. What possessed the girl? It was as if she knew each cunning joint of his armor, as if she had realized her peril and had set about the awakening of his conscience, deliberately and with a cautious wisdom beyond her years. Well, she had done it—and he swore to himself. Then he melted at the sight of her, crouched there against the shadows, following his every movement with her soul in her eyes, the tenderest trace of a smile upon her lips. He vowed he was a reprobate to wrong her so; it was her white soul and her woman's love that spoke.

When she beheld him gazing at her, she tilted her head sidewise daintily, like a little bird.

"Oh, my! What a fierce you are all at once!"

Her smile flashed up as if illumined by the leaping blaze, and he crossed quickly, kneeling beside her.

"Dear, wonderful girl," he said, "it is going to be my heart's work to see that you never change and that you remain just what you are. You can't understand what this means to me, for I, too, was blinded, but the darkness of the night has restored my vision. Now you must go to sleep; the hours are short and we must be going early."

He piled up a great, sweet-scented couch of springy boughs, and fashioned her a pillow out of a bundle of smaller ones, around which he wrapped his khaki coat; then he removed her high-laced boots, and, taking her tiny feet, one in the palm of either hand, bowed his head over them and kissed them with a sense of her gracious purity and his own unworthiness. He spread one of the big gray blankets over her, and tucked her in, while she sighed in delightful languor, looking up at him all the time.

"I'll sit here beside you for a while," he said. "I want to smoke a bit."

She stole a slim, brown hand out from beneath the cover and snuggled it in his, and he leaned forward, closing her lids down with his lips. Her utter weariness was manifest, for she fell asleep almost instantly, her fingers twined about his in a childlike grip.

At times a great desire to feel her in his arms, to have her on his breast, surged over him, for he had lived long apart from women, and the solitude of the night seemed to mock him. He was a strong man, and in his veins ran the blood of wayward forebears ho were wont to possess that which they conquered in the lists of love, mingled with which was the blood of spirited Southern women who had on occasion loved not wisely, according to Kentucky rumor, but only too well. Nevertheless, they were honest men and women, if over-sentimental, and had transmitted to him a heritage of chivalry and a high sense of honor and courage. Strange to say, this little, simple half-breed girl had revived this honor and courage, even when he tried most stubbornly to smother it. If only her love was like her blood, he might have had no scruples; or if her blood were as pure as her love—even then it would be easier; but, as it was, he must give her up to-night, and for all time. Her love had placed a barrier between them greater and more insurmountable than her blood.

He sat for a long time with the dwindling firelight playing about him, his manhood and his desires locked in a grim struggle, wondering at the hold this forest elf had gained upon him, wondering how it was that she had stolen into his heart and head and taken such utter possession of him. It would be no easy task to shut her out of his mind and put her away from him. And she...?

He gently withdrew his fingers from her grasp, and, seeking the other side of the wickiup, covered himself over without disturbing her, and fell asleep.

It was early dawn when Necia crept to him.

"I dreamed you had gone away," she said, shivering violently and drawing close. "Oh, it was a terrible awakening—"

"I was too tired to dream," he said.

"So I had to come and see if you were really here."

He quickly rekindled the fire, and they made a hasty breakfast. Before the warmth of the rising sun had penetrated the cold air they had climbed the ridge and obtained a wondrous view of broken country, the hills alight with the morning rays, the valleys misty and mystical. They made good progress on the summit, which was paved with barren rock and sparsely carpeted with short moss, while there was never a hint of insects to annoy them. Merrily they swung along, buoyed up by an unnatural exaltation; yet now and then, as they drew near their destination, the young man had a chilling premonition of evil to come, and wondered if he had not been foolhardy to undertake this rash enterprise.

"I wish Stark was not one of Lee's party," he said once. "He may misunderstand our being together this way."

"But when he learns that we love each other, that will explain everything."

"I'm not so sure. He doesn't know you as Lee and Poleon and your father do. I think we had better say nothing at all about—you and me—to any one."

"But why?" questioned the girl, stopping abruptly. "They will know it, anyhow, when they see us. I can't conceal it."

"I am wiser in this than you are," the soldier insisted, "and we mustn't act like lovers; trust this to me."

"Oh, I won't play that!" cried Necia, petulantly. "If all this is going to end when we get to Lee's cabin, we'll stay right here forever."

He was not sure of all the logic he advanced in convincing her, but she yielded finally, saying:

"Well, I suppose you know best, and, anyhow, littles should always mind."

They clung to the divide for several hours, then descended into the bed of a stream, which they followed until it joined a larger one a couple of miles below, and there, sheltered in a grove of whispering firs, they found Lee's cabin nestling in a narrow, forked valley. Evidently the miner had selected a point on the main creek just below the confluence of the feeders as a place in which to prospect, and Burrell fell to wondering which one of these smaller streams supplied the run of gold.

"There's no one here," said Necia, gleefully. "We've beat them in! We've beat them in!"

They had been walking rapidly since dawn, and, although Burrell's watch showed two o'clock, she refused to halt for lunch, declaring that the others might arrive at any moment; so down they went to the lower end of "No Creek" Lee's location, where Burrell blazed a smooth spot on the down-stream side of a tree and wrote thereon at Necia's dictation. When he had finished, she signed her name, and he witnessed it, then paced off four hundred and forty steps, where he squared a spruce-tree, which she marked: "Lower centre end stake of No. I below discovery. Necia Gale, locator." She was vastly excited and immensely elated at her good-fortune in acquiring the claim next to Lee's, and chattered like a magpie, filling the glades with resounding echoes and dancing about in the bright sunlight that filtered through the branches.

"Now you stake the one below mine," she said. "It's just as good, and maybe better—nobody can tell." But he shook his head.

"I'm not going to stake anything," said he.

"You must!" she cried, quickly, the sparkle dying from her eyes. "You said you would, or I never would have brought you."

"I merely said I would come with you," he corrected. "I did not promise to take up a claim, for I don't think I ought to do so. If I were a civilian, it would be different, but this is government land, and I am a part of the government, as it were. Then, too, in addition to the question of my right to do it, there would be the certainty of making enemies of your people, old "No Creek" and the rest, and I can't afford that now. With you it is different, for you are entitled to this ground. After Lee's friends have shared in his discovery I may change my mind."

All arguments and pleading were in vain; he remained obdurate and insisted on her locating two other claims for herself, one on each of the smaller creeks where they came together above the house.

"But nobody ever stakes more than one claim on a gulch," objected the girl. "It's a custom of the miners."

"Then we'll call each one of these branches a different and separate creek," he said. "The gold was carried down one of those smaller streams, and we won't take any chances on which one it was. When a fellow plays a big game he should play to win, and, as this means such a great deal to you, we won't overlook any bets."

Necia consented, and when her three claims had been properly located the couple returned to the cabin to get lunch and to await with some foreboding the coming of the others and what of good or ill it might bring.



CHAPTER VII

THE MAGIC OF BEN STARK

Before the party came in sight, the sound of their voices reached the cabin, and Burrell rose nervously and sauntered to the door. Uncertain how this affair might terminate, he chose to get first look at his enemies, if they should prove to be such, realizing the advantage that goes to a man who stands squarely on both feet.

The trail came through the brush at the rear, and he heard Lee say:

"This here's the place, boys—the shack ain't fifty yards away."

"Likely looking gulch," Gale was heard to reply, in his deep tones—there was a crackle of dead brush, a sound as of a man tripping and falling heavily, then oaths in a voice that made the Lieutenant start.

"Ha, ha!" laughed Doret. "You mus' be tired, Meestaire R-r-unnion. Better you pick up your feet. Dat's free tarn' you've-"

They emerged into the open behind the house to pause in line back of Lee, who was staring at the stove-pipe of his cabin, from which came a wisp of smoke. It seemed to Burrell that they held their position for a long time. Then he heard Lee say:

"Well, I'll be damned! Somebody's here ahead of us."

"We've been beaten," growled Stark, angrily, pushing past him and coming round the corner, an ugly look in his eyes.

Burrell was standing at ease in the door, smoking, one forearm resting on the jamb, his wide shoulders nearly filling the entrance.

"Good-afternoon," he nodded, pleasantly.

Lee answered him unintelligibly; Stark said nothing, but Runnion's exclamation was plain.

"It's that damned blue-belly!"

"When did YOU get here?" said Stark, after a pause.

"A few hours ago."

"How did you come?" asked Lee.

"Black Bear Creek," said the soldier, curtly, at which Runnion broke into profanity.

"Better hush," Burrell admonished him; "there's a lady inside," and at that instant Necia showed her laughing face under his arm, while the trader uttered her name in amazement.

"Lunch is ready," she said. "We've been expecting you for quite a while."

"Ba Gar! Dat's fonny t'ing for sure," said Poleon. "Who tol' you 'bout dis strike—eh?"

"Mother; I made her," the girl answered.

"Take off your packs and come in," Burrell invited, but Stark strode forward.

"Hold on a minute. This don't look good to me. You say your mother told you. I suppose you're Old Man Gale's other daughter—eh?"

Necia nodded.

"What time of day was it when you learned about this?"

"Cut that out," roughly interjected Gale. "Do you think I double-crossed you?"

The other turned upon him.

"It looks that way, and I intend to find out. You said yesterday you hadn't told anybody—"

"I didn't think about the woman," said the trader, a trifle disconcerted, whereupon Runnion gave vent to an ironical sneer.

"But here's your girl and this man ahead of us. I suppose there's others on the way, too."

"Nonsense!" Burrell cut in. "Don't quarrel about this. Miss Gale got wind of your secret, and beat you at your own game, so that ends it; but there's plenty of ground left for all of you, and no harm done. Nobody knows of this strike from us, I can assure you."

"I call it dam' sleeck work," chuckled the Canadian, slipping out of his straps. "De nex' tam' I go stampedin' I tak' you 'long, Necia."

"Me, too," said Lee. "An' now I'm goin' to tear into some of them beans I smell a bilin' in yonder."

The others followed, although Stark and Runnion looked black and had little to say. It was an uncomfortable meal—every one was ill at ease; Gale, in particular, was quiet, and ate less than any of them. His eyes sought Stark's face frequently, and once the blood left his cheeks and his eyes blazed as he observed the gambler eying Necia, gazing at her with the same boldness he would have used in scanning a horse.

"You are a mighty good-looking girl for a 'blood,'" remarked Stark, at last.

"Thank you," she replied, simply, and the soldier's vague dislike of the man crystallized into hate on the instant. There was a tone back of his words that seemed aimed at the trader, Meade thought, but Gale showed no sign of it, so the meal was finished in silence, after which the five belated prospectors went out to make their locations, for the fear of interruption was upon them now.

First they went down-stream, and, according to their agreement, the trader staked first, followed by Poleon and Stark, thus throwing Runnion's claim more than a mile distant from Lee's discovery. From here they went up the creek to find the girl's other locations, one on each branch, at which Stark sneeringly remarked that she had pre-empted enough ground for a full-grown white woman.

Runnion's displeasure was even more open, and he fell into foul-mouthed mutterings, addressing himself to Poleon and Stark while the trader was out of earshot.

"This affair don't smell right, and I still think it's a frame-up."

"Bah!" exclaimed Doret.

"The old man sent the girl on ahead of us to blanket all the good ground. That's what he did!"

"Dat's fool talk," declared the Frenchman.

"I'm not so sure," Stark broke in. "You remember he hung back and wanted to go slow from the start; and didn't he ask us to camp early last night? Looks now as if he did it just to give her time to get in first. He admitted that he knew the Black Bear trail, and if he lied about keeping his mouth shut to the squaw, he'd lie about other—"

"Wait wan minnit," interrupted Poleon, his voice as soft as a woman's. "I tol' you dat I know all 'bout dis Black Bear Creek, too—you 'member, eh? Wal, mebbe you t'ink I'm traitor, too. Wat? W'y don' you spik out?"

The three of them were alone, and only the sound of Gale's axe came to them; but at the light in the Canadian's face Runnion hastily disclaimed any such thought on his part, and Stark shrugged his denial.

"I don' know you feller' at all," continued Poleon, "but Ole Man Gale, he's my frien', so I guess you don' better talk no more lak' dat."

"Don't get sore," said Stark. "I simply say it looks bad." But the other had turned his back and was walking on.

There are men quite devoid of the ability to read the human face, and Runnion was of this species. Moreover, malice was so bitter in his mouth that he must have it out, so when they paused to blaze the next stake he addressed himself to Stark loud enough for Poleon to hear.

"That Lieutenant is more of a man than I thought he was."

"How so?" inquired the older man.

"Well, it takes nerve to steal a girl for one night and then face the father; but the old man don't seem to mind it any more than she does. I guess he knows what it means, all right."

Stark laughed raucously. "I thought of that myself," he said.

"That's probably how Gale got his squaw," concluded Runnion, with a sneer.

It seemed a full minute before the Frenchman gave sign that he had heard, then a strange cry broke from his throat and he began to tremble as if with cold. He was no longer the singer of songs or the man who was forever a boy; the mocking anger of a moment ago was gone; in its place was a consuming fury that sucked the blood from beneath his tan, leaving him the pallor of ashes, while his mouth twitched and his head rolled slightly from side to side like a palsied old man's. The red of his lips was blanched, leaving two white streaks against a faded, muddy background, through which came strange and frightful oaths in a bastard tongue. Runnion drew back, fearful, and the older man ceased chopping and let his axe hang loosely in his hand. But evidently Poleon meant no violence, for he allowed the passion to run from him freely until it had spent its vigor, then said to Runnion:

"M'sieu, eider you are brave man or dam' fool."

"What do you mean, Frenchy?" said the man addressed, uneasily.

"Somebody goin' die for w'at you say jus' now. Mebbe it's goin' be you, m'sieu; mebbe it's goin' be him; I can't tell yet, but I'm hope an' pray it's goin' be you, biccause I t'ink w'at you say is a lie, an' nobody can spik dose kin' of lie 'bout Necia Gale."

He went crashing blindly through the underbrush, his head wagging, his shoulders slumped loosely forward like those of a drunken man, his lips framing words they could not understand.

When he had disappeared Runnion drew a deep breath.

"I guess I've framed something for Mister Burrell this time."

"You go about it queer," said Stark. "I'd rather tackle a gang-saw than a man like Poleon Doret. Your frame-up may work double."

"Huh! No chance. The soldier was out all night alone with that half-breed girl, and anybody can see she's crazy about him. What's the answer?"

"Well, she's mighty pretty," agreed the other, "most too pretty for a mixed blood, but you can't make that Frenchman believe she's wrong."

"Why, he believes it now," chuckled Runnion, "or at least he's jealous, and that's just as good. Those two will have trouble before dark. I wish they would—then I'd have a chance."

"Have you got your eye on her, too?"

"Sure! Do you blame me?"

"No, but she's too good for you."

"Then she's too good for them. I think I'll enter the running."

"Better stay out," the gambler advised; "you'll have sore feet before you finish. As a matter of fact, I don't like her father any better than you like her lovers—"

"Well, it's mutual. I can see Gale hates you like poison."

"—and I don't intend to see him and his tribe hog all the best ground hereabouts."

"They've already done it. You can't stop them."

Before answering, Stark listened for the trader, but evidently Gale had finished his task and returned to the shack, for there was neither sign nor sound of him.

"Yes, I can stop them," said Stark. "I want the ground that girl has staked, and I'm going to get it. It lies next to Lee's, and it's sure to be rich; ours is so far away it may not be worth the recorder's fees. This creek may be as spotted as a coach-dog, so I don't intend to take any chances."

"She made her locations legally," said Runnion.

"You leave that to me. When will the other boys he here?"

"To-morrow morning. I told them to follow about four hours behind, and not to run in on us till we had finished. They'll camp a few miles down the creek, and be in early."

"You couldn't get but three, eh?"

"That's all I could find who would agree to give up half."

"Can we count on them?"

"Huh!" the other grunted. "They worked with me and Soapy on the Skagway trail."

"Good. Five against three, not counting the girl and the Lieutenant," Stark mused. "Well, that will do it." He outlined his plan, then the two returned to the cabin to find Lee cooking supper. Poleon was there with the others, but, except for his silence, he showed no sign of what had taken place that afternoon.

Stark developed a loquacious mood after supper, devoting himself entirely to Necia, in whom he seemed to take great interest. He was an engaging talker, with a peculiar knack of suggestion in story-telling—an unconscious halting and elusiveness that told more than words could express—and, knowing his West so well, he fascinated the girl, who hung upon his tales with flattering eagerness.

Poleon had finished several pipes, and now sat in the shadows in the open doorway, apparently tired and dejected, though his eyes shone like diamonds and roved from one to the other. Half unconsciously he heard Stark saying:

"This girl was about your size, but not so dark. However, you remind me of her in some ways—that's why it puts her in my mind, I suppose. She was about your age at the time—nineteen."

"Oh, I'm not eighteen yet," said Necia.

"Well, she was a fine woman, anyhow, the best that ever set foot in Chandon, and there was a great deal of talk when she chose young Bennett over the Gaylord man, for Bennett had been running second best from the start, and everybody thought it was settled between her and the other one. However, they were married quietly."

The story did not interest the Canadian; his mind was in too great agitation to care for dead tales; his heart burned within him too fiercely, and he felt too great a desire to put his hands to work. As he watched Burrell and Runnion bend over the table looking at a little can of gold-dust that Lee had taken from under his bunk, his eyes grew red and bloodshot beneath his hat-brim. Which one of the two would it be, he wondered. From the corner of his eye he saw Gale rise from Lee's bed, where he had stretched himself to smoke, and take his six-shooter from his belt, then remove the knotted bandanna from his neck, and begin to clean the gun, his head bowed over it earnestly, his face in the shadow. He had ever been a careful and methodical man, reflected Poleon, and evidently would not go to sleep with his fire-arm in bad condition.

"Nobody imagined that Gaylord would cause trouble," Stark was saying, "for he didn't seem to be a jealous sort, just stupid and kind of heavy-witted; but one night he took advantage of Bennett's absence and sneaked up to the house." The story-teller paused, and Necia, who was under the spell of his recital, urged him on:

"Yes, yes. What happened then? Go on." But Stark stared gloomily at his hands, and held his silence for a full minute, the tale appearing to have awakened more than a fleeting interest in him.

"It was one of the worst killings that ever happened in those parts," he continued. "Bennett came back to find his wife murdered and the kid gone."

"Oh!" said the girl, in a shocked voice.

"Yes, there was the deuce of a time. The town rose up in a body, and we—you see, I happened to be there—we followed the man for weeks. We trailed him and the kid clear over into the Nevada desert where we lost them."

"Poor man!"

"Poor man?" The story-teller raised his eyes and laughed sinisterly. "I don't see where that comes in."

"And you never caught him?"

"No. Not yet."

"He died of thirst in the desert, maybe, he and the little one."

"That's what we thought at the time, but I don't believe it now."

"How so?"

"Well, I've crossed his trail since then. No. Gaylord is alive to-day, and so is the girl. Some time we'll meet—" His voice gave out, and he stared again at the floor.

"Couldn't the little girl be traced?" said Necia. "What was her name?"

Stark made to speak, but the word was never uttered, for there came a deafening roar that caused Lee's candle to leap and flicker and the air inside the cabin to strike the occupants like a blow. Instantly there was confusion, and each man sprang to his feet crying out affrightedly, for the noise had come with utter unexpectedness.

"My God, I've killed him!" cried Gale, and with one jump he cleared half the room and was beside Stark, while his revolver lay on the floor where he had been sitting.

"What is it?" exclaimed Burrell; but there was no need to ask, for powder-smoke was beginning to fill the room and the trader's face gave answer. It was whiter than that of his daughter, who had crouched fearfully against the wall, and he shook like a man with ague. But Stark stood unhurt, and more composed than any of them; following the first bound from his chair, he had relapsed into his customary quiet. There had blazed up one momentary flash of suspicion and anger, but it died straightway, for no man could have beheld the trader and not felt contrition. His condition was pitiable, and the sight of a strong man overcome is not pleasant; when it was seen that no harm had been done the others strove to make light of the accident.

"Get together, all of you! It's nothing to be excited over," said Stark.

"How did it happen?" Runnion finally asked Gale, who had sunk limply upon the edge of the bunk; but when the old man undertook to answer his words were unintelligible, and he shook his head helplessly.

Stark laid his finger on the hole that the bullet had bored in the log close to where he was sitting, and laughed.

"Never mind, old man, it missed me by six inches. You know there never was a bullet that could kill me. I'm six-shooter proof."

"Wha'd I tell you?" triumphantly ejaculated Lee, turning his one eye upon the Lieutenant. "You laughed at me, didn't you?"

"I'm beginning to believe it myself," declared the soldier.

"It's a cinch," said Stark, positively,

Doret, of all in the cabin, had said nothing. Seated apart from the others, he had seen the affair from a distance, as it were, and now stepped to the bed to lay his hand on Gale's shoulder.

"Brace up, John! Sacre bleu! Your face look lak' flour. Come outside an' get li'l' air."

"It will do you good, father," urged Necia.

The trader silently rose, picked up his hat, and shambled out into the night behind the Frenchman.

"The old man takes it hard," said Lee, shaking his head, and Burrell remarked:

"I've seen things like that in army quarters, and the fellow who accidentally discharges his gun invariably gets a greater shock than his companion."

"I call it damned careless, begging your pardon, Miss Necia," said Runnion.

Poleon led his friend down the trail for half a mile without speaking, till Gale had regained a grip of himself and muttered, finally:

"I never did such a thing before, Poleon, never in all my life."

The young man turned squarely and faced him, the starlight illumining their faces dimly.

"Why?" said Doret.

"Why?" echoed Gale, with a start. "Well, because I'm careful, I suppose."

"Why?" insisted the Frenchman.

"I—I—I—What do you mean?"

"Don' lie wit' me, John. I'm happen to be watch you underneat' my hat w'en you turn roun' for see if anybody lookin'."

"You saw?"

"Yes."

"I thought you were asleep," said Gale.



CHAPTER VIII

THE KNIFE

In every community, be it never so small, there are undesirable citizens; and, while the little party was still at breakfast on the following morning, three such members of society came around the cabin and let fall their packs, greeting the occupants boisterously.

"Well, well!" said Lee, coming to the door. "You're travellin' kind of early, ain't you?"

"Yes—early and late," one of them laughed, while the other two sprawled about as if to rest.

"How far are you goin'?"

"Not far," the spokesman answered.

Now in the North there is one formality that must be observed with friend or enemy, and, though Lee knew these men for what they were, he said:

"Better have some breakfast, anyhow."

"We just ate." There was an uncomfortable pause, then the speaker continued: "Look here. It's no use to flush around. We want a piece of this creek."

"What are you goin' to do with it?"

"Cut that out, Lee. We're on."

"Who wised you up to this?" inquired the miner, angrily, for he had other friends besides those present whom he wished to profit by this strike, and he had hoped to keep out this scum.

"Never mind who put us Jerry. We're here, ain't we?"

Stark spoke up. "You can't keep news of a gold strike when the wind blows, Lee. It travels on the breeze."

The harm was done, and there was no use in concealment, so Lee reluctantly told them of his discovery and warned them of the stakes already placed.

"And see here, you fellers," he concluded, "I've been forty years at this game and never had a creek named after me, but this one is goin' to be called '"No Creek" Lee Creek' or I fight. Does it go?"

"Sure, that's a good name, and we'll vote for it."

"Then go as far as you like," said the miner, dismissing them curtly.

"I'll step along with the boys and show them where our upper stakes are," volunteered Stark, and Runnion offered to do the same, adding that it were best to make sure of no conflict so early in the game. The five disappeared into the woods, leaving the others at the cabin to make preparations for the homeward trip.

"That man who did the talking is a tin-horn gambler who drifted in a month ago, the same as Runnion, and the others ain't much better," said Gale, when they had gone. "Seems like the crooks always beat the straight men in."

"Never knowed it to fail," Lee agreed. "There's a dozen good men in camp I'd like to see in on this find, but it'll be too late 'gin we get back."

"Dose bum an' saloon feller got all de bes' claims at Klondike," said Poleon. "I guess it's goin' be de same here."

"I don't like the look of this," observed the Lieutenant, thoughtfully. "I'm afraid there's some kind of a job on foot."

"There's nothing they can do," Gale answered. "We've got our ground staked out, and it's up to them to choose what's left."

They were nearly ready to set out for Flambeau when the five men returned.

"Before you go," said Stark, "I think we'd better organize our mining district. There are enough present to do it."

"We can make the kind of laws we want before the gang comes along," Runnion chimed in, "and elect a recorder who will give us a square deal."

"I'll agree if we give Lee the job," said Gale. "It's coming to him as the discoverer, and I reckon the money will be handy, seeing the hard luck he's played in."

"That's agreeable to me," Stark replied, and proceeded forthwith to call a miners' meeting, being himself straightway nominated as chairman by one of the strangers. There was no objection, so he went in, as did Lee, who was made secretary, with instructions to write out the business of the meeting, together with the by-laws as they were passed.

The group assembled in the cleared space before the cabin to make rules and regulations governing the district, for it is a custom in all mining sections removed from authority for the property holders thus to make local laws governing the size of claims, the amount of assessment work, the size of the recorder's fees, the character of those who may hold mines, and such other questions as arise to affect their personal or property interests. In the days prior to the establishment of courts and the adoption of a code of laws for Alaska, the entire country was governed in this way, even to the adjudication of criminal actions. It was the primitive majority rule that prevails in every new land, and the courts later recognized and approved the laws so made and administered, even when they differed in every district, and even when these statutes were often grotesque and ridiculous. As a whole, however, they were direct in their effect and worked no hardship; in fact, government by miners' meeting is looked upon to this day, by those who lived under it, as vastly superior to the complicated machinery which later took its place.

The law permits six or more people to organize a mining district and adopt articles of government, so this instance was quite ordinary and proper.

Lee had come by his learning slowly, and he wrote after the fashion of a school-boy, who views his characters from every angle and follows their intricacies with corresponding movements of the tongue, hence the business of the meeting progressed slowly.

It was of wondrous interest to Necia to be an integral part of such important matters, and she took pride in voting on every question; but Burrell, who observed the proceedings from neutral ground, could not shake off the notion that all was not right. Things moved too smoothly. It looked as if there had been a rehearsal. Poleon and the trader, however, seemed not to notice it, and Lee was wallowing to the waist in his own troubles, so the young man kept his eyes open and waited.

The surprise came when they had completed the organization of the district and had nearly finished adopting by-laws. It was so boldly attempted and so crude in its working-out that it seemed almost laughable to the soldier, until he saw these men were in deadly earnest and animated by the cruelest of motives. Moreover, it showed the first glimpse of Stark's spite against the trader, which the Lieutenant had divined.

Runnion moved the adoption of a rule that no women be allowed to locate mining claims, and one of the strangers seconded it.

"What's that?" said Lee, raising his one eye from the note-book in which he was transcribing.

"It isn't right to let women in on a man's game," said Runnion.

"That's my idea," echoed the seconder.

"I s'pose this is aimed at my girl," said Gale, springing to his feet. "I might have known you bums were up to some crooked work."

Poleon likewise rose and ranged himself with the trader.

"Ba Gar! I don' stan' for dat," said he, excitedly. "You want for jump Necia's claims, eh?"

"As long as I'm chairman we'll have no rough work," declared Stark, glaring at them. "If you want trouble, you two, I reckon you can have it, but, whether you do or not, the majority is going to rule, and we'll make what laws we want to."

He took no pains now to mask his dislike of Gale, who began to move towards him in his dogged, resolute way. Necia, observing them, hastened to her father's side, for that which she sensed in the bearing of both men quite overcame her indignation at this blow against herself.

"No, no, don't have any trouble," she pleaded, as she clung to the trader. "For my sake, daddy, sit down." Then she whispered fiercely into his ear: "Can't you see he's trying to make you fight? There's too many of them. Wait! Wait!"

Burrell attempted to speak, but Stark, who was presiding, turned upon him fiercely:

"Now this is one time when you can't butt in, Mr. Soldier Man. This is our business. Is that plain?"

The Lieutenant realized that he had no place in this discussion, and yet their move was so openly brazen that he could restrain himself with difficulty. A moment later he saw the futility of interference, when Stark continued, addressing the trader:

"This isn't aimed at you in particular, Gale, nor at your girl, for a motion to disqualify her isn't necessary. She isn't old enough to hold mining property."

"She's eighteen," declared the trader.

"Not according to her story."

"Well, I can keep her claims for her till she gets of age."

"We've just fixed it so you can't," grinned Runnion, cunningly. "No man can hold more than one claim on a creek. You voted for that yourself."

Too late, Gale saw the trick by which Stark had used him to rob his own daughter. If he and his two friends had declined to be a part of this meeting, the others could not have held it, and before another assembly could have been called the creek would have been staked from end to end, from rim to rim, by honest men, over whom no such action could pass; but, as it was, his own votes had been used to sew him up in a mesh of motions and resolutions.

"No Creek" Lee had the name of a man slow in speech and action, and one who roused himself to anger deliberately, much as a serpent stings itself into a painful fury; but now it was apparent that he was boiling over, for he stammered and halted and blurted explosively.

"You're a bunch of rascals, all of you, tryin' to down a pore girl and get her ground; but who put ye wise to this thing, in the first place? Who found this gold? Just because there's enough of you to vote that motion through, that don't make it legal, not by a damned sight, and it won't hold, because I won't write it in the book. You—you—" He glared at them malevolently, searching his mind for an epithet sufficiently vile, and, finding it, spat it out—"dressmakers!"

So this was why both Stark and Runnion had gone up the creek with the three new men, thought Burrell. No doubt they had deliberately arranged the whole thing so that the new arrivals could immediately relocate each of Necia's claims—the pick of all the ground outside Lee's discovery, and the surest to be valuable—and that Stark would share in the robbery. He or Runnion, or both of them, had broken Lee's oath of secrecy even before leaving camp, which accounted for the presence of these thugs; and now, as he revolved the situation rapidly in his mind, the soldier looked up at a sudden thought. Poleon had begun to speak, and from his appearance it seemed possible that he might not cease with words; moreover, it was further evident that they were all intent on the excited Frenchman and had no eyes for the Lieutenant. Carefully slipping around the corner of the cabin, and keeping the house between him and the others, Burrell broke into a swift run, making the utmost possible speed for fear they should miss him and guess his purpose, or, worse yet, finish their discussion and adjourn before he could complete his task. He was a light man on his feet, and he dodged through the forest, running more carelessly the farther he went, visiting first the upper claims, then, making a wide detour of the cabin, he came back to the initial stake of Necia's lower claim, staggering from his exertions, his lungs bursting from the strain. He had covered nearly a mile, but, even so, he laughed grimly as he walked back towards the cabin, for it was a game worth playing, and he was glad to take a hand on the side of the trader and the girl. Coming within earshot, he heard the meeting vote to adjourn. It could not have terminated more opportunely had he held a stopwatch on it.

From the look of triumph on Runnion's face, the Lieutenant needed no glance at Gale or Poleon or Necia to know that the will of the majority had prevailed, and that the girl's importunities had restrained her advocates from a resort to violence. She looked very forlorn, like a little child just robbed and deceived, with the shock of its first great disillusionment still fresh in its eyes.

Runnion addressed the other conspirators loudly.

"Well, boys, there are three good claims open for relocation. I'm sorry I can't stake one of them."

"They won't lie open long," said one of the undesirable citizens, starting to turn down-stream while his two companions made for the opposite direction. But Burrell stopped them.

"Too late, boys. Your little game went wrong. Now! Now! Don't get excited. Whew! I had quite a run."

Gale paused in his tracks and looked at the young man queerly.

"What do you mean?"

"I've jumped those claims myself."

"YOU jumped them!" cried Necia.

"Sure! I changed my mind about staking."

"It's a lie!" cried Runnion, at which Burrell whirled on him.

"I've been waiting for this, Runnion—ever since you came back. Now—"

"I mean you haven't had time," the other temporized, hurriedly.

"Oh, that sounds better! If you don't believe me take a look for yourself; you'll find my notice just beneath Miss Gale's." Then to "No Creek" Lee he continued, "Kindly record them for me so there will be no question of priority."

"I'll be damned if I do!" said the belligerent recorder. "You're worse'n these crooks. That ground belongs to Necia Gale."

Up to this time Stark had remained silent, his impassive face betraying not a shadow of chagrin, for he was a good loser; but now he spoke at large.

"Anybody who thinks the American army is asleep is crazy." Then to Burrell, "You certainly are a nice young man to double-cross your friends like that."

"You're no friend of mine," Meade retorted.

"I? What do you mean?"

"I double-crossed you, Stark, nobody else."

The Kentuckian glared at him with a look like that which Runnion had seen in his face on that first day at the trading-post. The thought of these five men banded together to rob this little maid had caused a giddiness to rise up in him, and his passions were beginning to whirl and dance.

"There's no use mouthing words about it," said he. "These thugs are your tools, and you tried to steal that ground because it's sure to be rich."

Stark exclaimed angrily, but the other gave him no time to break in.

"Now, don't get rough, because THAT is my game, and I'd be pleased enough to take you back a prisoner." Then turning to Lee, he said: "Don't make me force you to record my locations. I staked those claims for Miss Gale, and I'll deed them to her when she turns eighteen."

Poleon Doret called to Runnion: "M'sieu, you 'member w'at I tol' you yestidday? I'm begin for t'ink it's goin' be you."

The man paled in his anger, but said nothing. Necia clapped her hands gleefully.

Seeing that the game had gone against him, Stark got his feelings under control quickly, and shrugged his shoulders as he turned away.

"You're in the wrong, Lieutenant," he remarked; "but I don't want any trouble. You've got the law with you." Then to Runnion and the others he said, "Well, I'm ready to hit the trail."

When they had shouldered their packs and disappeared down the valley, Gale held out his hand to the soldier. "Young man, I reckon you and I will be friends."

"Thank you," said Burrell, taking the offer of friendship which he knew was genuine at last.

"I'm in on that!" said "No Creek" Lee; "you're all right!"

Poleon had been watching Stark's party disappear, but now he turned and addressed the young soldier.

"You mak' some enemies to-day, M'sieu."

"That's right," agreed Lee. "Ben Stark will never let up on you now."

"Very well, that is his privilege."

"You don't savvy what it means to get him down on you," insisted Lee. "He'll frame things up to suit himself, then pick a row with you. He's the quickest man on a trigger in the West, but he won't never make no open play, only just devil the life out of you with little things till you flare up, then he'll down you. That's how he killed the gold commissioner back in British Columbia."

Necia had said little so far, but the look in her eyes repaid the soldier for his undertaking in her behalf, and for any mischief that might ensue from it. She came forward and laid her hands upon his.

"Promise that you won't have trouble with him," she begged, anxiously, "for it's all my fault, and I'd—I'd always blame myself if any hurt came to you. Promise! Won't you?"

"Don't worry, daughter," reassured Gale. "There's nothing Stark can do, and whatever happens we're with the Lieutenant. He's our kind of people."

Burrell liked this grizzled old fellow with the watchful eyes, and was glad now that he could grip his hand and face him squarely with no guilt upon his conscience.

By this time Doret had finished with their blankets, and the four set out for town, but instead of following the others they accepted Necia as guide and chose the trail to Black Bear Creek. They had not gone far before she took occasion to lag behind with the Lieutenant.

"I couldn't thank you before all those people—they would have read our secret—but you know how I feel, don't you, Meade?"

"Why! It was a simple thing—"

"It was splendid when you defied them. My, what a fierce you are! Oh, boy! What if something should happen to you over this!"

"But there's no chance. It's all done, and you'll have your fine dresses and be able to hold your nose just as high as you want."

"Whatever I get I will owe to you. I—I've been thinking. Suppose—well, suppose you keep two of those claims; they are sure to be rich—"

"Why, Necia!" he exclaimed.

"They're yours, and I have no right to them under the law. Of course it would be very handsome of you to give me one—the poorest."

"You ought to have your ears boxed," he laughed at her.

"I don't see why. You—you—may be very poor, for all I know."

"I am," he declared, "but not poor enough to take payment for a favor."

"Well, then, if they are really mine to do with as I please, I'll sell one to you—"

"Thanks. I couldn't avail myself of the offer," he said, with mock hauteur.

"If you were a business man instead of a fighting person you would listen to my proposition before you declined it. I'll make the price right, and you may pay me when we get behind yonder clump of bushes." She pouted her lips invitingly, but he declared she was a minor and as such her bargain would not hold.

It was evidently her mood to re-enter the land of whims and travel again, as they had on the way from town, but he knew that for him such a thing could not be, for his eyes had cleared since then. He knew that he could never again wander through the happy valley, for he vowed this maid should be no plaything for him or for any other man, and as there could be no honorable end to this affair, it must terminate at once. Just how this was to be consummated he had not determined as yet, nor did he like to set about its solution, it hurt him so to think of losing her. However, she was very young, only a child, and in time would come to count him but a memory, no doubt; while as for him—well, it would be hard to forget her, but he could and would. He reasoned glibly that this was the only honest course, and his reasoning convinced him; then, all of a sudden, the pressure of her warm lips came upon him and the remembrance upset every premise and process of his logic. Nevertheless, he was honest in his stubborn determination to conclude the affair, and finally decided to let time show him the way.

She seemed to be very happy, her mood being in marked contrast to that of Poleon and the trader, both of whom had fallen silent and gloomy, and in whom the hours wrought no change. The latter had tacitly acknowledged his treachery towards Stark on the previous night, but beyond that he would not go, offering no motive, excuse, or explanation, choosing to stand in the eyes of his friend as an intended murderer, notwithstanding which Poleon let the matter drop—for was not his friend a good man? Had he not been tried in a hundred ways? The young Frenchman knew there must have been strong reason for Gale's outburst, and was content to trust him without puzzling his mind to discover the cause of it.

Now, a secret must either grow or die—there is no fallow age for it—and this one had lived with Gale for fifteen years, until it had made an old man of him. It weighed him down until the desire to be rid of it almost became overpowering at times; but his caution was ingrained and powerful, and so it was that he resisted the temptation to confide in his partner, although the effort left him tired and inert. The only one to whom he could talk was Alluna—she understood, and though she might not help, the sound of his own voice at least always afforded him some relief.

As to Poleon, no one had ever seen him thus. Never in all his life of dream and song and romance had he known a heavy heart until now, for if at times he had wept like a girl, it was at the hurts of others. He had loved a bit and gambled much, with equal misfortune, and the next day he had forgotten. He had lived the free, clean life of a man who wins joyously or goes down with defiance in his throat, but this venomous thing that Runnion had planted in him had seeped and circulated through his being until every fibre was penetrated with a bitter poison. Most of his troubles could be grappled with bare hands, but here was one against which force would not avail, hence he was unhappy.

The party reached Flambeau on the following day, sufficiently ahead of Stark and his men for Lee to make known his find to his friends, and by sunset the place was depopulated, while a line of men could be seen creeping slowly up the valleys.

Gale found Alluna in charge of the store, but no opportunity of talking alone with her occurred until late in the evening, after Necia had put the two little ones to bed and had followed them wearily. Then he told his squaw. She took the news better than he expected, and showed no emotion such as other women would have displayed, even when he told her of the gunshot. Instead, she inquired:

"Why did you try it there before all those others?"

"Well, when I heard him talking, the wish to kill him was more than I could stand, and it came on me all at once, so that I was mad, I suppose. I never did the like before." He half shuddered at the memory.

"I am sorry," she said.

"Yes! So am I."

"Sorry that you failed, for you will never have as good a chance again. What was the matter with your aim? I have seen you hit a knot-hole, shooting from the hip."

"The man is charmed," declared Gale. "He's bullet-proof."

"There are people," she agreed, "that a gunshot will not injure. There was a man like that among my people—my father's enemy—but he was not proof against steel."

"Your old man knifed him, eh?"

She nodded.

"Ugh!" the man shivered. "I couldn't do that. A gun is a straight man's friend, but a knife is the weapon of traitors. I couldn't drive it home."

"Does this man suspect?"

"No."

"Then it is child's play. We will lay a trap."

"No, by God!" Gale interrupted her hotly. "I tried that kind of work, and it won't do. I'm no murderer."

"Those are only words," said the woman, quietly. "To kill your enemy is the law."

The only light in the room came from the stove, a great iron cylinder made from a coal-oil tank that lay on a rectangular bed of sand held inside of four timbers, with a door in one end to take whole lengths of cord-wood, and which, being open, lit the space in front, throwing the sides and corners of the place into blacker mystery.

When he made no answer the squaw slipped out into the shadows, leaving him staring into the flames, to return a moment later bearing something in her hands, which she placed in his. It was a knife in a scabbard, old and worn.

"There is no magic that can turn bright steel," she said, then squatted again in the dimness outside of the firelight. Gale slid the case from the long blade and held it in his palm, letting the firelight flicker on it. He balanced it and tested the feel of its handle against his palm, then tried the edge of it with his thumb-nail, and found it honed like a razor.

"A child could kill with it," said Alluna. "Both edges of the blade are so thin that a finger's weight will bury it. One should hold the wrist firmly till it pierces through the coat, that is all—after that the flesh takes it easily, like butter."