CHAPTER X PRINCESS MUCKLUCK

CHAPTER X

PRINCESS MUCKLUCK

"We all went to Tibbals to see the Kinge, who used my mother and my aunt very gratiouslie; but we all saw a great chaunge betweene the fashion of the Court as it was now, and of y in ye Queene's, for we were all lowzy by sittinge in Sr Thomas Erskin's chamber." _Memoir: Anne Countess of Dorset_, 1603.

It was the 26th of February, that first day that they "hit the Long Trail."

Temperature only about twenty degrees, the Colonel thought, and so little wind it had the effect of being warmer. Trail in fair condition, weather gray and steady. Never men in better spirits. To have left the wrangling and the smouldering danger of the camp behind, that alone, as the Boy said, was "worth the price of admission." Exhilarating, too, to men of their temperament, to have cut the Gordian knot of the difficulty by risking themselves on this unprecedented quest for peace and food. Gold, too? Oh, yes--with a smile to see how far that main object had drifted into the background--they added, "and for gold."

They believed they had hearkened well to the counsel that bade them "travel light." "Remember, every added ounce is against you." "Nobody in the North owns anything that's heavy," had been said in one fashion or another so often that it lost its ironic sound in the ears of men who had come so far to carry away one of the heaviest things under the sun.

The Colonel and the Boy took no tent, no stove, not even a miner's pick and pan. These last, General Lighter had said, could be obtained at Minóok; and "there isn't a cabin on the trail," Dillon had added, "without 'em."

For the rest, the carefully-selected pack on the sled contained the marmot-skin, woollen blankets, a change of flannels apiece, a couple of sweaters, a Norfolk jacket, and several changes of foot-gear. This last item was dwelt on earnestly by all. "Keep your feet dry," John Dillon had said, "and leave the rest to God Almighty." They were taking barely two weeks' rations, and a certain amount of stuff to trade with the up-river Indians, when their supplies should be gone. They carried a kettle, an axe, some quinine, a box of the carbolic ointment all miners use for foot-soreness, O'Flynn's whisky, and two rifles and ammunition. In spite of having eliminated many things that most travellers would count essential, they found their load came to a little over two hundred pounds. But every day would lessen it, they told each other with a laugh, and with an inward misgiving, lest the lightening should come all too quickly.

They had seen in camp that winter so much of the frailty of human temper that, although full of faith by now in each other's native sense and fairness, they left nothing to a haphazard division of labour. They parcelled out the work of the day with absolute impartiality. To each man so many hours of going ahead to break trail, if the snow was soft, while the other dragged the sled; or else while one pulled in front, the other pushed from behind, in regular shifts by the watch, turn and turn about. The Colonel had cooked all winter, so it was the Boy's turn at that--the Colonel's to decide the best place to camp, because it was his affair to find seasoned wood for fuel, his to build the fire in the snow on green logs laid close together--his to chop enough wood to cook breakfast the next morning. All this they had arranged before they left the Big Chimney.

That they did not cover more ground that first day was a pure chance, not likely to recur, due to an unavoidable loss of time at Pymeut.

Knowing the fascination that place exercised over his companion, the Colonel called a halt about seven miles off from the Big Chimney, that they might quickly despatch a little cold luncheon they carried in their pockets, and push on without a break till supper.

"We've got no time to waste at Pymeut," observes the Colonel significantly.

"I ain't achin' to stop at Pymeut," says his pardner with a superior air, standing up, as he swallowed his last mouthful of cold bacon and corn-bread, and cheerfully surveyed the waste. "Who says it's cold, even if the wind is up? And the track's bully. But see here, Colonel, you mustn't go thinkin' it's smooth glare-ice, like this, all the way."

"Oh, I was figurin' that it would be." But the Boy paid no heed to the irony.

"And it's a custom o' the country to get the wind in your face, as a rule, whichever way you go."

"Well, I'm not complainin' as yet."

"Reckon you needn't if you're blown like dandelion-down all the way to Minóok. Gee! the wind's stronger! Say, Colonel, let's rig a sail."

"Foolishness."

"No, sir. We'll go by Pymeut in an ice-boat, lickety split. And it'll be a good excuse for not stopping, though I think we ought to say good-bye to Nicholas."

This view inclined the Colonel to think better of an ice-boat. He had once crossed the Bay of Toronto in that fashion, and began to wonder if such a mode of progression applied to sleds might not aid largely in solving the Minóok problem.

While he was wondering the Boy unlashed the sled-load, and pulled off the canvas cover as the Colonel came back with his mast. Between them, with no better tools than axe, jack-knives, and a rope, and with fingers freezing in the south wind, they rigged the sail.

The fact that they had this increasingly favourable wind on their very first day showed that they were specially smiled on by the great natural forces. The superstitious feeling that only slumbers in most breasts, that Mother Nature is still a mysterious being, who has her favourites whom she guards, her born enemies whom she baulks, pursues, and finally overwhelms, the age-old childishness stirred pleasantly in both men, and in the younger came forth unabashed in speech:

"I tell you the omens are good! This expedition's goin' to get there." Then, with the involuntary misgiving that follows hard upon such boasting, he laughed uneasily and added, "I mean to sacrifice the first deer's tongue I don't want myself, to Yukon Inua; but here's to the south wind!" He turned some corn-bread crumbs out of his pocket, and saw, delighted, how the gale, grown keener, snatched eagerly at them and hurried them up the trail. The ice-boat careened and strained eagerly to sail away. The two gold-seekers, laughing like schoolboys, sat astride the pack; the Colonel shook out the canvas, and they scudded off up the river like mad. The great difficulty was the steering; but it was rip-roaring fun, the Boy said, and very soon there were natives running down to the river, to stare open-mouthed at the astounding apparition, to point and shout something unintelligible that sounded like "Muchtaravik!"

"Why, it's the Pymeuts! Pardner, we'll be in Minóok by supper-ti--"

The words hadn't left his lips when he saw, a few yards in front of them, a faint cloud of steam rising up from the ice--that dim danger-signal that flies above an air-hole. The Colonel, never noticing, was heading straight for the ghastly trap.

"God, Colonel! Blow-hole!" gasped the Boy.

The Colonel simply rolled off the pack turning over and over on the ice, but keeping hold of the rope.

The sled swerved, turned on her side, and slid along with a sound of snapping and tearing.

While they were still headed straight for the hole, the Boy had gathered himself for a clear jump to the right, but the sled's sudden swerve to the left broke his angle sharply. He was flung forward on the new impetus, spun over the smooth surface, swept across the verge and under the cloud, clutching wildly at the ragged edge of ice as he went down.

All Pymeut had come rushing pell-mell.

The Colonel was gathering himself up and looking round in a dazed kind of way as Nicholas flashed by. Just beyond, in that yawning hole, fully ten feet wide by fifteen long, the Boy's head appeared an instant, and then was lost like something seen in a dream. Some of the Pymeuts with quick knives were cutting the canvas loose. One end was passed to Nicholas; he knotted it to his belt, and went swiftly, but gingerly, forward nearer the perilous edge. He had flung himself down on his stomach just as the Boy rose again. Nicholas lurched his body over the brink, his arms outstretched, straining farther, farther yet, till it seemed as if only the counterweight of the rest of the population at the other end of the canvas prevented his joining the Boy in the hole. But Nicholas had got a grip of him, and while two of the Pymeuts hung on to the half-stunned Colonel to prevent his adding to the complication, Nicholas, with a good deal of trouble in spite of Yagorsha's help, hauled the Boy out of the hole and dragged him up on the ice-edge. The others applied themselves lustily to their end of the canvas, and soon they were all at a safe distance from the yawning danger.

The Boy's predominant feeling had been one of intense surprise. He looked round, and a hideous misgiving seized him.

"Anything the matter with you, Colonel?" His tone was so angry that, as they stared at each other, they both fell to laughing.

"Well, I rather thought that was what _I_ was going to say"; and Kentucky heaved a deep sigh of relief.

The Boy's teeth began to chatter, and his clothes were soon freezing on him. They got him up off the ice, and Nicholas and the sturdy old Pymeut story-teller, Yagorsha, walked him, or ran him rather, the rest of the way to Pymeut, for they were not so near the village as the travellers had supposed on seeing nearly the whole male population. The Colonel was not far behind, and several of the bucks were bringing the disabled sled. Before reaching the Kachime, they were joined by the women and children, Muckluck much concerned at the sight of her friend glazed in ice from head to heel. Nicholas and Yagorsha half dragged, half pulled him into the Kachime. The entire escort followed, even two or three very dirty little boys--everybody, except the handful of women and girls left at the mouth of the underground entrance and the two men who had run on to make a fire. It was already smoking viciously as though the seal-lamps weren't doing enough in that line, when Yagorsha and Nicholas laid the half-frozen traveller on the sleeping-bench.

The Pymeuts knew that the great thing was to get the ice-stiffened clothes off as quickly as might be, and that is to be done expeditiously only by cutting them off. In vain the Boy protested. Recklessly they sawed and cut and stripped him, rubbed him and wrapped him in a rabbit-blanket, the fur turned inside, and a wolverine skin over that. The Colonel at intervals poured small doses of O'Flynn's whisky down the Boy's throat in spite of his unbecoming behaviour, for he was both belligerent and ungrateful, complaining loudly of the ruin of his clothes with only such intermission as the teeth-chattering, swallowing, and rude handling necessitated.

"I didn't like--bein' in--that blow-hole. (Do you know--it was so cold--it burnt!) But I'd rather--be--in a blow-hole--than--br-r-r! Blow-hole isn't so s-s-melly as these s-s-kins!'

"You better be glad you've got a whole skin of your own and ain't smellin' brimstone," said the Colonel, pouring a little more whisky down the unthankful throat. "Pretty sort o' Klondyker you are--go and get nearly drowned first day out!" Several Pymeut women came in presently and joined the men at the fire, chattering low and staring at the Colonel and the Boy.

"I can't go--to the Klondyke--naked--no, nor wrapped in a rabbit-skin--like Baby Bunting--"

Nicholas was conferring with the Colonel and offering to take him to Ol' Chief's.

"Oh, yes; Ol' Chief got two clo'es. You come. Me show"; and they crawled out one after the other.

"You pretty near dead that time," said one of the younger women conversationally.

"That's right. Who are you, anyway?"

"Me Anna--Yagorsha's daughter."

"Oh, yes, I thought I'd seen you before." She seemed to be only a little older than Muckluck, but less attractive, chiefly on account of her fat and her look of ill-temper. She was on specially bad terms with a buck they called Joe, and they seemed to pass all their time abusing one another.

The Boy craned his neck and looked round. Except just where he was lying, the Pymeut men and women were crowded together, on that side of the Kachime, at his head and at his feet, thick as herrings on a thwart. They all leaned forward and regarded him with a beady-eyed sympathy. He had never been so impressed by the fact before, but all these native people, even in their gentlest moods, frowned in a chronic perplexity and wore their wide mouths open. He reflected that he had never seen one that didn't, except Muckluck.

Here she was, crawling in with a tin can.

"Got something there to eat?"

The rescued one craned his head as far as he could.

"Too soon," she said, showing her brilliant teeth in the fire-light. She set the tin down, looked round, a little embarrassed, and stirred the fire, which didn't need it.

"Well"--he put his chin down under the rabbit-skin once more--"how goes the world, Princess?"

She flashed her quick smile again and nodded reassuringly. "You stay here now?"

"No; goin' up river."

"What for?" She spoke disapprovingly.

"Want to get an Orange Grove."

"Find him up river?"

"Hope so."

"I think I go, too"; and all the grave folk, sitting so close on the sleeping-bench, stretched their wide mouths wider still, smiling good-humouredly.

"You better wait till summer."

"Oh!" She lifted her head from the fire as one who takes careful note of instructions. "Nex' summer?"

"Well, summer's the time for squaws to travel."

"I come nex' summer," she said.

By-and-by Nicholas returned with a new parki and a pair of wonderful buckskin breeches--not like anything worn by the Lower River natives, or by the coast-men either: well cut, well made, and handsomely fringed down the outside of the leg where an officer's gold stripe goes.

"Chaparejos!" screamed the Boy. "Where'd you get 'em?"

"Ol' Chief--he ketch um."

"They're _bully!_" said the Boy, holding the despised rabbit-skin under his chin with both hands, and craning excitedly over it. He felt that his fortunes were looking up. Talk about a tide in the affairs of men! Why, a tide that washes up to a wayfarer's feet a pair o' chaparejos like that--well! legs so habited would simply _have_ to carry a fella on to fortune. He lay back on the sleeping-bench with dancing eyes, while the raw whisky hummed in his head. In the dim light of seal-lamps vague visions visited him of stern and noble chiefs out of the Leather Stocking Stories of his childhood--men of daring, whose legs were invariably cased in buck-skin with dangling fringes. But the dashing race was not all Indian, nor all dead. Famous cowboys reared before him on bucking bronchos, their leg-fringes streaming on the blast, and desperate chaps who held up coaches and potted Wells Fargo guards. Anybody must needs be a devil of a fellow who went about in "shaps," as his California cousins called chaparejos. Even a peaceable fella like himself, not out after gore at all, but after an Orange Grove--even he, once he put on--He laughed out loud at his childishness, and then grew grave. "Say, Nicholas, what's the tax?"

"Hey?"

"How much?"

"Oh, your pardner--he pay."

"Humph! I s'pose I'll know the worst on settlin'-day."

Then, after a few moments, making a final clutch at economy before the warmth and the whisky subdued him altogether:

"Say, Nicholas, have you got--hasn't the Ol' Chief got any--less glorious breeches than those?"

"Hey?"

"Anything little cheaper?"

"Nuh," says Nicholas.

The Boy closed his eyes, relieved on the whole. Fate had a mind to see him in chaparejos. Let her look to the sequel, then!

When consciousness came back it brought the sound of Yagorsha's yarning by the fire, and the occasional laugh or grunt punctuating the eternal "Story."

The Colonel was sitting there among them, solacing himself by adding to the smoke that thickened the stifling air.

Presently the Story-teller made some shrewd hit, that shook the Pymeut community into louder grunts of applause and a general chuckling. The Colonel turned his head slowly, and blew out a fresh cloud: "Good joke?"

In the pause that fell thereafter, Yagorsha, imperturbable, the only one who had not laughed, smoothed his lank, iron-gray locks down on either side of his wide face, and went on renewing the sinew open-work in his snow-shoe.

"When Ol' Chief's father die--"

All the Pymeuts chuckled afresh. The Boy listened eagerly. Usually Yagorsha's stories were tragic, or, at least, of serious interest, ranging from bereaved parents who turned into wolverines, all the way to the machinations of the Horrid Dwarf and the Cannibal Old Woman.

The Colonel looked at Nicholas. He seemed as entertained as the rest, but quite willing to leave his family history in professional hands.

"Ol' Chief's father, Glovotsky, him Russian," Yagorsha began again, laying down his sinew-thread a moment and accepting some of the Colonel's tobacco.

"I didn't know you had any white blood in you," interrupted the Colonel, offering his pouch to Nicholas. "I might have suspected Muckluck--"

"Heap got Russian blood," interrupted Joe.

As the Story-teller seemed to be about to repeat the enlivening tradition concerning the almost mythical youth of Ol' Chief's father, that subject of the great Katharine's, whose blood was flowing still in Pymeut veins, just then in came Yagorsha's daughter with some message to her father. He grunted acquiescence, and she turned to go. Joe called something after her, and she snapped back. He jumped up to bar her exit. She gave him a smart cuff across the eyes, which surprised him almost into the fire, and while he was recovering his equilibrium she fled. Yagorsha and all the Pymeuts laughed delightedly at Joe's discomfiture.

The Boy had been obliged to sit up to watch this spirited encounter. The only notice the Colonel took of him was to set the kettle on the fire. While he was dining his pardner gathered up the blankets and crawled out.

"Comin' in half a minute," the Boy called after him. The answer was swallowed by the tunnel.

"Him go say goo'-bye Ol' Chief," said Nicholas, observing how the Colonel's pardner was scalding himself in his haste to despatch a second cup of tea.

But the Boy bolted the last of his meal, gathered up the kettle, mug, and frying-pan, which had served him for plate as well, and wormed his way out as fast as he could. There was the sled nearly packed for the journey, and watching over it, keeping the dogs at bay, was an indescribably dirty little boy in a torn and greasy denim parki over rags of reindeer-skin. Nobody else in sight but Yagorsha's daughter down at the water-hole.

"Where's my pardner gone?" The child only stared, having no English apparently.

While the Boy packed the rest of the things, and made the tattered canvas fast under the lashing, Joe came out of the Kachime. He stood studying the prospect a moment, and his dull eyes suddenly gleamed. Anna was coming up from the river with her dripping pail. He set off with an affectation of leisurely indifference, but he made straight for his enemy. She seemed not to see him till he was quite near, then she sheered off sharply. Joe hardly quickened his pace, but seemed to gain. She set down her bucket, and turned back towards the river.

"Idiot!" ejaculated the Boy; "she could have reached her own ighloo." The dirty child grinned, and tore off towards the river to watch the fun. Anna was hidden now by a pile of driftwood. The Boy ran down a few yards to bring her within range again. For all his affectation of leisureliness and her obvious fluster, no doubt about it, Joe was gaining on her. She dropped her hurried walk and frankly took to her heels, Joe doing the same; but as she was nearly as fleet of foot as Muckluck, in spite of her fat, she still kept a lessening distance between herself and her pursuer.

The ragged child had climbed upon the pile of drift-wood, and stood hunched with the cold, his shoulders up to his ears, his hands withdrawn in his parki sleeves, but he was grinning still. The Boy, a little concerned as to possible reprisals upon so impudent a young woman, had gone on and on, watching the race down to the river, and even across the ice a little way. He stood still an instant staring as Joe, going now as hard as he could, caught up with her at last. He took hold of the daughter of the highly-respected Yagorsha, and fell to shaking and cuffing her. The Boy started off full tilt to the rescue. Before he could reach them Joe had thrown her down on the ice. She half got up, but her enemy, advancing upon her again, dealt her a blow that made her howl and sent her flat once more.

"Stop that! You hear? _Stop_ it!" the Boy called out.

But Joe seemed not to hear. Anna had fallen face downward on the ice this time, and lay there as if stunned. Her enemy caught hold of her, pulled her up, and dragged her along in spite of her struggles and cries.

"Let her alone!" the Boy shouted. He was nearly up to them now. But Joe's attention was wholly occupied in hauling Anna back to the village, maltreating her at intervals by the way. Now the girl was putting up one arm piteously to shield her bleeding face from his fists. "Don't you hit her again, or it'll be the worse for you." But again Joe's hand was lifted. The Boy plunged forward, caught the blow as it descended, and flung the arm aside, wrenched the girl free, and as Joe came on again, looking as if he meant business, the Boy planted a sounding lick on his jaw. The Pymeut staggered, and drew off a little way, looking angry enough, but, to the Boy's surprise, showing no fight.

It occurred to him that the girl, her lip bleeding, her parki torn, seemed more surprised than grateful; and when he said, "You come back with me; he shan't touch you," she did not show the pleased alacrity that you would expect. But she was no doubt still dazed. They all stood looking rather sheepish, and like actors "stuck" who cannot think of the next line, till Joe turned on the girl with some mumbled question. She answered angrily. He made another grab at her. She screamed, and got behind the Boy. Very resolutely he widened his bold buck-skin legs, and dared Joe to touch the poor frightened creature cowering behind her protector. Again silence.

"What's the trouble between you two?"

They looked at each other, and then away. Joe turned unexpectedly, and shambled off in the direction of the village. Not a word out of Anna as she returned by the side of her protector, but every now and then she looked at him sideways. The Boy felt her inexpressive gratitude, and was glad his journey had been delayed, or else, poor devil--

Joe had stopped to speak to--

"Who on earth's that white woman?"

"Nicholas' sister."

"Not Muckluck?"

She nodded.

"What's she dressed like that for?"

"Often like that in summer. Me, too--me got Holy Cross clo'es."

Muckluck went slowly up towards the Kachime with Joe. When the others got to the water-hole, Anna turned and left the Boy without a word to go and recover her pail. The Boy stood a moment, looking for some sign of the Colonel, and then went along the river bank to Ol' Chief's. No, the Colonel had gone back to the Kachime.

The Boy came out again, and to his almost incredulous astonishment, there was Joe dragging the unfortunate Anna towards an ighloo. As he looked back, to steer straight for the entrance-hole, he caught sight of the Boy, dropped his prey, and disappeared with some precipitancy into the ground. When Anna had gathered herself up, the Boy was standing in front of her.

"You don't seem to be able to take very good care o' yourself." She pushed her tousled hair out of her eyes. "I don't wonder your own people give it up if you have to be rescued every half-hour. What's the matter with you and Joe?" She kept looking down. "What have you done to make him like this?" She looked up suddenly and laughed, and then her eyes fell.

"Done nothin'."

"Why should he want to kill you, then?"

"No _kill_" she said, smiling, a little rueful and embarrassed again, with her eyes on the ground. Then, as the Boy still stood there waiting, "Joe," she whispered, glancing over her shoulder--"Joe want me be he squaw."

The Boy fell back an astonished step.

"Jee-rusalem! He's got a pretty way o' sayin' so. Why don't you tell your father?"

"Tell--father?" It seemed never to have occurred to her.

"Yes; can't Yagorsha protect you?"

She looked about doubtfully and then over her shoulder.

"That Joe's ighloo," she said.

He pictured to himself the horror that must assail her blood at the sight. Yes, he was glad to have saved any woman from so dreadful a fate. Did it happen often? and did nobody interfere? Muckluck was coming down from the direction of the Kachime. The Boy went to meet her, throwing over his shoulder, "You'd better stick to me, Anna, as long as I'm here. I don't know, I'm sure, _what'll_ happen to you when I'm gone." Anna followed a few paces, and then sat down on the snow to pull up and tie her disorganized leg-gear.

Muckluck was standing still, looking at the Boy with none of the kindness a woman ought to show to one who had just befriended her sex.

"Did you see that?"

She nodded. "See that any day."

The Boy stopped, appalled at the thought of woman in a perpetual state of siege.

"Brute! hound!" he flung out towards Joe's ighloo.

"No," says Muckluck firmly; "Joe all right."

"You say that, after what's happened this morning?" Muckluck declined to take the verdict back. "Did you see him strike her?"

"No _hurt_."

"Oh, didn't it? He threw her down, as hard as he could, on the ice."

"She get up again."

He despised Muckluck in that moment.

"You weren't sorry to see another girl treated so?"

She smiled.

"What if it had been you?"

"Oh, he not do that to _me_."

"Why not? You can't tell."

"Oh, yes." She spoke with unruffled serenity.

"It will very likely be you the next time." The Boy took a brutal pleasure in presenting the hideous probability.

"No," she returned unmoved. "Joe savvy I no marry Pymeut."

The Boy stared, mystified by the lack of sequence. "Poor Anna doesn't want to marry _that_ Pymeut."

Muckluck nodded.

The Boy gave her up. Perversity was not confined to the civilized of her sex. He walked on to find the Colonel. Muckluck followed, but the Boy wouldn't speak to her, wouldn't look at her.

"You like my Holy Cross clo'es?" she inquired. "Me--I look like your kind of girls now, huh?" No answer, but she kept up with him. "See?" She held up proudly a medallion, or coin of some sort, hung on a narrow strip of raw-hide.

He meant not to look at it at all, and he jerked his head away after the merest glance that showed him the ornament was tarnished silver, a little bigger than an American dollar, and bore no device familiar to his eyes. He quickened his pace, and walked on with face averted. The Colonel appeared just below the Kachime.

"Well, aren't you _ever_ comin'?" he called out.

"I've been ready this half-hour--hangin' about waitin' for you. That devil Joe," he went on, lowering his voice as he came up and speaking hurriedly, "has been trying to drag Yagorsha's girl into his ighloo. They've just had a fight out yonder on the ice. I got her away, but not before he'd thrown her down and given her a bloody face. We ought to tell old Yagorsha, hey?"

Muckluck chuckled. The Boy turned on her angrily, and saw her staring back at Joe's ighloo. There, sauntering calmly past the abhorred trap, was the story-teller's daughter. Past it? No. She actually halted and busied herself with her legging thong.

"That girl must be an imbecile!" Or was it the apparition of her father, up at the Kachime entrance, that inspired such temerity?

The Boy had gone a few paces towards her, and then turned. "Yagorsha!" he called up the slope. Yagorsha stood stock-still, although the Boy waved unmistakable danger-signals towards Joe's ighloo. Suddenly an arm flashed out of the tunnel, caught Anna by the ankle, and in a twinkling she lay sprawling on her back. Two hands shot out, seized her by the heels, and dragged the wretched girl into the brute's lair. It was all over in a flash. A moment's paralysis of astonishment, and the involuntary rush forward was arrested by Muckluck, who fastened herself on to the rescuer's parki-tail and refused to be detached. "Yagorsha!" shouted the Boy. But it was only the Colonel who hastened towards them at the summons. The poor girl's own father stood calmly smoking, up there, by the Kachime, one foot propped comfortably on the travellers' loaded sled. "Yagorsha!" he shouted again, and then, with a jerk to free himself from Muckluck, the Boy turned sharply towards the ighloo, seeming in a bewildered way to be, himself, about to transact this paternal business for the cowardly old loafer. But Muckluck clung to his arm, laughing.

"Yagorsha know. Joe give him nice mitts--sealskin--_new_ mitts."

"Hear that, Colonel? For a pair of mitts he sells his daughter to that ruffian."

Without definite plan, quite vaguely and instinctively, he shook himself free from Muckluck, and rushed down to the scene of the tragedy. Muffled screams and yells issued with the smoke. Muckluck turned sharply to the Colonel, who was following, and said something that sent him headlong after the Boy. He seized the doughty champion by the feet just as he was disappearing in the tunnel, and hauled him out.

"What in thunder--All right, you go first, then. _Quick_! as more screams rent the still air.

"Don't be a fool. You've been interruptin' the weddin' ceremonies."

Muckluck had caught up with them, and Yagorsha was advancing leisurely across the snow.

"She no want _you_," whispered Muckluck to the Boy. "She _like_ Joe--like him best of all." Then, as the Boy gaped incredulously: "She tell me heap long time ago she want Joe."

"That's just part of the weddin' festivity," says the Colonel, as renewed shrieks issued from under the snow. "You've been an officious interferer, and I think the sooner I get you out o' Pymeut the healthier it'll be for you."

The Boy was too flabbergasted to reply, but he was far from convinced. The Colonel turned back to apologise to Yagorsha.

"No like this in your country?" inquired Muckluck of the crestfallen champion.

"N-no--not exactly."

"When you like girl--what you do?"

"Tell her so," muttered the Boy mechanically.

"Well--Joe been tellin' Anna--all winter."

"And she hated him."

"No. She like Joe--best of any."

"What did she go on like that for, then?"

"Oh-h! She know Joe savvy."

The Boy felt painfully small at his own lack of _savoir_, but no less angry.

"When you marry"--he turned to her incredulously--"will it be"--again the shrieks--"like this?"

"I no marry Pymeut."

Glancing riverwards, he saw the dirty imp, who had been so wildly entertained by the encounter on the ice, still huddled on his drift-wood observatory, presenting as little surface to the cold as possible, but grinning still with rapture at the spirited last act of the winter-long drama. As the Boy, with an exclamation of "Well, I give it up," walked slowly across the slope after the Colonel and Yagorsha, Muckluck lingered at his side.

"In your country when girl marry--she no scream?"

"Well, no; not usually, I believe."

"She go quiet? Like--like she _want_--" Muckluck stood still with astonishment and outraged modesty.

"They agree," he answered irritably. "They don't go on like wild beasts."

Muckluck pondered deeply this matter of supreme importance.

"When you--get you squaw, you no _make_ her come?"

The Boy shook his head, and turned away to cut short these excursions into comparative ethnology.

But Muckluck was athirst for the strange new knowledge.

"What you do?"

He declined to betray his plan of action.

"When you--all same Joe? Hey?"

Still no answer.

"When you _know_--girl like you best--you no drag her home?"

"No. Be quiet."

_"No?_ How you marry you self, then?"

The conversation would be still more embarrassing before the Colonel, so he stopped, and said shortly: "In our country nobody beats a woman because he likes her."

"How she know, then?"

"They _agree_, I tell you."

"Oh--an' girl--just come--when he call? Oh-h!" She dropped her jaw, and stared. "No fight a _little?"_ she gasped. "No scream quite _small?"_

_"No_, I tell you." He ran on and joined the Colonel. Muckluck stood several moments rooted in amazement.

Yagorsha had called the rest of the Pymeuts out, for these queer guests of theirs were evidently going at last.

They all said "Goo'-bye" with great goodwill. Only Muckluck in her chilly "Holy Cross clo'es" stood sorrowful and silent, swinging her medal slowly back and forth.

Nicholas warned them that the Pymeut air-hole was not the only one.

"No," Yagorsha called down the slope; "better no play tricks with _him_." He nodded towards the river as the travellers looked back. "Him no like. Him got heap plenty mouths--chew you up." And all Pymeut chuckled, delighted at their story-teller's wit.

Suddenly Muckluck broke away from the group, and ran briskly down to the river trail.

"I will pray for you--hard." She caught hold of the Boy's hand, and shook it warmly. "Sister Winifred says the Good Father--"

"Fact is, Muckluck," answered the Boy, disengaging himself with embarrassment, "my pardner here can hold up that end. Don't you think you'd better square Yukon Inua? Don't b'lieve he likes me."

And they left her, shivering in her "Holy Cross clo'es," staring after them, and sadly swinging her medal on its walrus-string.

"I don't mind sayin' I'm glad to leave Pymeut behind," said the Colonel.

"Same here."

"You're safe to get into a muss if you mix up with anything that has to do with women. That Muckluck o' yours is a minx."

"She ain't my Muckluck, and I don't believe she's a minx, not a little bit."

Not wishing to be too hard on his pardner, the Colonel added:

"I lay it all to the chaparejos myself." Then, observing his friend's marked absence of hilarity, "You're very gay in your fine fringes."

"Been a little too gay the last two or three hours."

"Well, now, I'm glad to hear you say that. I think myself we've had adventures enough right here at the start."

"I b'lieve you. But there's something in that idea o' yours. Other fellas have noticed the same tendency in chaparejos."

"Well, if the worst comes to the worst," drawled the Colonel, "we'll change breeches."

The suggestion roused no enthusiasm.

"B'lieve I'd have a cammin' influence. Yes, sir, I reckon I could keep those fringes out o' kinks."

"Oh, I think they'll go straight enough after this"; and the Boy's good spirits returned before they passed the summer village.

It came on to snow again, about six o'clock, that second day out, and continued steadily all the night. What did it matter? They were used to snow, and they were as jolly as clams at high-tide.

The Colonel called a halt in the shelter of a frozen slough, between two banks, sparsely timbered, but promising all the wood they needed, old as well as new. He made his camp fire on the snow, and the Boy soon had the beef-tea ready--always the first course so long as Liebig lasted.

Thereafter, while the bacon was frying and the tea brewing, the Colonel stuck up in the snow behind the fire some sticks on which to dry their foot-gear. When he pulled off his mucklucks his stockinged feet smoked in the frosty air. The hint was all that was needed, that first night on the trail, for the Boy to follow suit and make the change into dry things. The smoky background was presently ornamented with German socks, and Arctic socks (a kind of felt slipper), and mucklucks, each with a stick run through them to the toe, all neatly planted in a row, like monstrous products of a snow-garden. With dry feet, burning faces and chilly backs, they hugged the fire, ate supper, laughed and talked, and said that life on the trail wasn't half bad. Afterwards they rolled themselves in their blankets, and went to sleep on their spruce-bough spring mattresses spread near the fire on the snow.

After about half an hour of oblivion the Boy started up with the drowsy impression that a flying spark from the dying fire had set their stuff ablaze. No. But surely the fire had been made up again--and--he rubbed the sleep out of his incredulous eyes--yes, Muckluck was standing there!

"What in thunder!" he began. "Wh-what is it?"

"It is me."

"I can see that much. But what brings you here?"

Shivering with cold, she crouched close to the fire, dressed, as he could see now, in her native clothes again, and it was her parki that had scorched--was scorching still.

"Me--I--" Smiling, she drew a stiff hand out of its mitten and held it over the reviving blaze, glancing towards the Colonel. He seemed to be sleeping very sound, powdered over already with soft wet snow; but she whispered her next remark.

"I think I come help you find that Onge Grove."

"I think you'll do nothing of the kind." He also spoke with a deliberate lowering of the note. His great desire not to wake the Colonel gave an unintentional softness to his tone.

"You think winter bad time for squaws to travel?" She shook her head, and showed her beautiful teeth an instant in the faint light. Then, rising, half shy, but very firm, "I no wait till summer."

He was so appalled for the moment, at the thought of having her on their hands, all this way from Pymeut, on a snowy night, that words failed him. As she watched him she, too, grew grave.

"You say me nice girl."

"When did I say that?" He clutched his head in despair.

"When you first come. When Shamán make Ol' Chief all well."

"I don't remember it."

"Yes."

"I think you misunderstood me, Muckluck."

"Heh?" Her countenance fell, but more puzzled than wounded.

"That is--oh, yes--of course--you're a nice girl."

"I think--Anna, too--you like me best." She helped out the white man's bashfulness. But as her interlocutor, appalled, laid no claim to the sentiment, she lifted the mittened hand to her eyes, and from under it scanned the white face through the lightly falling snow. The other hand, still held out to the comfort of the smoke, was trembling a little, perhaps not altogether with the cold.

"The Colonel'll have to take over the breeches," said the Boy, with the air of one wandering in his head. Then, desperately: "What _am_ I to do? What am I to _say?_"

"Say? You say you no like girl scream, no like her fight like Anna. Heh? So, me--I come like your girls--quite, quite good.... Heh?"

"You don't understand, Muckluck. I--you see, I could never find that Orange Grove if you came along."

"Why?"

"Well--a--no woman ever goes to help to find an Orange Grove. Th-there's a law against it."

"Heh? Law?"

Alas! she knew too little to be impressed by the Majesty invoked.

"You see, women, they--they come by-and-by--when the Orange Grove's all--all ready for 'em. No man _ever_ takes a woman on that kind of hunt."

Her saddened face was very grave. The Boy took heart.

"Now, the Pymeuts are going in a week or two, Nicholas said, to hunt caribou in the hills."

"Yes."

"But they won't take you to hunt caribou. No; they leave you at home. It's exactly the same with Orange Groves. No nice girl _ever_ goes hunting."

Her lip trembled.

"Me--I can fish."

"Course you can." His spirits were reviving. "You can do anything--except hunt." As she lifted her head with an air of sudden protest he quashed her. "From the beginning there's been a law against that. Squaws must stay at home and let the men do the huntin'."

"Me ... I can cook"--she was crying now--"while you hunt. Good supper all ready when you come home."

He shook his head solemnly.

"Perhaps you don't know"--she flashed a moment's hope through her tears--"me learn sew up at Holy Cross. Sew up your socks for you when they open their mouths." But she could see that not even this grand new accomplishment availed.

"Can help pull sled," she suggested, looking round a little wildly as if instantly to illustrate. "Never tired," she added, sobbing, and putting her hands up to her face.

"Sh! sh! Don't wake the Colonel." He got up hastily and stood beside her at the smouldering fire. He patted her on the shoulder. "Of course you're a nice girl. The nicest girl in the Yukon"--he caught himself up as she dropped her hands from her face--"that is, you will be, if you go home quietly."

Again she hid her eyes.

Go home? How could he send her home all that way at this time of night? It was a bothering business!

Again her hands fell from the wet unhappy face. She shivered a little when she met his frowning looks, and turned away. He stooped and picked up her mitten. Why, you couldn't turn a dog away on a night like this--

Plague take the Pymeuts, root and branch! She had shuffled her feet into her snow-shoe straps, and moved off in the dimness. But for the sound of sobbing, he could not have told just where, in the softly-falling snow, Muckluck's figure was fading into the dusk. He hurried after her, conscience-stricken, but most unwilling.

"Look here," he said, when he had caught up with her, "I'm sorry you came all this way in the cold--very sorry." Her sobs burst out afresh, and louder now, away from the Colonel's restraining presence. "But, see here: I can't send you off like this. You might die on the trail."

"Yes, I think me die," she agreed.

"No, don't do that. Come back, and we'll tell the Colonel you're going to stay by the fire till morning, and then go home."

She walked steadily on. "No, I go now."

"But you can't, Muckluck. You can't find the trail."

"I tell you before, I not like your girls. I can go in winter as good as summer. I _can_ hunt!" She turned on him fiercely. "Once I hunt a owel. Ketch him, too!" She sniffed back her tears. "I can do all kinds."

"No, you can't hunt Orange Groves," he said, with a severity that might seem excessive. "But I can't let you go off in this snowstorm--"

"He soon stop. Goo'-bye."

Never word of sweeter import in his ears than that. But he was far from satisfied with his conduct all the same. It was quite possible that the Pymeuts, discovering her absence, would think he had lured her away, and there might be complications. So it was with small fervour that he said: "Muckluck, I wish you'd come back and wait till morning."

"No, I go now." She was in the act of darting forward on those snow-shoes, that she used so skillfully, when some sudden thought cried halt. She even stopped crying. "I no like go near blow-hole by night. I keep to trail--"

"But how the devil do you do it?"

She paid no heed to the interruption, seeming busy in taking something over her head from round her neck.

"To-morrow," she said, lowering her tear-harshened voice, "you find blow-hole. You give this to Yukon Inua--say I send it. He will not hate you any more." She burst into a fresh flood of tears. In a moment the dim sight of her, the faint trail of crying left in her wake, had so wholly vanished that, but for the bit of string, as it seemed to be, left in his half-frozen hands, he could almost have convinced himself he had dreamt the unwelcome visit.

The half-shut eye of the camp fire gleamed cheerfully, as he ran back, and crouched down where poor little Muckluck had knelt, so sure of a welcome. Muckluck, cogitated the Boy, will believe more firmly than ever that, if a man doesn't beat a girl, he doesn't mean business. What was it he had wound round one hand? What was it dangling in the acrid smoke? _That_, then--her trinket, the crowning ornament of her Holy Cross holiday attire, that was what she was offering the old ogre of the Yukon--for his unworthy sake. He stirred up the dying fire to see it better. A woman's face--some Catholic saint? He held the medal lower to catch the fitful blaze. "_D. G. Autocratrix Russorum_." The Great Katharine! Only a little crown on her high-rolled hair, and her splendid chest all uncovered to the Arctic cold.

Her Yukon subjects must have wondered that she wore no parki--this lady who had claimed sole right to all the finest sables found in her new American dominions. On the other side of the medal, Minerva, with a Gorgon-furnished shield and a beautiful bone-tipped harpoon, as it looked, with a throwing-stick and all complete. But she, too, would strike the Yukon eye as lamentably chilly about the legs. How had these ladies out of Russia and Olympus come to lodge in Ol' Chief's ighloo? Had Glovotsky won this guerdon at Great Katharine's hands? Had he brought it on that last long journey of his to Russian America, and left it to his Pymeut children with his bones? Well, Yukon Inua should not have it yet. The Boy thrust the medal into a pocket of his chaparejos, and crawled into his snow-covered bed.

“One work. Many languages. One reading experience.”