‘A dirty scoundrel and a liar!’ ‘By gar!  Him no good!’ ‘A thief!’ ‘Worse than an Indian!’

It was evident that they were angry—­first at the way they had been deceived; and second at the outraged ethics of the Northland, where honesty, above all, was man’s prime jewel.

‘An’ we gave the cuss a hand, after knowin’ what he’d did.’  All eyes turned accusingly upon Malemute Kid, who rose from the corner where he had been making Babette comfortable, and silently emptied the bowl for a final round of punch.

‘It’s a cold night, boys—­a bitter cold night,’ was the irrelevant commencement of his defense.  ’You’ve all traveled trail, and know what that stands for.  Don’t jump a dog when he’s down.  You’ve only heard one side.  A whiter man than Jack Westondale never ate from the same pot nor stretched blanket with you or me.

’Last fall he gave his whole clean-up, forty thousand, to Joe Castrell, to buy in on Dominion.  Today he’d be a millionaire.  But, while he stayed behind at Circle City, taking care of his partner with the scurvy, what does Castell do?  Goes into McFarland’s, jumps the limit, and drops the whole sack.  Found him dead in the snow the next day.  And poor Jack laying his plans to go out this winter to his wife and the boy he’s never seen.  You’ll notice he took exactly what his partner lost—­forty thousand.  Well, he’s gone out; and what are you going to do about it?’ The Kid glanced round the circle of his judges, noted the softening of their faces, then raised his mug aloft.  ’So a health to the man on trail this night; may his grub hold out; may his dogs keep their legs; may his matches never miss fire.

‘God prosper him; good luck go with him; and—­’ ’Confusion to the Mounted Police!’ cried Bettles, to the crash of the empty cups.

The Priestly Prerogative

This is the story of a man who did not appreciate his wife; also, of a woman who did him too great an honor when she gave herself to him.  Incidentally, it concerns a Jesuit priest who had never been known to lie.  He was an appurtenance, and a very necessary one, to the Yukon country; but the presence of the other two was merely accidental.  They were specimens of the many strange waifs which ride the breast of a gold rush or come tailing along behind.

Edwin Bentham and Grace Bentham were waifs; they were also tailing along behind, for the Klondike rush of ’97 had long since swept down the great river and subsided into the famine-stricken city of Dawson.  When the Yukon shut up shop and went to sleep under a three-foot ice-sheet, this peripatetic couple found themselves at the Five Finger Rapids, with the City of Gold still a journey of many sleeps to the north.