Something familiar about the man grew upon Alan.  Yet he could not place him.  He wore a gun, which he had unbelted and placed within reach of his hand on the grass.  His chin was pugnaciously prominent, and in sleep the mysterious stranger had crooked a forefinger and thumb about his revolver in a way that spoke of caution and experience.

“If he is in such a hurry to see me, you might awaken him,” said Alan.

He turned a little aside and knelt to drink at a tiny stream of water that ran down from the snowy summits, and he could hear Tatpan rousing the stranger.  By the time he had finished drinking and faced about, the little man with the carroty-blond hair was on his feet.  Alan stared, and the little man grinned.  His ruddy cheeks grew pinker.  His blue eyes twinkled, and in what seemed to be a moment of embarrassment he gave his gun a sudden snap that drew an exclamation of amazement from Alan.  Only one man in the world had he ever seen throw a gun into its holster like that.  A sickly grin began to spread over his own countenance, and all at once Tatpan’s eyes began to bulge.

“Stampede!” he cried.

Stampede rubbed a hand over his smooth, prominent chin and nodded apologetically.

“It’s me,” he conceded.  “I had to do it.  It was give one or t’other up—­my whiskers or her.  They went hard, too.  I flipped dice, an’ the whiskers won.  I cut cards, an’ the whiskers won.  I played Klondike ag’in’ ’em, an’ the whiskers busted the bank.  Then I got mad an’ shaved ’em.  Do I look so bad, Alan?”

“You look twenty years younger,” declared Alan, stifling his desire to laugh when he saw the other’s seriousness.

Stampede was thoughtfully stroking his chin.  “Then why the devil did they laugh!” he demanded.  “Mary Standish didn’t laugh.  She cried.  Just stood an’ cried, an’ then sat down an’ cried, she thought I was that blamed funny!  And Keok laughed until she was sick an’ had to go to bed.  That little devil of a Keok calls me Pinkey now, and Miss Standish says it wasn’t because I was funny that she laughed, but that the change in me was so sudden she couldn’t help it.  Nawadlook says I’ve got a character-ful chin—­”

Alan gripped his hand, and a swift change came over Stampede’s face.  A steely glitter shot into the blue of his eyes, and his chin hardened.  Nature no longer disguised the Stampede Smith of other days, and Alan felt a new thrill and a new regard for the man whose hand he held.  This, at last, was the man whose name had gone before him up and down the old trails; the man whose cool and calculating courage, whose fearlessness of death and quickness with the gun had written pages in Alaskan history which would never be forgotten.  Where his first impulse had been to laugh, he now felt the grim thrill and admiration of men of other days, who, when in Stampede’s presence, knew they were in the presence of a master.  The old Stampede had come to life again.  And Alan knew why.  The grip of his hand tightened, and Stampede returned it.