Where the Sun Swings North

It was quiet in the great store room of the Alaska Fur and Trading Company's post at Kat-lee-an. The westering sun streaming in through a side window lighted up shelves of brightly labeled canned goods and a long, scarred counter piled high with gay blankets and men's rough clothing. Back of the big, pot-bellied stove-cold now-that stood near the center of the room, lidless boxes of hard-tack and crackers yawned in open defiance of germs.

An amber, mote-filled ray slanted toward the moss-chinked log wall where a row of dusty fox and wolverine skins hung-pelts discarded when the spring shipment of furs had been made, because of flaws visible only to expert eyes.

At the far end of the room the possessor of those expert eyes sat before a rough home-made desk. There was a rustle of papers and he closed the ledger in front of him with an air of relief. He clapped his hands smartly. Almost on the instant the curtain hanging in the doorway at the side of the desk was drawn aside and a small, brown feminine hand materialized.

"My cigarettes, Decitan."

The man's voice was low, with that particular vibrant quality often found in the voices of men accustomed to command inferior peoples on the far outposts of civilization.

The curtain wavered again and from behind the folds a brown arm, bare and softly rounded, accompanied the hand that set down a tray of smoking materials.

With a careless nod toward his invisible servitor, the man picked up a cigarette and lighted it. He took one long, deep pull. Tossing it aside he swung his chair about and faced the open doorway that gave on a courtyard and the bay beyond.

He readjusted the scarlet band about his narrow hips. Flannel-shirted, high-booted, he stretched his six-foot length in the tilting chair and clasped his hands behind his head. The movement loosened a lock of black hair which fell heavily across his forehead. His eyes, long, narrow and the color of pale smoke, drowsed beneath brows that met above his nose. Thin, sharply defined nostrils quivered under the slightest emotion, and startling against the whiteness of his face, was a short, pointed beard, black and silky as a woman's hair. When Paul Kilbuck, the white trader of Katleean, smiled, his thin, red lips parted over teeth white and perfect, but there was that in the long, pointed incisors that brought to mind the clean fangs of a wolf-dog.

He closed his pale eyes now and smiled to himself. His work on the Company's books was finished for the present. He hated the petty details of account keeping, but since the death of old Add-'em-up Sam, his helper and accountant, who had departed this world six months before during a spell of delirium tremens, the trader had been obliged to do his own.

Queer and clever things had Add-'em-up done to the books. Down in San Francisco the directors of the Alaska Fur and Trading Company had long suspected it no doubt, but it was not for nothing that Paul Kilbuck was known up and down the coast of Alaska as the White Chief. No other man in the North had such power and influence among the Thlinget tribes. No other man sent in such quantities of prime pelts; hence the White Chief of Katleean had never been obliged to give too strict an accounting of his stewardship. Taking what belongs to a company is not, in the elastic code of the North, considered stealing. "God is high above and the Czar is far away," said the plundering, roistering old Russians of Baranoff's day, and the spirit in the isolated posts had not changed, though Russian adventurers come no more to rape Alaska of her riches, and the Stars and Stripes now floats over the old-time Russian stronghold at Sitka.

For eighteen years Kilbuck had been the agent of the Company. In trading-posts up and down the coast where the trappers and prospectors gather to outfit, many tales of the White Chief were afloat: his trips to the Outside[1]; his lavish spending of money; his hiring of private cars to take him from Seattle to New York; his princely entertainment of beautiful women. In every story told of Paul Kilbuck there were women. Sometimes they were white, but more often they were dusky beauties of the North.

Among the several dark-eyed Thlinget women who occupied the mysterious quarters back of the log store, there was always rejoicing when the White Chief returned from his visits to the States. He was a generous master, bringing back with him many presents from the land of the white people-rings, beads, trinkets, and yards of bright colored silks. The favorites of his household fondled these gifts for a time with soft, guttural cries of delight and gentle strokings of their slim, brown hands, and then laid them away in fantastically carved Indian chests of yellow cedar.

Perhaps the strangest of these gifts had been a pair of homing pigeons, which had thrived and multiplied under the care of Add-'em-up Sam. A fluttering of wings now outside the doorway bespoke the presence of some of them, and Kilbuck stirred in his chair and opened his eyes.

He had been many hours alone in the store, but he had been prepared for that today. The entire post of Katleean was getting ready for the Potlatch, an Indian festival scheduled for the near future. For this occasion Kayak Bill, in his carefully secreted still across the lagoon, had completed a particularly potent batch of moonshine, known locally as hootch. The arrival, earlier in the afternoon, of the jocose old hootch-maker with a canoe-load of his fiery beverage, had been a signal for a gathering at his cabin across the courtyard. From the sounds that now floated out on the late afternoon air, he must already have distributed generous samples of his brew.

The White Chief rose from his chair and reached for another cigarette. As usual, he tossed it away after one long, deep inhalation. Before the smoke cleared from his head, he was crossing the store room with his easy panther tread-the result of former years of moccasin-wearing.

In the open doorway he paused, leaned against the portal and hooked one thumb beneath his scarlet belt. His narrow eyes swept the scene before him. Across the bay, between purple hills, a valley lay dreaming in rose-lavender mist. Blue above the August haze was a glimpse of a glacier, and farther back, peaks rose tier upon tier in the vague, amethystine distance.

Suddenly the quiet beauty was shot through with the sound of loud voices and snatches of song issuing from the cabin of Kayak Bill. The trader listened with a smile that was half a sneer. He himself never drank while at the post, deeming that it lessened his influence with the Indians. But among the secrets of his own experience were memories of wild days and nights aboard visiting schooners, at the end of which prone in the captain's bunk, he had lain for hours in alcoholic oblivion.

The voices from the cabin ceased abruptly. Then like the bellow of a fog horn on a lonely northern sea came Kayak Bill's deep bass:

"Take me north of old Point Barrow

Where there ain't no East or West;

Where man has a thirst that lingers

And where moonshine tastes the best;

Where the Arctic ice-pack hovers

'Twixt Alaska and the Pole,

And there ain't no bloomin' fashions

To perplex a good man's soul."

There was a momentary pause followed by a hubbub of masculine voices apparently in a dispute as to how the song should run. High above the others rose a squeaky Scandinavian protest:

"By yingo, ven ay ban cook on Soofie Suderlant ve sing it so dis vay--"

"Close yore mouth, Silvertip." As a whale would swallow a minnow so Kayak Bill's drawling tones engulfed the thin, high accents of the one-time cook of the Sophie Sutherland. "I ain't no nature for Swedes a-devilin' o' me. I been singin' that song for nigh on to ten yars, and by the roarin' Jasus, I reckon I know how to sing it. Come on boys-now all together!"

Joining the again raised bass of Kayak Bill, several voices took up the rollicking strain, among them the high, easily recognizable tenor of Silvertip, and the voice of another, a baritone of startling mellowness and purity, having in it a timbre of youth and recklessness:

"Up into the Polar Seas,

Where the Innuit maidens be,

There's a fat, bright-eyed va-hee-ney

A-waitin' there for me.

She's sittin' in her igloo cold,

Chewing on a muckluck sole,

And the sun comes up at midnight

From an ice-pack round the Pole."

At the sound of the baritone, the White Chief hitched his shoulders with a movement of satisfaction. Add-'em-up Sam's successor, the bookkeeper, was bidding fair to follow in the sodden footsteps of his predecessor. Given a little more time and this baritone-singing cheechako[2] would be where the White Chief need have no anxiety as to the accounts rendered the Company's new president, whom Kilbuck had never seen. A little more time, a little more hootch, and he would also have settled the case of Na-lee-nah.

The thought of the Thlinget girl's soft brown eyes brought a momentary pang. The white plague permitted few native women to become old. Twice now Naleenah had lost her voice, and only last night he had noticed behind her soft, her singularly beautiful little ears, the peculiar drawn look that to his practiced eye spelled tuberculosis. She would last two years more, perhaps, but in the meantime he must protect himself-he stirred uneasily. The bookkeeper must be made to take her off his hands.

His musing was broken into by another burst of song:

"Oh-o-o-o! I am a jolly rover

And I lead a jolly life!

I have my hootch and salmon

And a little squaw to wife."

Simultaneously the door of Kayak Bill's cabin opened and the owner, a tatterdemalion figure, stood for a moment on the doorstep. Stretching his arms above his head, he yawned prodigiously, and then, espying Kilbuck, sauntered across the courtyard toward him.

An old sombrero curved jauntily on red-grey hair that was overly long. A wavy beard of auburn-grey spread over the front of his blue flannel shirt. Hanging loosely from his shoulders a hair-seal waistcoat, brightly trimmed with red flannel, served as a coat above faded blue overalls, and from the knees down Kayak Bill was finished off with hip rubber boots, the turned-down tops of which flapped with every step, lending a swashbuckling air to his rolling gait.

He seated himself leisurely on the steps below the platform in front of the trading-post door.

"By hell, Chief," he drawled, drawing a huge clasp-knife from his pocket, "I been grazin' on this here Alasky range nigh on to twenty yars, and so help me Hannah, I never did find a place so wild or a bunch o' hombres so tough but what sooner or later all hands starts a-singin' o' the female sect." With a movement of his thumb Kayak Bill released the formidable blade of the knife, and nonchalantly, dexterously, began using it as a toothpick.

"Yas," he said slowly, in answer to the other's silence, "a-talkin' and a-singin' o' women and love. . . . Now, I hearn tell a heap about love and women in my time, but neither o' them things has affected my heart ever, though one time a spell back, tobaccy did. Still, Chief, with all respects to yore sentiments regardin' them Chocolate Drops what inhabits yore harem, . . . still, it sort o' roils me up to hear a white man a-talkin' and a-singin' o' takin' a squaw to wife."

There was an involuntary contraction of the hand that was hooked under Paul Kilbuck's belt. Not another man from Dixon's Entrance to Point Barrow would have dared to hint at the White Chief's domestic arrangements in that gentleman's hearing, but there was something in the soft twinkle of Kayak Bill's hazel eye, something in the crude, whimsical philosophy distilled in the old hootch-maker's heart, that amused, while it piqued the trader at Katleean. He sat down now on the steps beside his visitor.

"Kayak," he said, almost gently, "when an old fellow like you begins to talk about squaws I have to smile. A man past sixty-! But how about twenty-five years ago? . . . What's a man going to do when he finds himself on the edge of the wilderness and-he wants a woman?" Kilbuck's voice rose slightly, his black brows drew together over the pale, unseeing eyes that sought the distant peaks, his thin nostrils quivered. "It's a wild country up here, Kayak. Makes a man hunger for something soft and feminine-and where's the pale-faced woman who would follow a man into this-" He finished his sentence with a wave of his hand. "That is a woman one would marry," he amended. "The average female of that country down south has no spirit of adventure in her make-up."

Kayak Bill closed his clasp-knife, restored it to his pocket and slowly drew forth an ancient corn-cob pipe.

"Wall, Chief," he drawled presently between puffs, "I ain't a-sayin' yore not right, seein' as you've had consid'able more experience with petticoats than me; but one time I hearn a couple o' scientific dudes a-talkin' about females and they was of the notion that sons gets their brains and their natures from their mammies." Disregarding the contemptuous sound uttered by the White Chief, Kayak's slow tones flowed on: "And I'm purty nigh pursuaded them fellows is right. . . . Take it down in Texas now, where I was drug up. I'm noticin' a heap o' times how the meechinest, quietest little old ladies has the rarin'est, terrin'-est sons, hell-bent on fightin' and adventure. . . . Kinder seems to me, Chief, that our women has been bottled up so long by us men folks they just ain't had no chance to strike out that way, except by givin' o' their natures to their sons. You take any little gal, Chief, a-fore they get her taken with the notion that it ain't lady-like to fight, and by hell, she can lick tar outen any boy her size in the neighborhood. Same way with she-bears, or a huskie bitch. Durned if they don't beat all get-out when it comes to fightin' courage!"

Kayak Bill drew once or twice on his pipe with apparently unsatisfactory results, for he slowly removed his sombrero, drew a broom-straw from inside the band, extracted the stem of the corn-cob and ran the straw through it. The immediate vicinity became impregnated with a violent odor of nicotine. The White Chief, however, musing close by on the steps, seemed not to notice it. His eyes were fixed on three Indian canoes being paddled in from the lagoon across the bay which was now taking on the opalescent tints of the late Alaska sunset.

"What I been a-sayin' goes for the white women, Chief. As for them Chocolate Drops-wall, I ain't made up my mind exactly. 'Pears to me if I ever went a-courtin' though, it would be just like goin' a-huntin': no fun in it if the end was certain and easy-like. Barrin' the case of Silvertip and Senott, his squaw, it's like this: you say 'Come,' and they come. You say 'Go,' and they go. Now, a white woman ain't that way. By the roarin' Jasus, you never can tell which way she's goin' to jump!" Kayak Bill held the stem of his pipe up to the light and squinted through it, fitted it again into the bowl and gave an experimental draw. "But everybody to his own cemetery, says I."

"Bill, you old reprobate, you have an uncanny way of picking the weak spots in everything. There's some truth in that last. . . . Gad, I'd like to get into a game of love with a woman of my own blood up here in the wilderness! . . . There's never been a white woman in Katleean. It would be great sport to see one up against it here, eh, Kayak?" The White Chief turned, smiling, and the light in his pale, narrow eyes matched the wolfish gleam of his sharp teeth.

The face of the old hootch-maker was hidden in a smoke cloud, but his voice drawled on as calmly as ever: "Wall, from what I hearn tell when I'm over at the Chilcat Cannery, Chief, you may get a chance to see a white woman at Katleean purty soon. There's a prospector named Boreland a-cruisin' up the coast in his own schooner, the Hoonah, and from what I can make out he's got his wife and little boy with him."

The trader turned sharply. Like a hungry wolf scenting quarry he raised his head. There was a keener look in his eye. His thin nostrils twitched.

"A white woman, Kayak? Are you sure?"

Before Kayak Bill could answer there came an extra loud burst of song from the cabin across the courtyard. The door had been flung wide and in the opening swayed the arresting figure of the leader of the wild chorus.

[1] Name by which the States is designated in the North.

[2] Newcomer.

He was young and tall and slight, with a touch of recklessness in his bearing that was somehow at variance with the clean-cut lines of his face. He stood unsteadily on the threshold, hands thrust deep in the pockets of his grey tweed trousers, chin up-tilted from a strong, bare throat that rose out of his open shirt. As the singing inside the cabin ceased, he shook back the tumbled mass of his brown hair and alone his mellow baritone continued the whaler's song:

"Up into the Polar Seas,

Where the greasy whalers be,

There's a strip of open water

Reaching north to eighty-three--"

The White Chief, with his eyes on the singer, spoke to Kayak Bill.

"Our gentleman-bookkeeper takes to your liquid dynamite like an Eskimo to seal oil, Kayak. He's been at Katleean three months now, and I'll be damned if he's been sober three times since he landed. Seems to be hitting it up extra strong now that the Potlatch is due-" Kilbuck lowered his voice-"I want nothing said to him of the prospector and his white wife, understand?"

At the dictatorial tone flung into the last sentence there came a narrowing of the old hootch-maker's eyes. It was seldom that Paul Kilbuck spoke thus to Kayak Bill.

The singer was crossing the courtyard now with steps of exaggerated carefulness. Suddenly he paused. His dark eyes, in vague, alcoholic meditation, sought the distant peaks stained with the blush-rose of sunset. The evening-purple of the hills fringed the bay with mystery. Gulls floated high on lavender wings, their intermittent plaint answering the Indian voices that drifted up from the beach where the canoes were landing.

Kayak Bill moved over on the step, indicating the space beside him.

"Come along side o' me, son, and get yore bearin's!" he called.

"Yes, Harlan, stop your mooning and come here. I want to talk to you."

Gregg Harlan turned, and the smile that parted his lips, though born in a liquor-fogged brain, was singularly winning.

"Chief," his words came distinctly but with careful deliberation, "an outsider would think-that I am-a-fellow of rare-judgment and s-sound phil-os-ophy from the way-you're always-wanting to talk-to-me."

He advanced and seated himself on the steps near the base of the flag-pole, leaning heavily against it. The gay recklessness that is the immediate effect of the fiery native brew of the North was evidently wearing away, and preceding the oblivion that was fast coming upon him, stray glimpses of his past, bits of things he had read or heard, and snatches of poetry flashed on the screen of his mind.

"It doesn't go with me-Chief. Don't-bring on-your-little forest-maiden-Naleenah-again. Tired-hearing about-her. Know-what you say: Up here-my people-never know. Me-a squaw man! Lord! What do I want-with-a squaw?" He laughed as at some blurred vision of his brain. "It's not that-I'm so damned virtuous, Chief. But I'm-fas-fas-tid-ious. That's it-fastidious--"

Paul Kilbuck's eyes flashed a cold steel grey. "We'll see how fastidious you'll be a year from now." His lip lifted on one side exposing a long, pointed tooth. "That'll be enough, now, Harlan."

"Sure, 's enough-for me, Chief," admitted the young man with drowsy good nature, as his tousled head sought a more comfortable place against the flagpole. "Pardon-casting aspersions-on your-taste in women, Chief. Wouldn't do-it-if sober. Hate to be sober. Makes me feel-re-responsible for so-many things. . . . Hence flowing bowl. 'Member old Omar-unborn Tomorrow and dead-Yesterday. . . . Why fret 'bout it-if-if-today-be-sweet." His voice trailed off in a murmur and his boyish chin with its look of firmness despite his dejection, sank slowly on his breast.

The canoes had made a landing. A dozen or more Thlinget women came straggling up the beach laden with the fruits of their afternoon labors: gay-colored baskets of wild strawberries, red and fragrant from the sand-dunes along the lagoon. From the Indian Village, a short distance down the curve of the beach where the smokes of evening fires were rising, a welcoming buck or two came to accompany the softly laughing squaws.

Slightly in advance of the shawled figures moving toward the group on the steps walked one whose slenderness and grace marked her from the rest. A scarlet shawl splashed the cream of her garments. Unlike the other women, she wore no disfiguring handkerchief on her head. Her face, oval and creamy-brown, was framed by two thick braids that fell over her shoulders. In the crook of her arm rested a basket of berries. At her side, rubbing against her now and then, came a powerful huskie, beautiful with the lean grace of the wolf and paw-playing as a kitten.

"Mush on,[1] Kobuk! Mush-you!" She laughed, pushing him aside as she advanced.

When she smiled up at the white men her face was lighted by long-lashed childish eyes, warm and brown as a sun-shot pool in the forest.

The White Chief rose. With an imperious gesture he motioned the other

Indians back.

"Ah cgoo, Naleenah! Come here!" In rapid, guttural Thlinget he spoke to the girl, pointing from time to time to the now unconscious Harlan.

As she listened the smile faded from her face. Her smooth brow puckered. . . . She turned troubled eyes to Kayak Bill, sitting silent, imperturbable, in a cloud of tobacco smoke, his interest apparently fixed where the slight breeze was ruffling the evening radiance of the water.

Still mutely questioning, Naleenah glanced at the figure of the young white man, slumped in stupor against the flag-pole. . . . A look of unutterable scorn distorted her face. Then she looked up at the White Chief shaking her head in quick negation.

At her rebellion Kilbuck's voice shot out stingingly like the lash of a whip. With a hurt, stunned expression the girl shrank back. Her shawl shivered into a vivid heap about her feet. The basket of berries slipped unheeded to the sand, their wild fragrance scenting the air about her.

While he was still speaking she started forward, her wide, idolatrous eyes raised to his, her little berry-stained hands held out beseechingly.

"No-no, Paul!" Anguish and pleading were in her broken English. "No, no! I can not do! Too mooch, too mooch I loof you, Paul!" Brimming tears overflowed and rolled slowly down her cheeks.

Kayak Bill rose hastily and stalked across the platform into the store. The White Chief turned away with tightening lips, but there was no softening in his smoke-colored eyes. It would be to his interest to have his bookkeeper a squaw-man. The old Hudson Bay Company factors had proved the advantage of having their employees take Indian women. For his own health's sake he must get rid of Naleenah. The tubercular girl would live longer in the house of a white man than with her own people, where he would soon be forced to send her. He was, therefore, doing her a kindness in turning her over to Harlan.

He lighted a cigarette, inhaled a deep draught, and tossing the scarcely burned weed away, crossed deliberately to the huddled figure of Gregg Harlan. He shook him by the shoulder.

"Wake up!" he ordered, "and go to your bunk."

From Kayak Bill's cabin doorway several men drifted curiously toward the store steps. The natives gathered closer.

The bookkeeper raised his head and passed a slow hand over bewildered eyes.

"Beg-pardon, Chief," he said quickly, as he rose on unsteady legs, "making sleeping porch-of your-steps. . . . Awf-lly tired. . ." Wavering, he clung for support to the flag-pole.

With a peremptory gesture Kilbuck motioned to Naleenah.

"Take this man to his cabin," he snapped, "and-" he paused significantly, "remember what I have told you."

The girl came forward with drooping head and listless arms. She paused dully beside the flag-pole. The trader placed the arm of the stupefied young man across her slim shoulders. Obediently she led her charge away in the direction of the small cabins across the courtyard.

Though the eyes of the spectators had been intent on the drama of the steps, only Kayak Bill, perhaps, knew its real significance. The old man now stood in the doorway of the store, his sombrero pushed to the back of his head, a pair of binoculars held against his eyes.

From around the point beyond the Indian Village and into the bay, a white-sailed schooner had drifted. As it advanced there was wafted across the water a faint and silvery fragment of melody which endured but a moment and was gone.

The White Chief turned his back on the courtyard and for the first time noted Kayak Bill's attitude. He followed the direction of the old man's gaze and beheld the incoming vessel just as the white men and Indians behind him broke out in a babble of interest and curiosity.

There floated inshore the rattle of the windlass letting go the anchor chain. On the deck of the schooner men ran about as the sails were lowered. The vessel swung gently until the bow headed into the current of the incoming tide.

"Get out the canoe, Silvertip," ordered the trader, turning to his henchman, "and take Swimming Wolf with you. Find out who's--"

He broke off, wondering, incredulous, for at that moment across the water came the golden singing of a violin. Wonderfully low and tender it began. Swelling, it rose and soared and trembled, then with lingering, chorded sweetness died away like the exquisite music of a dream.

The listeners on the shore stood spellbound. Gregg Harlan, swaying in the doorway of his cabin, steadied himself while the silvery harmony stole into his clouded senses.

"Strange-strange," he muttered, "a violin-playing like that-in Katleean. Dreams-more-dreams-" He stumbled into the room and the weeping Indian girl guided his footsteps to the narrow bunk in the corner.

In the after-sunset light that precedes the long Alaskan twilight there is some rare quality that seems to bring nearer objects on the water. Kayak Bill in the doorway, took another long look through the glasses, then stepped down to the White Chief's side. His voice was the first to break the enchanted silence that followed the strains of the violin.

"That wind-jammer's the Hoonah I been a-tellin' you of, Chief," he drawled, holding out the binoculars. "There's two women aboard o' her, instead o' one. 'Pears to me like one o' them's purty young, and it's her that's standin' in the stern a-playin' o' the fiddle."

[1] Corruption of the French marchez, marche, which the Canadian coureurs du bois used to shout to their dogs, meaning to go forward, advance.

The morning after the arrival of the schooner, Gregg Harlan woke with an aching head and trembling limbs. As he sat on the edge of his bunk holding his fingers against his throbbing temples, he made a mental vow that he would drink no more of Kayak Bill's liquor; that today he would settle down to the business that had brought him to Katleean.

He had made the same vow every morning since his landing-made it earnestly, intending to keep it, but there was something in the air of the trading-post that made irresistible the reckless camaraderie engendered by the hootch-cup; something that emphasized that very quality of gay irresponsibility he had come North to lose.

The stale, close air of his little cabin sent waves of nausea through him. Hatless and coatless he sought the open air. He turned his steps instinctively toward the point beyond the Indian Village. On the other side, screened from sight of the post, he was accustomed to take the daily plunge in the bay that enabled him to throw off the immediate effects of his hard drinking.

As he stumbled along, his lack-lustre eyes rested but a moment on the schooner in the bay. He had not been long enough away from the world to be other than faintly interested in the arrival, and his recollections of the night before were nil.

The tide was low. The fresh, keen scent of seaweed came up from the Point refreshing his sickened senses. Noisy gulls wheeled and tilted over the brown, kelp-covered rocks and on the ridge back of the Indian graveyard, ravens answered the gull cries with raucous soliloquies.

He was nearing the Point when his eye was attracted by a splash of white among the boulders. Something peculiar in its outline drew his inquiring steps. At the sound of crunching gravel under his feet a great huskie dog rose almost from under him. The young man sprang aside with a startled exclamation. Against the wet sand the dog's dark coat had been practically invisible.

"Heavens, Kobuk, old boy! I thought I was seeing things!"

He passed a damp hand over his brow. The dog, strangely undemonstrative, advanced and placed a sleek head against Gregg's knee, its pointed muzzle down, its tail hanging dispiritedly. Vaguely wondering what the trader's favorite lead-dog was doing among the boulders on the Point, Harlan patted the animal's broad back and turned to the object that had attracted his attention.

What he had at first taken to be seaweed was a mass of long dark hair. Beneath it a damp, clinging cream-colored garment outlined the dead body of an Indian girl.

"God!" came Gregg's awed whisper, as he bent above the pitiful little heap. "The White Chief's Naleenah! . . . Poor little devil!"

Steadied by the tragedy he did not understand, he stooped and gathered up the still form. He started back to the trader's quarters, little dreaming that the last earthly act performed by those small hands now so still, had been for himself. But if Kobuk, following close at his heels, could have spoken, he would have told of the manner of her going, the night before.

The trading-post of Katleean had lain wrapped in moonlight and slumber when Naleenah, after obeying her master's instructions to the extent of making the drunken young white man comfortable, crept from the doorway of Harlan's cabin. Kobuk, waiting outside for the mistress who had fed him since puppy days, pressed closely to her side as she crossed the courtyard.

At the beachline, where silvered rice-grass grew tall among the piles of whitened driftwood, she paused, looking with wistful eyes toward the Indian Village cuddled in the crescent curve of the beach. The weird, ghostly totems of her people rose above the roofs, catching the moonbeams fearfully on their mystic carvings. Stern and forbidding they seemed, as if guarding the quiet shelters at their feet against one who had forsaken them for the more luxurious cabins of the white man. . . . Slowly she turned from the tribal emblems of her clan to look back at the log trading-post, dim and softly grey and splashed with shadows. . . . So still she stood and so long, that the dog grew restless and rubbed his cold nose against her hand. She sighed, a tired, quivering sigh like that of a child who has been hurt, and with bowed head, stumbled along the trail that led down to the water.

Over a dark line of hills glowed the glorious red-gold orb of Sha-hee-yi, The-Moon-When-All-Things-Make-Their-Winter-Homes. Unbelievably large and round and clear it stood out against the night-blue, throwing a path of shimmering gold across the bay to her little feet. With eyes raised to its splendor, she waded out slowly, steadily, into the moonlit, whispering waves. . . .

At the edge of the beach Kobuk settled on his haunches, watching her with questioning, side-turned head. He whined uneasily.

The scarlet shawl slipped from her shoulders and floated off behind her. . . . The water crept above her waist . . . her shoulders. Her wide-eyed, frightened face caught the light. . . . Then the ripples closed above her head. A moment later her long hair, loosed from its braids, swayed on the amber-lighted surface like seaweed, then the moonpath lay quiet as before.

On the shore Kobuk waited, his slant eyes blinking at the moon. Occasionally he raised his pointed nose and uttered a muffled whine that ended in a short, querulous yelp. . . . Hours passed. . . . The tide began to ebb, leaving a dark line of sand at the edge of the water. . . . After a long while Kobuk went in search of his mistress, and having found her, watched beside her until Harlan came and bore her away.

As the young man ascended the steps to the store platform he was dimly aware of encountering a tall, dark stranger, who afterward proved to be the owner of the schooner that had come in the evening before. Shane Boreland, whose figure was blocking the doorway, stepped aside to let Gregg pass into the building with his burden.

From about the stove, where several men were already gathered, came low exclamations, and the White Chief, who had been following Boreland to the door, stopped suddenly at the sight of Harlan. His face went as cold and emotionless as that of the dead girl.

"Take her in to Decitan," he said shortly, with a gesture toward his quarters back of the store. Turning on his heel, he walked out to the platform where Boreland stood waiting.

"A damned sad ending to their little domestic difficulty," he murmured softly, as befitted one with a large heart and a kindly understanding of the follies of youth. "But young Harlan, my bookkeeper, hasn't been long enough in the North to appreciate the intensity of these little hot-blooded savages. I told him, when he took Naleenah, . . ." The Chief, as if he had said too much, let his sentence trail off into silence. He shook his head in apparent sorrow, but his eyes were fixed on the schooner that rode at anchor in the bay.

"But don't let this incident mar your arrival, Boreland," Paul Kilbuck went on, and then, with the frontier heartiness he knew so well how to assume, he set about tendering Boreland the hospitality of the post, urging the prospector to bring his family ashore for a visit during the time of the coming Potlatch. This was a festival, he assured the master of the Hoonah, which could not fail to interest Mrs. Boreland and her younger sister.

Even as the trader planned for the reception of the white women, the squaws who had borne him children were preparing the body of little Naleenah for its resting place below the ridge where the grave-houses and totems of the Thlinget dead huddled among the wild celery bushes.

Quietly that night, just before moon-set she was laid away so that her funeral might cast no sadness on the coming visitors. On the grave, the silent women of the household placed the treasures that had been dear to the heart of the White Chief's favorite: a string of cheap beads, a scarlet shawl, gaudy painted cup and two dead pigeons, progenitors of the flock that now cooed and fluttered in and out of the high wire enclosure back of the store.

A week later on the ridge above the new-made grave of Naleenah, a white girl stood talking to a small boy by her side. Above the amber-freckled nose of the youngster wide grey eyes were raised in eager coaxing to her face. From the crown of his bare head, a lock of dark red hair trembling with absurd earnestness stood up from the mass of its fellows.

"Oh, Je-an! Don't put on your shoes and stockings just yet! Let's have one more story before we go back to the post. P-l-e-a-s-e, Auntie Jean!"

Jean Wiley dropped to the ground a bundle made of her discarded footwear. Earlier in the afternoon her nephew's barefoot enjoyment of the beach sand had enticed her to remove her own shoes and stockings, and delighting in the feel of the cool earth against her pink soles, she had not replaced them when they decided to follow the trail to the ridge. She tossed her head, and even in the sunless afternoon, the dark mass of hair that tumbled down her back seemed shot through with glints of copper.

"I wouldn't mind going without them always, Loll," she said, holding out a slim foot and contemplating the freedom of her five, wriggling, perfect toes. "But-" the foot took its place beside its stationary twin, "you see, little man, it isn't done at my age, even in Katleean." Her long-lashed hazel eyes, full of the dreams of eighteen happy years, laughed down at the boy, and her slender fingers, that could coax such tender harmonies from the strings of a violin, busied themselves with the ribbon that bound the hair at the back of her neck.

It was one of the lavender dream-days peculiar to the late summer of the North. Faint wisps of colorful mist clung to the pickets of the small fences in the Indian burial-place below them. The totems and the windows of the tiny grave-houses were filmed with it, and through the dim glass appeared vague glimpses of the kettles, blankets and provision inside the houses of the dead-material comforts which the Thlinget Indians provide for the departed soul's journey over the Spirit Trail to the Ghost's Home. On the quiet bay below, the Hoonah, blurred in mist, tugged gently at her anchor. Some hundred yards to the left smoke from the trading-post rose above the alder trees.

"This is a dandy place for story-telling, Jean. See!" Little Laurence Boreland pointed to the dim-limned schooner. "The Hoonah looks like a ghost-ship out there. Listen! I'll tell you the story Kayak Bill scared me most to death with last night. Ugh! It's spooky, Jean!" The boy's eyes were round and his voice had lowered at the remembered thrills of terror. He tugged at the girl's short skirt, until she sat down beside him, tucking her slim bare feet beneath her as she prepared to listen.

A raven, weird epitome of Thlinget myth and legend, croaked spasmodically from the white branch of a dead spruce behind them. The damp air had in it the freshness of new-cut hemlock boughs, a wild, vigorous fragrance that stirs the imagination with strange, illusive promises of the wilderness.

"And the door of the dead-house slowly opened," Loll ended his tale, pointing to the graveyard below for local color, "and the door s-l-o-w-l-y opened and a long, white finger-a bony finger, beckoned--"

He broke off with a gasp of astonishment and terror, for above the rank growth of Indian celery in front of the lonely grave-house door, there was a sudden, unmistakable flutter of white. So thoroughly had the little fellow lost himself in the weird mysteries of his own creating that panic took possession of him, and communicated itself to the girl beside him. They sprang to their feet, and with one accord raced toward the trading-post.

Near the courtyard their footsteps slackened, and Jean began to recover herself, reminded of her shoes and stockings left behind on the knoll. She became suddenly ashamed of her headlong flight, precipitated, as she now saw, by the first breath of afternoon breeze as it came in from the sea and fluttered a piece of weather-bleached canvas nailed over the grave-house door.

"Goodness, Loll, you frightened me nearly to death with your wild imaginings!" She laughed. "Let's run back now and get our shoes and stockings."

The youngster laid a detaining hand on her arm. "But, Jean," his shrill voice trembled, "didn't you see it-the long, white skeleton finger?"

"Nonsense!" She stood a moment pointing out the reason for the flutter of white, and as she did so a group of Indians landing from canoes on the beach, came up the trail toward the post. Curiously and quickly they gathered about the strangers. Many of them had never before seen a white girl or boy, specimens of the strange Letquoan, the Snow People from that far-away land of the White Chief. Solemn, black-eyed little toddlers peered cautiously out from under their mother's shawls. Pretty young squaws with dark handkerchiefs over their heavy hair, jostled one another to get a better view, and at the sight of the white girl, the young buck gallants of the tribe straightened their shoulders and shifted their rifles to a jauntier angle.

In low, throaty tones, punctuated with long-drawn "Ah-a-a's" and occasional explosions of laughter, they talked among themselves, pressing closer each moment. From time to time a brown finger pointing at Jean's bare feet evoked a general shaking of dark heads and more "Ah-a-a's" of wonderment.

Perhaps because of the apprehension in her heart, Jean held her head high and looked fearlessly into the brown, apparently menacing faces about her. She glanced out over the dark heads hoping to see some member of her own race; but the post, for the moment, seemed deserted by the whites. She reached for her nephew's small hand and held it tightly.

Among the Indians the talking ceased suddenly. A sense of expectation emanated from the group. There was a shifting of positions as a tall Thlinget, whom Jean had heard the White Chief call Swimming Wolf, stepped toward her, his red-bordered snowy blanket trailing majestically from his shoulders. He stopped, bent his stately form, and looked long and earnestly at her bare feet. Before the girl knew what he was about he had wetted his finger in his mouth, rubbed it along her foot, and scrutinized it gravely. He glanced up, his teeth flashing at her in a pleased smile.

"Ugh! Ugh!" he marveled in his best English. "Little squaw with white feet!"

The smile ended in an involuntary grunt, for Loll with the fire of wrath in his eye had leaped at the investigator and with all the strength of his eight years had planted both fists in the stomach of the unprepared Indian.

"She's not a squaw!" shouted the outraged little fellow, making ready for another attack.

At the same moment Jean, her face burning and her hazel eyes two points of fire, landed a stinging blow on the surprised Swimming Wolf's ear.

Straightening himself, he side-stepped, flinging his white blanket over his shoulder with a sheepish grin.

"Fierce little squaw with white feet!" he chuckled, admiringly.

With loud laughs of amusement the others backed away. The circle broken, the indignant Jean caught at the hand of her small protector and fled away in the direction of the store.

Angry with herself and thoroughly mortified by what she considered the insulting familiarity of the Indian, she ran heedlessly. She rounded the corner of one of the little courtyard cabins with reckless haste and before she could check herself, had collided smartly with the dejected figure of a young man. The impact sent her staggering backward, but at the stammered words of apology which accompanied the steadying hands he reached toward her, she looked at him with angry scorn.

"It's a pity you white men are never around when you're needed!" she stormed at his surprised face. "But squaw-men, I suppose, are always busy-driving their wives to suicide!" She flung the last words at him and fled across the courtyard. At the moment she was out of patience with the entire population of Katleean. As she disappeared into the store with Loll, she left Gregg Harlan gazing after her perplexedly, wondering at her last sentence. It was his first actual meeting with either of the white women from the Hoonah. Because of their advent in Katleean he had remained sober for several days, but for some reason he did not understand he had not yet been given an opportunity to meet these women from his own world. He turned from his contemplation of the empty doorway and walked back to his own cabin, his head bowed in thought.