Roy Norton

“ He undermined all the good in Marie Devinne as surely as the devil undermines any of us, if he gets us in the right condition. He made her think that all they needed to be married and to go outside and live that other life, was money in plenty, and he made her believe that life was a joke, and that so long as one had money enough, everything went easily.
“Sam Barstow was soured by ill luck! He had starved, and worked, and trailed in this country, frozen, and slaved, and hoped, until everything hardened within him except that one dream, the possession of Marie Devinne. ”

“ Both Marie Barstow—she that was the foolish little Marie Devinne—and Spider Riggs, whose real name was something else, are dead. They paid the penalty, and Barstow executed them as cruelly as ever any man could conceive. He must have been as mad as any of those who ever went after the red gold. The squaw you saw wearing them was given the name of Mary down at the mission. I've known her and her brother, Constantine, for years. He worked for me two seasons. He doesn't lie. He is more than intelligent. ”

“ Life had not dealt softly with him, and it was a long cry from mud-floored cabins and trying trails and short rations to a home which he regarded as the ultimate splendor of luxury, a wife who was better than any that had ever lived, and the proprietorship of two great things—the Horn Spoon and the secret of the red gold. ”

“ Pitkok told him about it, and the range of mountains where it was said to be, away up there on the far edge of the tundra, between the strange landmarks, a peak thin as a needle, and by it, on one side, one which looks like a devil's face, and on the other a third that resembles an eagle squatted with his head between his shoulders. ”

“ She couldn't appreciate the honest love of an honest man, and a clean name, and a forgotten and forgiven past. All that, the cleanliness and decency of life, meant nothing to her. She was playing with him, because she wanted to be the wife of Spider Riggs, ex-race-track tout and tinhorn gambler!
“So Sam Barstow was tempted by Pitkok, who had been tempted by the legend of red gold, and couldn't go after it alone because he couldn't get credit from anybody on earth for an outfit, and wouldn't take the time and trouble to work for it. ”

“ I've seen men die like flies in the fall by the side of the trails for less. And there was but little more attention paid to them than as if they were dead flies. There is nothing so heartless as a stampede. So Constantine will never talk. ”

“ My companions agreed, and we bade the others good night, and hurried across the crackling snow to the cabin at the rear of the trading post, which I had never entered. Cavanaugh went in ahead of me, and struck a light. It was from a heavy library lamp, that seemed incongruous so far from the outer world and its concomitants.
I looked around. One side of the room was literally filled with books, the only open space being a square in the center, where a double window was let in. Everything about the room bespoke the artist. ”

“ Marie Devinne never loved Sam Barstow. She was fascinated by that Spider Riggs. She had promised to marry him long before Sam went away on that trip to the north with Pitkok, who betrayed the secrets o£ the old men of his tribe, and led a white man to the place where the gold is red. She was no better nor no worse than any other dance-hall girl in any other camp. She was not nearly so immoral as unmoral, and was what life and men had made her. ”

“ It spoils them. They get to know too much. They want too much. Constantine has hard work to control her. Up this side of the flats they heard a shot, and they naturally went to see what it was. It was off on the bank. It was what was left of Spider Riggs. His feet were frozen, and he had not waited to go to sleep in the snow. And I've no prayer for his soul, because he was bad, clean through. Constantine lashed him up in a tree, where the wolves couldn't get at him, and left him there.
“The trail was hard going, and the day was bad. ”