Roy Norton

“ The charitable associations have the most to gain. One or two of them are in need of funds and have been most active in the matter. The executors, but one of whom ever knew the younger Barnes personally, are all men of means and prominence and disinterested. I have met them and believe them honest men, although perhaps they are of an older-fashioned and rather—I am inclined to think—well, to put it baldly, a strait-laced, puritanical type. ”

“ The natives of that village did not tell us how to reach you. We could not understand their tongue, but we gathered from their vague signs that somewhere in this direction might live those who would help us. We could not have found you save for a random trail of sled runners upon snow which we followed. ”

“ She paused and then, turning toward me, asked, “Where did you come from—up here?”
“From a village that I think the natives call Thluckstova,” I replied. “We had hoped to get food there. They were starving.”
“Doubtless! she said, and repeated, “doubtless. The Indians of this country lack foresight. And so, when the warmest seasons cause the game to go far northward, they—pay the penalty. Death teaches much—too late!”
I turned and stared at her. My partner, lifting bandaged eyes, also faced her as if wondering what peculiar place this might be and how peculiar this hostess of ours. ”

“ I saw no reason why I should evade, for neither Jack nor I had the slightest ulterior motive, nor any mission other than that of which I had told her.
“A man named Harris Barnes,” I explained, upon discovering that she expected me to give a full and explicit account of ourselves, “if alive, is sole heir to property in Boston valued at about a quarter of a million dollars. ”

“ He laughed quietly as if at the absurdity of our characteristics, and ran his hand upward across his bearded, strong, and not unhandsome face; for this partner of mine was of the viking type.
Madame Malitka sat quietly in the depths of her chair with one hand supporting her firm chin and regarding him with a fixed and almost disinterested immobility.
“It seems that some of the Barnes outfit—most of them—died there on Katmai Pass. A wind-swept place of torture. It's—it's an awful place—a frigid hell! The natives don't tackle it very often. They come to its foot and camp. ”

“ Natives in there used to have tribal wars. They were unfriendly. A guide might take a traveler just so far and no farther, if travelers there were. Bethel wasn't known then; but there are natives in that hinterland who say that the first and only white man they had ever seen came through, passed, was gone. That man could have been no other than Barnes.
“My friend and I are on that long-obliterated trail; looking for a man who may be dead or alive. The game has gone northward because the season is milder than usual. The natives for more than a hundred miles southward starve. ”

“ We learned all this, my partner and I, from Petalin, the half-breed trader at Katmai.
“But we learned something else; that there was a rumor among the natives that Barnes survived and with the remnant of his natives and dog teams pressed on into the interior. I've an idea that he was all man. At Sevenoski, an Indian village on the banks of Lake Illiac, they tell of a white man who, with but a few natives and dogs, came and went, heading northwest. They say these men made a camp on Lake Illiac, to rest and recuperate, and then disappeared. ”

“ Partners are that way, once they understand each other, and always know just what the other will do if it comes to hard trails and a bad pinch. So we took on the job. Partly because men such as we always need money, partly because it gave an excuse to travel into a country which was unknown. There's always something interesting in places that are unmapped. ”

“ They lay considerable stress on that clause pertaining to the past, moral reputation and so forth, of the widow, if there be such. They are the kind of men who would far rather see the money all go to charitable institutions and churches than into the possession of a woman who was not up to their rather harsh ideals. ”