“ Through this lane a fresh-faced girl of twenty-four or -five pushed from the rear, the rustle of her canary-satin dress and the tap-tap of her dainty pumps falling with strange distinctness across the silence of the Saxon.
“Winnie, shake hands with an old friend of yours!” yawned Bassett.
White-Pass-City Winnie gave one swift, curious glance at the woman by the stove and recoiled, her nose in the air.
“Me? Shake with Blera Sark? Not much! And if I’d shamed as good a man as Eric Sark for a cur like Jose Cantine I’d spare my old friends the sight of my face!” ”

“ Blera knew that had it not been for the fact that she was a woman the blows would surely have been sent home and perhaps the wolf-dogs swerved from their course to rend them as they ran. More bitter still her anger flared, and Jose himself quivered with passion as he clambered out of the side snow back into the trail and reviled the disappearing seven. He could not fully identify the befurred and parka-clad drivers, but he had a suspicion that they were Tom Bassett and the six men who had sat around the stove the night before in the Saxon Saloon. ”

“ At their advent five wolf-dogs leaped up snarling from their rest beside the stove.
“Lie down!” gurgled Cantine’s and Blera’s rescuer.
He kicked the dogs soundly in the ribs till they retreated into the huge empty wood-box that stood behind the stove.
“I don’t like the brutes inside,” he mumbled, still wrestling convulsively to get rid of the gagging pilot-bread, “but it’s a case of have to keep them inside or get them eaten whole. Tutchi’s Village is full of savage semi-wolves, and they run the river in a hunt-pack every night.” ”

“ Cantine and Blera were traveling almost due westward. On their left to the south lay Haeckel Hill. On their right to the north loomed the Miner’s Range, and on the far horizon beyond the valley of the tributary Klokhok jutted higher, nameless peaks. In interminable vastness the land spread before them, virgin ground oft from the main-traveled trail to Dawson City, and the stupendous extent of it was enough to strike fear into the human heart. ”

“ The rest were here, the survivors, the fit, the strong, in whom life flowed fiercely with its primordial pulse, and they were reveling in triumph and shouting toasts to the trough roof, when the door of the Saxon opened and the frost puffed in a fog-bank into the superheated room.
Out of the fog-bank stepped two figures, a man and a woman, fresh from the trail. Their parkas where they clung tightly over their backs and sagged on their hips were rimmed with hoarfrost, advertising body-sweat congealed, and about the close-drawn puckers of their hoods icicles hung like tusks. ”

“ With a string of muffled imprecations Jose made a move as if to go back up the slope, but Blera put her hands on his shoulders and checked him.
“Don’t, Jose, don’t!” she besought. “They’ll maim and manhandle you till you’re a proper cripple. And the word’ll go round like a plague. There isn’t any tent there for us tonight.”
“I ain’t seein’ any here either, then,” snarled Jose. “You know how light we come over the Pass to make it in a day. Grub enough for one stop, and no blankets!”
“Well,” shivered Blera petulantly, “there’s lots of fire, isn’t there? What’s the use of lamenting in the frost?” ”

“ With the ultimatum Sark’s lingers slid back and seized the rifle lying in his bunk on the wall, for he looked to see a weapon flash in Cantine’s hand and guessed that one of them had traveled his last trail.
But Blera was upon him on the instant, pressing down the gun.
“You can’t harm us, Eric! You can’t harm us!” she declared hysterically. “You can’t touch us here, people you’ve broken bread with under your own roof. You know that’s the Northland law!”
Again Sark stared at her as across a gulf and dropped the rifle on the bunk. ”

“ I know there’s a Stick village at the mouth of the Klokhok—old Tutchi’s Village. I’ve been in it often. The beggars is rich. They’re lousy with dogs, and we’ll dicker for some and go down the Middle Fork of the Nordenskold. After that, Dawson’s dead easy with dogs. And in Dawson we’ll lie low till we get a chance to square up with Mister Bassett. Come on!”
Endowed with redoubled energy at his bettered prospects, Jose turned and sped off in a long lurching snowshoe stride for the mouth of the Takhini River which emptied into the Fifty-mile halfway between Whitehorse and Lake Laberge. ”

“ But if I was Cantine, and you ain’t goin’ to perforate Cantine on sight, what in Hades do you mean?”
“Mean?” echoed Bassett. “Your gall is sure chilled steel and case-hardened on top. Do you think as me or any other white man’s goin’ to eat, drink or sleep with or breathe the same air as you? You as broke the bond of bread and blanket, the Northland law as no man ever breaks, and lives to boast of it! Days on end I seen you sit at table with my pardner Sark under his own roof in White Pass City. ”

“ It was a permanent village. But maybe they’ve shifted up-stream or back in the range. Let’s see if there’s a trail.”
With a swift pang of fear and loneliness caused by she knew not what, Blera mechanically followed Cantine as he skimmed up the snow-sheeted ice alongside the Klokhok’s left limit. In that moment of non-discovery of the village the inimical wild crept close to her. She saw it as a concrete force, strong, sure, ruthless as the persecuting Bassett or the avenging hand of Eric Sark. ”

“ The girls of Happy Camp is slightly frivolous and not what you’d term pernickety, but they draw the line at her. And I tell you, Cantine, I draw the line at you. I wouldn’t deserve to be called Sark’s pardner if I didn’t. I wouldn’t deserve to be called a white man if I didn’t. I’m strong for sanitation here. The likes of you two is stench and putrefaction in a healthy place. Savvy what I mean? You git to blazes outa Happy’ Camp!”
Bassett released the other’s wrist as he spoke, and the man, his lips drawn up in a wolf-dog’s snarl, stepped back a yard. ”

“ Blera, peering through a chink in the back-room door, watched him thus hour by hour. It was a strange and weary vigil, but on after midnight his head slipped down from his hand.
“Jose,” she breathed, “he’s asleep. Now’s our chance. But we have to have the rifle to make our get-away good. Then you can stand him off. I’ll take the gun. I’m lighter than you, and the slab floor’s awful creaky.”
Cautiously she slipped out of the back room and as cautiously, inch by inch, edged across the main room toward Sark’s bunk. ”

“ Gulping down the last of his pilot-bread, the owner of the cabin was gone while he spoke.
Cantine reached up to the shelf, took off the tallow candle stuck in a wide-necked pickle-bottle, reached a box of matches from the same shelf and lighted the wick.
From force of habit he fingered up a small bunch of matches out of the box and went to shove them into his vest pocket.
“Wait, Jose, wait!” cautioned Blera. “They’ll be as bad as the others if you put them there. Put them in the dry clothes, and after this don’t trust a bottle any more. Get one of those rubber match-safes with the screw top. ”

“ Old-timers, hailing from opposite ends of the earth, called one another friend and swapped harsh experiences, vile tobacco and colossal lies; while chechakos, to whom these seared adventurers were little less than gods, worshiped meekly at their feet, imbibing among other things instruction in the ways and wiles of the land. ”

“ She moved apparently without stepping, with the peculiar gliding grace that is the inheritance of North-born people.
The irregularities of the slab floor seemed to lose stability, to become fluid and flow under her feet like waves in a rapid. ”

“ He turned apologetically to his guests.
“But hold on!” he exclaimed, noting the drawn parka hoods which allowed only their eyes to be seen. “You’re not for hitting the trail again tonight, eh?”
“We got to,” twanged Jose, the bullet in his mouth altering his voice and causing him to enunciate through his nose. “We got to get along on the jump. My brother’s sick up in the Miner’s Range, up on the headwaters of the Klokhok. We. got to keep going tonight, for I sent him word I’d reach him tomorrow.”
“Thunder!” exclaimed Sark. “That’s different. And I’m sorry. But you eat before you travel. ”

“ I feel as if I can work my arms and legs once more.”
Taking the candle from Jose, she moved across the cabin toward the door of the back room. The yellow light flooding the main room showed it to be built of the customary spruce logs chinked with moss and plastered with mud. ”