up by the rim of the Arctic Sea, not so many hundred miles from the
American line, and all of half a thousand God-forsaken souls live there,
giving and taking in marriage, and starving and dying in-between-whiles.
Explorers have overlooked them, and you will not find them in the census
of 1890. A whale-ship was pinched there once, but the men, who had made
shore over the ice, pulled out for the south and were never heard of.

"But it was a great brew we had, Moosu and I," he added a moment later,
with just the slightest suspicion of a sigh.

I knew there were big deeds and wild doings behind that sigh, so I haled
him into a corner, between a roulette outfit and a poker layout, and
waited for his tongue to thaw.

"Had one objection to Moosu," he began, cocking his head
meditatively--"one objection, and only one. He was an Indian from over
on the edge of the Chippewyan country, but the trouble was, he'd picked
up a smattering of the Scriptures. Been campmate a season with a
renegade French Canadian who'd studied for the church. Moosu'd never
seen applied Christianity, and his head was crammed with miracles,
battles, and dispensations, and what not he didn't understand. Otherwise
he was a good sort, and a handy man on trail or over a fire.

"We'd had a hard time together and were badly knocked out when we plumped
upon Tattarat. Lost outfits and dogs crossing a divide in a fall
blizzard, and our bellies clove to our backs and our clothes were in rags
when we crawled into the village. They weren't much surprised at seeing
us--because of the whalemen--and gave us the meanest shack in the village
to live in, and the worst of their leavings to live on. What struck me
at the time as strange was that they left us strictly alone. But Moosu