you know, and wanted her bad.

"Great days, those. Was a likely chap myself when I struck the coast.
Jumped a whaler, the _Pole Star_, at Unalaska, and worked my way down to
Sitka on an otter hunter. Picked up with Happy Jack there--know him?"

"Had charge of my traps for me," Dick answered, "down on the Columbia.
Pretty wild, wasn't he, with a warm place in his heart for whiskey and
women?"

"The very chap. Went trading with him for a couple of seasons--_hooch_,
and blankets, and such stuff. Then got a sloop of my own, and not to cut
him out, came down Juneau way. That's where I met Killisnoo; I called
her Tilly for short. Met her at a squaw dance down on the beach. Chief
George had finished the year's trade with the Sticks over the Passes, and
was down from Dyea with half his tribe. No end of Siwashes at the dance,
and I the only white. No one knew me, barring a few of the bucks I'd met
over Sitka way, but I'd got most of their histories from Happy Jack.

"Everybody talking Chinook, not guessing that I could spit it better than
most; and principally two girls who'd run away from Haine's Mission up
the Lynn Canal. They were trim creatures, good to the eye, and I kind of
thought of casting that way; but they were fresh as fresh-caught cod. Too
much edge, you see. Being a new-comer, they started to twist me, not
knowing I gathered in every word of Chinook they uttered.

"I never let on, but set to dancing with Tilly, and the more we danced
the more our hearts warmed to each other. 'Looking for a woman,' one of
the girls says, and the other tosses her head and answers, 'Small chance
he'll get one when the women are looking for men.' And the bucks and