cargo raw, and then, leaving all standing, ready for the start, and with
a blanket around me, headed across the flat to the camp. No mistaking,
it was a grand layout. The Chilcats had come in a body--dogs, babies,
and canoes--to say nothing of the Dog-Ears, the Little Salmons, and the
Missions. Full half a thousand of them to celebrate Tilly's wedding, and
never a white man in a score of miles.

"Nobody took note of me, the blanket over my head and hiding my face, and
I waded knee deep through the dogs and youngsters till I was well up to
the front. The show was being pulled off in a big open place among the
trees, with great fires burning and the snow moccasin-packed as hard as
Portland cement. Next me was Tilly, beaded and scarlet-clothed galore,
and against her Chief George and his head men. The shaman was being
helped out by the big medicines from the other tribes, and it shivered my
spine up and down, the deviltries they cut. I caught myself wondering if
the folks in Liverpool could only see me now; and I thought of yellow-
haired Gussie, whose brother I licked after my first voyage, just because
he was not for having a sailorman courting his sister. And with Gussie
in my eyes I looked at Tilly. A rum old world, thinks I, with man
a-stepping in trails the mother little dreamed of when he lay at suck.

"So be. When the noise was loudest, walrus hides booming and priests a-
singing, I says, 'Are you ready?' Gawd! Not a start, not a shot of the
eyes my way, not the twitch of a muscle. 'I knew,' she answers, slow and
steady as a calm spring tide. 'Where?' 'The high bank at the edge of
the ice,' I whispers back. 'Jump out when I give the word.'

"Did I say there was no end of huskies? Well, there was no end. Here,
there, everywhere, they were scattered about,--tame wolves and nothing
less. When the strain runs thin they breed them in the bush with the