"And should I not go down to the Russians, or back to my brothers?"

"Then shall you go swift-footed before your god, which is a bad god, and
the god of the white men."

The red sun shot up above the northern sky-line, dripping and bloody.
Baptiste the Red came to his feet, nodded curtly, and went back to his
camp amid the crimson shadows and the singing of the robins.

Hay Stockard finished his pipe by the fire, picturing in smoke and coal
the unknown upper reaches of the Koyukuk, the strange stream which ended
here its arctic travels and merged its waters with the muddy Yukon flood.
Somewhere up there, if the dying words of a ship-wrecked sailorman who
had made the fearful overland journey were to be believed, and if the
vial of golden grains in his pouch attested anything,--somewhere up
there, in that home of winter, stood the Treasure House of the North. And
as keeper of the gate, Baptiste the Red, English half-breed and renegade,
barred the way.

"Bah!" He kicked the embers apart and rose to his full height, arms
lazily outstretched, facing the flushing north with careless soul.



II


Hay Stockard swore, harshly, in the rugged monosyllables of his mother
tongue. His wife lifted her gaze from the pots and pans, and followed