CHAPTER II

POLEON DORET'S HAND IS QUICKER THAN HIS TONGUE


The trader's house sat back of the post, farther up on the hill. It
was a large, sleepy house, sprawling against the sunny side of the
slope, as if it had sought the southern exposure for warmth, and had
dozed off one sultry afternoon and never waked up from its slumber.
It was of great, square-hewn timbers, built in the Russian style,
the under side of each log hollowed to fit snugly over its fellow
underneath, upon which dried moss had previously been spread, till
in effect the foot-thick walls were tongued and grooved and, through
years of seasoning, become so tinder dry that no frosts or heats
could penetrate them. Many architects had worked on it as it grew,
room by room, through the years, and every man had left behind the
mark of his individuality, from Pretty Charlie the pilot, who swung
an axe better than any Indian on the river, to Larsen the ship's
carpenter, who worked with an adze and who starved the summer
following on the Koyukuk. It had stretched a bit year by year, for
the trader's family had been big in the early days when hunters and
miners of both breeds came in to trade, to loaf, and to swap stories
with him. Through the winter days, when the caribou were in the
North and the moose were scarce, whole families of natives came and
camped there, for Alluna, his squaw, drew to her own blood, and they
felt it their due to eat of the bounty of him who ruled them like an
overlord; but when the first goose honked they slipped away until,
by the time the salmon showed, the house was empty again and silent,