with gold washed from the bars at Forty Mile, and there were others
who had wandered in from the Koyukuk with the first frosts, foot-
sore and dragging, the legs of their skin boots eaten to the ankle,
and the taste of dog meat still in their mouths. Broken and
dispirited, these had fared as well through that desperate winter as
their brothers from up-river, and received pound for pound of musty
flour, strip for strip of rusty bacon, lump for lump of precious
sugar. Moreover, the price of no single thing had risen throughout
the famine.

Some of them, to this day, owed bills at Old Man Gale's, of which
they dared not think; but every fall and every spring they came
again and told of their disappointment, and every time they fared
back into the hills bearing another outfit, for which he rendered no
account, not even when the debts grew year by year, not even to "No
Creek" Lee, the most unlucky of them all, who said that a curse lay
on him so that when a pay-streak heard him coming it got up and
moved away and hid itself.

There were some who had purposely shirked a reckoning, in years
past, but these were few, and their finish had been of a nature to
discourage a similar practice on the part of others, and of a
nature, moreover, to lead good men to care for the trader and for
his methods. He mixed in no man's business, he took and paid his
dues unfalteringly. He spoke in a level voice, and he smiled but
rarely. He gazed at a stranger once and weighed him carefully,
thereafter his eyes sought the distances again, as if in search of
some visitor whom he knew or hoped or feared would come. Therefore,
men judged he had lived as strong men live, and were glad to call
him friend.