for in a new, a white-man's world. For Wapi, the Walrus, forty years
removed from Tao of Vancouver, had at last come home.





THE YELLOW-BACK

Above God's Lake, where the Bent Arrow runs red as pale blood under its
crust of ice, Reese Beaudin heard of the dog auction that was to take
place at Post Lac Bain three days later. It was in the cabin of Joe
Delesse, a trapper, who lived at Lac Bain during the summer, and trapped
the fox and the lynx sixty miles farther north in this month of February.

"Diantre, but I tell you it is to be the greatest sale of dogs that has
ever happened at Lac Bain!" said Delesse. "To this Wakao they are coming
from all the four directions. There will be a hundred dogs, huskies, and
malamutes, and Mackenzie hounds, and mongrels from the south, and I
should not wonder if some of the little Eskimo devils were brought from
the north to be sold as breeders. Surely you will not miss it, my
friend?"

"I am going by way of Post Lac Bain," replied Reese Beaudin equivocally.

But his mind was not on the sale of dogs. From his pipe he puffed out
thick clouds of smoke, and his eyes narrowed until they seemed like coals
peering out of cracks; and he said, in his quiet, soft voice:

"Do you know of a man named Jacques Dupont, m'sieu?"