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But El-Soo had no eyes for him. Nor had she eyes for the white men who wanted to marry her at the Mission with ring and priest and book. For at Tana-naw Station was a young man, Akoon, of her own blood, and tribe, and village.
When he returned from the gold-strike in Klondike he came, as was his wont, to the large house to make report to old Klakee-Nah of all the world that he had seen; and there he first saw El-Soo, three years back from the Mission. Thereat, Akoon wandered no more. He refused a wage of twenty dollars a day as pilot on the big steamboats.
You did not think quick. It is your loss. Your wit is slow these days, Porportuk. You are getting old." He did not answer. He glanced uneasily at Akoon, and was reassured. His lips tightened, and a hint of cruelty came into his face. "Come," he said, "we will go to my house." "Do you remember the two things I told you in the spring?" El-Soo asked, making no movement to accompany him.
She sat and looked at her shattered ankles, on which she would never walk again. "My legs are strong, El-Soo," Akoon said. "But never will they bear me away from you." El-Soo looked at him, and for the first time in all the time he had known her, Akoon saw tears in her eyes. "Your eyes are like deer's eyes, El-Soo," he said. "Is it just?"
"We will go south before the winter catches us. We will go to the sunlands where there is no snow. But we will return. I have seen much of the world, and there is no land like Alaska, no sun like our sun, and the snow is good after the long summer." "And you will learn to read," said El-Soo. And Akoon said, "I will surely learn to read." But there was delay when they reached the Mackenzie.
The crowd had eyes for naught but Akoon, and the rifle of Porportuk's man lay across the hollow of his arm, the muzzle directed at Akoon a yard away, the man's thumb on the hammer. But Akoon did nothing. "Make out the bill of sale," Porportuk said grimly. And Tommy made out the till of sale, wherein all right and title in the woman El-Soo was vested in the man Porportuk.
Akoon, lying helpless, had rifle and knife taken from him, and to either side of his shoulders sat young men of the Mackenzies. The one-eyed old man arose and stood upright. "We marvel at the price paid for one mere woman," he began; "but the wisdom of the price is no concern of ours. We are here to give judgment, and judgment we give. We have no doubt.
The Eldorado king raised a thousand, and Porportuk raised back; and as they bid, Akoon turned from one to the other, half menacingly, half curiously, as though to see what manner of man it was that he would have to kill. When the king prepared to make his next bid, Akoon having pressed closer, the king first loosed the revolver at his hip, then said: "Twenty-three thousand."
You are like a deer, El-Soo; you are like a deer, and your eyes are like deer's eyes, sometimes when you look at me, or when you hear a quick sound and wonder if it be danger that stirs. Your eyes are like a deer's eyes now as you look at me." And El-Soo, luminous and melting, bent and kissed Akoon. "When we reach the Mackenzie, we will not delay," Akoon said later.
Also, he lay by the fire so that the smoke would keep the mosquitoes away. Then it was that Porportuk, with his six young men, arrived. Akoon groaned in his helplessness and made appeal to the Mackenzies. But Porportuk made demand, and the Mackenzies were perplexed. Porportuk was for seizing upon El-Soo, but this they would not permit.
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