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Updated: June 12, 2025
Sounds like as if one b'ar had come along to another b'ar's den and was tryin' to git in and drive tother one out. B'ars is dennin' to-night, and tham as has put off lookin' up a den till now is runnin' round in a hurry to get in somewhars out of the snow. "A b'ar's allus ugly when he's out late, lookin' for a den," the old trapper went on. "A b'ar hates snow on his toes.
Dennin shuffled his feet on the barrel, looked down bashfully like a man making his maiden speech, and cleared his throat. "I'm glad it's over with," he said. "You've treated me like a Christian, an' I'm thankin' you hearty for your kindness." "Then may God receive you, a repentant sinner," she said.
Dimly they saw him through the smoke of the powder, and in the silence nothing was to be heard save the drip-drip of Dutchy's spilled coffee on the floor. Dennin threw open the breech of the shot-gun, ejecting the empty shells. Holding the gun with one hand, he reached with the other into his pocket for fresh shells.
He had not been home to the old country for fifteen years, Dennin explained, and it had always been his intention to return with plenty of money and make his old mother comfortable for the rest of her days. "An' how was I to be doin' it on sixteen hundred?" he demanded. "What I was after wantin' was all the goold, the whole eight thousan'. Thin I cud go back in style.
"Lind me a hand," he said to Hans, with whose assistance he managed to mount the barrel. He bent over so that Edith could adjust the rope about his neck. Then he stood upright while Hans drew the rope taut across the overhead branch. "Michael Dennin, have you anything to say?" Edith asked in a clear voice that shook in spite of her.
This tilted plate fascinated her. Why did it not fall down? It was ridiculous. It was not in the nature of things for a mush-plate to up- end itself on the table, even if a man or so had been killed. She glanced back at Dennin, but her eyes returned to the tilted plate. It was so ridiculous! She felt a hysterical impulse to laugh.
As they had to sleep, and as the watches extended through the night, their whole waking time was expended in guarding Dennin. They had barely time left over for the preparation of meals and the getting of firewood. Since Negook's inopportune visit, the Indians had avoided the cabin.
He spoke of miners' meetings, where all the men of a locality came together and made the law and executed the law. There might be only ten or fifteen men altogether, he said, but the will of the majority became the law for the whole ten or fifteen, and whoever violated that will was punished. Edith saw her way clear at last. Dennin must hang. Hans agreed with her.
She felt incessant impulses to scream, to shriek, to collapse into the snow, to put her hands over her eyes and turn and run blindly away, into the forest, anywhere, away. It was only by a supreme effort of soul that she was able to keep upright and go on and do what she had to do. And in the midst of it all she was grateful to Dennin for the way he helped her.
Edith sent Hans to their cabins to get them to take Dennin down the coast in a canoe to the nearest white settlement or trading post, but the errand was fruitless. Then Edith went herself and interviewed Negook. He was head man of the little village, keenly aware of his responsibility, and he elucidated his policy thoroughly in few words. "It is white man's trouble," he said, "not Siwash trouble.
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