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Updated: June 18, 2025
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?"
And Porportuk came in from the outside frost to look with disapproving eyes upon the meat and wine on the table for which he had paid. But as he looked down the length of flushed faces to the far end and saw the face of El-Soo, the light in his eyes flared up, and for a moment the disapproval vanished. Place was made for him at Klakee-Nah's side, and a glass placed before him.
Even now will I give her to him." Reaching down, he took El-Soo by the hand and led her across the space to where Akoon lay on his back. "She has a bad habit, Akoon," he said, seating her at Akoon's feet. "As she has run away from me in the past, in the days to come she may run away from you. But there is no need to fear that she will ever run away, Akoon. I shall see to that.
Also, at Porportuk's back, walked another man with a rifle, who had eyes only for Akoon. "Here are the notes and mortgages," said Porportuk, "for fifteen thousand nine hundred and sixty-seven dollars and seventy-five cents." El-Soo received them into her hands and said to Tommy, "Let them be reckoned as sixteen thousand." "There remains ten thousand dollars to be paid in gold," Tommy said.
And she was the one Indian woman whom no white man ever insulted. For El-Soo was beautiful not as white women are beautiful, not as Indian women are beautiful. It was the flame of her, that did not depend upon feature, that was her beauty. So far as mere line and feature went, she was the classic Indian type.
And while Tommy's "Going going going " dominated the air, the slave went up to Akoon and spoke in a low voice in his ear. Akoon made no sign that he had heard, though El-Soo watched him anxiously. "Gone!" Tommy's voice rang out. "To Porportuk, for twenty-six thousand dollars." Porportuk glanced uneasily at Akoon. All eyes were centred upon Akoon, but he did nothing.
El-Soo stood at three thousand. Porportuk made it thirty-five hundred, and gasped when the Eldorado king raised it a thousand dollars. Porportuk again raised it five hundred, and again gasped when the king raised a thousand more. Porportuk became angry. His pride was touched; his strength was challenged, and with him strength took the form of wealth.
He was a Caliban-like creature, primitively ugly, with a mop of hair that had never been combed. He looked at her disapprovingly and refused to sit down. "Thy brother is dead," he said shortly. El-Soo was not particularly shocked. She remembered little of her brother. "Thy father is an old man, and alone," the messenger went on.
He has made a success in his vocation, and has grown grey and respected in the crusade against strong drink. But on the Yukon the passing of Marcus O'Brien remains tradition. It is a mystery that ranks at par with the disappearance of Sir John Franklin. El-Soo had been a Mission girl.
"It is for Porportuk to measure the strength his age," said he who bled at the mouth. "We be old men. Behold! Age is never so old as youth would measure it." And the circle of old men champed their gums, and nodded approvingly, and coughed. "I told him that I would never be his wife," said El-Soo. "Yet you took from him twenty-six times all that we possess?" asked a one- eyed old man.
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