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Updated: June 24, 2025
They appeared to know nobody else on the Sarah, though once Gordon met Dustin just as he was hurrying away from the Indian woman. The little remittance man took the pains to explain to Elliot later that he was trying to find out whether the Indians knew any English. Meteetse transferred with the other Kusiak passengers at the river junction.
Kusiak got into its working clothes and dug itself out from the heavy blanket of white that had tucked it in. By noon the business of the town was under way again. That which would have demoralized the activities of a Southern city made little difference to these Arctic Circle dwellers. Roads were cleared, paths shoveled, stores opened.
The Kusiak contingent, driven indoors, resorted to bridge. Miss O'Neill read. Gordon Elliot wrote letters, dawdled over magazines, and lounged alternately in the ladies' parlor and the smoking-room, where Macdonald, Strong, a hardware merchant from Fairbanks, and a pair of sour-dough miners had settled themselves to a poker game that was to last all night and well into the next day.
The sky was clear again when the Hannah drew in to the wharf at Moose Head to unload freight, but the mud in the unpaved street leading to the business section of the little frontier town was instep deep. Many of the passengers hurried ashore to make the most of the five-hour stop. Macdonald, with Mrs. Mallory and their Kusiak friends, disappeared in a bus.
They all assured her that there had not been so hilarious a party in Kusiak. One old-timer, a trifle lit up by reason of too much hospitality, phrased his enjoyment a little awkwardly. "It's been great, Mrs. Selfridge. Nothing like it since the days of the open dance hall." Mrs. Mallory hastily suppressed an internal smile and stepped into the breach.
He was officially known as the chief of police of Kusiak. Incidentally he constituted the whole police force. Generally he was referred to as Gopher Jones on account of his habit of spasmodic prospecting. "I got to put you under arrest, Mr. Elliot," he explained. The loafers in the hotel drew closer. "What for?" demanded Gordon, surprised. "Doc thinks it will run to murder, I reckon."
"You're going to Kusiak, aren't you? Do you know anybody there?" replied Elliot. "My cousin lives there, but I haven't seen her since I was ten. She's an American. Eleven years ago she visited us in Ireland." "I'm glad you know some one," he said. "You'll not be so lonesome with some of your people living there. I have two friends at Kusiak a girl I used to go to school with and her husband."
"I don't think that's a compliment." Mrs. Mallory did not often indulge in the luxury of a blush, but she changed color now. This big, blunt man sometimes had an uncanny divination. Did he, she asked herself, know what stake she was gambling for at Kusiak? "You are too wise," she laughed with a touch of embarrassment very becoming. "But I suppose you are right. I like excitement." "We all do.
There were at least two robbers. He was morally sure of that, for this was not a one-man job. Now, if Holt had with him a companion, who of all those in Kusiak was the most likely man? He was a friendless, crabbed old fellow. Since coming to Kusiak old Gideon had been seen constantly with one man. Together they had driven out the day before and tried his new team.
The Kamatlah trip had to be taken because his chief had ordered it, but the little man shirked the journey in his heart just as he knew his soft muscles would shrink from the aches of the trail. His idea of work was a set of tennis on the outdoor wooden court of the Kusiak clubhouse, and even there his game was not a hard, smashing one, but an easy foursome with a girl for partner.
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