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Updated: June 24, 2025
Sheba noticed that the Hannah was drawing up to a wharf and the passengers were lining up with their belongings. "Is this where we change?" "Those of us going to Kusiak transfer here. But there's no hurry. We wait at this landing two hours." Gordon helped Sheba move her baggage to the other boat and joined her on deck. They were both strangers in the land.
Peter would go, of course, and Gordon Elliot. The work in the mines would stop and men would volunteer by scores. That was one fine thing about the North. It responded to the unwritten law that a man must risk his own life to save others. But if the wires had come down in the storm Kusiak would not know they had not got through to Smith's Crossing.
It never occurred to him that he was not a match for any two men he might face. "Swiftwater" Pete, the driver of the stage between Kusiak and Katma, did not like the look of the sky as his ponies breasted the long uphill climb that ended at the pass. It was his habit to grumble. He had been complaining ever since they had started.
Hanford Strong nodded in the direction of the Kusiak circle. "They say he's going to marry Mrs. Mallory. She's the one with the red hair." It struck young Elliot that the miner was dismissing Mrs. Mallory in too cavalier a fashion. She was the sort of woman at whom men look twice, and then continue to look while she appears magnificently unaware of it.
In fact, if you're going to Kusiak, I think I'll ask you for a lift," returned the field agent coolly. "And your friends-in-a-hurry do they want a lift too?" Big Bill Macy came swaying forward, both hands to his bleeding head. "He's a spy, curse him. And he tried to kill me." "Did he?" commented Macdonald evenly. "What were you doing to him?"
But she did wish this pleasant young fellow could be made to take the proper view of things. Within two weeks Elliot had finished his work at Kamatlah. "Off for Kusiak to-morrow," he told Holt that night. The old miner went with him as a guide to the big bend. Gordon had no desire to attempt again Fifty-Mile Swamp without the help of some one who knew every foot of the trail.
She had staked a year of her waning youth on winning the big mining man of Kusiak, together with all the money that she had been able to scrape up for a campaign outfit. Moreover, she liked him. It was not in the picture that she should fall desperately in love with any man. A woman of the world, she was sheathed in the plate armor of selfishness.
"But, Good Lord, I can't keep the man tied up a month," protested the leading tenor of Kusiak. "It isn't doing Holt any good to sit tight clamped to that claim of his! He needs a change. Besides, I want him away so that we can contest his claim. Run him up into the hills. Or send him across to Siberia on a whaler. Or, better still, have him arrested for insanity and send him to Nome.
Macdonald smiled, but there was no mirth in his savage eyes. "Do you know what I want with him why I have come to get him?" "No." "I've come to take him back to Kusiak to be hanged because he murdered Milton, the bank cashier." The eyes of the woman blazed at him. "Are you mad?" "It's the truth." Macdonald's voice was curt and harsh.
You never can tell," the old man retorted with a manner that concealed volumes. Those who were present remembered the words and in the light of what took place later thought them significant. "Anyhow, it is quite a social event for Kusiak," Macdonald suggested with a smile of irony. Without more words Holt turned back to his bargaining.
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