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Updated: May 28, 2025
"I warned you not to get excited." She laughed mockingly, and went about washing the dishes. "Nobody wants you. I was just playing with you. I am happier where I am." But Messner did not believe. He remembered her facility in changing front. She had changed front now. It was exploitation by indirection. She was not happy with the other man. She had discovered her mistake.
There were two bunks in the cabin, and into one of them, when he had cleared his lip, the stranger tossed his bed-roll. "We'll sleep here," he said, "unless you prefer this bunk. You're the first comer and you have first choice, you know." "That's all right," Messner answered. "One bunk's just as good as the other." He spread his own bedding in the second bunk, and sat down on the edge.
But, as she turned casually to go about her cooking, he shot another swift look at her, and she, glancing as swiftly back, caught his look. He shifted on past her to the doctor, though the slightest smile curled his lip in appreciation of the way she had trapped him. She drew a candle from the grub-box and lighted it. One look at her illuminated face was enough for Messner.
And I'm not going to give her up." Messner hemmed, cleared his throat, and hemmed again, semi-apologetically, and said, "I need some money." Contempt showed instantly in Womble's face. At last, beneath him in vileness, had the other sunk himself. "You've got a fat sack of dust," Messner went on. "I saw you unload it from the sled." "How much do you want?"
"I can't help being natural," Messner complained. "You can be expedient at the same time, and practical," Womble said sharply. "What we want to know is what are you going to do?" Messner made a well-feigned gesture of helplessness. "I really don't know. It is one of those impossible situations against which there can be no provision." "All three of us cannot remain the night in this cabin."
It was yellow with gold like a mustard-plaster. That's why I staked the Yukon for a minin' claim. That's what made the stampede. An' then there was nothin' to it. That's what I said NOTHIN' to it. An' I ain't got over guessin' yet. John Messner clung with mittened hand to the bucking gee-pole and held the sled in the trail. With the other mittened hand he rubbed his cheeks and nose.
The pails were already skinned over with young ice when he picked them up and made for the cabin. When he entered he found the other man waiting, standing near the stove, a certain stiff awkwardness and indecision in his manner. Messner set down his water-pails. "Glad to meet you, Graham Womble," he said in conventional tones, as though acknowledging an introduction.
Messner did not offer his hand. Womble stirred uneasily, feeling for the other the hatred one is prone to feel for one he has wronged. "And so you're the chap," Messner said in marvelling accents. "Well, well. You see, I really am glad to meet you. I have been er curious to know what Theresa found in you where, I may say, the attraction lay. Well, well."
He heard the wolfish snarling and yelping of strange dogs and the sound of voices. A knock came on the door. "Come in," Messner called, in a voice muffled because at the moment he was sucking loose a fragment of ice from its anchorage on his upper lip. The door opened, and, gazing out of his cloud of steam, he saw a man and a woman pausing on the threshold.
Haythorne, finishing his mug of coffee, grunted uninterestedly and lighted his pipe. "It was fortunate they had no children," Messner continued. But Haythorne, with a glance at the stove, pulled on his cap and mittens. "I'm going out to get some wood," he said. "Then I can take off my moccasins and he comfortable." The door slammed behind him. For a long minute there was silence.
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