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Updated: July 26, 2025
I have no thought of the interest. Make it as large as you will, and make it payable in the next world, when I shall meet you by the fire of the Great Father of all Indians. Then the note will be paid. This I promise you. It is the word of Klakee-Nah." Porportuk looked perplexed, and loudly the laughter arose and shook the room. Klakee-Nah raised his hands. "Nay," he cried. "It is not a joke.
With rheumy eyes they saw to his needs, with palsied hands filling his glass or striking him on the back between the shoulders when death stirred and he coughed and gasped. It was a wild night, and as the hours passed and the fun laughed and roared along, death stirred more restlessly in Klakee-Nah's throat. Then it was that he sent for Porportuk.
In his youth he had been swiftest of all the young men. But El-Soo dodged in a willowy, elusive way. Being in native dress, her feet were not cluttered with skirts, and her pliant body curved a flight that defied the gripping fingers of Porportuk. With laughter and tumult, the great crowd scattered out to see the chase.
One day, after such an elaboration, El-Soo made final announcement to Porportuk. "I shall tell you two things," she said. "First I shall not be your wife. Will you remember that? Second, you shall be paid the last cent of the sixteen thousand dollars " "Fifteen thousand nine hundred and sixty-seven dollars and seventy-five cents," Porportuk corrected.
Klakee-Nah, himself masterful, protested at this masterful conduct of his young daughter; but in the end, dreaming barbarically of magnificence, he went forth and borrowed a thousand dollars from old Porportuk, than whom there was no richer Indian on the Yukon. Also, Klakee-Nah ran up a heavy bill at the trading post. El-Soo re-created the large house.
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.
The Eldorado king raised a thousand, and Porportuk raised back; and as they bid, Akoon turned from one to the other, half menacingly, half curiously, as though to see what manner of man it was that he would have to kill. When the king prepared to make his next bid, Akoon having pressed closer, the king first loosed the revolver at his hip, then said: "Twenty-three thousand."
"Twenty-four thousand," said Porportuk. He grinned viciously, for the certitude of his bidding had at last shaken the king. The latter moved over close to El-Soo. He studied her carefully for a long while. "And five hundred," he said at last. "Twenty-five thousand," came Porportuk's raise. The king looked for a long space, and shook his head.
El-Soo was silent. "It is true?" And his one eye burned and bored into her like a fiery gimlet. "It is true," she said. "But I will run away again," she broke out passionately, a moment later. "Always will I run away." "That is for Porportuk to consider," said another of the old men. "It is for us to consider the judgment." "What price did you pay for her?" was demanded of Akoon.
An Indian from the Tozikakat, a pilot, bid one hundred and fifty, and after some time a gambler, who had been ordered out of the Upper Country, raised the bid to two hundred. El-Soo was saddened; her pride was hurt; but the only effect was that she flamed more audaciously upon the crowd. There was a disturbance among the onlookers as Porportuk forced his way to the front.
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