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Updated: June 5, 2025
He never failed her; he was a brother, truly the best, the cheeriest, the most loyal in the world. Rouletta was amazed to realize what a part in her life the French Canadian had played. His sincere affection was about the biggest thing that had come to her, so it seemed.
The speaker threw back his head and laughed heartily. "It's fac'! I'scover de only creek on all de Yukon wit'out gravel. Muck! Twenty feet of solid frozen muck! It's lucky I stake on soch bum place, eh? S'pose all winter I dig an' don' fin' 'im out?" For a moment Rouletta remained silent; then she said, wearily: "Everything is all wrong, all upside down, isn't it?
Profiting by the confusion, Rouletta dragged Broad aside and queried, breathlessly: "Was he dead quite dead ?" "Oh, sure!" "Who shot him?" The question came with difficulty. Lucky stared at his interrogator queerly, then he shrugged. "Quien sabe? Nobody seen or heard the shooting. He'd been croaked a long while when we found him." For a moment the two eyed each other silently.
Rouletta knew that her deliverance had been miraculous and that this man, this total stranger, out of the goodness of his heart, had given her back her life. She never ceased pondering over it. She was now sitting motionless, comb and brush in hand, when 'Poleon came into the tent for a second time and aroused her from her abstraction.
In order the more thoroughly to test her skill several of them bought stacks of chips and began to play in earnest; they played their bets open, they coppered, they split, they strung them, and at the finish they called the turn. Rouletta paid and took; she measured stacks of counters with unerring facility, she overlooked no bets.
He turned and strode away, but Rouletta followed at his heels. "I'm going, too," she stoutly asserted. "Don't argue. I'll bet ten to one we find their cabin empty." Together they made their way rapidly out of the brightly illuminated portion of the town and into the maze of blank warehouses and snow-banked cabins which lay behind.
From midway of the gambling-hall rose the noisy exhortations of some amateur gamester who was breathing upon his dice and pleading earnestly, feelingly, with "Little Joe"; from the theater issued the strains of a sentimental ballad. As Rouletta and her companion edged their way toward the lunch-counter in the next room they were intercepted by the Snowbird, whose nightly labors had also ended.
"Dey lef 'bout five hour' ago. Wal, dat's beeg start. I guess mebbe dey safe enough." "Don't say that," Rouletta implored. "Rock can overtake them. He's a famous traveler." "I dunno. Dey got good team " "He must catch them! Why, he has ninety miles to do it in! He must, 'Poleon, he MUST! Of course this is evidence, but it isn't proof. Remember, Pierce talked wildly.
Rouletta was slow in leaving; for some time she stood harkening to the swift diminuendo of those tinkling sleigh-bells, staring into the night as if to fix in her mind's eye the picture of what she had last seen, the picture of a mighty man riding the rail of a plunging basket sled.
After perhaps an hour, during which a considerable crowd had come and gone, Sam Kirby broke away from the group with which he had been drinking and made for the door. As he passed Rouletta he paused to say: "I'm going to drift around a bit, kid, and see if I can't stir up a little game." "Where are we going to put up for the night?" his daughter inquired. "I don't know yet; it's early.
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