Somewhere up there, if the dying words of a ship-wrecked sailorman who
had made the fearful overland journey were to be believed, and if the
vial of golden grains in his pouch attested anything,--somewhere up
there, in that home of winter, stood the Treasure House of the North. And
as keeper of the gate, Baptiste the Red, English half-breed and renegade,
barred the way.
"Bah!" He kicked the embers apart and rose to his full height, arms
lazily outstretched, facing the flushing north with careless soul.
II
Hay Stockard swore, harshly, in the rugged monosyllables of his mother
tongue. His wife lifted her gaze from the pots and pans, and followed
his in a keen scrutiny of the river. She was a woman of the Teslin
Country, wise in the ways of her husband's vernacular when it grew
intensive. From the slipping of a snow-shoe thong to the forefront of
sudden death, she could gauge occasion by the pitch and volume of his
blasphemy. So she knew the present occasion merited attention. A long
canoe, with paddles flashing back the rays of the westering sun, was
crossing the current from above and urging in for the eddy.
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