El-Soo had been a Mission girl. Her mother had died when she was very
small, and Sister Alberta had plucked El-Soo as a brand from the burning,
one summer day, and carried her away to Holy Cross Mission and dedicated
her to God. El-Soo was a full-blooded Indian, yet she exceeded all the
half-breed and quarter-breed girls. Never had the good sisters dealt
with a girl so adaptable and at the same time so spirited.
El-Soo was quick, and deft, and intelligent; but above all she was fire,
the living flame of life, a blaze of personality that was compounded of
will, sweetness, and daring. Her father was a chief, and his blood ran
in her veins. Obedience, on the part of El-Soo, was a matter of terms
and arrangement. She had a passion for equity, and perhaps it was
because of this that she excelled in mathematics.
But she excelled in other things. She learned to read and write English
as no girl had ever learned in the Mission. She led the girls in
singing, and into song she carried her sense of equity. She was an
artist, and the fire of her flowed toward creation. Had she from birth
enjoyed a more favourable environment, she would have made literature or
music.
Instead, she was El-Soo, daughter of Klakee-Nah, a chief, and she lived
in the Holy Cross Mission where were no artists, but only pure-souled
Sisters who were interested in cleanliness and righteousness and the
welfare of the spirit in the land of immortality that lay beyond the
skies.
The years passed. She was eight years old when she entered the Mission;
she was sixteen, and the Sisters were corresponding with their superiors
in the Order concerning the sending of El-Soo to the United States to
complete her education, when a man of her own tribe arrived at Holy Cross
and had talk with her. El-Soo was somewhat appalled by him. He was
dirty. He was a Caliban-like creature, primitively ugly, with a mop of
hair that had never been combed. He looked at her disapprovingly and
refused to sit down.
“Thy brother is dead,” he said shortly.
El-Soo was not particularly shocked. She remembered little of her
brother. “Thy father is an old man, and alone,” the messenger went on.
“His house is large and empty, and he would hear thy voice and look upon
thee.”
Him she remembered—Klakee-Nah, the headman of the village, the friend of
the missionaries and the traders, a large man thewed like a giant, with
kindly eyes and masterful ways, and striding with a consciousness of
crude royalty in his carriage.
“Tell him that I will come,” was El-Soo’s answer.
Much to the despair of the Sisters, the brand plucked from the burning
went back to the burning. All pleading with El-Soo was vain. There was
much argument, expostulation, and weeping. Sister Alberta even revealed
to her the project of sending her to the United States. El-Soo stared
wide-eyed into the golden vista thus opened up to her, and shook her
head. In her eyes persisted another vista. It was the mighty curve of
the Yukon at Tana-naw Station. With the St. George Mission on one side,
and the trading post on the other, and midway between the Indian village
and a certain large log house where lived an old man tended upon by
slaves.
All dwellers on the Yukon bank for twice a thousand miles knew the large
log house, the old man and the tending slaves; and well did the Sisters
know the house, its unending revelry, its feasting and its fun. So there
was weeping at Holy Cross when El-Soo departed.
There was a great cleaning up in the large house when El-Soo arrived.
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. She
invested it with new splendour, while Klakee-Nah maintained its ancient
traditions of hospitality and revelry.
All this was unusual for a Yukon Indian, but Klakee-Nah was an unusual
Indian. Not alone did he like to render inordinate hospitality, but,
what of being a chief and of acquiring much money, he was able to do it.
In the primitive trading days he had been a power over his people, and he
had dealt profitably with the white trading companies. Later on, with
Porportuk, he had made a gold-strike on the Koyokuk River. Klakee-Nah
was by training and nature an aristocrat. Porportuk was bourgeois, and
Porportuk bought him out of the gold-mine. Porportuk was content to plod
and accumulate. Klakee-Nah went back to his large house and proceeded to
spend. Porportuk was known as the richest Indian in Alaska. Klakee-Nah
was known as the whitest. Porportuk was a money-lender and a usurer.
Klakee-Nah was an anachronism—a mediæval ruin, a fighter and a feaster,
happy with wine and song.
El-Soo adapted herself to the large house and its ways as readily as she
had adapted herself to Holy Cross Mission and its ways. She did not try
to reform her father and direct his footsteps toward God. It is true,
she reproved him when he drank overmuch and profoundly, but that was for
the sake of his health and the direction of his footsteps on solid earth.
The latchstring to the large house was always out. What with the coming
and the going, it was never still. The rafters of the great living-room
shook with the roar of wassail and of song. At table sat men from all
the world and chiefs from distant tribes—Englishmen and Colonials, lean
Yankee traders and rotund officials of the great companies, cowboys from
the Western ranges, sailors from the sea, hunters and dog-mushers of a
score of nationalities.
El-Soo drew breath in a cosmopolitan atmosphere. She could speak English
as well as she could her native tongue, and she sang English songs and
ballads. The passing Indian ceremonials she knew, and the perishing
traditions. The tribal dress of the daughter of a chief she knew how to
wear upon occasion. But for the most part she dressed as white women
dress. Not for nothing was her needlework at the Mission and her innate
artistry. She carried her clothes like a white woman, and she made
clothes that could be so carried.
In her way she was as unusual as her father, and the position she
occupied was as unique as his. She was the one Indian woman who was the
social equal with the several white women at Tana-naw Station. She was
the one Indian woman to whom white men honourably made proposals of
marriage. And she was the one Indian woman whom no white man ever
insulted.
For El-Soo was beautiful—not as white women are beautiful, not as Indian
women are beautiful. It was the flame of her, that did not depend upon
feature, that was her beauty. So far as mere line and feature went, she
was the classic Indian type. The black hair and the fine bronze were
hers, and the black eyes, brilliant and bold, keen as sword-light, proud;
and hers the delicate eagle nose with the thin, quivering nostrils, the
high cheek-bones that were not broad apart, and the thin lips that were
not too thin. But over all and through all poured the flame of her—the
unanalysable something that was fire and that was the soul of her, that
lay mellow-warm or blazed in her eyes, that sprayed the cheeks of her,
that distended the nostrils, that curled the lips, or, when the lip was
in repose, that was still there in the lip, the lip palpitant with its
presence.
And El-Soo had wit—rarely sharp to hurt, yet quick to search out
forgivable weakness. The laughter of her mind played like lambent flame
over all about her, and from all about her arose answering laughter. Yet
she was never the centre of things. This she would not permit. The
large house, and all of which it was significant, was her father’s; and
through it, to the last, moved his heroic figure—host, master of the
revels, and giver of the law. It is true, as the strength oozed from
him, that she caught up responsibilities from his failing hands. But in
appearance he still ruled, dozing, ofttimes at the board, a bacchanalian
ruin, yet in all seeming the ruler of the feast.
And through the large house moved the figure of Porportuk, ominous, with
shaking head, coldly disapproving, paying for it all. Not that he really
paid, for he compounded interest in weird ways, and year by year absorbed
the properties of Klakee-Nah. Porportuk once took it upon himself to
chide El-Soo upon the wasteful way of life in the large house—it was when
he had about absorbed the last of Klakee-Nah’s wealth—but he never
ventured so to chide again. El-Soo, like her father, was an aristocrat,
as disdainful of money as he, and with an equal sense of honour as finely
strung.
Porportuk continued grudgingly to advance money, and ever the money
flowed in golden foam away. Upon one thing El-Soo was resolved—her
father should die as he had lived. There should be for him no passing
from high to low, no diminution of the revels, no lessening of the lavish
hospitality. When there was famine, as of old, the Indians came groaning
to the large house and went away content. When there was famine and no
money, money was borrowed from Porportuk, and the Indians still went away
content. El-Soo might well have repeated, after the aristocrats of
another time and place, that after her came the deluge. In her case the
deluge was old Porportuk. With every advance of money, he looked upon
her with a more possessive eye, and felt bourgeoning within him ancient
fires.
But El-Soo had no eyes for him. Nor had she eyes for the white men who
wanted to marry her at the Mission with ring and priest and book. For at
Tana-naw Station was a young man, Akoon, of her own blood, and tribe, and
village. He was strong and beautiful to her eyes, a great hunter, and,
in that he had wandered far and much, very poor; he had been to all the
unknown wastes and places; he had journeyed to Sitka and to the United
States; he had crossed the continent to Hudson Bay and back again, and as
seal-hunter on a ship he had sailed to Siberia and for Japan.
When he returned from the gold-strike in Klondike he came, as was his
wont, to the large house to make report to old Klakee-Nah of all the
world that he had seen; and there he first saw El-Soo, three years back
from the Mission. Thereat, Akoon wandered no more. He refused a wage of
twenty dollars a day as pilot on the big steamboats. He hunted some and
fished some, but never far from Tana-naw Station, and he was at the large
house often and long. And El-Soo measured him against many men and found
him good. He sang songs to her, and was ardent and glowed until all
Tana-naw Station knew he loved her. And Porportuk but grinned and
advanced more money for the upkeep of the large house.
Then came the death table of Klakee-Nah.
He sat at feast, with death in his throat, that he could not drown with
wine. And laughter and joke and song went around, and Akoon told a story
that made the rafters echo. There were no tears or sighs at that table.
It was no more than fit that Klakee-Nah should die as he had lived, and
none knew this better than El-Soo, with her artist sympathy. The old
roystering crowd was there, and, as of old, three frost-bitten sailors
were there, fresh from the long traverse from the Arctic, survivors of a
ship’s company of seventy-four. At Klakee-Nah’s back were four old men,
all that were left him of the slaves of his youth. 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. And Porportuk came in from the
outside frost to look with disapproving eyes upon the meat and wine on
the table for which he had paid. But as he looked down the length of
flushed faces to the far end and saw the face of El-Soo, the light in his
eyes flared up, and for a moment the disapproval vanished.
Place was made for him at Klakee-Nah’s side, and a glass placed before
him. Klakee-Nah, with his own hands, filled the glass with fervent
spirits. “Drink!” he cried. “Is it not good?”
And Porportuk’s eyes watered as he nodded his head and smacked his lips.
“When, in your own house, have you had such drink?” Klakee-Nah demanded.
“I will not deny that the drink is good to this old throat of mine,”
Porportuk made answer, and hesitated for the speech to complete the
thought.
“But it costs overmuch,” Klakee-Nah roared, completing it for him.
Porportuk winced at the laughter that went down the table. His eyes
burned malevolently. “We were boys together, of the same age,” he said.
“In your throat is death. I am still alive and strong.”
An ominous murmur arose from the company. Klakee-Nah coughed and
strangled, and the old slaves smote him between the shoulders. He
emerged gasping, and waved his hand to still the threatening rumble.
“You have grudged the very fire in your house because the wood cost
overmuch!” he cried. “You have grudged life. To live cost overmuch, and
you have refused to pay the price. Your life has been like a cabin where
the fire is out and there are no blankets on the floor.” He signalled to
a slave to fill his glass, which he held aloft. “But I have lived. And
I have been warm with life as you have never been warm. It is true, you
shall live long. But the longest nights are the cold nights when a man
shivers and lies awake. My nights have been short, but I have slept
warm.”
He drained the glass. The shaking hand of a slave failed to catch it as
it crashed to the floor. Klakee-Nah sank back, panting, watching the
upturned glasses at the lips of the drinkers, his own lips slightly
smiling to the applause. At a sign, two slaves attempted to help him sit
upright again. But they were weak, his frame was mighty, and the four
old men tottered and shook as they helped him forward.
“But manner of life is neither here nor there,” he went on. “We have
other business, Porportuk, you and I, to-night. Debts are mischances,
and I am in mischance with you. What of my debt, and how great is it?”
Porportuk searched in his pouch and brought forth a memorandum. He
sipped at his glass and began. “There is the note of August, 1889, for
three hundred dollars. The interest has never been paid. And the note
of the next year for five hundred dollars. This note was included in the
note of two months later for a thousand dollars. Then there is the
note—”
“Never mind the many notes!” Klakee-Nah cried out impatiently. “They
make my head go around and all the things inside my head. The whole!
The round whole! How much is it?”
Porportuk referred to his memorandum. “Fifteen thousand nine hundred and
sixty-seven dollars and seventy-five cents,” he read with careful
precision.
“Make it sixteen thousand, make it sixteen thousand,” Klakee-Nah said
grandly. “Odd numbers were ever a worry. And now—and it is for this
that I have sent for you—make me out a new note for sixteen thousand,
which I shall sign. 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.
I but speak in fairness. It was for this I sent for you, Porportuk.
Make out the note.”
“I have no dealings with the next world,” Porportuk made answer slowly.
“Have you no thought to meet me before the Great Father!” Klakee-Nah
demanded. Then he added, “I shall surely be there.”
“I have no dealings with the next world,” Porportuk repeated sourly.
The dying man regarded him with frank amazement.
“I know naught of the next world,” Porportuk explained. “I do business
in this world.”
Klakee-Nah’s face cleared. “This comes of sleeping cold of nights,” he
laughed. He pondered for a space, then said, “It is in this world that
you must be paid. There remains to me this house. Take it, and burn the
debt in the candle there.”
“It is an old house and not worth the money,” Porportuk made answer.
“There are my mines on the Twisted Salmon.”
“They have never paid to work,” was the reply.
“There is my share in the steamer _Koyokuk_. I am half owner.”
“She is at the bottom of the Yukon.”
Klakee-Nah started. “True, I forgot. It was last spring when the ice
went out.” He mused for a time while the glasses remained untasted, and
all the company waited upon his utterance.
“Then it would seem I owe you a sum of money which I cannot pay . . . in
this world?” Porportuk nodded and glanced down the table.
“Then it would seem that you, Porportuk, are a poor business man,”
Klakee-Nah said slyly. And boldly Porportuk made answer, “No; there is
security yet untouched.”
“What!” cried Klakee-Nah. “Have I still property? Name it, and it is
yours, and the debt is no more.”
“There it is.” Porportuk pointed at El-Soo.
Klakee-Nah could not understand. He peered down the table, brushed his
eyes, and peered again.
“Your daughter, El-Soo—her will I take and the debt be no more. I will
burn the debt there in the candle.”
Klakee-Nah’s great chest began to heave. “Ho! ho!—a joke. Ho! ho! ho!”
he laughed Homerically. “And with your cold bed and daughters old enough
to be the mother of El-Soo! Ho! ho! ho!” He began to cough and
strangle, and the old slaves smote him on the back. “Ho! ho!” he began
again, and went off into another paroxysm.
Porportuk waited patiently, sipping from his glass and studying the
double row of faces down the board. “It is no joke,” he said finally.
“My speech is well meant.”
Klakee-Nah sobered and looked at him, then reached for his glass, but
could not touch it. A slave passed it to him, and glass and liquor he
flung into the face of Porportuk.
“Turn him out!” Klakee-Nah thundered to the waiting table that strained
like a pack of hounds in leash. “And roll him in the snow!”
As the mad riot swept past him and out of doors, he signalled to the
slaves, and the four tottering old men supported him on his feet as he
met the returning revellers, upright, glass in hand, pledging them a
toast to the short night when a man sleeps warm.
It did not take long to settle the estate of Klakee-Nah. Tommy, the
little Englishman, clerk at the trading post, was called in by El-Soo to
help. There was nothing but debts, notes overdue, mortgaged properties,
and properties mortgaged but worthless. Notes and mortgages were held by
Porportuk. Tommy called him a robber many times as he pondered the
compounding of the interest.
“Is it a debt, Tommy?” El-Soo asked.
“It is a robbery,” Tommy answered.
“Nevertheless, it is a debt,” she persisted.
The winter wore away, and the early spring, and still the claims of
Porportuk remained unpaid. He saw El-Soo often and explained to her at
length, as he had explained to her father, the way the debt could be
cancelled. Also, he brought with him old medicine-men, who elaborated to
her the everlasting damnation of her father if the debt were not paid.
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.
“My father said sixteen thousand,” was her reply. “You shall be paid.”
“How?”
“I know not how, but I shall find out how. Now go, and bother me no
more. If you do”—she hesitated to find fitting penalty—“if you do, I
shall have you rolled in the snow again as soon as the first snow flies.”
This was still in the early spring, and a little later El-Soo surprised
the country. Word went up and down the Yukon from Chilcoot to the Delta,
and was carried from camp to camp to the farthermost camps, that in June,
when the first salmon ran, El-Soo, daughter of Klakee-Nah, would sell
herself at public auction to satisfy the claims of Porportuk. Vain were
the attempts to dissuade her. The missionary at St. George wrestled with
her, but she replied—
“Only the debts to God are settled in the next world. The debts of men
are of this world, and in this world are they settled.”
Akoon wrestled with her, but she replied, “I do love thee, Akoon; but
honour is greater than love, and who am I that I should blacken my
father?” Sister Alberta journeyed all the way up from Holy Cross on the
first steamer, and to no better end.
“My father wanders in the thick and endless forests,” said El-Soo. “And
there will he wander, with the lost souls crying, till the debt be paid.
Then, and not until then, may he go on to the house of the Great Father.”
“And you believe this?” Sister Alberta asked.
“I do not know,” El-Soo made answer. “It was my father’s belief.”
Sister Alberta shrugged her shoulders incredulously.
“Who knows but that the things we believe come true?” El-Soo went on.
“Why not? The next world to you may be heaven and harps . . . because
you have believed heaven and harps; to my father the next world may be a
large house where he will sit always at table feasting with God.”
“And you?” Sister Alberta asked. “What is your next world?”
El-Soo hesitated but for a moment. “I should like a little of both,” she
said. “I should like to see your face as well as the face of my father.”
The day of the auction came. Tana-naw Station was populous. As was
their custom, the tribes had gathered to await the salmon-run, and in the
meantime spent the time in dancing and frolicking, trading and gossiping.
Then there was the ordinary sprinkling of white adventurers, traders, and
prospectors, and, in addition, a large number of white men who had come
because of curiosity or interest in the affair.
It had been a backward spring, and the salmon were late in running. This
delay but keyed up the interest. Then, on the day of the auction, the
situation was made tense by Akoon. He arose and made public and solemn
announcement that whosoever bought El-Soo would forthwith and immediately
die. He flourished the Winchester in his hand to indicate the manner of
the taking-off. El-Soo was angered thereat; but he refused to speak with
her, and went to the trading post to lay in extra ammunition.
The first salmon was caught at ten o’clock in the evening, and at
midnight the auction began. It took place on top of the high bank
alongside the Yukon. The sun was due north just below the horizon, and
the sky was lurid red. A great crowd gathered about the table and the
two chairs that stood near the edge of the bank. To the fore were many
white men and several chiefs. And most prominently to the fore, rifle in
hand, stood Akoon. Tommy, at El-Soo’s request, served as auctioneer, but
she made the opening speech and described the goods about to be sold.
She was in native costume, in the dress of a chief’s daughter, splendid
and barbaric, and she stood on a chair, that she might be seen to
advantage.
“Who will buy a wife?” she asked. “Look at me. I am twenty years old
and a maid. I will be a good wife to the man who buys me. If he is a
white man, I shall dress in the fashion of white women; if he is an
Indian, I shall dress as”—she hesitated a moment—“a squaw. I can make my
own clothes, and sew, and wash, and mend. I was taught for eight years
to do these things at Holy Cross Mission. I can read and write English,
and I know how to play the organ. Also I can do arithmetic and some
algebra—a little. I shall be sold to the highest bidder, and to him I
will make out a bill of sale of myself. I forgot to say that I can sing
very well, and that I have never been sick in my life. I weigh one
hundred and thirty-two pounds; my father is dead and I have no relatives.
Who wants me?”
She looked over the crowd with flaming audacity and stepped down. At
Tommy’s request she stood upon the chair again, while he mounted the
second chair and started the bidding.
Surrounding El-Soo stood the four old slaves of her father. They were
age-twisted and palsied, faithful to their meat, a generation out of the
past that watched unmoved the antics of younger life. In the front of
the crowd were several Eldorado and Bonanza kings from the Upper Yukon,
and beside them, on crutches, swollen with scurvy, were two broken
prospectors. From the midst of the crowd, thrust out by its own
vividness, appeared the face of a wild-eyed squaw from the remote regions
of the Upper Tana-naw; a strayed Sitkan from the coast stood side by side
with a Stick from Lake Le Barge, and, beyond, a half-dozen
French-Canadian voyageurs, grouped by themselves. From afar came the
faint cries of myriads of wild-fowl on the nesting-grounds. Swallows
were skimming up overhead from the placid surface of the Yukon, and
robins were singing. The oblique rays of the hidden sun shot through the
smoke, high-dissipated from forest fires a thousand miles away, and
turned the heavens to sombre red, while the earth shone red in the
reflected glow. This red glow shone in the faces of all, and made
everything seem unearthly and unreal.
The bidding began slowly. The Sitkan, who was a stranger in the land and
who had arrived only half an hour before, offered one hundred dollars in
a confident voice, and was surprised when Akoon turned threateningly upon
him with the rifle. The bidding dragged. 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. “Five hundred dollars!” he bid in a loud voice, then
looked about him proudly to note the effect.
He was minded to use his great wealth as a bludgeon with which to stun
all competition at the start. But one of the voyageurs, looking on
El-Soo with sparkling eyes, raised the bid a hundred.
“Seven hundred!” Porportuk returned promptly.
And with equal promptness came the “Eight hundred” of the voyageur.
Then Porportuk swung his club again.
“Twelve hundred!” he shouted.
With a look of poignant disappointment, the voyageur succumbed. There
was no further bidding. Tommy worked hard, but could not elicit a bid.
El-Soo spoke to Porportuk. “It were good, Porportuk, for you to weigh
well your bid. Have you forgotten the thing I told you—that I would
never marry you!”
“It is a public auction,” he retorted. “I shall buy you with a bill of
sale. I have offered twelve hundred dollars. You come cheap.”
“Too damned cheap!” Tommy cried. “What if I am auctioneer? That does
not prevent me from bidding. I’ll make it thirteen hundred.”
“Fourteen hundred,” from Porportuk.
“I’ll buy you in to be my—my sister,” Tommy whispered to El-Soo, then
called aloud, “Fifteen hundred!”
At two thousand one of the Eldorado kings took a hand, and Tommy dropped
out.
A third time Porportuk swung the club of his wealth, making a clean raise
of five hundred dollars. But the Eldorado king’s pride was touched. No
man could club him. And he swung back another five hundred.
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. He would not
be ashamed for weakness before the world. El-Soo became incidental. The
savings and scrimpings from the cold nights of all his years were ripe to
be squandered. El-Soo stood at six thousand. He made it seven thousand.
And then, in thousand-dollar bids, as fast as they could be uttered, her
price went up. At fourteen thousand the two men stopped for breath.
Then the unexpected happened. A still heavier club was swung. In the
pause that ensued, the gambler, who had scented a speculation and formed
a syndicate with several of his fellows, bid sixteen thousand dollars.
“Seventeen thousand,” Porportuk said weakly.
“Eighteen thousand,” said the king.
Porportuk gathered his strength. “Twenty thousand.”
The syndicate dropped out. 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. He looked again,
and said reluctantly, “And five hundred.”
“Twenty-six thousand,” Porportuk snapped.
The king shook his head and refused to meet Tommy’s pleading eye. In the
meantime Akoon had edged close to Porportuk. El-Soo’s quick eye noted
this, and, while Tommy wrestled with the Eldorado king for another bid,
she bent, and spoke in a low voice in the ear of a slave. And while
Tommy’s “Going—going—going—” dominated the air, the slave went up to
Akoon and spoke in a low voice in his ear. Akoon made no sign that he
had heard, though El-Soo watched him anxiously.
“Gone!” Tommy’s voice rang out. “To Porportuk, for twenty-six thousand
dollars.”
Porportuk glanced uneasily at Akoon. All eyes were centred upon Akoon,
but he did nothing.
“Let the scales be brought,” said El-Soo.
“I shall make payment at my house,” said Porportuk.
“Let the scales be brought,” El-Soo repeated. “Payment shall be made
here where all can see.”
So the gold scales were brought from the trading post, while Porportuk
went away and came back with a man at his heels, on whose shoulders was a
weight of gold-dust in moose-hide sacks. Also, at Porportuk’s back,
walked another man with a rifle, who had eyes only for Akoon.
“Here are the notes and mortgages,” said Porportuk, “for fifteen thousand
nine hundred and sixty-seven dollars and seventy-five cents.”
El-Soo received them into her hands and said to Tommy, “Let them be
reckoned as sixteen thousand.”
“There remains ten thousand dollars to be paid in gold,” Tommy said.
Porportuk nodded, and untied the mouths of the sacks. El-Soo, standing
at the edge of the bank, tore the papers to shreds and sent them
fluttering out over the Yukon. The weighing began, but halted.
“Of course, at seventeen dollars,” Porportuk had said to Tommy, as he
adjusted the scales.
“At sixteen dollars,” El-Soo said sharply.
“It is the custom of all the land to reckon gold at seventeen dollars for
each ounce,” Porportuk replied. “And this is a business transaction.”
El-Soo laughed. “It is a new custom,” she said. “It began this spring.
Last year, and the years before, it was sixteen dollars an ounce. When
my father’s debt was made, it was sixteen dollars. When he spent at the
store the money he got from you, for one ounce he was given sixteen
dollars’ worth of flour, not seventeen. Wherefore, shall you pay for me
at sixteen, and not at seventeen.” Porportuk grunted and allowed the
weighing to proceed.
“Weigh it in three piles, Tommy,” she said. “A thousand dollars here,
three thousand here, and here six thousand.”
It was slow work, and, while the weighing went on, Akoon was closely
watched by all.
“He but waits till the money is paid,” one said; and the word went around
and was accepted, and they waited for what Akoon should do when the money
was paid. And Porportuk’s man with the rifle waited and watched Akoon.
The weighing was finished, and the gold-dust lay on the table in three
dark-yellow heaps. “There is a debt of my father to the Company for
three thousand dollars,” said El-Soo. “Take it, Tommy, for the Company.
And here are four old men, Tommy. You know them. And here is one
thousand dollars. Take it, and see that the old men are never hungry and
never without tobacco.”
Tommy scooped the gold into separate sacks. Six thousand dollars
remained on the table. El-Soo thrust the scoop into the heap, and with a
sudden turn whirled the contents out and down to the Yukon in a golden
shower. Porportuk seized her wrist as she thrust the scoop a second time
into the heap.
“It is mine,” she said calmly. Porportuk released his grip, but he
gritted his teeth and scowled darkly as she continued to scoop the gold
into the river till none was left.
The crowd had eyes for naught but Akoon, and the rifle of Porportuk’s man
lay across the hollow of his arm, the muzzle directed at Akoon a yard
away, the man’s thumb on the hammer. But Akoon did nothing.
“Make out the bill of sale,” Porportuk said grimly.
And Tommy made out the till of sale, wherein all right and title in the
woman El-Soo was vested in the man Porportuk. El-Soo signed the
document, and Porportuk folded it and put it away in his pouch. Suddenly
his eyes flashed, and in sudden speech he addressed El-Soo.
“But it was not your father’s debt,” he said, “What I paid was the price
for you. Your sale is business of to-day and not of last year and the
years before. The ounces paid for you will buy at the post to-day
seventeen dollars of flour, and not sixteen. I have lost a dollar on
each ounce. I have lost six hundred and twenty-five dollars.”
El-Soo thought for a moment, and saw the error she had made. She smiled,
and then she laughed.
“You are right,” she laughed, “I made a mistake. But it is too late.
You have paid, and the gold is gone. You did not think quick. It is
your loss. Your wit is slow these days, Porportuk. You are getting
old.”
He did not answer. He glanced uneasily at Akoon, and was reassured. His
lips tightened, and a hint of cruelty came into his face. “Come,” he
said, “we will go to my house.”
“Do you remember the two things I told you in the spring?” El-Soo asked,
making no movement to accompany him.
“My head would be full with the things women say, did I heed them,” he
answered.
“I told you that you would be paid,” El-Soo went on carefully. “And I
told you that I would never be your wife.”
“But that was before the bill of sale.” Porportuk crackled the paper
between his fingers inside the pouch. “I have bought you before all the
world. You belong to me. You will not deny that you belong to me.”
“I belong to you,” El-Soo said steadily.
“I own you.”
“You own me.”
Porportuk’s voice rose slightly and triumphantly. “As a dog, I own you.”
“As a dog you own me,” El-Soo continued calmly. “But, Porportuk, you
forget the thing I told you. Had any other man bought me, I should have
been that man’s wife. I should have been a good wife to that man. Such
was my will. But my will with you was that I should never be your wife.
Wherefore, I am your dog.”
Porportuk knew that he played with fire, and he resolved to play firmly.
“Then I speak to you, not as El-Soo, but as a dog,” he said; “and I tell
you to come with me.” He half reached to grip her arm, but with a
gesture she held him back.
“Not so fast, Porportuk. You buy a dog. The dog runs away. It is your
loss. I am your dog. What if I run away?”
“As the owner of the dog, I shall beat you—”
“When you catch me?”
“When I catch you.”
“Then catch me.”
He reached swiftly for her, but she eluded him. She laughed as she
circled around the table. “Catch her!” Porportuk commanded the Indian
with the rifle, who stood near to her. But as the Indian stretched forth
his arm to her, the Eldorado king felled him with a fist blow under the
ear. The rifle clattered to the ground. Then was Akoon’s chance. His
eyes glittered, but he did nothing.
Porportuk was an old man, but his cold nights retained for him his
activity. He did not circle the table. He came across suddenly, over
the top of the table. El-Soo was taken off her guard. She sprang back
with a sharp cry of alarm, and Porportuk would have caught her had it not
been for Tommy. Tommy’s leg went out, Porportuk tripped and pitched
forward on the ground. El-Soo got her start.
“Then catch me,” she laughed over her shoulder, as she fled away.
She ran lightly and easily, but Porportuk ran swiftly and savagely. He
outran her. 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.
It led through the Indian encampment; and ever dodging, circling, and
reversing, El-Soo and Porportuk appeared and disappeared among the tents.
El-Soo seemed to balance herself against the air with her arms, now one
side, now on the other, and sometimes her body, too, leaned out upon the
air far from the perpendicular as she achieved her sharpest curves. And
Porportuk, always a leap behind, or a leap this side or that, like a lean
hound strained after her.
They crossed the open ground beyond the encampment and disappeared in the
forest. Tana-naw Station waited their reappearance, and long and vainly
it waited.
In the meantime Akoon ate and slept, and lingered much at the steamboat
landing, deaf to the rising resentment of Tana-naw Station in that he did
nothing. Twenty-four hours later Porportuk returned. He was tired and
savage. He spoke to no one but Akoon, and with him tried to pick a
quarrel. But Akoon shrugged his shoulders and walked away. Porportuk
did not waste time. He outfitted half a dozen of the young men,
selecting the best trackers and travellers, and at their head plunged
into the forest.
Next day the steamer _Seattle_, bound up river, pulled in to the shore
and wooded up. When the lines were cast off and she churned out from the
bank, Akoon was on board in the pilot-house. Not many hours afterward,
when it was his turn at the wheel, he saw a small birch-bark canoe put
off from the shore. There was only one person in it. He studied it
carefully, put the wheel over, and slowed down.
The captain entered the pilot-house. “What’s the matter?” he demanded.
“The water’s good.”
Akoon grunted. He saw a larger canoe leaving the bank, and in it were a
number of persons. As the _Seattle_ lost headway, he put the wheel over
some more.
The captain fumed. “It’s only a squaw,” he protested.
Akoon did not grunt. He was all eyes for the squaw and the pursuing
canoe. In the latter six paddles were flashing, while the squaw paddled
slowly.
“You’ll be aground,” the captain protested, seizing the wheel.
But Akoon countered his strength on the wheel and looked him in the eyes.
The captain slowly released the spokes.
“Queer beggar,” he sniffed to himself.
Akoon held the _Seattle_ on the edge of the shoal water and waited till
he saw the squaw’s fingers clutch the forward rail. Then he signalled
for full speed ahead and ground the wheel over. The large canoe was very
near, but the gap between it and the steamer was widening.
The squaw laughed and leaned over the rail.
“Then catch me, Porportuk!” she cried.
Akoon left the steamer at Fort Yukon. He outfitted a small poling-boat
and went up the Porcupine River. And with him went El-Soo. It was a
weary journey, and the way led across the backbone of the world; but
Akoon had travelled it before. When they came to the head-waters of the
Porcupine, they left the boat and went on foot across the Rocky
Mountains.
Akoon greatly liked to walk behind El-Soo and watch the movements of her.
There was a music in it that he loved. And especially he loved the
well-rounded calves in their sheaths of soft-tanned leather, the slim
ankles, and the small moccasined feet that were tireless through the
longest days.
“You are light as air,” he said, looking up at her. “It is no labour for
you to walk. You almost float, so lightly do your feet rise and fall.
You are like a deer, El-Soo; you are like a deer, and your eyes are like
deer’s eyes, sometimes when you look at me, or when you hear a quick
sound and wonder if it be danger that stirs. Your eyes are like a deer’s
eyes now as you look at me.”
And El-Soo, luminous and melting, bent and kissed Akoon.
“When we reach the Mackenzie, we will not delay,” Akoon said later. “We
will go south before the winter catches us. We will go to the sunlands
where there is no snow. But we will return. I have seen much of the
world, and there is no land like Alaska, no sun like our sun, and the
snow is good after the long summer.”
“And you will learn to read,” said El-Soo.
And Akoon said, “I will surely learn to read.” But there was delay when
they reached the Mackenzie. They fell in with a band of Mackenzie
Indians, and, hunting, Akoon was shot by accident. The rifle was in the
hands of a youth. The bullet broke Akoon’s right arm and, ranging
farther, broke two of his ribs. Akoon knew rough surgery, while El-Soo
had learned some refinements at Holy Cross. The bones were finally set,
and Akoon lay by the fire for them to knit. Also, he lay by the fire so
that the smoke would keep the mosquitoes away.
Then it was that Porportuk, with his six young men, arrived. Akoon
groaned in his helplessness and made appeal to the Mackenzies. But
Porportuk made demand, and the Mackenzies were perplexed. Porportuk was
for seizing upon El-Soo, but this they would not permit. Judgment must
be given, and, as it was an affair of man and woman, the council of the
old men was called—this that warm judgment might not be given by the
young men, who were warm of heart.
The old men sat in a circle about the smudge-fire. Their faces were lean
and wrinkled, and they gasped and panted for air. The smoke was not good
for them. Occasionally they struck with withered hands at the mosquitoes
that braved the smoke. After such exertion they coughed hollowly and
painfully. Some spat blood, and one of them sat a bit apart with head
bowed forward, and bled slowly and continuously at the mouth; the
coughing sickness had gripped them. They were as dead men; their time
was short. It was a judgment of the dead.
“And I paid for her a heavy price,” Porportuk concluded his complaint.
“Such a price you have never seen. Sell all that is yours—sell your
spears and arrows and rifles, sell your skins and furs, sell your tents
and boats and dogs, sell everything, and you will not have maybe a
thousand dollars. Yet did I pay for the woman, El-Soo, twenty-six times
the price of all your spears and arrows and rifles, your skins and furs,
your tents and boats and dogs. It was a heavy price.”
The old men nodded gravely, though their weazened eye-slits widened with
wonder that any woman should be worth such a price. The one that bled at
the mouth wiped his lips. “Is it true talk?” he asked each of
Porportuk’s six young men. And each answered that it was true.
“Is it true talk?” he asked El-Soo, and she answered, “It is true.”
“But Porportuk has not told that he is an old man,” Akoon said, “and that
he has daughters older than El-Soo.”
“It is true, Porportuk is an old man,” said El-Soo.
“It is for Porportuk to measure the strength his age,” said he who bled
at the mouth. “We be old men. Behold! Age is never so old as youth
would measure it.”
And the circle of old men champed their gums, and nodded approvingly, and
coughed.
“I told him that I would never be his wife,” said El-Soo.
“Yet you took from him twenty-six times all that we possess?” asked a
one-eyed old man.
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.
“No price did I pay for her,” he answered. “She was above price. I did
not measure her in gold-dust, nor in dogs, and tents, and furs.”
The old men debated among themselves and mumbled in undertones. “These
old men are ice,” Akoon said in English. “I will not listen to their
judgment, Porportuk. If you take El-Soo, I will surely kill you.”
The old men ceased and regarded him suspiciously. “We do not know the
speech you make,” one said.
“He but said that he would kill me,” Porportuk volunteered. “So it were
well to take from him his rifle, and to have some of your young men sit
by him, that he may not do me hurt. He is a young man, and what are
broken bones to youth!”
Akoon, lying helpless, had rifle and knife taken from him, and to either
side of his shoulders sat young men of the Mackenzies. The one-eyed old
man arose and stood upright. “We marvel at the price paid for one mere
woman,” he began; “but the wisdom of the price is no concern of ours. We
are here to give judgment, and judgment we give. We have no doubt. It
is known to all that Porportuk paid a heavy price for the woman El-Soo.
Wherefore does the woman El-Soo belong to Porportuk and none other.” He
sat down heavily, and coughed. The old men nodded and coughed.
“I will kill you,” Akoon cried in English.
Porportuk smiled and stood up. “You have given true judgment,” he said
to the council, “and my young men will give to you much tobacco. Now let
the woman be brought to me.”
Akoon gritted his teeth. The young men took El-Soo by the arms. She did
not resist, and was led, her face a sullen flame, to Porportuk.
“Sit there at my feet till I have made my talk,” he commanded. He paused
a moment. “It is true,” he said, “I am an old man. Yet can I understand
the ways of youth. The fire has not all gone out of me. Yet am I no
longer young, nor am I minded to run these old legs of mine through all
the years that remain to me. El-Soo can run fast and well. She is a
deer. This I know, for I have seen and run after her. It is not good
that a wife should run so fast. I paid for her a heavy price, yet does
she run away from me. Akoon paid no price at all, yet does she run to
him.
“When I came among you people of the Mackenzie, I was of one mind. As I
listened in the council and thought of the swift legs of El-Soo, I was of
many minds. Now am I of one mind again but it is a different mind from
the one I brought to the council. Let me tell you my mind. When a dog
runs once away from a master, it will run away again. No matter how many
times it is brought back, each time it will run away again. When we have
such dogs, we sell them. El-Soo is like a dog that runs away. I will
sell her. Is there any man of the council that will buy?”