Cultus George asked.

A snarl, spontaneous and general, grated in the throats and twisted the
mouths of the miners. At the same moment, with clenched fists or fingers
crooked to grip, they pressed in on the offender.

"Wait a bit, boys," Smoke cried. "Maybe he doesn't understand. Let me
explain it to him. Look here, George. Don't you see, nobody is charging
anything. They're giving everything to save two hundred Indians from
starving to death." He paused, to let it sink home.

"How much?" said Cultus George.

"Wait, you fellows! Now listen, George. We don't want you to make any
mistake. These starving people are your kind of people. They're another
tribe, but they're Indians just the same. Now you've seen what the white
men are doing--coughing up their dust, giving their dogs and sleds,
falling over one another to hit the trail. Only the best men can go with
the first sleds. Look at Fat Olsen there. He was ready to fight because
they wouldn't let him go. You ought to be mighty proud because all men
think you are a number-one musher. It isn't a case of how much, but how
quick."

"How much?" said Cultus George.

"Kill him!" "Bust his head!" "Tar and feathers!" were several of the
cries in the wild medley that went up, the spirit of philanthropy and
good fellowship changed to brute savagery on the instant.

In the storm-center Cultus George stood imperturbable, while Smoke
thrust back the fiercest and shouted:

"Wait! Who's running this?" The clamor died away. "Fetch a rope," he
added quietly.

Cultus George shrugged his shoulders, his face twisting tensely in a
sullen and incredulous grin. He knew this white-man breed. He had toiled
on trail with it and eaten its flour and bacon and beans too long not to
know it. It was a law-abiding breed. He knew that thoroughly. It always
punished the man who broke the law. But he had broken no law. He knew
its law. He had lived up to it. He had neither murdered, stolen, nor
lied. There was nothing in the white man's law against charging a price
and driving a bargain. They all charged a price and drove bargains. He
was doing nothing more than that, and it was the thing they had taught
him. Besides, if he wasn't good enough to drink with them, then he was
not good enough to be charitable with them, nor to join them in any
other of their foolish diversions.

Neither Smoke nor any man there glimpsed what lay in Cultus George's
brain, behind his attitude and prompting his attit