crossed the Chilcoot. I went over to the headwaters of
the Tanana. Into the big valley I went and got lost in the Flats.
'Tis a wild country, rimmed by high mountains, full of niggerheads
and tundra, with the river windin' clean back to the source of the
Copper. I run out of grub. We always did them days, and built a
raft to float down to the Yukon. A race with starvation, and a dead
heat it near proved, too, though I had a shade the best of it. I
drifted out into the main river, ravin' mad, my 'Mukluks' eat off and
my moose-hide gun cover inside of me.

"A girl spied me from the village, and 'twas her brought me ashore in
her birch-bark and tended me in her wick-i-up till reason came and
the blood ran through me again.

"I mind seein' a white man stand around at times and hearin' him beg
her to leave me to the old squaws. She didn't though. She gave me
bits of moose meat and berries and dried salmon, and when I come to
one day I saw she was little and brown and pleadin' and her clothes
all covered with beads. Her eyes was big and sad, Cap, and dimples
poked into her cheeks when she laughed.

"'Twas then that Orloff takes a hand--the white man. A priest he
called himself; breed, Russian. Maybe he was, but a blacker hearted
thief never wronged a child. He wanted the girl, Metla, and so did
I. When I asked her old man for her he said she was promised to the
Russian. I laughed at him, and a chief hates to be mocked. You know
what sway the Church has over these Indians. Well, Orloff is a
strong man. He held 'em like a rock. He worked on 'em till one day
the tribemen came to me in a body and said, 'Go!'

"'Give me the girl, and I will,' says I.

"Orloff sneered. 'She was mine for a month before ye came,' says he
with the fiend showin' back of his eyes. 'Do ye want her now?'

"For a minute I believed him. I struck once to kill, and he went
down. They closed on me as fast as I shook 'em off. 'Twas a
beautiful sight for a ruction, on the high banks over the river, but
I was like water from the sickness. I fought to get at their priest
where he lay, to stamp out his grinning face before they downed me,
but I was beat back to the bluff and I battled with my heels over the
edge. I broke a pole from the fish-rack and a good many went down.
Then I heard Metla calling softly from below:--

"'Jump!' she said. 'Big one, jump.'

"She had loosed a canoe at the landing and now held it in the boiling
cur