n't stand the
exposure. She can't travel till the temperature rises. And I'm not
going to give her up."

Messner hemmed, cleared his throat, and hemmed again,
semi-apologetically, and said, "I need some money."

Contempt showed instantly in Womble's face. At last, beneath him in
vileness, had the other sunk himself.

"You've got a fat sack of dust," Messner went on. "I saw you unload it
from the sled."

"How much do you want?" Womble demanded, with a contempt in his voice
equal to that in his face.

"I made an estimate of the sack, and I--ah--should say it weighed about
twenty pounds. What do you say we call it four thousand?"

"But it's all I've got, man!" Womble cried out.

"You've got her," the other said soothingly. "She must be worth it.
Think what I'm giving up. Surely it is a reasonable price."

"All right." Womble rushed across the floor to the gold-sack. "Can't
put this deal through too quick for me, you--you little worm!"

"Now, there you err," was the smiling rejoinder. "As a matter of ethics
isn't the man who gives a bribe as bad as the man who takes a bribe? The
receiver is as bad as the thief, you know; and you needn't console
yourself with any fictitious moral superiority concerning this little
deal."

"To hell with your ethics!" the other burst out. "Come here and watch
the weighing of this dust. I might cheat you."

And the woman, leaning against the bunk, raging and impotent, watched
herself weighed out in yellow dust and nuggets in the scales erected on
the grub-box. The scales were small, making necessary many weighings,
and Messner with precise care verified each weighing.

"There's too much silver in it," he remarked as he tied up the gold-sack.
"I don't think it will run quite sixteen to the ounce. You got a trifle
the better of me, Womble."

He handled the sack lovingly, and with due appreciation of its
preciousness carried it out to his sled.

Returning, he gathered his pots and pans together, packed his grub-box,
and rolled up his bed. When the sled was lashed and the complaining dogs
harnessed, he returned into the cabin for his mittens.

"Good-by, Tess," he said, standing at the open door.

She turned on him, struggling for speech but too frantic to word the
passion that burned in her.

"Good-by, Tess," he repeated gently.

"Beast!" she managed to articulate.

She turned and tottered to the bunk, flinging herself face down upon it,
sobbing: "You beast