eached anywhere near
that point.

Tonight it was probable that no woman in the world could have interested
him, except as the always casual observer of humanity. Another and
greater thing gripped him and had thrilled him since he first felt the
throbbing pulse of the engines of the new steamship _Nome_ under his
feet at Seattle. He was going _home_. And home meant Alaska. It meant
the mountains, the vast tundras, the immeasurable spaces into which
civilization had not yet come with its clang and clamor. It meant
friends, the stars he knew, his herds, everything he loved. Such was his
reaction after six months of exile, six months of loneliness and
desolation in cities which he had learned to hate.

"I'll not make the trip again--not for a whole winter--unless I'm sent
at the point of a gun," he said to Captain Rifle, a few moments after
Mary Standish had left the deck. "An Eskimo winter is long enough, but
one in Seattle, Minneapolis, Chicago, and New York is longer--for me."

"I understand they had you up before the Committee on Ways and Means at
Washington."

"Yes, along with Carl Lomen, of Nome. But Lomen was the real man. He has
forty thousand head of reindeer in the Seward Peninsula, and they had to
listen to him. We may get action."

"May!" Captain Rifle grunted his doubt. "Alaska has been waiting ten
years for a new deck and a new deal. I doubt if you'll get anything.
When politicians from Iowa and south Texas tell us what we can have and
what we need north of Fifty-eight--why, what's the use? Alaska might as
well shut up shop!"

"But she isn't going to do that," said Alan Holt, his face grimly set in
the moonlight. "They've tried hard to get us, and they've made us shut
up a lot of our doors. In 1910 we were thirty-six thousand whites in the
Territory. Since then the politicians at Washington have driven out nine
thousand, a quarter of the population. But those that are left are
hard-boiled. We're not going to quit, Captain. A lot of us are Alaskans,
and we are not afraid to fight."

"You mean--"

"That we'll have a square deal within another five years, or know the
reason why. And another five years after that, we'll he shipping a
million reindeer carcasses down into the States each year. Within twenty
years we'll be shipping five million. Nice thought for the beef barons,
eh? But rather fortunate, I think, for the hundred million Americans who
are turning their grazing lands into farms and irrigation