Standish. But that is not all. I believe I state the case
well within fact when I say he has killed many women and little children
by robbing the inland waters of the food supplies upon which the natives
have subsisted for centuries. I know. I have seen them die."

It seemed to him that she swayed against him for an instant.

"And that--is all?"

He laughed grimly. "Possibly some people would think it enough, Miss
Standish. But the tentacles of his power are reaching everywhere in
Alaska. His agents swarm throughout the territory, and Soapy Smith was a
gentleman outlaw compared with these men and their master. If men like
John Graham are allowed to have their way, in ten years greed and graft
will despoil what two hundred years of Rooseveltian conservation would
not be able to replace."

She raised her head, and in the dusk her pale face looked up at the
ghost-peaks of the mountains still visible through the thickening gloom
of evening. "I am glad you told me about Belinda Mulrooney," she said.
"I am beginning to understand, and it gives me courage to think of a
woman like her. She could fight, couldn't she? She could make a
man's fight?"

"Yes, and did make it."

"And she had no money to give her power. Her last dollar, you told me,
she flung into the Yukon for luck."

"Yes, at Dawson. It was the one thing between her and hunger."

She raised her hand, and on it he saw gleaming faintly the single ring
which she wore. Slowly she drew it from her finger.

"Then this, too, for luck--the luck of Mary Standish," she laughed
softly, and flung the ring into the sea.

She faced him, as if expecting the necessity of defending what she had
done. "It isn't melodrama," she said. "I mean it. And I believe in it. I
want something of mine to lie at the bottom of the sea in this gateway
to Skagway, just as Belinda Mulrooney wanted her dollar to rest forever
at the bottom of the Yukon."

She gave him the hand from which she had taken the ring, and for a
moment the warm thrill of it lay in his own. "Thank you for the
wonderful afternoon you have given me, Mr. Holt. I shall never forget
it. It is dinner time. I must say good night."

He followed her slim figure with his eyes until she disappeared. In
returning to his cabin he almost bumped into Rossland. The incident was
irritating. Neither of the men spoke or nodded, but Rossland met Alan's
look squarely, his face rock-like in its repression of emotion. Alan's
impression