own hair, and in the color of her
cheek, faintly sprayed and soft, like the downy bloom of a butterfly
wing. He walked around her, surveying her with the calculating eye of
a man who studies the lines upon which a horse or a boat is builded.
In the course of his circuit the pink shell of her ear came between
his eye and the westering sun, and he stopped to contemplate its
rosy transparency. Then he returned to her face and looked long and
intently into her blue eyes. He grunted and laid a hand on her arm
midway between the shoulder and elbow. With his other hand he lifted
her forearm and doubled it back. Disgust and wonder showed in his
face, and he dropped her arm with a contemptuous grunt. Then he
muttered a few guttural syllables, turned his back upon her, and
addressed himself to Dickensen.

Dickensen could not understand his speech, and Emily Travis laughed.
Imber turned from one to the other, frowning, but both shook their
heads. He was about to go away, when she called out:

"Oh, Jimmy! Come here!"

Jimmy came from the other side of the street. He was a big, hulking
Indian clad in approved white-man style, with an Eldorado king's
sombrero on his head. He talked with Imber, haltingly, with throaty
spasms. Jimmy was a Sitkan, possessed of no more than a passing
knowledge of the interior dialects.

"Him Whitefish man," he said to Emily Travis. "Me savve um talk no
very much. Him want to look see chief white man."

"The Governor," suggested Dickensen.

Jimmy talked some more with the Whitefish man, and his face went grave
and puzzled.

"I t'ink um want Cap'n Alexander," he explained. "Him say um kill
white man, white woman, white boy, plenty kill um white people. Him
want to die."

"Insane, I guess," said Dickensen.

"What you call dat?" queried Jimmy.

Dickensen thrust a finger figuratively inside his head and imparted a
rotary motion thereto.

"Mebbe so, mebbe so," said Jimmy, returning to Imber, who still
demanded the chief man of the white men.

A mounted policeman (unmounted for Klondike service) joined the group
and heard Imber's wish repeated. He was a stalwart young fellow,
broad-shouldered, deep-chested, legs cleanly built and stretched wide
apart, and tall though Imber was, he towered above him by half a head.
His eyes were cool, and gray, and steady, and he carried himself with
the peculiar confidence of power that is bred of blood and
tradition. His splendid masculinity was emphasized by