s
stick the old Guide pulled his big body up on his one stout leg,
hobbled nearer and gravely eyed Muckluck's offering as it swung to and
fro on its walrus-string over the Leader's head. The Boy, quite
conscious of some subtle change in the hitherto immobile face of the
Indian, laid the token in his hand. Standing there in the centre of the
semicircle between the assembly and the dog, Kurilla turned the Great
Katharine's medal over, examining it closely, every eye in the room
upon him.

When he lifted his head there was a rustle of expectation and a craning
forward.

"It is the same." Kurilla spoke slowly like one half in a dream. "When
I go down river, thirty winter back, with the Great Dall, he try buy
this off Nicholas's mother. She wear it on string red Russian beads.
Oh, it is a thing to remember!" He nodded his grey head significantly,
but he went on with the bare evidence: "When _John J. Healy_ make last
trip down this fall--Nicholas pilot you savvy--they let him take his
sister, Holy Cross to Pymeut. I see she wear this round neck."

The weight of the medal carried the raw-hide necklace slipping through
his fingers. Slowly now, with even impulse, the silver disc swung
right, swung left, like the pendulum of a clock. Even the Nigger dog
seemed hypnotised, following the dim shine of the tarnished token.

"I say Nicholas's sister: 'It is thirty winters I see that silver
picture first; I give you two dolla for him.' She say 'No.' I say, 'Gi'
fi' dolla.' 'No.' I sit and think far back--thirty winters back. 'I gi'
ten dolla,' I say. She say, 'I no sell; no--not for a hunner'--but she
_give_ it him! for to make Yukon Inua to let him go safe. Hein? Savvy?"
And lapsing into Ingalik, he endorsed this credential not to be denied.

"It is true," he wound up in English. The "Autocratrix Russorum" was
solemnly handed back. "You have make a brave journey. It is I who
unnerstan'--I, too, when I am young, I go with Dall on the Long Trail.
_We had dogs._" All the while, from all about the Leader's owner, and
out of every corner of the crowded room, had come a spirited
punctuation of Kurilla's speech--nods and grunts. "Yes, perhaps _these_
white men deserved dogs--even Peetka's!"

Kurilla limped back to his place, but turned to the Ingaliks before he
sat down, and bending painfully over his stick, "Not Kurilla," he said,
as though speaking of one absent--"not _Dall_ make so great journey, no
dogs. Kurilla? Best guide in Yuk