me along and bought them, harness and all, for a
song. The men addressed each other as "Hal" and "Charles." Charles was
a middle-aged, lightish-colored man, with weak and watery eyes and a
mustache that twisted fiercely and vigorously up, giving the lie to the
limply drooping lip it concealed. Hal was a youngster of nineteen or
twenty, with a big Colt's revolver and a hunting-knife strapped about
him on a belt that fairly bristled with cartridges. This belt was the
most salient thing about him. It advertised his callowness--a callowness
sheer and unutterable. Both men were manifestly out of place, and why
such as they should adventure the North is part of the mystery of things
that passes understanding.

Buck heard the chaffering, saw the money pass between the man and the
Government agent, and knew that the Scotch half-breed and the mail-train
drivers were passing out of his life on the heels of Perrault and
Francois and the others who had gone before. When driven with his mates
to the new owners' camp, Buck saw a slipshod and slovenly affair, tent
half stretched, dishes unwashed, everything in disorder; also, he saw a
woman. "Mercedes" the men called her. She was Charles's wife and Hal's
sister--a nice family party.

Buck watched them apprehensively as they proceeded to take down the tent
and load the sled. There was a great deal of effort about their manner,
but no businesslike method. The tent was rolled into an awkward bundle
three times as large as it should have been. The tin dishes were packed
away unwashed. Mercedes continually fluttered in the way of her men and
kept up an unbroken chattering of remonstrance and advice. When they put
a clothes-sack on the front of the sled, she suggested it should go on
the back; and when they had put it on the back, and covered it over
with a couple of other bundles, she discovered overlooked articles which
could abide nowhere else but in that very sack, and they unloaded again.

Three men from a neighboring tent came out and looked on, grinning and
winking at one another.

"You've got a right smart load as it is," said one of them; "and it's
not me should tell you your business, but I wouldn't tote that tent
along if I was you."

"Undreamed of!" cried Mercedes, throwing up her hands in dainty dismay.
"However in the world could I manage without a tent?"

"It's springtime, and you won't get any more cold weather," the man
replied.

She shook her head decidedly, and Ch