im many skins and much
fresh meat, for which he paid no price, and, with the fall, his cache
was filled with fish of which the bulk were dried king salmon as long
as a grown man's leg and worth a dollar apiece to any traveller.

There are men whose wits are quick as light, and whose muscles have
been so tempered and hardened by years of exercise that they are like
those of a wild animal. Of such was John Gale; but with all his
intelligence he was very slow at reading, hence he chose to spend his
evenings with his pipe and his thoughts, rather than with a book, as
lonesome men are supposed to do. He did with little sleep, and many
nights he sat alone till Alluna and Necia would be awakened by his
heavy step as he went to his bed. That he was a man who could really
think, and that his thoughts were engrossing, no one doubted who saw
him sitting enthralled at such a time, for he neither rocked, nor
talked, nor moved a muscle hour after hour, and only his eyes were
alive. To-night the spell was on him again, and he sat bulked up in his
chair, rocklike and immovable.

From the open door of the next room he could hear Necia and the little
ones. She had made them ready for bed, and was telling them the tale of
the snow-bird's spot.

"So when all the other birds had failed," he heard her say, "the little
snowbird asked for a chance to try. He flew and flew, and just before
he came to the edge of the world where the two Old Women lived he
pulled out all of his feathers. When he came to them he said:"

"'I am very cold. May I warm myself at your fire?'"

"They saw how little and naked he was, and how he shivered, so they did
not throw sticks at him, but allowed him to creep close. He watched his
chance, and when they were not looking he picked up a red-hot coal in
his beak and flew back home with it as fast as ever he could--and that
is how fire came to the Indian people."

"Of course the coal was hot, and it burned his throat till a drop of
blood came through, so ever since that day the snowbird has had a red
spot on his throat."

The two children spoke out in their mother's tongue, clamoring for the
story of the Good Beaver who saved the hunter's life, and she began,
this time in the language of the Yukon people, while Gale listened to
the low music of her voice, muffled and broken by the log partition.

His squaw came in, her arrival unannounced except by the scuff of her
moccasins, and seated herself against the wall