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The God of His Fathers: Tales of the Klondyke

Jack London

THE GREAT INTERROGATION


I


To say the least, Mrs. Sayther's career in Dawson was meteoric.  She
arrived in the spring, with dog sleds and French-Canadian _voyageurs_,
blazed gloriously for a brief month, and departed up the river as soon as
it was free of ice.  Now womanless Dawson never quite understood this
hurried departure, and the local Four Hundred felt aggrieved and lonely
till the Nome strike was made and old sensations gave way to new.  For it
had delighted in Mrs. Sayther, and received her wide-armed.  She was
pretty, charming, and, moreover, a widow.  And because of this she at
once had at heel any number of Eldorado Kings, officials, and adventuring
younger sons, whose ears were yearning for the frou-frou of a woman's
skirts.

The mining engineers revered the memory of her husband, the late Colonel
Sayther, while the syndicate and promoter representatives spoke awesomely
of his deals and manipulations; for he was known down in the States as a
great mining man, and as even a greater one in London.  Why his widow, of
all women, should have come into the country, was the great
interrogation.  But they were a practical breed, the men of the
Northland, with a wholesome disregard for theories and a firm grip on
facts.  And to not a few of them Karen Sayther was a most essential fact.
That she did not regard the matter in this light, is evidenced by the
neatness and celerity with which refusal and proposal tallied off during
her four weeks' stay.  And with her vanished the fact, and only the
interrogation remained.

To the solution, Chance vouchsafed one clew.  Her last victim, Jack
Coughran, having fruitlessly laid at her feet both his heart and a five-
hundred-foot creek claim on Bonanza, celebrated the misfortune by walking
all of a night with the gods.  In the midwatch of this night he happened
to rub shoulders with Pierre Fontaine, none other than head man of Karen
Sayther's _voyageurs_.  This rubbing of shoulders led to recognition and
drinks, and ultimately involved both men in a common muddle of inebriety.

"Heh?" Pierre Fontaine later on gurgled thickly.  "Vot for Madame Sayther
mak visitation to thees country?  More better you spik wit her.  I know
no t'ing 'tall, only all de tam her ask one man's name.  'Pierre,' her
spik wit me; 'Pierre, you moos' find thees mans, and I gif you mooch--one
thousand dollar you find thees mans.'  Thees mans?  Ah, _oui_.  Thees
man's name--vot you call--Daveed Payne.  _Oui_, m'sieu, Daveed Payne.  All
de tam her spik das name.  And all de tam I look rount vaire mooch, work
lak hell, but no can find das dam mans, and no get one thousand dollar
'tall.  By dam!

"Heh?  Ah, _oui_.  One tam dose mens vot come from Circle City, dose mens
know thees mans.  Him Birch Creek, dey spik.  And madame?  Her say
'_Bon_!' and look happy lak anyt'ing.  And her spik wit me.  'Pierre,'
her spik, 'harness de dogs.  We go queek.  We find thees mans I gif you
one thousand dollar more.'  And I say, '_Oui_, queek!  _Allons, madame_!'

"For sure, I t'ink, das two thousand dollar mine.  Bully boy!  Den more
mens come from Circle City, and dey say no, das thees mans, Daveed Payne,
come Dawson leel tam back.  So madame and I go not 'tall.

"_Oui, m'sieu_.  Thees day madame spik.  'Pierre,' her spik, and gif me
five hundred dollar, 'go buy poling-boat.  To-morrow we go up de river.'
Ah, _oui_, to-morrow, up de river, and das dam Sitka Charley mak me pay
for de poling-boat five hundred dollar.  Dam!"

Thus it was, when Jack Coughran unburdened himself next day, that Dawson
fell to wondering who was this David Payne, and in what way his existence
bore upon Karen Sayther's.  But that very day, as Pierre Fontaine had
said, Mrs. Sayther and her barbaric crew of _voyageurs_ towed up the east
bank to Klondike City, shot across to the west bank to escape the bluffs,
and disappeared amid the maze of islands to the south.



II


"_Oui, madame_, thees is de place.  One, two, t'ree island below Stuart
River.  Thees is t'ree island."

As he spoke, Pierre Fontaine drove his pole against the bank and held the
stern of the boat against the current.  This thrust the bow in, till a
nimble breed climbed ashore with the painter and made fast.

"One leel tam, madame, I go look see."

A chorus of dogs marked his disappearance over the edge of the bank, but
a minute later he was back again.

"_Oui, madame_, thees is de cabin.  I mak investigation.  No can find
mans at home.  But him no go vaire far, vaire long, or him no leave dogs.
Him come queek, you bet!"

"Help me out, Pierre.  I'm tired all over from the boat.  You might have
made it softer, you know."

From a nest of furs amidships, Karen Sayther rose to her full height of
slender fairness.  But if she looked lily-frail in her elemental
environment, she was belied by the grip she put upon Pierre's hand, by
the knotting of her woman's biceps as it took the weight of her body, by
the splendid effort of her limbs as they held her out from the
perpendicular bank while she made the ascent.  Though shapely flesh
clothed delicate frame, her body was a seat of strength.

Still, for all the careless ease with which she had made the landing,
there was a warmer color than usual to her face, and a perceptibly extra
beat to her heart.  But then, also, it was with a certain reverent
curiousness that she approached the cabin, while the Hush on her cheek
showed a yet riper mellowness.

"Look, see!"  Pierre pointed to the scattered chips by the woodpile.  "Him
fresh--two, t'ree day, no more."

Mrs. Sayther nodded.  She tried to peer through the small window, but it
was made of greased parchment which admitted light while it blocked
vision.  Failing this, she went round to the door, half lifted the rude
latch to enter, but changed her mind and let it fall back into place.
Then she suddenly dropped on one knee and kissed the rough-hewn
threshold.  If Pierre Fontaine saw, he gave no sign, and the memory in
the time to come was never shared.  But the next instant, one of the
boatmen, placidly lighting his pipe, was startled by an unwonted
harshness in his captain's voice.

"Hey!  You!  Le Goire! You mak'm soft more better," Pierre commanded.
"Plenty bearskin; plenty blanket.  Dam!"

But the nest was soon after disrupted, and the major portion tossed up to
the crest of the shore, where Mrs. Sayther lay down to wait in comfort.

Reclining on her side, she looked out and over the wide-stretching Yukon.
Above the mountains which lay beyond the further shore, the sky was murky
with the smoke of unseen forest fires, and through this the afternoon sun
broke feebly, throwing a vague radiance to earth, and unreal shadows.  To
the sky-line of the four quarters--spruce-shrouded islands, dark waters,
and ice-scarred rocky ridges--stretched the immaculate wilderness.  No
sign of human existence broke the solitude; no sound the stillness.  The
land seemed bound under the unreality of the unknown, wrapped in the
brooding mystery of great spaces.

Perhaps it was this which made Mrs. Sayther nervous; for she changed her
position constantly, now to look up the river, now down, or to scan the
gloomy shores for the half-hidden mouths of back channels.  After an hour
or so the boatmen were sent ashore to pitch camp for the night, but
Pierre remained with his mistress to watch.

"Ah! him come thees tam," he whispered, after a long silence, his gaze
bent up the river to the head of the island.

A canoe, with a paddle flashing on either side, was slipping down the
current.  In the stern a man's form, and in the bow a woman's, swung
rhythmically to the work.  Mrs. Sayther had no eyes for the woman till
the canoe drove in closer and her bizarre beauty peremptorily demanded
notice.  A close-fitting blouse of moose-skin, fantastically beaded,
outlined faithfully the well-rounded lines of her body, while a silken
kerchief, gay of color and picturesquely draped, partly covered great
masses of blue-black hair.  But it was the face, cast belike in copper
bronze, which caught and held Mrs. Sayther's fleeting glance.  Eyes,
piercing and black and large, with a traditionary hint of obliqueness,
looked forth from under clear-stencilled, clean-arching brows.  Without
suggesting cadaverousness, though high-boned and prominent, the cheeks
fell away and met in a mouth, thin-lipped and softly strong.  It was a
face which advertised the dimmest trace of ancient Mongol blood, a
reversion, after long centuries of wandering, to the parent stem.  This
effect was heightened by the delicately aquiline nose with its thin
trembling nostrils, and by the general air of eagle wildness which seemed
to characterize not only the face but the creature herself.  She was, in
fact, the Tartar type modified to idealization, and the tribe of Red
Indian is lucky that breeds such a unique body once in a score of
generations.

Dipping long strokes and strong, the girl, in concert with the man,
suddenly whirled the tiny craft about against the current and brought it
gently to the shore.  Another instant and she stood at the top of the
bank, heaving up by rope, hand under hand, a quarter of fresh-killed
moose.  Then the man followed her, and together, with a swift rush, they
drew up the canoe.  The dogs were in a whining mass about them, and as
the girl stooped among them caressingly, the man's gaze fell upon Mrs.
Sayther, who had arisen.  He looked, brushed his eyes unconsciously as
though his sight were deceiving him, and looked again.

"Karen," he said simply, coming forward and extending his hand, "I
thought for the moment I was dreaming.  I went snow-blind for a time,
this spring, and since then my eyes have been playing tricks with me."

Mrs. Sayther, whose flush had deepened and whose heart was urging
painfully, had been prepared for almost anything save this coolly
extended hand; but she tactfully curbed herself and grasped it heartily
with her own.

"You know, Dave, I threatened often to come, and I would have, too,
only--only--"

"Only I didn't give the word."  David Payne laughed and watched the
Indian girl disappearing into the cabin.

"Oh, I understand, Dave, and had I been in your place I'd most probably
have done the same.  But I have come--now."

"Then come a little bit farther, into the cabin and get something to
eat," he said genially, ignoring or missing the feminine suggestion of
appeal in her voice.  "And you must be tired too.  Which way are you
travelling?  Up?  Then you wintered in Dawson, or came in on the last
ice.  Your camp?"  He glanced at the _voyageurs_ circled about the fire
in the open, and held back the door for her to enter.

"I came up on the ice from Circle City last winter," he continued, "and
settled down here for a while.  Am prospecting some on Henderson Creek,
and if that fails, have been thinking of trying my hand this fall up the
Stuart River."

"You aren't changed much, are you?" she asked irrelevantly, striving to
throw the conversation upon a more personal basis.

"A little less flesh, perhaps, and a little more muscle.  How did _you_
mean?"

But she shrugged her shoulders and peered I through the dim light at the
Indian girl, who had lighted the fire and was frying great chunks of
moose meat, alternated with thin ribbons of bacon.

"Did you stop in Dawson long?"  The man was whittling a stave of
birchwood into a rude axe-handle, and asked the question without raising
his head.

"Oh, a few days," she answered, following the girl with her eyes, and
hardly hearing.  "What were you saying?  In Dawson?  A month, in fact,
and glad to get away.  The arctic male is elemental, you know, and
somewhat strenuous in his feelings."

"Bound to be when he gets right down to the soil.  He leaves convention
with the spring bed at borne.  But you were wise in your choice of time
for leaving.  You'll be out of the country before mosquito season, which
is a blessing your lack of experience will not permit you to appreciate."

"I suppose not.  But tell me about yourself, about your life.  What kind
of neighbors have you?  Or have you any?"

While she queried she watched the girl grinding coffee in the corner of a
flower sack upon the hearthstone.  With a steadiness and skill which
predicated nerves as primitive as the method, she crushed the imprisoned
berries with a heavy fragment of quartz.  David Payne noted his visitor's
gaze, and the shadow of a smile drifted over his lips.

"I did have some," he replied.  "Missourian chaps, and a couple of
Cornishmen, but they went down to Eldorado to work at wages for a
grubstake."

Mrs. Sayther cast a look of speculative regard upon the girl.  "But of
course there are plenty of Indians about?"

"Every mother's son of them down to Dawson long ago.  Not a native in the
whole country, barring Winapie here, and she's a Koyokuk lass,--comes
from a thousand miles or so down the river."

Mrs. Sayther felt suddenly faint; and though the smile of interest in no
wise waned, the face of the man seemed to draw away to a telescopic
distance, and the tiered logs of the cabin to whirl drunkenly about.  But
she was bidden draw up to the table, and during the meal discovered time
and space in which to find herself.  She talked little, and that
principally about the land and weather, while the man wandered off into a
long description of the difference between the shallow summer diggings of
the Lower Country and the deep winter diggings of the Upper Country.

"You do not ask why I came north?" she asked.  "Surely you know."  They
had moved back from the table, and David Payne had returned to his axe-
handle.  "Did you get my letter?"

"A last one?  No, I don't think so.  Most probably it's trailing around
the Birch Creek Country or lying in some trader's shack on the Lower
River.  The way they run the mails in here is shameful.  No order, no
system, no--"

"Don't be wooden, Dave!  Help me!"  She spoke sharply now, with an
assumption of authority which rested upon the past.  "Why don't you ask
me about myself?  About those we knew in the old times?  Have you no
longer any interest in the world?  Do you know that my husband is dead?"

"Indeed, I am sorry.  How long--"

"David!"  She was ready to cry with vexation, but the reproach she threw
into her voice eased her.

"Did you get any of my letters?  You must have got some of them, though
you never answered."

"Well, I didn't get the last one, announcing, evidently, the death of
your husband, and most likely others went astray; but I did get some.
I--er--read them aloud to Winapie as a warning--that is, you know, to
impress upon her the wickedness of her white sisters.  And I--er--think
she profited by it.  Don't you?"

She disregarded the sting, and went on.  "In the last letter, which you
did not receive, I told, as you have guessed, of Colonel Sayther's death.
That was a year ago.  I also said that if you did not come out to me, I
would go in to you.  And as I had often promised, I came."

"I know of no promise."

"In the earlier letters?"

"Yes, you promised, but as I neither asked nor answered, it was
unratified.  So I do not know of any such promise.  But I do know of
another, which you, too, may remember.  It was very long ago."  He
dropped the axe-handle to the floor and raised his head.  "It was so very
long ago, yet I remember it distinctly, the day, the time, every detail.
We were in a rose garden, you and I,--your mother's rose garden.  All
things were budding, blossoming, and the sap of spring was in our blood.
And I drew you over--it was the first--and kissed you full on the lips.
Don't you remember?"

"Don't go over it, Dave, don't!  I know every shameful line of it.  How
often have I wept!  If you only knew how I have suffered--"

"You promised me then--ay, and a thousand times in the sweet days that
followed.  Each look of your eyes, each touch of your hand, each syllable
that fell from your lips, was a promise.  And then--how shall I
say?--there came a man.  He was old--old enough to have begotten you--and
not nice to look upon, but as the world goes, clean.  He had done no
wrong, followed the letter of the law, was respectable.  Further, and to
the point, he possessed some several paltry mines,--a score; it does not
matter: and he owned a few miles of lands, and engineered deals, and
clipped coupons.  He--"

"But there were other things," she interrupted, "I told you.
Pressure--money matters--want--my people--trouble.  You understood the
whole sordid situation.  I could not help it.  It was not my will.  I was
sacrificed, or I sacrificed, have it as you wish.  But, my God!  Dave, I
gave you up!  You never did _me_ justice.  Think what I have gone
through!"

"It was not your will?  Pressure?  Under high heaven there was no thing
to will you to this man's bed or that."

"But I cared for you all the time," she pleaded.

"I was unused to your way of measuring love.  I am still unused.  I do
not understand."

"But now! now!"

"We were speaking of this man you saw fit to marry.  What manner of man
was he?  Wherein did he charm your soul?  What potent virtues were his?
True, he had a golden grip,--an almighty golden grip.  He knew the odds.
He was versed in cent per cent.  He had a narrow wit and excellent
judgment of the viler parts, whereby he transferred this man's money to
his pockets, and that man's money, and the next man's.  And the law
smiled.  In that it did not condemn, our Christian ethics approved.  By
social measure he was not a bad man.  But by your measure, Karen, by
mine, by ours of the rose garden, what was he?"

"Remember, he is dead."

"The fact is not altered thereby.  What was he?  A great, gross, material
creature, deaf to song, blind to beauty, dead to the spirit.  He was fat
with laziness, and flabby-cheeked, and the round of his belly witnessed
his gluttony--"

"But he is dead.  It is we who are now--now! now!  Don't you hear?  As
you say, I have been inconstant.  I have sinned.  Good.  But should not
you, too, cry _peccavi_?  If I have broken promises, have not you?  Your
love of the rose garden was of all time, or so you said.  Where is it
now?"

"It is here! now!" he cried, striking his breast passionately with
clenched hand.  "It has always been."

"And your love was a great love; there was none greater," she continued;
"or so you said in the rose garden.  Yet it is not fine enough, large
enough, to forgive me here, crying now at your feet?"

The man hesitated.  His mouth opened; words shaped vainly on his lips.
She had forced him to bare his heart and speak truths which he had hidden
from himself.  And she was good to look upon, standing there in a glory
of passion, calling back old associations and warmer life.  He turned
away his head that he might not see, but she passed around and fronted
him.

"Look at me, Dave!  Look at me!  I am the same, after all.  And so are
you, if you would but see.  We are not changed."

Her hand rested on his shoulder, and his had half-passed, roughly, about
her, when the sharp crackle of a match startled him to himself.  Winapie,
alien to the scene, was lighting the slow wick of the slush lamp.  She
appeared to start out against a background of utter black, and the flame,
flaring suddenly up, lighted her bronze beauty to royal gold.

"You see, it is impossible," he groaned, thrusting the fair-haired woman
gently from him.  "It is impossible," he repeated.  "It is impossible."

"I am not a girl, Dave, with a girl's illusions," she said softly, though
not daring to come back to him.  "It is as a woman that I understand.  Men
are men.  A common custom of the country.  I am not shocked.  I divined
it from the first.  But--ah!--it is only a marriage of the country--not a
real marriage?"

"We do not ask such questions in Alaska," he interposed feebly.

"I know, but--"

"Well, then, it is only a marriage of the country--nothing else."

"And there are no children?"

"No."

"Nor--"

"No, no; nothing--but it is impossible."

"But it is not."  She was at his side again, her hand touching lightly,
caressingly, the sunburned back of his.  "I know the custom of the land
too well.  Men do it every day.  They do not care to remain here, shut
out from the world, for all their days; so they give an order on the P.
C. C. Company for a year's provisions, some money in hand, and the girl
is content.  By the end of that time, a man--"  She shrugged her
shoulders.  "And so with the girl here.  We will give her an order upon
the company, not for a year, but for life.  What was she when you found
her?  A raw, meat-eating savage; fish in summer, moose in winter,
feasting in plenty, starving in famine.  But for you that is what she
would have remained.  For your coming she was happier; for your going,
surely, with a life of comparative splendor assured, she will be happier
than if you had never been."

"No, no," he protested.  "It is not right."

"Come, Dave, you must see.  She is not your kind.  There is no race
affinity.  She is an aborigine, sprung from the soil, yet close to the
soil, and impossible to lift from the soil.  Born savage, savage she will
die.  But we--you and I--the dominant, evolved race--the salt of the
earth and the masters thereof!  We are made for each other.  The supreme
call is of kind, and we are of kind.  Reason and feeling dictate it.  Your
very instinct demands it.  That you cannot deny.  You cannot escape the
generations behind you.  Yours is an ancestry which has survived for a
thousand centuries, and for a hundred thousand centuries, and your line
must not stop here.  It cannot.  Your ancestry will not permit it.
Instinct is stronger than the will.  The race is mightier than you.  Come,
Dave, let us go.  We are young yet, and life is good.  Come."

Winapie, passing out of the cabin to feed the dogs, caught his attention
and caused him to shake his head and weakly to reiterate.  But the
woman's hand slipped about his neck, and her cheek pressed to his.  His
bleak life rose up and smote him,--the vain struggle with pitiless
forces; the dreary years of frost and famine; the harsh and jarring
contact with elemental life; the aching void which mere animal existence
could not fill.  And there, seduction by his side, whispering of
brighter, warmer lands, of music, light, and joy, called the old times
back again.  He visioned it unconsciously.  Faces rushed in upon him;
glimpses of forgotten scenes, memories of merry hours; strains of song
and trills of laughter--

"Come, Dave, Come.  I have for both.  The way is soft."  She looked about
her at the bare furnishings of the cabin.  "I have for both.  The world
is at our feet, and all joy is ours.  Come! come!"

She was in his arms, trembling, and he held her tightly.  He rose to his
feet . . . But the snarling of hungry dogs, and the shrill cries of
Winapie bringing about peace between the combatants, came muffled to his
ear through the heavy logs.  And another scene flashed before him.  A
struggle in the forest,--a bald-face grizzly, broken-legged, terrible;
the snarling of the dogs and the shrill cries of Winapie as she urged
them to the attack; himself in the midst of the crush, breathless,
panting, striving to hold off red death; broken-backed, entrail-ripped
dogs howling in impotent anguish and desecrating the snow; the virgin
white running scarlet with the blood of man and beast; the bear,
ferocious, irresistible, crunching, crunching down to the core of his
life; and Winapie, at the last, in the thick of the frightful muddle,
hair flying, eyes flashing, fury incarnate, passing the long hunting
knife again and again--Sweat started to his forehead.  He shook off the
clinging woman and staggered back to the wall.  And she, knowing that the
moment had come, but unable to divine what was passing within him, felt
all she had gained slipping away.

"Dave!  Dave!" she cried.  "I will not give you up!  I will not give you
up!  If you do not wish to come, we will stay.  I will stay with you.  The
world is less to me than are you.  I will be a Northland wife to you.  I
will cook your food, feed your dogs, break trail for you, lift a paddle
with you.  I can do it.  Believe me, I am strong."

Nor did he doubt it, looking upon her and holding her off from him; but
his face had grown stern and gray, and the warmth had died out of his
eyes.

"I will pay off Pierre and the boatmen, and let them go.  And I will stay
with you, priest or no priest, minister or no minister; go with you, now,
anywhere!  Dave!  Dave!  Listen to me!  You say I did you wrong in the
past--and I did--let me make up for it, let me atone.  If I did not
rightly measure love before, let me show that I can now."

She sank to the floor and threw her arms about his knees, sobbing.  "And
you _do_ care for me.  You _do_ care for me.  Think!  The long years I
have waited, suffered!  You can never know!"  He stooped and raised her
to her feet.

"Listen," he commanded, opening the door and lifting her bodily outside.
"It cannot be.  We are not alone to be considered.  You must go.  I wish
you a safe journey.  You will find it tougher work when you get up by the
Sixty Mile, but you have the best boatmen in the world, and will get
through all right.  Will you say good-by?"

Though she already had herself in hand, she looked at him hopelessly.
"If--if--if Winapie should--"  She quavered and stopped.

But he grasped the unspoken thought, and answered, "Yes."  Then struck
with the enormity of it, "It cannot be conceived.  There is no
likelihood.  It must not be entertained."

"Kiss me," she whispered, her face lighting.  Then she turned and went
away.

* * * * *

"Break camp, Pierre," she said to the boatman, who alone had remained
awake against her return.  "We must be going."

By the firelight his sharp eyes scanned the woe in her face, but he
received the extraordinary command as though it were the most usual thing
in the world.  "_Oui, madame_," he assented.  "Which way?  Dawson?"

"No," she answered, lightly enough; "up; out; Dyea."

Whereat he fell upon the sleeping _voyageurs_, kicking them, grunting,
from their blankets, and buckling them down to the work, the while his
voice, vibrant with action, shrilling through all the camp.  In a trice
Mrs. Sayther's tiny tent had been struck, pots and pans were being
gathered up, blankets rolled, and the men staggering under the loads to
the boat.  Here, on the banks, Mrs. Sayther waited till the luggage was
made ship-shape and her nest prepared.

"We line up to de head of de island," Pierre explained to her while
running out the long tow rope.  "Den we tak to das back channel, where de
water not queek, and I t'ink we mak good tam."

A scuffling and pattering of feet in the last year's dry grass caught his
quick ear, and he turned his head.  The Indian girl, circled by a
bristling ring of wolf dogs, was coming toward them.  Mrs. Sayther noted
that the girl's face, which had been apathetic throughout the scene in
the cabin, had now quickened into blazing and wrathful life.

"What you do my man?" she demanded abruptly of Mrs. Sayther.  "Him lay on
bunk, and him look bad all the time.  I say, 'What the matter, Dave?  You
sick?'  But him no say nothing.  After that him say, 'Good girl Winapie,
go way.  I be all right bimeby.'  What you do my man, eh?  I think you
bad woman."

Mrs. Sayther looked curiously at the barbarian woman who shared the life
of this man, while she departed alone in the darkness of night.

"I think you bad woman," Winapie repeated in the slow, methodical way of
one who gropes for strange words in an alien tongue.  "I think better you
go way, no come no more.  Eh?  What you think?  I have one man.  I Indian
girl.  You 'Merican woman.  You good to see.  You find plenty men.  Your
eyes blue like the sky.  Your skin so white, so soft."

Coolly she thrust out a brown forefinger and pressed the soft cheek of
the other woman.  And to the eternal credit of Karen Sayther, she never
flinched.  Pierre hesitated and half stepped forward; but she motioned
him away, though her heart welled to him with secret gratitude.  "It's
all right, Pierre," she said.  "Please go away."

He stepped back respectfully out of earshot, where he stood grumbling to
himself and measuring the distance in springs.

"Um white, um soft, like baby."  Winapie touched the other cheek and
withdrew her hand.  "Bimeby mosquito come.  Skin get sore in spot; um
swell, oh, so big; um hurt, oh, so much.  Plenty mosquito; plenty spot.  I
think better you go now before mosquito come.  This way," pointing down
the stream, "you go St. Michael's; that way," pointing up, "you go Dyea.
Better you go Dyea.  Good-by."

And that which Mrs. Sayther then did, caused Pierre to marvel greatly.
For she threw her arms around the Indian girl, kissed her, and burst into
tears.

"Be good to him," she cried.  "Be good to him."

Then she slipped half down the face of the bank, called back "Good-by,"
and dropped into the boat amidships.  Pierre followed her and cast off.
He shoved the steering oar into place and gave the signal.  Le Goire
lifted an old French _chanson_; the men, like a row of ghosts in the dim
starlight, bent their backs to the tow line; the steering oar cut the
black current sharply, and the boat swept out into the night.
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A Little Princess Frances Hodgson Burnett Category: Fiction Sections: 24 What's this? Table of Contents		Non Fiction Short Stories Poetry Plays Sci Fi Philosophy Religion Biography