ffs drifted deep, so I drove back into Holy Cross a week late
with bleedin' dogs and frozen Indians strainin' at the sled ropes.

"I heard the wail of the old women before. I come to the cabin, and
when Metla had sobbed the story out in her weakness, I went back into
the dark and down to the Mission. I remember how the Northern Lights
flared over the hills above, and the little spruces on the summit
looked to me like headstones, black against the moon--and I laughed
when I saw the snow red in the night glare, for it meant blood and
death.

"It was as lusty a babe as ever crowed, but Orloff had come to the
sick bed and sent her squaws away. Baptism and such things he said
he'd do. The little fellow died that night.

"They say the Mission door was locked and barred, but I pushed
through it like paper and came into Father Barnum's house, where they
sat. Fifty below is bad for the naked flesh. I broke in,
bare-headed, mittenless, and I'd froze some on the way down. He saw
murder in my eyes and tried to run, but I got him as he went out of
the room. He tore his throat loose from my stiffened fingers and
went into the church, but I beat down the door with my naked fists,
mocking at his prayers inside, and may I never be closer to death
than Orloff was that night.

"Then a squaw tugged at my parka.

"'She is dying, Anguk,' she said, and I ran back up the hill with the
cold bitin' at my heart.

"There was no death that night in Holy Cross, though God knows one
naked soul was due to walk out onto the snow. At daylight, when I
came back for him, he had fled down the river with the fastest dogs,
and to this day I've never seen his face, though 'tis often I've felt
his hate.

"He's grown into the strongest missionary on the coast, and he never
lets a chance go by to harry me or the girl.

"D'ye mind the time 'Skagway' Bennet died? We was pardners up Norton
Sound way when he was killed. They thought he suicided, but I know.
I found a cariboo belt in the brush near camp--the kind they make on
the Kuskokwim, Father Orion's country. His men took the wrong one,
that's all.

"I'm sorry I didn't tell ye this, Cap, before we started, for now
we're into the South Country, where he owns the natives. He knows
we've come, as the blood-token of the guide showed. He wants my
life, and there's great trouble comin' up. I'm hopin' ye'll soon get
your sight, for by now there's a runner twenty miles into the hills
with new