nd likewise the
Yukon-dwellers for a thousand miles up and down. It has been the custom
of the land-robbing and sea-robbing Anglo-Saxon to give the law to
conquered peoples, and ofttimes this law is harsh. But in the case of
Imber the law for once seemed inadequate and weak. In the mathematical
nature of things, equity did not reside in the punishment to be accorded
him. The punishment was a foregone conclusion, there could be no doubt
of that; and though it was capital, Imber had but one life, while the
tale against him was one of scores.

In fact, the blood of so many was upon his hands that the killings
attributed to him did not permit of precise enumeration. Smoking a pipe
by the trail-side or lounging around the stove, men made rough estimates
of the numbers that had perished at his hand. They had been whites, all
of them, these poor murdered people, and they had been slain singly, in
pairs, and in parties. And so purposeless and wanton had been these
killings, that they had long been a mystery to the mounted police, even
in the time of the captains, and later, when the creeks realized, and a
governor came from the Dominion to make the land pay for its prosperity.

But more mysterious still was the coming of Imber to Dawson to give
himself up. It was in the late spring, when the Yukon was growling and
writhing under its ice, that the old Indian climbed painfully up the
bank from the river trail and stood blinking on the main street. Men who
had witnessed his advent, noted that he was weak and tottery, and that
he staggered over to a heap of cabin-logs and sat down. He sat there a
full day, staring straight before him at the unceasing tide of white men
that flooded past. Many a head jerked curiously to the side to meet his
stare, and more than one remark was dropped anent the old Siwash with so
strange a look upon his face. No end of men remembered afterward that
they had been struck by his extraordinary figure, and forever afterward
prided themselves upon their swift discernment of the unusual.

But it remained for Dickensen, Little Dickensen, to be the hero of the
occasion. Little Dickensen had come into the land with great dreams and
a pocketful of cash; but with the cash the dreams vanished, and to earn
his passage back to the States he had accepted a clerical position with
the brokerage firm of Holbrook and Mason. Across the street from the
office of Holbrook and Mason was the heap of cabin-logs upon which Imb