ith his other hand he lifted her forearm and doubled it back.
Disgust and wonder showed in his face, and he dropped her arm with a
contemptuous grunt. Then he muttered a few guttural syllables, turned
his back upon her, and addressed himself to Dickensen.

Dickensen could not understand his speech, and Emily Travis laughed.
Imber turned from one to the other, frowning, but both shook their
heads. He was about to go away, when she called out:

"Oh, Jimmy! Come here!"

Jimmy came from the other side of the street. He was a big, hulking
Indian clad in approved white-man style, with an Eldorado king's
sombrero on his head. He talked with Imber, haltingly, with throaty
spasms. Jimmy was a Sitkan, possessed of no more than a passing
knowledge of the interior dialects.

"Him Whitefish man," he said to Emily Travis. "Me savve um talk no very
much. Him want to look see chief white man."

"The Governor," suggested Dickensen.

Jimmy talked some more with the Whitefish man, and his face went grave
and puzzled.

"I t'ink um want Cap'n Alexander," he explained. "Him say um kill white
man, white woman, white boy, plenty kill um white people. Him want to
die."

"'Insane, I guess," said Dickensen.

"What you call dat?" queried Jimmy.

Dickensen thrust a finger figuratively inside his head and imparted a
rotary motion thereto.

"Mebbe so, mebbe so," said Jimmy, returning to Imber, who still demanded
the chief man of the white men.

A mounted policeman (unmounted for Klondike service) joined the group
and heard Imber's wish repeated. He was a stalwart young fellow,
broad-shouldered, deep-chested, legs cleanly built and stretched wide
apart, and tall though Imber was, he towered above him by half a head.
His eyes were cool, and gray, and steady, and he carried himself with
the peculiar confidence of power that is bred of blood and tradition.
His splendid masculinity was emphasized by his excessive boyishness,--he
was a mere lad,--and his smooth cheek promised a blush as willingly as
the cheek of a maid.

Imber was drawn to him at once. The fire leaped into his eyes at sight
of a sabre slash that scarred his cheek. He ran a withered hand down the
young fellow's leg and caressed the swelling thew. He smote the broad
chest with his knuckles, and pressed and prodded the thick muscle-pads
that covered the shoulders like a cuirass. The group had been added to
by curious passers-by--husky miners, mountaineers, and frontiersmen,