off," he snarled.

The Halfbreed nicked the flesh down to the bone, then with the ragged
jack-knife he began to saw. I could not bear to look. It made me deathly
sick. I heard the grit, grit of the jagged blade. I will remember the
sound to my dying day. How long it seemed to take! No man could stand
such torture. A groan burst from Locasto's lips. He fell back on the
bed. His jaws no longer worked, and a thin stream of brown saliva
trickled down his chin. He had fainted.

Quickly the Halfbreed finished his work. The hand dropped on the floor.
He pulled down the flaps of skin and sewed them together.

"How's that for home-made surgery?" he chuckled. He was vastly proud of
his achievement. He took the severed hand upon a shovel and, going to
the door, he threw it far out into the darkness.

CHAPTER XIII

"WHY don't you go outside?" I asked of the Jam-wagon.

I had rescued him from one of his periodical plunges into the cesspool
of debauch, and he was peaked, pallid, penitent. Listlessly he stared at
me a long moment, the dull, hollow-eyed stare of the recently
regenerate.

"Well," he said at last, "I think I stay for the same reason many
another man stays--pride. I feel that the Yukon owes me one of two
things, a stake or a grave--and she's going to pay."

"Seems to me, the way you're shaping you're more liable to get the
latter."

"Yes--well, that'll be all right."

"Look here," I remonstrated, "don't be a rotter. You're a man, a
splendid one. You might do anything, be anything. For Heaven's sake stop
slipping cogs, and get into the game."

His thin, handsome face hardened bitterly.

"I don't know. Sometimes I think I'm not fit to play the game; sometimes
I wonder if it's all worth while; sometimes I'm half inclined to end
it."

"Oh, don't talk nonsense."

"I'm not; I mean it, every word. I don't often speak of myself. It
doesn't matter who I am, or what I've been. I've gone through a
lot--more than most men. For years I've been a sort of a human
derelict, drifting from port to port of the seven seas. I've sprawled in
their mire; I've eaten of their filth; I've wallowed in their moist,
barbaric slime. Time and time again I've gone to the mat, but somehow I
would never take the count. Something's always saved me at the last."

"Your guardian angel."

"Maybe. Somehow I wouldn't be utterly downed. I'm a bit of a fighter,
and every day's been a battle with me. Oh, you don't know, you can't
bel