. Tara had stretched himself out lazily in
the sun and Baree was still between the two rocks, eyeing him
watchfully. Before David lighted the fire he spread his one blanket out
on the sand and made the Girl sit down. She was close to him, and her
eyes did not leave his face for an instant. Whenever he looked up she
was gazing straight at him, and when he went down to the creek for
another pail of water he felt that her eyes were still on him. When he
turned to come back, with fifty paces between them, she smiled at him
and he waved his hand at her. He asked her a great many questions while
he prepared their dinner. The Nest, he learned, was a free-trading
place, and Hauck was its proprietor. He was surprised when he learned
that he was not on Firepan Creek after all. The Firepan was over the
range, and there were a good many Indians to the north and west of it.
Miners came down frequently from the Taku River country and the edge of
the Yukon, she said. At least she thought they were miners, for that is
what Hauck used to tell Nisikoos, her aunt. They came after whisky.
Always whisky. And the Indians came for liquor, too. It was the chief
article that Hauck, her uncle, traded in. He brought it from the coast,
in the winter time--many sledge loads of it; and some of those "miners"
who came down from the north carried away much of it. If it was summer
they would take it away on pack horses. What would they do with so much
liquor, she wondered? A little of it made such a beast of Hauck, and a
beast of Brokaw, and it drove the Indians wild. Hauck would no longer
allow the Indians to drink it at the Nest. They had to take it away with
them--into the mountains. Just now there was quite a number of the
"miners" down from the north, ten or twelve of them. She had not been
afraid when Nisikoos, her aunt, was alive. But now there was no other
woman at the Nest, except an old Indian woman who did Hauck's cooking.
Hauck wanted no one there. And she was afraid of those men. They all
feared Hauck, and she knew that Hauck was afraid of Brokaw. She didn't
know why, but he was. And she was afraid of them all, and hated them
all. She had been quite happy when Nisikoos was alive. Nisikoos had
taught her to read out of books, had taught her things ever since she
could remember. She could write almost as well as Nisikoos. She said
this a bit proudly. But since her aunt had gone, things were terribly
changed. Especially the men. They had made h