You say 'Go,' and they go. Now, a white woman
ain't that way. By the roarin' Jasus, you never can tell which way
she's goin' to jump!" Kayak Bill held the stem of his pipe up to the
light and squinted through it, fitted it again into the bowl and gave
an experimental draw. "But everybody to his own cemetery, says I."

"Bill, you old reprobate, you have an uncanny way of picking the weak
spots in everything. There's some truth in that last. . . . Gad, I'd
like to get into a game of love with a woman of my own blood up here in
the wilderness! . . . There's never been a white woman in Katleean.
It would be great sport to see one up against it here, eh, Kayak?" The
White Chief turned, smiling, and the light in his pale, narrow eyes
matched the wolfish gleam of his sharp teeth.

The face of the old hootch-maker was hidden in a smoke cloud, but his
voice drawled on as calmly as ever: "Wall, from what I hearn tell when
I'm over at the Chilcat Cannery, Chief, you may get a chance to see a
white woman at Katleean purty soon. There's a prospector named
Boreland a-cruisin' up the coast in his own schooner, the _Hoonah_, and
from what I can make out he's got his wife and little boy with him."

The trader turned sharply. Like a hungry wolf scenting quarry he
raised his head. There was a keener look in his eye. His thin
nostrils twitched.

"A _white_ woman, Kayak? Are you sure?"

Before Kayak Bill could answer there came an extra loud burst of song
from the cabin across the courtyard. The door had been flung wide and
in the opening swayed the arresting figure of the leader of the wild
chorus.

[1] Name by which the States is designated in the North.

[2] Newcomer.

CHAPTER II

THE CHEECHAKO

He was young and tall and slight, with a touch of recklessness in his
bearing that was somehow at variance with the clean-cut lines of his
face. He stood unsteadily on the threshold, hands thrust deep in the
pockets of his grey tweed trousers, chin up-tilted from a strong, bare
throat that rose out of his open shirt. As the singing inside the
cabin ceased, he shook back the tumbled mass of his brown hair and
alone his mellow baritone continued the whaler's song:

"Up into the Polar Seas,
Where the greasy whalers be,
There's a strip of open water
Reaching north to eighty-three----"

The White Chief, with his eyes on the singer, spoke to Kayak Bill.

"Our gentleman-bookkeeper takes to your liqui