ed canned goods and a
long, scarred counter piled high with gay blankets and men's rough
clothing. Back of the big, pot-bellied stove--cold now--that stood
near the center of the room, lidless boxes of hard-tack and crackers
yawned in open defiance of germs. An amber, mote-filled ray slanted
toward the moss-chinked log wall where a row of dusty fox and wolverine
skins hung--pelts discarded when the spring shipment of furs had been
made, because of flaws visible only to expert eyes.

At the far end of the room the possessor of those expert eyes sat
before a rough home-made desk. There was a rustle of papers and he
closed the ledger in front of him with an air of relief. He clapped
his hands smartly. Almost on the instant the curtain hanging in the
doorway at the side of the desk was drawn aside and a small, brown
feminine hand materialized.

"My cigarettes, Decitan."

The man's voice was low, with that particular vibrant quality often
found in the voices of men accustomed to command inferior peoples on
the far outposts of civilization.

The curtain wavered again and from behind the folds a brown arm, bare
and softly rounded, accompanied the hand that set down a tray of
smoking materials.

With a careless nod toward his invisible servitor, the man picked up a
cigarette and lighted it. He took one long, deep pull. Tossing it
aside he swung his chair about and faced the open doorway that gave on
a courtyard and the bay beyond.

He readjusted the scarlet band about his narrow hips. Flannel-shirted,
high-booted, he stretched his six-foot length in the tilting chair and
clasped his hands behind his head. The movement loosened a lock of
black hair which fell heavily across his forehead. His eyes, long,
narrow and the color of pale smoke, drowsed beneath brows that met
above his nose. Thin, sharply defined nostrils quivered under the
slightest emotion, and startling against the whiteness of his face, was
a short, pointed beard, black and silky as a woman's hair. When Paul
Kilbuck, the white trader of Katleean, smiled, his thin, red lips
parted over teeth white and perfect, but there was that in the long,
pointed incisors that brought to mind the clean fangs of a wolf-dog.

He closed his pale eyes now and smiled to himself. His work on the
Company's books was finished for the present. He hated the petty
details of account keeping, but since the death of old Add-'em-up Sam,
his helper and accountant, who had