Butts home. So he took
his gun and went to call."

"Don't tell me that poor devil's killed after all."

"Not a bit. Butts is a little bunged up, but he's the handier man, even
so. He drew the first bead."

"Charlie hurt?"

"No, he isn't hurt. He's dead. Three or four fellows had just looked
in, on the quiet, to kind of apologise to Butts. They're down at
Corey's now givin' evidence against him."

"So Butts'll have to swing after all. Is he in Court?"

"Yes--been a busy day for Butts."

A confused noise came suddenly out of the big cabin they were nearing.
They opened the door with difficulty, and forced their way into the
reeking, crowded room for the second time that night. Everybody seemed
to be talking--nobody listening. Dimly through dense clouds of
tobacco-smoke "the prisoner at the Bar" was seen to be--what--no!
Yes--shaking hands with the Judge.

"Verdict already?"

"Oh, that kind o' case don't take a feller like Corey long."

"What's the decision?"

"Prisoner discharged. Charlie Le Gros committed suicide."

"Suicide!"

"--by goin' with his gun to Butts' shack lookin' f trouble."

CHAPTER XIX

THE ICE GOES OUT

"I am apart of all that I have seen."

It had been thawing and freezing, freezing and thawing, for so long
that men lost account of the advance of a summer coming, with such
balked, uncertain steps. Indeed, the weather variations had for several
weeks been so great that no journey, not the smallest, could be
calculated with any assurance. The last men to reach Minook were two
who had made a hunting and prospecting trip to an outlying district.
They had gone there in six days, and were nineteen in returning.

The slush was waist-deep in the gulches. On the benches, in the snow,
holes appeared, as though red-hot stones had been thrown upon the
surface. The little settlement by the mouth of the Minook sat
insecurely on the boggy hillside, and its inhabitants waded knee-deep
in soaking tundra moss and mire.

And now, down on the Never-Know-What, water was beginning to run on the
marginal ice. Up on the mountains the drifted snow was honey-combed.
Whole fields of it gave way and sunk a foot under any adventurous shoe.
But although these changes had been wrought slowly, with backsets of
bitter nights, when everything was frozen hard as flint, the illusion
was general that summer came in with a bound. On the 9th of May, Minook
went to bed in winter, and woke to find the snow alm