sat on our blankets, our moccasins steaming on
upended sticks before the fire, and had our evening smoke.

"You didn't know her?" Lon queried suddenly. I shook my head.

"You noticed the colour of her hair and eyes and her complexion, well,
that's where she got her name--she was like the first warm glow of a
golden sunrise. She was called Flush of Gold. Ever heard of her?"

Somewhere I had a confused and misty remembrance of having heard the
name, yet it meant nothing to me. "Flush of Gold," I repeated; "sounds
like the name of a dance-house girl." Lon shook his head. "No, she was
a good woman, at least in that sense, though she sinned greatly just the
same."

"But why do you speak always of her in the past tense, as though she were
dead?"

"Because of the darkness on her soul that is the same as the darkness of
death. The Flush of Gold that I knew, that Dawson knew, and that Forty
Mile knew before that, is dead. That dumb, lunatic creature we saw last
night was not Flush of Gold."

"And Dave?" I queried.

"He built that cabin," Lon answered, "He built it for her . . . and for
himself. He is dead. She is waiting for him there. She half believes
he is not dead. But who can know the whim of a crazed mind? Maybe she
wholly believes he is not dead. At any rate, she waits for him there in
the cabin he built. Who would rouse the dead? Then who would rouse the
living that are dead? Not I, and that is why I let on to expect to meet
Dave Walsh there last night. I'll bet a stack that I'd a been more
surprised than she if I _had_ met him there last night."

"I do not understand," I said. "Begin at the beginning, as a white man
should, and tell me the whole tale."

And Lon began. "Victor Chauvet was an old Frenchman--born in the south
of France. He came to California in the days of gold. He was a pioneer.
He found no gold, but, instead, became a maker of bottled sunshine--in
short, a grape-grower and wine-maker. Also, he followed gold
excitements. That is what brought him to Alaska in the early days, and
over the Chilcoot and down the Yukon long before the Carmack strike. The
old town site of Ten Mile was Chauvet's. He carried the first mail into
Arctic City. He staked those coal-mines on the Porcupine a dozen years
ago. He grubstaked Loftus into the Nippennuck Country. Now it happened
that Victor Chauvet was a good Catholic, loving two things in this world,
wine and woman. Wine of all kinds