ct of his
young daughter; but in the end, dreaming barbarically of magnificence, he
went forth and borrowed a thousand dollars from old Porportuk, than whom
there was no richer Indian on the Yukon. Also, Klakee-Nah ran up a heavy
bill at the trading post. El-Soo re-created the large house. She
invested it with new splendour, while Klakee-Nah maintained its ancient
traditions of hospitality and revelry.

All this was unusual for a Yukon Indian, but Klakee-Nah was an unusual
Indian. Not alone did he like to render inordinate hospitality, but,
what of being a chief and of acquiring much money, he was able to do it.
In the primitive trading days he had been a power over his people, and he
had dealt profitably with the white trading companies. Later on, with
Porportuk, he had made a gold-strike on the Koyokuk River. Klakee-Nah
was by training and nature an aristocrat. Porportuk was bourgeois, and
Porportuk bought him out of the gold-mine. Porportuk was content to plod
and accumulate. Klakee-Nah went back to his large house and proceeded to
spend. Porportuk was known as the richest Indian in Alaska. Klakee-Nah
was known as the whitest. Porportuk was a money-lender and a usurer.
Klakee-Nah was an anachronism--a mediaeval ruin, a fighter and a feaster,
happy with wine and song.

El-Soo adapted herself to the large house and its ways as readily as she
had adapted herself to Holy Cross Mission and its ways. She did not try
to reform her father and direct his footsteps toward God. It is true,
she reproved him when he drank overmuch and profoundly, but that was for
the sake of his health and the direction of his footsteps on solid earth.

The latchstring to the large house was always out. What with the coming
and the going, it was never still. The rafters of the great living-room
shook with the roar of wassail and of song. At table sat men from all
the world and chiefs from distant tribes--Englishmen and Colonials, lean
Yankee traders and rotund officials of the great companies, cowboys from
the Western ranges, sailors from the sea, hunters and dog-mushers of a
score of nationalities.

El-Soo drew breath in a cosmopolitan atmosphere. She could speak English
as well as she could her native tongue, and she sang English songs and
ballads. The passing Indian ceremonials she knew, and the perishing
traditions. The tribal dress of the daughter of a chief she knew how to
wear upon occasion. But for the most part sh