eer, but
she made the opening speech and described the goods about to be sold. She
was in native costume, in the dress of a chief's daughter, splendid and
barbaric, and she stood on a chair, that she might be seen to advantage.

"Who will buy a wife?" she asked. "Look at me. I am twenty years old
and a maid. I will be a good wife to the man who buys me. If he is a
white man, I shall dress in the fashion of white women; if he is an
Indian, I shall dress as"--she hesitated a moment--"a squaw. I can make
my own clothes, and sew, and wash, and mend. I was taught for eight
years to do these things at Holy Cross Mission. I can read and write
English, and I know how to play the organ. Also I can do arithmetic and
some algebra--a little. I shall be sold to the highest bidder, and to
him I will make out a bill of sale of myself. I forgot to say that I can
sing very well, and that I have never been sick in my life. I weigh one
hundred and thirty-two pounds; my father is dead and I have no relatives.
Who wants me?"

She looked over the crowd with flaming audacity and stepped down. At
Tommy's request she stood upon the chair again, while he mounted the
second chair and started the bidding.

Surrounding El-Soo stood the four old slaves of her father. They were
age-twisted and palsied, faithful to their meat, a generation out of the
past that watched unmoved the antics of younger life. In the front of
the crowd were several Eldorado and Bonanza kings from the Upper Yukon,
and beside them, on crutches, swollen with scurvy, were two broken
prospectors. From the midst of the crowd, thrust out by its own
vividness, appeared the face of a wild-eyed squaw from the remote regions
of the Upper Tana-naw; a strayed Sitkan from the coast stood side by side
with a Stick from Lake Le Barge, and, beyond, a half-dozen
French-Canadian voyageurs, grouped by themselves. From afar came the
faint cries of myriads of wild-fowl on the nesting-grounds. Swallows
were skimming up overhead from the placid surface of the Yukon, and
robins were singing. The oblique rays of the hidden sun shot through the
smoke, high-dissipated from forest fires a thousand miles away, and
turned the heavens to sombre red, while the earth shone red in the
reflected glow. This red glow shone in the faces of all, and made
everything seem unearthly and unreal.

The bidding began slowly. The Sitkan, who was a stranger in the land and
who had arrived only half