of the Upper Tanana Sticks.
They marveled at his temerity; for they had a bad name and had been
known to kill white men for as trifling a thing as a sharp ax or a
broken rifle.

But he went among them single-handed, his bearing being a delicious
composite of humility, familiarity, sang-froid, and insolence. It
required a deft hand and deep knowledge of the barbaric mind
effectually to handle such diverse weapons; but he was a past-master in
the art, knowing when to conciliate and when to threaten with Jove-like
wrath.

He first made obeisance to the Chief Thling-Tinneh, presenting him with
a couple of pounds of black tea and tobacco, and thereby winning his
most cordial regard. Then he mingled with the men and maidens, and that
night gave a potlach.

The snow was beaten down in the form of an oblong, perhaps a hundred
feet in length and quarter as many across. Down the center a long fire
was built, while either side was carpeted with spruce boughs. The
lodges were forsaken, and the fivescore or so members of the tribe gave
tongue to their folk-chants in honor of their guest.

'Scruff' Mackenzie's two years had taught him the not many hundred
words of their vocabulary, and he had likewise conquered their deep
gutturals, their Japanese idioms, constructions, and honorific and
agglutinative particles. So he made oration after their manner,
satisfying their instinctive poetry-love with crude flights of
eloquence and metaphorical contortions. After Thling-Tinneh and the
Shaman had responded in kind, he made trifling presents to the menfolk,
joined in their singing, and proved an expert in their fifty-two-stick
gambling game.

And they smoked his tobacco and were pleased. But among the younger men
there was a defiant attitude, a spirit of braggadocio, easily
understood by the raw insinuations of the toothless squaws and the
giggling of the maidens. They had known few white men, 'Sons of the
Wolf,' but from those few they had learned strange lessons.

Nor had 'Scruff' Mackenzie, for all his seeming carelessness, failed to
note these phenomena. In truth, rolled in his sleeping-furs, he thought
it all over, thought seriously, and emptied many pipes in mapping out a
campaign. One maiden only had caught his fancy,--none other than
Zarinska, daughter to the chief. In features, form, and poise,
answering more nearly to the white man's type of beauty, she was almost
an anomaly among her tribal sisters. He would possess her, m