nger of the endless forest by the Russian seas. As you know, I led
him into the east--him and Unga--into the east where many have gone and
few returned. I led them to the spot where the bones and the curses of
men lie with the gold which they may not have.

'The way was long and the trail unpacked. Our dogs were many and ate
much; nor could our sleds carry till the break of spring. We must come
back before the river ran free. So here and there we cached grub, that
our sleds might be lightened and there be no chance of famine on the
back trip. At the McQuestion there were three men, and near them we
built a cache, as also did we at the Mayo, where was a hunting camp of
a dozen Pellys which had crossed the divide from the south.

'After that, as we went on into the east, we saw no men; only the
sleeping river, the moveless forest, and the White Silence of the
North. As I say, the way was long and the trail unpacked. Sometimes, in
a day's toil, we made no more than eight miles, or ten, and at night we
slept like dead men. And never once did they dream that I was Naass,
head man of Akatan, the righter of wrongs.

'We now made smaller caches, and in the nighttime it was a small matter
to go back on the trail we had broken and change them in such way that
one might deem the wolverines the thieves. Again there be places where
there is a fall to the river, and the water is unruly, and the ice
makes above and is eaten away beneath.

'In such a spot the sled I drove broke through, and the dogs; and to
him and Unga it was ill luck, but no more. And there was much grub on
that sled, and the dogs the strongest.

'But he laughed, for he was strong of life, and gave the dogs that were
left little grub till we cut them from the harnesses one by one and fed
them to their mates. We would go home light, he said, traveling and
eating from cache to cache, with neither dogs nor sleds; which was
true, for our grub was very short, and the last dog died in the traces
the night we came to the gold and the bones and the curses of men.

'To reach that place--and the map spoke true--in the heart of the great
mountains, we cut ice steps against the wall of a divide. One looked
for a valley beyond, but there was no valley; the snow spread away,
level as the great harvest plains, and here and there about us mighty
mountains shoved their white heads among the stars. And midway on that
strange plain which should have been a valley the earth and the