'Is it the lie ye'd be givin' me?' threatened Lon. 'Ye'd better be
askin' that Siwash wife of yours. I'll lave it to her, for the truth I
spake.' Bettles flared up in sudden wrath. The Irishman had unwittingly
wounded him; for his wife was the half-breed daughter of a Russian
fur-trader, married to him in the Greek Mission of Nulato, a thousand
miles or so down the Yukon, thus being of much higher caste than the
common Siwash, or native, wife. It was a mere Northland nuance, which
none but the Northland adventurer may understand.

'I reckon you kin take it that way,' was his deliberate affirmation.

The next instant Lon McFane had stretched him on the floor, the circle
was broken up, and half a dozen men had stepped between.

Bettles came to his feet, wiping the blood from his mouth. 'It hain't
new, this takin' and payin' of blows, and don't you never think but
that this will be squared.' 'An' niver in me life did I take the lie
from mortal man,' was the retort courteous. 'An' it's an avil day I'll
not be to hand, waitin' an' willin' to help ye lift yer debts, barrin'
no manner of way.'

'Still got that 38-55?' Lon nodded.

'But you'd better git a more likely caliber. Mine'll rip holes through
you the size of walnuts.'

'Niver fear; it's me own slugs smell their way with soft noses, an'
they'll spread like flapjacks against the coming out beyand. An'
when'll I have the pleasure of waitin' on ye? The waterhole's a
strikin' locality.' ''Tain't bad. Jest be there in an hour, and you
won't set long on my coming.' Both men mittened and left the Post,
their ears closed to the remonstrances of their comrades. It was such a
little thing; yet with such men, little things, nourished by quick
tempers and stubborn natures, soon blossomed into big things.

Besides, the art of burning to bedrock still lay in the womb of the
future, and the men of Forty-Mile, shut in by the long Arctic winter,
grew high-stomached with overeating and enforced idleness, and became
as irritable as do the bees in the fall of the year when the hives are
overstocked with honey.

There was no law in the land. The mounted police was also a thing of
the future. Each man measured an offense, and meted out the punishment
inasmuch as it affected himself.

Rarely had combined action been necessary, and never in all the dreary
history of the camp had the eighth article of the Decalogue been
violated.

Big Jim Belden called an impromptu meeting. Scruff