y or in times of famine, his store was open to every man,
and all received the same measure. Nor did he raise his prices when the
boats were late. They recalled one bleak and blustery autumn when the
steamer sank at the Lower Ramparts, taking with her all their winter's
food, how he eked out his scanty stock, dealing to each and every one
his portion, month by month. They remembered well the bitter winter
that followed, when the spectre of famine haunted their cabins, and
when for endless periods they cinched their belts, and cursed and went
hungry to sleep, accepting, day by day, the rations doled out to them
by the grim, gray man at the log store. Some of them had money-belts
weighted low with gold washed from the bars at Forty Mile, and there
were others who had wandered in from the Koyukuk with the first frosts,
foot-sore and dragging, the legs of their skin boots eaten to the
ankle, and the taste of dog meat still in their mouths. Broken and
dispirited, these had fared as well through that desperate winter as
their brothers from up-river, and received pound for pound of musty
flour, strip for strip of rusty bacon, lump for lump of precious sugar.
Moreover, the price of no single thing had risen throughout the famine.

Some of them, to this day, owed bills at Old Man Gale's, of which they
dared not think; but every fall and every spring they came again and
told of their disappointment, and every time they fared back into the
hills bearing another outfit, for which he rendered no account, not
even when the debts grew year by year, not even to "No Creek" Lee, the
most unlucky of them all, who said that a curse lay on him so that when
a pay-streak heard him coming it got up and moved away and hid itself.

There were some who had purposely shirked a reckoning, in years past,
but these were few, and their finish had been of a nature to discourage
a similar practice on the part of others, and of a nature, moreover, to
lead good men to care for the trader and for his methods. He mixed in
no man's business, he took and paid his dues unfalteringly. He spoke in
a level voice, and he smiled but rarely. He gazed at a stranger once
and weighed him carefully, thereafter his eyes sought the distances
again, as if in search of some visitor whom he knew or hoped or feared
would come. Therefore, men judged he had lived as strong men live, and
were glad to call him friend.

This day he stood in the door of his post staring up the sun