"Well, what do you want," he demanded roughly; "work?"

"No," I said, "I just want a scrap of information. I came into the country with some Jews the name of Winklestein. I've lost track of them and I think you may be able to tell me where they are."

He was all attention now. He turned half round and scrutinised me with deliberate intensity. Then, like a flash, his rough manner changed. He was the polished gentleman, the San Francisco club-lounger, the man of the world.

He rasped the stubble on his chin; his eyes were bland, his voice smooth as cream.

"Winklestein," he echoed reflectively, "Winklestein; seems to me I do remember the name, but for the life of me I can't recall where."

He was watching me like a cat, and pretending to think hard.

"Was there a girl with them?"

"Yes," I said eagerly, "a young girl."

"A young girl, ah!" He seemed to reflect hard again. "Well, my friend, I'm afraid I can't help you. I remember noticing the party on the way in, but what became of them I can't think. I don't usually bother about that kind of people. Well, good-night, or good-morning rather. This is my hotel."

He had half entered when he paused and turned to me. His face was urbane, his voice suave to sweetness; but it seemed to me there was a subtle mockery in his tone.

"I say, if I should hear anything of them, I'll let you know. Your name? Athol Meldrum--all right, I'll let you know. Good-bye."

He was gone and I had failed. I cursed myself for a fool. The man had baffled me. Nay, even I had hurt myself by giving him an inkling of my search. Berna seemed further away from me than ever. Home I went, discouraged and despairful.

Then I began to argue with myself. He must know where they were, and if he really had designs on the girl and was keeping her in hiding my interview with him would alarm him. He would take the first opportunity of warning the Winklesteins. When would he do it? That very night in all likelihood. So I reasoned; and I resolved to watch.

I stationed myself in a saloon from where I could command a view of his hotel, and there I waited. I think I must have watched the place for three hours, but I know it was a weariful business, and I was heartsick of it. Doggedly I stuck to my post. I was beginning to think he must have evaded me, when suddenly coming forth alone from the hotel I saw my man.

It was about midnight, neither light nor dark, but rather an absence of either quality, and the Northern sky was wan and ominous. In the crowded street I saw Locasto's hat overtopping all others, so that I had no difficulty in shadowing him. Once he stopped to speak to a woman, once to light a cigar; then he suddenly turned up a side street that ran through the red-light district.

He was walking swiftly and he took a path that skirted the swamp behind the town. I had no doubt of his mission. My heart began to beat with excitement. The little path led up the hill, clothed with fresh foliage and dotted with cabins. Once I saw him pause and look round. I had barely time to dodge behind some bushes, and feared for a moment he had seen me. But no! on he went again faster than ever.

I knew now I had divined his errand. He was at too great pains to cover his tracks. The trail had plunged among a maze of slender cotton-woods, and twisted so that I was sore troubled to keep him in view. Always he increased his gait and I followed breathlessly. There were few cabins hereabouts; it was a lonely place to be so near to town, very quiet and thickly screened from sight. Suddenly he seemed to disappear, and, fearing my pursuit was going to be futile, I rushed forward.

I came to a dead stop. There was no one to be seen. He had vanished completely. The trail climbed steeply up, twisty as a corkscrew. These cursed poplars, how densely they grew! Blindly I blundered forward. Then I came to a place where the trail forked. Panting for breath I hesitated which way to take, and it was in that moment of hesitation that a heavy hand was laid on my shoulder.

"Where away, my young friend?" It was Locasto. His face was Mephistophelian, his voice edged with irony. I was startled I admit, but I tried to put a good face on it.

"Hello," I said; "I'm just taking a stroll."

His black eyes pierced me, his black brows met savagely. The heavy jaw shot forward, and for a moment the man, menacing and terrible, seemed to tower above me.

"You lie!" like explosive steam came the words, and wolf-like his lips parted, showing his powerful teeth. "You lie!" he reiterated. "You followed me. Didn't I see you from the hotel? Didn't I determine to decoy you away? Oh, you fool! you fool! who are you that would pit your weakness against my strength, your simplicity against my cunning? You would try to cross me, would you? You would champion damsels in distress? You pretty fool, you simpleton, you meddler----"

Suddenly, without warning, he struck me square on the face, a blinding, staggering blow that brought me to my knees as falls a pole-axed steer.

I was stunned, swaying weakly, trying vainly to get on my feet. I stretched out my clenched hands to him. Then he struck me again, a bitter, felling blow.

I was completely at his mercy now and he showed me none. He was like a fiend. Rage seemed to rend him. Time and again he kicked me, brutally, relentlessly, on the ribs, on the chest, on the head. Was the man going to do me to death? I shielded my head. I moaned in agony. Would he never stop? Then I became unconscious, knowing that he was still kicking me, and wondering if I would ever open my eyes again.

CHAPTER IV

"Long live the cold-feet tribe! Long live the soreheads!"

It was the Prodigal who spoke. "This outfit buying's got gold-mining beaten to a standstill. Here I've been three weeks in the burg and got over ten thousand dollars' worth of grub cached away. Every pound of it will net me a hundred per cent. profit. I'm beginning to look on myself as a second John D. Rockefeller."

"You're a confounded robber," I said. "You're working a cinch-game.

What's your first name? Isaac?"

He turned the bacon he was frying and smiled gayly.

"Snort away all you like, old sport. So long as I get the mon you can call me any old name you please."

He was very sprightly and elate, but I was in no sort of mood to share in his buoyancy. Physically I had fully recovered from my terrible manhandling, but in spirit I still writhed at the outrage of it. And the worst was I could do nothing. The law could not help me, for there were no witnesses to the assault. I could never cope with this man in bodily strength. Why was I not a stalwart? If I had been as tall and strong as Garry, for instance. True, I might shoot; but there the Police would take a hand in the game, and I would lose out badly. There seemed to be nothing for it but to wait and pray for some means of retaliation.

Yet how bitterly I brooded over the business. At times there was even black murder in my heart. I planned schemes of revenge, grinding my teeth in impotent rage the while; and my feelings were complicated by that awful gnawing hunger for Berna that never left me. It was a perfect agony of heart, a panic-fear, a craving so intense that at times I felt I would go distracted with the pain of it.

Perhaps I am a poor sort of being. I have often wondered. I either feel intensely, or I am quite indifferent. I am a prey to my emotions, a martyr to my moods. Apart from my great love for Berna it seemed to me as if nothing mattered. All through these stormy years it was like that--nothing else mattered. And now that I am nearing the end of my life I can see that nothing else has ever mattered. Everything that happened appealed to me in its relation to her. It seemed to me as if I saw all the world through the medium of my love for her, and that all beauty, all truth, all good was but a setting for this girl of mine.

"Come on," said Jim; "let's go for a walk in the town."

The "Modern Gomorrah" he called it, and he was never tired of expatiating on its iniquity.

"See that man there?" he said, pointing to a grey-haired pedestrian, who was talking to an emphatic blonde. "That man's a lawyer. He's got a lovely home in Los Angeles, an' three of the sweetest girls you ever saw. A young fellow needed to have his credentials O. K.'d by the Purity Committee before he came butting round that man's home. Now he's off to buy wine for Daisy of the Deadline."

The grey-haired man had turned into a saloon with his companion.

"Yes, that's Dawson for you. We're so far from home. The good old moralities don't apply here. The hoary old Yukon won't tell on us. We've been a Sunday School Superintendent for ten years. For fifty more we've passed up the forbidden fruit. Every one else is helping themselves.

Wonder what it tastes like? Wine is flowing like water. Money's the cheapest thing in sight. Cut loose, drink up. The orchestra's a-goin'.

Get your partners for a nice juicy two-step. Come on, boys!"

He was particularly bitter, and it really seemed in that general lesion of the moral fibre that civilisation was only a makeshift, a veneer of hypocrisy.

"Why should we marvel," I said, "at man's brutality, when but an aeon ago we all were apes?"

Just then we met the Jam-wagon. He had mushed in from the creeks that very day. Physically he looked supreme. He was berry-brown, lean, muscular and as full of suppressed energy as an unsprung bear-trap.

Financially he was well ballasted. Mentally and morally he was in the state of a volcano before an eruption.

You could see in the quick breathing, in the restlessness of this man, a pent-up energy that clamoured to exhaust itself in violence and debauch. His fierce blue eyes were wild and roving, his lips twitched nervously. He was an atavism; of the race of those white-bodied, ferocious sea-kings that drank deep and died in the din of battle. He must live in the white light of excitement, or sink in the gloom of despair. I could see his fine nostrils quiver like those of a charger that scents the smoke of battle, and I realised that he should have been a soldier still, a leader of forlorn hopes, a partner of desperate hazards.

As we walked along, Jim did most of the talking in his favourite morality vein. The Jam-wagon puffed silently at his briar pipe, while I, very listless and downhearted, thought largely of my own troubles. Then, in the middle of the block, where most of the music-halls were situated, suddenly we met Locasto.

When I saw him my heart gave a painful leap, and I think my face must have gone as white as paper. I had thought much over this meeting, and had dreaded it. There are things which no man can overlook, and, if it meant death to me, I must again try conclusions with the brute.

He was accompanied by a little bald-headed Jew named Spitzstein, and we were almost abreast of them when I stepped forward and arrested them. My teeth were clenched; I was all a-quiver with passion; my heart beat violently. For a moment I stood there, confronting him in speechless excitement.

He was dressed in that miner's costume in which he always looked so striking. From his big Stetson to his high boots he was typically the big, strong man of Alaska, the Conqueror of the Wild. But his mouth was grim as granite, and his black eyes hard and repellent as those of a toad.