"Just Laure--for the present."

"Humph! You're one of this--theatrical company, I presume." He indicated the singers across the room.

"Yes. Morris Best hired us to work in his place at Dawson."

"I remember your outfit at Sheep Camp. Best was nearly crazy--"

"He's crazier now than ever." Laure smiled for the first time and her face lit up with mischief. "Poor Morris! We lead him around by his big nose. He's deathly afraid he'll lose us, and we know it, so we make his life miserable." She turned serious abruptly, and with a candor quite startling said, "I like you."

"Indeed!" Pierce was nonplussed.

The girl nodded. "You looked good to me when you came in. Are you going to Dawson?"

"Of course. Everybody is going to Dawson."

"I suppose you have partners?"

"No!" Pierce's face darkened. "I'm alone--very much alone." He undertook to speak in a hollow, hopeless tone.

"Big outfit?"

"None at all. But I have enough money for my needs and--I'll probably hook up with somebody." Now there was a brave but cheerless resignation in his words.

Laure pondered for a moment; even more carefully than before she studied her companion. That the result satisfied her she made plain by saying:

"Morris wants men. I can get him to hire you. Would you like to hook up with us?"

"I don't know. It doesn't much matter. Will you have something to drink now?"

"Why should I? They don't give any percentage here. Wait! I'll see Morris and tell you what he says." Leaving Pierce, the speaker hurried to a hara.s.sed little man of Hebraic countenance who was engaged in the difficult task of chaperoning this unruly aggregation of talent. To him she said:

"I've found a man for you, Morris."

"Man?"

"To go to Dawson with us. That tall, good-looking fellow at the bar."

Mr. Best was bewildered. "What ails you?" he queried. "I don't want any men, and you know it."

"You want this fellow, and you're going to hire him."

"Am I? What makes you think so?"

"Because it's--him or me," Laure said, calmly.

Mr. Best was both surprised and angered at this cool announcement.

"You mean, I s'pose, that you'll quit," he said, belligerently.

"I mean that very thing. The man has money--"

Best's anger disappeared as if by magic; his tone became apologetic. "Oh! Why didn't you say so? If he'll pay enough, and if you want him, why, of course--"

Laure interrupted with an unexpected dash of temper. "He isn't going to pay you anything: you're going to pay him--top wages, too. Understand?"

The unhappy recipient of this ultimatum raised his hands in a gesture of despair. "Himmel! There's no understanding you girls!

There's no getting along with you, either. What's on your mind, eh? Are you after him or his coin?"

"I--don't know." Laure was gazing at Phillips with a peculiar expression. "I'm not sure. Maybe I'm after both. Will you be good and hire him, or--"

"Oh, you've got me!" Best declared, with frank resentment. "If you want him, I s'pose I'll have to get him for you, but"--he muttered an oath under his breath--"you'll ruin me. Oy! Oy! I'll be glad when you're all in Dawson and at work."

After some further talk the manager approached Phillips and made himself known. "Laure tells me you want to join our troupe," he began.

"I'll see that he pays you well," the girl urged. "Come on."

Phillips' thoughts were not quite clear, but, even so, the situation struck him as grotesquely amusing. "I'm no song-and- dance man," he said, with a smile. "What would you expect me to do? Play a mandolin?"

"I don't know exactly," Best replied. "Maybe you could help me ride herd on these Bernhardts." He ran a hand through his thin black hair, thinner now by half than when he left the States. "If you could do that, why--you could save my reason."

"He wants you to be a Simon Legree," Laure explained.

The manager seconded this statement by a nod of his head. "Sure!

Crack the whip over 'em. Keep 'em in line. Don't let 'em get married. I thought I was wise to hire good-lookers, but--I was crazy. They smile and they make eyes and the men fight for 'em.

They steal 'em away. I've had a dozen battles and every time I've been licked. Already four of my girls are gone. If I lose four more I can't open; I'll be ruined. Oy! Such a country! Every day a new love-affair; every day more trouble--"

Laure threw back her dark head and laughed in mischievous delight.

"It's a fact," she told Pierce. "The best Best gets is the worst of it. He's not our manager, he's our slave; we have lots of fun with him." Stepping closer to the young man, she slipped her arm within his and, looking up into his face, said, in a low voice: "I knew I could fix it, for I always have my way. Will you go?" When he hesitated she repeated: "Will you go with me or--shall I go with you?"

Phillips started. His brain was fogged and he had difficulty in focusing his gaze upon the eager, upturned face of the girl; nevertheless, he appreciated the significance of this audacious inquiry and there came to him the memory of his recent conversation with the Countess Courteau. "Why do you say that?" he queried, after a moment. "Why do you want me to go?"

Laure's eyes searched his; there was an odd light in them, and a peculiar intensity which he dimly felt but scarcely understood. "I don't know," she confessed. She was no longer smiling, and, although her gaze remained hypnotically fixed upon his, she seemed to be searching her own soul. "I don't know," she said again, "but you have a--call."

In spite of this young woman's charms, and they were numerous enough, Phillips was not strongly drawn to her; resentment, anger, his rankling sense of injury, all these left no room for other emotions. That she was interested in him he still had sense enough to perceive; her amazing proposal, her unmistakable air of proprietorship, showed that much, and in consequence a sort of malicious triumph arose within him. Here, right at hand, was an agency of forgetfulness, more potent by far than the one to which he had first turned. Dangerous? Yes. But his life was ruined. What difference, then, whether oblivion came from alcohol or from the drug of the poppy? Deliberately he shut his ears to inner warnings; he raised his head defiantly.

"I'll go," said he.

"We leave at daylight," Best told him.

CHAPTER XIV

With 'Poleon Doret to be busy was to be contented, and these were busy times for him. His daily routine, with trap and gun, had made of him an early riser and had bred in him a habit of greeting the sun with a song. It was no hardship for him, therefore, to cook his breakfast by candle-light, especially now that the days were growing short. On the morning after his rescue of Sam Kirby and his daughter 'Poleon washed his dishes and cut his wood; then, finding that there was still an hour to spare before the light would be sufficient to run Miles Canon, he lit his pipe and strolled up to the village. The ground was now white, for considerable snow had fallen during the night; the day promised to be extremely short and uncomfortable. 'Poleon, however, was impervious to weather of any sort; his good humor was not dampened in the least.

Even at this hour the saloons were well patronized, for not only was the camp astir, but also the usual stale crowd of all-night loiterers was not yet sufficiently intoxicated to go to bed. As 'Poleon neared the first resort, the door opened and a woman emerged. She was silhouetted briefly against the illumination from within, and the pilot was surprised to recognize her as Rouletta Kirby. He was upon the point of speaking to her when she collided blindly with a man who had preceded him by a step or two.

The fellow held the girl for an instant and helped her to regain her equilibrium, exclaiming, with a laugh: "Say! What's the matter with you, sister? Can't you see where you're going?" When Rouletta made no response the man continued in an even friendlier tone, "Well, I can see; my eyesight's good, and it tells me you're about the best-looking dame I've run into to-night." Still laughing, he bent his head as if to catch the girl's answer. "Eh? I don't get you. Who d'you say you're looking for?"