Miller nodded his approval of this att.i.tude; then his face clouded. "I've been wondering how you're going to protect your bank-roll. Things won't always be like they were to-day. I s'pose I'll have to put a man on--"

"I'll protect it," the girl a.s.serted. "Agnes and I will do that."

The proprietor was interested. "Agnes? Holy Moses! Is there two of you? Have you got a sister? Who's Agnes?"

"She's an old friend of my father's."

Miller shrugged. "Bring her along if you want to," he said, doubtfully, "but those old dames are trouble-makers."

"Yes, Agnes is all of that, but"--Rouletta's eyes were dancing-- "she minds her own business and she'll guard the bank-roll."

Lucky Broad and Kid Bridges had found employment at the Rialto soon after it opened. As they pa.s.sed the gold-scales on their way to work Pierce Phillips halted them.

"I've some good news for you, Lucky," he announced. "You've lost your job."

"Who, me?" Broad was incredulous.

"Miller has hired a new faro-dealer, and you don't go on until midnight." Briefly Pierce retold the story that had come to his ears when he reported for duty that evening.

Broad and Bridges listened without comment, but they exchanged glances. They put their heads together and began a low-pitched conversation. They were still murmuring when Rouletta appeared, in company with 'Poleon Doret.

'Poleon's face lighted at sight of the two gamblers. He strode forward, crying: "Hallo! I'm glad for see you some more." To the girl he said: "You 'member dese feller'. Dey he'p save you in de rapids."

Rouletta impulsively extended her hands. "Of course! Could I forget?" She saw Pierce Phillips behind the scales and nodded to him. "Why, we're all here, aren't we? I'm so glad. Everywhere I go I meet friends."

Lucky and the Kid inquired respectfully regarding her health, her journey down the river, her reasons for being here; then when they had drawn her aside the former interrupted her flow of explanations to say:

"Listen, Letty. We got just one real question to ask and we'd like a straight answer. Have you got any kick against this Frenchman?"

"Any kick of any kind?" queried Bridges. "We're your friends; you can tip us off."

The sudden change in the tone of their voices caused the girl to start and to stare at them. She saw that both men were in sober earnest; the reason behind their solicitude she apprehended.

She laid a hand upon the arm of each. Her eyes were very bright when she began: "'Poleon told me how you came to his tent that morning after--you know, and he told me what you said. Well, it wasn't necessary. He's the dearest thing that ever lived!"

"Why'd he put you to work in a place like this?" Bridges roughly demanded.

"He didn't. He begged me not to try it. He offered me all he has-- his last dollar. He--"

Swiftly, earnestly, Rouletta told how the big woodsman had cared for her; how tenderly, faithfully, he had nursed her back to health and strength; how he had cast all his plans to the winds in order to bring her down the river. "He's the best, the kindest, the most generous man I ever knew," she concluded. "His heart is clean and--his soul is full of music."

"'Sta bueno!" cried Lucky Broad, in genuine relief. "We had a hunch he was right, but--you can't always trust those Asiatic races."

Ben Miller appeared and warmly greeted his new employee. "Rested up, eh? Well, it's going to be a big night. Where's Agnes--the other one? Has she got cold feet?"

"No, just a cold nose. Here she is." From a small bag on her arm Rouletta drew Sam Kirby's six-shooter. "Agnes was my father's friend. n.o.body ever ran out on her."

Miller blinked, he uttered a feeble exclamation, then he burst into a mighty laugh. He was still shaking, his face was purple, there were tears of mirth in his eyes, when he followed Broad, Bridges, and Rouletta into the gambling-room.

There were several players at the faro-table when the girl took her place. Removing her gloves, she stowed them away in her bag.

From this bag she extracted the heavy Colt's revolver, then opened the drawer before her and laid it inside. She breathed upon her fingers, rubbing the circulation back into them, and began to shuffle the cards. Slipping them into the box, the girl settled herself in her chair and looked up into a circle of grinning faces. Before her level gaze eyes that had been focused queerly upon her fell. The case-keeper's lips were twitching, but he bit down upon them. Gravely he said:

"Well, boys, let's go!"

CHAPTER XXI

In taking charge of a sick girl, a helpless, hopeless stranger, 'Poleon Doret had a.s.sumed a responsibility far greater than he had antic.i.p.ated, and that responsibility had grown heavier every day.

Having, at last, successfully discharged it, he breathed freely, his first relaxation in a long time; he rejoiced in the consciousness of a difficult duty well performed. So far as he could see there was nothing at all extraordinary, nothing in the least improper, about Rouletta's engagement at the Rialto. Any suggestion of impropriety, in fact, would have greatly surprised him, for saloons and gambling-halls filled a recognized place in the every-day social life of the Northland. Customs were free, standards were liberal in the early days; no one, 'Poleon least of all, would have dreamed that they were destined to change in a night. Had he been told that soon the country would be dry, and gambling-games and dance-halls be prohibited by law, he would have considered the idea too utterly fantastic for belief; the mere contemplation of such a dreary prospect would have proved extremely dispiriting. He--and the other pioneers of his kind-- would have been tempted immediately to pack up and move on to some freer locality where a man could retain his personal liberty and pursue his happiness in a manner as noisy, as intemperate, and as undignified as suited his individual taste.

In justice to the saloons, be it said, they were more than mere drinking-places; they were the pivots about which revolved the business life of the North country. They were meeting-places, social centers, marts of trade; looked upon as evidences of enterprise and general prosperity, they were considered desirable a.s.sets to any community. Everybody patronized them; the men who ran them were, on the whole, as reputable as the men engaged in other pursuits. No particular stigma attached either to the places themselves or to the people connected with them.

These gold-camps had a very simple code. Work of any sort was praiseworthy and honorable, idleness or unproductivity was reprehensible. Mining, storekeeping, liquor-selling, gambling, steamboating, all were occupations which men followed as necessity or convenience prompted. A citizen gained repute by the manner in which he deported himself, not by reason of the nature of the commodity in which he dealt. Such, at least, was the att.i.tude of the "old-timers."

Rouletta's instant success, the fact that she had fallen among friends, delighted a woodsman like 'Poleon, and, now that he was his own master again, he straightway surrendered himself to the selfish enjoyment of his surroundings. His nature and his training prescribed the limits of those pleasures; they were quite as simple as his everyday habits of life; he danced, he gambled, and he drank.

To-night he did all three, in the reverse order. To him Dawson was a dream city; its lights were dazzling, its music heavenly, its games of chance enticing, and its liquor was the finest, the smoothest, the most inspiriting his tongue had ever tested. Old friends were everywhere, and new ones, too, for that matter. Among them were alluring women who smiled and sparkled. Each place 'Poleon entered was the home of carnival.

By midnight he was gloriously drunk. Ere daylight came he had sung himself hoa.r.s.e, he had danced two holes in his moccasins, and had conducted three fist-fights to a satisfactory if not a successful conclusion. It had been a celebration that was to live in his memory. He strode blindly off to bed, shouting his complete satisfaction with himself and with the world, retired without undressing, and then sang himself to sleep, regardless of the protests of the other lodgers.

"Say! That Frenchman is a riot," Kid Bridges declared while he and Lucky Broad were at breakfast. "He's old General Rough-houser, and he set an altogether new mark in disorderly conduct last night.

Letty 'most cried about it."

"Yeah? Those yokels are all alike--one drink and they declare a dividend." Lucky was only mildly concerned. "I s'pose the vultures picked him clean."

"Nothin' like it," Bridges shook his head. "He gnawed 'em naked, then done a war-dance with their feathers in his hat. He left 'em bruised an' bleedin'."

For a time the two friends ate in silence, then Broad mused, aloud: "Letty 'most cried, eh? Say, I wonder what she really thinks of him?"

"I don't know. Miller told me she was all broke up, and I was goin' to take her home and see if I could fathom her true feelin's, but--Phillips beat me to it."

"Phillips! He'll have to throw out the life-line if Laure gets onto that. She'll take to Letty just like a lone timber-wolf."

"Looks like she'd been kiddin' us, don't it? She calls him her 'brother' and he says she's his ma.s.seur--you heard him, didn't you?" There was another pause. "What's a ma.s.seur, anyhow?"

"A ma.s.seur," said Mr. Broad, "is one of those women in a barber- shop that fixes your fingernails. Yes, I heard him, and I'm here to say that I didn't like the sound of it. I don't yet. He may mean all right, but--them foreigners have got queer ideas about their women. Letty's a swell kid and she's got a swell job. What's more, she's got a wise gang riding herd on her. It's just like she was in a church--no danger, no annoyance, nothing. If Doret figures to start a barber-shop with her for his ma.s.seur, why, we'll have to lay him low with one of his own razors."

Mr. Bridges nodded his complete approval of this suggestion.

"Right-o! I'll bust a mirror with him myself. Them barber-shops is no place for good girls."

Broad and Bridges pondered the matter during the day, and that evening they confided their apprehensions to their fellow-workers.

The other Rialto employees agreed that things did not look right, and after a consultation it was decided to keep a watch upon the girl. This was done. Prompted by their pride in her, and a genuinely unselfish interest in her future, the boys made guarded attempts to discover the true state of her feelings for the French Canadian, but they learned little. Every indirect inquiry was met with a tribute to 'Poleon's character so frank, so extravagant, as to completely baffle them. Some of the investigators declared that Rouletta was madly in love with him; others were equally positive that this extreme frankness in itself proved that she was not. All agreed, however, that 'Poleon was not in love with her--he was altogether too enthusiastic over her growing popularity for a lover. Had the gamblers been thoroughly a.s.sured of her desires in the matter, doubtless they would have made some desperate effort to marry 'Poleon to her, regardless of his wishes-they were men who believed in direct action--but under the circ.u.mstances they could only watch and wait until the uncertainty was cleared up.

Meanwhile, as 'Poleon continued his celebration, Rouletta grew more and more miserable; at last he sobered up--sufficiently to realize he was hurting her. He was frankly puzzled at this; he met her reproaches with careless good-nature, brushing aside the remonstrances of Lucky Broad and his fellows by declaring that he was having the time of his life, and arguing that he injured n.o.body. In the end the girl prevailed upon him to stop drinking, and then bound him to further sobriety by means of a sacred pledge. When, perhaps a week later, he disappeared into the hills Rouletta and her corps of self-appointed guardians breathed easier.

But the boys did not relax their watchfulness; Rouletta was their charge and they took good care of her. None of the Rialto's patrons, for instance, was permitted to follow up his first acquaintance with "the lady dealer." Some member of the clan was always on hand to frown down such an attempt. Broad or Bridges usually brought her to work and took her home, the s...o...b..rd and the Mocha Kid made it a practice to take her to supper, and when she received invitations from other sources one or the other of them firmly declined, in her name, and treated the would-be host with such malevolent suspicion that the invitation was never repeated. Far from taking offense at this espionage, Rouletta rather enjoyed it; she grew to like these ruffians, and that liking became mutual. Soon most of them took her into their confidence with a completeness that threatened to embarra.s.s her, as, for instance, when they discussed in her hearing incidents in their colorful lives that the Mounted Police would have given much to know. The Mocha Kid, in particular, was addicted to reminiscence of an incriminating sort, and he totally ignored Rouletta's protests at sharing the secrets of his guilty past. As for the s...o...b..rd, he was fond of telling her fairy-stories. They were queer fairy-stories, all beginning in the same way: