"Nice people?" The Countess lifted her brows. "You mean those at the Barracks and up on the hill? Yes, they're talking about you, too."

"I can imagine what they say." Rouletta drew her brows together in a frown. "No doubt they think I'm just like the dance-hall girls.

I've seen a few of them--at a distance. They avoid me as if I had measles."

"Naturally. Do you care?"

"Certainly I care. I'd like to be one of them, not a--a specimen.

Wouldn't you?"

"Um-m, perhaps. I dare say I could be one of them if it weren't for Courteau. People forget things quickly in a new country."

"Why did you take him back? I'm sure you don't care for him."

"Not in the least. He's the sort of man you can't love or hate; he's a nine-spot. Just the same, he protects me and--I can't help being sorry for him."

Rouletta smiled. "Fancy you needing protection and him giving--"

"You don't understand. He protects me from myself. I mean it. I'm as unruly as the average woman and I make a fool of myself on the slightest provocation. Henri is a loafer, a good-for-nothing, to be sure, but, nevertheless, I have resumed his support. It was easier than refusing it. I help broken miners. I feed hungry dogs.

Why shouldn't I clothe and feed a helpless husband? It's a perfectly feminine, illogical thing to do."

"Other people don't share your opinion of him. He can be very agreeable, very charming, when he tries."

"Of course. That's his stock in trade; that's his excuse for being. Women are crazy about him, as you probably know, but--give me a man the men like." There was a pause. "So you don't enjoy the thing you're doing?"

"I hate it! I hate the whole atmosphere--the whole underworld.

It's-unhealthy, stifling."

"What has happened?"

Slowly, hesitatingly, Rouletta told of her encounter with Laure.

The Countess listened silently.

"It was an unpleasant shock," the girl concluded, "for it brought me back to my surroundings. It lifted the curtain and showed me what's really going on. It's a pity Pierce Phillips is entangled with that creature, for he's a nice chap and he's got it in him to do big things. But it wasn't much use my trying to tell him that he was cheating himself. I don't think he understood. I feel almost--well, motherly toward him."

Hilda nodded gravely. "Of course you do. He has it."

"Has it? What?"

"The call--the appeal--the same thing that lets Henri get by."

"Oh, he's nothing like the Count!" Rouletta protested, quickly.

The elder woman did not argue the point. "Pierce has more character than Henri, but a man can lose even that in a gambling- house. I was very fond of him--fonder than I knew. Yes, it's a fact. I'm jealous of Laure, jealous of you--"

"JEALOUS? of ME? You're joking!"

"Of course. Don't take me seriously. Nevertheless, I mean it." The Countess smiled queerly and rose to her feet. "It's improper for a married woman to joke about such things, even a woman married to a no-good count, isn't it? And it's foolish, too. Well, I'm going to do something even more foolish--I'm going to give you some advice.

Cut out that young man. He hasn't found himself yet; he's running wild. He's light in ballast and he's rudderless. If he straightens out he'll make some woman very happy; otherwise--he'll create a good deal of havoc. Believe me, I know what I'm talking about, for I collided with Henri and--look at the result!"

CHAPTER XXII

Pierce Phillips possessed the average young American's capacities for good or evil. Had he fallen among healthy surroundings upon his arrival at Dawson, in all probability he would have experienced a healthy growth. But, blown by the winds of chance, he took root where he dropped--in the low grounds. Since he possessed the youthful power of quick and vigorous adaptation, he a.s.sumed a color to match his environment. Of necessity this alteration was gradual; nevertheless, it was real; without knowing it he suffered a steady deterioration of moral fiber and a progressive change in ideals.

His new life was easy; hours at the Rialto were short and the pay was high. Inasmuch as the place was a playground where cares were forgotten, there was a wholly artificial atmosphere of gaiety and improvidence about it. When patrons won at the gambling-games, they promptly squandered their winnings at the bar and in the theater; when they lost, they cheerfully ignored their ill- fortune. Even the gamblers themselves shared this recklessness, this prodigality; they made much money; nevertheless, they were usually broke. Most of them drank quite as freely as did the customers.

This was not a temperance country. Although alcohol was not considered a food, it was none the less regarded as a prime essential of comfort and well-being. It was inevitable, therefore, that Pierce Phillips, a youth in his growing age, should adopt a good deal the same habits, as well as the same spirit and outlook, as the people with whom he came in daily contact.

Vice is erroneously considered hideous; it is supposed to have a visage so repulsive that the simplest stranger will shudder at sight of it and turn of his own accord to more attractive Virtue.

If that were only true! More often than not it is the former that wears a smile and masquerades in agreeable forms, while the latter repels. This is true of the complex life of the city, where a man has landmarks and guide-posts of conduct to go by, and it is equally true of the less complicated life of the far frontier where he must blaze his own trail. Along with the strength and vigor and independence derived from the great outdoors, there comes also a freedom of individual conduct, an impatience at irksome restraints, that frequently offsets any benefits that accrue from such an environment.

So it was in Pierce's case. He realized, subconsciously, that he was changing, had changed; on the whole, he was glad of it. It filled him with contemptuous amus.e.m.e.nt, for instance, to look back upon his old puritanical ideas. They seemed now very narrow, very immature, very impractical, and he was gratified at his broader vision. The most significant alteration, however, entirely escaped his notice. That alteration was one of outlook rather than of inlook. Bit by bit he had come to regard the general crowd--the miners, merchants, townspeople--as outsiders, and him self as an insider--one of the wise, clever, ease-loving cla.s.s which subsisted without toil and for whom a freer code of morals existed. Those outsiders were stupid, hard-working; they were somehow inferior. He and his kind were of a higher, more advanced order of intelligence; moreover, they were bound together by the ties of a common purpose and understanding and therefore enjoyed privileges denied their less efficient brethren.

If jackals were able to reason, doubtless they would justify their existence and prove their superiority to the common herd by some such fatuous argument.

Pierce's complacency received its first jolt when he discovered that he had lost caste in the eyes of the better sort of people-- people such as he had been accustomed to a.s.sociate with at home.

This discovery came as the result of a chance meeting with a stranger, and, but for it, he probably would have remained unaware of the truth, for his newly made friends had treated him with consideration and nothing had occurred to disturb his complacency.

He had acquired a speaking acquaintance with many of the best citizens, including the Mounted Police and even the higher Dominion officials, all of whom came to the Rialto. These men professed a genuine liking for him, and, inasmuch as his time was pretty full and there was plenty of amus.e.m.e.nt close at hand, he had never stopped to think that the side of Dawson life which he saw was merely the under side--that a real social community was forming, with real homes on the back streets, where already women of the better sort were living. Oblivious of these facts, it never occurred to Pierce to wonder why these men did not ask him to their cabins or why he did not meet their families.

He had long since become a night-hawk, mainly through a growing fondness for gambling, and he had arrived at the point where daylight impressed him as an artificial and unsatisfactory method of illumination. Recently, too, he had been drinking more than was good for him, and he awoke finally to the unwelcome realization that he was badly in need of fresh air and outdoor exercise.

After numerous half-hearted attempts, he arose one day about noon; then, having eaten a tasteless breakfast and strengthened his languid determination by a stiff gla.s.s of "hootch," he strolled out of town, taking he first random trail that offered itself. It was a wood trail, leading nowhere in particular, a fact which precisely suited his resentful mood. His blood moved sluggishly, he was short of breath, the cold was bitter. Before long he decided that walking was a profitless and stultifying occupation, a pastime for idiots and solitaire-players; nevertheless, he continued in the hope of deriving some benefit, however indirect or remote.

It was a still afternoon. A silvery brightness beyond the mountain crests far to the southward showed where the low winter sun was sweeping past on its flat arc. The sky to the north was empty, colorless. There had been no wind for some time, and now the firs sagged beneath burdens of white; even the bare birch branches carried evenly balanced inch-deep layers of snow. Underfoot, the earth was smothered in a feathery shroud as light, as clean as the purest swan's-down, and into it Pierce's moccasins sank to the ankles. He walked as silently as a ghost. Through this queer, breathless hush the sounds of chopping, of distant voices, of an occasional dog barking followed him as he went deeper into the woods.

Time was when merely to be out in the forest on such a day would have pleased him, but gone entirely was that pleasure, and in its place there came now an irritation at the physical discomfort it entailed. He soon began to perspire freely, too freely; nevertheless, there was no glow to his body; he could think only of easy-chairs and warm stoves. He wondered what ailed him.

Nothing could be more abhorrent than this, he told himself. Health was a valuable thing, no doubt, and he agreed that no price was too high to pay for it--no price, perhaps, except dull, uninteresting exercise of this sort. He was upon the point of turning back when the trail suddenly broke out into a natural clearing and he saw something which challenged his attention.

To the left of the path rose a steep bank, and beyond that the bare, sloping mountain-side. In the shelter of the bank the snow had drifted deep, but, oddly enough, its placid surface was churned up, as if from an explosion or some desperate conflict that had been lately waged. It had been tossed up and thrown down.

What caused him to stare was the fact that no footprints were discernible--nothing except queer, wavering parallel streaks that led downward from the snowy turmoil to the level ground below.

They resembled the tracks of some oddly fashioned sled.

Pierce halted, and with bent head was studying the phenomenon, when close above him he heard the rush of a swiftly approaching body; he looked up just in time to behold an apparition utterly unexpected, utterly astounding. Swooping directly down upon him with incredible velocity was what seemed at first glance to be a bird-woman, a valkyr out of the pages of Norse mythology. Wingless she was, yet she came like the wind, and at the very instant Pierce raised his eyes she took the air almost over his head-- quite as if he had startled her into an upward flight. Upon her feet was a pair of long, Norwegian skees, and upon these she had scudded down the mountain-side; where the bank dropped away she had leaped, and now, like a meteor, she soared into s.p.a.ce. This amazing creature was clad in a blue-and-white toboggan suit, short skirt, sweater jacket, and knitted cap. As she hung outlined against the wintry sky Pierce caught a snap-shot glimpse of a fair, flushed, youthful face set in a ludicrous expression of open-mouthed dismay at sight of him. He heard, too, a high-pitched cry, half of warning, half of fright; the next instant there was a mighty upheaval of snow, an explosion of feathery white, as the human projectile landed, then a blur of blue-and-white stripes as it went rolling down the declivity.

"Good Lord!" Pierce cried, aghast; then he sped after the apparition. Only for the evidence of that undignified tumble, he would have doubted the reality of this flying Venus and considered her some creature of his imagination. There she lay, however, a thing of flesh and blood, bruised, broken, helpless; apprehensively he pictured himself staggering back to town with her in his arms.

He halted, speechless, when the girl sat up, shook the snow out of her hair, gingerly felt one elbow, then the other, and finally burst into a peal of ringing laughter. The face she lifted to his, now that it wore a normal expression, was wholly charming; it was, in fact, about the freshest, the cleanest, the healthiest and the frankest countenance he had ever looked into.

"Glory be!" he stammered. "I thought you were--completely spoiled."

"I'm badly twisted," the girl managed to gasp, "but I guess I'm all here. Oh! What a b.u.mp!"

"You scared me. I never dreamed--I didn't hear a thing until-- Well, I looked up and there you were. The sky was full of you.

Gee! I thought I'd lost my mind. Are you quite sure you're all right?"

"Oh, I'll be black and blue again, but I'm used to that. That's the funniest one I've had, the very funniest. Why don't you laugh?"