The Hunt Pack

Out of the fog-bank stepped two figures, a man and a woman, fresh from the trail. Their parkas where they clung tightly over their backs and sagged on their hips were rimmed with hoarfrost, advertising body-sweat congealed, and about the close-drawn puckers of their hoods icicles hung like tusks.

Upon the two were the unmistakable signs of the Chilkoot climb. New recruits to the ranks of the strong they seemed, and the triumphant army in the Saxon acclaimed them with a thunderous cheer.

The man and the woman held their heads over the heat. The icy tusks thawed and fell to sizzle and steam upon the glowing stove-top. The two shoved back the parka hoods and nodded genially to their welcomers.

But the moment the newcomers’ faces were bared, a thick-set man in moccasins, German socks and bearskin coat stagged off at the hips, rose up on the other side of the stove and peered sharply through the steam. Next, an unspoken question in his eyes, he gazed significantly at his six companions around the fire. They likewise scrutinized the late arrivals for a keen second, looked back at the thick-set man in the stagged-off bearskin and nodded grimly.

Whereupon the bearskin-clad one raised an authoritative hand amid the bedlam of the Saxon.

At once the din lessened.

“What’s up, Bassett?” yelled an irrepressible member of the dance crowd. “Relatives of yours?”

“Maybe they come through the Chilkoot by tunnel and ain’t had the third degree of the Pass!” hazarded another facetiously. “Tom’s going to find out.”

But Tom Bassett had stepped swiftly round the stove and laid a hand upon the shoulder of the man in the parka.

“What might your name be, stranger?”

“Karle Lott.”

“Lie number one! It’s Jose Cantine. And who’s the woman with you?”

“My wife!” He resentfully shook off Bassett’s hand.

“Lie number two, you hound! It’s Eric Sark’s wife—vamoosed with in White Pass City months and months back! Aw, hold up!” Bassett seized the hand that dived under the parka and jerked it forth again. “You don’t go gunnin’ with me. If you was fair game I’d sure let you, but you ain’t. My pardner Sark’s got a mortgage on you. And if I was over in his place establishin’ relay camps on another trail and he was here in mine you’d pay right now. I’m sufferin’ sorry he ain’t here, but all the same it’s a bloody short morator-ee-um you’re gittin’, Cantine. Savvy? That’s why I’m lettin’ you stay hull-skinned.”

“Well, if you’re lettin’ me stay whole-skinned what you crossin’ me for then?” fiercely demanded the man in the parka, anger darkening his already dark eyes, tensing sharper his already sharp features. “Mind, I ain’t admittin’ I’m Cantine either. But if I was Cantine, and you ain’t goin’ to perforate Cantine on sight, what in Hades do you mean?”

“Mean?” echoed Bassett. “Your gall is sure chilled steel and case-hardened on top. Do you think as me or any other white man’s goin’ to eat, drink or sleep with or breathe the same air as you? You as broke the bond of bread and blanket, the Northland law as no man ever breaks, and lives to boast of it! Days on end I seen you sit at table with my pardner Sark under his own roof in White Pass City. Nights on end I seen you smoke by his fireside and bed down in his blankets. And with the guile of your stinkin’ soul you was plannin’ and executin’ his betrayal every blasted minute of the time!

“Then ag’in, do you think as any woman in this camp’s goin’ to suffer the companionship of yon female you call your wife who’s ten times guiltier’n you? The girls of Happy Camp is slightly frivolous and not what you’d term pernickety, but they draw the line at her. And I tell you, Cantine, I draw the line at you. I wouldn’t deserve to be called Sark’s pardner if I didn’t. I wouldn’t deserve to be called a white man if I didn’t. I’m strong for sanitation here. The likes of you two is stench and putrefaction in a healthy place. Savvy what I mean? You git to blazes outa Happy’ Camp!”

Bassett released the other’s wrist as he spoke, and the man, his lips drawn up in a wolf-dog’s snarl, stepped back a yard.

“I’ll be bludgeoned if we do!” he snapped. “You ain’t proved anything yet. Anyway there ain’t anything to prove.”

Tom Bassett gazed at him with a wearied air and resignedly waved a hand to his companions.

“Who is he, men?” he asked.

As one man, six of them took pipes out of their mouths, lowered their feet from the guard-rail of the stove, and spat toward the damper.

“Jose Cantine!” they chorused. Immediately their feet went up to the guard-rail again, and their pipes went back to their mouths.

“And about the woman!” Bassett paused and scanned the throng of dancers. “Where’s White-Pass-City Winnie?” he asked. “Ain’t she here tonight? I thought I seen her yeller dress somewhar. Oh, she’s at the back, eh? Well, trot her forrard.”

The throng shifted, leaving an irregular lane in its center.

Through this lane a fresh-faced girl of twenty-four or -five pushed from the rear, the rustle of her canary-satin dress and the tap-tap of her dainty pumps falling with strange distinctness across the silence of the Saxon.

“Winnie, shake hands with an old friend of yours!” yawned Bassett.

White-Pass-City Winnie gave one swift, curious glance at the woman by the stove and recoiled, her nose in the air.

“Me? Shake with Blera Sark? Not much! And if I’d shamed as good a man as Eric Sark for a cur like Jose Cantine I’d spare my old friends the sight of my face!”

Winnie, arms folded so tight as to lock her hands away from any possible contamination, flounced back into the front rank of the dance-crowd and remained there standing on her dignity and her high heels.

For a little the other woman gazed fixedly at her scorner. Then her flushed face, still handsome in spite of the marring frontier life, began to quiver and work. Her hands clenched upon the breast of her parka, and tears splashed down and hissed upon the stove.

“You—you—vixen!” she choked.

For revelation as well as inexpressible hurt was White-Pass-City Winnie’s opinion of her social status.