Lost Face | Page 9

Makamuk swung the axe, a broadaxe for the
squaring of logs. The bright steel flashed through the frosty air, poised
for a perceptible instant above Makamuk's head, then descended upon
Subienkow's bare neck. Clear through flesh and bone it cut its way,
biting deeply into the log beneath. The amazed savages saw the head
bounce a yard away from the blood-spouting trunk.
There was a great bewilderment and silence, while slowly it began to
dawn in their minds that there had been no medicine. The fur-thief had
outwitted them. Alone, of all their prisoners, he had escaped the torture.

That had been the stake for which he played. A great roar of laughter
went up. Makamuk bowed his head in shame. The fur- thief had fooled
him. He had lost face before all his people. Still they continued to roar
out their laughter. Makamuk turned, and with bowed head stalked away.
He knew that thenceforth he would be no longer known as Makamuk.
He would be Lost Face; the record of his shame would be with him
until he died; and whenever the tribes gathered in the spring for the
salmon, or in the summer for the trading, the story would pass back and
forth across the camp-fires of how the fur-thief died peaceably, at a
single stroke, by the hand of Lost Face.
"Who was Lost Face?" he could hear, in anticipation, some insolent
young buck demand, "Oh, Lost Face," would be the answer, "he who
once was Makamuk in the days before he cut off the fur-thief's head."

TRUST

All lines had been cast off, and the Seattle No. 4 was pulling slowly out
from the shore. Her decks were piled high with freight and baggage,
and swarmed with a heterogeneous company of Indians, dogs, and
dog-mushers, prospectors, traders, and homeward-bound gold- seekers.
A goodly portion of Dawson was lined up on the bank, saying
good-bye. As the gang-plank came in and the steamer nosed into the
stream, the clamour of farewell became deafening. Also, in that
eleventh moment, everybody began to remember final farewell
messages and to shout them back and forth across the widening stretch
of water. Louis Bondell, curling his yellow moustache with one hand
and languidly waving the other hand to his friends on shore, suddenly
remembered something and sprang to the rail.
"Oh, Fred!" he bawled. "Oh, Fred!
The "Fred" desired thrust a strapping pair of shoulders through the
forefront of the crowd on the bank and tried to catch Louis Bondell's
message. The latter grew red in the face with vain vociferation. Still the

water widened between steamboat and shore.
"Hey, you, Captain Scott!" he yelled at the pilot-house. "Stop the boat!"
The gongs clanged, and the big stern wheel reversed, then stopped. All
hands on steamboat and on bank took advantage of this respite to
exchange final, new, and imperative farewells. More futile than ever
was Louis Bondell's effort to make himself heard. The Seattle No. 4
lost way and drifted down-stream, and Captain Scott had to go ahead
and reverse a second time. His head disappeared inside the pilot- house,
coming into view a moment later behind a big megaphone.
Now Captain Scott had a remarkable voice, and the "Shut up!" he
launched at the crowd on deck and on shore could have been heard at
the top of Moosehide Mountain and as far as Klondike City. This
official remonstrance from the pilot-house spread a film of silence over
the tumult.
"Now, what do you want to say?" Captain Scott demanded.
"Tell Fred Churchill--he's on the bank there--tell him to go to
Macdonald. It's in his safe--a small gripsack of mine. Tell him to get it
and bring it out when he comes."
In the silence Captain Scott bellowed the message ashore through the
megaphone
"You, Fred Churchill, go to Macdonald--in his safe--small gripsack--
belongs to Louis Bondell--important! Bring it out when you come! Got
it!"
Churchill waved his hand in token that he had got it. In truth, had
Macdonald, half a mile away, opened his window, he'd have got it, too.
The tumult of farewell rose again, the gongs clanged, and the Seattle
No. 4 went ahead, swung out into the stream, turned on her heel, and
headed down the Yukon, Bondell and Churchill waving farewell and
mutual affection to the last.

That was in midsummer. In the fall of the year, the W. H. Willis started
up the Yukon with two hundred homeward-bound pilgrims on board.
Among them was Churchill. In his state-room, in the middle of a
clothes-bag, was Louis Bondell's grip. It was a small, stout leather
affair, and its weight of forty pounds always made Churchill nervous
when he wandered too far from it. The man in the adjoining state-room
had a treasure of gold-dust