The Yukon Trail | Page 3

mind you," continued the miner.
"Were they working for Macdonald?"
"Yep. His superintendent up there was too soft. These here Swedes got gay. Mac hit the trail for Frozen Gulch. He hammered his big fist into the bread-basket of the ringleader and said, 'Git!' That fellow's running yet, I'll bet. Then Mac called the men together and read the riot act to them. He fired this bunch on the boat and was out of the camp before you could bat an eye. It was the cleanest hurry-up job I ever did see."
"From what I've heard about him he must be a remarkable man."
"He's the biggest man in Alaska, bar none."
This was a subject that interested Gordon Elliot very much. Colby Macdonald and his activities had brought him to the country.
"Do you mean personally--or because he represents the big corporations?"
"Both. His word comes pretty near being law up here, not only because he stands for the Consolidated, but because he's one man from the ground up. I ain't any too strong for that New York bunch of capitalists back of Mac, but I've got to give it to him that he's all there without leaning on anybody."
"I've heard that he's a domineering man--rides roughshod over others. Is that right, Mr. Strong?"
"He's a bear for getting his own way," grinned the little miner. "If you won't get out of his road he peels your hide off and hangs it up to dry. But I can't help liking him. He's big every way you take him. He'll stand the acid, Mac will."
"Do you mean that he's square--honest?"
"You've said two things, my friend," answered Strong dryly. "He's square. If he tells you anything, don't worry because he ain't put down his John Hancock before a notary. He'll see it through to a finish--to a fighting finish if he has to. Don't waste any time looking for fat or yellow streaks in Mac. They ain't there. Nobody ever heard him squeal yet and what's more nobody ever will."
"No wonder men like him."
"But when you say honest--Hell, no! Not the way you define honesty down in the States. He's a grabber, Mac is. Better not leave anything valuable around unless you've got it spiked to the floor. He takes what he wants."
"What does he look like?" asked Gordon.
"Oh, I don't know." Strong hesitated, while he searched for words to show the picture in his mind. "Big as a house--steps out like a buck in the spring--blue-gray eyes that bore right through you."
"How old?"
"Search me. You never think of age when you're looking at him. Forty-five, mebbe--or fifty--I don't know."
"Married?"
"No-o." Hanford Strong nodded in the direction of the Kusiak circle. "They say he's going to marry Mrs. Mallory. She's the one with the red hair."
It struck young Elliot that the miner was dismissing Mrs. Mallory in too cavalier a fashion. She was the sort of woman at whom men look twice, and then continue to look while she appears magnificently unaware of it. Her hair was not red, but of a lustrous bronze, amazingly abundant, and dressed in waves with the careful skill of a coiffeur. Half-shut, smouldering eyes had met his for an instant at dinner across the table and had told him she was a woman subtle and complex. Slightest shades of meaning she could convey with a lift of the eyebrow or an intonation of the musical voice. If she was already fencing with the encroaching years there was little evidence of it in her opulent good looks. She had manifestly specialized in graceful idleness and was prepared to meet with superb confidence the competition of débutantes. The elusive shadow of lost illusions, of knowledge born of experience, was the only betrayal of vanished youth in her equipment.
CHAPTER II
ENTER A MAN
The whistle of the Hannah blew for the Tatlah Cache landing while Strong and Elliot were talking. Wally Selfridge had just bid three hundred seventy and found no help in the widow. He pushed toward each of the other players one red chip and two white ones.
"Can't make it," he announced. "I needed a jack of clubs."
The men counted their chips and settled up in time to reach the deck rail just as the gangplank was thrown out to the wharf. The crew transferred to the landing a pouch of mail, half a ton of sacked potatoes, some mining machinery, and several boxes containing provisions and dry goods.
A man came to the end of the wharf carrying a suitcase. He was well-set, thick in the chest, and broad-shouldered. He came up the gangplank with the strong, firm tread of a man in his prime. Looking down from above, Gordon Elliot guessed him to be in the early thirties.
Mrs. Mallory was the first to recognize him, which she did with a drawling little shout of welcome. "Oh