The Yukon Trail | Page 3

had been drinking, and were in a sullen humor. Elliot gathered from
their talk that they had lost their jobs because they had tried to organize

an incipient strike in the Frozen Gulch district.
"Roughnecks and booze-fighters--that's all they are. But they earn their
way. Not that I blame Macdonald for firing them, 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