Where the Sun Swings North | Page 4

. . . What's a man going to do when he finds
himself on the edge of the wilderness and--he wants a woman?"
Kilbuck's voice rose slightly, his black brows drew together over the
pale, unseeing eyes that sought the distant peaks, his thin nostrils
quivered. "It's a wild country up here, Kayak. Makes a man hunger for
something soft and feminine--and where's the pale-faced woman who
would follow a man into this--" He finished his sentence with a wave of
his hand. "That is a woman one would marry," he amended. "The
average female of that country down south has no spirit of adventure in
her make-up."
Kayak Bill closed his clasp-knife, restored it to his pocket and slowly
drew forth an ancient corn-cob pipe.
"Wall, Chief," he drawled presently between puffs, "I ain't a-sayin' yore
not right, seein' as you've had consid'able more experience with
petticoats than me; but one time I hearn a couple o' scientific dudes
a-talkin' about females and they was of the notion that sons gets their
brains and their natures from their mammies." Disregarding the
contemptuous sound uttered by the White Chief, Kayak's slow tones
flowed on: "And I'm purty nigh pursuaded them fellows is right. . . .
Take it down in Texas now, where I was drug up. I'm noticin' a heap o'
times how the meechinest, quietest little old ladies has the rarin'est,
terrin'-est sons, hell-bent on fightin' and adventure. . . . Kinder seems to
me, Chief, that our women has been bottled up so long by us men folks
they just ain't had no chance to strike out that way, except by givin' o'
their natures to their sons. You take any little gal, Chief, a-fore they get
her taken with the notion that it ain't lady-like to fight, and by hell, she
can lick tar outen any boy her size in the neighborhood. Same way with
she-bears, or a huskie bitch. Durned if they don't beat all get-out when
it comes to fightin' courage!"
Kayak Bill drew once or twice on his pipe with apparently
unsatisfactory results, for he slowly removed his sombrero, drew a
broom-straw from inside the band, extracted the stem of the corn-cob
and ran the straw through it. The immediate vicinity became
impregnated with a violent odor of nicotine. The White Chief, however,

musing close by on the steps, seemed not to notice it. His eyes were
fixed on three Indian canoes being paddled in from the lagoon across
the bay which was now taking on the opalescent tints of the late Alaska
sunset.
"What I been a-sayin' goes for the white women, Chief. As for them
Chocolate Drops--wall, I ain't made up my mind exactly. 'Pears to me if
I ever went a-courtin' though, it would be just like goin' a-huntin': no
fun in it if the end was certain and easy-like. Barrin' the case of
Silvertip and Senott, his squaw, it's like this: you say 'Come,' and they
come. You say 'Go,' and they go. Now, a white woman ain't that way.
By the roarin' Jasus, you never can tell which way she's goin' to jump!"
Kayak Bill held the stem of his pipe up to the light and squinted
through it, fitted it again into the bowl and gave an experimental draw.
"But everybody to his own cemetery, says I."
"Bill, you old reprobate, you have an uncanny way of picking the weak
spots in everything. There's some truth in that last. . . . Gad, I'd like to
get into a game of love with a woman of my own blood up here in the
wilderness! . . . There's never been a white woman in Katleean. It
would be great sport to see one up against it here, eh, Kayak?" The
White Chief turned, smiling, and the light in his pale, narrow eyes
matched the wolfish gleam of his sharp teeth.
The face of the old hootch-maker was hidden in a smoke cloud, but his
voice drawled on as calmly as ever: "Wall, from what I hearn tell when
I'm over at the Chilcat Cannery, Chief, you may get a chance to see a
white woman at Katleean purty soon. There's a prospector named
Boreland a-cruisin' up the coast in his own schooner, the Hoonah, and
from what I can make out he's got his wife and little boy with him."
The trader turned sharply. Like a hungry wolf scenting quarry he raised
his head. There was a keener look in his eye. His thin nostrils twitched.
"A white woman, Kayak? Are you sure?"
Before Kayak Bill could answer there came an extra loud burst of song
from the cabin across the courtyard. The door had been flung wide and

in the opening swayed the arresting figure of the leader