“Back ’n a minute.”  But he was gone a long time.

Benham looked down the toast-list and smiled inwardly, for it was Klondyked from top to bottom.  The others, too, stole uneasy glances at that programme, staring them in the face, unabashed, covertly ironic—­nay, openly jeering.  They actually hadn’t noticed the fact before, but every blessed speech was aimed straight at the wonderful gold camp across the line—­not the Klondyke of Benham’s croaking, but the Klondyke of their dreams.

Even the death’s head at the feast regretted the long postponement of so spirited a programme, interspersed, as it promised to be, with songs, dances, and “tricks,” and winding up with an original poem, “He won’t be happy till he gets it.”

Benham’s Indian had got up and gone out.  Kaviak had tried to go too, but the door was slammed in his face.  He stood there with his nose to the crack exactly as a dog does.  Suddenly he ran back to Mac and tugged at his arm.  Even the dull white men could hear an ominous snarling among the Mahlemeuts.

Out of the distance a faint answering howl of derision from some enemy, advancing or at bay.  It was often like this when two teams put up at the Big Chimney Camp.

“Reckon our dogs are gettin’ into trouble,” said Salmon P. anxiously to his deaf and crippled partner.

“It’s nothing,” says the Trader.  “A Siwash dog of any spirit is always trailing his coat”; and Salmon P. subsided.

Not so Kaviak.  Back to the door, head up, he listened.  They had observed the oddity before.  The melancholy note of the Mahlemeut never yet had failed to stir his sombre little soul.  He was standing now looking up at the latch, high, and made for white men, eager, breathing fast, listening to that dismal sound that is like nothing else in nature—­listening as might an exiled Scot to the skirl of bagpipes; listening as a Tyrolese who hears yodelling on foreign hills, or as the dweller in a distant land to the sound of the dear home speech.

The noise outside grew louder, the air was rent with howls of rage and defiance.

“Sounds as if there’s ’bout a million mad dogs on your front stoop,” says Schiff, knowing there must be a great deal going on if any of it reached his ears.

“You set still.”  His pardner pushed him down on his stool.  “Mr. Benham and I’ll see what’s up.”

The Trader leisurely opened the door, Salmon P. keeping modestly behind, while Kaviak darted forward only to be caught back by Mac.  An avalanche of sound swept in—­a mighty howling and snarling and cracking of whips, and underneath the higher clamour, human voices—­and in dashes the Boy, powdered with snow, laughing and balancing carefully in his mittened hands a little Yukon spruce, every needle diamond-pointed, every sturdy branch white with frost crystals and soft woolly snow, and bearing its little harvest of curious fruit—­sweet-cake rings and stars and two gingerbread men hanging by pack-thread from the white and green branches, the Noah’s Ark lodged in one crotch, the very amateur snow-shoes in another, and the lost toys wrapped up, transfigured in tobacco-foil, dangling merrily before Kaviak’s incredulous eyes.