As the Leader feigned to be going home, he made a dash in passing at the stranger’s fish.  It was held tight, and the pirate got off with only a fragment.  Leader gave one swallow and looked back to see how the theft was being taken.  That surprising stranger simply stood there laughing, and holding out the rest of a fine fat fish!  Leader considered a moment, looked the alien up and down, came back, all on guard for sudden rushes, sly kicks, and thwackings, to pay him out.  But nothing of the kind.  The Nigger dog said as plain as speech could make it: 

“You cheechalko person, you look as if you’re actually offering me that fish in good faith.  But I’d be a fool to think so.”

The stranger spoke low and quietly.

They talked for some time.

The owner of the two had shuffled off home again, with Spotty and Red at his heels.

The Leader came quite near, looking almost docile; but he snapped suddenly at the fish with an ugly gleam of eye and fang.  The Boy nearly made the fatal mistake of jumping, but he controlled the impulse, and merely held tight to what was left of the salmon.  He stood quite still, offering it with fair words.  The Leader walked all round him, and seemed with difficulty to recover from his surprise.  The Boy felt that they were just coming to an understanding, when up hurries Peetka, suspicious and out of sorts.

"My dog!" he shouted.  “No sell white man my dog.  Huh! ho—­oh no!” He kicked the Leader viciously, and drove him home, abusing him all the way.  The wonder was that the wolfish creature didn’t fly at his master’s throat and finish him.

Certainly the stranger’s sympathies were all with the four-legged one of the two brutes.

“—­something about the Leader—­” the Boy said sadly, telling the Colonel what had happened.  “Well, sir, I’d give a hundred dollars to own that dog.”

“So would I,” was the dry rejoinder, “if I were a millionaire like you.”

* * * * *

After supper, their host, who had been sent out to bring in the owner of Red and Spotty, came back saying, “He come.  All come.  Me tell—­you from below Holy Cross!” He laughed and shook his head in a well-pantomimed incredulity, representing popular opinion outside.  Some of the bucks, he added, who had not gone far, had got back with small game.

“And dogs?”

“No.  Dogs in the mountains.  Hunt moose—­caribou.”

The old Ingalik came in, followed by others.  “Some” of the bucks?  There seemed no end to the throng.

Opposite the white men the Indians sat in a semicircle, with the sole intent, you might think, of staring all night at the strangers.  Yet they had brought in Arctic hares and grouse, and even a haunch of venison.  But they laid these things on the floor beside them, and sat with grave unbroken silence till the strangers should declare themselves.  They had also brought, or permitted to follow, not only their wives and daughters, but their children, big and little.