“Mustn’t talk!” ordered Mac.  The Colonel raised his head with sudden anger.  It did not mend matters that Maudie was there to hold him down before a lot of men.

“You go to Halifax,” said the Boy to Mac, blustering a trifle.  “The Colonel may stand a little orderin’ about from Maudie—­don’t blame him m’self.  But Kentucky ain’t going to be bossed by any of us.”

The Colonel lay quite still again, and when he spoke it was quietly enough.

“Reckon I’m in the kind of a fix when a man’s got to take orders.”

“Foolishness!  Don’t let him jolly you, boys.  The Colonel’s always sayin’ he ain’t a soldier, but I reckon you better look out how you rile Kentucky!”

The sick man ignored the trifling.  “The worst of it is bein’ so useless.”

“Useless!  You just wait till you see what a lot o’ use we mean to make of you.  No crawlin’ out of it like that.”

“It’s quite true,” said Mac harshly; “we all kind of look to you still.”

“Course we do!” The Boy turned to the others.  “The O’Flynns comin’ all the way out from Dawson to-morrow to get Kentucky’s opinion on a big scheme o’ theirs.  Did you ever hear what that long-headed Lincoln said when the Civil War broke out?  ’I would like to have God on my side, but I must have Kentucky.’”

“I’ve been so out o’ my head, I thought you were arrested.”

“No ‘out of your head’ about it—­was arrested.  They thought I’d cleared Scowl Austin off the earth.”

“Do they know who did?” Potts and Maudie asked in a breath.

“That Klondyke Indian that’s sweet on Princess Muckluck.”

“What had Austin done to him?”

“Nothin’.  Reckon Skookum Bill was about the only man on Bonanza who had no objection to the owner of o.  Said so in Court.”

“What did he kill him for?”

“Well,” said the Boy, “it’s just one o’ those topsy-turvy things that happen up here.  You saw that Indian that came in with Nicholas?  Some years ago he killed a drunken white man who was after him with a knife.  There was no means of tryin’ the Indian where the thing happened, so he was taken outside.

“The Court found he’d done the killin’ in self-defence, and sent him back.  Well, sir, that native had the time of his life bein’ tried for murder.  He’d travelled on a railroad, seen a white man’s city, lived like a lord, and came home to be the most famous man of his tribe.  Got a taste for travel, too.  Comes to the Klondyke, and his fame fires Skookum Bill.  All you got to do is to kill one o’ these white men, and they take you and show you all the wonders o’ the earth.  So he puts a bullet into Austin.”

“Why didn’t he own up, then, and get his reward?”

“Muckluck knew better—­made him hold his tongue about it.”

“And then made him own up when she saw——­”

The boy nodded.

“What’s goin’ to happen?”

“Oh, he’ll swing to-morrow instead o’ me.  By the way, Colonel, a fella hunted me up this mornin’ who’d been to Minook.  Looked good to him.  I’ve sold out Idaho Bar.”