Dickensen could not understand his speech, and Emily Travis laughed.  Imber turned from one to the other, frowning, but both shook their heads.  He was about to go away, when she called out: 

“Oh, Jimmy!  Come here!”

Jimmy came from the other side of the street.  He was a big, hulking Indian clad in approved white-man style, with an Eldorado king’s sombrero on his head.  He talked with Imber, haltingly, with throaty spasms.  Jimmy was a Sitkan, possessed of no more than a passing knowledge of the interior dialects.

“Him Whitefish man,” he said to Emily Travis.  “Me savve um talk no very much.  Him want to look see chief white man.”

“The Governor,” suggested Dickensen.

Jimmy talked some more with the Whitefish man, and his face went grave and puzzled.

“I t’ink um want Cap’n Alexander,” he explained.  “Him say um kill white man, white woman, white boy, plenty kill um white people.  Him want to die.”

“Insane, I guess,” said Dickensen.

“What you call dat?” queried Jimmy.

Dickensen thrust a finger figuratively inside his head and imparted a rotary motion thereto.

“Mebbe so, mebbe so,” said Jimmy, returning to Imber, who still demanded the chief man of the white men.

A mounted policeman (unmounted for Klondike service) joined the group and heard Imber’s wish repeated.  He was a stalwart young fellow, broad-shouldered, deep-chested, legs cleanly built and stretched wide apart, and tall though Imber was, he towered above him by half a head.  His eyes were cool, and gray, and steady, and he carried himself with the peculiar confidence of power that is bred of blood and tradition.  His splendid masculinity was emphasized by his excessive boyishness,—­he was a mere lad,—­and his smooth cheek promised a blush as willingly as the cheek of a maid.

Imber was drawn to him at once.  The fire leaped into his eyes at sight of a sabre slash that scarred his cheek.  He ran a withered hand down the young fellow’s leg and caressed the swelling thew.  He smote the broad chest with his knuckles, and pressed and prodded the thick muscle-pads that covered the shoulders like a cuirass.  The group had been added to by curious passers-by—­husky miners, mountaineers, and frontiersmen, sons of the long-legged and broad-shouldered generations.  Imber glanced from one to another, then he spoke aloud in the Whitefish tongue.

“What did he say?” asked Dickensen.

“Him say um all the same one man, dat p’liceman,” Jimmy interpreted.

Little Dickensen was little, and what of Miss Travis, he felt sorry for having asked the question.

The policeman was sorry for him and stepped into the breach.  “I fancy there may be something in his story.  I’ll take him up to the captain for examination.  Tell him to come along with me, Jimmy.”

Jimmy indulged in more throaty spasms, and Imber grunted and looked satisfied.