“It happened when we rocked the bars of Forty Mile, before ever a Chechako had crossed the Chilcoot.  I went over to the headwaters of the Tanana.  Into the big valley I went and got lost in the Flats.  ’Tis a wild country, rimmed by high mountains, full of niggerheads and tundra, with the river windin’ clean back to the source of the Copper.  I run out of grub.  We always did them days, and built a raft to float down to the Yukon.  A race with starvation, and a dead heat it near proved, too, though I had a shade the best of it.  I drifted out into the main river, ravin’ mad, my ‘Mukluks’ eat off and my moose-hide gun cover inside of me.

“A girl spied me from the village, and ’twas her brought me ashore in her birch-bark and tended me in her wick-i-up till reason came and the blood ran through me again.

“I mind seein’ a white man stand around at times and hearin’ him beg her to leave me to the old squaws.  She didn’t though.  She gave me bits of moose meat and berries and dried salmon, and when I come to one day I saw she was little and brown and pleadin’ and her clothes all covered with beads.  Her eyes was big and sad, Cap, and dimples poked into her cheeks when she laughed.

“’Twas then that Orloff takes a hand—­the white man.  A priest he called himself; breed, Russian.  Maybe he was, but a blacker hearted thief never wronged a child.  He wanted the girl, Metla, and so did I. When I asked her old man for her he said she was promised to the Russian.  I laughed at him, and a chief hates to be mocked.  You know what sway the Church has over these Indians.  Well, Orloff is a strong man.  He held ’em like a rock.  He worked on ’em till one day the tribemen came to me in a body and said, ‘Go!’

“‘Give me the girl, and I will,’ says I.

“Orloff sneered.  ‘She was mine for a month before ye came,’ says he with the fiend showin’ back of his eyes.  ‘Do ye want her now?’

“For a minute I believed him.  I struck once to kill, and he went down.  They closed on me as fast as I shook ’em off.  ’Twas a beautiful sight for a ruction, on the high banks over the river, but I was like water from the sickness.  I fought to get at their priest where he lay, to stamp out his grinning face before they downed me, but I was beat back to the bluff and I battled with my heels over the edge.  I broke a pole from the fish-rack and a good many went down.  Then I heard Metla calling softly from below:—­

“‘Jump!’ she said.  ‘Big one, jump.’

“She had loosed a canoe at the landing and now held it in the boiling current underneath, paddling desperately.

“As they ran out of the tents with their rifles I leaped.

“A long drop and cold water, but I hit feet first.  When I rose the little girl was alongside.

“It’s a ticklish thing to crawl over the stern of a canoe in the spatter of slugs, with the roar of muzzle-loaders above.  It’s shakin’ to the nerves, but the maid never flinched, not even when a bullet split the gunnel.  She ripped a piece of her dress and plugged a hole under the water line while I paddled out of range.