“Even about the wolves?”

She dropped her hands, bracing herself a little on the table, and turned her face, looking, with that manner of one helplessly trapped, around the room.

“Even about the wolves?” he persisted.

“No.  No,” she admitted at last.

He nodded.  “I thought likely not.  Hollis never told that.  It goes against his grain to be made much of.  He and Dave was cut out of the same block.  But last night in the lobby to the hotel, I happened on a fellow that met him in the pass above Seward.  There were four of ’em mushing through to some mines beyond the Susitna.  It was snowing like blazes when they heard those wolves, and pretty soon Tisdale’s dogs came streaking by through the smother.  Then a gun fired.  It kept up, with just time enough between shots to load, until they came up to him.  He had stopped where a kind of small cave was scooped in the mountainside and put the sled in and turned the huskies loose.  He had had the time, too, to make a fire in front of the hole, but when the boys got there, his wood was about burned out, and the wolves had got Dave’s old husky, Jack.  He had done his best to help hold off the pack.  There’s no telling how many Hollis killed; you see the rest fell on ’em soon’s they dropped.  It was hell.  Nothing but hair and blood and bones churned into the snow far as you could see.  Excuse me, ma’am; I guess it sounds a little rough.  I’m more used to talking to men, my, yes.  But the fellow who told me said Hollis knew well enough what was coming at the start, when he heard the first cry of the pack.  He had a chance to make a roadhouse below the pass.  Not one man in a thousand would have stayed by that sled.”

His withered face worked again.  He moved to the door.  “But Dave would have done it.”  His voice took a higher pitch.  “Yes, ma’am, Dave would have done the same for Hollis Tisdale.  They was a team; my, yes.”  He laughed his hard, mirthless laugh.  “Well, so long,” he said.

She did not answer.  Half-way down the corridor Banks looked back through the open door.  She had not moved from the place where he had left her, though her face was turned to the window.  A little farther on, while he waited for the elevator, he saw she had taken the package he had brought from Tisdale.  She stood weighing it, undecided, in her hands, then drew out the table drawer and laid it in.  She paused another instant in uncertainty and, closing the drawer, began to gather up the pieces of gold.

CHAPTER XIX

LUCKY BANKS AND THE PINK CHIFFON