Regarding Lucile, Corliss was disappointed.  “I confess I cannot understand her,” he said to Colonel Trethaway.  “I thought her bench claim would make her independent of the Opera House.”

“You can’t get a dump out in a day,” the colonel interposed.

“But you can mortgage the dirt in the ground when it prospects as hers does.  Yet I took that into consideration, and offered to advance her a few thousand, non-interest bearing, and she declined.  Said she didn’t need it,—­in fact, was really grateful; thanked me, and said that any time I was short to come and see her.”

Trethaway smiled and played with his watch-chain.  “What would you?  Life, even here, certainly means more to you and me than a bit of grub, a piece of blanket, and a Yukon stove.  She is as gregarious as the rest of us, and probably a little more so.  Suppose you cut her off from the Opera House,—­what then?  May she go up to the Barracks and consort with the captain’s lady, make social calls on Mrs. Schoville, or chum with Frona?  Don’t you see?  Will you escort her, in daylight, down the public street?”

“Will you?” Vance demanded.

“Ay,” the colonel replied, unhesitatingly, “and with pleasure.”

“And so will I; but—­” He paused and gazed gloomily into the fire.  “But see how she is going on with St. Vincent.  As thick as thieves they are, and always together.”

“Puzzles me,” Trethaway admitted.  “I can grasp St. Vincent’s side of it.  Many irons in the fire, and Lucile owns a bench claim on the second tier of French Hill.  Mark me, Corliss, we can tell infallibly the day that Frona consents to go to his bed and board,—­if she ever does consent.”

“And that will be?”

“The day St. Vincent breaks with Lucile.”

Corliss pondered, and the colonel went on.

“But I can’t grasp Lucile’s side of it.  What she can see in St. Vincent—­”

“Her taste is no worse than—­than that of the rest of the women,” Vance broke in hotly.  “I am sure that—­”

“Frona could not display poor taste, eh?” Corliss turned on his heel and walked out, and left Colonel Trethaway smiling grimly.

Vance Corliss never knew how many people, directly and indirectly, had his cause at heart that Christmas week.  Two men strove in particular, one for him and one for the sake of Frona.  Pete Whipple, an old-timer in the land, possessed an Eldorado claim directly beneath French Hill, also a woman of the country for a wife,—­a swarthy breed, not over pretty, whose Indian mother had mated with a Russian fur-trader some thirty years before at Kutlik on the Great Delta.  Bishop went down one Sunday morning to yarn away an hour or so with Whipple, but found the wife alone in the cabin.  She talked a bastard English gibberish which was an anguish to hear, so the pocket-miner resolved to smoke a pipe and depart without rudeness.  But he got her tongue wagging, and to such an extent that he stopped and smoked many pipes, and whenever she lagged, urged her on again.  He grunted and chuckled and swore in undertones while he listened, punctuating her narrative regularly with hells! which adequately expressed the many shades of interest he felt.