“I had.”

“And now?”

“No.”

Hay Stockard swept the blood from his eyes and laughed.  The missionary looked at him curiously, as in a dream.  A feeling of infinite distance came over him, as though of a great remove.  In that which had transpired, and which was to transpire, he had no part.  He was a spectator—­at a distance, yes, at a distance.  The words of Baptiste came to him faintly:-

“Very good.  See that this man go free, and that no harm befall him.  Let him depart in peace.  Give him a canoe and food.  Set his face toward the Russians, that he may tell their priests of Baptiste the Red, in whose country there is no god.”

They led him to the edge of the steep, where they paused to witness the final tragedy.  The half-breed turned to Hay Stockard.

“There is no god,” he prompted.

The man laughed in reply.  One of the young men poised a war-spear for the cast.

“Hast thou a god?”

“Ay, the God of my fathers.”

He shifted the axe for a better grip.  Baptiste the Red gave the sign, and the spear hurtled full against his breast.  Sturges Owen saw the ivory head stand out beyond his back, saw the man sway, laughing, and snap the shaft short as he fell upon it.  Then he went down to the river, that he might carry to the Russians the message of Baptiste the Red, in whose country there was no god.

THE GREAT INTERROGATION

I

To say the least, Mrs. Sayther’s career in Dawson was meteoric.  She arrived in the spring, with dog sleds and French-Canadian voyageurs, blazed gloriously for a brief month, and departed up the river as soon as it was free of ice.  Now womanless Dawson never quite understood this hurried departure, and the local Four Hundred felt aggrieved and lonely till the Nome strike was made and old sensations gave way to new.  For it had delighted in Mrs. Sayther, and received her wide-armed.  She was pretty, charming, and, moreover, a widow.  And because of this she at once had at heel any number of Eldorado Kings, officials, and adventuring younger sons, whose ears were yearning for the frou-frou of a woman’s skirts.

The mining engineers revered the memory of her husband, the late Colonel Sayther, while the syndicate and promoter representatives spoke awesomely of his deals and manipulations; for he was known down in the States as a great mining man, and as even a greater one in London.  Why his widow, of all women, should have come into the country, was the great interrogation.  But they were a practical breed, the men of the Northland, with a wholesome disregard for theories and a firm grip on facts.  And to not a few of them Karen Sayther was a most essential fact.  That she did not regard the matter in this light, is evidenced by the neatness and celerity with which refusal and proposal tallied off during her four weeks’ stay.  And with her vanished the fact, and only the interrogation remained.