Fortune purred his name for the other’s benefit, and assisted understandingly.  The bunk was built against a side and end of the cabin.  It was a rude affair, the bottom being composed of drift-wood logs overlaid with moss.  At the foot the rough ends of these timbers projected in an uneven row.  From the side next the wall Uri ripped back the moss and removed three of the logs.  The jagged ends he sawed off and replaced so that the projecting row remained unbroken.  Fortune carried in sacks of flour from the cache and piled them on the floor beneath the aperture.  On these Uri laid a pair of long sea-bags, and over all spread several thicknesses of moss and blankets.  Upon this Fortune could lie, with the sleeping furs stretching over him from one side of the bunk to the other, and all men could look upon it and declare it empty.

In the weeks which followed, several domiciliary visits were paid, not a shack or tent in Nome escaping, but Fortune lay in his cranny undisturbed.  In fact, little attention was given to Uri Bram’s cabin; for it was the last place under the sun to expect to find the murderer of John Randolph.  Except during such interruptions, Fortune lolled about the cabin, playing long games of solitaire and smoking endless cigarettes.  Though his volatile nature loved geniality and play of words and laughter, he quickly accommodated himself to Uri’s taciturnity.  Beyond the actions and plans of his pursuers, the state of the trails, and the price of dogs, they never talked; and these things were only discussed at rare intervals and briefly.  But Fortune fell to working out a system, and hour after hour, and day after day, he shuffled and dealt, shuffled and dealt, noted the combinations of the cards in long columns, and shuffled and dealt again.  Toward the end even this absorption failed him, and, head bowed upon the table, he visioned the lively all-night houses of Nome, where the gamekeepers and lookouts worked in shifts and the clattering roulette ball never slept.  At such times his loneliness and bankruptcy stunned him till he sat for hours in the same unblinking, unchanging position.  At other times, his long-pent bitterness found voice in passionate outbursts; for he had rubbed the world the wrong way and did not like the feel of it.

“Life’s a skin-game,” he was fond of repeating, and on this one note he rang the changes.  “I never had half a chance,” he complained.  “I was faked in my birth and flim-flammed with my mother’s milk.  The dice were loaded when she tossed the box, and I was born to prove the loss.  But that was no reason she should blame me for it, and look on me as a cold deck; but she did—­ay, she did.  Why didn’t she give me a show?  Why didn’t the world?  Why did I go broke in Seattle?  Why did I take the steerage, and live like a hog to Nome?  Why did I go to the El Dorado?  I was heading for Big Pete’s and only went for matches.  Why didn’t I have matches?  Why did I want