“You should have seen them when they heard me spitting Chinook.  Then I broke loose.  I told them all about themselves, and their people before them; their fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers—­everybody, everything.  Each mean trick they’d played; every scrape they’d got into; every shame that’d fallen them.  And I burned them without fear or favor.  All hands crowded round.  Never had they heard a white man sling their lingo as I did.  Everybody was laughing save the Mission girls.  Even Chief George forgot the paddle, or at least he was swallowing too much respect to dare to use it.

“But the girls.  ‘Oh, don’t, Tommy,’ they cried, the tears running down their cheeks.  ‘Please don’t.  We’ll be good.  Sure, Tommy, sure.’  But I knew them well, and I scorched them on every tender spot.  Nor did I slack away till they came down on their knees, begging and pleading with me to keep quiet.  Then I shot a glance at Chief George; but he did not know whether to have at me or not, and passed it off by laughing hollowly.

“So be.  When I passed the parting with Tilly that night I gave her the word that I was going to be around for a week or so, and that I wanted to see more of her.  Not thick-skinned, her kind, when it came to showing like and dislike, and she looked her pleasure for the honest girl she was.  Ay, a striking lass, and I didn’t wonder that Chief George was taken with her.

“Everything my way.  Took the wind from his sails on the first leg.  I was for getting her aboard and sailing down Wrangel way till it blew over, leaving him to whistle; but I wasn’t to get her that easy.  Seems she was living with an uncle of hers—­guardian, the way such things go—­and seems he was nigh to shuffling off with consumption or some sort of lung trouble.  He was good and bad by turns, and she wouldn’t leave him till it was over with.  Went up to the tepee just before I left, to speculate on how long it’d be; but the old beggar had promised her to Chief George, and when he clapped eyes on me his anger brought on a hemorrhage.

“‘Come and take me, Tommy,’ she says when we bid good-by on the beach.  ‘Ay,’ I answers; ‘when you give the word.’  And I kissed her, white-man-fashion and lover-fashion, till she was all of a tremble like a quaking aspen, and I was so beside myself I’d half a mind to go up and give the uncle a lift over the divide.

“So I went down Wrangel way, past St. Mary’s and even to the Queen Charlottes, trading, running whiskey, turning the sloop to most anything.  Winter was on, stiff and crisp, and I was back to Juneau, when the word came.  ‘Come,’ the beggar says who brought the news.  ’Killisnoo say, “Come now."’ ‘What’s the row?’ I asks.  ‘Chief George,’ says he. ‘Potlach.  Killisnoo, makum klooch.’

“Ay, it was bitter—­the Taku howling down out of the north, the salt water freezing quick as it struck the deck, and the old sloop and I hammering into the teeth of it for a hundred miles to Dyea.  Had a Douglass Islander for crew when I started, but midway up he was washed over from the bows.  Jibed all over and crossed the course three times, but never a sign of him.”