Hitchcock nodded that he heard, half-turned, and lifted his voice.  “Look here, you fellows!  There’s a lot of foolery going on over to the camp, and they’re getting ready to murder Sipsu.  What d’ye say?”

Wertz looked at Hawes, and Hawes looked back, but neither spoke.  Sigmund dropped his head, and petted the shepherd dog between his knees.  He had brought Shep in with him from the outside, and thought a great deal of the animal.  In fact, a certain girl, who was much in his thoughts, and whose picture in the little locket on his breast often inspired him to sing, had given him the dog and her blessing when they kissed good-by and he started on his Northland quest.

“What d’ye say?” Hitchcock repeated.

“Mebbe it’s not so serious,” Hawes answered with deliberation.  “Most likely it’s only a girl’s story.”

“That isn’t the point!” Hitchcock felt a hot flush of anger sweep over him at their evident reluctance.  “The question is, if it is so, are we going to stand it?  What are we going to do?”

“I don’t see any call to interfere,” spoke up Wertz.  “If it is so, it is so, and that’s all there is about it.  It’s a way these people have of doing.  It’s their religion, and it’s no concern of ours.  Our concern is to get the dust and then get out of this God-forsaken land.  ’T isn’t fit for naught else but beasts?  And what are these black devils but beasts?  Besides, it’d be damn poor policy.”

“That’s what I say,” chimed in Hawes.  “Here we are, four of us, three hundred miles from the Yukon or a white face.  And what can we do against half-a-hundred Indians?  If we quarrel with them, we have to vamose; if we fight, we are wiped out.  Further, we’ve struck pay, and, by God!  I, for one, am going to stick by it!”

“Ditto here,” supplemented Wertz.

Hitchcock turned impatiently to Sigmund, who was softly singing,—­

   “In a year, in a year, when the grapes are ripe,
      I shall stay no more away.”

“Well, it’s this way, Hitchcock,” he finally said, “I’m in the same boat with the rest.  If three-score bucks have made up their mind to kill the girl, why, we can’t help it.  One rush, and we’d be wiped off the landscape.  And what good’d that be?  They’d still have the girl.  There’s no use in going against the customs of a people except you’re in force.”

“But we are in force!” Hitchcock broke in.  “Four whites are a match for a hundred times as many reds.  And think of the girl!”

Sigmund stroked the dog meditatively.  “But I do think of the girl.  And her eyes are blue like summer skies, and laughing like summer seas, and her hair is yellow, like mine, and braided in ropes the size of a big man’s arms.  She’s waiting for me, out there, in a better land.  And she’s waited long, and now my pile’s in sight I’m not going to throw it away.”

“And shamed I would be to look into the girl’s blue eyes and remember the black ones of the girl whose blood was on my hands,” Hitchcock sneered; for he was born to honor and championship, and to do the thing for the thing’s sake, nor stop to weigh or measure.