“But I work hard, Joy.  Never a day am I not on trail or up creek.  Even now have I just come off.  My dogs are yet tired.  Other men have luck and find plenty of gold; but I—­I have no luck.”

“Ah!  But when this mans with the wife which is Indian, this mans McCormack, when him discovaire the Klondike, you go not.  Odder mans go; odder mans now rich.”

“You know I was prospecting over on the head-reaches of the Tanana,” Harrington protested, “and knew nothing of the Eldorado or Bonanza until it was too late.”

“That is deeferent; only you are—­what you call way off.”

“What?”

“Way off.  In the—­yes—­in the dark.  It is nevaire too late.  One vaire rich mine is there, on the creek which is Eldorado.  The mans drive the stake and him go ’way.  No odddr mans know what of him become.  The mans, him which drive the stake, is nevaire no more.  Sixty days no mans on that claim file the papaire.  Then odder mans, plentee odder mans—­what you call—­jump that claim.  Then they race, O so queek, like the wind, to file the papaire.  Him be vaire rich.  Him get grub for famine.”

Harrington hid the major portion of his interest.

“When’s the time up?” he asked.  “What claim is it?”

“So I speak Louis Savoy last night,” she continued, ignoring him.  “Him I think the winnaire.”

“Hang Louis Savoy!”

“So Louis Savoy speak in my cabin last night.  Him say, ’Joy, I am strong mans.  I haf good dogs.  I haf long wind.  I will be winnaire.  Then you will haf me for hoosband?’ And I say to him, I say—­”

“What’d you say?”

“I say, ‘If Louis Savoy is winnaire, then will he haf me for wife.’”

“And if he don’t win?”

“Then Louis Savoy, him will not be—­what you call—­the father of my children.”

“And if I win?”

“You winnaire?  Ha! ha!  Nevaire!”

Exasperating as it was, Joy Molineau’s laughter was pretty to hear.  Harrington did not mind it.  He had long since been broken in.  Besides, he was no exception.  She had forced all her lovers to suffer in kind.  And very enticing she was just then, her lips parted, her color heightened by the sharp kiss of the frost, her eyes vibrant with the lure which is the greatest of all lures and which may be seen nowhere save in woman’s eyes.  Her sled-dogs clustered about her in hirsute masses, and the leader, Wolf Fang, laid his long snout softly in her lap.

“If I do win?” Harrington pressed.

She looked from dog to lover and back again.

“What you say, Wolf Fang?  If him strong mans and file the papaire, shall we his wife become?  Eh?  What you say?”

Wolf Fang picked up his ears and growled at Harrington.

“It is vaire cold,” she suddenly added with feminine irrelevance, rising to her feet and straightening out the team.

Her lover looked on stolidly.  She had kept him guessing from the first time they met, and patience had been joined unto his virtues.