Forty Mile stood breathless.  Not a sound, save the roar of the runners and the voice of the whips.

Then the clear voice of Joy Molineau rose on the air.  “Ai!  Ya!  Wolf Fang!  Wolf Fang!”

Wolf Fang heard.  He left the trail sharply, heading directly for his mistress.  The team dashed after him, and the sled poised an instant on a single runner, then shot Harrington into the snow.  Savoy was by like a flash.  Harrington pulled to his feet and watched him skimming across the river to the Gold Recorder’s.  He could not help hearing what was said.

“Ah, him do vaire well,” Joy Molineau was explaining to the lieutenant.  “Him—­what you call—­set the pace.  Yes, him set the pace vaire well.”

AT THE RAINBOW’S END

I

It was for two reasons that Montana Kid discarded his “chaps” and Mexican spurs, and shook the dust of the Idaho ranges from his feet.  In the first place, the encroachments of a steady, sober, and sternly moral civilization had destroyed the primeval status of the western cattle ranges, and refined society turned the cold eye of disfavor upon him and his ilk.  In the second place, in one of its cyclopean moments the race had arisen and shoved back its frontier several thousand miles.  Thus, with unconscious foresight, did mature society make room for its adolescent members.  True, the new territory was mostly barren; but its several hundred thousand square miles of frigidity at least gave breathing space to those who else would have suffocated at home.

Montana Kid was such a one.  Heading for the sea-coast, with a haste several sheriff’s posses might possibly have explained, and with more nerve than coin of the realm, he succeeded in shipping from a Puget Sound port, and managed to survive the contingent miseries of steerage sea-sickness and steerage grub.  He was rather sallow and drawn, but still his own indomitable self, when he landed on the Dyea beach one day in the spring of the year.  Between the cost of dogs, grub, and outfits, and the customs exactions of the two clashing governments, it speedily penetrated to his understanding that the Northland was anything save a poor man’s Mecca.  So he cast about him in search of quick harvests.  Between the beach and the passes were scattered many thousands of passionate pilgrims.  These pilgrims Montana Kid proceeded to farm.  At first he dealt faro in a pine-board gambling shack; but disagreeable necessity forced him to drop a sudden period into a man’s life, and to move on up trail.  Then he effected a corner in horseshoe nails, and they circulated at par with legal tender, four to the dollar, till an unexpected consignment of a hundred barrels or so broke the market and forced him to disgorge his stock at a loss.  After that he located at Sheep Camp, organized the professional packers, and jumped the freight ten cents a pound in a single day.  In token of their gratitude, the packers patronized his faro and roulette layouts and were mulcted cheerfully of their earnings.  But his commercialism was of too lusty a growth to be long endured; so they rushed him one night, burned his shanty, divided the bank, and headed him up the trail with empty pockets.