’Said they might keep him on the other half of the trail and he wouldn’t get to Dawson in two years, and then it would be too late.  Never saw a man take on so in my life.  And when I said I’d let him have it, had to yank him out of the snow again.  Told him to consider it in the light of a grubstake.  Think he’d have it?  No sir!  Swore he’d give me all he found, make me rich beyond the dreams of avarice, and all such stuff.  Now a man who puts his life and time against a grubstake ordinarily finds it hard enough to turn over half of what he finds.  Something behind all this, Prince; just you make a note of it.  We’ll hear of him if he stays in the country—­’ ‘And if he doesn’t?’ ’Then my good nature gets a shock, and I’m sixty some odd ounces out.’  The cold weather had come on with the long nights, and the sun had begun to play his ancient game of peekaboo along the southern snow line ere aught was heard of Malemute Kid’s grubstake.  And then, one bleak morning in early January, a heavily laden dog train pulled into his cabin below Stuart River.  He of the Otter Skins was there, and with him walked a man such as the gods have almost forgotten how to fashion.  Men never talked of luck and pluck and five-hundred-dollar dirt without bringing in the name of Axel Gunderson; nor could tales of nerve or strength or daring pass up and down the campfire without the summoning of his presence.  And when the conversation flagged, it blazed anew at mention of the woman who shared his fortunes.

As has been noted, in the making of Axel Gunderson the gods had remembered their old-time cunning and cast him after the manner of men who were born when the world was young.  Full seven feet he towered in his picturesque costume which marked a king of Eldorado.  His chest, neck, and limbs were those of a giant.  To bear his three hundred pounds of bone and muscle, his snowshoes were greater by a generous yard than those of other men.  Rough-hewn, with rugged brow and massive jaw and unflinching eyes of palest blue, his face told the tale of one who knew but the law of might.  Of the yellow of ripe corn silk, his frost-incrusted hair swept like day across the night and fell far down his coat of bearskin.

A vague tradition of the sea seemed to cling about him as he swung down the narrow trail in advance of the dogs; and he brought the butt of his dog whip against Malemute Kid’s door as a Norse sea rover, on southern foray, might thunder for admittance at the castle gate.

Prince bared his womanly arms and kneaded sour-dough bread, casting, as he did so, many a glance at the three guests—­three guests the like of which might never come under a man’s roof in a lifetime.  The Strange One, whom Malemute Kid had surnamed Ulysses, still fascinated him; but his interest chiefly gravitated between Axel Gunderson and Axel Gunderson’s wife.  She felt the day’s journey, for she had softened in comfortable cabins during the many days since her