But El-Soo had no eyes for him.  Nor had she eyes for the white men who wanted to marry her at the Mission with ring and priest and book.  For at Tana-naw Station was a young man, Akoon, of her own blood, and tribe, and village.  He was strong and beautiful to her eyes, a great hunter, and, in that he had wandered far and much, very poor; he had been to all the unknown wastes and places; he had journeyed to Sitka and to the United States; he had crossed the continent to Hudson Bay and back again, and as seal-hunter on a ship he had sailed to Siberia and for Japan.

When he returned from the gold-strike in Klondike he came, as was his wont, to the large house to make report to old Klakee-Nah of all the world that he had seen; and there he first saw El-Soo, three years back from the Mission.  Thereat, Akoon wandered no more.  He refused a wage of twenty dollars a day as pilot on the big steamboats.  He hunted some and fished some, but never far from Tana-naw Station, and he was at the large house often and long.  And El-Soo measured him against many men and found him good.  He sang songs to her, and was ardent and glowed until all Tana-naw Station knew he loved her.  And Porportuk but grinned and advanced more money for the upkeep of the large house.

Then came the death table of Klakee-Nah.

He sat at feast, with death in his throat, that he could not drown with wine.  And laughter and joke and song went around, and Akoon told a story that made the rafters echo.  There were no tears or sighs at that table.  It was no more than fit that Klakee-Nah should die as he had lived, and none knew this better than El-Soo, with her artist sympathy.  The old roystering crowd was there, and, as of old, three frost-bitten sailors were there, fresh from the long traverse from the Arctic, survivors of a ship’s company of seventy-four.  At Klakee-Nah’s back were four old men, all that were left him of the slaves of his youth.  With rheumy eyes they saw to his needs, with palsied hands filling his glass or striking him on the back between the shoulders when death stirred and he coughed and gasped.

It was a wild night, and as the hours passed and the fun laughed and roared along, death stirred more restlessly in Klakee-Nah’s throat.  Then it was that he sent for Porportuk.  And Porportuk came in from the outside frost to look with disapproving eyes upon the meat and wine on the table for which he had paid.  But as he looked down the length of flushed faces to the far end and saw the face of El-Soo, the light in his eyes flared up, and for a moment the disapproval vanished.

Place was made for him at Klakee-Nah’s side, and a glass placed before him.  Klakee-Nah, with his own hands, filled the glass with fervent spirits.  “Drink!” he cried.  “Is it not good?”

And Porportuk’s eyes watered as he nodded his head and smacked his lips.

“When, in your own house, have you had such drink?” Klakee-Nah demanded.