She looked over the crowd with flaming audacity and stepped down.  At Tommy’s request she stood upon the chair again, while he mounted the second chair and started the bidding.

Surrounding El-Soo stood the four old slaves of her father.  They were age-twisted and palsied, faithful to their meat, a generation out of the past that watched unmoved the antics of younger life.  In the front of the crowd were several Eldorado and Bonanza kings from the Upper Yukon, and beside them, on crutches, swollen with scurvy, were two broken prospectors.  From the midst of the crowd, thrust out by its own vividness, appeared the face of a wild-eyed squaw from the remote regions of the Upper Tana-naw; a strayed Sitkan from the coast stood side by side with a Stick from Lake Le Barge, and, beyond, a half-dozen French-Canadian voyageurs, grouped by themselves.  From afar came the faint cries of myriads of wild-fowl on the nesting-grounds.  Swallows were skimming up overhead from the placid surface of the Yukon, and robins were singing.  The oblique rays of the hidden sun shot through the smoke, high-dissipated from forest fires a thousand miles away, and turned the heavens to sombre red, while the earth shone red in the reflected glow.  This red glow shone in the faces of all, and made everything seem unearthly and unreal.

The bidding began slowly.  The Sitkan, who was a stranger in the land and who had arrived only half an hour before, offered one hundred dollars in a confident voice, and was surprised when Akoon turned threateningly upon him with the rifle.  The bidding dragged.  An Indian from the Tozikakat, a pilot, bid one hundred and fifty, and after some time a gambler, who had been ordered out of the Upper Country, raised the bid to two hundred.  El-Soo was saddened; her pride was hurt; but the only effect was that she flamed more audaciously upon the crowd.

There was a disturbance among the onlookers as Porportuk forced his way to the front.  “Five hundred dollars!” he bid in a loud voice, then looked about him proudly to note the effect.

He was minded to use his great wealth as a bludgeon with which to stun all competition at the start.  But one of the voyageurs, looking on El-Soo with sparkling eyes, raised the bid a hundred.

“Seven hundred!” Porportuk returned promptly.

And with equal promptness came the “Eight hundred” of the voyageur.

Then Porportuk swung his club again.

“Twelve hundred!” he shouted.

With a look of poignant disappointment, the voyageur succumbed.  There was no further bidding.  Tommy worked hard, but could not elicit a bid.

El-Soo spoke to Porportuk.  “It were good, Porportuk, for you to weigh well your bid.  Have you forgotten the thing I told you—­that I would never marry you!”

“It is a public auction,” he retorted.  “I shall buy you with a bill of sale.  I have offered twelve hundred dollars.  You come cheap.”