“As the owner of the dog, I shall beat you—­”

“When you catch me?”

“When I catch you.”

“Then catch me.”

He reached swiftly for her, but she eluded him.  She laughed as she circled around the table.  “Catch her!” Porportuk commanded the Indian with the rifle, who stood near to her.  But as the Indian stretched forth his arm to her, the Eldorado king felled him with a fist blow under the ear.  The rifle clattered to the ground.  Then was Akoon’s chance.  His eyes glittered, but he did nothing.

Porportuk was an old man, but his cold nights retained for him his activity.  He did not circle the table.  He came across suddenly, over the top of the table.  El-Soo was taken off her guard.  She sprang back with a sharp cry of alarm, and Porportuk would have caught her had it not been for Tommy.  Tommy’s leg went out, Porportuk tripped and pitched forward on the ground.  El-Soo got her start.

“Then catch me,” she laughed over her shoulder, as she fled away.

She ran lightly and easily, but Porportuk ran swiftly and savagely.  He outran her.  In his youth he had been swiftest of all the young men.  But El-Soo dodged in a willowy, elusive way.  Being in native dress, her feet were not cluttered with skirts, and her pliant body curved a flight that defied the gripping fingers of Porportuk.

With laughter and tumult, the great crowd scattered out to see the chase.  It led through the Indian encampment; and ever dodging, circling, and reversing, El-Soo and Porportuk appeared and disappeared among the tents.  El-Soo seemed to balance herself against the air with her arms, now one side, now on the other, and sometimes her body, too, leaned out upon the air far from the perpendicular as she achieved her sharpest curves.  And Porportuk, always a leap behind, or a leap this side or that, like a lean hound strained after her.

They crossed the open ground beyond the encampment and disappeared in the forest.  Tana-naw Station waited their reappearance, and long and vainly it waited.

In the meantime Akoon ate and slept, and lingered much at the steamboat landing, deaf to the rising resentment of Tana-naw Station in that he did nothing.  Twenty-four hours later Porportuk returned.  He was tired and savage.  He spoke to no one but Akoon, and with him tried to pick a quarrel.  But Akoon shrugged his shoulders and walked away.  Porportuk did not waste time.  He outfitted half a dozen of the young men, selecting the best trackers and travellers, and at their head plunged into the forest.

Next day the steamer Seattle, bound up river, pulled in to the shore and wooded up.  When the lines were cast off and she churned out from the bank, Akoon was on board in the pilot-house.  Not many hours afterward, when it was his turn at the wheel, he saw a small birch-bark canoe put off from the shore.  There was only one person in it.  He studied it carefully, put the wheel over, and slowed down.