The walls of the room were of tiered logs, the bark still on, and the chinking between the logs, plainly visible, was arctic moss.  Through the open door that led to the dance-room came the rollicking strains of a Virginia reel, played by a piano and a fiddle.  The drawing of Chinese lottery had just taken place, and the luckiest player, having cashed at the scales, was drinking up his winnings with half a dozen cronies.  The faro- and roulette-tables were busy and quiet.  The draw-poker and stud-poker tables, each with its circle of onlookers, were equally quiet.  At another table, a serious, concentrated game of Black Jack was on.  Only from the craps-table came noise, as the man who played rolled the dice, full sweep, down the green amphitheater of a table in pursuit of his elusive and long-delayed point.  Ever he cried:  “Oh! you Joe Cotton!  Come a four!  Come a Joe!  Little Joe!  Bring home the bacon, Joe!  Joe, you Joe, you!”

Cultus George, a big strapping Circle City Indian, leaned distantly and dourly against the log wall.  He was a civilized Indian, if living like a white man connotes civilization; and he was sorely offended, though the offense was of long standing.  For years he had done a white man’s work, had done it alongside of white men, and often had done it better than they did.  He wore the same pants they wore, the same hearty woolens and heavy shirts.  He sported as good a watch as they, parted his short hair on the side, and ate the same food—­bacon, beans, and flour; and yet he was denied their greatest diversion and reward; namely, whiskey.  Cultus George was a money-earner.  He had staked claims, and bought and sold claims.  He had been grub-staked, and he had accorded grub-stakes.  Just now he was a dog-musher and freighter, charging twenty-eight cents a pound for the winter haul from Sixty Mile to Mucluc—­and for bacon thirty-three cents, as was the custom.  His poke was fat with dust.  He had the price of many drinks.  Yet no barkeeper would serve him.  Whiskey, the hottest, swiftest, completest gratifier of civilization, was not for him.  Only by subterranean and cowardly and expensive ways could he get a drink.  And he resented this invidious distinction, as he had resented it for years, deeply.  And he was especially thirsty and resentful this night, while the white men he had so sedulously emulated he hated more bitterly than ever before.  The white men would graciously permit him to lose his gold across their gaming-tables, but for neither love nor money could he obtain a drink across their bars.  Wherefore he was very sober, and very logical, and logically sullen.

The Virginia reel in the dance-room wound to a wild close that interfered not with the three camp drunkards who snored under the piano.  “All couples promenade to the bar!” was the caller’s last cry as the music stopped.  And the couples were so promenading through the wide doorway into the main room—­the men in furs and moccasins, the women in soft fluffy dresses, silk stockings, and dancing-slippers—­when the double storm-doors were thrust open, and Smoke Bellew staggered wearily in.