Where the Sun Swings North

ow lighted up shelves of brightly labeled canned goods and a long, scarred counter piled high with gay blankets and men's rough clothing. Back of t

row of dusty fox and wolverine skins hung-pelts discarded when the spring s

pers and he closed the ledger in front of him with an air of relief. He clapped his hands smartly. Almost on the instant

rettes,

ality often found in the voices of men accustomed to com

a brown arm, bare and softly rounded, accompanied

e and lighted it. He took one long, deep pull. Tossing it aside he swung his ch

orehead. His eyes, long, narrow and the color of pale smoke, drowsed beneath brows that met above his nose. Thin, sharply defined nostrils quivered under the slightest emotion, and startling against the whiteness of his face, was a short, pointed bear

ted the petty details of account keeping, but since the death of old Add-'em-up Sam, his helper and accountant, who ha

er and influence among the Thlinget tribes. No other man sent in such quantities of prime pelts; hence the White Chief of Katleean had never been obliged to give too strict an accounting of his stewardship. Taking what belongs to a company is not, in the elastic code of the North, considered stealing. "God i

the White Chief were afloat: his trips to the Outside[1]; his lavish spending of money; his hiring of private cars to take him from Seattle to New York; his princely

He was a generous master, bringing back with him many presents from the land of the white people-rings, beads, trinkets, and yards of bright colored silks. The favorites of his household fond

d multiplied under the care of Add-'em-up Sam. A fluttering of wings now outside the doorway

Bill, in his carefully secreted still across the lagoon, had completed a particularly potent batch of moonshine, known locally as hootch. The arrival, earlier in the afternoon, of the jocose old hootch-maker with a canoe-l

t away after one long, deep inhalation. Before the smoke cleared from his head, he was cross

wept the scene before him. Across the bay, between purple hills, a valley lay dreaming in rose-lavender mist. Blue above

e that was half a sneer. He himself never drank while at the post, deeming that it lessened his influence with the Indians. But among the secrets of his own experi

Then like the bellow of a fog horn on a lon

rth of old

ain't no E

as a thirst

onshine tast

Arctic ice

aska and

n't no bloom

a good ma

e voices apparently in a dispute as to how the song should r

ook on Soofie Suderlant

accents of the one-time cook of the Sophie Sutherland. "I ain't no nature for Swedes a-devilin' o' me. I been singin' th

among them the high, easily recognizable tenor of Silvertip, and the voice of another, a ba

the Pol

Innuit m

t, bright-ey

n' ther

in' in her

n a muckl

n comes up

-pack round

in the sodden footsteps of his predecessor. Given a little more time and this baritone-singing cheechako[2] would be where the White Chief need have no anxiety as to the

er voice, and only last night he had noticed behind her soft, her singularly beautiful little ears, the peculiar drawn look that to his practiced eye spelled tubercu

oken into by anot

! I am a

ad a jol

hootch a

tle squaw

igure, stood for a moment on the doorstep. Stretching his arms above his head, he yawn

g loosely from his shoulders a hair-seal waistcoat, brightly trimmed with red flannel, served as a coat above faded blue overalls, and from the knees down

the steps below the platform in

elp me Hannah, I never did find a place so wild or a bunch o' hombres so tough but what sooner or later all hands starts a-singin' o' the female sec

time, but neither o' them things has affected my heart ever, though one time a spell back, tobaccy did. Still, Chief, with all respects to yore sentiments rega

int at the White Chief's domestic arrangements in that gentleman's hearing, but there was something in the soft twinkle of Kayak Bill's hazel eye, something in the cru

wants a woman?" Kilbuck's voice rose slightly, his black brows drew together over the pale, unseeing eyes that sought the distant peaks, his thin nostrils quivered. "It's a wild country up here, Kayak. Makes a man hunger for something soft and feminine-

estored it to his pocket and slowly

Kayak's slow tones flowed on: "And I'm purty nigh pursuaded them fellows is right. . . . Take it down in Texas now, where I was drug up. I'm noticin' a heap o' times how the meechinest, quietest little old ladies has the rarin'est, terrin'-est sons, hell-bent on fightin' and adventure. . . . Kinder seems to me, Chief, that our women has been bottled up so long by us men folks they just

the corn-cob and ran the straw through it. The immediate vicinity became impregnated with a violent odor of nicotine. The White Chief, however, musing close by on the steps, seeme

he end was certain and easy-like. Barrin' the case of Silvertip and Senott, his squaw, it's like this: you say 'Come,' and they come. You say 'Go,' and they go. Now, a white woman ain't that way. By the roarin' Jasus, you nev

o a game of love with a woman of my own blood up here in the wilderness! . . . There's never been a white woman in Katleean. It would be great sport to se

hen I'm over at the Chilcat Cannery, Chief, you may get a chance to see a white woman at Katleean purty soon. There's a prospector named

enting quarry he raised his head. There was a ke

an, Kayak? A

om the cabin across the courtyard. The door had been flung wide and in t

the States is desi

Newc