The Alaskans (The Making of America, Book 10)
Lee Davis Willoughby
GORY REFUGE 
Bryan Mathews stood over the dead moose, knowing that they must do something immediately to stay alive--in minutes they'd be frozen corpses in this raging Arctic storm.
"Bryan," said Milla, "give me the knife."
He watched in amazement as the slender Russian girl slit open the creature from throat to belly.
"Help me," she cried. Aroused from his lethargy, Bryan plunged his hands inside the animal and began pulling out its entrails. Milla went to the abandoned dog sled and returned with lap robes.
Soon they were huddled together inside their gory refuge, the slit stomach frozen shut. Their body heat began to warm them, but Milla was still not content.
"Bryan," she said, teeth chattering uncontrollably, "hold me closer. Warm me."
"Milla," he said, rubbing her cold cheeks, "you must stay awake." He pulled her closer, feeling the roundness of her breasts through the wool clothing. Now her cheeks were rosy and she was breathing faster.
Bryan felt a new sensation rising unbidden within him ...
The Making of America Series 
The Wilderness Seekers
The Mountain Breed
The Conestoga People
The Forty-Niners
Hearts Divided
The Builders
The Land Rushers
The Wild and the Wayward
The Texans
Lee Davis Willoughby
The Alaskans
A DELL/BRYANS BOOK
Published by Dell Publishing Co., Inc. 1 Dag Hammarskjold Plaza New York, New York 10017
Copyright © 1980 by Barry Myers
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including
photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system without the written permission of the Publisher, except where permitted by law.
Dell ® TM 681510, Dell Publishing Co., Inc.
ISBN: 0-440-00199-4
Printed in the United States of America First printing--November 1980
THE ALASKANS 
The woman with the red-gold hair huddled under a buffalo robe on the narrow dogsled. A bone-chilling wind gusted over the frozen Alaskan tundra and the sled dogs howled plaintively.
Jason Briscoe leaned over and touched the woman gently. "You stay put, Tammy. I'm going over yonder to see if I can pick up the trail."
She reached out and pressed his hand. Both of them had grown weak from hunger and cold in the two days since marauding wolves had made off with their supply of beef jerky.
"Don't go too far, Jason," she pleaded.
He nodded and she observed how gaunt and haggard her once-sturdy man had become. Why had they ever made this damn fool journey from their comfortable ranch? She yearned for the blazing heat of the Texas sun.
"Hell, no," he said. "I'd be crazy--you can't hardly see your hand in front of your face."
She looked about her and saw that a great cloak of midday darkness was enveloping them. Tamar Swanson Briscoe was a brave little woman, but now she was afraid.
He pressed her hand once more and then, before she could call out for him to stay, vanished into the blackness. She knew in her heart of hearts that she'd never see him again, that this was the end . ..
Bryan Mathews was on the route to Sitka early in the afternoon, as soon as the storm had passed. Young and powerfully muscled though he was, he found it hard going on the steep and curving trail. As he slowed on one particularly sharp rise, he saw out of the corner of one eye a dark shape at the side of the trail.
It was a man, frozen stiff, his dead face blanketed with snow. With much effort, he drew from a pocket in the man's mackinaw a small memorandum book that bore the name of J. Briscoe. Not far from where he'd found the first body, he found a pitiful heap of frozen sled dogs--and in the sled a woman whose once-pretty face was a mask of death. A letter in her satchel identified her as Tamar, wife of the dead man by the side of the trail. Since burial was impossible, he gathered up what mementoes he could to send to the surviving relatives. Sighing at the cruelty of nature in this frigid Territory, he resumed his journey toward Sitka.
a 
Umalti sat staring at the fire in the center of his hut, his face impassive. To set a good example for his children he knew he must eat, but he had barely gnawed on his length of blubber fat. He dared not look at his wife or the stranger who shared their fire. Oomua had warned him not to. Oomua was one-quarter promyshlenniki Russian and thus a very superstitious woman. The old women of Umalti's village could still relate tales of the time when the ruthless band of professional hunters had arrived unexpectedly in the last winter of the 18th Century. The promyshlenniki had sought the great treasure of the sea-otter pelts. To gain them they had felt they had to kill the male Aleuts and keep their women. 
Those Russian hunters, along with the sea-otter pelts, had long since vanished; but the blood line they had left within Umalti's people and the
superstitious fear of them that they had passed down through it would not quickly vanish. Fear had been unknown to his ancestors, for the gods of the totem pole were there to protect them and food was always plentiful. The Russians had taught them the knowledge of an empty belly. All the wise women of the village had kept alive the old warning of Raven-Man that the Russians would some day return. It was this belief that was greatly troubling Umalti's mind: if the stranger himself was not Russian, who knew that he was not an emissary of theirs, with the same power to hurt Umalti and his people?
It had been a most unusual day in an unusually harsh winter. In his thirty years Umalti had never known such a harsh winter, although his father had recalled many when the tribe had been island-dwellers, before they had migrated to A laska (the mainland). A harsh winter was not necessarily a bad thing. If living inland had made it more difficult to secure the Bering Sea whales, the Yukon River was plentiful with salmon and a harsh winter brought the moose and bear within easy hunting distance. 
But this had been a bad, frightening day. It had started before dawn when Oomua had seen the approach of a moose in her dreams. Umalti, waking, had promptly prepared for the hunt. He never went against Oomua's visions. But an hour later Oomua had come running frantically back into their hut. Never would he be able to rid his mind of the look of fear that was on her face.
"My man," she had gasped, "Giyeg, the evil, must have blinded my eyes to see the moose!"
"Woman, what ails you?"
"Aiyee!" she wailed. "It is a monster that approaches!" 
Umalti had scoffed and gone to the village edge to view the thing for himself. His heart began to pound when he saw it, but he forced himself to remain calm for the sake of his gathering people. He could not judge with confidence whether it was man or beast or both that came along the banks of the frozen river directly at him. It hailed him in a human voice, but not in a tongue he recognized. He had grasped his spear more tightly for protection.
He need not have. Archie Burns was definitely human and relatively harmless. He was 240 miles out of Dawson, bound for Nome on an old white mare, and the nag was starving. He was cheechako --a newcomer to the North. He was unaware that the Aleuts had never before-seen a horse and that only a few of the old ones could recall the likes of a white man. Fearfully, the Indian men formed a protective circle about the beast as Burns crawled down, his legs stiff and barely able to support him. 
"Food!" he demanded. "Food for my mare!"
The old ones grew confused. They recalled a few Russian words but these did not resemble them. They gathered in little knots and began chattering.
Burns, a short-tempered man even at the best of times, glared and ranted at them. "Damn place has been under the U.S. flag for thirty years. Why the hell don't you speak American?"
His tone, more than his strange words, terrified the old ones. One young hunter, not to be intimidated, raced at the intruder shaking his seal-harpoon
and demanding from Umalti the honor of killing both rider and beast.
"Hold!" Umalti barked. He stepped out of the circle and examined Burns from head to foot. Umalti of the smiling face was not smiling.
Burns altered his tone immediately, cursing himself for not having unsheathed his rifle when he'd first spotted the village. He smiled a brown-toothed grin, which still didn't look too friendly, and began to rub his belly.
"I am hungry and my horse is hungry. Mainly my horse," he intoned, patting the mare and rubbing its belly. "She ain't had as much as a dried blade of grass in the last hundred miles. Food! Eat!"
"I understand," Umalti said firmly to his people to reassure them. "Bring food for the big white dog that can carry a man on its back."
Oomua raced away and the people murmured their approval of Umalti's words. They could accept the beast for their chief had told them what it was.
Timidly, Oomua handed the heavily bearded man a whalebone bowl of food, but the horse snorted and turned away its head.
"Silly damn nag, eat!"
Burns tried everything he knew to get the starving beast to eat but it would not. Then his heart nearly stopped. The cries and shouts of the Aleuts made him fear for his life. He dropped the bowl and tried to get his rifle off the horse. But the Aleuts were paying him no mind; their eyes were riveted on the river.
Gliding on skates over the frozen surface of the Yukon was a massive prospector. The Aleuts stood open mouthed. Burns was furious.
"Damn your sneaky-assed hide," he shouted
down at the man. "You said it was only a few days ride from the Klondike to Nome."
The man slowed, circled and laughed. "Be cleanin' y'ur ears out, Burns. I said the nag would last only a few days ride." 
"Svenson, you're a thieving bastard! How much further?"
"It's still about eight hundred miles due west, Burns." The man's laugh grew sarcastic. "What you makin' on my old nag? I be doin' about forty miles to the day on these here ice runners. Better get moving. The rumors in the Klondike are that Dawson will be a ghost town by spring. Everybody's moving out."
Burns forgot that his horse had not eaten and flew to its back, urging it back to the dog-sled path. He was not about to let the big Norwegian get to the far west side of Alaska, to a place on the Seward Peninsula called Cape Nome, before him. He had a hunch deep in his old bones that this rumor of new gold found in Nome would be for real.
Oomua sidled up to her husband, her face a deep study in curiosity. "What is wrong?" she whispered. "Big white dog no eat salmon?"
Umalti shrugged. The two events coming hard upon each other had rattled him. He had never seen a dog large enough to carry a man on its back, nor a man who had feet that could glide on the ice. He was a chief and should know about such things and was embarrassed that he would not have the answers to give to his people.
For several hours he ignored everyone in the village, trying to appear studious and aloof. When he thought no one was watching he went to the hut of Muta, the oldest woman in the village.
For a long while they sat silently as Muta studied the lay of the timber wolf's teeth she had cast out upon an otter pelt.
"Not Russian," she said at last, almost tiredly, "but they are as many as the salmon coming home to spawn."
"What do they seek from us, old woman?"
She shook her head sadly. "I do not understand what my old eyes see, my son. They seek sand and rocks. I do not understand. I am too old. Perhaps this is the winter I will make my trip to sea and find an iceberg to sail home upon. I am no longer of use to my people."
Umalti grew gruff. "We do not practice that custom any longer, Muta. The old now stay with us."
"Perhaps that is what I see as well, Umalti. Too many of the old ways are to vanish."
Unceremoniously, Umalti's ten-year-old son, Al- tram, came rushing into the hut, his almond eyes saucer-round.
"Papa," he shrieked, "my mother says come at once. A new monster is coming!"
It was no big white dog or man gliding on ice. This was far worse.
Down the rutted and icy dog-sled path came a man bundled in furs and furiously pumping a bicycle. Totally bewildered now, Umalti studied this unorthodox mode of transportation. This was far more difficult to understand than the two previous events. He was hypnotized by the motion of the spoked wheels going around so fast that they seemed to be going backwards. The Russians, as terrible as they had been, had at least come by sled dog, something he could accommodate as being natural to
men. But here was a white man with legs that went around and around. Umalti couldn't stand many more frightening oddities for one day.
Bryan Mathews was also cheechako, to a certain degree. For a year he had been a contract supplier of caribou meat to prospectors in the Klondike, paying his Eskimo hunters with the hide and making a clear profit on the carcass. A man with a good ear, he had learned the complicated-sounding yet basically simple Indian language quite easily. He now prayed that the argot he knew would be understood in this village. 
Expertly, he jumped from the still-moving vehicle and pushed it up the bank to the awaiting encirclement of Indians.
"I come in peace," he called in his booming baritone voice. "What chief do I stand before?"
To be addressed in a tongue he could understand both surprised and pleased Umalti, "It is the village of Umalti, whom you stand before."
"It is the honor of Bryan Mathews to stand before you, Chief Umalti. My honor is greater if you are a man of family."
The very tall man was most unusual, Umalti decided. He was much like another Indian coming upon a strange village and knowing the proper customs to follow.
"Visitor," Umalti intoned, motioning his family forward, "I am the man of this woman Oomua. Myself being with only thirty winters she is still my only woman. My man-child is ten and called in the family tradition Altram. My two girl children are still young and of little use."
Bryan dug deep in his backpack, knowing he had
*0 
to handle this moment very carefully. A year among the Klondike Eskimos kept him from scoffing at their superstitious ways. 
"The oldest in the village may have use for this to store her wolves' teeth, Chief Umalti."
Umalti couldn't refuse the velvet pouch he was offered; it was already being exclaimed over by his people and he sensed it would please Muta greatly. Then the visitor stunned him further. He had striped candy canes for his daughters, a jack-knife for Altram, a hair brush for Oomua, and a gleaming bone- handled bowie knife for Umalti himself.
To refuse the gifts would be to court disaster. By the gods' injunction, Umalti was now compelled to treat the stranger like any other Indian visitor: he must offer him the use of his home, a sharing of his food and even the bed of his wife if he so desired.
Though troubled, Umalti made his offer and then rushed away to present Muta with her gift. As he had expected, she was greatly pleased with the pouch. But could she help him deal with the problem confronting him?
"I am unaware how to treat the visitor, old woman. You are wise and must help this young chief."
Muta smiled knowingly. "He seems to come to us like the Chinook salmon, he who is king and spawns the greatest eggs. Others will come, even those who like chum are fit only to be fed to the dogs. You say he has shown respect. Then the customs of our people must hold. One night he is the visitor, the second night a guest, but if he stays the third, then he must forage for his own evening meal and find his own bed to lie in."
The wise counsel stilled Umalti's troubled thoughts only until he returned to his hut. The bicycle and the man's provisions had vanished, but the man stood outside the hut performing an act that was leaving several watching villagers stupefied. Umalti's face darkened at the sight but he said nothing, only strode into the hut to join Oomua.
Outside, the man, with no show of embarrassment, was actually divesting himself of his outer layers of fur and laying them carefully on the frozen ground. When he'd done that, he unpeeled several sections of newspaper he had wrapped around his body and folded them back into a neat stack. Then he began to unbutton his long underwear.
The villagers gasped.
Stark naked, seemingly unperturbed by the twenty below zero weather, Bryan laid out his clothing for an airing in the arctic night air and casually entered the hut. He did not lack gratitude for the hospitality offered him, but he had learned the hard way about Eskimo lice, or "seam squirrels" as he called them.
His entrance to the hut gave Oomua a start. In his fur garb the stranger had appeared as rotund and dumpy as her husband. In ten years of marriage she had yet to see exactly what all of her husband's body looked like, nor had she ever felt a strong desire to. But she couldn't help but ogle Bryan as he casually inspected his bike and took food from his backpack, as though he were still fully clothed.
Bryan, at an even six feet, towered over his host. His coal-black hair was wavy and glistened with little sparkles. The wave was also apparent in his neatly clipped mustache and Van Dyke beard. The
latter helped give his head and face a saturnine look, which was augmented by bushy eyebrows that almost met at the top of his long, thin-bridged nose. But he was no menacing devil. His deep-set, hazel- green eyes, though at times darkly wary, at other times sparkled with innocent merriment, the simple happiness of being alive.
By American standards, perhaps, he was tall, dark and handsome. In Oomua's eyes he was a white god. Her eyes feasted on his hard, muscular shoulders, then on the curly hair on his equally muscular chest. Her husband's torso was hairless. That of the god had furry arrows down to his slim waist and flat belly and then became a forest around his manhood. Here her fascination turned to an inward giggle. No woman, she was certain, would be able to accept such length, especially after it started growing with excitement.
"Here!" Umalti said gruffly, thrusting a sealskin robe at Bryan. "My woman fixes food."
"Thank you for the covering, but the food is not necessary. I do not wish to impose. I have my own food."
Oomua was doubly perturbed as Bryan slipped the robe on. She had longed to keep gazing upon his unusual male body and wished to please him with her own food.
Both husband and wife wondered what new surprise the visitor would have in store for them.
A year before Bryan would have surprised himself, undressing that way in view of an entire village. But he was not the same man he had been; he had changed himself over, and that by careful design. There were secrets he was withholding from others. His native Oklahoma twang was nearly
completely gone; in the Klondike he had announced himself as an Illinoisan and had been so accepted, without question. His strong, bearded face defied an age being attached to it. Usually he gave his age as twenty-five, if he gave it at all, but he was younger than that by five years.
"Where do your round feet take you?" Umalti asked, to be polite.
"It is called a bicycle," Bryan said, easily sidestepping the question. "It is more for boys like Altram. Perhaps he would like to learn to ride it tomorrow."
Altram's face lit up, but he knew better than to impose himself when adults were talking. The idea did not please Umalti, for it meant the man might be staying longer than a single night. Then his embarrassment grew, but he was an honest man. "I have forgotten your name."
"Bryan. Bryan Mathews." ¦
Umalti tried to concentrate on one or the other. He was not used to a man having more than one name. The names were still quite new to Bryan as well, since he had borrowed them from two different sailors working the ship that had brought him from New Orleans to Sitka. He had tucked his real name away forever.
Not, he brooded, that he couldn't give it to these Indians; chances were none of them had ever even heard of Oklahoma, let alone the Doolin gang. The point was he didn't want to think of them either. Legally, he was supposed to be dead--killed during the gang's final days--and he was not about to set the record straight. He was now Bryan Mathews and wouldn't even think his real name to himself, lest it slip past his lips while he was asleep.
After supper he steeled himself for what would come next, the one Indian custom he had not so far in his Alaskan journeys observed. He lay on his side, unthinking, accepting the warmth of Umalti and Oomua on either side of him. Even when Oomua snuggled suggestively closer he forced his mind to be still. Many Eskimo girls and women had offered themselves to him, but he could not bring himself to do anything with their fathers or husbands sleeping but inches away.
But Oomua was more daring than any Eskimo woman he had ever before encountered. He felt her hand lightly explore the fur covering until it had found an open seam and entered it to lay gently on his bare back. Like a snake it crawled to his waist and over onto his belly, nervously twitching to note his reaction.
Bryan didn't move, was hardly breathing, and' forced a name and image onto the surface of his tightly closed eyes. If the roving hand was to belong to anyone it had to be one from out of his past that he would not and could not forget.
Ever since he had first ridden with the Daltons and Bill Doolin at age fifteen he had held a secret love in his heart. Not Oomua, but Tandy Lee Woodrowe Girondin was now nibbling gently at his groin. The vivacious young beauty had always treated him as little more than a kid brother, but his mind could alter that fact.
His excitement was mounting. He tried to keep the image of Tandy firmly in his mind, but found it wavering as Oomua's fingers began playing seductively at his growing length. No! That would not do! He would not betray Tandy. He had to think of why he'd come north in the first place--to strike 
it rich so that he could return to her with proof that he had become a man. He'd arrived too late for the Klondike strike and he hadn't gotten rich selling caribou to the miners already here. But the rumor of the gold in Nome had sent his hopes soaring. In Dawson he'd found that even though the rumors were being discounted in some quarters, men were leaving for Nome in droves, buying sled dogs at $350 a head and more. He couldn't afford that kind of money. But in the Alaska Commercial Company store, he had spotted an unwanted, cobweb-gathering bike and paid $150 for it, spending the next eight days teaching himself to ride it on ice. It had been twenty-two below zero the day he left Dawson and it had stayed that cold through all his days of pedaling. Yet he had come this far-- and it was all for Tandy!
. His enlarged penis had begun to shrink in Oomua's fingers. Concentrating on his ultimate quest had brought Bryan to a climax; he had come into her hand. He relaxed now, Oomua all but forgotten. After all, he was actually only twenty years old, and easily set off by mere fantasies and touches.
Umalti heard Oomua slump back in disgust and he sighed. The man's refusal to take his young wife, he decided, was a sign of his respect towards himself, his home and his family. He lay awake for a long time with that thought in mind, his fears lessening. If all the men coming his way were chinook, then it might not be like in the days of the promyshlenniki. His village and its women would be safe. But if, as the old woman had said, there would also be chum men come along with their dog ways, then he must prepare his people. 
He decided that it would be wise of him to
discuss the matter fully with the man the next morning, for the man, by honor code, was now a welcome visitor forever in his home. The man would help him to know how to handle these new invaders. Men who sought only sand and rocks. He thought it most foolish. Salmon, whale and sea- otters. That was the measure of a man's true wealth.
The new invaders of the "sand and rock" came as much from within Alaska as from other lands. Some, for example, came from Sitka, which, by a sea route, was some two thousand miles to the south and east of Nome but was still in the territory now owned by the United States.
At a time when Sitka had functioned as an outpost of Russian-Alaska commerce, it had been a thriving, culturally attractive little city. With the imposing Mount Vertovia rising behind it, it lay in the shadow both of a strongly manned hilltop fort and the exotic Russian Orthodox St. Michael's Cathedral. Small groups of aristocratic cultural attaches posted there had honored visiting sea captains and traders with lavish entertainments at the governor's mansion or on the wooded hillside adjoining the Feodorovna house--adoringly called "The Little Tsarskoe Selo" for its resemblance, on
a small scale, to the Tsar's winter palace in St. Petersburg.
But those halcyon days for the Russians had long since gone. Now the Feodorovna house's wrought- iron carriage gate hung a little askew, the Romanovs' double-headed-eagle coat of arms on the door lintel was fading, and three sets of freshly made footprints in the snow were the house's only sign of habitation. The city below was much the same, dying or dead.
For thirty years the American flag had flown over Sitka. Few of its citizens were impressed by the fact. The city was an orphan of the Washington political storm. In 1898, there were those in government concerned about Cuba and the Philippines, but hardly anyone interested in this particular remote place.
Three fur-clad men stood in the foyer of the once-grand mansion while the uniformed maid scurried off to announce their arrival. Only one, John Brynteson, had been inside the Little Tsarskoe Selo before. That had been a year ago, when every American had scoffed at his notion that there were millions in gold for the digging near Nome and he had come here for Russian financial help in getting his claims started. Brynteson looked at the furnishings expressionlessly. But for the Laplander, Jafet Lindeberg, who had come initially to Alaska to herd reindeer, and for the Swedish sailor, Erik Lindblom, who had jumped ship to hunt for gold, this house was a wonder to behold. Only a Swedish king, and no one in Lapland, lived in this manner.
Brynteson led the gawking men to a side parlor and began to remove his outer layers of sealskin.
"This place was begun in 1805," he said, as if
he were its owner giving a guided tour, "by the Petropavlovsk family. The father and son were in business with Alexander Baranov, whom God should have willed to live a century. Men like him are still needed to shape this land's destiny."
He knew it was like talking to deaf-mutes. His two companions continued to stand and gaze at the art-lined walls in the elegant parlor, intricately carved mahogany furniture and richly colored Persian rugs. To their untrained eyes these furnishings were signs of vast wealth. Brynteson knew differently. He could see, as he had seen the year before, that the chair fabric was growing thin and threaded. The bric-a-brac was even dustier than on his last visit, and now there were water stains in the ceiling molding and corners of the silk wallpaper were beginning to curl and peel away. The Baroness Irina Feodorovna, who lived here, was not exactly impoverished but, Brynteson remarked to himself dryly, she was getting there. "Gentlemen, welcome!"
Out of respect the greeting had been uttered in Swedish and as a unit the three men turned to the door. Brynteson, his anvil-shaped head bobbing, stepped forward and bowed deeply.
"Baroness! How good to see you again! May I present the partners I have acquired since our last meeting, Jafet Lindeberg and Erik Lindblom. Gentlemen, the Baroness Irina Petropavlovsk Feodorovna."
Lindblom bowed stiffly. He had expected to be greeted by an older, less imposing-looking woman. Lindeberg, the young Laplander, could only stare in amazement. The woman coming toward them with a reserved smile was incredibly beautiful. She was
tall and moved gracefully. A cascade of chestnut curls flowed down onto her trim shoulders and high breasts. Her pale blue velvet gown seemed molded to her small waist and its wide skirt barely moved as she sailed on into the room, acknowledging each of the men in turn and offering them chairs.
The baroness was forty, the same age as Lindblom, but in her looks and movements, she appeared more a contemporary of the twenty-five-year-old Laplander. Brynteson himself had always marveled at her complexion, which never seemed to need cosmetic attention. Hers was a classic beauty. Her grace, acquired in the Russian court, was now a part of her nature. Because the Americans in Sitka took little heed of such matters, few were aware that she was by marriage the second cousin to Alexandra Feodorovna, Empress of Russia.
But Russia was not Baroness Irina's home. Sitka was. It was where she had buried her husband and raised her daughter. She could have returned to the Russian court at any time, but refused to return as a near-penniless shirt-tail relation.
"You have news for me?" she asked calmly of Brynteson. There was not a sign of anticipation in her voice, however much the answer might mean to her.
Brynteson nodded, then hesitated.
"Get on with it, man!" Lindblom growled.
Brynteson flushed. He was irritated by Lindblom's precipitousness. One, he felt, did not jump into a business discussion so quickly with a lady of this stature.
Irina put out her hand.
"Why not just tell me everything from the beginning, sir?"
"As you wish, baroness." Brynteson said gratefully. "My hunch proved most correct. On my return to Cape Nome, the three of us went three miles inland from the coast to a gulch called Anvil Creek. On our first day we were able to pan a good $50 in gold. As you suggested last September, we spent most of our time scouting the area. After three weeks we agreed on which sites were most likely to contain gold and returned to our base camp for more supplies and additional workers."
"Who were immediately sworn to secrecy," young Lindeberg quickly interjected.
Brynteson cleared his throat, thinking the statement uncalled for. "They are three Scandinavian friends and a hired Eskimo, madam. Our friends have stayed at the Cape Nome base camp and the Eskimo has returned to his village for the winter."
Irina's voice turned coldly speculative. "His village would be in the Klondike area?" she asked.
"I believe that to be quite correct."
Irina said, "Then that would account for the rumors."
"Rumors?" Lindblom exploded. "What rumors?"
Irina regarded the irate Swede calmly. "Since the turn of the new year there's been much gossip in the Klondike concerning the Seward Peninsula. Some of it has reached me. Was this Eskimo aware of how much you took out of the creek?"
"I don't think he knew its true value, madam. It was only after he left and we returned to the original site that we accumulated $1,800 worth of gold in just a few days."
"That's all?" Irina said, raising an eyebrow. "It's not very much, is it?"
"It may sound little to you, but we felt it was
enough to begin establishing claims in the area. The three of us organized a mining company and elected Jafet as our recorder. We spent the next month staking out our claims, scores of them."
"Which, of course," Jafet Lindeberg pointed out with alacrity, "included several claims for you and your daughter."
Irina's green eyes flickered with amusement. "I suppose I should be grateful. But I hardly see either my daughter or myself as a sourdough."
"Then why did you back us?" Lindblom demanded.
"I only backed John Brynteson," Irina said quietly. "You, Mr. Lindblom, with all due respect, are his afterthought. I do not take kindly to these rumors that have somehow spread. Riff-raff are likely to appear in Nome by the thousands and consume us all, jumping our claims, engaging us in endless legal battles, God knows what else. No, gentlemen. It appears that you have covered my initial investment and little more. I shall take the proceeds and withdraw from the venture." She rose and started to sweep from the parlor. Lindblom stood and ran up behind her.
"Please!" he said. "Please, baroness. You can find men to guard and work your claims. There'll be no trouble. Don't you see we need the money to re-equip?"
Irina turned, her eyes hardening.
"Perhaps, Mr. Lindblom, if you had somehow managed to find more gold for me at Anvil Creek," she said meaningfully, "I should have been encouraged to go on." .
"We held nothing back from you, my good lady,"
Lindblom spluttered. "How could you think we would do such a thing?"
Irina affected innocence. "I wasn't aware that I accused you of anything, sir. Could it be that I have somehow hit the mark?"
Lindblom looked apoplectic.
Brynteson, who enjoyed seeing his brash, domineering partner getting his comeuppance, allowed himself a small smile. "It's true, baroness, that we've brought you your fair share of what we found, though I consider it simply good business sense on your part to have raised the question since there are indeed those who would try to bilk you under any circumstances. But our anticipated profits, you see, are huge, and we need your continued investment far more than the few extra dollars we could have by cheating you. I beg of you to reconsider."
Irina cocked her head in thought. What she was thinking was that she had succeeded in putting Lindblom in his place, something she'd instantly recognized she would have to do in order to retain control over the enterprise. Brynteson and Lindeberg she felt she could handle. "Well," she said hesitantly, "I was going to use the $1,800 towards my daughter's dowry. But you gentlemen have labored so long and hard to uncover this bonanza of yours that it would be a shame to see it become merely a poor man's diggings, when the Klondike crowd arrives. You will need help to stave them off ... ."
"Then you will go along with us?'" Lindblom said hopefully.
"No, not in the way you wish," Irina answered coolly. "I desire the gold, gentlemen, but only after other men have taken it from the ground." Brynteson
sat back, ready to enjoy every minute of what was coming. Their "silent partner" was about to reveal a facet of her nature he was well aware of but had purposely kept from the two men.
Irina went on. "I come from a family of empire- builders, gentlemen. Trading, not grubbing in the ground for gold, is in my blood. My grandfather and father, for example, owned shipping fleets. They served under thirteen Russian governors of this area after the death of Alexander Baranov and built up what is now Alaska through trade. If only they had Alexander II's ear as well! I am positive they would have counseled him against selling our land to the Americans. I was only ten at the time, but knew even then that that stupid transaction would bring ruination to us all .... I was forced to leave Sitka and return to Russia for a time. You men, who have lived under Tsarist rule, will no doubt understand my next ten years of loathing for the restrictive court life, its narrow training, its prearranged marriages. Now, don't misunderstand or misquote me. My husband, Baron Alex Feodorovna, was a kind and considerate man."
A curt, mocking laugh came from the doorway. Brynteson bowed as a young woman stepped lightly into the room. Carelessly, Ludmilla Feodorovna dropped her fur hat, her gloves and her purse on the closest chair available.
"Gentlemen," Irina said tonelessly, "my daughter, Ludmilla, for whom I intend to rebuild an Alaskan empire."
The girl grimaced. Then she presented them each with a rather cold, theatrical smile. She took an inordinate amount of time to remove her floor length ermine coat. Lindeberg and Lindblom stood
transfixed. The two women, both beautiful, were more like rival sisters than mother and daughter.
"Good afternoon, gentlemen." When Ludmilla finally spoke, there was an exaggerated sweetness in her voice. "I hope I'm not intruding."
Irina's poise seemed to disintegrate. "Intruding!" She said sharply. "You arrived at a most inopportune moment! I'm discussing business with these gentlemen."
"Mother!"
"I mean it! Now don't interrupt again!"
Ludmilla made an unladylike snort.
"Yes, mother," she said. "Far be it from me to go on and give them the wrong impression of your husband, my father .... He was so kind and considerate that he drank himself to death."
Irina gasped. "Milla! How could you!"
"How could I what, mother? Stop you from boring these men to death? Why, that's perfectly easy --I've heard your lies so often my stomach turns of its own accord. I must speak up or throw up!"
In the shocked moments that followed, only one sound was heard--Lindblom's snicker.
Brynteson was speechless. He stared at the baroness and her daughter, his face drawn and bleak. Through his mind ran one word: ruined! The slip of a girl had made her mother look like a fool and Lindblom had made things worse by showing his contempt--just as they were about to be offered, Brynteson was sure, terms they could have lived with. Now he was sure of nothing. 
"I think," he muttered at last, "we'd better be going for now."
"You . . . you can't!" Irina's voice was hoarse. "We have so much yet to discuss."
"Perhaps some other time," Lindblom said, rising, a grin of triumph on his face. "We do have a bit of time to plan before spring is upon us. We should be out pricing supplies, and perhaps looking for other backers?"
Irina nodded weakly. "As you wish, gentlemen. But please join us for dinner tomorrow evening."
It was a rather embarrassing departure. Brynteson left despondent, Lindblom with increased confidence that he was the real power in the trio, Jafet Lindeberg more awed by a woman than he had ever been in his life.
How long the baroness stood after their departure, her face a troubled mask, none of the three was in a position to guess. The fact was that almost immediately Irina began to giggle. Milla came toward her, a questioning look on her face.
"Well? I suppose from your happiness that I did all right?"
"Yes," Irina said, "I think they've taken the bait. Your entrance was well-timed, my dear. I believe the mice are in the process of outwitting the cats."
Milla began to frown a bit. "I hope you're right," she said reluctantly. "Still, I didn't like speaking of father in that manner."
"Rubbish!" Irina walked away from her, toward the window, the hatred in her green eyes absolutely bottomless. "Your father gave me only one good thing during our marriage--you. No, two. When he killed himself, we were able to return to Sitka. If we have to use his name to help us, so be it."
Slowly Milla shook her head. "I don't see why we had to bring father into it at all."
Irina made a quick gesture with her hand . "You don't understand men, my dear. By now, Brynteson
will be pointing me out as a woman of tragedy and Lindblom, who won't swallow that, will be thinking of me as a pushover who can't even control her own daughter. Let them argue about me! Divide and conquer is the rule. Besides, they won't find another backer in Sitka, not with the prices for supplies as high as they are here . . . ."
"Do you really think you can control Lindblom?"
"Easily," Irina said coolly. "He is, after all, basically a greedy man. I have lived with such men my entire life. As you know, my ship-owning grandfather was, in actual fact, a thief and a bounder. He enslaved the Eskimos, had them hunt pelts for him, then robbed them blind. And left my father with a small fortune, I might add--the same fortune that the Tsar, in his imperial way, claimed when he sold us out to the Americans."
Milla ran her fingers through her hair. She had heard this story since childhood and had never seen its point. She was aware only that her mother was driven by some dark and bitter energy to restore herself to something she called "greatness." What troubled Milla mostly was her suspicion that she herself was but a pawn in her mother's grand designs.
"Oh, damn you anyhow!" Irina exploded. "Why on earth do I try to explain anything to you in the first place!"
"In the first place," Milla said, "you don't explain anything to me. I almost burst out laughing in the hall when you told them you were using my dowry money. Do I have a dowry, mother? I didn't know that. I'm not even sure I want to marry, if marriage is as horrible as you paint it to be."
"It isn't horrible if it is a properly planned" marriage, Ludmilla."
"Exactly my point," Milla said cruelly. "Was not your own a properly planned marriage?"
Glaring at her, Irina thought: Without me in on the planning.
She was worried about Milla. Milla was far more beautiful than she at twenty--lightly, stunningly beautiful. But she was also exceedingly vulnerable. The wrong man could inflame her, turn her even more provocative than she was now. That's what I must guard against, Irina thought.
The bell shrilled.
Milla stood up, like a student at court with a book on her head, cool, aloof and straightbacked.
"I'll get it, mother. You know how deaf Mama is becoming." Then she walked regally toward the door and opened it.
Jafet Lindeberg stood looking at her, taking in her beauty. "Oh my!" he murmured under his breath.
"Welcome back," Milla said carelessly. "Come in, won't you? Mother is still in the parlor."
Irina sat back slowly, as Jafet came into the room. Things were happening more quickly than she had expected. This was not the member of the trio she had anticipated seeing.
"Mrs. Feodorovna!" he began. "I mean--baroness--I mean--"
"Mother, dear," Milla said laughingly, "put him out of his misery. We don't use titles in Alaska, sir."
"Thank you," Jafet murmured. "I--I'm sorry to rush back so quickly. I've learned something that is most upsetting."
"I see," Irina said patiently.
"I--I can come back--when you are alone."
"It's quite all right," Irina said soothingly. "My daughter is well aware of all my business dealings."
Jafet glanced at Milla uneasily. It would have been hard enough to talk with the older woman without the daughter there to distract him. Then he launched into the reason for his visit, blurting it out, forgetting completely the careful approach he had planned.
"As bad as that," Irina said thoughtfully. "The prices you are quoting are quite ruinous, to be sure."
"They are," Jafet said stoutly. "More so because they think we are Russian. One merchant quoted three different prices to the three of us."
"A point you should have discussed with me before going off on your own. You are not known in Sitka. Every stranger, no matter where he's from, is an easy mark for these American merchants. Perhaps it is a matter you should have left in my hands."
Jafet sat there looking at Irina with dawning respect in his eyes.
"You know," he said, "I never thought of that." Then he added, truthfully, "But you are a woman."
"Should that make a difference?" she demanded.
"I--I guess not. We are all lost without fresh supplies. But the prices. Lindblom is, well, conservative."
Irina turned to Milla.
"Get me pen and ink," she said quietly.
Milla, surprisingly demure, got up and took a portable secretary from the desk. Her deepening
curiosity kept her from asking her mother then and there what she planned.
The quill raced. Jafet was amazed at Irina's knowledge of the type and quantity of supplies they would require. Finally, she was done.
"This list will do, I think," she said crisply. "When can I see some gold to cover my cost in ordering them?"
"You are willing to invest your money again?" Jafet scarcely breathed.
"Hardly! You three will be investing your money. You will still owe me the capital loan plus interest. I will act merely as your agent in underwriting these supplies and those that you will have to secure later."
"But how will you be able to do this when we cannot?"
Irina studied him intently, almost coyly. "I am going to confide in you, Jafet. The Russian freighter Maria is owned by an old friend of mine. I shall ask Captain Maksutov to purchase the supplies for me on his next voyage home." 
"From Russia? That's marvelous! You're a genius!" he exulted.
"Now, Milla will see you out. I should have good news for us by the time we all meet for dinner."
At the front door with Milla, Jafet was reluctant to leave.
"She's fantastic," he stammered, "and you are the loveliest girl I've ever seen."
Then he was gone, surprised that he had been so bold, equally surprised that Milla had not immediately slapped his face for it. That he had pulled it off gave him heart for their next meeting. Just thinking about her made the heat rise out of his
collar. But why shouldn't he be daring? This was the year 1898 and this was a new frontier. A man had to be daring or he was lost.
Milla re-entered the parlor, her mind a torrent of thoughts.
"I was unaware," she said softly, "that Captain Maksutov was back in Sitka."
Irina laughed throatily.
"He's not, Milla," she said. "He and the Maria will not return until March." 
"Oh? Then this list of supplies?"
Irina looked at her daughter with grim amusement.
"Carefully storehoused by me since the end of August."
"That was quite a gamble," Milla grinned.
"I don't know," Irina said thoughtfully. "I had a feeling all along that the Swede would get lucky. If not, the supplies could still have been sold to others looking to get rich quick. As that showman in America, P. T. Barnum said, there is a sucker born every minute."
"But can you trust them?" Milla asked quietly. "Cape Nome is quite a ways from Sitka."
"You're growing wise," Irina laughed. "Of course I don't trust them. I trust no man unless he gives me more than sufficient reason to trust him. That's why we shall sail for Nome in the spring, along with our supplies, our "partners," and a few other surprises I have up my sleeve."
Milla gasped. "Mother, that is insanity. Where shall we live? What shall we do with Marna?"
"Insanity, my dear girl, is a term applicable to foolish people who sit down and give up on life. If I must go backwards to put our lives in a for
ward motion again I do so with no fear in my heart. I will expect no less from you."
"Yes, mother," Milla said sadly.
She got up stiffly, thinking: Mother is her own strength. But where do I get my strength from? She still thinks of me as a child. Can't she see that? When will she let me learn to be a woman?
As the winter days shortened, Bryan Mathews found a growing tide of people overtaking him. The rumors were now being accepted as fact by prospectors who had the means to buy or hire dog sleds. Daily one or two with extra teams would pass him by, with a capability of traveling seventy to a hundred miles a day. At first Bryan strove to keep up with them. Then he began to cut down on his daily mileage, on the theory that pedaling so far in a day through the strongly swirling williwaw winds would burn out his energies rapidly. 
He was severely disadvantaged by the cold winds. The nights could dip to seventy below zero while the williwaw swirled at a hundred miles an hour The other prospectors could gain warmth by sleeping with their dogs; a bicycle provided no such comfort. Bryan's Van Dyke began to lose its clipped 
appearance and his mustache drooped with hoarfrost. His spirits began drooping as well.
One day, as he was pedaling downriver to Kaltag, he turned a serpentine bend in the river and a strong wind suddenly caught him from the rear. Frantically, he began back-pedaling to keep from going too fast, but the wind was at gale force.
"Jesus!" he cried as one capricious gust lifted man and two-wheeler a good two feet off the frozen surface and spun them about like a toy top. Bryan could do nothing to control the vehicle. To jump off might have been more disastrous than keeping his seat. The bicycle, lighting on the ground again, began to swerve hard to the right and Bryan thrust his weight leftward. But he overcompensated for- the wind and could not pull back before crashing at tremendous speed into a patch chock full of huge ice boulders.
He smashed into one and screamed with the sudden pain, his own voice sounding small and lost to him under the howling wind. Then he was desperately fighting the rising blackness and stars before his eyes. He could not lose consciousness. Even a blackout of a few minutes could result in his freezing to death. He concentrated on the pain in his knee, using its fierce throbs to stay awake. 
Dislodging himself from the bicycle, he battled the wind and half-rose until he was on his haunches. The crash had torn the gloves from his hands, and they and his elbows had been badly lacerated by the sharp edges of ice. But the most intense pain now was in his right leg, which would barely support him. Fearing the worst he sat back down in a soft snow bank and tore away his leggings. Gingerly, he felt his rapidly swelling knee. It was
severely bruised and beginning to discolor, but as far as he could determine it was not broken.
Then, blinking at the bicycle in disbelief, he saw where the most costly damage had been done. The front wheel rim was bent at an impossible angle; moreover, one half of the handlebar had been sheared off. The machine was inoperable. Numbly, Bryan stared at it. He would now have to push it into Kaltag; given his bad leg and the heavy backpack of food he would have to take with him in order to survive, he was not confident he could make it to the Eskimo village. He was not even sure how far ahead Kaltag was; it could be five miles, maybe ten.
He looked at the bicycle with grim humor. "Well, old paint," he said, "at least I don't have to shoot you."
Wincing, he used the sprawled bicycle to help haul himself upright. Then he got the machine standing and strapped the pack to its seat. Laboriously, he inched it back onto the track.
Nature turned whimsical. The williwaw dropped as suddenly as it had arisen. Though the temperature remained well below freezing, Bryan began to feel giddily happy, as if, with the wind gone, it was a better deal than it actually was and everything was going to be all right. Pushing the bicycle, he started singing every bawdy song he had learned as an outlaw. Raw, rough songs that made his spirits rise still further, with one lusty lyric calling forth another. He went on singing that way for quite a spell, then began to repeat himself, in even louder tones, unaware of how feverish he was becoming. "You must be one horn-eee dude!" 
Bryan stopped short. Two men stood above him
on a snow bank. They were not ordinary prospectors, he could see that at a glance. Their dress betrayed them. In a sense, Craig Buttle and Lance DeLough were better dressed than any prospector just out of Dawson had a right to be. Their fur outer garments looked store-bought new, and their beaver-pelt hats were festooned with bright feathers.
Bryan looked at the pair in astonishment. He was groggily lightheaded by now. It flickered through his mind that perhaps he had stumbled into a story book, for the two strongly reminded him of the fairy-tale characters who had led Pinocchio astray on his adventures. Suppressing a giggle, he worked on sobering himself up to the reality of the situation.
He might better have trusted his perceptions.
Above him, "I think we got ourselves a pigeon," Buttle whispered to DeLough.
DeLough cautioned in a low voice, "I'll handle this. Hey, lad, you look a little weather-weary."
Bryan nodded. "Had an accident. How far is it to the Eskimo village of Kaltag?"
"Far enough so's you'll never get there in the condition you're in. Twenty miles, I'd say," DeLough said.
"We got us a lean-to nearby, if you'd care to warm yourself."
Bryan's heart sank. "I'm beholding," he sighed wearily. The impulse to sing himself on had dissipated like hot air leaving a balloon; he could never walk twenty miles, for his knee was beginning to throb and buckle. "Perhaps I have something to trade for your hospitality."
"Perhaps you have." Craig Buttle grinned. "We
also got us a damn fool old scout who let our larder get low. Not much left besides tea, beans, and mush. Got some hot cake flour but nothing to fry 'em on."
"Then we are well met," Bryan said, nodding. He started pushing the bicycle up the snow bank. "I have bacon, crackers and frying pan, plus some butter and canned milk."
"Craig," DeLough said to his partner, "be a good fellow and help the lad up with his vehicle."
The lean-to was too small for four grown men. In the opinion of DeLough and Buttle, their scout should have been put out for an overnight airing.
John Hummell had spent three-quarters of his life searching for elusive gold from California to the Klondike. He was old and sick, which was one reason he smelled bad, and he was no joy on other counts for the other two men to be around. But he possessed one commodity that Buttle and DeLough lacked, a dog sled with superior huskies to pull it. Over in Dawson, he'd offered to guide the two San Franciscans the seven hundred and fifty miles west to Cape Nome in exchange for food and supplies. Plus, of course, a sizable guiding fee. Buttle and DeLough had grabbed at the opportunity. Unfortunately, they had not left behind their voracious appetites. They had been quite truthful in what they had told Bryan about the state of their larder--after three weeks on the trail, it had just about run out. It was hardly Hummell's fault.
Hummell greeted Bryan with a grunt. He was tired of playing wet-nurse to the two foppish cheechakos and thought at first the newcomer must be more of the same if he was in their company. He soon changed his mind, however. He was a tough, never-say-die little man--he stood only five feet 
tall in his bare feet--and it didn't take him long to spot the young bicycle traveler as a man stamped out of the same resourceful mold as he was.
As for Bryan, it didn't take him long to see that Hummell had little use for his arrogant, lazy-traveling companions. They treated the old man like a hired servant, something he took with a kind of disgruntled stoicism.
Bryan felt better after he'd eaten some flapjacks and drunk some coffee. So, obviously, did DeLough and Buttle. They patted their stomachs agreeably, even thanked old Hummell for frying up the meal, then showed Bryan where he was to bed down for the night--on a blanket on which all four were to sleep in a row to share bodily warmth. Bryan thought little of the arrangement, other than that, given the freezing weather, it sounded like a good idea to him.
"How will you be traveling from here?" Buttle asked him in an interested voice after coffee.
"I'm not sure." Bryan scratched his head. "I bought a hand-drawn map in Dawson that routes me only to Kaltag. I'll have to learn the way from there."
Hummell started to comment, but was quickly interrupted by Lance DeLough, whose voice ingratiated itself into Bryan's ear.
"We can be of help to you there, friend, can't we, Craig? You go all the way down the Yukon until it comes to the sea. This time of year it's still frozen and you ought to be able to ride right across it to Nome. You get some rest now, and there'll be nothing to it."
Nothing to it, Bryan thought grimly, if you had a vehicle you could navigate.'
His worry over his future transportation took some joy out of the rest of the evening.
Later, old John Hummell, lying on the blanket to one side of Bryan, sensed the young man's tension. He also knew what figured to be percolating in the minds of Buttle and DeLough. He dared not speak out his suspicions for them to hear, for they were paying him well. But he did want to help the boy. He decided he could be helpful in a way that would not necessarily reveal his clients' hand.
"Son," he growled, "there's a hammer and some spruce boughs outside. Seems to me you could go out there and mend your contraption."
Bryan was too worn out to move. "Might have something there. Thanks," he muttered. "I could ... no, I will look into it ... first thing in the morning." He fell asleep.
He awoke with a start. His bottom was freezing cold. For a moment he wondered why. Then he saw why, or thought he did. He'd apparently hiked the top blanket up off his back while asleep. He pulled it back over him, then inched backward to let the body behind him, whoever it was, share in the blanket's recovery. Drowsily, he felt the body curl closer.
Then, instantly, he knew what really had awakened him. The back flap of his long-johns had been unbuttoned and pulled down. Hard flesh, with the heat of a branding iron, was being pressed against his buttocks, boring in to spread them. His mind spun. He locked his legs tightly together. Not the rancid odor of John Hummell came to his nostrils but the sweet scent of lavender water. God, which of the other two was trying to screw him? He had an odd sensation, mixed of revulsion and, curiously,
nostalgia. It kept him from reacting immediately. He'd never been in this spot before, but some of the Doolin gang had; he was aware that a few of the big, bold outlaws he had ridden with had used each other without question or embarrassment. As a clean-shaven kid outlaw, he himself had been up for grabs and might have fallen in with that style of life had not Bill Doolin himself protected him from it. Bill Doolin, and Tandy.
How did he feel about it now? He wanted to know, wanted not to lie to himself. It was too easy to turn in affected disgust and slam a fist into somebody's nose. Maybe, for Christ's sake, he would like it if he let himself. 
He lay still.
Lance DeLough's hot, moaning murmurs--Bryan recognized the voice now--came up close against his neck and a pair of soft, hairless arms went around his waist.
No. Bryan didn't Eke it. Not one bit. It wasn't doing a thing for him. He wasn't sure this was because he couldn't enjoy male sex. He was sure of only one thing, that there was no way he was going to get hot for Lance DeLough.
With a sudden loud snore, as if he were in a sleep disturbed by a dream, he thrust his elbow backward and rolled out of DeLough's grasp to the far side of the blanket. For a moment, DeLough lay still behind him. Curiously, Bryan felt he himself was the guilty party. Why had he resorted to pretense to get away? Why hadn't he spun around and, cursing, shoved the man away? 
And what would he do now when DeLough came at him again? For Bryan was sure he would--he'd
practically invited him to. Deep anxiety made him swallow and gulp for air.
"Goddam it, there'll be no queer stuff around me!" 
The voice, exploding like a thunderbolt in the stillness of the lean-to, was old John Hummell's.
Bryan, blinking in the darkness, did not otherwise move a muscle. Neither did Lance DeLough. Both lay frozen.
"You two quit scurryin' around here I'll cut y'ur danged peckers off!"
Holy Christ, Bryan thought with alarm, does old Hummell really think that I--
"Aw, shit," came DeLough's low mutter.
That was all there was to it, almost. After a while, Bryan, hearing DeLough's deep, regular breathing, settled down and went to sleep himself.
And overslept, far too long into the late morning.
When he awoke, he was alone and nearly freezing. His blanket was gone and the fire had just gone out completely. In the dull gray of the sunless day he found his clothing and quickly dressed. It was probably close to noon. He surmised the others had been gone for hours.
At first he was pleased that they had left, for he was saved the embarrassment of facing either -DeLough or Hummell. Then, checking the leanto, he saw the real reason for their stealthy departure. His backpack had been ransacked. The only food left was a tin of beans and a few crumbled crackers.
He went outside and sat down on the spruce boughs Hummell had talked about. Never had he felt more desolate, lonely and self-pitying. He
seemed to be a crumbled cracker himself, and the' question welled up inside him: What have I ever done to deserve this?
A slow, bemused grin crossed his face as he thought that one over. Well, he had robbed plenty in his time, he had to admit it--Oklahoma banks, stores, a cash-laden drummer now and then. So now he had been robbed himself. Tit for tat, in God's slow way of evening the scales of justice. But seeing that philosophical point gave Bryan peace of mind for a few moments at best. After that he felt terrible again. He was lost in an icy wilderness without supplies. He could very well starve in this spot. It was awful, what he had let happen to himself. He was a fool!
Boiling with anger now, he rose and began to sort through the spruce boughs. There was no hammer to be found--that, if it ever had been there, was gone. But John Hummell had at least left him with the germ of an idea.
Bryan found a straight-enough length of spruce and grooved it with his knife so that he could set one end of it snugly into the half of the handlebar that remained. Then he used a backpack strap and a cross stick to fasten it securely. When he tested the free end of the spruce branch, he found he had restored the handlebar to a solid, functioning whole. He was elated. But then, that was the easy part; it had been slow, tedious but necessary work that had helped him control his anger. When he considered the bent front wheel rim, he blew up in disgust. "What the fuck!" he growled. With little thought as to the efficacy of his actions, he picked up a lump of ice and began smashing it down .on the rim with the general intent of straightening the
angle. When the ice shattered in his hand, he simply picked up another lump. And so on. His hand was so numbed by the cold that for all he knew he was smashing his own flesh and bone down on the metal.
But he got the job done, somehow. There came a point when he stopped his angry smashing and took a look at the rim. "Well, I'll be damned," he said admiringly. He spun-the wheel and watched the spokes revolve easily and smoothly. The bicycle was ready to ride.
Twenty miles! Why, after pedaling less than three miles, Bryan saw smoke rising from Kaltag's igloos. He could have walked this distance. Once again, chagrin stabbed at him. Had he really let DeLough and Buttle dupe him on this score as well? And Hummell too? God damn! 
Pedaling faster now that his goal was in sight, he was approaching the outskirts of the village when a squat, roly-poly Eskimo came busting up the trail to greet him. Bryan was surprised. It was as if he had been expected. He stopped the bicycle and waited. The Eskimo soon reached him.
"Aiyee! Aiyee! I was near come out by sled to look for you," the Eskimo said, beaming.
"For me?' 
"So say Little Man. You come! You come!"
Bryan's suspicions soared. "Little Man. You mean Hummell?"
The Eskimo continued smiling but said nothing.
"Why should I come with you?" Bryan demanded. "What's Hummell want with me?"
The Eskimo looked hurt. "Little Man say for you not to follow big water but his tracks. He leave
me big package to give you--dried salmon, moose meat and kelp."
Bryan blinked. Things, he suddenly realized, were a hell of a lot different than he'd thought. Humanity wasn't dead up here in the frozen North; at least it was still alive in Hummell's old body. It was just the fops who had taken him. The old sourdough was not about to let him starve or become wolf bait.
"Well, come on then," he said gruffly to the Eskimo. "You get up on the seat behind me, and I'll give you a ride in."
Bryan stayed in Kaltag three days, resting his knee until it healed. From the Eskimo, whose name was Yamook and to whom, he found out, Hummell had made a gift of a husky, he learned that Kaltag was the place where the looping Yukon made its closest approach to Nome. To have followed the river all around would have added a month to his journey.
When he left the village and started pedaling out almost due west across the frozen tundra, he found Hummell's tracks soon petering out, covered by drifting snows. He continued on nevertheless. Nome was still 200 miles away, even on this route. The tundra was rough and slow-going; sometimes there were bogs too thinly coated with ice to risk riding across and he had to circle them carefully, losing much time in that manner. Worse, the weather refused to warm up.
He saw abandoned, rusted sleds, eviscerated wolf carcasses and cross-marked human graves all around. In his loneliness, hunched over his handlebars, he started making up stories that would relate these various items one to another, until he found
himself getting very depressed. So he quit telling himself stories then and concentrated on the ruts in front of him.
At night, after eating chunks of moose meat raw, he did as Yanook the Eskimo had advised him to. He dug a hole in the snow, covered himself with his blanket and let the wind blow more snow over that. Oddly, it worked; the heavier weight on the blanket added to its warmth and let him sleep almost comfortably. His bicycle did not fare as well. Morning after morning he would wake up to find its rubber tires frozen stiff, the oil in its bearings of almost glue-like viscosity. He would have to walk the bike for several miles to loosen the movement.
On his thirty-eighth day out of Dawson--he had measured the journey from its beginning-- Bryan pushed the bicycle to the top of a ridge and looked down. The perpetual whiteness of the snow was troubling his vision by then, and at first he saw only more icy expanse dotted with what appeared to be dead trees. Then he saw that the trees were tents, a distant cluster of them in the long valley below him. There were hundreds of them, all over the landscape.
His heart leaped. He was there! He had made it! This was Cape Nome!
Almost immediately, he sought out John Hummell, who greeted him like the prodigal son. No mention was made of Buttle and DeLough, which suited Bryan just fine, as he did not care to have their names or the incident that had embarrassed him brought to his attention. They were simply not around at the moment. For a sage old sourdough, Hummell was youthfully exuberant that he had made it. Did he know, Bryan was asked, that fewer than
seventy men had survived the trip across the tundra? That scores had been reported dead or missing? He made Bryan feel like a grand fellow.
And yet, for all of Hummell's enthusiasm, this figured to be the worst part of the expedition for young Bryan Mathews, for it was a period of long waiting for the spring thaw. Most of the prospectors had enough grub and/or money to trade with each other, but as for Bryan, his supplies were nearly gone and he couldn't pay the inflated prices most everybody was asking for replacements. John Hummell gave him a place to rest his head, but he didn't want to impose on the old man for more; in the first place, he was a bit too proud to ask for a loan without having reasonable collateral to offer, and in the second place he figured old Hummell might soon be running short himself.
Such was the situation when, one night while he was getting to bed down, Hummell got curious as to the layers of clothing Bryan was taking off.
"What are them newspapers for?" he growled. "Seen you had 'em back on the trail and didn't know what they was for then neither."
"To keep warm," Bryan laughed. "It's something I learned from my ma."
"Well, I never heared tell . . . ." The old man sucked at a back tooth. He scowled. "You change 'em every day?" he asked suspiciously.
Bryan shook his head. "My ma would sure have liked me to, I know. But you don't often get papers up here--some of these are a couple months old."
"Hmm." Suddenly, the old man's hand shot out. "Lemme see one of them sheets. Got me a wonderment."
Bryan shrugged and handed a paper over. Hummell stuck a pair of steel-rimmed spectacles on the end of his nose and studied it intently.
"Damme, this be the one," he said, at last.
"One what?"
"Lots of grub and drinks tonight. Air you comin'?"
"I don't understand. What are you up to?"
"Well, you just get your duds back on and foller me and you'll see. Here, don't fergit your undershirt." The old man handed the newspaper back to Bryan, stonefaced.
The tent they went to that night was the largest in the area. Along one wall was a long makeshift bar and food table, around which milled about fifty prospectors, some of them ready to shell out their last few dollars for a good time. There was some paltry gambling going on. A cast-iron wood stove in the center of the tent gave" off a constant red glow, which somehow put Bryan in mind of a Kansas City whorehouse, except there were no women present, not one. It was hard to tell what Hummell had in mind in coming here; whatever it was, it soon became apparent it had nothing to do with drinks, food, cards or any other kind of fun and games.
He watched the old man pound vigorously on the bar, a clamor for attention which brought a sharp look from a tall, beefy, red-bearded gent pouring out drinks from behind it. The man, in a heavy lumberjack shirt, looked like he could fell an ox with his fist, and when he glowered Bryan got concerned for his little rooster of a friend's wellbeing.
"Sir," Hummell growled, ignoring the man's
glower. "I think you know me to be John Hamilton Hummell, no two ways about it. And I know you to be John F. A. Strong. I figgered you'd be in these parts soon enough. But what air you callin' yerself now--a prospector or a newspaperman?"
John Farmininger Arthur Strong's face had been brightening as the old man spoke. "Hummell! Why, you old sourdog of a sourdough, it is you! The hell with the gold, I say. Tonight I'm your host and barkeep, but I'll be putting out the Nome News as soon as I get good and ready to. Damn, haven't seen you in a coon's age. Any more questions, you cantankerous old codger?" 
"Yep," Hummell said curtly. "What would you be willing to put out fer me and my friend here for some more or less current news in the meantime?"
Strong, a canny businessman, looked at Hummell sternly.
"Now just what are you offering, John?" he asked. "Out with it. Getting the news out is my profession. You know you got me hooked."
"Well," Hummell drawled, "young Mathews here" --he jerked a thumb at Bryan--"is presently wearin' a copy of the San Francisco Examiner, from not too long ago neither. Point is he knows how to read an' he can read it out loud to them here that don't." 
"Wearing the Examiner, you say." Strong looked vague for a moment. Then he pulled himself together and said flatly, "Hell, one paper ain't much." 
"Ain't," Hummell agreed, "but we got plenty more where that one came from. Ain't that right, son?"
Bryan started. "Oh. Yeah," he said. "I have a
Seattle Post-Intelligencer, I know. And I think I have a couple all the way from Chicago and New York." 
Strong, looking from one to the other, now showed interest. Percolating in his mind was his shrewd observation that his current customers were literally starved for homeside news and gossip; that, more than food and drink, was what was bringing customers to his tent. Washington political gossip, news of the music halls and boxing matches in the states-- any news, in fact, that would help relieve the boredom of the would-be prospectors' long wait would, as far as he was concerned, be good news. 
Strong nodded. "If you've got what you say you have, son, you've got a deal. Grub for you and John both so long as your news holds out." Bryan, eager to prove out his merchandise, started to unbutton his outer shirt. Strong added hastily, "Don't show me now, I believe you. Just come early tomorrow night, sit up on that high chair over there and start reading."
Thus, over the remaining winter months, Bryan found himself reading newspaper columns aloud to large, interested audiences, warming men's spirits, it turned out, with the same newsprint that had kept his body warm. It was a good deal all around. He and Hummell ate well for free and drank too, out of Strong's private stock. He even became something of a hero to the prospectors. He had never before heard of Admiral George Dewey, for example, but as he began to inspire the men with his read-aloud accounts of Dewey's exploits at Manila Bay some of the glory seemed to rub off on him. He was the bearer of heroic, manly tidings and the
tough, hard-bitten prospectors shouted him up for it. His success made Bryan feel strong and confident in himself.
Once in a while Buttle and DeLough, who had a tent off together somewhere, would come by and listen quietly while he read. Bryan's neck would prickle. But they never spoke to him, nor he to them.
The steamship Maria broke the ice of Norton Sound on March 22, 1898. Now, a day later, she was moving low in the water of Nome, her hold crammed with supplies. Brynteson, Lindblom and Lindeborg were no longer aboard: they had left the ship by small boat during the night so as to get to their claims without giving notice of their arrival. 
Alone on deck, bundled up in a cape and heavy tweeds, Baroness Irina looked out over the distant desolate strip of tundra that was Nome and felt heartsick. It was raining, snowing, sleeting, everything at once: heaven seemed to have singled her head out to spit at. Moreover, it appeared the Maria might not be able to get much closer to shore; its bow hard up against an ice-pack, it was barely moving, just inching along with engines groaning. 
Irina saw Nome as a hovel of filthy tents on an
endless gray plain. Outside the tents, she began to" make out knots of dirty little men, like cockroaches almost, against the vast, cloudy sky. It was terribly depressing, this place, the weather, and all. She would have to shake off that feeling, definitely. Scanning the horizon, she finally found what she was looking for; a high, open patch of land removed from the tents by a narrow inlet of icy water.
Holding onto the rail, she made her way along the Maria's slushy deck and climbed to the bridge. Pounding on the door of the wheelhouse with half- frozen fingers, she was admitted by a tall, thin man with a worried expression on his face. 
"Can't go in much further, baroness," Captain Maksutov informed her. "Not without breaking up my ship."
Irina strode to the window. "Is the ice here thick enough to hold the mules and supply sleds, captain?"
"Well, as to that, yes. I would certainly presume so. But surely you don't wish to debark here, baroness."
"Lay anchor, captain. Give me ten minutes and then come to my cabin."
"Madam?"
Irina looked at Igor Maksutov wonderingly. How had this simple-minded man ever become the master of a ship? He had exasperated her almost since the day they had left Sitka. Stupid, unimaginative Russian peasant--always she had to spell everything out for him.
"Ten minutes," she said tartly and departed.
When she returned to her cabin, Marna Stoecklov, the family servant, rose at once to greet her.
She was a plump, plain-looking woman who obviously adored Irina.
"My!" Marna admonished her. "You're all wet, child! Give me that cape and get yourself into something dry."
"How is Milla?"
The girl turned in her upper bunk and glared at her mother, her face drawn and ashen.
"Ask me yourself," she snapped. "I still feel sick; awful! Aren't we ever going to get there?"
Irina raised her eyebrows. Milla's sea-sickness no longer had her sympathy. It had gone on for days now. She herself had not considered the voyage rough at all, as far as the sea was concerned.
"You might take note," she said coolly, "that the ship is no longer moving. Now, get up and make yourself presentable. The captain will be here in a few moments."
"Whatever for?" Milla demanded.
"Now, that's enough, young lady!" Irina said sharply. "This whimpering and petulance of yours I will not tolerate. It is most unbecoming. Marna, fetch Milla some clothing!"
While Milla grudgingly dressed, Irina began to arrange several documents on the table. She was ready for Captain Maksutov when he came in and gave him a welcoming smile.
"My, it's cold in here," were his first words.
"It has been for the whole damn trip," Milla informed him.
"I apologize for my daughter, captain Maksutov," Irina said sweetly. "Milla dear, I am sure that now we are anchored more heat can be supplied to the cabins. Isn't that so, dear sir?"
Milla gave her mother a quick look. Irina's abrupt change in tone had made her immediately suspicious. What sort of devious route, and to where, was she embarked on now? «
Captain Maksutov frowned. "It would be a waste of fuel, I'm afraid," he said. "I've already ordered the stokers to bank all but one furnace."
"An order that can be reversed, I am sure," Irina said smoothly. "You would not wish us to get ill while we are still aboard, would you?"
The captain was genuinely puzzled. "That shouldn't happen, baroness. You should be debarking very shortly, one way or another."
Irina laughed lightly. "No, captain. We shall have to live on board for at least a month, perhaps two, sir."
"But my orders are to return at once to my home port."
Irina patted a sealed document on the table. "I'm afraid I have here your priority orders, captain. You yourself brought them to me from Nakhodka."
The captain looked astonished. Then, "May I know their content, madam?" he said heavily.
"But of course. The very reason for this meeting. By these orders, I am to have the service of your sailors while we are here."
"I don't understand."
Irina went right on. "When you do sail, which I anticipate will be around the first of May, you will be acting as my supply ship between here and Juneau. An order has already been placed with the Juneau Mill Works for lumber and related supplies, and I shall need other items as well. You will be bringing these items here throughout the summer, Captain Maksutov."
Maksutov stood up.
"This is contrary to what the owner informed me," he said evenly.
Irina smiled.
"Boris Henkja is no longer the owner of the Maria, sir. I am." 
Milla gasped and Maksutov stared.
Irina went on calmly. "When you return home this fall you shall take him my final payment."
"Baroness, I . ..." Maksutov looked at the document on the table. Any desire he'd had to examine it for himself had faded rapidly before the woman's imperious commands. He risked the sea. It was not in him to risk questioning any arrangement made between royalty and his rich employer. He spread his hands in a resigned gesture. "What would you have of my crew?" he said.
"I wish them now to unload the mules, sleds and three large tents. I will go with the first mate and show him exactly where I wish the men to put the tents up. Then, it is very simple ... we will completely unload the ship. Good morning, Captain."
Only when he was outside the cabin did the anger and the shame rise inside Igor Maksutov, as bitterly as wormwood. He did not know what he would do once he was able to return to Russia. For how much longer could he keep humbling himself in the Tsar's service? It was intolerable. There were those in the Russian navy seething with discontent brewing a revolt, a revolution even. Perhaps, somehow, he could join them. For it was true what the socialists, Marx and Engels, had written: united with others, he would have nothing to lose but his chains ....
The brooding captain left behind an impassive
Milla, studying her mother with a curious half-smile on her face.
"That was quite a surprise, mother, you owning this ship," she said softly and a bit tauntingly.
Irina tilted her head back and laughed. "But obviously not a surprise to you, love," she said. She opened the alleged sealed document and revealed, with some glee, the rather bland, well-wishing letter Maksutov had brought her from her old friend Boris Henkja.
Milla nodded. "Congratulations are in order, mother," she said.
Irina speculated. "I imagine the real surprise will be Boris Henkja's when his delayed ship returns in the fall. But by then I should have ample funds to compensate him most generously for the inconvenience to him."
By nightfall of the next day, Irina's three main tents had been set upon the spot on the plain she had selected. Over the next four days came the wood plank floors, pot-bellied stoves, chimneys, et al, to furnish them. She was getting ready to open a combination inn, general store and assaying office when the moment was propitious--the beginnings, she saw it, of her Alaskan empire.
The baroness had not idled her time away on the 2,000 mile voyage from Sitka. She had studied the Maria's crew and gotten to know its various attitudes and capabilities. She had a strong hunch about the burly first mate, Basil Sturmer. He was quick-witted, spoke excellent English and showed every indication of loathing the sea. She'd put his talents and commanding energies to better use; once her store tent was fully stocked, she would 
make him manager of The Petropavlovsk Mercantile Company. The captain's mess steward, Karl Druska, she had ear-marked as her bartender; she'd set him up in a tent that would also offer one meal a day, prepared and served by Marna and Milla.
It gave Irina a heady feeling to watch her long preparations take shape. She was dead broke and out on a dangerous limb. The entire venture might collapse if Brynteson, Lindblom and Lindeborg-- the "Lucky Swedes," she was beginning to call them --proved not to be lucky. But she reserved her nights in bed to worry about this; the days she used to command and build.
Those days began to lengthen. The frost gave up its hold in April and the tundra turned into ankle- deep slush. Across the inlet, the hardier prospectors shook off their winter blues and began slogging daily up Snake Creek.and Anvil Creek to search for nuggets and lay claims.
At night they would look across the inlet at the dark, well-guarded tents and wonder about them, what merchandise they housed and when they would open. They wondered even more deeply about the strikingly beautiful Russian woman who daily paraded around in tweeds and cape, a Cossack fur hat crowning her chestnut hair. Rumor had it she had other women aboard the ship she repaired to at night--this rumor from a sailor who worked for her--but that she wasn't about to bring them ashore until the prospectors had uncovered enough pay dirt to pay for them.
In actual fact, Irina wanted a report from John Brynteson before deciding on her next move.
It was not Brynteson but Jafet Lindeberg who finally came to the ship. That was during the sec
and week in April and he was deeply apologetic.
"I am sorry, baroness. There are many would-be claim jumpers about. The three of us have had much time just guarding our property with guns. We have had no time at all to get to your claim or your daughter's. I am sorry, baroness, truly, profoundly sorry."
He's damned nervous is what he is, Irina thought. I wonder why?
Jafet leaned forward confidentially.
"Now, if we could borrow some of the sailors you're employing to help guard the claims, at least until the law gets here, perhaps we'd be freer to get on with your business."
"The law," Irina said, her voice heavy with sarcasm, "is two thousand miles away, Jafet. It'll never get here." 
"I beg to disagree, baroness. We have it on good authority that a company of soldiers is due here from St. Michael in just a few days and is likely to be activated immediately. They are already crossing Norton Sound."
Irina frowned thoughtfully.
"Why," she asked quietly, "can't you three employ your own guards until then? Why this 'borrowing' of my men? I don't like that idea at all, don't like the sound of it. It makes me suspicious, you see."
Lindeberg smiled, though it was more of a nervous tic than a smile.
"You know how Lindblom operates. He pinches pennies. It isn't that we haven't found gold. Here. John and I wanted you to have this. We want you to keep it for us in your new safe after you take, out the debt and interest we owe you."
From the lining of his mackinaw Lindeberg took two heavy sacks. "You may wish to weigh it again, but I figure it to be worth just over $20,000," he said.
"My God!" Irina gasped. "You're carrying a fortune! No wonder you seem so nervous."
Jafet colored. "Yes. I'm afraid of getting robbed. I'm always afraid of that. But that was only part of it. I ... I was hoping that Miss Ludmilla would be with you."
Irina was saved from the tangle of her thoughts by a knock on the cabin door. It was Milla herself. Abstractedly, she turned the young Laplander over to her daughter. A romance between the foolish Lindeberg and her daughter was not one she would tolerate for long, but for now his doglike devotion to Milla redounded to her advantage. Besides, she preferred to be alone now. She wanted to sit and savor Lindeberg's gold and plan for the opening of her businesses.
"Don't worry," Milla said to her mother, "the new people coming in will surely have to buy from us."
Each opening had been a total disaster.
The miners had come into the mercantile store and walked its length examining the picks and shovels, wheelbarrows, lanterns, and the like. They'd fingered the heavy duty clothing and boots. But they'd bought nothing. The tent town's population had grown to two hundred and fifty men and there hadn't been a single purchase.
The "grand opening" restaurant take was as great a disappointment. Bearded, mud-stained men sauntered through the double doors, took a look at the
menu board and, barring a lusty whistle or two at Milla, sauntered quietly out again. The prices put them off;
Coffee, tea or chocolate, .50
Sandwiches, .75
Baked Beans, 1.00
Bread, Vi loaf, .50 
Ham & Eggs, 5.00
Porterhouse Steak, 5.00
Goulash, 4.00
Stew, 4.00
Pie and Cake, 1.00
Nor when the rough-hewn dining room was converted into a saloon that night were there many takers for the dollar drinks.
"Swine," Irina grumbled, "they will pay my prices yet. Basil, it's time to get the other tent set up. Then the ship and its crew can go back."
"What about the sailors guarding the claims?"
"Leave them there. I've decided to charge the Swedes for their services. Maksutov can get all the sailors he needs in Sitka."
Milla daily grew more and more uncomfortable. The last tent Irina put up, which was well furnished and was for herself, Milla and Marna to live in, soon gave rise to the rumor that it would be a "house of women," in short, a brothel.
As time went by, droves of men began to arrive from the Klondike and a few did begin to come to the restaurant tent for their meals. Milla did not see fit to mention to her mother the unsavory comments they uttered in tones so low they doubtless thought their irony and disdain would be inaudible. She felt the comments might actually excite her mother; in any case, she felt that in bringing the matter up she would do little more than suffer Irina's contempt.
Instead, Milla tried to resign herself to this deplorable life. She saw the men in Nome as loud, riotous, vulgar, without a soupgon of grace. On the
serving line she behaved icily towards them, though inwardly she blazed with anger. That they would have the effrontery to assume she would bed down for money after hours with the likes of them!
Another man, not a prospector, entertained a similar notion, but about Irina, not Milla.
Lieutenant Oliver Spaulding had been dispatched to Nome with a company of soldiers and specific instructions to maintain law and order. A young West Point graduate with a strict Calvinist background, he saw it as his duty to protect not so much the miners as the men in his command from moral infection by fallen women.
Irina was busy assessing her various ventures one morning when there came a knock on the tent door behind her. She thought it was Marna, who always knocked tentatively before entering, and so did not respond. She had just weighed the latest bag of gold delivered by Jafet and was musing over whether their careful secrecy was not now doing her more harm than good. There was obviously pay dirt out there where Brynteson was. Keeping those finds a secret from the local prospectors was in turn keeping them from paying the hostelry and store prices she had set. Such was business. She was musing over how she could make the gold finds better known when the knock came again.
"Oh come on in, Marna," she said irritably. "I know just what you are going to say. No, I haven't changed my mind. Just re-heat yesterday's food and serve it. I am not about to waste it by throwing it out."
Oliver Spaulding, stepping into the tent, growled "Have you no decency, woman?" *
Irina turned slowly. For a moment she was too
The Alaskans
surprised to speak. She had an instantaneous impression of a magnetically attractive young man of perhaps twenty-five. Her impression was compounded of the man's dark good looks and tall, regal bearing, as highlighted by his epauletted uniform and the sword sheathed at his side. On closer inspection, he struck her as stunningly handsome, like a prince born to the purple, his American uniform notwithstanding.
"I beg your pardon," she said with dignity, "I am not accustomed to having strange men enter my boudoir at this hour of the morning."
Her words made Spaulding believe the worst of her. Yet he was fascinated by her blatant seductiveness as she glided from her chair to the bed, took a silk robe up from it and indolently slipped it on. She,had been sitting in her brief undergarments when he came in. The image of her shapely legs remained imprinted in his brain even after they were covered, and he could still feel the heat rising around his collar and ears. Now Spaulding knew the full danger of his mission. This was surely a creature any man might sell his soul to the devil to possess for a single night.
"Well," Irina said, turning and casting him a smile. "It is time for introductions. I am the Baroness Irina Feodorovna. And you are Lieutenant Oliver Spaulding."
Oliver colored, a trifle disconcerted. "How do you know my name?" he said.
"It is my business to know about certain things that occur in Nome. Actually, I'm rather glad you've come to see me." Irina's smile grew warmer.
Oliver steeled himself against the smile's obvious sincerity. "It is my duty . . ." he began. "I must re
quest ... I must insist, ah, that your establishment be off limits for my soldiers."
"Off limits!" Irina looked shocked. "For goodness sakes, why? What have I done? Does the United States Army object to my restaurant prices? But surely, sir, neither it nor you have the right to interfere with the laws of supply and demand. You, a citizen of a country advocating free enterprise, of all people! I--"
Oliver suddenly felt troubled, deeply troubled. This beautiful, fiery woman seemed to have no idea of what he was talking about. Could he have been wrong about her? "No, I, please," he said, silencing her objections with a wave of his hand. "I, I think it best for our relationship if I tell you the truth from the beginning."
Irina, as if puzzled, said slowly, "The truth? But of course, tell the truth. Only, what is it?"
"I thought, you see, that you--" He decided to blurt it out and have done with it. "That you might be engaged in prostitution. If such were the case, I would be forced by army regulation to . . ." He looked at her, breaking down at the last moment.
"And that's the truth?" Irina said softly. She restrained an urge to pat the young man's cheek, knowing that her tender impulse would be read by him even with the gesture aborted. "Well, you thought," she said complacently. "I forgive you for that. But did you have any evidence, any reported incidents for thinking so?" When he made no answer, she said, "Only arrogant rumors, you see." Now she did stretch out her hand and pat him, but on his tightly knotted fist rather than on his cheek.
"Dear Lieutenant Spaulding," she said, "coming to me first was the wisest thing you could have
done. Please give me a half hour to dress. I would enjoy, with your permission, to walk around Nome with you. I would like to explain to you the real need for troops in this area."
Oliver talked little during the walk they took. His thoughts remained troubled. He didn't know how to express the full extent of his regret for thinking Irina a whore. Though he had apologized, it seemed to him he hadn't said enough: How she must hate me, he thought. God, what a woman! Gentle and spirited both, like . . . His mind was about to form an image of a girl he cherished back home in Salem, Massachusetts, but he suppressed it before it presented itself. There could be no comparison between that sweet little girl and this wise and beautiful woman.
"So, you can see," Irina said, when she had pointed out various symptoms of disruption in Nome and they had returned- to her tent, "why I am so grateful for the arrival of your troops."
And forgiving, Oliver Spaulding was thinking by then. Without putting it into words or requiring more words of him, she was absolving him of all guilt for the gross, baseless accusation he had hurled at her.
Irina said goodby to him, happily for the time being only. "I would be honored to express my gratitude in a more tangible manner," she said. "Shall we say dinner, here in my tent, at seven?"
Oliver gazed at her with deep longing in his eyes. "The general himself would be hard put to keep me away, baroness," he said with a smile. He saluted and was marching away just as Milla came walking up. He didn't notice her at all.
"What ails him?" Milla demanded, having seen the lieutenant's rapt expression.
"Oh, it's just puppy love," Irina explained carelessly. Then, more to her present purpose, "It's to our advantage. Come, we must plan a special private dinner for him. I want to make sure that the law in Nome is defined and administered exactly the way I want it to be." She began to usher Milla inside the tent, then stopped on a sudden thought. "It might be a good idea to give the lieutenant's soldiers a free meal tonight as well," she decided. "I'd like you and Marna to add some specialties to the regular menu."
Old John Hummell had just about had it with the so-called rich goldfields of Nome. It must have been all hot air, those rumors in the Klondike; fact was, he hadn't found enough gold in these parts to fill his two back teeth. Each day he felt older and sicker. He was ready to give up on going to the creeks every day with Bryan. He was, for a fact, about ready to give up on the whole durned expedition, go back to California where he could decline in the warm sun and leave the greed for the yellow metal to younger men.
Bryan, on his part, took the old man's grumblings with a grain of salt. He was beginning to know Hummell's moods better than did Hummell himself. About the only concession he made to his friend's now-and-again bitter complaints was to let him stay home with his thoughts on those days he wanted to, not insist that he trudge along just so's he could argue with him and bore him to death.
What really began to trouble Bryan was the old codger's subsequent cooking. As the days went by,
Hummell seemed to be getting even with him for not showing his opinions more respect by nightly heating up a mess of stuff that could make a man puke.
Well, maybe four months in the company of one partner, without so much as a full twenty-four hours away from him, was too much for any man to take.
Bryan had seen the Russian "folks" dining tent from a distance and had heard plenty of rumors about their operation. He made up his mind to go there of an evening. Down to his last twenty dollars or not, he was going to have one good meal and one helluva good time before he went broke ....
Oliver Spaulding was promptness itself. He entered Irina's tent, then stood near the threshold, his lips parted saying nothing. He was overcome by what he saw.
"Well," Irina whispered, "aren't you going to come in?"
Oliver stood there a moment longer, looking from her slim form in its burgundy silk gown to the chestnut hair piled into a high crown, and finally at the intimate setting. It was a new experience for the young New Englander.
Irina saw his glances at the chilled champagne on the table, the bowl of black caviar, the white lace tablecloth, the Romanov coat-of-arms on the gold service.
"My partners are taking quite a bit of gold from the ground," she said by way of explaining her riches. "The secret of its location is still well kept."
Wordlessly, Oliver accepted the glass of champagne, but declined the caviar. Just to be with Irina
was all the food that he required at the moment.
Later, while they ate, Irina noticed that Oliver was manfully centering the dinner conversation on the topography of Nome and how different it was from New England. Though the longing in his eyes betrayed him, he seemed adamant in his refusal to discuss what was clearly uppermost in his mind--herself. This will never do, thought Irina. Unless she maneuvered him properly, he would never become the source of gossip about gold that she wanted him to be. Over dessert and coffee, she decided on new and radical tactics.
"Excuse me a moment," she said. She rose and went behind a canvas partition that had been drawn closed to hide the bedroom portion of the tent. Continuing to chat, she deftly stepped from her dinner gown and put on a gossamer night dress that clung revealingly to her breast, waist and thighs. Then, putting the pins one by one in her mouth, she let down her hair.
When she pulled apart the partition, her hair was spread out over her shoulders like a golden veil. She stood in the opening, all but nude, the unmade bed revealed invitingly behind her. Oliver sat where he was, making no move other than to wipe his lips with a napkin. His senses were reeling, and he was shocked beyond words.
"Come here," Irina whispered. "Oliver, please . . . make love to me."
As though mesmerized, he went over to her. When he was close she put up her arms and began to kiss him--soft clinging kisses, pressing enough to arouse him, not so ravenous that he might be frightened away. Her own actions worked on Irina?
despite herself, she felt herself growing warm and wet. y 
Suddenly, convulsively, Oliver brought up his hands and broke her grip.
"No!" he said hoarsely. "I am an officer and a gentleman!"
Irina, with the spell broken almost burst out laughing. Indeed, she would have laughed in the young man's face and let the devil take the hindmost if a bellowing from outside the tent hadn't brought them both up sharp.
"Lieutenant, where the hell are you? We got ourselves a peck of trouble over to the eating tent!"
Swearing, Oliver turned to go. Irina shrieked, "No. I must go, too--wait for me to dress!"
Angrily, Oliver spun away from her. Stepping outside, he came face to face with the sergeant who had called him. He could tell from the man's knowing grin that the woman's last words had been heard. Oliver colored deeply. He had never been so ashamed in his life.
The melee then in full swing at Irina's restaurant involved both soldiers and miners, one of whom, and far from the least active, was Bryan Mathews. It was a brawl typical of many such incidents that had occurred and would occur on the Alaskan frontier.
Bryan had arrived an hour or so after Mama and Milla had started serving a buffet dinner. Everything on the chalk-board menu, after Hummell's miserable salt-pork atrocities, looked good to him, so he quickly joined the rather long line of men already at the steam table. Among other foods that
seemed either choice or filling, there was a glazed ham and a roast beef, along with white china plates to eat them off. Their prices were high, even exorbitant, but at this point Bryan had thrown financial caution to the winds; mouth watering, he was out to splurge himself, body and soul.
Marna was then serving, her old peasant head wrapped in a babushka. Most of the miners on line eschewed the fancier foods with their fancy prices; they simply grunted, pointed and went away with their plates heaped with ground meat, beans and the like. It was easy for Marna to serve them; blinking fixedly, she merely had to move her ladle in the direction of their extended fingers.
When it came Bryan's turn, he couldn't make up his mind.
"What do you recommend?" he said cheerily to the old Russian woman.
"Eh?"
"What's good?"
Marna shrugged. "Everything good," she said without conviction.
Bryan, a bit let down, was then unexpectedly relieved of Mama's questionable aid. He was about to point to the roast beef and ask her specifically about it when a much younger woman came up to spell her on the serving line. "Time for your break, Marna," Milla said, then turned to their waiting customer. "And what may I please you with, sir?" she asked.
At this point, Bryan suddenly felt his choice of food to be immaterial. He looked at the girl's openly amused face, then looked away, swallowing. Slip was one of the prettiest girls he had ever seen in his life. Also, her voice, with its slightly foreign
intonation, had a kind of lilting music in it, like nothing he had ever heard in Oklahoma, Alaska or anywhere else. He was fully aware that she was fooling with him, mocking him slightly. Well, that was because he was having so much trouble making up his mind. He brought his gaze up slowly, then flushed at her continued scrutiny of him. Now her mouth was unsmiling, her green eyes unanimated. She was growing impatient with him.
"I'll just have me some meat and potatoes, ma'am," he said importantly.
"I guess you will," the girl said with a kind of admiration in her voice. But even then Bryan had the feeling she was funning with him.
He paid for his plate and carried it to a table, where he ate slowly while he watched the girl out of the corner of his eye. He felt a definite pull towards her, in his chest and somewhere around his groin too. For the life of him, he couldn't understand why she was affecting him that way. In his opinion, she didn't measure up to Tandy, who was just as pretty and didn't have that sharp, cruel edge to her. Maybe it was just because she was the first real live girl he had seen, outside of Indian squaws, for sixteen months.
A bunch of soldiers came into the tent then and behaved in a manner that cut his reflections short. They were loud, boisterous and arrogant, and as Bryan watched them he grew rankled. The soldiers were making no bones over the fact that they were there for a free meal and were demanding the best of everything. He recognized their cut: they were mostly tough hombres who'd found the army of the northwest a convenient hiding place from whatever trouble they'd been in in the states. A few
t 
of them, it was clear, had elsewhere drunk more whiskey than they could handle.
Bryan's eyes darted to the serving line where already one of the soldiers had brashly approached the girl working there. He watched what ensued. The soldier demanded a huge helping of ham, which the girl with a fixed smile gave him and which he took away. He ate only about half of it, however, before dumping the remainder in a slop-bucket and shoved his way into the line for something else--¦ this time, beef. Bryan couldn't hear what he said to the girl, but he saw her color deeply.
Miners all around Bryan began to object to the preferential treatment the soldiers were obviously getting, not having to pay and being allowed to push their way into line whenever they chose to. There were stirrings among them, and deep growls, but so far not so much as one miner had raised a hand to stop a soldier from doing exactly as he wished.
Bryan's blood began to boil. When the one soldier returned to the line for the third time, Bryan rose quickly and got in line behind him. He wasn't sure if he was doing this out of gallantry or curiosity or both. He surely wanted to hear what the soldier might be saying to the girl before he decided on any course of action.
"The beef stinks too," the soldier said. "Give me a steak--I'll try that."
The girl didn't flinch at that remark, Bryan noted, just looked at the soldier coldly and shrugged. "We fry them up in the kitchen," she said. "I'll get one for you." As she started to turn away, her icy green eyes met Bryan's. Momentarily, Bryan felt weak in the knees.
The soldier nodded complacently.
"Just make sure it's right tender, little darlin'," he said. " 'bout as tender as I figger you must be in bed."
Milla stiffened. She said nothing, just walked with measured dignity back to the kitchen.
The soldier turned to Bryan. "Geez! Will you look at that ass? Bet she charges double to get stuck back there!"
Bryan steeled himself to keep quiet.
"What's the matter, feller?" the soldier challenged him. "Don't you like to fuck ass?"
Bryan's ears burned; still he said nothing.
Milla came back with not one but a pair of steaks on a plate. "Sorry, but these are all the steaks we have prepared for tonight. Why not just take the two?"
"Why not just take you?" the soldier said bluntly. "Them steaks are no damn good--you're the eatin' stuff." 
Milla turned abruptly to Bryan. "Sir? How can I help you?"
Bryan's mouth dropped open. My God, she didn't even remember him! "I--" he began.
"Hey, cunt," the soldier growled, "you ain't finished with me."
Bryan gritted his teeth. "I think the lady is quite finished with you," he said evenly.
"Back off, blubber boy," the soldier snarled. Then, reaching across the steam table, he grabbed Milla by the wrist. "You and me's got private business to discuss, honey."
For Bryan, everything happened very quickly then. He grabbed at the soldier's forearm, simply to pull him away from Milla. At the same time,
Milla, without warning, sank her teeth deeply into' the forearm flesh. Bryan felt himself being flung backward. "You filthy little bitch," the soldier cried, swinging out with his other hand and catching Milla across the eye and cheek. The force of the blow broke her loose from his grasp and she went tumbling back onto the plank flooring.
Bryan seized a plate, ran back and crashed it over the soldier's head. It didn't even stun him. He turned, bellowing. Bryan fell on him like an avenging Jove. His fists pumped out, delivering hammer blows. The man was like solid granite. He came right back, pivoting on his left foot, leaning forward, putting his weight behind a blow that hooked Bryan's jaw so hard he felt his head almost bounce from his body. Amazingly, Bryan stayed on his feet. He had taken harder blows in his time. He came right back in, crouching to pummel at the soldier's beer-barrel belly.
No one knew he threw the first dish of half-eaten food. It struck a miner on the side of the head, felling him. Immediately the air was filled with flying china.
Marna came bustling in from the kitchen, clutching her head and crying, "Stop it! Oh, stop!" But she might as well have been addressing the wind. She heard the deep, slow cracks of benches being smashed to make clubs. Then the clubs crashed into heads and men started falling, with thick pools of blood spreading beneath them on the floor.
Knives and forks became weapons, eating into the arms and faces of the miners. Those without weapons used their fists, feet, teeth. Neither side knew much about how the donnybrook had begun.,
only that it was turning into a damn good fight.
Bryan went down. The soldier he'd been battling stayed on his feet, roaring like a bull, and raced around the steam table toward Milla. Bryan, groggily, struggled up and scrambled over the pans of food. He jumped on the man's broad back, and they swayed back and forth, tearing down the canvas partition to the kitchen, falling against and splintering Mama's chopping table, until Bryan was aware suddenly of other hands tugging at him and the shriek of a woman's voice:
"It's over! No more, it's over!"
Bryan turned the soldier loose, and at that moment Lieutenant Spaulding entered. Bryan heard his revolver being cocked and looked up into the gun's long barrel.
"If any of my men are dead," the lieutenant said in a dangerously quiet voice, "so are you!"
Bryan felt the slow sickness spreading through his middle, fearing that the man might well fire before learning the whole truth. He had been this route before, but now there would be no Bill Doolin to come out of nowhere to shoot a lawman that held him at bay.
"Idiot!" Milla stormed at Spaulding, her face tear-streaked and working, "you'll be shooting the wrong man!"
Slowly, Bryan shook his head.
"I'm not so sure, lady," he said huskily. "I didn't kill anyone, but I'll take the blame for starting it all."
Spaulding nodded. "Now at least we are getting somewhere," he said.
Irina rushed in just in time to overhear him. She
spread her arms wide to accept her weeping daughter. "Getting where?" she demanded. "What's going on here?"
"I will handle matters, madam," Oliver said sternly.
"Really?" Irina drew herself up and said acidly, "I somehow doubt that you can, lieutenant. This is my establishment and your soldiers have helped wreck it. Milla, tell me what happened, the exact truth."
Now it was Milla's turn to be acidulous. "The exact truth, mother?" she said softly. "But, of course." She gave as faithful an account of the episode as she could, leaving out only that the inferior food served may have helped precipitate it.
"Ridiculous," Spaulding growled, after hearing her out. "Surely the girl must have given Private Stevens some provocation for uttering such statements."
Private Stevens, who was present, glowered but said nothing. *
Wearily, Bryan shook his head.
"Not the point," he muttered. "I punched out Stevens here because no woman, no matter what she does or doesn't do, needs to hear language like he was using. Unless you command a pack of liars, some of the men on line with me who heard him will back the girl's story."
"Hmm," Oliver Spaulding said. He was struggling furiously with his emotions. Never had he wanted a woman more than he had wanted Irina that night; she had provoked him but he had been resolute and strong. Probably, he thought the daughter, and a devilish little thing she was, had tested Stevens in her own way, despite her denial--only why hadn't Stevens resisted, as he had? He could only 
thank God that no deaths had resulted from this stupid bloodbath. Come to think of it, he had little regard for Stevens; the man had been a troublemaker since he had joined the company at St. Michaels.
"I shall conduct a most exhaustive investigation of this matter in the morning. Men, to your tents."
Oliver turned and left. His- men, including Stevens, trooped after him. Oliver cursed. It was still light outside, despite the late hour. He could not get used to the many long hours of daylight he'd found in Alaska. He walked through the mud toward his quarters, his head bowed, his footsteps dragging. He knew that his "exhaustive investigation" would be a mere gesture, for he'd already decided on what he must do--ship Stevens out of his company and try to bury the incident in his mind.
Bryan Mathews sat in the kitchen while Marna wrapped bandages around his hands.
"There are two claims in Anvil Creek under the names of my daughter and myself," Irina told him quietly. "I'll supply you and you can work them for twenty percent of the proceeds."
"I, I don't get you," Bryan mumbled through his swollen lips. "I just wrecked your place."
"I think you do. This damage can be repaired in a day or two. Without your help, it might have taken a lifetime to restore my daughter's reputation, if then. I know nothing about you, Bryan Mathews, but I like your style. There's only one thing I don't like about you. You could stand a good bath."
Then Irina turned on her heel and took Milla with her. Bryan sat there for a long time, still unable to grasp the fact of his sudden good fortune.
Some jobs, he concluded slowly, come when you least expect them . . . And then he took a good whiff of himself.
"Jesus, you do stink, man!"
Although John Hummell was reluctant and finally refused to work somebody else's claim as what he called "a blackheaded go-fer," he did go along with Bryan to survey the sites the Brynteson group pointed out to them. He had to agree there was gold there, alright, and he gave Bryan some valuable tips on how to get it out. But then he returned to Nome, his sage old head working overtime. He still hadn't smelled the real gold where it ought to have been. He decided to delay his return to California, to stay put for a while and see what developed. He couldn't put his finger on it, but he was highly suspicious of the Swedes he'd met. Irina grew suspicious of the Swedes as well. During June, Bryan took more gold out of her two claims than they had out of theirs since midspring. Irina began to feel she wasn't getting her full share 
out of what the Swedes were producing, that they'd been holding back on her. On his next visit to town, Jafet Lindeberg vigorously denied this.
"Fiddlesticks! The truth of the matter is that the American ox is working eighteen, twenty hours a day. You are fortunate, baroness. No decent man can stand up that long--we would not do it, even in shifts!"
Irina rested content, with her wise choice of Bryan as a worker as much as anything else.
Then, shortly after the first of July, the full force of the Swedes' duplicity struck her a mighty blow.
The Maria arrived in the bay the same week as several other cargo-laden passenger vessels did. By then, overlanders had brought Nome's population to 2,000, which the new ships promptly doubled. But any delight Irina took in anticipating added customers went by the boards as soon as the other ships' cargo started to unload. 
It was cargo ordered by Erik Lindblom. Almost overnight, new construction began. A saloon, bakery, laundry, general merchandise and liquor store, meat market, tonic parlor and two new tent hotels started to go up--all in competition with Irina's enterprises and all backed by Lindblom's money.
It took Irina some time to recover from the shock. Then she sent two brief messages out to the diggings, a request for Bryan to return to Nome and a demand that Lindblom come and explain himself.
Bryan, who had been given plenty of trouble by Lindblom in the field and did not like the man, arrived at Irina's tent a couple of days after the Swede did. He heard Lindblom cursing and swearing inside and instinctively tightened his fists, ready
to protect Irina with his life should that be necessary.
"So you think we have swindled you?" Lindblom was screeching. "But you have swindled us from the very beginning, madam. Your charge for supplies amounted to extortion and your interest rates to usury! My partners have been jelly-fish in your hand, but I say enough, no longer! You deserve what you are getting. It is only competition. If you were not a woman, madam, you would get more from me--you would get a strap on your behind!" Eyes narrowing, Bryan moved swiftly into the tent.
"What is this?" he demanded. "Lindblom, I warn you, another filthy threat from you and it will be your last! Apologize to the baroness!"
It took a moment for Lindblom to recover from Bryan's sudden, angry entrance.
"Apologize? Never!" he snarled. "I'll tell you what this is, Mathews. This is the beginning of the end for her and for you. Nome is mine! My gold! My land! I shall have you run out of business by the end of summer!"
Irina, who had been listening quietly, waited until Lindblom had stalked from the tent. Then, a slow grin lighting her eyes, she winked at Bryan.
"You arrived at a propitious moment. Thank you," she remarked cheerfully. "I shouldn't take Mr. Lindblom's threats too seriously if I were you. I do have a matter that he has suddenly made quite pressing, however. You look ghastly as usual, Bryan. A new tailor has arrived in town. Why don't you get yourself a new suit and then have dinner? I shall speak to you later about what I have decided to do."
ft 
Bryan Mathews was better dressed than any other man entering the Feodorovna's restaurant tent that night. He had taken Irina's suggestion in good grace --he had come to Nome ill-kempt, God knows, and with well over $6,000 now in his poke, he could well afford new clothes, the first he would ever own in his life. So he'd found the tailor she'd recommended, a wizened little man from New York named Hiram Lansky, and had himself done up proud, head to foot. A grey derby hat with a black band sat cockily on his head. The starched wing collar of his new white shirt was knife-blade sharp and he'd bought a fashionable soft-knotted Ascot scarf to set it off. The single-breasted grey tweed jacket that Hiram had let out to its fullest extent was still a bit tight in the shoulders but went quite nicely with the black sack-cloth trousers. 
Striding towards the restaurant, Bryan had a sense of being re-born, re-vitalized, at a mere $300 in cost. Aside from looking spiffy in his new getup, he was aware that his outdoors work had weathered and matured his face, so that he now seemed to himself positively handsome. To go with the new kind of overall craggy look he'd acquired, he'd even shaved off his once-prized Van Dyke beard. Seeing the results, he was glad he had done so.
Then, once in the restaurant, his spirits dropped to zero. He'd been looking forward to dinner here for one big reason: Milla. But she was nowhere to be seen. The place had changed since he'd been here last. Four Eskimo girls now worked the steam table, and there was an older squaw at the cashier's desk. But Milla? There was no sign of her Or of Marna either. Had they turned the management 
of the place over to hired help? Unless Milla was running things from the kitchen, he was in for a severe disappointment.
These thoughts went through his head. He waited a few minutes, too shy to ask questions. Milla didn't come out. Damn it all! Bryan thought, his appetite vanishing. He turned and was on the point of leaving when, lo and behold, the kitchen door opened and Milla seemed to float through, heading straight for the cashier to replace her.
Bryan's heart pounded. She was exquisite, even more so than he remembered her being. Her eyes, now untroubled, were of a softer, more verdant green, and her chestnut hair, touched by the summer sun, had gone a shade lighter towards a warm gold. She walked like a princess. She was a princess! 
Quickly, Bryan got into line. Now his hunger was back. He just had to get close to this girl, to say hello, to speak to her again
His mind was so preoccupied with planning on how best to greet her that he lost track of what food he was ordering. So that when he finally reached her and had to pay for it all, he could only stare at his tray in confusion.
He shook his head in morose self-deprecation. "Guess I'm pretty stupid," he muttered. Then he looked up, smiling hopefully. "It's really you though, isn't it? Hello."
Milla
cast him a questioning look. It struck her as odd that a man who looked like nothing so much as an aggressive and successful hardware drummer should be falling all over himself in embarrassment. "Yes, it is me," she admitted, "but who are you?"
Bryan's smile froze on his face. "Oh. You don't know me. I shaved off my beard," he said inanely.
"I'm Bryan Mathews. I'm working for your mother now, I guess you know. At your claims."
He would have gone on, except that Milla's eyes widened in recognition and he didn't have to.
"Well, my goodness, Bryan, what have you done to yourself?" she said in simple amazement. When he looked abject, thinking she disapproved of his fancy new duds, she said impatiently, "Never mind. I can't let you eat those beans you've put on your tray. Come into the kitchen and I'll have Marna fix you something special. It's the least I can do for what you did for me."
It was on the tip of Bryan's tongue to say, "Seeing you again is all the thanks I need," but already she was beckoning to the squaw to come back and take over as cashier again. Dutifully, he followed Milla into the kitchen, and was astonished himself now to see the changes towards prosperity that had been made there.
"Do you like our new coal stove?" Milla said carelessly.
"I sure do. It's a dandy," Bryan said.
In addition to the gleaming black stove, there was a brick baking oven, a couple of white porcelain sinks, a huge icebox and other new, smaller items too numerous to take in at once look.
Milla had him sit at a work table and called over Marna, who knew him immediately, greeted him warmly, but then looked to Milla for her orders. "Get Bryan the best and biggest T-bone steak we have in the house,' Milla said. She smiled, as if to desensitize Marna to any familiar innuendo she may have picked up. "I really mean that, Marna-- the best."
Marna beamed and left, and Milla then turned enthusiastically to Bryan.
"We're really doing wonderfully well now," she said. "What you see here in the kitchen is just the beginning. I've hired carpenters and they're going to put up a whole new wooden building with space for three hundred customers at a time. I'm going to hire lots more Eskimo girls. We're going to have real waitresses, in uniforms, and we'll be fixing the place up beautifully with some potted evergreens mother ordered from Sitka ..."
As Milla continued waxing on with visions of her future, Bryan kept thinking only about how spectacularly vivacious she was being right there and then. Her face seemed lit with innocence and hope, making her seem to him doubly beautiful, if such a thing were possible. He enjoyed listening to her; his heart swelled with happiness for her. And yet something gnawed at him; for it also seemed to him he was not in this picture she was painting at all.
He waited until, seeming to run out of breath, she frowned. "Of course, I don't have to work," she said. 
"That's right," Bryan said in slow agreement. "You don't have to, not with all the gold your mother has coming in now."
Milla pouted. "Well, I suppose I work no harder than she does, and it is all for my future, as she says." 
Bryan frowned. "Does she have your future all planned for you?"
Milla looked at him closely. Her eyes suddenly filled with mischief.
"Quite so, Mr. Bryan Mathews," she teased, "quite so. I think she has her heart set on no less than a grand duke."
"A grand duke! You mean for you to marry one? Now, where in hell would you find a grand duke around here?" Bryan's ease of manner had turned into sudden alarm, making his tone truculent, belligerent, something he surely never intended. He flushed.
"Oh, I don't know," Milla was teasing. "But one thing she's sure of is that there'll be no sourdough for me, no matter how much gold he takes from the ground."
Bryan's devotion overcame his angry bout with jealousy. "You," he said earnestly, "are much too good for a sourdough anyway. I guess I'll just have to find out how you get to be one of those grand duke things."
He uttered the sentiment with such explosive force that Milla couldn't laugh at his ignorance. She felt briefly tender towards him. She didn't want to hurt him with the truth.
"That's a very nice thought, Bryan, but I still think I'll have a say in the matter. I don't think I want to marry any man."
"What you're saying," he growled, "is that I'm not good enough for you!"
Milla frowned, then shrugged.
"That's what mother would say."
"But what do you say?" he demanded, hotly.
Milla bowed her head. "I say it's time for me to go back to work. You stay here and have your steak."
Bryan cursed. "I don't want any steak. What time does this damn place change into a bar?"
"It doesn't anymore," Milk said quietly. "Not since mother opened the Golden Nugget up the street."
Bryan picked up his new derby, crammed it down onto his head and stormed out. Had he turned back and seen the look that came into Milla's eyes he would have raged even more. The look had in it pure pity for him and a kind of disconsolate nothingness for herself.
Mama came back with the steak and found her that way. She seemed to understand at a glance what must have taken place. She set the sizzling plate down on the table. "The boy likes you, Milla," she said.
"Yes. I think he does. And I think I like him too," Milla replied. "But as long as he works for mother she'll never let him amount to much, no matter how utterly handsome he looks all dressed up."
Marna said sadly, "Yes, that is correct. Here, eat something yourself. It is rare, as you like it." Using a cloth to protect her fingers, she pushed the plate in front of Milla.
Bryan stood alone at the end of the Golden Nugget bar getting drunker and drunker. He was weighing Milla Feodorovna against Tandy Newcombe and wondering what he saw in the former. He was very quiet in his thoughts, so that the barkeep repeatedly filled his glass without question.
Drunk as he was, he was fair game for the man who moments later insinuated himself at his side.
"That is some fashionable outfit you're wearing," the man snickered.
Bryan had to blink several times before the leering
face of Lance DeLough came into focus. He made careful note that DeLough himself was dressed to the nines.
"No more 'n your own," Bryan said then, and hiccupped. " 'Scuse me."
Lance chuckled. "How about buying an old friend a drink?"
Bryan's elbow slipped as he tried to slam his hand down on the bar. "Ain't ever thought of you as a friend, you thieving--"
"Please! Please!" Lance cut him short. "It was survival of the fittest out here, and you seem to have survived very well. Not so for the likes of Craig and me. The army seems to take a dim view of gambling. They've chased us out of one saloon after another."
"Bully for the army!" Bryan belched. "Ain't one much for gambling myself. But, well, shit, barkeep, set the bastard up!"
"Now, that is a much more friendly attitude," Lance sighed, and reached to put an arm around Bryan's shoulder.
Bryan pulled away sharply and glared. "None of that crap, now!"
Lance shrugged. "A friendly gesture, that's all."
Bryan decided to let the matter drop. He was lonely. He put down another shot glass of whiskey.
"It would seem," Lance started up again carefully, "that you're one of the lucky few with a big, profitable claim."
Bryan nodded. "That's right," and waved for another drink. Some of the newer prospectors in town began drawing close, now that someone had engaged the well-dressed young man in conversation. They, like Lance, had grown curious about
him. His get-up and quick shell out for two-dollar shot drinks bespoke wealth and his muscular arms and toughened hands suggested he'd gotten rich by digging up gold. Most of the newcomers couldn't afford more than the fifty-cent rotgut and had to nurse a single drink all night. A couple of them stepped right up and fetened in as Lance kept on talking.
"Not like these men here," Lance said, nodding towards them.
"That's fer dang sure," a heavily bearded listener agreed, moving still closer. "Dang-blamed foreigners got all of everything. I ain't touched hardly nothing yet."
"You mean the Scandies and Russkies," another snarled. "What I want to know is, who gave them the right to come here and get over eighty claims?"
"They ain't got that many, you stupid shit."
"Stupid, you say? Lad, what would you be sayin' they got?"
It took Bryan a moment to realize the question had been directed at him. He saw no reason not to give them the exact number. "They got five. Lots of land, here, there everywhere. But five folks. Thassall.'
A crowd was gathering and they mumbled and cursed.
The bearded prospector turned coy. "You seem pretty sure of what you're saying, lad."
"Should be," Bryan mumbled, "I dig out there."
The man scratched his beard. "Funny, I ain't 'card of no Americans being with 'em. You're damn lucky."
Another man pushed forward. "We could all be lucky," he said, malcontentedness etching each
word, "if we all stood up together like true-blue American citizens."
"And get shot for claim jumping?" someone scoffed.
"Ain't talkin' about claim jumpin'," the first man shot back. "I'm talkin' 'bout how we all been done foully by these friggin' foreigners."
"Friggin' or not, they got here first."
Everyone started to talk at once and the first man had to quiet them. "Now, listen up, will yuh? I was in Californ-nee when the chinks came and started digging and making claims. Some smart dude down there knew the United States mining laws. It said that the chinks was aliens and they couldn't hold a legal claim until they took an oath, proper like, that they was goin' ta become citizens. I guess these Scandinavians and Russians are just as alien as the chinks."
"Jesus H. Christ! We got 'em, men!"
"No, we don't! Them Russkies would just go ahead and take the oath--wouldn't cost 'em nothin' to do that!"
As a loud, opinionated argument started, on what the Russians and Swedes would or would not do, Lance said softly, "Hold it! I know a bit about this, too. That oath has to be taken before a qualified United States commissioner. We don't have any such in Nome."
"Hell, they'll just import one!"
Lance laughed. "Not so easy. Summer would be over before they could send for one and he could get back."
The seed the wily Lance had planted brought the first fruits of inspiration to one man's mind. "Good We're under Oregon law here. If we ain't got a
commissioner, we'll become our own commissioners and evict the bastards."
His suggestion was greeted by rowdy cheers. For a second, Bryan's foggy mind cleared enough to realize the implications of what was being propounded.
"No!" he shouted. "You'll just be getting yourselves killed. My boss has armed guards on all of those claims."
The nearest man spun Bryan about. "Your boss?" he roared. "You mean you just work for those thievin' bastards?" He spat. "That's worse than takin' food out of the mouth of a starvin' baby!"
Lance stepped in at once. "Cut it! Leave off of Mathews--he was one of the first men here. I don't blame him for making a buck to survive. It's more than a lot of you did--you just sat on your asses. Shit, you'll get nowhere going off halfcocked. Why don't you think this thing out carefully before you do anything rash? Come on, Mathews, I'll see you home."
Bryan grinned foolishly, tossed a bill on the bar and marched out. There was only a slight sway to his walk. Outside, the long twilight came down cool and white. He stumbled, then straightened up, swearing. Lance knew better than to give him a helping hand.
"Ain't going home," Bryan suddenly muttered. "Got to let the baroness know about them."
"My dear fellow," Lance chuckled, "in the first place you are not in any condition to get the story straight, and in the second place, you're a little dense."
Bryan stopped, bristling with sudden rage, but a spinning in his head kept him from speaking.
"I didn't mean to be rude," Lance said, his voice' almost tender, "but the fact is that you spend all your time out at the digs and are not aware of a few subtleties about our rapidly growing city. The good baroness has an efficient spy system set up. That barkeep was all eyes and ears, although you would never have known it. Don't worry, friend, she'll have the word before the night is out."
How much of his little speech Bryan heard, Lance was never to know. Without warning, Bryan sat down in the mud with a thump and his head dropped forward onto his chest.
"I thought you were a bit over your limit," Lance laughed, and struggled to get the young man onto his feet. Once Bryan was vertical, he grasped him under his armpits and literally dragged him along.
"My, oh my," he snickered. "Isn't Craig going to be surprised to come home and find you there?"
At the time DeLough's sole intention was to get Bryan to his and Buttle's tent and let him sleep it off. But once he had him there, an old yearning began to smoulder anew in him--not to make advances towards the young man, but simply to see him nude. For whatever else could be said about Lance, he had something of Michaelangelo's appreciation for manly muscles--young, vigorous male strength struck him as god-like. Accordingly, getting Bryan into bed, he carefully removed every stitch of his new clothing and neatly folded it. Bryan was too far gone to be aware of what he had in mind. But still Lance did not attempt to intimately touch the prone young god, only stood with worshiping eyes, burning the sight onto his memory.
"You filthy bastard!"
Lance turned an amazed face toward Craig But
tie, who stood at the tent door, glaring at him.
"I--I've done nothing," he gasped. "What the devil do you mean, filthy bastard?"
"You've wanted him ever since that night on the trail, and don't deny it. I've just been waiting for you to make a move like this."
"Don't be a fool, Craig," Lance grinned. "He was drunk and I saw him home. That's all."
"Most drunks," Buttle sneered, "can sleep just as well with their clothes on."
"Oh, Craig," Lance said, with a condescending wave. "I don't want him. He can be yours, if you do."
Buttle's face went livid. "I'll tell you how I want him," he snarled. He pulled a derringer from a hidden shoulder holster and aimed it straight at Bryan's sleeping head.
"No, Craig!" Lance, screaming, jumped in front of the cot just as the gun went off, making a small pop.
The two men stood and stared at each other stupidly for a long, silent moment. Lance began to grin, a tiny trickle of blood beginning to creep from the corner of his mouth.
"Oh, no!" Buttle began to weep. "I--I didn't mean--Oh, no!"
A look of forgiveness came into Lance DeLough's eyes. He made a move towards Buttle, as if to soothe him with a touch. Then his eyes glazed over and, like a puppet whose strings had just been severed, folded up and fell to the floor, dead.
Buttle, whimpering, tossed the derringer onto the cot where Bryan lay snoring, then turned and ran from the tent.
Bryan started, brought groggily away by
something slapping down on the bed. He opened his eyes and saw the gun. His senses sharpened; instantly he became aware of the dim commotion he had heard in his stuporous sleep. Craning his tortured head, he saw DeLough sprawled on the floor. "Oh, Jesus," he muttered. Fully awake now, he grasped the gun, ready, with his instinct for selfpreservation, to throw it far from him.
He was too late.
Brought by Buttle's sobs of grief as he'd run past them, two prospectors who'd been in the bar came barging into the tent and caught Bryan with the gun in his hand.
"Holy Christ! The kid's killed him! Stark nakkid too! Why, you slimy faggot--!"
Bryan stiffened. "No---no--I didn't--I'm not--." Clumsily, he got to his feet. He was suddenly mortally ashamed of his nakedness. It was like a nightmare to him. Even if he hadn't killed DeLough, what was he doing in his tent! Why, drunk or not, had he gone with DeLough? He felt sick. All he could think of was that he was ruined--with Milla, with his job, with everybody and everything in Nome. He had to get out of there. 
One of the prospectors was coming towards him to restrain him while the other shouted outside for someone to go for the soldiers.
Bryan, panicking, dropped the gun, picked up his clothes and bolted past both of them into the night.
Karl Druska, the Golden Nugget barkeep, had found Irina at home and made short work of telling her of the malcontent, trouble-brewing miners. Irina instructed the man to find Bryan Mathews and send him to her.
A half hour later there was a knock at her door and she half-rose, thinking it Bryan. It was not he, however; the stiffly regal, somewhat malicious- looking caller was Lieutenant Oliver Spaulding.
Irina frowned. "Oliver . . ." she said abstractedly, "what an unexpected pleasure ... do come in ... I'll have coffee brought." Irina now turned a tentative smile on her visitor. Despite the unfortunate outcome of her previous tete a tete with him, she still thought Oliver princely--and was still trying to think up a use to put him to. Only why had he come? For weeks he had treated her like a leper. 
Growling, Spaulding told her. "I suppose, madam, you have heard that your man is responsible for the first murder in Nome!"
Irina blinked. "Of whom do you speak?"
"Bryan Mathews," he said narrowly. "He shot and killed that gambler, Lance DeLough."
Her mouth gaped open. "I don't believe it. I demand to know the facts of the matter."
Spaulding grunted. "They are not facts proper to disclose to a lady."
Irina fumed. "Then stop pretending that you consider me a lady and tell them to me straight out."
"All I can say is that he shot the man and then ran away."
Irina waited quietly for him to go on.
"All I wish to say further on the matter is that he ran away without his clothing on. I have a party of men out searching for him now."
Irina started to grin, then giggled, then roared with laughter. "Are you sure he and that gambler aren't just playing strip-poker?"
Spaulding pursed his lips. "I hardly find murder a joking matter, madam."
"And I hardly find it possible that you are suggesting that Bryan Mathews would undress, of his own accord, before a known homosexual. Or have any close dealings with him, for that matter. The notion is utterly ludicrous. No, I suspect, on my own evidence, that something entirely different from what you are insinuating took place, sir."
"What evidence? What are you saying, madam?" Spaulding said irritably.
Irina regarded him in a superior manner. Theft,
as if enlightening a backward schoolboy, she went on to inform him of what Druska had told her about the ugly mood that had prevailed among the prospectors in the bar after Bryan and DeLough had left. "They were maddened, lieutenant, capable of anything," she concluded.
"The prospectors killed DeLough?" Spaulding said disbelievingly. "When if they were maddened, as you say, why would they kill DeLough and not Mathews? As you report the incident, it was Mathews who drew their wrath." 
Irina thought quickly. "A thorough investigation might uncover the answer to that."
Spaulding gasped. "Are you daring to suggest that I will not be thorough?"
"I'm suggesting no such thing," Irina now said soothingly. "I'm merely offering to pay five thousand dollars reward for information leading to the arrest of the man who did kill Lance DeLough-- and to give you a bonus of a thousand dollars if you allow Bryan to remain free during that time."
Spaulding stared at her. "You are attempting to bribe me!"
"No," Irina said quickly. "Only to make palatable a course of action that reason should tell you is the wisest to follow for now. Your men are presently hounding Bryan. Where else would he go, could he go, but back out to the claims? I have men guarding those claims--friends of mine, friends of Bryan's. I would not raise a finger to stop them from defending him--would you, lieutenant, if you were in my position? There will be much bloodshed if you send soldiers to capture him; many of your men will die. Why risk that--when I can give you
my personal guarantee that Bryan will not leave the environs of Nome while you look elsewhere for the real murderer." 
She went to her safe, drew out a thousand dollars and handed it to the open-mouthed Spaulding. "Take it, Oliver, if only as a token of my gratitude for not revealing what--what went on between us here that night. You had my reputation in your hands, and you acted like a thorough gentleman in all respects . . ."
Beyond the partition Milla lay in her bed, listening to her mother's manipulations with revulsion. She was far more deeply disturbed, however, by what the discussion revealed of Bryan's predicament. She felt sick to her stomach and a little guilty. Bryan had gotten drunk in the Golden Nugget bar. No matter what had happened after that, she thought, wouldn't have happened if she hadn't rejected him in the restaurant and sent him off in misery. She brought his handsome face and youthful, innocent manner to mind and could not imagine, anymore than her mother apparently could, of him doing any of the things Spaulding had implied he had. A homosexual spat, indeed! How absurd! She felt as though she knew Bryan to the bone, had indeed known him all her life, and she had a longing to protect him from such calumnies.
Silently, Milla slipped from bed and began to dress. Even then she did not, in so many words, admit that her nature had a tender, maternal side. The way she put it to herself was that Bryan had championed her cause and now she must champion his. She knew it was dangerous to be on the streets of Nome at this hour, but in going out to find him, she felt no fear whatever. For one thing, she knew
in her heart where he really was and flew straight there.
Bryan, far from running wildly into the night, had resolved his panic and gone for the advice of John Hummell, the one man he felt he could trust. In Hummell's tent, he told the old man all that he knew or could remember, and it wasn't very much.
"I have no idea of who shot DeLough, I was out like a light when it happened," he said worriedly. "All I know is that it looked bad for me and I had to get away."
"Running away never solved anything," the old man grunted.
"But how do I prove myself innocent?"
Hummell said flatly, "You ain't completely innocent, not in your own eyes, that's part of the trouble. You were screwing around with DeLough out on the trail, weren't you?" When Bryan looked abashed, he went" on more kindly, "Now look, son, I wasn't born yesterday. It don't make no difference to me whether a fellow up here now and then likes to screw a man or an old piece of whale blubber if it comes to that. Point is don't be hypocritical about it 'cause that's what fucks a man up. You didn't kill DeLough and I don't get the impression you felt like you wanted to kill him neither--that right?"
"That's right," Bryan admitted. "I wasn't much angry at him, only a little, and maybe not even that much. . . ."
" 'Course you weren't. You're a gentle cuss-- maybe too gentle for your own good. Don't know about that. Point is you don't have to prove yourself 
innocent to an old sourdough like me, nor to any of the other oldtimers around here. . . . And there's plenty of us, enough to see that the pious newcomers around here don't get their way. There ain't going to be no necktie parties taking place afore a man gets his fair day in court. . . ."
"I hope you're right, John. God, I hope you're right." A sudden knock at the tent door made Bryan stiffen. "Damn, maybe they're coming for me now . . ."
Hummell was as surprised to see their unexpected visitor as Bryan was ashamed to face her.
"Bryan, you must go right back to the digs," Milla said, stammering. "Mother has made some sort of deal with Lieutenant Spaulding. You'll be safe there, at least for a while."
Hummell chuckled. "Guess you have more than old sourdoughs in your corner, son."
Bryan didn't move. "How much do you know?" he demanded frozenly.
She answered honestly, "Everything worth knowing except your version of DeLough's murder."
"I haven't any version," he said helplessly. "I was dead drunk and don't remember a damn thing until I came to and had the gun in my hand and . . . and "
Milla stepped to him quietly, and when she was close he could see that her heart was in her eyes.
"Don't," she whispered, "don't think about it. Just go, and go quickly. I don't think Spaulding is going to stay too pleased with mother."
Hummell said quietly, "Help yourself to some of my clothes and skedaddle, lad. I'll see the young lady safely back to her tent." .
It was as if all that was needed was the one murder to set off a train of similar acts of violence in Nome. Law and order dissolved into sheer anarchy. For nine days and nights, Oliver Spaulding hardly ate or slept--and had little time to put into the investigation of DeLough's death. Everywhere there were fights, robberies, backstabbings, burnings, impoverished miners exploding in frustration and alcoholic frenzy to attack each other rather than face the armied night at the Anvil Creek claims or agree on one legal course of action to drive the Russians and Swedes off them.
It was Irina who saw and feared what the ultimate focus of the miners' riots would be. Sometime before they'd begun, she'd had construction started on a new clapboard home for herself, Milla and Marna.
In her tent one night, while guns went off and men were shouting in the distance, she told Milla, "I think, even though the house isn't finished, we are going to move in tomorrow. It wouldn't take much for those animals to slit these canvas walls and get at us."
By "us," Irina meant her safe, which contained a small treasury in gold by now. She had implicit faith in the invulnerability of her royal Russian person. Not once did she conceive of anyone attacking her or her daughter or their faithful servant, Marna.
The ferment in the streets went on.
Irina cursed the fact that she continued to have trouble sleeping, even in the new safe house. One night she got up, not because she heard a noise but because she heard no sound at all. The house was just too quiet; it made her neck prickle.
"Damn!" she muttered as she slipped a robe over her filmy nightdress, "This is stupid of me."
Nonetheless, she walked into the adjoining bedroom to see if Milla was quite all right. She saw her daughter sleeping soundly, curled knees to chin on her four-poster bed and with a sweet, almost beatific expression on her face. For a moment Irina's heart filled with love. She did not know what had brought about the change in Milla, but during the past few days', she had developed a sudden new, obviously genuine interest in seeing that the work on the expanded restaurant got done. She wasn't doing it in fits and starts anymore, wasn't pouting or grumbling at all; it was as if she had been instantaneously invested with new energies. Irina wondered if Milla had met and fallen in love with a man. while she wasn't looking; she was suspicious that she had and wondered who the man could possibly be. Since Milla was working well, she would let her keep her secret for a while. Then she would find out.
Leaving Milla's room, Irina headed downstairs to sit up in the living room for a spell. Halfway down the staircase she almost halted and turned back. The house was chilly and she didn't know the first thing about laying a fire in the new fireplace.
"Funny," she said to herself, "how much I rely on Marna for so many things. I really should get some more servants for this new house."
She was not aware that she had spoken aloud until her words provoked a low, coarse laugh. Already at the bottom of the stairs by now, she turned and found herself staring at the barrel of a revolver. The face of the man who held the gun was hidden in the shadows of the bannister.
Irina froze but remained unafraid, only chided herself for having left her derringer upstairs in her bedroom. "Who are you and what do you want?" she demanded.
The man in the shadows chuckled. "It is simple, baroness. We are going to make it difficult for you to afford more servants. How many in the house?" 
"My servant woman and I," Irina lied evenly. An instinct had warned her not to mention Milla.
But the lie accomplished little. From behind the man with a gun came a sarcastic bark. A match was struck in the dining room and a candle on the table there was lit.
"She also has a young daughter!" the second man called out.
Irina blinked for a moment, then peered into the now dimly lit dining room. There was not one but two men there, both heavily bearded and filthily dressed. She could not see their faces.
She was amazed that she had not heard them. They had already collected her silver service on the table, along with bags of gold they had taken from the safe. She knew she had left the safe locked, so why hadn't she heard the noise of its being forced open? She burned the two men's images into her brain, what she could see of them, for future reference.
"Jesus!" the revolver toter said with a leer in his voice. "She may be young but she ain't that young!" 
Irina was loath to turn around. She knew, with her heart sinking, that Milla must have walked out onto the second-floor landing above her, into the same trap she had.
"Mother, are you all right?"
"I'm fine," Irina stammered, without turning. "Go back to sleep, Milla."
The man in the dining room who had first mentioned Milla, laughed softly. "Oh no, you don't. You come on down here, missy, so's we can all see what kind of whore you are."
Milla, terrified, did not move. "I am not a whore," she whimpered.
"Get down here!" the man in the dining room snarled. "Don't worry--I'm not going to touch your lily-white ass. I've got a very important question to ask you."
"Mama, I'm frightened," Milla cried.
The man came charging out of the dining room, belted past Irina and raced up the stairs. He grabbed Milla by the arm and started shaking her violently. "Where do you have that faggot lover of yours hidden out? Tell me, damn it!"
Milla stared at the man, unable to speak. She cast an imploring look past him down at her mother.
Irina, looking upward and listening, now knew the man. "Buttle!" she cried. "Leave her alone. She knows nothing about Mathews' whereabouts."
Buttle, still holding Milla's arm, shouted back, "You've already lied once tonight, baroness, so just hold your tongue. I saw old man Hummell walking her back from his tent and heard him saying how Mathews was there. But by the time I got there the bastard was gone. Now, I want it from one or the other of you. Where have you got him hidden out?"
"He's innocent," Milla wailed.
"That's hardly the point," Craig Buttle spat. "I just want the bastard dead."
There was a sudden silence. Irina and Milla stared aghast at Buttle. Each instantly knew the
truth and knew, too, that Buttle would not let them live to repeat it.
Buttle laughed. "I can almost hear your brains ticking. I couldn't care less. Where's Mathews? Or would you like a couple of cold gun barrels up your cunts?' The man holding a gun on Irina suppressed a nervous laugh; the other man stared coldly up at Milla, saying nothing.
Milla had never once taken her eyes off Buttle. As he gestured, jeeringly, towards the robbers with him, her free arm suddenly came from behind her back. The first shot from the derringer she was holding was fired without warning, the bullet crashing squarely into Buttle's taunting face. His eyes flared in surprise but went instantly sightless.
Milla dropped, using the dead man's still standing body as a shield. In that split-second she was screaming for Irina to run and for the other two bandits to drop their arms.
As their companion began a slow fall backwards down the stairs, the miner in the dining room snarled and drew a bead on the exposed Milla. His arm was abruptly shattered by a shot coming from the darkness of the kitchen door. The gun falling from his fingers, he whirled and fled, with a scream of pain, right into the hands of the waiting soldiers.
"Don't try anything!" Spaulding commanded shrilly, racing in to disarm the other mines. With a stammering plea for mercy the man dropped his gun, nearly tripping on his own feet as another soldier came to drag him away.
Marna came waddling into the hall. For a moment she stared up at Milla in disbelief. "Had I known you'd be doing this, child, I'd never have risked leaving for the soldiers."
Ill
"It's a good thing you did, Mama," Spaulding' said. "It got me here in time to hear his confession."
It was as if Milla heard them, yet did not hear them. Strangely calm, she slipped the derringer in the pocket of her dressing robe and turned away, as if wearily going back to bed.
Irina blinked at her.
"Go to her, Marna," Spaulding whispered. "She's in shock and shouldn't be left alone. Corporal, get some men in here to remove the body. Then set a guard on the house for the rest of the night."
Afterwards, Spaulding took Irina gently by the arm and led her to the small parlor next to her office. There a fire was smoldering feebly in a potbellied stove. Spaulding poked at the embers. Then, little by little, he added wood until the fire was blazing and making the room warm and comfortable. All this while, Irina sat and looked at him with great, wondering eyes.
"Why did you let her shoot him?" she asked him softly.
"I couldn't see her," Spaulding answered truthfully. "I didn't know that she had a gun. It all happened so quickly."
"I didn't hear any noise," she said foolishly.
Spaulding frowned, then understood. "There was enough to arouse Marna. She went and saw Buttle working at the combination of the safe. She thought we could catch him before he figured it out."
Irina laughed inanely. "Must be a very cheap safe I bought."
Spaulding didn't comment. He was aware that she was in a state of shock herself. He looked at her wonderingly, as though seeing her for the first time. She was paler, and therefore more beautiful.
The experience, he thought, had humanized her-- knocked her from her lofty perch and made her beholding to her daughter and to him.
Irina sighed. "Thank God it's over."
He did not want to talk, nor did he want Irina to do so--talking might turn her backward again. But he couldn't allow her to hold that peace for long.
"It isn't over, really. Buttle was only one of many who would like to see you ruined. They've called a miners' meeting for tomorrow night to draw up a resolution that will declare all existing claims void and vulnerable to re-staking."
Irina gazed at him, her green eyes soft and tender.
"You know," she said, "suddenly it no longer matters."
"That doesn't sound like you," Spaulding protested.
"I know. Milla and I could be dead right now, and only then would it not really matter. But right now---I feel old, terribly old."
"Old," he repeated, shaking his head. "I've never seen you more lovely."
"I'm glad," she said very simply. "A woman likes to hear such things, even at a time like this."
She lay back very peacefully against Oliver's shoulder and tilted her head. This time she allowed him to make the next move. The kiss was boyish and clumsy.
"You know," she said, "no other man has ever kissed me--except my husband."
Oliver kissed her again and her sigh was soft with contentment. She raised her head and rewarded him with a pleasing smile. "Thank you,
Oliver," she said, leaving off his formal rank as' had been her custom in the past. "You make a woman feel so protected."
Her expression of gratitude, simply put, bolstered Oliver's ego tremendously at a time when he needed it the most, but he still had to make very sure that she understood their position.
He hesitated. "You know, Irina, I can't take sides in this matter. The law is not really on your side, unless you take the oath."
Irina looked him squarely in the eye. "I was not thinking of that, Oliver. I was thinking only of this moment."
Oliver had no further desire to discuss business. Their eyes locked on a shared thought, a shared desire. This time their lips blended, seemingly melted together slowly. Her arms, tightening about his neck, demanded more. There was no refusal on his part when she carefully parted his lips with her tongue and began to explore the hard whiteness of his teeth, the warmth of his gums, the tenderness of his mouth all over.
Oliver was a virgin. As though anticipating this as the only moment in time he would ever have for his sexual awakening, he responded in kind. He began to explore her mouth with his own tongue. At the same time, he hesitantly touched the hardening nipples of her breasts, which brought her hands quickly to his chest--as if to push him away, and yet not. She moaned, and the moan raised him towards ecstasy. His hips responded to the grinding motion of hers until he became almost excruciatingly aware that it was only cloth that separated their lower bodies.
Because he had dwelled with fantasies for so
many years, waiting for this exact moment to happen, it was for Oliver like the working out of a dream. He was floating, hardly conscious of who or where he was. His hands were but gossamer touches placed on her body, and her fingers, moving down to his waist and then below, were almost equally insubstantial, like the unknown source of some unbearable excitement.
Even his voice, as he whispered that they should undress, did not seem real to him.
Eyes closed, she nodded, then slowly began to unbutton her robe. His fingers trembled as he tried to help her, and he only delayed her with his fumblings. Again he was boyish and clumsy. She pushed his hand away gently, then quickly undressed herself. And then he found himself unable to take his eyes from her nakedness--her full, round, uptilted breasts, her navel, her slim hips, her thighs, the gorgeous hairy mound between her legs. He could not move for staring.
She slipped to her knees and tugged at his hand. Together they sank down onto the bearskin rug in front of the fire. Irina kissed him hungrily, then pulled herself away to lie suggestively on her back. It took only a single whispered command for Oliver to comply with her fondest desires. His mouth, so quickly and greedily upon her breasts, made her gasp with pain and pleasure; he was like a child who refused to be weaned. She fondled him, amazed at the sudden ferocity and strength in him.
He could not contain himself. Driven by some blind instinct, he altered his position with lightning speed and entered her. He was not prepared for her pain, for her demands that he stop, for her sudden fear and exhilaration both.
It had been years since Irina had been with a' man. She was still young enough to bear children. A fear of pregnancy mixed with an uncontrollable urge to conceive once more made her lift her body up at him, the pleasure of the sexual act taking on an anguished, hostile side. She had unleashed the animal in Oliver and in herself; now she fought desperately to control both.
She could not. Oliver was insatiable. She could not keep from responding to his sudden devouring kisses on her face, neck and shoulders, or to the quick mounting of his thrusts inside her. His hips and stomach slammed into hers. His hard, hot penis buried itself deep inside her; it seemed to rise to her throat. "Yes! Yes!" she screamed. But only twice, for then, with a loud grunt, Oliver came.
Afterwards, he was nearly inconsolable. Both lay still for several moments, Irina breathing hard under him. Then he raised his head and, looking forlornly into her eyes, said, "It was too fast, wasn't it?"
She didn't answer immediately, only gazed up at the dark despair written on his face. Then, "It was good, very good--I loved it, Oliver," she said quietly, "And it's going to get lots better, you'll see."
Hope flickered in his eyes. "When?" he said.
"Tomorrow night? Is that all right with you?"
As he inspected the yearning expression Irina had put on her face, Oliver's spirits soared with a new sense of his power. "I think," he said carelessly, "I think I can make it."
Later, watching Oliver dress, observing his affected yawn, Irina said, as if casually, "One thing, Oliver. I want you to take a thousand dollars from
the money on the dining room table. You caught DeLough's real killer. A deal is a deal. Take it."
Oliver Spaulding thought. He had solved the case, after all, and he had also proven to the Russian baroness that he was quite a man. His future in Nome no longer seemed bleak. "I suppose I have earned it," he admitted. "Very well then, I accept your kind offer."
It did not occur to Oliver, even after he had left the house, that he had D»t so much accepted Irina's offer as obeyed her command.
"I was unaware that you knew Bryan Mathews that intimately," Irina said coldly to Milla.
It was three days later. Irina had decided to give her distraught daughter that much time to recover before grilling her.
"I would hardly call it intimate, mother. We've met three times, including the time I went to warn him to get away."
"And why, may I ask," Irina snapped, "am I just learning about your warning him?"
Milla shrugged. "I didn't think it was important, as long as he was safe."
Irina screamed, "I am the one who should be worried about his safety, not you. I demand to know what there is between you two."
"Mother, I'm tired and upset. It wasn't pleasant to see the hole I shot in Buttle's face. Don't make it worse. There is nothing between Bryan and me."
Irina glared at her, but there was nothing in Milla's sad expression to indicate she wasn't telling the truth. "See that you keep it that way," she said grudgingly. "I haven't been doing all of this so you
could throw yourself away on a commoner. . . . Now, I want to know right now, where exactly Mathews is. I still haven't heard from him."
"It's really no secret, mother, except from those who wished him harm. John Hummell made certain arrangements with Jafet Lindeberg. Two of Jafet's men took Bryan's place at our claims and Bryan went to work at Jafet's. But now, with Buttle's confession, he won't have to hide out anymore. He'll hear about it soon, and then I'm sure he'll come back to Nome." With her statement came a silent prayer on Milla's part that Bryan would indeed return to her soon.
Irina said flatly, "Soon isn't soon enough. I have need of him now. While I dress, have Mama go to a stable and order me something suitable to ride in."
As she turned to leave the living room and go upstairs, Milla called out in disbelieving tones: "You're going out to see Bryan?" 
Irina stopped, turned back. "What of it?"
"Nothing. I--I thought you might enjoy some company, that's all."
Irina looked at her daughter narrowly, "Damn you, Milla, damn you."
Four hours later, Irina was confronting Bryan inside the tent he had taken over on Lindeberg's claim. She was, if anything, seething even more angrily inside than when she'd left her despicable liar of a daughter. At the same time, she had a vital need for Bryan's services. It was a difficult moment for her.
She had caught Bryan by surprise in coming to him; she hoped that would work to her advantage.
After granting him a terse hello, she let her eyes wander over the tent. What she saw confirmed her low opinion of him--he was living in slovenliness, like an animal. Then her gaze fell on two small canvas bags of gold sitting on a wooden crate in. the tent's shadows.
Bryan saw the look.
"The gold is Jafet's," he said grimly. "He has yours."
"I know," Irina said, without further explanation.
"How did you find me? Few people knew that I was here."
"But my daughter did?" she asked softly.
"Milla? I wasn't aware that she did."
There it was, Irina thought. Her daughter had called him by his first name and now he was doing the same. She was happy she had learned what the situation was before it got out of hand.
"It seems that she knows quite a bit about you," Irina said evenly, "which came as quite a shock to me. I was under the impression that I was your employer."
"So? I don't understand."
"The point," Irina snapped, "is that I don't like this sudden interest you have taken in each other."
"Now, wait a minute, baroness. We don't hardly even know each other." Bryan motioned lamely at a folding chair. "That's my only chair."
Irina shook her head. "I'll stand. What I have to say will only take a minute. But first, thank you for your honesty. I believe you. If the interest is all on my daughter's side, I can handle it. Honestly, on my part, I can understand her attraction to you to a certain degree. This is, after all, a world mostly
of undesirable men up here, and you do shine forth' as one of the younger and more handsome of the breed, but still ..." Her words trailed off.
Bryan growled, "But still you think I'm not good enough for the likes of her?"
Irina made a quick, expressive gesture with her hands, as if to finish off that part of the conversation.
"I don't need to think on it, Mr. Mathews, I know you're not good enough," she said coldly. 
"But that's not what you came all the way up here to tell me, is it?" Bryan intuited softly. "Why don't you take a seat now, baroness, and tell me what you really came to say?"
Now Irina did take the seat, slowly and elegantly.
"What I wanted to tell you, Bryan, is that Craig Buttle is dead." She gave him the news bluntly, watching for his reaction. "He confessed shooting DeLough before he died, however."
Bryan sat rigid for several seconds and then sagged, burying his head in his hands. "I'm sorry about everything. How did it happen?"
"That is immaterial," she said coolly. "It's over. You're free of both of them--and I suspect you know what I mean. We must, however, go on and attack our next problem at once."
Bryan said, "I suddenly don't have any problems anymore."
"Personally you may not," she said, "but I think you might take into account that I was somewhat responsible for keeping Lieutenant Spaulding from arresting you these past ten days."
Bryan stared at her. Then a wicked grin lit his face. *
"And now comes the pay off?"
Irina grinned back, just as wickedly. "I think you will like the terms. There is to be a miners' meeting tonight. They want to take everything away from Mill and me--the foreigners, they call us."
"Is that still brewing?"
"Stronger than ever, but I have a way to stop it ... with your help."
"I'm listening."
Irina smiled. She would handle Bryan Mathews now and Oliver Spaulding later.
"You mean to be rich and return to the states," she said. "I don't think that even you can get rich from working my claim--and you, like the others, don't stand a chance of getting your hands on a rich claim of your own." She smiled again and opened her purse. "But, a man, taking a large percentage from several claims, could not be called a fool. He could even be called a very rich man. I have papers here for you to sign and I have no doubt I can get the Swedes to sign them too. Of course, it is all on paper, even though it will look like we are all working for you and not the opposite."
"What in the hell are you talking about?"
"Don't be stupid," Irina barked. "As an American citizen these claims can be in your name and the miners can't say a damn word. Now, here, sign them! I'm giving you an opportunity to be a very rich man for nothing more than your signature."
Bryan was stunned into disbelief. "How--how much do I get?" he stammered.
"Five per cent of all the gold we take out of the ground."
Hell, Bryan thought, that could be thousands of dollars. With a shaking hand he signed each document
carefully. Then, riding the moment, he grew cocky.
He leaned forward confidentially.
"What will it take, baroness, for me to become good enough for your daughter?"
Irina frowned thoughtfully.
"Why," she said quietly, "no less than a million."
Irina saw all manner of disgruntled miners sitting about the hills as she came from the Scandinavians' diggings on Anvil Creek. At the moment, it was easy for her to ignore the threat they posed to her, for she was jubilant about what she had accomplished. All the land she had previously claimed had been documented by ninety separate papers,- and each now bore a double signature--Bryan's and either hers or Milla's. She had, of course, forged Milla's signature to several of the documents, but thought she had every right to do so. She had gotten Bryan Mathews to do her bidding; surely she would be able to control her own daughter if that became necessary. First and foremost now, she had to get some military aid from Oliver Spaulding.
Even then, scores of prospectors in Nome were, literally, firing up emergency trouble for Irina. On
the afternoons of her return to the city, Oliver had not gone on his normal military rounds. Instead, he'd gone to a barber for a haircut and a shave. Oliver wanted all the nights of his new life to be special. He had left his dress uniform off to be pressed, his boots to be polished. With Irina's reward money in hand, he was now considerably richer than he had been and he felt he could afford to splurge on his grooming, as much to please his lover as himself.
While Oliver was so preoccupied, rebellious miners were starting bonfires on Nome's outskirts. Oliver had received word from his men that the fires were being lit but had simply assumed they were for the purposes of a miners' meeting that night, for such grievance meetings, all legal and proper, were becoming routine in the city.
The reports Irina received from her spies on her return, however, told her, if not Oliver, the real reason the fires were being lit.
She did nothing about it immediately, only waited for Oliver to come to her that evening. Indeed, as she readied herself for him, soaking in her tub, then dressing in a low cut gown of sea-green velvet, she was delighted with her knowledge that there was nothing she had to do about it; the obliging Oliver would take care of everything, and a lot sooner than she'd hoped for. The impatient miners were simply playing into her hands. 
Oliver's eyes were alight with pleasure when he arrived. She looked gorgeous to him, and the perfume she wore quickened his desire instantly.
"Irina--" he began, and moved to take her in his arms. But she interrupted him, stepping back with a cautionary wave of her hand.
"Later, Oliver," she promised him. "I've got to talk to you now. Seriously."
Wonderingly, he followed her into the little parlor and sank into the chair she indicated.
"Are you aware," she said showing her concerned need for him, "that those bonfires in town are part of a relay signal system to those would-be claim jumpers out at the diggings? There are plotters here planning a resolution to throw us off our land. As soon as they get enough support for it, which may be tonight, they are going to signal the riff-raff at Anvil Creek to jump our claims at will." 
Oliver swore. "So that's their game. I should have known. . . ." He mused. "A bit premature of them, taking the law into their own hands. . . . Have your guards been warned?"
"Oliver!" Irina was genuinely astonished "What do you mean, premature, my guards--aren't you going to take action here in town against them? And I mean, now!" 
Mostly, Oliver saw her concern as a threat to his lovely evening. He hesitated. "I don't like it," he said slowly. "Believe me, I don't. But why don't you arrange to take the oath? Then they could have no possible excuse for trying to oust you. As it is . . ." He spread his hands. "Well, I'm just not sure the U.S. Army would be on secure ground in interfering."
Irina stamped her foot. "I am not taking any oath. I have been a part of Alaska for forty years. My whole life. I resent being made to look like a greedy outsider. I'm not talking about oaths. Haven't we had enough violence around here recently? I'm asking you to stop another outbreak of it before it gets started."
"Then take the oath," he demanded impatiently.
"Do not my actions on behalf of this territory speak louder than a few words, Oliver? Who but I has had the courage to begin erecting permanent buildings for businesses? What was the cargo of the Maria? I didn't bring in more people to squabble over the few claims available, like I could name. No. I brought in lumber and supplies to replace the tents with houses that will withstand next winter. I have built a house here myself--for God's sake, Oliver--Alaska is my home!" 
"Yes," he said, "I am well aware of all of that."
"But those rowdies out there are not," she sighed. "Oh, Oliver, they accuse me of doing all I have done to insure my daughter's future. It's true in part, but do I not have a future here as well? I don't wish to remain alone forever."
The words seared into Oliver Spaulding's brain. He had arrived with his sexual interests paramount in his mind, thinking he wanted no more than their immediate gratification. But suddenly Irina, with her passions and vulnerability both, had opened vast new avenues for his mind to travel on. She was all but suggesting that he could be the man who could keep her from remaining alone. Yes, he thought, he could be! He could easily give up his military career and pursue one of business---with a go-getter like Irina as his marriage partner, the stakes could be enormous!
Oliver jumped up, his face splitting into a wide grin.
"All right, you've convinced me," he chuckled. "Now I see what I must do!"
"But Oliver--" Irina protested. She got no further than she wished to. He bent and kissed her a
passionate goodbye. Then his heavy, footsteps were trodding from the house.
"Oh, Oliver, you dear silly fool," Irina pouted after he'd gone, "I do hope you'll come back-- afterwards!"
Then she sat back, poured a fresh glass of champagne and toasted herself. She had not needed to bring the signed documents into play. They had been her ace-in-the-hole and would remain there unless Oliver failed her.
It. Oliver Spaulding and a company of fifty men stalked Nome's streets that night. The saloons were all but deserted, they found, save for Clancey's Blarney Stone, which was packed wall to wall with about two hundred of the ugliest specimens of humanity Oliver had ever seen. These were the same rambunctious miners he had encountered day after day on his rounds, but there was something different about them this night--they were drunk, mean, wild-eyed desperate: Clancey O'Rooney, who had a stake in their fomenting a riot, was cagily offering them drinks at two for the price of one. Everyone was getting a nose full.
Oliver marched his fifty soldiers up to a knot of men who stood before the saloon.
"Open a path," he ordered. "Those of you who respect the law can join us. Those who don't had better go to your tents peacefully. This gathering is a threat to the order of this town!"
The bystanders sullenly opened a path for Oliver and the soldiers to enter the saloon and then closed ranks. No one departed.
A great quiet settled momentarily within. There was hardly room to move, but the men inside huddled
back away from the soldiers, their faces mirroring their resentment at the intrusion.
Oliver moved forward steadily at the head of his line toward the mob's ringleaders, who sat at a long table in front of the bar. Murmurs arose, like a keen of mourning at a funeral or something equally as ominous. Oliver felt chilled. He had not expected to find so large a crowd of plotters in one place.
The soldiers were very close to the table when someone spat out a mouthful of whiskey. It struck a young private full in the face, making him gasp. Immediately the air was filled with rowdy jeering.
"Let us have order!" Oliver roared, but he might as well have addressed a pack of apes. He drew out his revolver and fired it through the roof of the tent.
"Who is your spokesman?" he roared again, this time loud enough to be heard all the way to the street.
"It be I," a burly miner answered, rising from his seat at the table. "Sam Duggan, by name."
"All right, Duggan," Oliver growled. "State your reasons for this gathering."
Duggan roared with laughter. "Come on, lieutenant, where ya'll been of late, under a rock? I've just read the boys a resolution making all claims in this area void. We was just about ready to vote on it when you barged in."
"The resolution is presumptive," Oliver said flatly, "and a threat to order."
Duggan scratched his head. "I ain't that much of book-learned man, lieutenant, so don't know or give a shit what the word presumptive means. I just want to hear from the men the ayes and nays of this matter."
The tent immediately rocked with an ongoing chorus of 'ayes.' There was stony silence when 'nays' were called for.
"Light the fire!" someone shouted.
Oliver raised his revolver to a spot between Duggan's eyes.
"There will be no bonfire lit," he snarled, "now or ever."
"What's done is done," Duggan shouted back. "We've done voted."
"Gentlemen," Oliver commanded, cocking the revolver, "withdraw that resolution."
"What for?" angry voices shouted. Miners began to close around him, now growing more and more belligerent. They would not have their victory taken away before they had tasted the fruits of it. They pressed close to the soldiers, all but smothering their rifles against their bodies.
Duggan pounded for order. ; "Hear me!" he shouted. "Hear what I got to say to him." He jumped up on the table and waited until he had everyone's full attention. Looking down at the frightened faces of the soldiers he began to speak with rising power and urgency.
"Hey, soldiers, listen to me. We make our laws around here from now on. What do we care for you and your laws? You've just been replaced and this town is ours."
Nimbly, Oliver jumped right up beside him, his face a mask of ferocity.
"Treason and revolution," he bellowed. "Men! Fix bayonets!"
"What the hell?" Duggan swore.
The clang of fifty bayonets being attached to rifles echoed over the gathering stillness.
"I'll tell you what the hell it is," Oliver answered, his voice raging. "You men are putting yourself outside the law and revolting against the Army of the United States of America. I call that treason on the part of each and every one of you. I declare that if you stand by this resolution then you are no longer citizens and unable to make the claims yourself. I will give you two minutes to clear this place, voluntarily, or my men and I will clear it for you!"
The threat, backed by the resonant might of the U.S. Army, had its effect. One by one, then in small clusters, the miners backed down.
Duggan had lost. Grumbling, but faced down, he jumped from the table and pushed his way through the departing miners.
It took over two minutes for the miners to shuffle away, but it was done so silently they might have been ghosts floating from a cemetery. When the soldiers marched out they found one man so badly frightened that he had left a puddle of urine where he had been standing. Meanwhile, out on Anvil Creek other miners sat waiting for a signal bonfire that would never be lit while Irina's armed guards sat undisturbed with their guns at the ready, in the shadow of the anvil-shaped rock for which the creek was named.
Two weeks later a most unlikely prospector would stumble on a discovery in Nome itself that would make the rich veins of that same Anvil Creek seem paltry by comparison.
One by one, Irina Feodorovna let a series of hammer blows fall after Oliver had successfully squelched the miners rebellion for her.
It was well after midnight when Oliver decided the town was quiet enough to release his troops, too late, he felt, to go back to Irina's. Actually, he felt elated enough with what he had accomplished not to need the thrill of sex. He was satisfied that he had preserved order, not so much for the town as for the baroness and himself. He fell asleep dreaming glorious dreams of their future together.
Had he known Irina was still quite awake and something of what she was planning, his sleep would have been far less comfortable.
In Irina's fireplace the fire burned brightly, and the room was near the point of suffocation. Hardly conscious of the heat, she stood there and burned to embers the ninety documents Bryan Mathews had signed. They were no longer of use to her, nor was the man who had signed them. She would cut Bryan Mathews out of her life, just as she intended to sever all connections with Oliver Spaulding. She had a separate plan for dispensing with each.
Bryan Mathews, the next day, was the first to hear of his fate--through a note from Irina informing him of his dismissal. By the time he reached Nome to confront her on the matter, he was speechless with anger.
Irina grinned at him, seeing his jaw working amid the forest of his newly grown out Van Dyke.
"The note said terminated," she chuckled. "Don't you know what the word terminated means? Fired! Out!"
"But what of the documents I signed to protect the claims?"
Irina blinked stupidly. "What documents? I don't know what you are talking about."
"The Swedes will know what I'm talking about!" ' Bryan exclaimed. "And the law will, too!" "Law? What law?"
"Lieutenant Spaulding. There is no way he could have stopped the miners' resolution without those documents. He can't lie about it!"
"No," she said quite honestly, "he can't lie about documents that he never saw. Because they never were. He stopped the resolution because he is the law and did what was proper. I'm doing what I think is proper, because I don't think you are doing justice to my claims. I've already hired other men to work them for me." 
Bryan's face was a study in near-apoplexy.
"Then give me my money!" he demanded. "The money I've already earned that you have in the safe."
"Gladly," Irina said cheerfully, tossing him a bag of ten dollar gold pieces she had already prepared.
Bryan weighed it in his hand, frowning.
"There's not more than a few hundred dollars here," he insisted.
Irina shook her head sympathetically. "I've been more than fair, Bryan. After all, I did have to subtract for the damage you did in my restaurant."
"What! You damn thief! I'll see you in jail for this!" 
"Wait a minute," she said soothingly, taking a document off her desk. "Control your temper, or I'll have the law on you. I guess you signed so many documents the other day you failed to see that you signed one admitting your responsibility for the damage and agreeing to pay for it. I'll mark it paid in full, if you like."
Bryan ranted and tore at his beard, but he was defeated.
Twelve days later a courier arrived from St. Michael. It. Oliver Spaulding was to report back to Washington to answer court-martial charges of having accepted a bribe in the performance of his duties. No mention was made of whom he had received the bribe from or the amount. Irina was very sympathetic and understanding of his plight. She even dispatched, in his care, a letter extolling his heroism in stopping the miners' revolt, but never once mentioned the particulars surrounding the $1,000 reward.
Oliver's case was shuffled from minor department to minor department. The Department of the Army and the Department of the Interior did not want it to surface.
But in her subtle manner of getting rid of Oliver, it turned out that Irina had overstepped herself. More news of the finds in the territory leaked out through him than she wanted revealed, and now the heavier battalions in Washington coveted the Alaskan gold.
Bryan stood by John Hummell's tent, looking out over the choppy waters of Norton Sound. The Ohio lay at anchor a mile out. His bag was packed and his bicycle sold. His head ached dully, both from fatigue and from despair. It would not do to think of his failed efforts over the past two weeks to find another claim to work. Irina had thwarted him at every turn, had even convinced Jafet not to hire him. It would take almost all he had to sail away on the Ohio, but it was as if he had no choice but to leave. His reputation was ruined. Milla? Bitter laughter rumbled in his throat. Not even Hummell had been allowed to have a word with the girl. 
Neither man was aware that Irina had lied to Milla as well.
"It is fortunate that we found out in time," Irina had told her silently weeping daughter. "The man is a blatant thief and pervert. I wouldn't want to
repeat all the things Erik Lindblom found out about him. But then, he was bound to be found out sooner or later; evil always will out."
Milla did not answer. If she could have let out her grief by screaming, it might have given her some relief. She had been told he was a thief, but not what he had stolen. She had been told again that he was a pervert, but not what he had done to be branded. Her heart told her that he was innocent of all charges, but her brain had to accept her mother's words as fact. She held out a slim ray of hope that John Hummell would know the full truth, but Irina was too sly to leave any door ajar.
"I can understand, to a degree," Irina said sadly, "younger men finding themselves so mentally and physically starved as to lie together, but it utterly sickens me to picture in my mind Bryan being with that old man. Disgusting! I forbid you to see John Hummell, as well."
While Bryan, who knew nothing of this, was standing there feeling miserable about Milla's refusal to see him, Hummell came up from the beach, his face stoically calm, his legs moving with uncommon speed. With a casual nod, he motioned for Bryan to follow him into the tent.
From both pockets of his mackinaw the old sourdough scooped out handfuls of sand sprinkled with tiny nuggets. His mouth cracked in a wide grin, but for the moment he said nothing.
"Well," Hummell chuckled, "ain't you going to ask me where I found it?"
Bryan stood there a moment longer, looking at the pile, then finally grasped a handful of sand and let the coarse grains sift through his fingers.
"Always said," Hummell rambled on enthusiastically,
"that gold is where you find it, and I found it at the water's edge. Sure, the bedrock of the creeks is seamed with gold-rich quartz, but it's the beach, boy, where the real treasure lies. I'm a damn fool not to have thought of it before. Just imagine, thousands of years of erosion have deposited a fabulous amount right at our feet."
"I---I'm happy for you."
Hummell roared with laughter. "Be happy for yourself, too, lad. I can't be doing this alone. I'll be needing a partner with a strong back and plenty of guts. You've got both, if you'd stop licking your wounds and fight back. We'll have to work fast to stake out our claims. Working right under the noses of everybody is not going to keep this secret quiet very long. Well, are you ready to get to work?"
Bryan heard him. Oddly, at that moment, he was thinking of his mother and of himself as a child in Oklahoma. She had always told him that when one door closes, someone is always standing there ready to open a new one. You just had to know if it was the right time to walk through it.
The time was ripe for Bryan Mathews and for Nome.
Within one full turn of the clock hands the news was out. Throngs of men, and a few women, raced to the beach and began spading up the sand. On the beach all a miner needed was a shovel and a gold pan. They tried to get as close to the Hummell-Mathews claims as possible, but it wasn't really necessary. Gold was where you found it. 
For a week the two men worked their claims; but through it all Bryan remained morose and quiet. The work, however, was turning Hummell young and spry again, and he chattered away at a great
rate during each of their evening meals. And one thing he said caused Bryan to lift his head and stare at him eagerly.
"Yes lad, we're better off than them mining folk up the creeks. Reminds me of some of the gold claims in California. Panning got out more dust than the diggers did. Still, some of the big companies had to come up with devices that would pan faster."
"What kind of devices?"
"A rocker contraption. Something like a baby's cradle. You pour in a shovelful of sand and a bucket of water, then swing the rocker back and forth. It's like a lullaby and it does for the gold what it does for a baby--causes it to settle down."
Hummell could see the excitement in Bryan's face. He did not guess its cause, but whatever it was, he was glad of it, because that look of his sullen self- torment was gone.
Bryan grabbed pencil and paper and scribbled for the rest of the evening. Near midnight he awoke the old man and pulled him back to the lamplit table. Hummell looked at his drawings with wide- eyed admiration.
"You are one smart lad!" He hesitated. "But let an old man make a few practical suggestions. . . ."
They worked together for two more hours and sat back pleased.
"Let's go over it one more time," Bryan said, "and stop me if you see a flaw. At the top we have a hopper with holes in the bottom small enough to keep out the coarse stuff. The sand falls through the hopper holes and washes over two aprons slanting back and forth to the bottom, where it runs out through a sluice box." *
"Just a moment, son," Hummell interrupted. "In
stead of canvas, why not make the aprons and the whole bottom of the box and the riffles out of blanket? The finer dust would then catch in the wool nap and we could wash it out each night."
"Yep, that's it--great! Now we'll really have a two-man operation going. You'll stand dipping water into the hopper with one hand and rocking with the other. I'll put in a shovelful of sand every now and then, keep the water tub full, keep the tailings cleared away and bring up more wheelbarrows of sand when we're ready for it.
The first day they used their new device brought them more gold than their first week of panning had. But they would not let anyone get near enough to see exactly how it operated. Bryan bought back his bicycle and used the wheels to make a trailer to haul the rock back and forth from the tent each day.
By the end of their second week of operation it was obvious that Hummell had discovered one of the most phenomenal gold fields in history and surely the most extensive. Over two thousand miners, dotting a 42-mile stretch of the beach, would take out two million dollars before the summer of 1899 ended.
If Irina had performed the impossible before, she now proceeded to create miracles. Turning the new gold in the area to her immediate advantage, she began erecting two and three buildings a week, which she either rented or sold. For this real-estate venture she simply outbid all competitors for the cargos of three American ships, then hired away all their ship's carpenters and offered triple bonuses to the ships' captains if they would ply the waters to Sitka and California for her.
Then she all but divorced herself from everything but her latest money-making toy, The Nome Bank and Assay Association--laughingly called by the miners "The Double Ass" since one usually took it in the butt twice in dealing with this shrewd woman.
Although it galled them, Bryan and Hummell had no choice but to deal with Irina's bankers and assayers; she had cunningly made sure that she had received the only bank charter from the new military commander of the area. Lieutenant Wallace M. Cragie was no Oliver Spaulding. A career soldier, well into his forties, he ruled with an iron hand and a strong will. The law was the law and he ran the Claims Office like a little fiefdom. 'Homely as a hawg,' he was also a devout family man and railed at the prostitutes all agreed, "Cragie's a man all right. But he's saving it to give his wife another brat."
Irina didn't mind the increase in the demimonde --they had ready cash to pay for her new buildings and were among some of her largest depositors.
Another of her large depositors did gall her. This was The Hummell-Mathews Mining Company. If Irina feared anything, it was that Bryan Mathews could grow powerful enough to unglue the lies she had spread about him.
She sat back and waited, feeling that the growing chaos would bring Bryan tumbling down again-- and without her doing the pushing.
Once again the have-nots were pushing to gain what the haves already possessed.
"Gentlemen," Lieutenant Cragie advised one noisy miners' meeting, "as there is no one in Nome experienced in mining a beach, so there is no one in Nome who knows quite how to go about allocating
claims made on sand. The beach is only two hundred feet wide, and therefore, in my opinion, not suitable for the common creekside claim size of 1,320 by 660 feet."
"The hell you say!" a miner shouted. "I want the same twenty acres that they get creekside!"
"That is obviously impractical," Cragie said firmly. "As of today I shall only honor claims in my office based on a space measured on each side by the length of a long-handled miner's shovel."
"Robber!" someone yelled, "That's only about twenty square feet per man!"
Cragie was adamant. "I am told, and on good authority, that many men are taking at least $100 per day out of an area that small. That seems quite fair compensation to me."
"What about those who already have creekside- sized claims on the beach?" a blond young miner, who seemed unable to grow a beard, asked.
"How long have you been here son?" Cragie inquired.
The boy hesitated and then stammered, "A week."
"And they call me a newcomer," Cragie sneered. "Son, let me tell you something. Some of these men dug their hands raw in the creek beds before hitting gold on the beach. They made legitimate claims on their early finds. I don't think it fair to make them now share with the latecomers!"
But there were old-timers, as well as latecomers, who didn't quite agree.
That night there yas a second meeting of several corporate owners, old and new, who had joined up to exploit the Nome gold fields. Many, secretly, were nothing more than hired voices for the real owners--senators, congressman, and the heads of
practically every Washington department that had influence to wield over what they had once termed 'Seward's Folly.' The 'icebox,' they were coming to understand, was loaded with riches. The Swedes and Irina were included in this second meeting.
"Sir," a rotund man exploded at It. Cragie, "I will be heard on this matter. I am Francis Merriweather, general manager of the Nome-Sinuk Mining Company. Your letting these miners plow up the beaches is contrary to my understanding of the claims recorded by my company in Washington. If you will explore your own claim maps, sir, you will see that we have twenty acre claims that extend from the tundra land behind the beach all the way to the water's edge."
"He is quite correct," the Fairchild Mining Corporation executive proclaimed, "as is the case with my company. We feel justified in stating that the miners working on the beaches are little more than trespassers and we demand that you, as the law, see that they are evicted!"
"Yes," several more protested. "They are stealing the gold right out of our pockets."
Cragie smiled to himself, knowing fully that it took a thief to know a thief. But he was also a man who followed the rule book. The law, in this case, having been written in Washington by men who didn't even know what the word tundra meant, was on the side of big business. Irina had fed the beast its first taste of meat and it now desired the whole carcass.
Quietly, Irina studied her map and felt pleased. The claims of the "Lucky Swedes" and her own ran right down through those of the Hummell-Mathews Mining Company. Their combined creekside claims
had brought out a million dollars that summer. The combined beach claims nearly doubled that amount.
Smiling innocently, she raised her hand to be heard. "Well, I'm only a woman," she said, "and don't know much about these things, but--" Her words trailed off.
Cragie nodded. He had come to learn that Irina was the hidden power in Nome. When she smiled the town cowered. Cragie cowered too, because he thought she represented an even bigger town--* Washington.
The raid was brutal, messy and uncalled for. Cragie's soldiers beat, kicked and whipped between 300 and 400 miners off the beach and into the cattle pens. It was typical of Cragie's sloppy methods, outside of the claims office, that he had nobody take an exact head count. The men were just left to roam amongst the penned cattle, glaring back at guards who had orders to shoot to kill any attempted escapee. The raid was also bizarre, in that many men who worked a claim together were not arrested together. Such was the case of Bryan and Hummell.
While the arrested men were putting together a $600 pool to hire, the services of a lawyer, Bryan was going directly to the source of the trouble.
"Changed your tune, Mathews?" Irina chuckled. "I never thought I would live to see the day when you learned to beg."
"I'm not begging for myself, baroness," Bryan snapped. "That old man doesn't deserve treatment like this, and you damn well know it!"
"Why is he any different from the others?" she asked indifferently.
"Don't play dumb with me, lady. No one else' thought to look for the gold in the sand. This place was almost ready to go bust before that find and you would have been the first one to go down."
Irina shrugged. "Someone would have found it sooner or later."
"That is beside the point," Bryan said darkly.
"But I gather," she said sarcastically, "that you are here to make a point and not just give yourself up for arrest."
Bryan grinned at her, sensing some hesitation in her manner. Suddenly he no longer feared her or the power she might have over him.
"The point I wish to make is that you've pulled a very stupid thing with backing Cragie on these arrests. No, hear me out. You've got several hundred men penned up like animals. There is no jail or even a building big enough to hold them all for long. Does Cragie have a solution to that problem? Hell, no! And do you have a solution to your problem?"
"I hardly see where I have one," she scoffed.
Bryan shook his head sympathetically. "You didn't look far enough down the road, baroness. Does the Nome-Sinuk Mining Company deposit with you? No. Do the Swedes? No. Do any of the mining companies? Hell no, and you damn well know it. It's those arrested men's gold that you have assayed, banked and filtered back through every one of your businesses. Now they're through giving you gold--they have nothing to assay and nothing to bank. You went with the wrong crowd this time and are just too damn vain to admit it."
Irina was furious. She saw him as the fool--for 
not fighting on his own behalf for the gold that was still there.
"You think you have me over a barrel, don't you? I never should have fired you on trumped-up charges. It would have given me so much more pleasure to get rid of you legally today."
Milla, who had been standing quietly in the doorway, gave a gasp.
"So, you did lie about him, mother!" she said. "You tried to ruin him--because of me!" 
"Don't be ridiculous!" Irina scoffed.
But Milla had already turned and fled in tears.
"That's the first card in your house to fall, baroness," Bryan said evenly. "The rest are going to start tumbling soon enough."
"Get out!" Irina screeched. "Get your damn money out of my bank! I don't need you or those damn scummy miners!"
"You don't mean it," Bryan said cheerfully, "but we'll give it a try."
Because mining camps were notoriously litigious places, Nome already had an adequate supply of lawyers. It didn't take Bryan long to find an attorney with background knowledge in corporate and banking regulations. Since it was Bryan's stated view that the only legal banking facility in Nome was refusing him service, he had the Miner's Cooperative Holding Company formed.
Lawrence Smith, acting as the newly appointed treasurer of the cooperative, placed on Irina's desk that afternoon three hundred eighty power-of-attorney and withdrawal forms. Within an hour her bank was poorer by $412,385, nearly eighty percent of her capital deposits.
The speed of the transactions left Irina in a state of disbelief. Bryan was more of a fighter and a man than she had given him credit for. She sent a demanding note to Wallace Cragie.
Cragie's eyes were round as moons in his ugly face. Her business problem was nothing in comparison to the jurisdictional mess he found himself in.
"It's a matter of survival, Wally," Irina said. "Mathews aims to ruin me--and I don't aim to lose everything I've fought so hard to obtain."
Cragie sympathized, warily.
"He's been a very busy man today, baroness. The counsel he hired for the miners just left me. He intends to demand individual trials by jury."
Irina frowned. "Why? I don't understand his reasoning."
"It is not so much his reasoning as John Hummell's. That old man is cagier than we realized. He's well aware that we have no court, no judge and no authority to impanel a jury. The nearest jurist is United States District Judge Charles S. Johnson in Sitka."
"Good!" she exclaimed, slapping the desk with the palm of her hand. "I can send the Maria for him at once! Let them have their trials by jury-- we'll win!" 
"Sorry, baroness," he said quietly. "It would be a wasted trip, I'm afraid."
Irina turned an amazed face toward the officer.
"And what does that mean?"
"It is unclear whether even Judge Johnson can try the miners. All we are holding them on is a trespassing offense. That's out of the realm of the federal courts."
"What--?" Irina got out. "What then?"
"We are under an act of 1884, baroness, that puts us squarely under the laws of the state of Oregon. The men are under their constitutional rights to demand a trial by jury and for the offense charged, the closest place they can get one is Portland. How do I transport over 400 men to Portland and how do I pay for that transportation? Would your bank be willing to advance such a sum until Washington approved a re-payment? If not, I'm afraid I'll have to let the men go free."
Irina blanched and then began to laugh.
"Wally, my bank is so depleted of money at this very moment that if Hiram the Tailor came through those doors right now to make a withdrawal it could close me up. In a word, I've borrowed from the Peters to pay the Pauls. In a sense, Bryan Mathews is correct. We have brought ourselves to a pretty pass."
"I'm sorry, baroness," Cragie murmured, "truly I am! But candidly speaking, isn't this boiling down to a vendetta between you and Mathews? Is there no way you two could patch up your differences and get us all out of what has become a very messy situation?"
"Never!" Irina spluttered. "I'll dump my claims on the open market---and I'll tip off The Nome-Sinuk Mining Company to buy them! Then let's see who is back on the top of the heap!"
Milla didn't know what she was going to say, although she had practiced a million little opening comments as she walked out to Hummell's tent. Bryan saw her coming and wondered what new little trick Irina had up her sleeve. He was prepared to
tell her to turn back, but she was now running toward him, her arms outstretched.
Ten feet from him she stopped and cast her eyes down, as if to keep herself from tripping on the uneven turf. It was an awkward gesture at best. She raised her head and looked straight at him.
"Hello, Bryan," she said softly.
He did not answer her. He stood there, refusing even to take her hand. Then he felt ashamed. He was angry at her but could not fault her, because she as well as he had been lied to. He took her hand and held it lightly.
"I had to come," she continued in a near whisper. "I had a million things to say, but now they all sound so stupid."
"Try one." He smiled encouragingly.
She took her hand away and turned toward the bay.
"You made me start to like this place," Milla said slowly, patiently, as though she had to make him see the whole picture, "and now I hate it again. I told mother that I wanted to go back to Sitka, but she only scoffed. I was a fool. I made a mistake letting her know how my feelings were running toward you. Now she will do everything within her power to keep us apart. She's determined now to marry me off before summer comes again."
"And you're weak enough to let her do that to you?"
"It's not a question of being weak," she sighed.
"Then what in thunderation is it?" he demanded hotly. "Go ahead and run away! You can see that I'm not afraid of her anymore."
"I'm not afraid of her," she insisted, "but she is still my mother. I do have to respect her wishes."
"Don't you mean her money?" he said rudely. "You're going to go through the rest of your days miserable with a man you don't want just because you're afraid she will cut you off without a dime. If you want to be honest with yourself, admit it!"
"That goes for you too," she said simply. "Would you still want me if I ran away from her and her money?"
Bryan scowled down at her.
"That's a damn fool question!" he exploded. "I don't need her damn dirty money! I'm getting mine clean, right out of the ground!"
Milla shook her head sadly. "That doesn't really answer my question," she said. Suddenly, stretching to her tiptoes, she kissed him on the mouth, lingeringly, with so much unspoken desire that Bryan could feel her heat penetrate his mackinaw. When she drew away her face was calm, her eyes moist.
"Don't answer it, Bryan," she whispered. "I don't want to know right now if you love me or not. But I have one more thing to say to show my love for you. Mother wanted me to sign over my claims to her so she could sell them with her own. I refused, even though I know she's got herself in a horrible financial mess at the bank. You're out to ruin each other and it's tearing me up inside because I can't take one side or the other. But I guess I have taken a side, haven't I? I'm telling you this. I'm giving you more ammunition to use against her. Oh, damn, I'm beginning to hate you both! Bryan, please I beg of you, do something!"
She spun and fled away in tears.
Bryan stood looking after her in mute misery. If he was honest with himself he couldn't truthfully say that he would want Milla if she ran away. Not
that he needed her for Irina's money. It was her courage he felt he needed; he wished she'd shown more of it, he wished she'd just tell her mother to go to hell. But then, he had to admit that it took quite a bit of courage on Milla's part to stand up to Irina as much as she did. He watched her go, his heart lighting as he saw the sterling side of her. He fully suspected now that Irina would sell her claims to someone who would try and force him out. Well, he had to do something about that now. But how, just as importantly, could he stop the big mining companies from swallowing up all the miners--not just himself but all the independents, those who had good claims and those who were still fighting for them? It seemed to Bryan that he and the rest of them were all in the same boat. He thought about it, and then he began to grin. The solution, if everyone would just cooperate, was really very simple. . . .
Irina was furious. With a muffled "damn!" she rose from her desk and faced the unlikely trio entering her office.
"And what is this all about?" she demanded.
"It's a way out of this whole mess," Cragie answered sternly, "and I'm expecting you to go along with it."
Irina sat down, her face highly suspicious. She could understand Bryan's and Cragie's presence, but she could not fathom why Milla was with them.
"Here is a deposit slip," Bryan said stiffly, "on a new account I have just opened with your bank."
Irina glanced at the slip, her eyes widening. It was for $100,000.
"It was your daughter's suggestion," Bryan
continued coolly. "The only way she would sell me her claim was if I deposited the money in your bank under her name."
"Her name?" Irina echoed blankly. She turned to Milla. "Why sell to him?"
Milla ignored the note of reproach in her mother's voice.
"He is willing to buy your claims too, mother."
Irina stared at Milla as though she had just lost her mind.
"Never," she said.
"I think you had best listen," Cragie said patiently. "Mathews has offered us a marvelous solution. I have a meeting with the mine company owners in less than an hour. I'm going to advise them that if they want all these miners prosecuted, then all of those companies are going to be required to put up a bond to defray the costs of food, lodging, confinement and transportation to Portland until the cases are disposed of. As a claim owner, how would that strike you?"
"I told you--utterly preposterous!" she gasped.
Cragie hid a smile behind his hand.
"So then, Mathews' offer to relieve you of claim ownership should appeal to you. Besides, according to my records, he's offering you more than what your claims have produced to date."
Irina could not deny that fact. Nor could she deny the fact that the sale and Milla's deposit would more than keep the bank operational. Still, it meant total surrender to Bryan Mathews.
"It seems," she said slowly, "that I am the one being asked to give up everything and get nothing in return."
"For the moment, yes," Bryan agreed. "But I'm
sure that once the miners learn of the part you played to secure their release--and they will be released, I assure you--they will have no further use for their own holding company."
"This isn't a trick?" Irina said warily. "You mean it?"
"We can start with the Mathews-Hummell account, what little will be left after paying you for the claim. We'll put it back in your bank. Is that proof enough?"
"Yes," Irina said firmly. "All right. I'll get the claim documents out of the safe."
But even as she marched regally away, the gears of her mind were whirling. She was looking to the future, seeing new opportunities for herself. In that future, she would be better off siding with the miners as opposed to the company owners. The claims she'd sold Bryan would give him full legal right to much of the beach. Whereas she anticipated the other companies would have to keep on fighting the. beachcombers for years, Bryan and John Hummell wouldn't have to; they were going to be the big winners. She would never allow him to have Milla, but she was already beginning to make other plans for Bryan Mathews and his money.
Beginning on the thirteenth of August, 1899, Nome took on the semblance of a steadily erupting volcano. The mine owners, contrary to Cragie's expectations, refused to put up even a dime for a bond. The prisoners were consequently set free. Irina started offering free drinks at her saloon to any miner who could produce a deposit slip from her bank. The saloon stayed packed for days. *
Lawrence Smith didn't resent having to fold up The Miner's Cooperative Holding Company; he would be more than busy as the new legal counsel for all of Irina's far-flung enterprises and would become a wealthy man in a very legitimate way--an oddity in Nome, to say the least.
The Washington-controlled mine companies didn't know what the word legitimate meant. To every arriving ship they sent agents, their pockets stuffed with forged claim papers. For a $10 fee and a 25% return to the mine company, the newcomers were offered "workable" claims--workable, that is, if the purchaser was not one of a hundred other men who had bought the same claim and was strong enough to fight off the rightful claimant.
Those who didn't have the $10 fee jumped claims anyway. Mob law ruled. The sands of Nome ululated with the sounds of dissent. All sorts of sharks were making a fortune.
No one, apparently, foresaw the danger that lay ahead. The vast majority had arrived during the summer and had no notion of what a Nome winter would be like.
During the summer and early fall eight hundred tons of supplies had been freighted up from Sitak and San Francisco. But the influx of new people over the trails and by ship rendered this insufficient. All without enough food on hand to last them till spring were urged to flee for their lives. Several hundred did, but most thought the warning was a ruse to keep them from the gold and stayed.
"Damn fools," Hummel carped, showing Bryan the snug little log cabin he had just built for the winter months. "The sand is already getting bone
hard and the bay will be frozen shut in another month. I'm most content to rest my weary bones until spring. What about you, lad?"
Bryan mused. They had been among the more fortunate, because they had been able to hire guards to protect their beach acreage and two creekside claims. But each ounce of gold taken from the sand had increased Bryan's appetite for more.
"I've been toying with another idea, but I would have to go back to Sitka to get it built. The summer only melts the sand down to the permafrost. If we could get ourselves a steam generator, with hoses and nozzles attached, we could thaw the frozen sand and go as deep for gold as we wanted to."
Hummel nodded his approval. He figured there were more layers of gold under the sand than he had years left to work the claim. Without telling Bryan, he had already decided that one more summer of gold digging was about all he wanted from Alaska. He would then relax and enjoy the wealth he would never be able to fully spend. But they were now partners and he wanted Bryan's life to be rich and bountiful.
"When do you leave?" the old man asked.
"By November," Bryan answered.
Hummell looked puzzled.
"Too late, son. You'll have missed the last boat out."
"I intend to," Bryan said thoughtfully. "Got me an idea of another way to go. Not many miners made friends with the Indians coming in here. I think I was a little different, speaking their tongue and all. Now I've got me this idea of a way both to get me to Sitka and to set up a route for bringing supplies here during the winter. Only, I'm not
well enough fixed to buy that many dog sleds or hire that many drivers. That's where Irina will
Irina, Bryan found, was as excited over the overland travel project as he was.
"I dread next summer more than I do this winter," she told him. "We'll have, throngs in from the United States by then and we'll need every possible supply route open to us."
Milla saw his intended departure as a means he had for escaping from her. The closer Irina and Bryan grew in business, the farther she was being shoved into the background. She hated Nome now, but she held her silence until the first week of November.
"Please, Bryan," she begged, "take me out of this place! I can't stand it here! I want to go home to Sitka."
"All right," Bryan said indulgently. "Be ready to leave at dawn."
He was only joking; Irina, he knew, would never let Milla go. But when he returned to his tent, he found a surprise in store for him. Irina was there, inspecting the four dog sleds and teams he had purchased.
"Did she convince you?" she asked gaily.
"Of what?" Bryan demanded.
"To take her along, of course!"
"Damn!" Bryan said fiercely. "Do you have ears all over this town?"
Irina grinned wickedly.
"Not really. Actually, I've been putting the idea into her head of late. She is still a child, Bryan, and she should visit Sitka while she can--it has
much to offer her that Nome doesn't. Besides, I've come to see you in quite a different light. You wouldn't touch her. You are much too much man for her."
Bryan raised his eyebrows at her.
"I mean that," Irina cooed. "I have an idea where your hands might be put to better service when you return."
Bryan, staring at her, began to tingle all over. He couldn't help himself. He detested Irina with a passion, but there was something about the woman that got to him sexually, something he couldn't put his finger on. Then he saw the light. She was about the most fascinating, highest-priced whore he was ever likely to meet in his life.
Half an hour before dawn, the bear with the strange white mark on its forehead was already close to exhaustion. It had been two hours since it had heard the first dog howl and seen the four sled teams racing across the tundra. Thereafter, the bear had stalked the dogs in deadly silence. Twice it had come near them. Twice the sled drivers had had to calm them.
It was the inexperienced drivers that Bryan wished were calmer rather than the dogs. They were in avalanche territory and a single rifle shot aimed at the bear could prove more disastrous than the beast's attack.
Bryan's luck, on the trip, had been miserable. Ten minutes after leaving Nome, he knew that the drivers he had hired were going to give him plenty of trouble. They were nothing but down-and-out prospectors, although they had claimed otherwise,
just to get out of Nome. They knew nothing about dogs or sleds. He just prayed that he would at least make it to Umalti's village, where he could buy the men off and hire Eskimos. They were a bad lot.
There was a fourth troublemaker that he could not rid himself of. Every aspect of Milla's spoiled upbringing seemed to surface all at once. She carped, she scolded, she pouted, she ranted, she raved until the three drivers were about ready to draw lots for the opportunity of slitting her throat during one of the nightly stops. Had Bryan known their thoughts he might have been tempted to throw his chip into the hat and pray for a lucky draw. He began to sympathize with Irina for having to put up with such a shrew for so many years.
"Wolf pack!" a driver called, pointing.
"Keep 'em moving!" Bryan commanded.
Milla turned in the sled and glared up at him. "The bear is almost done for," she shouted. "Why can't we shoot it and have fresh meat for supper?"
For the moment he ignored her. The wolf pack alarmed him. He had been watching and counting. The bear had pounded through the snowy woods, keeping abreast of the train, its lungs at the bursting point and every muscle quivering with strain. Around it in a tightening circle no less than thirty large timber wolves kept pace. They'd quit darting at the bear, as if they knew it was nearly finished. They were deliberately running it into the ground. When it fell, they would be on it in a snarling fury. But it would not be dinner enough for so many wolves. Bryan's dogs would be looked upon as, the main course--and human meat might satisfy them as a tasty dessert.
Bryan held up his hand for a halt. He had to figure out how to rid them of both bear and wolves without firing a dangerous shot. The wind was starting to keen softly out of the north, driving sandy snow crystal into his face.
"Start a fire," he commanded. "Use some of the longer pieces of wood for torches."
"What for?" one of the-drivers demanded.
Bryan sighed. "If we carry torches towards the wolves, we might frighten them off."
Milla sat up querulously pushing her fur laprobes aside. "And what of the bear?"
"I don't think he'll take off with the wolves. I think he'll actually come towards the torches out of curiosity. Then maybe we can get him with knives. At least, we can try."
As though the bear had heard him and wished to please him, it reacted almost as precisely as Bryan had hoped. The wolves, frightened by the light and heat of four torches looming slowly toward them, yipped and balked. The wind was growing higher; the men, fighting to keep the torches alight, brought them to within twenty feet of the pack, at which point the wolves turned and ran off a short distance. There, curiously, they stopped. Meanwhile, the bear, which had not moved, merely eyed the approaching torches with cautious suspicion.
And then an amazing thing happened, throwing Bryan momentarily into total bewilderment. One of the drivers, growing daring, drew a knife from his waist band and raced forward for the kill. The bear reared onto his hind quarters, miraculously shedding his fur at the same time. From the fur- lined bearskin leaped a near-nude Tlingit Indian.
"God, no! Ambush!" Bryan cried, but he was too late.
The Indian's leap was magnificent. His powerful legs came down over the knife-wielding driver's shoulders, driving him to the ground as if he'd been pole-axed. Crouched precariously on the man's chest, his slavering mouth agape, the Indian closed his strong fingers and throttled his would-be killer's throat.
Almost simultaneously, the wolves raced back, except that they were no longer wolves but, devoid of their costumers, fierce, short-legged Tlingit warriors. Unknown man things had come to their desolate land. Out of a Stone Age culture, they had donned animal skins and done what they believed best to drive them away.
It was too late for Bryan and the two remaining drivers to pull out their revolvers. One driver leaped for an onrushing Indian's throat. The Indian caught him in mid-air and flung him clear over his shoulder. He struck the side of an outcropping and the impact broke his back. The other driver sprang for a second Indian, missed, slipped to his knees in the snow and was promptly disposed of with his own snatched knife while in that dog-like position.
Bryan had been racing back to the sleds to protect the screaming Milla. But, suddenly, she and all else in his view simply vanished. A stinging, blinding whiteness came up everywhere. From all around him, Bryan heard the screeching whistle of the incredible arctic wind known as the williwaw, coming closer and closer, its force having only been hinted at previously. The whistling sound was punctuated by the screams of the Indians.
"Williwaw!" one cried out in anguish. "The gods are angry at us--what have we done?"
The tornado-like winds began whipping the powdery snow base with hundred-mile-an-hour velocity. The temperature abruptly fell ten degrees. The Indians, lost to Bryan's view, set up a howling plea for mercy, and then their wails suddenly ceased as the gale tore into their midst and ripped them asunder.
Meanwhile, Bryan, outside the wind's vortex, fought his way from dog team to dog team, searching vainly for Milla. He could see nothing but whiteness in the all-enveloping snowstorm the williwaw had brought in its wake; could feel only the wood of the sleds. There were no bodies, either animal or human. His mind nearly froze with the horror of it. Like so many before them, the northland had apparently closed over them forever. And soon it would close over him.
Bryan walked away. On and on he plowed, fighting desperately for his own survival now, fully believing Milla had gone to her grave. The storm kept up. He bent into it, wedging away huge masses of driving snow with his arms. How far he walked he did not know. Perhaps it was a mile, perhaps only fifty yards, it was impossible to tell. But it was at least an hour that he walked. Hysteria began to overtake him, the feeling that there was nothing but pelting snow in an endless universe of snow. And with the panic, somewhere underneath it, gradually came a snarling rage, a kind of insane lust to take the whole with him to his own certain icy doom.
Thus, when Bryan saw the moose, he was a shattered man, hardly responsible for his actions. The
moose loomed large in the snow's opening, its great, soulful eyes reflecting a panic no less than his. But Bryan thought it was another Tlingit Indian. With a savage growl, he flung himself forward and plunged his knife again and again into its bellowing throat muscles. Only when the huge, thrashing animal began to collapse onto its front haunches did he realize the truth. It was a real moose, and suddenly his bloodlust slaked by his knife jabs, he did not want to kill it. But he had joined battle and had to go on with it, or die himself. Savagely, he began to hack at the moose's hide to still it, lest it rear up and gouge him with its mighty antlers.
Later he could not tell for how long, he kept plunging his knife into its still form. The moose, a forlorn animal that had left its herd, was long since dead. Bryan grew giddy, uncaring. He was alive, or thought he was alive, and what else mattered?
"What now?" a scornful voice demanded at his shoulder.
Bryan looked up blankly through the driving snow. He thought he should know the girl peering down at him, but didn't quite. She was clothed head to foot in whiteness and her eyes were burning. She was to him the wrath of God.
"Give it to me!" Milla demanded, and Bryan handed her the knife without question. Then, recognizing her, he said feebly, "Milla . . . you . . . what are you going to do?"
Milla hesitated a second. The hesitation was not caused by any doubt as to what she must do. She had not lost all her wits. All around them was the same shelterless cold in which she had nearly perished. But she didn't know how to go about doing
it. She sighted carefully. Then she plunged the knife deep into the moose's throat and began drawing it jaggedly back down to the belly and down to the entrails. Her stomach started churning as the entrails spilled out. Bryan hadn't moved an inch. Milla turned to him.
"Bryan!" The sharpness of her voice made him start. "Help me!"
Bryan turned slowly and stared at the slitted moose.
Milla said in exasperation, "I need help in gutting him!" Bryan continued to stare. "Bryan!" Her anger caught Bryan and held him. He got up and began pulling out the rest of the animal's entrails. He moved numbly, as if only his hands were alive, with next to no awareness of what he was doing. Milla watched him for a second, then shrugged, fought her way back to the one dog sled she'd managed to push from the others, and returned with the lap robes. 
"We have to get inside the carcass," she shouted.
Bryan stared at her as if she had gone crazy. Waves of dizziness began to sweep over him. He swallowed to prevent himself from being sick.
"Do it!" The words bit into his consciousness as if from a great distance. "It's the only way we have to keep from freezing! Finish cleaning it out!"
Slowly, Bryan comprehended. He nodded, then worked both knife and hands until the job was done.
Though the animal had been enormous, Bryan had to hunch up to make room for Milla. The stench was horrible. He knew if he opened his mouth he would be sick.
Milla snuggled in close to him, tucking the
lap robe about her and bringing the two flaps of hide nearly closed. Around them the force of the blizzard increased as the williwaw raged at over one hundred and twenty miles an hour. It would have been futile to try moving in it. Now they both knew that. Peeking through the carcass slit, they could see the gale pick up the dog sled repeatedly and slam it down like a matchbox. The dogs had already burrowed into the snow and lay motionless, protected by their natural fur and fat.
They waited and waited. For a long while, the wind continued to rock their makeshift shelter, while the temperature dropped and dropped to seventy below zero. Then the rocking motion diminished, as if the wind had gone down a bit and the carcass's spilled blood had frozen, cementing the hide to the ground. They did not crawl outside to look. Around them they could see a flat unbroken sheet of snow. The tracks they themselves had made were now completely obliterated. Still, they had no immediate worry, no need to move. They lay quiet and warm and unthinking.
Within the hour the carcass itself began to freeze solid. For the first time Milla began to feel the heavy, insidious cold sliding down her back. She drew her Cossack hat down further as her ears began to pain her alarmingly. She had spent twenty winters in Alaska; she knew the signs of frost bite.
"I'm freezing!" she whispered through chattering teeth.
Bryan put an arm around her shoulder and drew her closer against him. He did it to give them both added warmth only but became suddenly aware that his hand was lying on her right breast. She made a little sound, a whimper from the cold, or
what, he did not know. He knew only that he was flushing, quivering with desire for her as he felt, even through her wool clothing, her breast's firm roundness. Then his quivering abated somewhat. He knew it was utterly stupid to be thinking of sex at a time like this. He started to remove his hand but again Milla whimpered, so he left it there, wonderingly. But Milla didn't move. She was almost asleep, her senses lulled towards a kind of peace and comfort by the cold, and her dim awareness of a warming hand. Bryan looked down at her closed eyes, then shook her roughly by the shoulder.
"Don's sleep!" he said fiercely. "You may never wake up!"
Milla's eyelids fluttered open, briefly. "Please," she begged, "I'm suddenly so tired."
"Roll around toward me," Bryan commanded. "We've got to keep talking and keep awake."
She moaned and struggled to do as he asked. The confines of the carcass gave her little room to maneuver, but at last she faced him. Her cheeks were beginning to pale, her eyes to glaze. Bryan took off his gloves and her mittens, then rubbed her hands vigorously until a little life began to return to her expression. He was pressed against her, chest to chest, and could hardly move while doing this.
"That was some little feat you pulled off," he said proudly, starting to knead her shoulders now. "Moving into a moose--where did you ever hear of a stunt like that?"
"From my mother, about her father." Milla chattered frozenly. "He did it--'nother time, 'nother blizzard. . . ."
"Bully for granddad!" Bryan said cheerfully. He
began to work on her arms through her coat. "He must have been quite a man."
Milla almost giggled. "Some say all he did was live in meece and rob and steal from the Indians. Mooses," she corrected herself. "Bryan, rub higher --my neck--oh, it feels so good."
Bryan chuckled. Daringly he brought his hands up to massage her neck while letting his forearm course lightly over her breasts. "They'll probably say the same of us some day."
"They say it already of mother, don't they? Bryan; don't do that, not there. You shouldn't. . . ."
Bryan swore to himself. "Milla, we've got to keep our blood circulating."
"Well, hardly there!"
"Everywhere," he went on determinedly. "Open your coat and I'll open mine. We don't have room to move around much, but we can at least keep rubbing each other."
"Well," she stammered, "don't get any crazy ideas."
Bryan looked at her deep, black hair curling out from under the Cossack hat, at her red lips, her green, disarmingly innocent eyes--looked at her and a glint came into his own eyes. Then he saw the same glint appear in hers, belying her admonition that he stop. He jutted his head forward until their lips met. It was not a soft, tender kiss he gave her. Hands clasped around her back, it was a hard, meaningful kiss, devouring in its intensity.
For a moment he was overcome by his own desire, which was like a drowning sensation, and he pulled back from the embrace.
"Oh, Milla!" he whispered.
Milla smiled brightly at him. There was a taunting
sarcasm in her voice as she said, "I never thought you would get the nerve to do that, Bryan. Did it make your blood flow and warm you up?"
Bryan blushed. "Yes, it did," he said. "But more. I--" He stopped. What he didn't want to tell her was that he now had a very hard erection painful in its urgency but that he couldn't do anything to relieve it because she wouldn't let him. She was wrecking him, inviting him close, then making use of his own words to push him away. He grew angry. Everything that she was--from a spoiled, despicable brat to a young girl eager for life to a smart, resourceful woman to a dominating shrew--flashed through his mind in an instant.
"God damn it, Milla," he muttered. "You're teasing my cock off. Do you want to screw in this moose or not?"
"Bryan!" She was shocked. And then--she giggled. "Let's . . . ." she said. Her face grew sober. "But Bryan, remember--I never have, anywhere."
Bryan groaned, this time at her affected, eye-batting show of innocence. But the renewed and powerful desire that rose in him blinded him almost immediately to everything but the closeness of her body. Eagerly, she leaned forward to kiss him. The movement gave Bryan an opportunity to run his hand down to his groin. He sighed as they embraced again and the sound made Milla shudder with delight. She had prayed and dreamed of this moment for so long that it now seemed dreamlike. His lips were gentle, yet firm. His tongue sent tremors of delight up and down her spine. She got her hands up so that she could twine them into his hair and pull their faces closer together. She could go on kissing him like this forever.
"Forever . . . forever . . ." She kept murmuring the word aloud between kisses, between tastes of his mouth from every angle. Then, at a point when Bryan was responding avidly, a languid look came into her eyes and she drew away.. "I'm going to make sure that I am the only woman who ever gets to kiss you like this, my darling."
"What!" Bryan gasped. 
Milla laughed happily. "Oh, you wonderful man . . . why do you think I made this trip? Mother can't stop us from being married in Sitka."
"Oh, Milla, I--" Bryan groaned. A stricken look came into his face as a sense of despair intruded on his desire, almost deflating it. To take up with Milla would just about doom his new business relationship with Irina; he didn't want to risk that now. Yet he wanted Milla desperately at this moment; never had the fires of his lust been so deftly stoked.
Milla read his expression almost perfectly.
"You just leave mother to me," she soothed him. "I'll just make her see that you are the only man for me."
For the moment Bryan remained abject.
"If we live through this to see her to tell her," he muttered.
"We'll live," she said gaily, "because I am too happy now to die. I just refuse to die. Now kiss me again, as though you were already my husband."
"But I haven't said I would marry you," Bryan insisted.
"You didn't have to put it into words, my darling. Your lips, your eyes, your actions--they all speak for you. I know you love me."
"You do?" Despite the desire ablaze in his loins, Bryan began to grin, whimsically, at the helplessly false position she was putting him in. Then, growing crafty, he told a lie.
"Do you know how my mother and father got married?" he asked. "There was no preacher man around so they just said they loved each other and started making babies,"
"You say the most shocking things!" Milla declared, giggling.
"I'm just being honest. Seems we're in the same boat as my folks were."
"Perhaps, but that's hardly my way of doing things. I plan on being married in St. Michael's Cathedral."
"You can have that too," Bryan whispered fiercely, his pulses racing, feeling he had set a perfect trap. "We can have it both ways, first here, then there. You can say the marriage Vow right now."
"I--I--" But this was exactly what she wanted. She wanted to be his wife. She wanted to spite Irina. It was only that other part of marriage that kept the words in her throat, the part that genuinely frightened her, the part that Irina always said was so pleasing for the man but so horrible for the woman. She gulped. She would just have to chance it. "You--you know that I love you!"
Bryan laughed huskily. It wasn't a marriage vow, but it served the purpose even better. He pulled her close and began kissing her hungrily again.
Now that the moment had finally arrived, Milla went rigid with fear. He had snaked his penis out of his pants. Pressed against her pelvis it felt as stiff, as horrible, as ugly as Irina had said it would
be. Her mind began to reel. Frantically she searched for an escape before he went further. She pulled away from his kiss to speak.
"No," she whimpered, "you haven't said your words yet."
Bryan shook his head grimly. It was action he wanted now, not further words. He brought her head back. His mouth clung to hers fiercely, while his hands roamed her body, kneading and caressing it to build her fires to match his own.
Milla struggled in vain. Slowly, inexorably, her woolen skirt was inched up until it was bunched about her waist. Underclothing was torn off, hers and his, and she felt the heat of his fully unleashed passion even before he moved over her.
Foolishly she braced herself, which promised to make the pain more intense than it had to be.
"Relax, Milla," Bryan mumbled. "Just relax!"
It might have helped if Bryan himself had been more experienced. As it was, she was too dry and tight and he was too large, and he knew of no way to ease matters or to let them become eased of their own accord. He saw her mouth freeze and her eyes roll but did not understand it was more pain than pleasure she was feeling. In pain himself, he nevertheless gritted his teeth and thrust his way into her.
"Ow!" Milla said sharply. Bryan stopped briefly. "No, no, it's all right now. Go on," she said. But it wasn't all right, quite. Bryan began to thrust and pump before Milla, though her own passion rose to meet his, was thoroughly lubricated.
Then, before she knew it, Bryan climaxed. She went limp under him. He let his immense bulk relax naturally down upon her. For a long time they lay locked together but unmoving. Milla did not quite
know what she felt; it had not been horrible, it had not been ugly, it had been . . . well, merely disappointing.
Then Bryan began to swell anew and slowly moved again. Milla gave a gasp. She was not prepared for the unutterably intense bodily rapture that now began flowing through her loins. Her mind reeled as she tried to separate the exquisite mingling of pain and ecstasy. She could not separate them for they were inseparable, but she fought her battle nevertheless, being so thoroughly conditioned to look for and emphasize the distastefulness of sex. But then, almost abruptly, the battle was lost, the feeling, whatever it was, kept floating her higher and higher, until she felt as though she were sitting outside her body and watching this gorgeous experience take place.
Her orgasm seemed to start in her booted toes. It quivered through her calves and thighs, rocked her pelvis with violent jerks, heaved her breasts and then erupted through her lips as a scream of exaltation.
"Oh Bryan!" she cried in joy. "You did it! You did it!"
Bryan looked down at her. He was spent, having climaxed violently at the same moment she did, but his heart was still pounding as hard as it had been throughout their second bout of lovemaking. Gazing at her flushed, beautiful face, searching her emerald- green eyes now gone tender, he said, with a grin, "You know what? I think you helped."
Milla didn't answer, except by smiling lazily, in warm satisfaction.
Bryan felt aglow. Then something seemed to bite at his innards. It was a twinge of guilt at having
lied to her about their future together. He wasn't going to marry her, that he knew, at St. Michael's Cathedral or anywhere else. He jerked his head upwards, as if towards heaven. "Oh, God," he muttered, "Now what am I going to do?"
Milla giggled in the darkness below him. "You're going to get us out of this moose, that's what," she sad, "It smells rank in here."
Oomua sat up and began to shake her sleeping husband vigorously.
"Woman!" Umalti cried. "Have you gone crazy in the head?"
Oomua's eyes were glazed, her mind and body still practically asleep. "White god," she said dully, "who sit down and walk fast by spinning feet . . . there!" She pointed northwest.
Umalti shivered. He was quite used to his wife's nighttime visions being all too correct.
"What else do you see?" he gently whispered.
Her eyes closed. "Bear . . * wolves . . . dogs ... a moose."
"Is that all?"
She shook her head. "He live ... we prosper."
Umalti studied the fire to determine the number of hours he had been sleeping. The williwaw had passed and the air was deathly still. He rose, although it was still two hours before his normal time to awaken. He looked back at his wife. She had curled back into a sleeping ball, pulling one of the children close. 
Umalti did not like to accept her dream words all of the time, for he was a chief and should listen to his own wisdom more. But throughout that summer he had thought of the man more and
more. As the old women had predicted, the trail 'had been crowded with this new breed of man. They were brutal and arrogant., They took food, lodging and the women as though all was owed to them. It was changing his tribe. The young women were chasing off after the miners--becoming their squaws and cooks and not returning home. Several of the young bucks had even followed along in search of their gold. Most had returned disappointed with the first snowfall. The white men had not allowed them to search, but had put them to work at menial tasks with little or no pay.
But of the hundreds of miners who had passed through his village, Oomua had branded only one as a "white god." Umalti had come to believe that he was such. He was the only one who had shown respect to Umalti, his home and his wife. He had to be a god.
Umalti stepped from his home and stared. His dogs, which were normally lazy and had to be coaxed into their harness, were alert and sitting expectantly in front of his sled.
A cold shiver ran up his spine. He wished that the old woman was awake for counsel, but he knew he had to work this out in his own mind.
Umalti's universe was carefully divided into those forces that are harmful to man and those that are beneficial to him. Chief among the harmful was Giyeg. He was the whirlwind, the williwaw, and he had visited the night before. The white ground swept clean of debris was evidence of his visit. On the other hand, Giyeg was the bringer of death, but Umalti had witnessed no death. Therefore, he concluded, Raven-Man must also be present. 
Raven-Man was the most important figure in the
Ingalik Eskimo pantheon. Not only did he create mankind; he created all life and afterlife. He therefore had created all of the other spirits and gods of the pantheon.
Oomua's words echoed in Umalti's brain. He smiled. 'He lives ... we prosper,' Oomua had said. It was a clear sign from Raven-Man. A test. Raven-Man was always sending his god-son, Camp Robber, to earth and putting him in great peril. If any man of the Ingalik belief, which encompassed most every Indian tribe from Siberia to Canada, accepted the challenge and saved Camp Robber from his peril, then Raven-Man would see that he prospered until the day came for him to enter the long tunnel and go to the place where the stone pillar holds up the sky.
Umalti pondered this thought for a long time. In his life he had known other men who thought Raven-Man had called them forth for this test. They had not returned and Umalti shuddered at their fate. Yet if he refused this challenge and it turned out to be a true one, he might, after he went through the long tunnel, have to go through two or three lifetimes as an inanimate object. Umalti shrugged. He had little choice. He believed firmly that Oomua's "white god" was Camp Robber. He would search for him and attempt to rescue him from whatever peril Raven-Man had placed him in.
It was one of those days when the air was so clear and bright you could almost see it. The sky was a polished blue bowl resting on the glacial mountains.
Milla awoke to the insistent thrust of a bony knee in the small of her back. Stiff and cold she twisted away to find Bryan wound awkwardly into a ball, but he slept peacefully and his breathing was deep and regular.
At first she could not remember what had happened; but as the cold numbness left her brain it came back to her and she smiled. It had been a wedding night that would become a legend for her children and grandchildren. She lay for a moment listening. The horrible howl of the wind was gone. Her heart sang with thanksgiving for that blessing.
The confined quarters were airless. She tried to push the lap robe away but it was like a solid
sheet of stone. She tried to reach around it and' push up the carcass flap. The two sections of hide were frozen solidly together and would not budge.
For the moment she felt no fright. She gently nudged Bryan and said tentatively, "Bryan, we have a problem."
Bryan woke up and rubbed his eyes. "What's up?"
"I can't get the flap open."
He made a sound that was half-snort and half- grunt and reached across her body. He pushed at the covering and then stared at it in astonishment.
He scowled. "How in the hell did your grandfather get out?"
"I don't know."
He made a fist and pounded at the surface. It produced a sound that made them feel like they were on the inside of a drum.
"What a mess," Bryan said. "If you expected me to get us out of here, why the hell didn't you let me sleep on the outside? I can't even get to the damn thing with you in the way."
"I didn't think about something like this," she said weakly.
"You just didn't think," he growled, trying to get his knife out of its holster.
"You don't have to be so nasty about it."
He ignored her, trying to reach over her body and slash at the fur and bone and frozen meat.
"It's no good," he fumed. "We're going to die in here."
Abashed, Milla took the knife from him. She could not figure out why he was behaving in this hostile manner. She wondered if he felt guilty and resentful about what they'd done the night before;
God knows, she did--just a little. But this was not the time to worry about that. She worked and worked, but the knife would only make scratches on the pelt, like a rock being scraped down a glass pane.
She swallowed the lump in her throat and tried to make her voice sound normal. "I'm sorry, Bryan."
He raised his head. "Shut up!"
Milla caught her breath. Tears welled into her eyes. Then she heard what he had heard. Someone was working on the outside of the carcass to free them.
"Thank God!" she whispered.
"Not so fast," Bryan snapped at her. "That could be a wolf out there."
Milla drew her lips back tautly against her teeth. He didn't have to say more. One dreadful winter she had seen a man attacked and shredded to ribbons by wolves right on the street of Sitka. It had happened so quickly that no one had time to go to the man's aid.
Now came the fear. Unmerciful and blinding. They had laughed death in the face only to have it taunt them in a new form.
From outside there came a low, ominous rumbling. They were wolves! More of the pack had arrived and a fight over the carcass was on. Fangs were sunk into the frozen moose and slivers of fur and flesh gnawed away. What the knife had been unable to penetrate, the fangs were tearing into successfully. The growling increased. 
A slit was suddenly opened in the carcass flap. They had view enough to freeze their blood. At least twenty gray forms with flashing teeth were attacking the carcass and each other. Within seconds
they would have the belly exposed as well as the real prize that they sought.
Bryan had a thought he might better have kept to himself. "They smell us now."
Milla felt her heartbeat quickening and the roof of her mouth went dry. Inch by agonizing inch their protective wall was being devoured. Her heart began thundering so loud now that she was afraid for a second that the wolves could hear it. Her fingers closed around the shaft of the knife she still held. She drew the blade up inch by inch until she had it poised and ready. Then a look of contempt crossed Bryan's face.
"Give me that damn thing! You don't have the strength or the guts to fight them off."
Milla's knuckles whitened around the handle of the knife. The taunting voice rang in her ears. For a moment she was tempted to turn the knife in his direction. For a second they lay frozen in their own glares.
It was almost as though the wolves sensed the battle within. They became abruptly quiet. The pack seemed to freeze. Then its gray leader lifted its shaggy head and emitted a long, dreadful, blood- chilling howl.
From the distance came the yipping barks of more wolves, a different pack racing up to challenge the first pack for feeding-ground rights. Then more barks. Barks now seemed to be coming from all directions. It sounded as though every wolf in Alaska was arriving for the feast.
Bryan wet his lips in nervous anticipation. "This could be our chance. As soon as they start fighting among themselves, kick out the rest of that flap.
I can get to the sled, then I'll at least have a rifle to fight them with."
Milla didn't wait. As soon as the gray leader moved off a few feet, she kicked out the flap and rolled free.
She rose from the ground to a fantastic sight. The snow had become a battlefield full of animals. But not all were wolves. The shaggy beasts were being cut out of their packs one by one and set upon by smaller but much fiercer sled dogs. Here and there a snarling ball of dog fur would burst up out of the snow and join the attack.
Bryan clawed his way from the hide and looked about quietly. He thought he'd gone crazy. He knew he had four dogs, but here were at least a dozen. As he watched, they continued their snarling attack on the wolves until all had been either killed or driven away.
In the silence that followed, somebody grunted. Bryan spun around looking for the author of the sound. Umalti arose from behind a battered sled. Bryan gaped in amazement.
"Umalti," he said huskily, "you--you've saved us!"
Slowly the Indian shook his head.
"No," he said, "Raven-Man guided the path. I but led my dogs on it."
Bryan's sigh was gusty with relief and admiration.
"They're vicious, those dogs!"
Umalti shook his head again. "Only when they are commanded to protect their master."
Milla stood staring from man to man. She did not know the argot they were speaking. She had
not known Bryan could speak any Eskimo language. She was intensely curious about what they were saying.
"But what of my dogs?" Bryan demanded. 
Umalti chuckled. "Gone. They are like Indians who fill their bellies too full of whisky. They make loud sounds but are not really brave in a fight and so they run away. But come. My woman will have food ready."
No explanation was given to Milla. She was left to follow along like a squaw in their tracks. As they gathered Umalti's dogs and hitched them to the two sleds, Bryan did most of the talking, so she assumed he was giving the Indian a full accounting of their adventure and misadventure. Still, in watching Umalti's passive face, she had the oddest sensation that he was quite aware of the events without having to be told of them.
She was left bundled up on Umalti's sled while the two men walked about a bit more. She saw Bryan point to the moose carcass but did not understand either what he said or the Indian's answer.
"You are clever and brave to have survived in this manner, Bryan Mathews," Umalti said with open admiration.
Bryan laughed. "You remembered my name."
Umalti nodded. "When a man becomes a welcome visitor in my home, the name must not be forgotten." What he did not say was that his wife and Raven- Man had kept the name alive in his brain. One did not remind a walking god that he was a god. Camp Robber had chosen to use the name Bryan Mathews on earth; so be it.
Bryan said, "How many sleds and dogs does your village possess?"
Umalti sucked in his breath. This god tested a man very, very quickly. "Twenty sleds and over a hundred dogs."
"But I recall seeing as many men and boys in your village as you possess dogs."
Umalti's heart began to thump, but he had to keep his face passive with humility. "We are a poor village and many foolish men sold their sleds to the white travelers."
"Then they must build new sleds. Bigger and stronger to carry much weight. I want you to help me find the shortest and quickest route to a southern port called Sitka. I want at least sixty sleds three hundred dogs and work from every man of your village."
Umalti couldn't help but tremble. It had not been a request but a god-given command. He looked at Bryan wonderingly, for here was something ancient and terrible and grand, something beyond the banality of ordinary men. He could feel the tightness beneath his eyelids, and he thought suddenly, I'm going to cry--and I mustn't! No, I mustn't! I am a chief standing with the walking form of Camp Robber! He lives--we prosper!
Milla sat very still in the tundra-roofed hut. She had been thinking for hours, but her thoughts went around and around in unanswerable patterns. She was still being ignored, while Bryan was being touted like some visiting royalty. She just couldn't fathom it all. How could one go from rapture to despair in so short a time? She wanted to hate him, but couldn't. Now she could no more stop loving him than she could stop breathing.
The procession of visitors went on and on. Each
man in the village had to pay his respects to his chief and to the man-god who would make them all prosper. Each was expected to sip a large draught of hot whisky from Bryan's whale bone cup, which Oomua made sure was kept filled to the brim. The fumes from the homemade brew of bark, berries, molasses and yeast burned one's eyes whether he was drinking the odorous concoction or not. The odor was making Milla violently ill, but she knew better than to mention the fact to Bryan. He was already so drunk that he couldn't focus his eyes.
She did not notice that Oomua was watching Bryan's consumption very carefully. Oomua would not be denied her rights with the man-god a second time. When she had plied Bryan with just the proper amount of the brew, she began to shoo the men away and would not let any new ones enter. Lovingly, she spread fur robes upon the floor and indicated where each of the four of them was to sleep.
Milla was apprehensive, but also grateful for an opportunity to lie down, stretch out her cramped legs and relax. It was the first time Oomua had paid her the slightest bit of attention and she couldn't help but wonder who the Indian woman thought she was.
Oomua hadn't given it any thought whatsoever. Milla was a woman and therefore of no importance. Man-gods, Oomua was well aware, often traveled with female companions to cast .in front of Giyeg and confuse him. But the woman would not be needed that night, for Raven-Man protected the hut and the village.
But Raven-Man was not ready to protect Milla's sensitive nature. She slept, soundly and peacefully. When she awoke, somewhere in the middle of The night, it took her a moment to realize that it was
sound and motion that had awakened her. She raised herself on an elbow and blinked.
The fire was half-dead, but still strong enough to cast weird shadows onto the ceiling. The shadows were being created right at her side. Her mind would not accept what she saw. It had to be some form of nightmare. The thought was intensified when she looked beyond the pair next to her and into the glazed eyes of Umalti. His face was radiant with pleasure.
My God, Milla thought, he's actually approving of ... of... She couldn't get her mind to put it into words. Nor could she pull her eyes away from what was transpiring right between her and the chief.
Bryan was naked! Totally without a stitch! He rested over the woman on extended arms, raising and lowering himself like a lever! Milla was able to see the horrible instrument he had used on her as he used it upon Oomua. The movement was almost mesmerizing.
It had to be a nightmare! Her mind rebelled. Bryan had not had such a look of rapture on his face the night before. Her body had not moved with the undulating motions that Oomua was employing. Where were Oomua's whimpers of pain from being stuck again and again by the enormous rod?
It wasn't that Bryan was being gentle with her. He was being savage, brutal, animalistic. The whisky seemed to have put him onto a sensual plane far beyond Milla's ken; she felt she didn't understand it. His head was tilted far back, his mouth was wide open and his tongue was slobbering over his lower lip. He was not seeing Oomua, he was not seeing anything. Eyes filmed over by his lust, he was clutching
Oomua's breasts and riding her at a gallop, as if she were a mare. And Oomua liked it! That's what Milla saw most of all--Oomua being pounded and ripped into, yet, with her eyes glistening in ecstasy, meeting his hips with savage upthrusts of her own.
Their stomachs slapped together. Milla couldn't shut her ears to the sound or take her eyes from the sight. She watched, petrified into a posture of infancy, as it went on and on. Then the man--she could no longer think of him as Bryan, her Bryan-- seemed to freeze for an instant, crouched over the woman who suddenly wrapped her flashing legs around his waist. A grunt escaped him. He gave a tremendous lurch. Oomua nearly screamed. And then it was done. He lay on Oomua's chest and her arms held him, quietly.
Milla, thinking none of this was real, lifted her eyes from the two prone bodies and saw, past them, a wide smile on Umalti's face.
She turned her back on the three of them and lay still with her agony. Her stomach was a churning mass of bile. Her participation in the living nightmare was over; no longer did she have to observe it, be revolted by it. But was it really over for her? Depraved! They were all possessed and depraved. How could the woman do such a thing before the eyes of her husband? How could the husband lie on his elbow and watch the scene with such open pleasure?
She wanted to cry. But for whom?
How could you treat me this way, Bryan? You could have spared me this!
At that moment Milla hated Bryan more than she'd ever envisioned hating anyone. The frequent spells of hatred she'd felt for her mother she now thought of as passing irritations stemming from her
inability then to understand what all women, her mother included, must suffer at the hands of men. She wanted to make Bryan suffer now. She wanted revenge.
She didn't know how to go about destroying Bryan. She lacked the experience in destruction that her mother had had. 
"But I can learn," she told herself quietly. "I can learn."
For three days after his whisky-fueled fling with Oomua, Bryan was sick in body and spirit. He hardly understood himself why he had done what he did--other than to relieve himself of the tremendous pressure he'd been under from all the extraordinary incidents that had occurred prior to his rescue by Umalti. He couldn't bring himself to face Milla. He could scarcely face Umalti, knowing that whatever had impelled him to take the chief's wife, he had definitely not done it out of respect for Eskimo custom.
He made his amends by applying himself doubly hard to the necessary preparations for the dogsled journey. It was, after all, going to give employment to the tribe. He wasn't going to be able to go all the way to Sitka, he discovered, mostly because of Umalti's obvious reluctance to leave his village for as long as it would take to get there. Bryan didn't
press the point; with Umalti as guide, he was sure' he could at least reach Valdez, a port on the Gulf of Alaska some five hundred miles up the coast from Sitka. He would see what he could arrange when he arrived there.
All went well on this leg of the trip. With twenty crack teams pulling the sleds, Bryan and Milla fairly raced to the old Russian trading post at Nulato; then used three hundred miles of the frozen Chena River as a highway to its fork with the FORTY-NINE Mile River. Last, with massive snow cliffs hanging above them, they crossed through Suslota Pass and went down into the broad snowy valley that led to Valdez.
In Valdez for less than a day, Bryan received a stroke of luck, which Umalti saw as yet another sign that Raven-Man was blessing them. A freighter had run aground on a reef off the Kensai Peninsula and the small port town's wharves were laden with its salvaged supplies. As there was little market in Valdez for these supplies, an American freighter stood off the icebanks ready to take most of them back to Sitka.
Bryan moved with a speed and intelligence that would have been to Irina's liking. He put his mark on every supply crate unsold and then commissioned the freighter to begin regular runs to him in Valdez.
When the freighter was ready to sail for Sitka, Milla looked at Bryan for some time before she spoke.
"I'm going," she said quietly. "To Sitka, until the thaw comes, then home to Nome."
"I know. But I'm staying here." Bryan said gruffly. "I have work to do here. If you get back before I do, tell your mother I'll come as soon as I can."
They said little to each other after that. Bryan
saw Milla to the longboat that would take her out to the freighter. There was no embracing, no tearful goodbyes, no mention of marriage plans. Each seemed to be glad to be rid of the other.
Bryan had already sent the supplies he had bought to Nome, in Umalti's care. He'd also given the chief a message for Irina that she could expect further shipments overland. His mind was too filled with plans for his winter trade route for him to think about anything else.
Milla was just filled with bitterness.
Bryan spent the entire winter in Valdez, and the new trade route he developed was all Irina had hoped it would be and more. A seemingly endless procession of supply-laden dog-sleds reached her via Umalti's drivers, who spoke no English, demanded little to eat and next-to-nothing in pay. Since the supplies were available for her various businesses long before the spring brought the ships to her major competitors--Erik Lindblom, for instance--Irina could not have been happier.
In Valdez, meanwhile, Bryan was seeing in his enterprise only the beginnings of the enormous wealth he could accumulate. He worked hard at first, on his own. Then, as he acquired more and more knowledge and trading skills, he began to hire and train men for the next winter's operation, so that he wouldn't have to return if he didn't wish to. When spring finally came, he set sail for Sitka, Seattle and San Francisco. The mercantile business he did aside, he was still bent on increasing the efficiency of his and Hummell's gold-digging operations, with a device he now called a 'sweater.' He spent two weeks in Sitka investigating the possibilities
of the device's manufacture there before moving on to the states. It occurred to him that he might call on Milla or at least check to see if she were still in the city, but he did neither.
It was mid-June when the Ambrose dropped anchor off Nome. Having left a gold strike knowing it would bring newcomers, Bryan was still astonished at the town's growth. While still two miles off shore, he could see over seventy vessels ahead of him in the harbor awaiting their turns to off load men, equipment and dreams of gold. Nome was no longer a town; it was a city that stretched from skyline to skyline. 
An even greater surprise, this one disconcerting, awaited him when he came ashore and idly looked at the off-loaded freight. Nowhere did he see Irina's mark on the large crates and cranes and pipes and wagons, items she would have had to have shipped by sea. As far as he could see everything was stamped McKenzie-Hubbard. He raced at once to Irina's house. But to his intense annoyance, Irina was no longer there.
"You likee velee nice Flower Drum Song girlee," the fat Chinese woman who greeted him suggested with gleeful anticipation. "She play beautiful music on body likee yours, golden man."
Swearing under his breath, Bryan went back into the overly congested street and fought his way to Irina's restaurant. There he was greeted by a stern and bitter Marna.
"The baroness? I hardly see her since she leased the house to those women and moved into the hotel. I have myself private rooms behind the kitchen now." Marna sniffed. "You may call on her if you wish--I certainly shall not."
The hotel had changed vastly since Bryan had last seen it: two new storeys and a lobby as posh as anything he had seen in San Francisco. The desk clerk seemed right out of the Nob Hill mold as well.
"The baroness?" he simpered, looking down his nose with disdain. "'I'm sorry, sir, but I'm not at liberty to divulge her suite number."
Bryan growled, "Knowing her it's high up, mister. So I'm going high up and pound every goddamn door until she opens one of them."
The clerk frowned slightly, picked up a small bell and tinkled it. Two burly bellhops who had been watching came up and stood behind Bryan.
"I suggest you leave, sir," the clerk said coldly. "Otherwise, I shall be forced to have you removed."
"The hell you will!" Bryan snarled. "Now look, you silly little bastard, get one of these men upstairs to tell the baroness Bryan Mathews is here. Bryan Mathews, get that? Or should I spell it for you?"
The clerk began stiffly, "Sir", I don't care who you are. The baroness expressly forbids visitors without prior appointments. Accordingly, I--" 
"One moment, Maurice," an oddly pretentious, yet somehow familiar voice to Bryan interrupted. "Maurice, you would be doing me a great personal favor if you would allow me to escort the gentleman to Irina's suite."
"But, Mr. Hummell. . ."
Bryan spun around disbelievingly.
Old John Hummell's grizzled hair, mustache and beard were neatly and stylishly cut. He had a Homberg set at a jaunty angle on his head. His suit, shirt, vest and spats were elegant.
"John--is that you!" Bryan gasped. 
"It is indeed, Mr. Mathews. Now, with Maurice's
kind permission, if you'll follow me this way . . ." Still stunned, aware of the clerk's suspicious eyes on his back, Bryan followed Hummell around a corner to a small anteroom near the hotel's staircase. There the old man fell to a riotous cackling. "Hee-hee-haw-hee-hee . . . Heeha-ha . . . Ha-ha-ho."
Bryan watched him narrowly. When he could take no more of it, he said evenly, "Old man, if you don't stop that hyena stuff and tell me what you're up to, I'm going to knock out all three of your teeth--one by one!"
Old Hummell raised a bony hand to ward him off while he kept cackling. Finally he wheezed, "Bought this place from the old gal last month, the whole durned place. Heh-heh-heh. . . ."
"You bought the hotel?" Bryan said incredulously.
"Yep, that I did, sure did--ain't that something? Oh, it's good to see you, boy--missed you like blazes!"
"But how'd you buy it and with what?"
Hummell sobered. "Something called 'futures,' lad. People been trading in them all winter. You get certain things based on what you are going to get out of your claim in the future. Of course, she still lives here until our futures pay off.
"Which they will," he enthused, "which they will."
Bryan was not so sure he shared Hummell's optimism after spending five minutes in Irina's suite. His amazement at the change in Hummell was nothing in comparison to the change he saw in her. But then, he had Milla in the back of his mind to compare her to. Always before he had regarded mother and daughter as near lookalikes.
Now, for him, Irina had grown far more stately, more regal, more agelessly beautiful. Not for one moment did he lose sight of her as a high-priced whore; it was just that high-priced whores, with their bold stares and clear-eyed goals, had, after his interim of troubles with Milla, gained a certain measure of his respect.
"My worst fears are coming about, Bryan," Irina told him sadly after their greeting, "and much sooner than I anticipated. The scum of the United States have landed on our streets and with them the worst manner of Washington bloodsuckers. Here we are, only halfway through June, and already we have over 20,000 new inhabitants."
Bryan nodded. "That's just too many people."
Irina laughed, pouring them glasses of champagne. "Thieves are so thick here that the prosecutors have to keep their grub tied to their belts. Last week a man went to open his new barber shop and there was no shop to be found. Instead he found four men digging up the ground where it had stood. But these are petty matters. The big thief is sitting out in the bay in his ship, complete with a judge and federal district attorney."
"McKenzie!" Hummell scoffed.
Bryan said, "I saw that name on dockside crates, coupled with another."
"Hubbard," Irina supplied. "Oliver P. Hubbard. You might remember him, Bryan. He has a law firm in Nome handling claim-jumping cases left over from last year."
"He seems to have come a long way."
"Longer than you can imagine. He's been a very busy little man down in Washington this winter, along with this Alexander McKenzie. It appears that
the scope of our Nome civil government is going to be enlarged, but the question of aliens owning claims or having the right to sell them was left hanging in the air. It's to be decided when Judge Arthur H. Noyes opens his court here next week."
"What's to be decided?" Bryan asked, puzzled.
Hummell hooted. "McKenzie makes no bones about that one, son. He 'owns' both the judge and federal prosecutor. He's organized a corporation called the Alaska Gold Mining Company with authorized capital stock of $ 15 million, even though he doesn't have a dang blasted claim on the books. He's a flim-flammer who has the ear of the man who sits in the White House."
"So," Bryan sighed, "it starts all over again. Where's our future now, John?"
By nine o'clock the next morning Bryan had occasion to meet Alexander McKenzie and learn how much power the forces in Washington had placed in McKenzie's hands. It was Sunday. Bryan stood looking with uncomprehending gaze at the longboat that was bringing in the supplies he'd bought in San Francisco. The incredibly noisy waterside was distracting him. Several barges carrying as many as a hundred passengers each were being ferried to shore. There seemed to be no other supply boat coming in except the one he was having trouble focusing his attention on. He was conscious of the interest his craning neck and the empty boat itself were causing in a burly man in a great coat and derby hat who stood near him. The man had two soldiers with him.
"Don't unload! Don't unload!" the man cried as the boat touched the beach.
"Any why shouldn't they?" Bryan growled, turning on him.
Alexander McKenzie glowered. Heavy shouldered and portly, about six-foot-three, he seemed to loom over Bryan. He had hard, shrewd eyes alongside a prow of a nose, and a full mustache above his pugnacious chin. He was a bold man and had the physical attributes to back his boldness up.
"Is it your cargo?" McKenzie demanded.
"Mine and others."
McKenzie shook his big head sadly "Son, I don't know what you were told down home, but this place ain't all that it's cracked up to be. The government has had to step in and take a hand in things."
Bryan waited quietly for him to go on.
"Like your cargo here. If it's for mining purposes you've got to have a claim to use it on. If it's for resale purposes there is a dollar a hundred pound off-loading fee."
Bryan raised a quizzical eyebrow. "The government must be getting rich off the tons of McKenzie- Hubbard supplies that have been coming in."
"Hardly," the man informed him with a grunt. "McKenzie-Hubbard business got underway before the new law went into effect. The company's protected by a 'grandfather' rule."
Bryan smiled to himself, suddenly realizing to whom he was speaking. "I take it, sir, that I am addressing Alexander McKenzie?" 
McKenzie beamed with pleasure. Even though he was a familiar figure in Washington and a formidable mover in Republican Party politics, it sated his ego to be recognized.
"You are quite correct, son. And whom am I addressing?"
"Bryan Mathews of the Mathews-Hummell Mining Company. We have claims here that have been worked for over a year, so that should satisfy the first part of this new law. The part of the cargo that is not for our use is consigned to the Petropavlovsk Mercantile Company, also an establishment that has been in operation in Nome for over a year. Doesn't that put it too under the 'grandfather' rule?"
McKenzie spread his hands expansively. All of the names were quite familiar to him. He was amazed to find Mathews so young a man.
"Let's put our cards on the table, Mathews. I haven't a thing against you. I don't think you and Hummell have a clean claim, but let that go. I like you, son. I'm from North Dakota where a go-getter like you is appreciated. I'm going to let you offload your mining equipment and wish you luck on your claims."
Again Bryan found himself waiting for the man to go on.
"Now, to the other cargo. Don't let this sound like I'm a man who hates aliens. That's what made our country, but, those aliens became citizens and didn't continue to go around using foreign titles. This is government business, son. This Petropavlovsk cargo--and we both know who owns it-- would be considered foreign cargo and subject to the fee." 
Bryan hesitated a moment, then slowly began to smile.
"Are you saying that there would be no fee if it were an American-owned company?"
"That could be the case, yes."
Bryan laughed so suddenly that the man started.
"Mr. McKenzie, I've heard that you have cronies in the highest places to serve your purposes. Perhaps you should start sprinkling them around Alaska. All last winter the P&M Overland had a contract to bring the U.S. mail from Valdez to Nome by dog sled. I'm the M of that company and American. That ship in the roadstead is chartered by P&M. All I have to do is turn it around and bring the supplies in overland--by wagon train." 
McKenzie stared at Bryan, his jaw dropping. Then he began roaring with laughter.
"Damn, I do like you, son. Give up all this foolish petty mining and trading business and I'll find a good spot in my organization for you. I can make you a very successful and wealthy man."
"You're damn sure of yourself, aren't you?" Bryan stated. "Well, McKenzie, I already am a wealthy man and plan to get a hell of a lot wealthier. Now, what about my cargo?"
McKenzie fumed. Bryan had just made an instant enemy. McKenzie was not used to people saying no to him.
"All right!" he barked. "Show these soldiers proof that you also are a partner in the mercantile business and you can have your damn cargo!"
Bryan accepted the challenge unruffled. That part was going to be easy. He simply went back to Irina and explained the situation to her.
"Of all the black-hearted dirty tricks!" Irina exploded. "A dollar a hundred pounds? That will shoot prices through the roof and force nearly everyone out of business but McKenzie. It's unbelievable: The man is here less than a month and he is already the preeminent power and influence over everything." But she signed the necessary
paper for making Bryan once more a partner in alt her businesses and passed it across her desk to him. After all, a similar agreement had been made and broken before; this one could be broken as well.
Paper transactions were also on the mind of Alexander McKenzie after he stormed away from Bryan. At Hubbard's law firm, he told William T. Hume that he had Hubbard's permission to gather together the briefs and pleadings in several claim- jumping cases the firm had pending.
"I don't have that authority," Hume stammered.
"Authority!" McKenzie exploded. "I am the authority. If I so desired I could just send Judge Noyes away and your cases will never be heard!"
McKenzie repaired to Noyes with two suitcases of riles and a growing plan in his mind. He didn't consult with the judge, he merely informed the man exactly what he was to do in court.
"Hume," he snapped, on his return, "Noyes won't allow these in his court in this form. He's given you an example here as to how the documents are to be drawn."
"But that is impossible," Hume gasped. "It will take days and there is only one public stenographer in Nome."
"You have exactly two days before the court is called into session," McKenzie declared acidly.
"That's not enough time to inform the defendants."
"You mean Mathews, Hummell and those damn Russians and Swedes."
"That is correct."
McKenzie's glare was glacial. "Nor will they be
notified, Hume! If you and Hubbard wish to remain in this town, you will do exactly as I say!"
So Hume and Hubbard, a couple of swindlers themselves, had just been hustled by an expert.
Hume called in the only public stenographer in Nome and sat down to long hours of work without food or sleep, finishing the documents just before the newly arrived judge came to declare his court in session.
The case was tried early in the morning in a makeshift courtroom in the Nome Cafe. It brought a shoo-in verdict for McKenzie's forces.
Hume, tired and depressed, addressed Judge Noyes in exactly the same words Judge Noyes had dictated. It was a schoolboyish read-aloud exercise.
"Your Honor," Hume began, "on behalf of my clients, whose names have been duly recorded in the documents before you, and whose rights as citizens of the United States of America are being denied them by alien claimants to land purchased and now owned by the government of the United States of America, I place before this court the following petition of grievance. To Wit: A plea on behalf of the named clients for an immediate injunction against said claims and the immediate appointment of a receiver for the following claims: two under the original claim of Irina and Ludmilla Feodorovna, later assigned to Bryan Mathews and John H. Hummell, who work the claim as the Mathews-Hummell Mining Company; the Jafet Lindeberg claim known as Discovery, plus the six adjacent claims worked by an organization known as the Pioneer Mining Company. . . ."
Hume droned on and on, without Judge Noyes
once looking at the documents referred to. A few prospectors breakfasting in the back of the cafe had long since finished their oatmeal and departed. One remained, slurping coffee.
"That was well organized," Noyes said without hesitation when Hume finished speaking. "I hereby grant the injunctions and put the contested claims in receivership to one Alexander McKenzie. This court instructs said receiver to work said mines and to take into custody all personal property he may discover on the premises. As the receiver he is ordered to post a surety bond of $5,000 for each mine. This court is adjourned."
McKenzie almost toppled the waitress in his rush to leave the cafe. In the street he had a gang of men and wagons waiting. The drivers whipped up their horses and McKenzie raced for Anvil Creek. Oddly enough he already had Noyes' signed papers in his breast pocket, although he had never once spoken with the judge in the cafe.
The news traveled fast, as did a series of both curious and dramatic reactions to it.
"Don't worry," Lawrence Smith told the group, after they had listened in astonishment to his account of the court proceedings, "I'll go at once and demand our day in court."
When he'd gone, Hummell put down his coffee cup and looked from Bryan to Irina.
"That's quite a steal," he said. "$5,000 bond on each mine. Hell, Jafet's Discovery is producing three times that much a day alone."
Bryan sat across the room studying Irina with grave, dark eyes. Suddenly, in this emergency, he did not trust her. She was up to something, he could tell that from the abstracted look that appeared on
her face. Whatever she was up to, he felt all but certain that it had nothing to do with her standing by him and John.
Some of his suspicions immediately seemed justified when Irina said complacently, "Well, it's not going to affect me all that much."
That afternoon workmen erected a new sign over the building opposite Irina's bank: Alaska Banking & Safety Deposit Company Alexander McKenzie, President 
The ax fell on Bryan and Hummell quickly. Gus Freeman, their foreman at Anvil Creek, showed up in town the next day with reports of McKenzie's coming. "Jesus Jenny! I thought it was the second coming of the Lord, what with his screaming and shouting and waving of them damn papers. He had them soldiers hold me at gunpoint. He seized it all, gold dust and nuggets, and then the hungry lardass even sat right down and ate the vittles I had prepared for myself. What was I supposed to do, Mr. Hummell?"
John soothed him. "It's all right, Gus. You stay here and help Bryan and me on the beach for a few days. That new 'sweater' rig of Bryan's is going to need some extra hands until we go to court."
Meanwhile, Lawrence Smith found himself balked in his attempt to see and reason with Judge Noyes. The judge had simply gone back aboard the ship he had come on and held himself incommunicado there--until, to Smith's disbelief, the ship steamed away one morning. Smith then descended on the Hubbard law firm offices like a whirlwind, demanding to know where Noyes was off to.
Hume, beginning now to appreciate the irony in how easily a lawyer could win a case when the
circumstances were right, was not about to hold the lastest bit of dark humor back.
"McKenzie sent him away," he said. "Told him to go to St. Michael on the other side of Norton Sound to establish his authority in the Yukon Delta. He'll be back in two weeks."
Smith gritted his teeth and kept his counsel. In two weeks, he vowed, he would be well prepared for the man.
For two weeks, McKenzie reined as dictator at Nome. It was a period of total hell for those he had seen fit to despise. McKenzie's bank began to drain customers away from Irina on his promise and delivery of higher interest rates. The so-called lucky Swedes ran into considerable bad luck, worse than just having to see McKenzie's soldiers run their claims around the clock. Those same soldiers would not allow three of Erik Lindblom's newly arrived supply ships to off-load without paying a fee that McKenzie had capriciously revised upwards to a dollar a pound.
One of the ships had daringly brought up California produce packed in chipped ice. Among his other business ventures, Lindblom was now successfully marketing fresh vegetables. But no prospector was about to pay $5.00 a head for lettuce or $3.00 for a bunch of radishes, which was what McKenzie's tariff would have brought prices to.
"Dump it all overboard," Lindblom moaned.
The roadstead became a floating garbage dump.
Nome became a city of 23,746 tautly strung people. One of the tautest was Bryan Mathews. Bryan's self-designed 'sweater' had not been built exactly to his specifications. It needed adjustments,
alterations and a lot of experimentation. He needed time and patience to work it all out. He didn't need the worries that McKenzie's presence gave him, and he didn't need the apprehensions he. had about Judge Noyes' return. But he couldn't seem to concentrate on the 'sweater.' He thought he might crack up under the strain.
About the only object of McKenzie's wrath who seemed to have matters well enough in hand was Irina. She did have her own secret plans with which to combat the McKenzie menace, just as Bryan had suspected. He had no way of knowing, however, that those plans concerned him and that even now--as he bent ferociously to his 'sweater' task-- she was in her hotel room discussing them with John Hummell.
"Looks like McKenzie has us over a barrel, doesn't it, John?" Irina was saying bemusedly. "Well, you're a man I can trust, so I'll be honest with you. I've been investing quite heavily in a couple of prospectors who feel that there's plenty more gold near Juneau and Skagway. I may leave this place to McKenzie, for whatever good it does him. Regardless of what action the court takes, I'm going to start slowly selling out here and put more money into the Juneau-Skagway operation. But an operation like that requires a strong, young man to oversee it."
"Bryan?"
"Perhaps. But there's more to it than that, John. I don't want just to make money. I want to make a man--a man good enough to marry my daughter. I want a son-in-law I can be proud of. Bryan's manners need a great deal of polishing before he becomes that."
Hummell snickered. "They surely do. I hear tell from him he slept in a dead moose and I seen him do worse."
Irina continued calmly: "Understand me, old friend. I will have the type of son-in-law that I desire, because I will mold him personally."
"You!" Hummell's lips puckered for a whistle of admiration he did not quite emit. "My lord," he muttered instead, "what a delightful experience Bryan has in store for him." 
The second court session was appropriately held by Judge Noyes in the lobby of the Alaska Banking and Safety Deposit Company. McKenzie did not attend, but left his office door open to listen to the proceedings.
"He was like an off-stage prompter," Lawrence Smith fumed to Jafet Lindeberg as they left the building. Smith's group had been totally defeated. Every motion he'd placed before Noyes had been summarily rejected. McKenzie's man was not about to let the aggrieved defendants regain control of their claims, and that's all there was to it.
"What now?" Jafet sighed. "Noyes has all but denied us the right to get a hearing in the federal appeals court in San Francisco." 
Smith frowned. "He can't quite do that, Jafet. All he did was make our chances look bad. We can try for a hearing. But they are going to be watching me and could stop me before I got started. Best thing to do is to get Bill Detson to draw up an appeal and slip away to submit it in San Francisco. Make sure that he makes it plain that we are doing this in defiance of Judge Noyes."
The Noyes decision had a depressing effect all
over Nome. The powerful McKenzie threatened to take over all the gold fields, one quasi-legal way or another. So for the rest of July and all of August prospecting in the area ground almost came to a standstill. Most of the prospectors, particularly the newcomers, felt that even if they did find rich veins, McKenzie would quickly find a way to strip their claims away from them.
As for Bryan Mathews, he was appalled by the entire situation. Added to his personal frustrations was the gloom he felt in seeing all the vitality go out of the town he'd come to call home.
"You can fight the town's fear, son," Hummell told him. "McKenzie has a spy system much more thorough than Irina's ever was, and far more vicious to boot. Lots of men here are afraid of getting killed if they cross him." The old man hesitated. "I'm one of them. Let's close down the 'sweater,' boy. It ain't working- right anyway, and there's no sense getting killed over a few more dollars even if you fix it. Thought I'd be taking me a little trip, until things turn around for us here."
Hummell left town without saying where he was going. After he'd gone, Bryan grew even moodier. He missed the old, man's daily visits. He gave up the 'sweater' and lolled about. Though for some reason, Irina then began to pay a good deal of attention to him and he started enjoying her company, he was also puzzled and confused by her. She talked to him at great length and with considerable excitement about some land she was acquiring in Juneau and Skagway. She was going to start business ventures there. He was happy for her but couldn't for the life of him see what it all had to do with him. She also read him poetry and long
Russian novels in translation--even began to teach him to speak Russian.
"Don't you find Tolstoy marvelous, Bryan?" she cooed at him one time. It was "Anna Karenina" she was talking about.
Bryan thought. "It's a good story and I like it fine," he said. "But I read 'Ben Hur' once and liked it better. It had lots more action."
She glanced at him. "I'm not sure I can teach you anything," she said.
But she did teach him plenty about what he was keen on learning.
Right at the outset Irina had decided that as part of his educational preparation for Milla, she would teach Bryan how to make proper love to a woman. With this worthy goal in mind, she would even offer her own services as a surrogate. At least, so she put her own voracious desire for him to herself.
The scene was Irina's hotel room, on the first night she invited him there, ostensibly for dinner. She greeted him at her door in her nightdress. Behind her the light over her bed was turned low.
Bryan took one astonished look and then all the bewildering amount of attention she had paid him in the past few weeks seemed to click into one simple place.
"Irina," he breathed. "Why didn't you just tell me this was what you wanted? We could have saved a hell of a lot of time. . . ." 
He stepped inside, kicked the door shut behind him and grabbed her roughly in his arms. She could hardly breathe in his bear-like embrace. She pulled away from him, panting from her exertions. "No--¦ not that way!"
"What way then?" Bryan was puzzled. He looked
down miserably at the bulge in his pants. One look at the rosy nipples of her breasts showing through the gossamer gown had given him an erection. He'd been about to pick her up and carry her into bed before she'd stopped him. He wanted to plunge right into her.
"I'll show you." Taking him by the hand, she led him to the bed and sat on its edge with him standing and facing her. He looked down at her chestnut hair and his heart began to pound and his knees felt weak. She looked up at him, shyly. "Do you know what I'm going to do? Are you going to like it?" she said. Bryan started to tremble. "Just do it," he urged her. He put his hands on her shoulders and began rubbing them, gently pulling her closer. She looked up at him mischievously for one brief instant more, then put her head down and began licking at his erection through his pants. Bryan moaned at the teasing tickling of her tongue. "Take it out," he implored, her. Smiling strangely, her own heart beating faster, Irina unbuttoned his fly and drew out through his longjohns an enormous, stiff penis. She stared at it. Now she moaned and began kissing and -licking its length, first slowly, then almost furiously. Bryan could hardly stand it. "Put it in your mouth," he ordered her. Nodding, but continuing to lick a few agonizing moments longer, Irina suddenly swooped her mouth over the head of the rod and began sucking at it, long and deeply.
Bryan's hips began to move, helping her to slide it in and out of her mouth. "Mmm-mm," Irina murmured as he kept doing this. He was panting. He could barely contain himself. And yet he did. He began to throb. Both he and Irina felt the beginnings
of his orgasm. She drew her head away for a moment. "Do you want to come in my mouth?" she said, "You can, you know. . . ."
"No!" Bryan choked. He was almost pleading with her. "I want to lick you first. . . ."
She smiled at him. "I thought you'd want that," she said softly and tenderly. She rose, lifted her nightdress and lay on her back on the bed, her knees spread wide, letting Bryan, for a moment, look down at her hungrily. . . .
This was an hour-long lesson in lovemaking for Bryan before their mutual passion was finally consummated. And it was only the first of many such lessons he got from Irina for the next six weeks. It was a course in gentleness, restrained savagery, sudden outbursts of violence, then tenderness, exhaustion--and peace.
But Bryan graduated from the course in a way Irina never intended him to. He'd learned to admire her as a clever businesswoman. Now he was smitten with her, body and soul. He wanted to marry her.
"Marriage! To me? Bryan, that's absurd!" was Irina's reply in bed one night. "Marriage is very much in the picture for you now, but not with me. Why, unless you lied to John Hummell, you are only twenty-one, not even the twenty-six you pretend to be."
"Age shouldn't matter between us," Bryan argued.
"It doesn't, Bryan, but my plan calls for you to marry someone more your own age. Say Milla."
Now he was really puzzled and confused. "You wouldn't have me for a son-in-law, remember? You wouldn't even let me court Milla."
Irina laughed. "I've changed my mind," she said. "I like you better now. There's not a man in Alaska who can go as far as you can, Bryan, with my backing. I'm going to tell you more about Juneau and Skagway, about what I'm fixing up for you there. You see, I think far, far ahead--say to my grandchildren. Don't you want sons to leave all your wealth to some day?"
Bryan then frowned. The truth of the matter, which was that Irina was still playing games with him, had struck home. And that truth angered him. Yes, he could marry Milla. He could take over the bonanza Irina appeared to be offering him. He could also leave Alaska a wealthy man whenever he chose to--simply vanish and turn up in Texas as his real self, to claim Tandy as his rightful bride. It didn't matter what games Irina wanted to play with him. He had his ancient dream still and games of his own to play.
It was mid-September before Bill Detson, Smith's courier, returned from San Francisco and made his report to those who had appealed Judge Noyes' decision--a group that included Bryan. After private discussions, Bryan went with Detson to reveal the findings to the opposition. He dressed carefully. He was in no hurry. He felt that they now had the goods on McKenzie, who could be ruined at leisure. In fact, he and Detson spent the first ten minutes with Noyes and the banker pleasantly chatting about gold conditions in Alaska at large. After they had all agreed that the surface hadn't even been scratched, Bryan revealed the actual purpose of his visit.
"Mr. Detson here informs me that Justice William Morrow of the appeals court feels that there is something rotten on the shores of Alaska," he began genially enough. "He has issued this writ enjoining
you, Judge Noyes, from holding court on claim cases, and displacing you, McKenzie, as receiver. You are to return to the defendants all the property you have taken--right down to the last grain of gold."
If Bryan had hoped to upset them with the news, he was badly disappointed. Judge Noyes didn't even blink.
"That's sheer nonsense, Mr. Mathews," he replied. "If such a writ has been issued, it comes from a circuit court with no more power invested in it than is invested in mine. I am the law here and intend to remain the law."
"You can't do that!" Detson stormed, jumping to his feet. "You and this crook can't ignore this writ!"
McKenzie smiled pityingly.
"You've heard the judge. As far as he and I are concerned, it is a worthless piece of paper," he remarked. "Don't fight it, boys, I'm too strong at headquarters."
"Headquarters, of course," Detson said, "is Washington? Well, there must be some honest men like Morrow there as well."
"Listen, you," McKenzie snarled, "you're stepping just a little too fancy to suit me, and I will fix you for it!"
'Turn 'er loose right now!" Detson cried, a gun suddenly appearing in his hand.
"Now, Bill," Bryan soothed, stepping in front of the gun, "that's not going to solve anything for us. Come on. I know a few other ways to skin polecats."
Judge Noyes' facade, when the two had gone, crumbled. He looked ashen. McKenzie's muscle was in Washington, not in Nome. He was scared because,
with an injunction now against him, he did not know how much longer he could keep his part of the show up.
"Square your shoulders, Noyes," McKenzie commanded him. "Our fight is just beginning. Write me out a warrant for that hothead Detson's arrest. And start digging up all the facts you can on Mathews. He's bound to have done something illegal in his past. I'm going to fix the whole bunch of them before this gets any further."
"All of them? But do we have the time? They'll be coming at me from all sides now," Noyes complained.
McKenzie chortled, "I've got all the time in the world. The day won't come when I can't drive a pack of Swedes and Russkies and one snot-nose kid right smack into the boneyard.".
While McKenzie was making certain nefarious plans, the rest of Nome, all unaware of them, was rejoicing. The average prospector was firmly convinced that the honest judge in San Francisco would not allow the ruthless gold baron to go on forever. The report of the writ was the most encouraging news Nome had had all summer and men dug deep into their pockets to have a night of- celebration. And where else to have it but at Baroness Irina Feodorovna's Golden Nugget saloon? Against such a dragon as McKenzie, Irina and the other "furriners" had become their champions.
The night began innocently enough--none too randy or rowdy, with just simple down-home fun for all. Irina's newly imported pianist was joined by a fiddler and a harmonica player. Twelve Flower Drum Song dancing girls were in attendance, but 
they were hardly enough to go around, so the men formed their own reels and squares as the music soared, the drinks were consumed and the temperature began to drop outside.
By the time Bryan sauntered over to join the revelers, a fierce, cold September wind was blowing clouds across the face of the moon. He was familiar with this kind of wind, which each spring and fall came up along with the equinoctial storms that raged in from the Bering Sea. He hated the weather this time of year; everybody did. John Hummell, for instance, had insisted that the term equinoctial was derived from the two words unequaled and obnoxious.
As he sniffed at the wind, Bryan's brow contracted with worry. The air was already heavily laced with salt-spray, the first sign that huge waves would be driving onto the shore soon. It was going to be a bitterly cold and stormy night. He almost regretted coming out in it, despite the promise of a rip-roaring good time at the Golden Nugget.
He crossed through an alley to Stedman Street and heard the noise from the bar while still a block away. Mixed incongruously with the fiddle music, there was now some girls' screaming and men's shouting going on in there. Bryan wondered what all the fuss was about. An old panhandler came waddling down the street and Bryan caught him by the arm.
"Big doings, Mike?"
"My foot!" the old man wheezed. "Bunch of ninnies in there claim to've got the clap from the slant eyes. Never seen them before 'n don't know where they came from. But they dragged the chink cookies up to the second floor and God knows what
they're doin' to them--me, I got out of there fast."
There was a shattering crash as a second-floor window was burst out by a rifle butt. Bryan's eyes widened. "That's an army gun--what the hell's going on here?"
He started to run to the saloon. Before he reached the door, he saw two Flower Drum Song girls at the broken window, screaming for someone to save them from the mad-men. Then they were yanked backwards by some men up there whom Bryan could hear swearing but couldn't see.
Swearing himself, he yanked at the door and found it locked, as if the girls' nabbers were trying to keep them from escaping. Bryan pounded and pounded, but nobody let him in. He raced around to the side of the building. There were two ground- floor windows there, but they were above his head and moreover barred against thieves and marauders, and he couldn't get in that way either.
Just then he heard an internal rumble and saw the window suddenly illuminated with an orange glow. He scrambled atop a packing crate and peered in. At first it was like looking at a still photograph. The barkeep was being held behind the bar at gunpoint and the two hundred or so prospectors packing the place stood motionless.
"Good God!" Bryan gasped.
Some idiot had thrown a couple of kerosene lamps at the front door and side wall. Tongues of flame were eating at the rickety wooden frame as though it were paper.
The photo came to life all at once. In a wild surge half of the men started charging the wall of flame and the front door. In their panic they didn't allow the lead men time to unbar the door and pull
it inward. Like stampeding cattle they clawed and kicked and piled one onto the other. The same was true of those trying to clamber up the stairs.
Bryan pounded and pulled at the barred window, desperately trying to make an escape route for some of the men.
The building was so combustible that the fire raced back across the ceiling unchecked.
There was an explosion, then another. The overheated lamps were bursting and spewing down liquid flame. Bryan was thrown from the crate, hard. When his breath returned he looked up and saw that the flames had eaten out the wall and were licking across the shingled roof.
He got up heavily and lurched around to the street. He saw that the front door was still tightly closed. The street was beginning to fill with people, hunched over against the rapidly rising wind, as they ran toward the scene, speechless.
"Get axes!" Bryan called. "Get a bucket brigade going!"
It was like getting snowmen to come to life and move.
Windows crashed out all along the second floor. Great-thewed men, bulky of trunk and wide of shoulder, pushed back the screaming little Chinese women and jumped to their own safety.
"The back!" Bryan shouted hoarsely. "Go break down the back door for them!"
"It's spreading!" someone shrieked.
It was a call that galvanized them to action. Two doors up the Petropavlovsk Mercantile was broken into for axes, picks and buckets. Fifteen minutes later it was also an inferno.
It was the worst time possible for a fullblown
gale to come sweeping in from the south. It fanned the flames east and west from the blaze, but oddly enough not north, where it dropped massive sprays of salt water on the buildings and tents. Block by block it roared like a famished beast bent on devouring everything in its sight. Marna escaped the Feodorovna restaurant moments before the roof collapsed. Men were unable to fight the fire, because they hardly had the strength to stand up in the gale winds, let alone tote water buckets.
Bryan was suddenly afraid that the whole city was going to burn down or blow away. He fought his way. through the crowds, and against the wind, ran back towards the Imperial Hotel. A cake of ice formed in his belly and cold sweat broke out on his forehead as he came out of the alley.
Flying sparks had ignited the roof of the hotel and the entire top floor was already a torch.
Frantically, he began searching the faces of the people fleeing the hotel. Only one did he recognize.
"Maurice," he called wildly. "Where is the baroness?"
Thick smoke swirled about them so that the man coughed convulsively. "Bank," he gasped. "I think."
Bryan fought his way back along the same route he had just come. Fear crawled agonizingly along his nerves. The bank lay a block east of the saloon and surely was gutted by now as well. Smoke tears stung at his eyelids, and the inside of his throat was burned raw with the harsh, lung-stinging fumes.
The front wall of the Pioneer Mercantile crashed down into the street just after he passed by. The "Lucky Swedes" were having another stroke of bad luck.
But, amazingly, Front Street was still free of any
sign of fire. Bryan burst into Irina's bank, but the lobby floor was deserted. Three at a time he bounded up to the lookout room. Several men, including Jafet Lindeberg, stood silently, their faces grim masks in the lantern light. One man sat moodily staring down at McKenzie's bank, while across the room Irina stared out the opposite window.'
When she turned at last her face was black, except for the white streaks of her tears through the soot.
"Are you all right?" he cried, running to her.
She took his arm and turned him to the window. "I was, until I looked out on that," she said sadly. "That made me cry. We could have rebuilt from the fire, but the storm . . . Her voice caught on a sob.
By the glow of the fire ravaging the city, she could see Bryan's face working. He opened his mouth to comment, but for the life of him he could not speak.
The equinoctial storm was wreaking horrendous damage. Men and tents were being blown from the beach like strengthless little black ants. The ever- increasing waves were swallowing up mining equipment and supplies as though they were models made of balsam wood. Out in the roadstead they could just barely make out a ship being ripped apart.
"Damn!" Bryan croaked. "Those waves--we've got to get out of here--they're going to wash away this whole damn street if they get higher."
A shout from the other window washed away the thought for the moment.
"We've got him," a lookout yelled. "He just came out with a heavy bag!"
They were talking about McKenzie. Right or wrong, whether they could ever prove it or not,
there was no question in the minds of the men in Irina's bank but that McKenzie's forces had created the disturbance and started the fire in the saloon.
Mindless of the storm six men trooped down the stairs, grabbing their rifles and drawing pistols as they went. Only Bryan, Lindblom and Irina remained in the room to view the scene from the window.
McKenzie took the time to turn and lock his bank's door before taking up a large gold-filled sack and turning back to the street.
The wind had muffled the approach of the six men. McKenzie's face went ashen, his jaw slowly dropping. No one spoke, no one needed to speak. The aimed rifles and pistols did all the talking. Like a puppet, McKenzie jerked about, nervously unlocked the bank door and scurried inside.
"He'll try again," Bryan muttered. "As long as this storm lasts he'll be looking for another opportunity to get away."
"Then we'll outlast him," Lindblom declared.
Bryan's previous thought came surging back. "If the waves don't take this building away first."
Irina, back at the rear window now suddenly cried out, "Bryan! The hotel is gone. And so are my stores and restaurant!"
Bryan ran to look. Irina's hand was tense and frightened on his arm.
"Bryan," she cried, "what of Marna? Have you seen her? Have you heard anything? Oh, how selfish of me not to have thought about her before this!"
"Don't worry. She's smart enough to take care of herself."
Irina stared back at him, as if she didn't hear
¥ 
him. Fine traces of sweat were making the soot run from her forehead.
"I know where she is," she whispered. "She would have gone to my old house to take refuge with the Chinese women. Take me there, Bryan! Please take me there! The house would be out of the path of the fire!"
Bryan nodded. "Let's go," he said, and took her by the arm, praying for her sake that Marna had indeed gone there.
Because of the fires hissing all about and the storm hurling blazing bits of wood in their path, it took them nearly an hour to reach the house. Every few seconds they had to turn away to catch their breaths so that they could plunge on a few more feet.
They were drenched and mind-battered by the time they were close enough to see that the house was still standing. But it was standing totally dark.
"I don't understand it," Irina cried into the wind. "Where are they? Those girls should have been back here from the saloon hours ago."
Bryan, who had kept from Irina alone what he he knew of the Chinese girls' probable fate, said nothing. He would have a hard time keeping Irina calm if something had happened to Marna.
The house was dry and still and smelled of incense. Just when Bryan feared it was deserted the kitchen door flew open and light poured down the hall.
Marna came before the light, quivering. She stood there holding a candle in her hand without saying a word, and slow tears crept down from the corner of her eyelids. Then she slowly put the candle "on a side-table and opened her arms.
"Little one," she whimpered, "I feared you'd perished in the .hotel."
Irina went to her at once, soothing her and comforting her.
Bryan, watching them, was deeply moved. He was seeing a new facet of Irina's character in her genuine concern for another human being. He couldn't recall her ever touching her own daughter Milla so tenderly as she was her Russian servant. And he had long since become aware that the warmth she had showed him was well calculated, something she could put on or take off at will. But this, this was different; he was seeing her, for the moment, with her mask gone and radiant with feeling.
"Rice," Marna cried through happy tears. "The only thing I can find to cook in that Chinese kitchen is rice."
Irina began to giggle and then to laugh. "I don't think they would mind your cooking it, my dear old friend. I don't think they would mind at all."
I don't think so either, Bryan thought gloomily.
The gale raged unceasingly for three days. As Bryan had feared the beach, side of Front Street was completely swept away. Nothing was left standing but Irina's cemented-in bank vault. It was hard to imagine that a few days before the beach had born traces of 8,000 diggers who had used their claim sites as tent sites. Tents and mining equipment both had vanished. In the roadstead, three ships had been ripped and torn into unrecognizable piles of metal and wood that mysteriously refused to sink below the water's surface.
The storm and fire took countless lives, although
the true number could not be determined. The winter exodus had already begun and people just didn't keep that much track of each other in a place like Nome.
It was estimated, however, that over two hundred charred bodies, some of them dismembered, lay piled like cordwood inside the saloon. It was hard and cruel news for Irina to swallow. She was determined to send Marna back to Sitka on the next boat leaving.
"And you are going too!" Bryan insisted.
"No," Irina murmured blankly. "As soon as I can get into the safe, I have depositors to pay off. They'll need their money to start rebuilding."
"Which means you're going to start rebuilding here too?" he demanded.
"Not here," she answered weakly, "not here. But I must do what I must do here first."
Yet she might have been spared the hardest and cruelest blow of all had Bryan been able to talk her into leaving at once.
McKenzie had lost nothing, because he had nothing to lose in the first place. It could never be proven that he had been responsible for the catastrophe; only he knew that. He had not, of course, commanded the gale to come up, but since it had, it had--there was no point in fretting about it. His own holdings remained secure. But the baroness, as McKenzie saw it, was ruined, and so were the Swedes ruined--in more ways than one. The city dwindled to a winter size that his soldiers could easily control. And now he gave it out that Jafet Lindeberg--who had disappeared and whom.the other two Swedes quickly closed ranks to maintain had been killed in the fire--was actually not only
alive but the real, frustration maddened culprit himself, a lunatic who had burned the city down after Judge Noyes had delivered a decision against him.
McKenzie had Noyes draw up a warrant for Jafet and instituted a dragnet search for Aim. He was right about one thing. Jafet was alive. Fleeing in terror from the fire, he had made his way out to Anvil Creek. He would have returned almost immediately if word hadn't reached him of McKenzie's warrant. As it was, he remained in hiding for a week, then cautiously, in the dead of night, slipped into Nome and went to Irina's house for aid. 
Irina was overjoyed to see him. She had plans to help him and Marna as well. £he hid him overnight, then revealed those plans in the morning. "Jafet, your life is in danger if you stay here," she told him. "I want you to escort Marna to Sitka for me. I have a disguise ready for you, one of Mama's old dresses. There's a ship sailing today. You must act quickly!"
Jafet stammered and hung his head. He was innocent of McKenzie's charge. He was ashamed and was sure he would feel ridiculous running from Nome dressed as an old woman. But he felt he had no choice in the matter; McKenzie's soldiers were everywhere and he had no more chance in Nome than a handful of snow did in summer.
"I am truly grateful, baroness," he said in his mortification. "I will dress immediately. Thank you."
Bryan came by while poor Jafet was wrapping a babuska around his head. Irina had rubbed rouge on his face and applied mascara to his eyes so that Bryan hardly recognized him. When he did, he did not smile in derision, as Jafet had feared. "It's going to work, Jafet," he said, nodding. "It's perfect."
Jafet grinned in relief, and this time he meant it.
For Irina and Bryan too, Jafet's hasty departure with Marna scarcely relieved the day's trials. The two had been gone for less than an hour when Bryan looked out the window and saw Judge Noyes coming up the path.
"What's he want, I wonder," Bryan said nervously. "Hasn't the bastard caused enough damage as it is?"
A few minutes later, he was shouting out his anger directly at the judge, who'd come to perpetrate his most unseemly outrage to date.
"Damn your black soul to hell!" Bryan yelled. "Noyes, what kind of lying infamy is this?"
Noyes looked at Bryan coldly through his pincenez, his quivering upper lip alone betraying his affront at the savage attack made on his honor. "Watch yourself, Mathews," he snapped, "or I'll hold you in contempt. Our investigation on this fire has been thorough. The Golden Nugget saloon was a fire-trap with less than adequate escape routes. We have witnesses to prove that the barkeep, in the employ of the baroness, ordered the front door barred, creating hazardous conditions and leading to the deaths that followed."
Bryan clenched his teeth. "Noyes, get out of here before I break your goddam neck."
"You make it sound as though I personally barred the door," Irina said promptly, looking to fight the judge on legal grounds.
Noyes eyed her complacently. "In my court it amounts to the same thing. I hold you responsible for over $700,000 in property damage and liable to the miners' next of kin in any and all of their civil suits. Further, I am holding you on a second
degree murder charge. It is a clear case of negligent homicide. Will you come quietly?"
"Murder?" Irina gasped. 
"Why, you fucking little pipsqueak!" Bryan screamed. "You can't arrest us. You're not the law --you're shit!"
"That does it!" Noyes screeched. "I'll have the soldiers here in five minutes to arrest the two of you!"
Bryan snorted derisively. "To place us in what jail? McKenzie burned the jail down too, and you damn well know it!"
Noyes faltered. "Then consider yourself under house arrest. I'll have soldiers guarding the trails and checking each longboat going out to the ships. I am sick and tired of scum like you who think they are greater than the law!"
The remark, coming so incongruously from the crooked judge, stunned Bryan and Irina into total silence as Noyes stalked from the room and the house.
Had they not been so far removed from the civilized world they might have laughed at the insanity of it all. But they were 7,000 miles from any U. S. site where they could expect rational order to reign. With a kind of mad vindictiveness sitting on the throne of justice, theirs was a sober predicament indeed.
"What are we going to do?" Irina said quietly.
"I don't know. I'm stumped," Bryan said.
"So am I."
Could they count on Noyes and McKenzie being unable to find a jury of twelve men who could be bought? No. McKenzie now had all the claims in his pocket. Prospectors had to come to him for
work. A juryman might say anything for a winter job ... or even for a few nuggets of gold.
From far off came the blast of the Helena's departing whistle. At least Mama is off safely, Irina thought, her mind off on an oblique tangent. The blast was answered by another. 
"What is that?" she asked dully.
"Ship coming in," Bryan answered, just as dully. "Little good it will do us, though."
Bryan's despair was misplaced.
William Morrow had been a young lawyer when the gold boom had hit California in 1849. He had seen men lie, cheat and murder for gold. After issuing his writ, he had continued to feel troubled about the story William Detson had told him. Alaska was a world away from San Francisco. It might take uncounted months before he learned whether or not his writ had been heeded. He suspected that it might not be, and his indignation had grown along with suspicions. Then he had acted with a suddenness uncommon for the courts.
Thus, from the incoming Oakland, two men rowed ashore--attired no differently from the 25,000 gold seekers who had arrived before them. Quietly asking questions, they wove their way to the dining room of the Golden Gate Hotel. Timidly, hats in hand, they approached the enormous man savagely attacking a 20-ounce porterhouse steak. 
"Excuse me," the taller of the two said hesitantly, "but might we be addressing Alexander McKenzie?"
McKenzie grunted and kept stuffing his mouth full of medium-rare beef.
"I hate to bother you, sir," the man went on.
"I'm Luke Fortney of Bismarck, and this is my cousin Lenny Fawn of Fargo. We're both from North Dakota. Well, we heard back home you was workin' some mines up here and might be in need of some boys such as we. My paw voted you in as sheriff twelve times, as he recollects."
"Home boys?" McKenzie beamed. "Nice to know you, I'm sure. Sit! Sit! Henry, bring these good North Dakota lads a couple of steaks and steins of beer. Yes, never let it be said that old Alex McKenzie don't have work for the. boys of the men who kept him in office for so long. Got experience? Don't matter! Ain't ever seen a North Dakota boy yet that wouldn't follow my wishes to the letter of the law. I'll start you tomorrow. Fifty dollars a day and room and board." He winked. "Ain't ever heard of wages like that in North Dakota, have you?"
The taller man whistled, and clucked his teeth. "You must be working some mighty rich veins."
McKenzie's chest expanded proudly. "Boys, I've banked a half million from those mines and it's only the beginning. I'm going to work them until they squeal that there ain't no more."
The shorter man rose slowly, taking a paper from his pocket.
"That's all we needed to hear, sir," he said quietly, the North Dakota accent suddenly missing. "This is a warrant for your arrest for contempt of a federal writ. Hate to ruin your meal, but I think we'd best go along to your bank to examine the gold you claim is there."
McKenzie turned red. "You can't do this! Do you realize who I am?"
"If we didn't," the tall federal marshal said laconically, "we'd sure be learning fast."
"I refuse to go anywhere until I consult with Judge Noyes."
Marshal Fawn chuckled. "He may not wish to consult with you, after he sees the warrants we have for him."
McKenzie rose, highly indignant. Marched from the hotel and through the streets, he kept searching for a soldier to order the two men's arrests.
There was not a single soldier in sight. Luke Fortney and Lenny Fawn knew that there wouldn't be. While rounding up information on McKenzie they had dropped off an order with the local commander which placed authority with regard to McKenzie in their hands. The intimidated lieutenant, believing that the last days of the dictator were at hand, had confined all the soldiers to their quarters for the night.
The two marshals and McKenzie reached the latter's bank.
"Now for the keys," Marshal Fortney said politely. He held out his hand for them.
McKenzie smiled a slow, quiet smile.
"The Attorney General is a personal friend of mine," he said. "He is always looking for smart young marshals for his Washington team."
"We like our work fine where we are, sir."
"But why? Don't you need extra money the higher position would pay?"
"Terribly," Fawn said heavily. "But not that much. Not enough to be accused of taking your bribe, Mr. McKenzie."
McKenzie sighed. He hated dealing with honest men. It always made things so difficult.
"No harm in trying, is there?" *
Fortney shook his head. "We won't hold it
against you. But now for the keys to the vault, sir."
"I do not have them," McKenzie said evenly. "They are in the possession of my bank manager."
"And where might we find him?" Fawn said.
"He has gone to St. Michael on vacation. Or he is anywhere else you choose him to be." McKenzie smiled evilly.
Fortney yawned. He and his partnered been ordered to treat McKenzie as a gentleman with powerful connections, not as a common criminal. But, in his naive stalling, he was acting very much like a common criminal. "I'm afraid we'll have to break the door in, sir," he said.
He might have done so at that moment had not the trio's entry into the bank been observed by Erik Lindblom. Lindblom, whose fortune had been locked up by McKenzie and who had been keeping an eye on the bank from across the street, mistook the marshals for hold-up men. Immediately, he had had Bryan Mathews sent for, for support both physical and moral.
Bryan arrived and he and Lindblom entered the bank and came upon the scene at the vault just as Fortney was losing patience with McKenzie's stalling tactics.
"Stand to one side, sir," the marshal said to McKenzie, and he took out his gun for a shot at the lock.
"Hold it!" Bryan said sharply.
Fortney spun around with his gun.
Bryan said quickly, "There's no shooting necessary. I don't care how much you take from this son of a bitch. But there's money in here that doesn't belong to him. . . ."
Fortney sighed and lowered his gun. "We're federal marshals," he said. "Who are you?"
Bryan studied the man. He wasn't sure if he believed him or not. He looked more like a miner than a law man.
"Bryan Mathews," he answered simply, not wishing to get too involved in any case.
"Of Mathews-Hummell Mining Company?"
Bryan nodded.
"And does this gentleman with you represent either the Pioneer or Wild Goose companies?"
"I own both. I am Erik Lindblom," Lindblom stormed. "I demand to know what all this is about."
"Take it easy, Mr. Lindblom. Would you and Mr. Mathews care to assist us in breaking open this safe?"
Bryan studied Fortney suspiciously. He still didn't trust the man, as he trusted no man he did not know whom he saw in McKenzie's presence. He thought this invitation might be a trap set by McKenzie to blacken their names even further.
"No," he said heavily. "We cannot assist you in a burglary, even for our own gold, until we have proof that you are federal marshals and you have the right to open that safe."
Fortney grinned broadly. Here was a sane voice, at last.
"Mr. Mathews, I am Luke Fortney and this is my partner Lenny Fawn. Here are our papers and our orders from Judge Morrow. We are here, in effect, in response to a plea made by a Mr. William Detson."
"I see," Bryan said slowly, handing back the papers. All seemed in order, but he still held one doubt in his mind. "What happens to the gold?"
"One of two things, Mr. Mathews. If there's no record in the safe of the amounts taken from each mine, then it is to be returned to the proper owners in accordance with the ratio that Mr. Detson stipulated in his appeal."
"No!" McKenzie cried.
His howl of anguish was echoed by Erik Lindblom, but for a different reason. "No!" Lindblom declared, his familiar greed rising. "I don't want just a percentage--who knows what McKenzie has already spent? I want every last ounce that was taken from my claims."
"What about Jafet Lindeberg?" Fawn demanded.
Lindblom hesitated. "What about him?"
"Is Lindeberg here?"
"He has left Nome," Bryan answered honestly.
"He is entitled to his share, Mr. Lindblom, whatever the amount turns out to be. We will find a trustee and receiver for his gold and claims until he returns."
Lindblom fumed. He had seen this as his opportunity to get his hands on Jafet's Discovery claim, but he saw now that he was beaten.
Suddenly, McKenzie saw that he too was beaten. There was no way he could cajole, argue or buy the marshals out of what they intended to do with the contents of his safe. "There's $600,000 in there," he growled, "but I still can't open it. You need two keys and one was stolen during the fire. I don't have the replacement yet."
Bryan had started to grin at the mention of the $600,000 sum. "Put away the pop gun, marshal-- you'd be at it all day with that. I'll get some dynamite," he said.
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Despite the deterioration of McKenzie's finances and power, indeed despite the mogul's arrest for fraud, embezzlement and being in contempt of court, Judge Noyes' authority in the "negligent homicide" case against Irina remained unimpeached. This was technically a different issue from the one Judge Morrow had enjoined him from handling, and he was determined to hang the Russian baroness with it. The arrest of McKenzie left him unperturbed. He was confident that McKenzie's muscle in Washington would eventually see to the overturning of Morrow's orders.
Meanwhile, Noyes worked in cahoots with District Attorney Joe Wood, another loyal hireling of the deposed financier who trusted that one day soon his weekly kickback stipend would be restored. Wood agreed with Noyes that Irina would be an easy target to go after. He made sure that everyone in Nome knew that a speedy trial date had been set.
As that date approached, Bryan worried more and more about Wood's involvement in the case. The man was a buzzsaw of activity. "There are prospectors in this town who will jump through a hoop for Wood, as prosecution witnesses, jurors, you name it," he told Irina on the morning of the trial. "He's got a rumor started that you stole the gold of your dead depositors, banked it in your own name. You were never a very popular woman to begin with, you know."
Irina's face darkened. "I steal nothing from the dead," she said haughtily. Then, fixing a new fur hat on her head, her eyes softened bemusedly. "Aren't you going to escort me to court?" she asked
Bryan. "I think Lawrence Smith's defense will surprise even you!"
As the case opened, Bryan truly was surprised.
Noyes had fully expected Smith to raise challenge after challenge to the prospective jurors. At Irina's suggestion he raised none; the first twelve veniremen called up he let be sworn in without an objection. Wood was more than satisfied. He felt these twelve men, disaster impoverished prospectors all of them, could be reached with bribes if need be. Noyes, on his part, was happy with the speed of the jury selection; he wanted the trial over by noon and Irina's assets confiscated by nightfall. He had no doubt that the witnesses to be produced would be utterly damaging to the defendant's case, for he had thoroughly rehearsed each of them.
But Lawrence Smith proved why he would someday become a powerful U.S. senator. His cross examination of the court's witnesses was biting, brittle and unnerving.
"Now, Mr. Ledbetter," he inquired of one, "you claim you saw the barkeep of the Golden Nugget bar the front door of that saloon on the night in question?"
"Yep!"
Smith pursed his lips. "Ate you acquainted, Mr. Ledbetter, with Jackson Pike, better known as 'Smiling Jack' Pike?"
"Yep!"
"Was he with you that night?" ' "Nope!"
Smith smiled wickedly. "Might I remind you that you are under oath, Mr. Ledbetter? I can produce evidence that you were with 'Smiling Jack' that night and not in the Golden Nugget!"
Wood jumped to his feet. "Objection, Your Honor. He is badgering the witness with undisclosed evidence."
"Objection sustained," Noyes snapped.
"No more questions of this witness," Smith barked, as though furious at being squelched.
"Do you have such evidence?" Irina whispered to him when he returned to their table.
"No, but they are afraid I might. Ledbetter and Pike shared a claim and were never out of each other's sight. That's pretty well established. Pike went back to Dawson after the fire, but the jury has to be wondering if I've been able to contact him."
Smith was not successful with every witness, but did well enough to cast a growing doubt on Wood's case. Noyes could see he was slowly losing ground in his aim to make Irina fully responsible for the damages resulting from the fire. Despite his sustaining of Wood's many objections, Smith kept throwing the storm up to the witnesses and they had to admit it was a major contributing factor. But then Wood subtly brought into testimony what he considered would be the crusher for winning his case.
Smith sat stoically silent until given his opportunity to cross-examine. The witness on the stand was one Abe Burns.
"So, Mr. Burns," Smith mused, "You are the partner of one Joseph Cantwell, and you have testified that all the gold from the claim the two of you share was banked in Mr. Cantwell's name."
"Correct," the man chuckled. "As I said, I ain't never learned to read and write. Ole Joe took care of that for both of us."
"Let the court understand that we are not questioning
this claim partnership, for it is a matter of record. However, Mr. Burns, in the summer of 1889, when this town organized a government and held elections, were you not allowed to vote by making no more than an X?"
"I was."
"Objection. I fail to see the relevancy of this line of questioning, Your Honor," Wood declared.
"I quite agree, Mr. District Attorney." Noyes frowned. "Make your point, Mr. Smith, if you are able."
"Quite able, Your Honor," Smith grinned. "Mr. Burns and every other miner in this room won that election for their slate of candidates. They got themselves their own mayor, city councilmen, treasurer and municipal judge--although he ain't had much work to do since we got ourselves a federal court in town. You've kind of put the poor fellow to sleep, Your Honor."
It was the first laugh produced in the otherwise dull morning session and the miners began to warm to Lawrence Smith. Noyes rapped the court back into order. Smith was dragging the session out longer than he wished.
"Mr. Smith," he snarled, "one more out-of-the- way comment like that and I will hold you in contempt."
"Hold me in contempt?" Smith flared. "Sir, if you were not so vacillating, partial, negligent and absolutely incompetent, you would see that I am sincerely fighting back against the most treacherous attack ever made on American jurisprudence!"
Noyes pounded his gavel in fury. "I find you in contempt of this court and fine you $5,000!"
"Shut up, you old windbag!" someone shouted.
"We want to hear the rest of what he has to say!"
"Clear the court!" Noyes screamed. "Clear the court, at once!"
The stationed soldiers did not move. Noyes' continued pounding of the gavel brought on only more hoots and jeers. But when Smith raised his arms over his head calm returned almost instantly. Turning to the witness, Smith went right on, with or without Noyes' approval.
"The point I was making with you, Mr. Burns, relates to your having openly accused the defendant of stealing the deposit made on your behalf by the late Joseph Cantwell. This, in turn, relates to the prosecution's charge that she--ahem--murdered men in her saloon so that she would have their deposits to steal. Well and good. But, as later testimony will prove, you never once approached the defendant or the local authorities to prove your claim to the money. Surely this is due to simple ignorance, sir--as evidenced by your admitted inability to read or write. But you are not alone in this regard. I have here a list of other so-called defrauded prospectors who, like you, never tried to prove their claims nor took any action whatsoever on their own behalfs. I submit to the court that, as I can prove, none of these men are literate and none are in a position to know whether they have legitimate claims or not!" 
There were murmurs of surprise and grumbles of disenchantment throughout the courtroom.
"Isn't it odd," Smith went on sarcastically, "that it is rumor alone that has branded my client a murderess and rumor alone that ascribes a motive to her for the alleged murders? I, for one, am curious as to who originated and/or fed these rumors." He
looked pointedly at Judge Noyes. "Your Honor, I move for a mistrial!"
"Motion denied!"
"Why fer denied? You ain't got a leg to stand on, jedge," someone shouted from the rear, and there were whistles and cheers of agreement.
"I have no further witnesses," Wood declared quickly.
"Mr. Smith, you may call your witnesses!"
The vigorous support in the courtroom for a declaration of a mistrial subsided, to be replaced by a ripple of excitement and anticipation. At last those in attendance would get to see and hear the baroness at close hand. For the majority she was just a name or a figure seen at a distance.
Lawrence Smith stood for a long moment. He had a very long list of witnesses he could call aside from the baroness, but with the clock standing at one minute to twelve, he did not trust what Noyes and Wood might be able to put together during a noon recess with the jurors. At the risk of changing the courtroom tenor by disappointing those who wanted more of a show, he decided to call matters to a halt.
"I have no witnesses, Your Honor. I rest my case without a closing argument."
As expecting, there was a rumble of displeasure. What was a show without the star appearing on stage?
Noyes and Wood were momentarily at a nonplus. Noyes knew that the crowd's displeasure could easily turn against him if he let matters stand the way they were. He decided not to call a noon recess. Frantically he motioned for Wood to make his own closing argument, short and to the point. 
But the district attorney grew nervous and stumbled over his words when the jurors as well as the onlookers started whispering amongst themselves. Were they chagrined at Smith's refusing them the baroness--or had they bought his aplomb? Wood couldn't tell.
Noyes felt he was losing the jury and was enraged at Wood's bumbling. However, with a few drinks and a good lunch under their belts, he was sure he could bring the jurors into line. He waited impatiently for Wood to finish.
"The jury is excused for deliberations and the rest of the court will take a noon recess," he said.
To Noyes' dismay, the jury foreman rose, a slow grin lighting his eyes.
"No need for that, judge," he said cheerfully. "We've already decided that we can't decide."
"Damn!" Smith muttered. "A hung jury."
But Noyes was upset too. "I'd hoped for better," he said ambiguously. "I suppose I have no recourse but to dismiss you. Very well, then. The defendant need not think this decision will work in her behalf. This case is held over until nine a.m. three days hence when a new jury will be selected. Court is adjourned!"
He was out of the room before the jury could move.
"Preposterous little man," Irina said narrowly. "Lawrence, does this really mean we have to go through it all again?"
"I'm afraid it does," Smith said dejectedly. "I gambled and didn't win. Looks like the jury wanted to hear you much more than I thought they did. I see their no-decision as practically a demand for your appearance. You might have to sing and dance
for them. I don't know." He was being facetious out of sheer weariness. "At least, he gave me time to rethink things."
Irina sat glaring. She might have agreed to testify in three days under other conditions, bin she certainly wasn't going to just to give illiterate gawkers a good show. Her pride wouldn't let her--she wasn't a sideshow spectacle at the command of peasants! She rose and left the room, haughty and elegant. She didn't wait for Smith; her faith in him had diminished considerably, was, in fact, at an ebb. "She now saw a further ploy of his as useless. The fact was that she had been in possession of the deceased prospector's deposits, an amount close to $100,000 overall. But, on Smith's view that it was contested money, she had consigned it all to Bob Hampden, the city's treasurer. What good had that done her? He hadn't presented it as evidence of good faith on her part. It hadn't helped' her go free. She had half a mind to go to Hampden and demand the money back. Instead, she went home. In anger, she had made a real decision, one that she would act on. She would pack up, get out of Nome and never come back. She would go to Sitka and stay with her daughter--yes, that's right, she thought-- and she would take Bryan Mathews with her. 
And that is exactly what Irina did. Once she had made up her mind, there was no stopping her and, Bryan soon discovered, no looking back. She refused to discuss the trial with him., To get out of Nome fast, she decided, they'd go the P&M overland route, through Umalti's village to Valdez, and all she would talk about were the preparations she needed to make for it. 
And yet, for all her preparations and all her strength, the trip to Valdez was almost unbearably hard for Irina. On it, she came to understand why this vast, icy land in the heart of Alaska was fit only for white savages--like Bryan at his worst-- and Indians. She refused to sleep in most of the Eskimo villages they passed, preferring a cold tent on the open plain to what she saw as the common filth of their huts. As a consequence, she felt, many a night, as if she would freeze to death. But her greatest displeasure and greatest fear came while she and Bryan stayed in Umalti's village. She could read Oomua's lusty eyes like an open book. She found the attention the squaw paid Bryan almost impossible to stomach, not because she was jealous but because she didn't want Milla's future groom to be tainted with the kind of disgusting diseases these savages spread.
Then, the day of their departure, Oomua brought and proudly displayed to Irina something as bad if not worse than a disease. It was a three-months- old baby. It didn't take a seer to tell whose child it was.
"Man child by man-god," Oomua announced proudly.
Irina was speechless with indignation. At her side, Bryan remained calm, almost preoccupied.
She turned on him. "Do you acknowledge this child?" she demanded.
Bryan shrugged. "I would if I had to, but I don't. Umalti thinks it is the doing of Raven-Man."
Irina's temper flared.
"He may think that today, but what of tomorrow or the next day? I will not have him coming to *me someday and trying to give that baby a rightful
place alongside my grandchildren. You will deny that it's yours right now!"
Again, Bryan shrugged. It mattered little to him. He thought Irina was making a big fuss over nothing. He turned to Umalti and spoke in argot so Irina couldn't understand.
"I give the child to you to raise as a son."
Umalti kept his face as passive as ever and nodded. He must not show on his face the joy Camp Robber's words had stirred in his heart. To indicate to his people that he had been blessed with the responsibility of raising a god-child he took the baby from Oomua and went to show it to them.
"What's that all about?" Irina demanded.
Bryan laughed. "You got your way, that's all. Umalti is telling everyone it is his son."
After thought, Irina decided to accept Bryan's account of the matter as true, but she also resolved then and there to dissolve the trade route after that winter's operation. She wanted Bryan divorced from this tribe completely. There was no place in her plans for its mythological hogwash or for a half- Eskimo bastard son.
"Softly, my darling daughter. In the first place, I didn't ruin Bryan Mathews--I've remade him into something quite acceptable."
"In your eyes," Milla said bitingly, "but not quite in mine."
The two were having tea in the living room of the Feodorovna house in Sitka, where Milla had been abiding and at which Irina, with Bryan, had arrived only the day before. Almost immediately, their ancient battle had been renewed.
"That hardly matters," Irina went on blithely.
"Who else would you marry at this point? There is no one else." She cast her eyes about the room. Milla had had the whole house renovated with money she had sent her so that it once more looked like the Tsar's "little palace." The furnishings in the living room were magnificent. "Look at the wonderful things you've done here," Irina said approvingly. "Well, I've done the same thing with Bryan Mathews. I've taken a commoner from the steppes, so to speak, and given him regal attributes. He is not perfect, God knows, but he will do."
Milla said, with a kind of dark bitterness, "He once asked me how one went about becoming a grand duke."
"Quite so," Irina exclaimed broadly. "That proves my point. He wants to do better, don't you see? That is a start. I intend to make the two of you--" 
"Fools," Milla finished for her. "Just two unloving fools, like you and father."
"I hardly see the comparison!"
Milla sighed.
"Did you ask Bryan if he loved me, mother? Did you ask me if I loved Bryan? Ah, mother, I'm so mixed up. There was a time I wanted him to be a grand duke, or thought I did. But there was also a time when I would have married him even if he were a penniless prospector. But, mother, you don't know him as I do. He's an animal, especially around Eskimo women."
An image of Bryan and Oomua together flashed through Irina's mind and brought her close to the boiling point. He had mounted that dirty cow in front of her child's eyes? He had, she was sure of it! She wanted to kill Bryan at that moment. She had to fight to control herself. "I see," she said
heavily. Then she thought some more. Nothing--not Oomua, Bryan or Milla--would she allow to stand in the way of her master plan.
"Animals," she finally continued, "require training by intelligent females. We are such, my dear. We have got to keep Bryan in our camp. Marriage is a way of doing that. Frankly, I couldn't care less about this coolness that has grown between the two of you. I intend to go ahead with the marriage plans with or without your- approval or consent!"
"You needn't beat the subject to death, mother," Milla said quietly. "I'm convinced that you will have your own way."
"Good," Irina said. "I'm glad you've come to your senses. I assure you, you won't regret it."
Milla said nothing.
She's too quiet, Irina thought. What is she planning?
One of Milla's wishes came true; she was married, two weeks later, at St. Michael's Cathedral. The reception party was given at home.
Milla's gaze rested briefly on the face of the man who had just become her husband. Then she looked down the stairway towards the crowd that had been assembled to honor her. The size and racial mixture of the assemblage was only one of many things she did not like about the affair. Russians, Indians, and Americans were present, as selected and invited by the groom and the groom's mother-in-law. No, Milla didn't like it, but she also realized she had no grounds for complaint; she had simply refused to participate in any of the planning. Indeed, her decision to marry at all had been based on one overwhelming desire--to
make Bryan and her mother suffer through her sulky neglect of them both. She would never yield on this desire. In the cathedral, she had made a religious vow to sustain it through all eternity.
She was even a little pleased that Umalti and Oomua had come, all the way from their village. They fed her hatred of the entire proceedings. There was Umalti, dressed in his chief's outfit, shaking hands, smiling like a fool. And there was Oomua, standing next to him but with her almond-shaped sloe eyes cast longingly up at Bryan . . . she despised them, all of them!
Next to her, Bryan felt miserable, sensing the misery in her. "Milla?" he said tentatively, "Would you straighten out this dad-blamed collar for me? Thing got stuck under this cravat or whatever you call it. I just can't seem to--" He stopped as Milla turned a cold shoulder on him. Then he began again. "Damn it, Milla, you're in this as much as I am. We've got a financial union going here, haven't we? What's wrong with that? You agreed to it. You knew the merchandise. The least you can do is--"
Again he stopped. This time Milla was fanning herself with her wedding fan.
"Do you know what I really need?" Bryan said belligerently. "I need a good stiff drink, that's what. I'll see you later--maybe!"
He stalked away and strode down the stairs two at a time. I hope he breaks his neck, Milla thought, watching him go. ...
Of food and drink Irina and Marna had not been stingy. On the long banquet table set up in the living room, Bryan found literally everything in the world to eat, including black Russian caviar,
California crayfish, venison stew prepared deliciously by Marna from caribou meat and scores of other international delicacies. The trouble was he wasn't hungry. He just wished it hadn't happened ¦--any of it. He wished he could wake up tomorrow with Irina not his mother-in-law and Milla not his bride. How had he gotten into this mess? Irina had long since quit sleeping with him. Milla loathed him. And he had become a puppet husband just so he could take over more properties at Juneau and Skagway. What did he need them for? He really didn't understand himself.
Bryan stood near the bottles of champagne and whiskey and proceeded to get drunk. A sea of smiling faces and bright party clothes surged around him. A roar of voices and laughter filled every downstairs room and at the far end of the great hall a string orchestra was playing. That much he kept seeing and hearing even as the alcohol he consumed began to fill him with an inner exaltation that had nothing specifically to do with any of his surroundings. People he didn't know kept coming up to pump his hand and offer congratulations. He kept squinting for Milla, but never saw her once. He was dimly aware of seeing Irina from time to time, but kept losing track of her. Well, it didn't really matter. When Umalti came to him, beaming, and said, "I wish you well, Camp Robber," Bryan, thanking him, began to swell with a kind of drunken arrogance. Camp Robber! In some absurd way, he was Camp Robber. Not the way Umalti meant it. But look at me, he thought with a swagger, I'm the best robber in the camp now, ain't I? I was just a punk kid when I rode with Bill Doolin and all those other fellers, but here I am now, and it's just 
a couple years later, an' I'm a respected leader in this whole thievin' community, including whassername herself; the thievin' Baroness Fee-odorovna. An' I'm married to the most beautiful girl in town --my god, what a piece! An' where in the hell is she when Camp Robber wants her? Nowhere, that's where!
All pumped up that way, Bryan began pushing his way through the crowd looking for Milla. He was not so drunk that he didn't know what he was doing, only high enough to know what he wanted. He would start acting like a real bridegroom. He felt a sudden irresistible impulse to shout out his feelings. He stood in the middle of the foyer and flung his arms wide.
"Anybody seen my bride?"
The American men roared and the women tittered. Bryan weaved his way to the bottom of the staircase.
"Hey, Mrs. Bryan Mathews, come on down here!"
"Here she comes!" someone shouted.
Milla came down the stairs with Irina beside her. The painted smiles on each of their faces suggested they had just had words. Regally Milla approached Bryan. Under duress, she was about to brush past him to join the rest of the party when he swept her off the floor and into his arms and planted a resounding kiss on her mouth. She struggled to free herself, feeling the hot flush that reddened her cheeks. People were watching.
"Bryan please!"
The note of embarrassment in her voice sobered him. He set her on her feet, suddenly aware that he had made a mistake. She was still a lady and he an
Oklahoma farmboy. "I'm . . . I'm sorry," he muttered.
There was an edge to the smile that returned to her face, something bright and dangerous that hadn't. been there before. "At least you know the words," she said. "Don't you think it's high time we left this party?"
He looked at her sharply. "You mean that?"
"She certainly should mean it," Irina said tartly. "After all, it is your wedding night."
"Do you mean that?" Bryan repeated stubbornly to Milla. 
Milla hesitated. "Come on," she said then, and took him by the hand, headed upstairs in a determined way.
Though everyone applauded lustily, their pleasure couldn't be compared to Bryan's sudden surge of anticipation. He was more than eager. Even going upstairs, he fumbled to get his hand beneath her bustle. She did not reprove him. He did not see her quivering with anger at his touch. He felt positively aglow with desire.
In the hall bathroom adjoining their room, Bryan removed his coat, cravat and shirt while Milla was undressing in the bedroom. He pictured her getting out of her clothes. He saw the whiteness of her breasts, imagined her slipping nude between the sheets. But then, possibly because he was still inebriated, his concentration on Milla's imagined face and figure began to waver. Oddly, he found her changing into Irina, a slightly fuller figure, a face of sheer sexual mischief. He took a flask from his coat and took several long swallows, then more swallows. By the time he had emptied the flask and taken off his boots he was beginning to get drunk
again, this time very drunk. He had not realized how much courage he needed to face Milla, with her bristlings about sex. Why couldn't she be like Irina? Irina has accepted the fact that he had slept with Oomua without a big scene.
In her bed, Milla heard him close the bathroom door and start to come her way. She clutched the covers fiercely and closed her eyes. "Give me the strength," she whispered, "to deny him as I have planned."
A chair overturned with a crash in the hall. Drunk, she thought, just as terribly drunk as he had been that night in Umalti's hut, the night he'd spent with that voracious Oomua. She pulled the covers tighter around her. Suddenly, she was afraid she would not be able to control his savage anger after she had denied him. But deny him she would. They, the two of them, they could force her to the altar but they could not force her ever to sleep with him again. Her mother had scoffed when she'd sworn she would deny him, but now, by everything that was holy, that's exactly what she would do!
She heard his footsteps at the bedroom door. She closed her eyes. She heard the door swing open. After several long moments, she opened her eyes. He had not moved. He stood on the threshold, his big frame filling the doorway. He was swaying slightly.
She held his gaze, ready to speak her piece. But then something in his eyes made it unnecessary for her to speak it. She saw doubt in his eyes, and fear. She said nothing. But, I've done it, she cried joyously to herself; I've got him whipped like a dog -- he can't move! 
She was almost right.
To break her fierce gaze Bryan stepped back into the hall and shut the door. He saw the situation as very complicated. He had seen the denial in her eyes and he was too cockeyed drunk now to overcome it. Besides, there was something in his loins making his legs go elsewhere. In his stocking feet he padded down the hall and entered Irina's room. It was deserted. He lay down on Irina's bed and tried to sort out his many mixed emotions. But he was much too sodden in mind to get very far with that, and, much as he tried to stay awake, he found himself drifting off to sleep. . . .
When Bryan awakened, it was to open his eyes on candlelight that seared them like a torch. He shut them tight again. His head was a booming kettledrum and his tongue a slab of dried beef-jerky. He lay still for a few seconds, thankful for the coolness of the silk sheets against his body. Then he was aware of human warmth nearby. He couldn't quite remember, but he thought he must have gained enough courage to go back up the hall and get into Milla's bed. He turned his head. She had her back to him. He took a deep breath.
"If you're not asleep," he said earnestly, "I ... I'm sorry--I didn't mean to get that drunk." She didn't turn. He felt sick and ashamed and angry all at once. "You got to believe me," he said desperately. "I know how I tricked you on the trail. I know you must know what went on in Umalti's hut. I'm sorry. What more can I say?"
She turned then and Bryan's mouth fell open.
"You've said quite enough," Irina said softly.
"Oh, Christ, you!" Bryan moaned. 
Irina, far from angry, spoke sympathetically. "I know how you must feel--rotten because you didn't
get it up with Milla last night. Well, you don't deserve to be told this, but the truth is, Milla planned to deny you, no matter what you did. You would have had to rape her, and a rapist, dear Bryan, is one thing you're not." He looked at her blankly and she smiled. "You don't remember a thing, do you?"
He shook his head.
"Nothing at all?" she prodded.
He dropped his eyes. "I remember standing in Milla's doorway for a moment, but I don't think she said anything."
"Well, I found you asleep on my bed. I had some time dragging those tight pants off your hulky legs." She watched in amusement as Bryan flushed a deep red. "Did we ... ah ... you know, do anything?" he asked.
She frowned. "What do you think?"
"Well, I... hell, I just don't know "
"Of course we did," she snapped. "You enjoyed it and I enjoyed it and that's that." Her face softened. "You were very good, Bryan, as usual. ... But now I want you to forget that you spent the night here, which should be easy for you to do since you don't seem to remember it. Give me time to think out how to handle Milla."
He swore under his breath and then stood up. "I think we should call the whole thing quits. I don't need this marriage--nobody does!"
Irina sighed. "I do." She saw that until Milla accepted the situation it was bound to entail one crisis like this after another. And Milla was acting like a spoiled brat. Slowly, she shook her head.
"The only thing we must call quits is between you and me. We have been too close for too long a time.
That was selfish of me, but I confess I rather enjoyed it. The party is still going on downstairs, as no doubt you can hear. After it's over, I think it best from all our standpoints if you go off with Milla for a while and develop the Skagway claims."
"What do you mean, after the party is over?"
Irina laughed. "This is a Russian wedding, Bryan.
The house will be open to guests for the whole week."
Bryan frowned. "Milla won't go with me," he said.
"She'll go with you," Irina replied. "Do your part to be tender with her and I'll see to the rest."
He left, muttering dark curses.
Irina stood looking at the closed door. She felt sad. Too late she was coming to realize that Bryan meant a good deal more to her than just a business associate and a son-in-law. That's why, when she had found him in her bed, she had aroused him to a fever pitch of lust--whether he chose to remember it or not. It would be the last time she would have such pleasure from him.
That part of him she would just have to forget. She hoped that, during his absence, she would be able to forget it.
Skagway, only a hundred and fifty miles from Sitka, was a raw, rough frontier town just three years old, a place of mucky streets and plank sidewalks. Its floating population of some ten thousand men, mostly transient prospectors on their way to the established gold fields, tended to be herded and fleeced like sheep by a coalition of corrupt government officials and downright hoodlums. Many of these men, who poured out of ships and headed for the Klondike laden with supplies and some money to live on, were actually butchered between the mud flats called Skagway Beach and the summit of White Pass.
One thing Bryan discovered about Skagway was that it was no place for a lady. Shootings were routine, armed robberies on the streets common. After a week he wanted to send Milla back, not doing so only because of Irina's repeated warnings that without her there would be no Skagway fortune for him.
Milla had an initial taste of Skagway when she tried to cross a street.
"Look out, lady!"
Rawhide cracked through the icy afternoon air; a supply wagon behind a team of lazy mules had sunk into mud that never seemed to freeze. As it did, spokes popped from a rear wheel and the axle mired in the ooze.
"Goddamnitohell!" the teamster exploded, standing high on the seat and rearing the whip back in his hand. "You seen what you caused!"
Milla, controlling her temper, stepped back onto the plank sidewalk. In no way, she knew, could she have been responsible for the accident. But such behavior as the teamster's was commonplace in Skagway. She was about to protest it when the teamster cracked his whip again. This time mud splattered up onto Milla's red and green plaid greatcoat from hem to belted waist.
"Oh!" she cried. "You've ruined my coat!"
The teamster couldn't have cared less. He glowered at her as she rubbed frantically with a handkerchief to get some of the mud off before it dried. Five or six grimy miners watching her from in front of Clancy's Corner Saloon hooted at her dainty actions while brassy music blared from the saloon and an Eskimo wearing green trousers and a felt hat stumbled out in a liquor-soaked fog. Milla was not so much mortified as disgusted. To reach the mercantile store she would have to cross in front of these men. She might even have to smell them. As much as she needed the supplies, she decided to turn back to the small house Bryan had purchased for them on the far end of town. *
But as she turned the teamster cracked his whip once more, this time with a vengeance. The whip curled snakelike around her ankles so that she stumbled, tripped and fell with a bone-jarring crash onto the sidewalk.
"If that's your normal position, lady," the teamster jeered, "how 'bout paying me off fer me broken wheel?"
Milla, unhurt but lying there in stunned disbelief, didn't see exactly what happened next. A figure sailed out of the saloon, was onto the wagon in a single bound and caught the teamster's jaw with a flashing uppercut of his fist. The teamster flew from the seat and landed spread-eagled in the street. He was unconscious, knocked out with a single blow. The man who had hit him came running to Milla's side while the watching miners, changing their tune, howled with glee and applauded him on.
Milla was grateful for the hands that helped her to stand. Then she started. She was looking at a most attractive older man. He was at least thirty. Tall and slim, he had, while kneeling at her side, pushed the brim of his Stetson hat high up on his forehead. He had a clear, open face, auburn hair with long sideburns and the keenest grey eyes she had ever seen in her life. He struck her as too sensitive-looking to have packed so much power in one punch. Then she took a look at the broadness of his shoulders on his rangy frame and his hard, muscular forearms, and she changed her mind.
"You-all okay?" the man asked in a soft Southern drawl.
Milla, swept off her feet in more ways than one, could only nod.
The man took his hat from his head and gave her an engaging smile. "I'm Jefferson Randolph," he said. "Might I be of further help to you?"
"Thank you," Milla stammered. "I'm just going home. I think I can walk there myself." Nevertheless she winced, as if her ankle pained her.
"No need for that," Jefferson Randolph drawled, after one quick, shrewd look at what she'd done. "I'd be obliged to escort you."
Milla felt herself growing coy. "It would be of great help, Mr. Randolph, if you would help me to the mercantile store. Some things I've ordered from Sitka have arrived, and I'd rather not pass that saloon while alone." 
"You should have let someone else pick them up for you, ma'am."
There was a note of a fishing expedition in his voice. Milla felt a little remiss in not having made herself known.
"I would have, Mr. Randolph, but what I bought is to be a surprise for my husband. I am Mrs. Bryan Mathews."
Randolph pursed his lips. His charming good looks notwithstanding, he was a hard-headed businessman who had his reasons for knowing everyone else's business in Skagway. He had never met Bryan, because Bryan wasn't frequenting saloons these days, but he was aware that the man was the general manager of The New Russia Mining Company, reported to be one of the richest claims between Juneau and the Klondike. The deceptively genial Randolph had some of the toughest and sharpest henchmen in the territory. None had been able to put a finger on, the amount of gold being taken from the ground by this company.
Randolph grinned disarmingly. "Please don't take offense, Mrs. Mathews, if I say your husband deserves a thrashing for letting you out on these streets."
"Mr. Randolph, please," she pleaded, "Bryan is not aware of my problems here. He has to be at the mine for several days at a time and--"
Milla stopped short. The man was still a total stranger. She shouldn't be telling him so much about herself so quickly.
"Damn!" Randolph muttered. "The man is some kind of a fool to leave such a beautiful woman as you alone in this town."
Milla flushed from the compliment.
"My husband is a very hard worker, sir, and can't be held responsible for his absences. Now, please, with your permission, I would like to go for my parcel."
"On one condition, Mrs. Mathews. Down home only the darkies call me Mister Randolph."
Milla hesitated. "Jefferson, then?"
He shook his head. "Here, everyone knows me as Soapy."
It struck Milla so oddly that she couldn't help but giggle.
Randolph chuckled as he offered his arm. "I know it's a right strange name, ma'am, and someday I'd like the honor of telling you how it came about."
Somehow, some way, before they reached the mercantile store, Soapy Randolph wormed out her first name and began using it as though he had known her for years.
The frontier store was a shambles compared to those Milla had shopped in even in Nome. Articles
. 257
of all sorts lay about in unclassified heaps, or were strewn at random on the floor. As they entered, a large crowd of men was poking through the items, then clambering over piles to pay for them at a wooden counter. The two harried clerks spent as much time keeping an eye out for thieves as taking money from the customers.
Soapy Randolph guided Milla through the maze to the back of the store and a door marked Private, which he opened without hesitation. 
"Sorry, nobody allowed back--" The bald, bespectacled man who looked up from a desk cut himself short. His voice dropped to a whine. "Soapy, I haven't--"
Randolph sharply stopped him. "Forget it, Collins. Got different business for you today."
The man rose quickly from his desk with a series of accommodating nods. Never had Milla seen such fear in a man's eyes. She gave Randolph a quick, nervous look herself.
"This is Mrs. Bryan Mathews and y'all have a parcel for her from Sitka."
"Well, but my clerks handle parcels," Collins began arguing.
The drawl left Randolph's voice as he said evenly, "You own the damn store, Collins. You shouldn't have any trouble finding her parcel."
The man nodded again and departed rapidly.
"You were a little rough on him, weren't you?" Milla whispered.
"Rough?" Randolph seemed to be reflecting on the matter. "Well now, I thought I was being right kind. Do you know that the day I arrived here, some folks were about to lynch a bartender because someone claimed he watered his drinks? That's rough."
Milla's eyes widened. "What happened?"
"Well, I had five men with me. I had them draw their guns and we saved the man from the mob, that's all. Then I told them that as long as Soapy Randolph was in town I wouldn't tolerate any lynchings."
It was stated quite matter of factly, and Milla was duly impressed. - "The bartender must have been very grateful."
"Milla," he chuckled, "It wasn't until later that I learned that he not only did have a habit of watering drinks but that he'd been a leader of several previous lynch mobs himself. He'd hung up six men personally, matter of fact."
"Did he go unpunished?"
"Sure did."
Milla shook her head.
"Little lady, if every man in this town who had killed someone was tried and put away, you and I would be the only ones left standing here."
Milla suddenly had the strangest feeling that only she would be left standing there.
The hard-as-nails southerner who liked to be called Soapy grabbed the parcel from Collins the moment he came through the door, and ushered Milla out without further word to him. Milla was a little reluctant to give Soapy the location of the house, but again she found it almost impossible to keep the information from him or deny him the right to see her safely home.
Though it was no Sitka mansion, Milla had been striving to make the one-bedroom clapboard house livable. The approving look in Soapy's grey eyes alone told her she had succeeded.
"I'm right impressed," he said. "It's not the
plantation home I used to know. But it has a woman's touch. My mother would like it."
They were the very words that Milla needed to hear. Bryan hardly noticed how she'd fixed up the house when he was home, which was as seldom as possible. She had been quite honest when she had told Soapy that Bryan was a hard worker, but had lied about his not having chosen to stay away. In the month since their marriage they had seemed to grow even farther apart. By an unspoken truce the bedroom was Milla's and Milla's alone.
"Now," Soapy said cheerfully, "after hauling that cumbersome package over here, I think I have a right to see what's in it."
Milla frowned. "That's strange. It's just some curtains and drapes that I had Marna--that's our family servant--send. Why it should be so cumbersome I don't know. But," she said on a brighter note, "I'm very glad now that I had you to assist me."
From a scabbard at his belt, Soapy drew out a Bowie knife and slit the cording. Milla folded back the heavy wrapping paper, then couldn't help but squeal out her girlish delight.
"Marna has outdone herself!" she exclaimed. "Just look at these bright and cheery patterns. They will make the whole house look like spring even on the darkest winter day. These will have to be for the bedroom, of course. The green floral pattern for this room and the rose for the sitting parlor. I have only a single window in the kitchen, but that dear has sent me three choices!"
Soapy sat watching her transformation from a severely buttoned-up young woman in a greatcoat to a bubbling, exuberant, absolutely ravishing young girl. He more than watched her; he absorbed her.
Then, as she scooped up the last folds of cloth from the package, he saw why it had bad to be so cumbersome. There was a large framed oil portrait of a woman at the bottom of the box. He watched Milla's expression change as she picked it up and stared at it.
"Is that Marna?" he said quickly.
"Hardly," Milla said stonily, "It's my mother."
Soapy took the portrait from her and held it at arm's length. Not even at home, in his wealthy Virginia surroundings, had he seen such an elegant piece of work. The colors, mostly reds and browns, were deep and richly toned. The flesh color was magnificent, in the style of Rubens. It must have cost the sitter a fortune to have it painted. Irina's chestnut curls had been piled into a high crown to hold aloft a diamond tiara. The red velvet, ermine- trimmed gown was cut daringly low to provide a frame for a diamond and ruby necklace. Over her right shoulder the artist had depicted her Sitka mansion sitting on a hillside, but her eyes looked outward as though she owned all that she would cast her gaze upon.
There was a note inserted in a lower corner of the gold-leaf frame. It read: To Bryan and Milla. So that you don't forget me. Irina.
"How could anyone ever forget her?" Soapy marveled. "She looks like a queen!"
"Not quite," Milla laughed, "but close. She's the Baroness Irina Petropavlovsk Feodorovna."
Soapy nearly dropped the portrait. "Not the gold baroness?" 
Milla frowned. "Is that what people are calling her?"
"And well they might. They say her two mines
at Douglas Island brought out over a million in their first month of operation. Didn't you know?"
A shadow went over Milla's face, then she said, "I don't keep abreast of my mother's business affairs. Here, let me take that." She wanted to change the subject quickly. Soapy, by reminding her of her mother's riches, had made her see something about the gift she had sent. It wasn't meant for her at all. It was meant for Bryan and Bryan alone, a subtle reminder that Irina had all the wealth and thus controlled him. It almost spoke out loud and told Milla that she was little more than a device by which Irina meant to keep Bryan's nose to the grindstone.
She felt simultaneously ashamed and offended. She was ashamed of herself for having suggested to Soapy, even by innuendo, that he might move in on her, so to speak, due to Bryan's lengthy absences. And she was offended at her mother's presumption.
When she thought about it, Milla was rea! proud of Bryan for the work he did. More than half of the gold attributed to Irina's Douglas Island mines actually stemmed from his labor in Skagway. That's where the gold really was. He was mining it and smuggling it to Irina through a network of couriers, including, of all people, Father Nicholas of St. Michael's Cathedral. Once a week, the waterways permitting, Father Nicholas would arrive in Skagway to say mass for her. He would leave with his cassock lining and traveling cases filled with gold for Irina who, not so coincidentally, had become St. Michael's leading patroness. This was a clever ruse to keep the Skagway source of the gold a secret. And it was Bryan who had thought it up, made all the arrangements, taken all the risks--and done all the hard min ing work to boot! Yet it was her mother who still 
. 
The Alaskans
considered herself the boss! Milla seethed with frustration and anger over this unjust state of affairs.
Soapy had been watching her intently, thinking his own thoughts. Why would the daughter of the gold baroness be stuck away in this little house in Skagway? Why would her son-in-law be working a Skagway claim? It didn't seem to be producing much.
"You're suddenly very quiet," he said at last.
Milla started. She had almost forgotten that he was there.
"I'm sorry." She smiled nervously as she fished for words. "I ... I'm still trying to decide on which drape to hang in the kitchen. Which do you think would look best?"
Soapy shrugged. He was not an easy man to lie to. Obviously, a lot more than curtains was on the girl's mind. This might be a fat goose he had here. She wasn't totally stupid so he couldn't shake the feathers loose all at once. But he could pluck them out one at a time. All it took was care, the same sort of care he'd used on shakedown operations throughout Oklahoma and Colorado prior to coming to Alaska with similar aims.
"Well now, I think--" he began, scratching his head.
He didn't finish because the outside door came flying open. "Milla, I--" Bryan stopped in midsentence and stared at the man sitting at the table.
"Oh, Bryan," Milla enthused, jumping into the breech, "Marna sent my package and Mr. Randolph was kind enough to tote it home for me. My husband, Bryan Mathews, sir. Bryan, this is Mr. Jefferson Randolph."
Randolph's surprise was elaborate. He rose and
extended his hand. "People call me Soapy. Bryan, is it?"
Bryan kept staring at the man's face. He was equally surprised, but there was no way he could disguise it as Randolph had. His hand began to shake as he grasped the other's hand.
"Yes," he said nervously. "Bryan. Bryan Mathews."
Soapy nodded thoughtfully. "Haven't we met before?"
Bryan shook his head. He felt sick. He had feared this day since he had left Oklahoma. He had recognized Soapy Randolph at once. How could he forget the man--or any other man who had ridden for a month, a week, even a day with the Doolin gang? This was a man who knew who he was. More than that, he was a clever, dangerous, vicious man, the worst of the breed who'd taken up with Doolin for the occasional bank job that needed coldblooded killers in readiness. Soapy Randolph, never caught, had a record clean as a whistle, but he didn't. Which meant Randolph could set the law on him or shoot him down as bounty, either one, with absolute impunity. 
"Funny, you remind me of a young chap I knew ¦ once," Soapy was saying, "kid called Johnny Cramer ... Well, no matter. Let's not stay strangers. I had the honor of saving your wife from a most troublesome teamster on the street, which was what led to my being here now."
Bryan said nothing.
"Bryan! Aren't you going to thank Mr. Randolph?" Milla demanded.
Still, Bryan said nothing.
Milla wailed, "But the man used a whip and threw me down--I was almost killed!"
Bryan said coldly, "You shouldn't have been on the street alone in the first place."
"Damn you!"
Soapy's shrewd eyes nickered from one to the other, almost with amusement. He liked what he saw--the exploitable hostility between them. "Well," he murmured, "I really must be off."
"Please," Milla demurred, reverting to the perfect hostess. "Bryan, at least offer Mr. Randolph a drink."
Bryan felt trapped. If he didn't offer Soapy Randolph a drink, he'd have too much explaining to do to Milla later. "I--I'm not sure we have anything to offer," he tried.
"Of course we do, silly," Milla said, reproving him playfully now. "While you were away, I bought some good whisky for a change. It's in the kitchen. I'll get it."
"Don't bother," Soapy said.
"No bother at all," Milla chirped and went through the door to the kitchen.
A moment of silence hung between the two men. It was Soapy who broke it. "So, Johnny, that's quite a hot young wife you've got there. Gives you blazes, doesn't she?"
Bryan flushed. "You got that wrong, mister. Name's Mathews."
Soapy shrugged. "Let it be."
Milla came back into the room with a bottle and two glasses. A glance told her that Bryan was still ill-at-ease with Soapy, which displeased her. "Now you two drink up and get to know each other,"
she said firmly. "I'm sure you have a lot in common to talk about. As for me, I'm going into the bedroom to hang some curtains."
When she was gone again, Soapy smiled. "Seems like the little woman's doing everything in her power to help us get the truth out." He poured himself a glass of whisky and lifted it. "Here's to you, Johnny."
"Mister, I don't know what you're talking about," Bryan said stubbornly.
"No? Isn't that Oklahoma I hear in your voice?"
"Never been west of Illinois."
Soapy snickered. "Never been west of Laramie, you mean, nor east of Tulsa. Whereas I've been to all hell and gone. . . . Aw, Johnny, give it up, will you? I mean, just between you and me--nobody else has to know. Just don't like being made a fool of, that's all, never did. What's your game up here, anyway?"
Bryan hesitated. Then he sighed. "There is no game, Soapy. Look, my past is dead and buried."
Soapy cracked the faintest suspicion of a smile. "Let's just say that mine is not and therefore yours is not. How do I know that you won't go running to the first lawman you meet and yell that I robbed banks with you?"
Bryan laughed softly. "Funny, I was afraid you'd pull that on me. You needn't worry about it. I want nothing to do with the law as Johnny Cramer, now or ever."
Soapy nodded. "Yes," he said slowly, "I guess that's a valid point. We seem to be at a stalemate on information about each other, old buddy."
Bryan's head snapped up. "What do you mean?"
"I mean that we could be of great service to
each other in this fair city, both being the respectable citizens that we are."
Bryan leaned forward across the table and his voice became intense with fury. "Get this, Randolph. I'm doing fine for myself. I'm not interested in any schemes you may have in mind. And that's final!"
Soapy blew out a long breath, then shrugged, got up and went to the door. Standing with his hand on the knob, he said, "Tough that you're away so much of the time and your lovely wife is left alone."
"You keep your hands off her," Bryan growled.
Soapy chuckled. "Johnny, don't get me wrong. I'm a gentleman. I wouldn't touch your wife. And I don't see any point in telling her about your past, either. No, not her . . ." He let his eyes rove to the portrait hanging on the wall behind Bryan's head, the portrait Milla had put up but Bryan hadn't noticed yet. "But her, now, that's a different story. Unless my eyes and ears and call it my intuition have missed my guess, she'd be mighty interested in learning she's got a son-in-law with a price on his head. . . . See you, Johnny." Soapy left, closing the door gently behind him. 
Bryan spun and stared into Irina's haughty eyes. Soapy's meaning was clear. He found Irina's note and read it. Yes, Irina was keeping her eyes on him. He looked at the portrait again, at the wealth and power Irina was advertising in her diamonds and rubies. He felt doomed already. Irina would throw him to the wolves once she heard of his outlaw past. Soapy had him and all that was left was to learn his blackmail fee. He was ready to run out the door in pursuit of Randolph when he heard
a muffled cry behind him. It was Milla. Bryan turned to face her.
"I ... I couldn't help overhearing. The walls ... so thin . . . and . . ."
"Milla, look, I ..." He didn't know what to say. He stood shifting his weight uncomfortably. The worst thought of all had occurred to him. Now that Milla knew the truth, she, with her deep-seated resentment of him, could also use it against him. He should deny everything. But somehow he couldn't. He took a deep breath, then said, "I ... I was quite young. A farm kid who saw glamour in being an outlaw. There wasn't any, leastways not much. I ran away and came here. I've done nothing dishonest since."
"I believe you." But her reply was cold, disinterested.
"It ... it just isn't fair. I've worked hard . . . damn hard."
"Perhaps you've worked too hard, on the wrong people. My mother, myself." 
He stepped forward and took her by the shoulders. His voice was thick and unsteady, "Maybe you're right, maybe you're wrong. Listen to me . . . please, I got to talk to you."
He pulled her to the table and sat her down. She didn't resist. But then her head came up and her eyes met his with icy contempt. "Father Nicholas hasn't taught you anything about confession yet."
He hesitated, then exploded. "I deserved that! I deserve a lot more, I guess. Confess? Yes, I need to confess that my mother was right. Oh, she was plain and simple, Milla. Always claimed that the bread we cast upon the water comes back to us tenfold. Mine's sourdough, tilled with the flour of
greed." She sat silent, motionless, waiting. He swallowed. "Look, I know what I've done. I came here with just one dream. To make enough money to go back and marry this girl I knew. Oh hell, everything got in the way. You . . . your mother . . . John Hummell ... the damn gold. You all tried to make something of me that I wasn't. I... I was no lover, Milla. You were the first girl that I had ever had . . . believe me ... and it all went sour." His voice was trembling with sincerity. He waited for something of understanding in her face, some flicker that might show that he was getting through to her. None came.
She said, "Is that all?"
"No, damnit!" he flared, shaking his head like. a wounded bull. "It's not all. Your mother tried to make me a dandy, John a surrogate son, and even Oomua tried to make me into some kind of a walking god. I'm none of these. I'm Johnny Cramer, a farm boy who was taught to work with his hands and rebelled against being cold and hungry and dead tired all the time for nothing. My old man looked fifty when he was thirty. My maw always looked old. I was going to have none of that and thought to take the easy road to wealth. Well, it wasn't easy. And now I wish I had been killed with Doolin. I'm a dead man as soon as Irina learns the truth."
"Must she learn?" Milla said it so softly he didn't think he had heard her correctly.
"What's to stop her from learning?" he stammered.
"We are."
Slowly he shook his head. "No," he said, "you don't know Soapy Randolph."
"You're wrong about him!" she said sharply. "Yes, he's a crook--I see that now--but he's also a gentleman. He can be bargained with."
"By you or me?"
"By me, if necessary!"
"Why bother?" he demanded.
"Why? I accepted you for better or worse. I didn't understand what was going on inside of you and feel ashamed that I made your suffering even greater. I'm a spoiled brat, Bryan but you've always known that. I ... I got my feelings hurt over Oomua ... No! I don't even want to discuss it. That, I guess, was some of the worse I accepted you for. I want the better, Bryan."
He did not move. His face was still and white as though it had been carved from stone. There was more he had to say. Words he had heard from John Hummell were there to guide him. . . . Sometimes a man has to cry out his soul.
"I'm not the better, Milla," he whispered. "My confession is not over."
She put up her arms and he knelt gladly into them.
"No more confessions," she soothed. "No more at all. The past dies for each of us at this very moment."
Bryan felt a quick rush of relief. From the corner of his eyes he could see Irina's eyes glaring at him. His affair with her was something he had no desire for Milla ever to learn about. She was giving him a reprieve from that confession, one that he had not thought possible just moments before. .
There was still the matter of Soapy Randolph,
but Milla had given him heart that they could handle that, and handle it they would, together.
He kissed her softly, then put his head down on her warm breast.
Was he again nothing more than the little boy that she wanted to mother and protect? Milla was even surprising herself. She didn't feel anger or fear toward Soapy Randolph. She felt gratitude. He had stripped away Bryan's many masks and left just the Bryan that she had fallen in love with, the Bryan who was an innocent boy and a valiant man both, who might fight with her but would also fight for her and would never try to force her to be the woman she wasn't.
"I'm afraid we do have a problem though," she whispered.
Bryan raised his head and frowned. "What?"
"I'm afraid I tore down the old drapes in the bedroom and didn't put up the new ones yet."
Bryan grinned broadly. "Then we won't light the lamp. It'll still be as dark as the inside of a moose."
Milla lay awake for hours after they had made love, listening to the far off sounds of the town that never slept. Her mind was a jumble of strange and delightful emotions.
Bryan, beside her, felt her stir and almost commented. But he was unable to move. There was nothing about him that would move--neither his lips nor his eyes, nor his hands hanging limply by his side. He was sated but still spellbound. Irina had made him into one kind of lover, but Milla, Milla . . . Milla was an angel. He was afraid that if he reached out to touch her she would be gone--evaporated
into sweet nothingness. He had someone now who loved and wanted him as much as he loved and wanted her. Nothing could be compared with it. To him, at that moment, his new-found love for Milla seemed the most beautiful thing in all the world . ..
In the morning at breakfast, Bryan felt good about himself. In fact, wonderful. Looking glowingly at Milla while he gobbled down his eggs and coffee, he thought about how right all those people were who said that confession was good for the soul. He had believed that his soul, by and large, had been doing all right for itself. But he'd been wrong. He'd been born fresh into a new world by some overnight miracle. Not only the present but his long-buried past was alive for him. He didn't have guilty secrets about it any more; he had the joys of remembrance.
One thing he thought about was his family. He hadn't spoken to or heard from them in years. He decided to do something about it.
"I don't think I'll go out to the mine this morning," he said suddenly.
"What did you have in mind?" Milla asked wickedly.
Bryan grinned. "Not what you do, young lady. I've got an errand or two to do in town today."
"Bryan, don't tangle with Soapy. Let him make the first move."
Bryan laughed. "Wrong again. I have no intention of tangling with Soapy. One thing I'm going to do, if you must know, is send me a telegram to Three Feathers, Oklahoma."
"To your pa? You told me he lives there."
"Now you've got it. And it's going to cost me an arm and a leg--so no more new hats for you, for at least a week."
Milla beamed at him. "Who needs hats when I have you?"
Bryan sent the telegram.
That night, as he eased his nude body into bed and Milla came to him eagerly, he felt that his whole world was coming together again.
The next day he was out with the mine gang again, working harder than the twenty Eskimo laborers he had hired. He had chosen these Indians carefully for certain qualities they possessed. They were short men, rock-hard, thin-lipped and sparse of English speech. They did not visit Skagway, drank their own home-made whisky, and thought his wages far superior to any other white man. They had moved their village close to their work site and respected Bryan because he did not covet their women. But that day Bryan did covet one of them, a squat, fierce-looking youngster of middle height who looked more like a sparring bear than a woman.
"Are you sure she can cook?" Bryan asked of the head man.
"Very good cook," he answered proudly, for the very rotund girl was his daughter.
"Good," Bryan exclaimed. "Here are the directions for her to find the house of my wife in Skagway. She will cook, sew, clean and be paid for it."
The work at the mine went even better after Bryan had provided the headman with an extra salary for his household. The chief had his pickaxe and shovel crews throwing earth into the rocking machines at an accelerated pace. In this rich Skag
way mine exceptionally large nuggets were turned up regularly; some could bring as much as $1,500 on the open market--a staggering sum considering that New York and Chicago families were living comfortably on that amount per annum.
At the end of that week Bryan went home with a singing heart. It was good to work hard outdoors and it didn't hurt to wrest so much wealth from the ground while doing it. He loved to work in this fashion. And he loved to love Milla now that they were finding their way together.
He came into their attractive house happily tired, feeling he was his own man perhaps for the first time in his life. During the week he had by his secret means sent Irina over $50,000 in gold. He was more than just satisfied. He felt in his bones now what previously had been only a notion he'd toyed with--that he was entitled to a full partnership in the business.
To his surprise, there was no supper on the table and no Milla to greet him. Perplexed, he went into the bedroom and found her face down on the bed.
"Honey, what's wrong?" he said, alarmed.
She raised herself to face him. She looked haggard. "Bryan, there's a telegram for you on the table. Oh, I've been so worried."
After a quick glance at her told him nothing, Bryan went and got the telegram and read it:
John Cramer, Skagway, Alaska. Pa sick. Need 
money. Frank. 
"Frank's my brother," Bryan said slowly, looking up at her. "It's bad but--well, I have money to send. Why are you so worried?"
Milla said tonelessly, "How did the telegraph people know to deliver it to you here?"
"What?" Bryan looked down at the message again.
"It doesn't even say John Cramer in care of Bryan Mathews. It just says John Cramer."
Bryan peered again at the message. "Oh, I see," he said slowly. "Well, I don't know--the telegram I sent, I just signed it Bryan. Pa and Frank know the name I'm using."
"Bryan, what are we going to do? Somebody else knows you're here, knows you're John Cramer. . . ."
Bryan shook his head. "I don't know. There has to be an innocent explanation. I'm going to the telegraph office to find out what it is."
"But Bryan . . ."
"Milla," Bryan argued. "However the message got to me, I have to send money for pa, don't you see that? After all this time, I've just found him again--I just can't ignore Frank's request. They're reaching out to me and I can't let them down!" 
"Is that final?"
Bryan said bluntly, "Yes, it's final! I'm going first thing in the morning, as soon as the telegraph office opens!"
Milla looked at him. The worried expression had not left her face. "I can't stop you when you're like this. Just be careful," she said.
Next morning, Bryan entered the telegraph office with a large roll of bills in his pocket. If the clerk was surprised to see him peel off two thousand dollars to be sent to a one-horse town in Oklahoma, he didn't show it. "That'll be $200 service charge," was all he said.
"What!" Bryan roared. "That's ridiculous!" The clerk shrugged. "We get ten percent of all 
funds sent to the states. Send less, pay less, is how she goes. Perhaps, Mr. Cramer, you'd like to speak to the owner about it. ..."
Bryan stared at the clerk, aghast that without having given him any name at all as yet, the man had known his real one. Then an inner office door behind the counter opened and Soapy Randolph came out. Bryan's face turned beet red. "You!" he muttered. "I should have known."
"Hello, Johnny," Randolph said cheerfully. "Oh, don't fret about Hank here--you don't know Johnny from a hole in the wall, do you, Hank. . . .Come into my office, Johnny, and we'll talk things over."
Stonily, Bryan followed him.
"What do you mean your office?" he demanded, once Soapy had closed the door behind them. 
Soapy chuckled. "You're looking at the owner, John. This I felt the town needed, so I put in a telegraph office. Of course, my customers are mainly cheechakos who are willing to pay the admittedly exorbitant rates I charge for messages home." 
"Your man wanted $200 from me," Bryan said hotly.
Soapy grinned. "Because you are a rich man and a very stupid one. It amazes me sometimes how stupid people really are. What makes you think I'd have wired your money to Oklahoma anyway? As a matter of fact, what makes you think I wired your first message to Oklahoma?" 
Bryan eyed him. "Because I got an answer from Frank," he said.
"Aw hell, Johnny. I know your brother Frank-- and your paw--damn near as well as you do. It didn't take much for me to send you an answer 
without the inconvenience of going roundabout through them."
Bryan's knees suddenly felt weak. "You worried me about them for nothing!" he cried. "You dirty bastard!"
Soapy frowned. "Not so, Johnny. If you think about it, you'll see I did you a favor by sending no message to Oklahoma. I could have, you know. I could have had Hank tap one out to the sheriff of Three Feathers--easy as that. Or to the federal marshal's office--easy as that. I got a communications network at my fingertips, remember. I could snap you into a prison cell, maybe for life--just like that."
Bryan stared at him. "I don't believe you," he said. "I just don't believe. You sent me an order-- that's what it comes down to, your sending me an order to show up here this morning. What's in it for you?"
Soapy laughed. "Now you're thinking, Johnny--that's the key question, isn't it? What's in it for me? Well, I wanted to show you part of my operation, for one thing. Profitable and neat, isn't it? The mails are slow or non-existent and I got the only telegraph game in town. I can--"
"And?" Bryan challenged him.
Soapy stopped. "I've been seeing you with your bride, John," he said quietly. "All of a sudden the two of you seem happy. I could spoil that for you. I could put you in an Oklahoma prison. But it strikes me that you are worth far more to me here than there."
"Get on with it!" Bryan growled.
"Well, Johnny, I want to build up my operation.
I want to open a saloon and gambling hall. I want to open a whorehouse or two. And I have other plans. They take time, money and a respectable front for a partner. You're the man, John--I mean Mr. Bryan Mathews."
Bryan shook his head. "You're barking up the wrong tree. I have no investment money. If you've learned so much about me, then you know I only manage the mines up here for the baroness. I'm a working stiff."
"Don't get cute!" Soapy snapped. "I happen to know you have a large investment in the mines. You're worth quite a chunk of money."
"Not so, Soapy. My money is invested in the mines to make more money in the mines. It's tied up. You probably shill more out of this town every day than I take home in a month."
Soapy sat tight-lipped and grim. "All right, listen and listen good. I am an inexhaustible font of larcenous schemes. I run crime in this town. Do you get my drift?"
"No. But that's quite a confession to make to me."
"I grow weary of you, Johnny. Here's the thing, and it took me a while to figure it out. About Father Nicholas, I mean, and all those other people you have going back and forth to Sitka. The New Russia Company has peanuts in the bank here in Skagway. That money is stashed regularly on the priest and his buddies. I have hard riders, Johnny, about the same sort of men we were with Doolin. You see what I'm driving at now?"
Suddenly Bryan began to sweat, and Soapy knew that he had him.
"You're offering me protection," Bryan said narrowly.
"Right. For a fee, of course."
"How much?"
"Twenty percent of the weekly mine take."
"Impossible!" Bryan said and shut his jaw.
"Nothing is impossible, Johnny. The baroness doesn't know how much you're taking out of the mines. It can come right off the top. I don't think I need to tell you what might happen to you, the mines and your wife if you don't go along." 
At that moment Bryan almost wished that Soapy had sent telegrams about him to the U.S. law. An Oklahoma prison would have taken only a few years out of his life. This way, Soapy could bleed him and bleed him and bleed him . And yet, for the moment, until he could think clearer, he had to go along with the protection racket. 
Milla, to Bryan's surprise, was happily relieved when he explained in toto the mystery of the fictitious telegrams to her. For one thing, she still believed that Jefferson Randolph was too much of a gentleman to have seriously included her in his threat. All the news of the unsent telegram did was make her wonder anew about what had really happened to Bryan's family. The gold going to Soapy didn't really bother her; she was just not as avaricious as either Bryan or her mother. If the fee would keep the mines, Bryan, Father Nicholas and the Eskimo workers safe, she thought it was well worth it. 
The trouble with Milla, if it was a trouble, was that she had never been happier in her whole life.
Her little house was becoming a cozy home. After one week of the Eskimo girl's cooking she took that department back into her own hands and became quite skilled at it. From a miner's wife she learned to knit and sew and quilt. As long as her life with Bryan was safe, very little could bother Milla.
Skagway was a rough town, however, for the majority of the wives who had dared come here with their miner husbands. There was as yet no school for the children, no church or community life. The wives waged a constant battle to keep their men out of the saloons and whorehouses.
These women without exception adored Bryan. He was a homebody and utterly attentive to Milla. Simple folks, they sensed his simple background. At first they were a little shy around Milla, with her polished charm, exquisite clothes and beautiful manners. But her love for Bryan was so open and honest that they took her to their hearts.
At a weekly sewing circle, one of Soapy Randolph's larcenous operations came up for discussion, though the lady speaker,- lacking information, couldn't possibly characterize it that way.
"Disgrace upon disgrace," Mrs. Pitts declared tartly, as four ladies sat quilting in Milla's parlor. "That kindly Mr. Randolph raised over $35,000 for the Reverend Mr. Jones's church. I'll say right here that Mr. Jones may be a shepherd of God, but he's a damn poor businessman. Can you imagine him putting that much money under his mattress?"
"How would you know where he put it, Luella?" Hannah Cruthers snickered.
"Don't be snide, Hannah. That's what the man said when he was telling about the robbery."
"Robbed?" Dorothy Yesley gasped. "They robbed the church fund?"
"Slick as can be," Luella preened, happy she had found one set of ears that had not heard the news. "The princely sum was just given to the preacher yesterday afternoon and taken right out from underneath him while he slept last night. Mr. Randolph is that upset over it all. Doesn't know if he can raise that much again."
Milla hid a smile behind her hand. She would have bet an equal amount that Soapy Randolph was the one who had had the preacher robbed.
"Well," Hannah simpered, "my Hiram says it's time we decent people did something about all this crime. He's got 101 names On his petition and is talking with both Mr. Randolph and Milla's husband about chairing a committee."
"Well," Dorothy Yesley said, "in my opinion Hiram was talking to the wrong person when he talked to Soapy Randolph. I considered him quite a respectable man until he started building that saloon of his, and don't tell me, Luella Pitts, that he's not involved. I have it on very good authority that it belongs to him and a silent partner." She scoffed. "Jeff's place. Why hide the fact? He might just as well call it Soapy's Place."
"His name is Jefferson Randolph," Milla said quietly.
"Is that a fact?" Dorothy exclaimed. "Well, of course, you would know, wouldn't you, dear? Your husband seems to be thick as thieves with the man."
Milla nearly burst out laughing. The cliche came too near the truth to be comfortable.
* * *
The situation was seriously discomforting for Bryan. Taking a little here and a little there, he had drained off over $20,000 to give to Soapy-- and Soapy had poured it all right into the building of his saloon. Soapy obviously intended to make Jeff's Place like no place west or north of the Mississippi . . . and with the preacher's $35,000 back in his hands he could go as elaborate as he wished.
When Hannah's Hiram came too see him, Soapy had his answer ready.
"Hiram," he said sagely, "I don't think you could do better than have Bryan head the committee. He's got the youth, the drive, and is the biggest miner hereabouts. You'll do it, won't you, Bryan?"
Bryan was more than a little surprised. Was Soapy slipping? He was giving him the opportunity to head a group of concerned citizens who would be fighting Soapy's own men. He balked for a moment, to put on a good front, and then agreed.
Within a week an order was published to "all confidence sharks, bunco men, sure-thing men and all other objectionable characters" to get out of town "while the getting was good." It was signed by The Committee of 101.
The joke was on Bryan. Contemptuously, the next afternoon, Soapy replied with a bulletin of his own, announcing on behalf of "the business interests" that "no Blackmailers or Vigilantes will be tolerated." Soapy's proclamation was signed by an imaginary "Law and Order Committee of 303."
Bryan was fuming when he stormed into Soapy's new office in Jeff's Place.
"Goddamn you!" he roared. "You set me up to look like a fool."
"Which you are," Soapy replied. "You thought you were going to sucker Soapy Randolph? God, you're stupid."
"No, not stupid, Soapy. Realistic! Look around you. Skagway is growing and prospering. It's got over 15,000 people. Merchants, craftsmen, people with homes and families. You are seriously underestimating the increasing strength of your opposition. Oh, you know how to control men, all right, but that's not what you're fighting, whether you know it or not. It's the ladies, Soapy. The ladies are stiffening their husband's spines. They want decency, order, public education."
"Are you quite finished?" Randolph said coolly.
"No," Bryan declared. "You're a slick con man, Soapy, that I will have to admit. But you could be fantastic as an honest businessman. You're doing it all wrong. Look at the money you're losing. Dyea wasn't even a port six months ago, but now, just six miles away, it is doing all the business Skagway should be doing. And why? Because you've made this town a sink-hole of crime. Every stateside newspaper warns the prospectors to steer clear. You're sitting on a tinderbox of outrage, Soapy, and it will only take one spark to blow you to kingdom come!"
Soapy smiled thinly.
"I'm glad you came by, Johnny. I've been going over our arrangement and find that I'll require fifty percent from the mines from now on."
Bryan was dumbfounded. It was a moment before he recovered from the shock of the statement.
"Go to hell! I'll fight you first!"
"When there is no law you make your own law," Bryan told his Eskimo miners as he issued them each a carbine and revolver. "Any man who steps onto my property, you shoot first and ask questions later."
Fearing for Father Nicholas's life on the open road now, Bryan sent a message to Irina to keep the priest in Sitka until he could send them further word.
Bryan prepared for all manner of trouble and grew nervous when none came about. The days slipped into weeks and the weeks into months. The gold that was taken from the ground was secretly hidden back in the ground. A hundred eyes watched every movement Bryan made day and night. His nerves grew raw and frayed. It was a four-mile trip to the mines--four miles of rough terrain that could hide death behind each and every boulder and outcropping.
On an icy morning in March, Bryan arrived at the camp to find that nineteen Eskimos had left, taking the guns he had given them.
"Where in the hell are they?" he demanded of the headman.
"Man come with paper," the Eskimo began, "he--"
"What kind of paper?" Bryan snarled.
"I do not read, boss," he answered flatly. "He take camp to new digging and tell me to bring you when you come."
At first Bryan thought this was a power play of Soapy's, but the man he encountered at the new camp was no lover of Soapy Randolph.
Frank Reid motioned Bryan to sit with a friendly
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gesture. He was a short, powerfully built man with beer-keg legs and a head so small it seemed to have been put on the wrong body.
"Good to see you, Mathews," he said quietly. "I just got in from Sitka yesterday."
"So?"
"Got orders from the baroness," Reid explained simply. "She's mad. Don't like the game you're playing with Randolph. Wants this new site dug that I surveyed last year."
Bryan frowned heavily. Irina's acting on her own again, he thought bitterly. What did she know of the local situation?
"Why didn't you come and speak to me in town?"
"Be smart." Frank Reid spread his hands. "Even when you're sleeping Randolph has you watched. This seemed the best way to get started without him learning too fast. The less you know about this operation, the less he'll learn from you."
"Now just a minute, Reid," Bryan growled, his anger rising. "You're making it sound like I'm in Randolph's back pocket. Maybe the baroness thinks that, but who put the idea into her head?"
Reid shrugged. "Best look to Randolph for the answer on that, Mathews. I'm only here to do a job."
Bryan studied Reid curiously.
"Let's see what she's ordered you to do."
"Sorry, Mathews, but I'm only to show you her signed order temporarily putting this property and work force in my name. We don't want Randolph getting any of this gold."
The note was curt, crisp and businesslike. Bryan read it three times, handed it back and spun away wordlessly.
Heading back to Skagway, the anger and frustration inside Bryan was like molten lava. And because dealing with Soapy was something he couldn't face, he turned savagely on Milla--and Irina.
"What does she know about what's been going on up here?" he snarled. "You been keeping her informed in those damn letters you keep writing?"
"Not really," Milla said quietly.
"And what in the hell is that supposed to mean?"
"I've written nothing about you, Bryan. Just about this town, the criminal element and how hard it is for the decent people to survive."
He yelled, "But that's enough to get her started smelling out what's been going on here. If it's so damn hard to live up here, why in the hell don't you go back to her?"
Milla was almost weeping now.
"I... I have something else to discuss with you, Bryan."
"Well, I have nothing to discuss with you!" he stormed at her, and strode from the house.
Although Milla understood what was prompting Bryan's wrath, it still hurt to be the victim of it. She wished they could both just walk away. No amount of gold in the world was worth ruining the relationship they had started building. She was going to need Bryan now as the husband he had started to be. And she was going to need him as the father of the child she was now carrying in her womb.
Bryan's bad luck, that day, was only beginning. Ten minutes after leaving the house, he determined it was time to have a final showdown with Soapy
Randolph. Randolph sent down word from his office that he couldn't see Bryan for an hour.
His determination growing, Bryan stayed in the bar and ordered the first drink he had consumed in a Skagway saloon. He was so intent on his own thoughts that he was not aware of the man who carefully studied him for a long, long time and then came to stand next to him.
"You've aged, Cramer."
Bryan turned his head slowly. It took him a moment to recognize the glinting eyes, the broken nose, the Fu Manchu mustache.
"Frank Canton," the man prompted. "In case you've forgotten."
Bryan hadn't forgotten. The color slowly left his cheeks, so that the crease lines stood out vividly like shadowy valleys. At the corners of his mouth a little tremble started. Frank Canton was the marshal who helped wipe out the fearsome Doolin gang in Oklahoma. Frank Canton was the only marshal who had refused to believe that John Cramer had been killed in that final raid.
"Guess the gut feeling I had about you is finally paying off," Canton grinned.
"Who tipped you off?" Bryan said suddenly, fiercely.
Canton bent over the bar and tented his long fingers together. No one had tipped him off. He had been in the Yukon as a deputy U.S. marshal since leaving Oklahoma. Only the day before had he been sent down from Dawson to assist the marshal in cleaning up Skagway. His orders were to investigate Soapy Randolph, but he had seen John Cramer and John Cramer was now a personal
prize he would covet returning to Oklahoma. His theory on how Cramer had escaped death and capture had been scoffed at. He would now have the last laugh.
His steady silence rattled Bryan. The answer had to be Soapy. He swung away from the bar wildly. Canton was in no hurry to follow. He motioned over the barkeep.
"Who was that fellow who left without paying for his drink?"
"Mathews. Bryan Mathews."
"Are the drinks on the house?"
The barkeep grinned. "They are for him."
From the balcony Soapy Randolph had seen the meeting. He sent down for the talkative barkeep. Randolph, too, had recognized Frank Canton and wondered what he was doing in Skagway. He listened carefully to what the barkeep had to say, then grinned.
"Run on over to Marshal Fuller," he instructed. "You've probably opened a beehive in the man's mind over the free drink you gave our Mr. Mathews, so we might as well let Johnny Cramer get stung by them. Then tell Hank I want to see him. I don't particularly want Canton talking too much with Mathews."
Frank Canton looked at Marshal Lon Fuller wonderingly. How had this gentle, quiet man ever become marshal of a crime-ridden town like Skagway? He had anticipated meeting a burly, tobacco- chewing individual, gun-toting and savage, but Lon Fuller was quite different.
Fuller saw the look.
"I was appointed by the Law and Order Committee of 303, Marshal Canton," he said. "Judge Sehlbridge in Dyea confirmed the appointment, though we've never met. . . I'm just a merchant by trade."
"I didn't--" Canton began.
"I know. But I could see the puzzlement in your eyes. I'm hardly the marshal type."
"Well, I'm here to help now. But I need your help, first."
"Shoot!"
"Do you know a man named Bryan Mathews?"
Fuller laughed. "You must be joking. Everyone knows Mr. Mathews. He's one of the biggest miners around and a very respectable gentleman."
"He wasn't so respected back in Oklahoma, Fuller. His real name is John Cramer and he's wanted for robbery."
"My!" Fuller gasped, "I can hardly believe that!"
"Take my word for it. I'll need your authority to arrest him."
That was exactly what Soapy Randolph didn't want happening--not yet.
"I see," Fuller said heavily. "But what if you are wrong?"
"I'm not wrong, Fuller."
"Still," the marshal said slowly, "I would advise you go after him carefully. He is a very powerful man in this town."
Frank Canton smiled a slow, quiet smile.
"So powerful that he can get free drinks in Jeffs Place?"
Canton had opened the trap Soapy had hoped for and all Fuller had to do was spring it shut.
"I can't say for sure, Canton, but I've never heard of a man having to pay for drinks in his own place."
Canton whistled. "I thought it was Soapy Randolph's place."
Fuller chuckled. "Canton, you've seen that place. It takes real money to build a palace like that. Randolph arrived here broke. Mathews arrived with his claims already recorded and plenty of money to start operating them. Ask yourself who might have backed whom." 
"Are they connected in other ways, as well?"
"I'm damned if I know," Fuller said quietly. "I've got my hands full without prying into the business affairs in this town. You feel free to look into it all you want, but watch your footing. The decent folk think right highly of Mr. Mathews. I don't want them carping at me because you're out after him and not the real thugs around here."
"That's a damn fool thing to say!" Canton barked. "I'll just have to let them know that he is a bank robber."
Fuller chuckled. "What was his take?"
"Personally? Hell, I wouldn't know. The Doolin gang, altogether, probably got ten to fifteen thousand."
Fuller roared. He knew the manner in which Soapy Randolph wanted to ruin Bryan in the eyes of the townspeople, but he wanted the vindictive Canton to know what manner of task that would be.
"Marshal, turn yourself and look out that window. You see that new church down the street? Well, our preacher man got robbed of $35,000. Mr. Mathews told the town he personally would put up half of it if they would put up the rest. Well,
the money came in fast, from merchants, craftsmen and their wives. Now, you just march right on out there and tell them all about your John Cramer."
Canton glowered. "I don't give a shit if he's become a saint. The law is the law!"
Lon Fuller was on Soapy Randolph's payroll, but he silently started rooting for Bryan Mathews.
The word was passed along quickly by Soapy Randolph's cohorts. If it was his operation, then Bryan's name was to be connected to it. It was Soapy's way of undermining Bryan's fight on behalf of the Committee of 101, whose increasing strength did indeed trouble him. Soapy didn't fear Frank Canton's investigation of him personally, for, after all, he had Marshal Fuller on his payroll. By and large, Soapy felt he was riding the edge of the situation and doing quite handsomely at it.
Meanwhile, he had still another trick up his sleeve for dealing with Bryan; he called it his "direct frontal attack."
In the after-midnight darkness, Hank, Soapy's henchman of many parts, stole unseen through the woods that ran behind Bryan's house. Over his shoulder he carried a sack of corked whisky bottles filled with kerosene. When he came to the back of the house, he took three logs from the wood pile, doused them with kerosene, then leaned them against the back door jamb. Taking another kerosene- soaked log with him, he circled the house and wedged it against the front door. Other logs, transformed neatly into kindling by the kerosene, he placed beneath the house's windows. Somewhere a dog started barking. Hank waited in the shadows until it stopped. Then, having completed his crafts
manlike preparations, he went around the house and doused its side and back walls with much of the remaining kerosene. He was in no hurry. While the kerosene soaked in good, he walked a hundred yards into the woods, buried all but one of his bottles and came back with his sack now filled with starter twigs.
So totally absorbed had Hank become in his work that he was almost sorry it had to end. But all good things must end, he figured. Dousing the twigs with the last of his kerosene, he arranged them at the base of the three logs at the back door and lit them with a match. Then he walked away.
He did not have long to wait. He was only fifty yards into the woods again when the house suddenly blazed up. Hank turned briefly to look, then kept walking. Rather than a passing thrill, he felt a kind of deep satisfaction. He'd done a good job under orders. Soapy hadn't actually wanted Bryan Mathews killed; if he had, Hank would have done it, but it would have been far less of a challenge.
Milla came awake first, coughing with the fumes. She screamed at Bryan, who woke up in a daze. Blinking, he saw the exterior of the bedroom window frame ablaze, the only light he could see through the smoky haze already enveloping the room, Cursing as he jumped out of bed, he grabbed Milla by the hand and pulled her out of the bedroom toward the front door.
He was yanking at the knob when the front door too suddenly burst into flame. "Jesus Christ! What's going on here!" Bryan bellowed. He turned to Milla, "Got to try the back," he coughed. "Stay here!"
"No!" she screamed. "I'm going with you!"
"Come on, then!"
Together, they raced through the smoky house, afraid that any moment it would blow up in their faces. Heart pounding, Bryan reached the kitchen door--another sheet of flame. Swearing at it, he readied himself to crash through the burning timbers with his shoulder.
"No!" Milla screamed. "The windows--it's safer--we can get out that way!"
Bryan had a forearm up to protect his face against the flames bursting from the door. Even if he got out alive, he wasn't sure Milla could. He had a quick and horrible vision of her eyes and skin catching fire. "All right! Get the crowbar! Get a chair! Get anything!"
He picked up a kitchen chair himself and ran back to the living room window, the only window where glass was not already blackening with smoke, though tongues of flame were beginning to lick at its frame.
"Bryan! The window--it's going to go too!" Milla cried at his side. She clutched at him.
"No! It's all right! Get out of my way!"
Bryan lifted the chair just as the window turned bright yellow with fire.
"Shit," he muttered, then shouted at Milla. "Get ready to jump clear! As soon as I break the glass!"
He raised the chair high over his head. He'd lied to Milla; there was no hope; they were doomed.
Then, just as he was about to smash the window anyway, the front door came crashing in. Bryan spun around. His heart leaped. It was his neighbor Hiram Cruthers, followed by Harry Yesley, both
of them wrapped in heavy wet towels and wielding axes.
"Out! Out!" Cruthers screamed. "The whole roof's on fire!"
Bryan and Milla looked at the two towel-draped apparitions for the briefest of moments. Then they were running from the inferno Soapy Randolph had made for them, leaving the ashes of their dream house behind.
All that spring and summer, Skagway people talked of little else but the fire and its curious aftermath.
It was a strange aftermath indeed. Because of Marshal Fuller's close connection with Soapy Randolph, he initiated only a perfunctory arson investigation, then concluded and passed it around town that the fire had started accidentally, possibly through lit embers in the grate. It was hard to say. People felt sorry for Bryan and Milla--for a while. Then, because of Soapy's further manipulations, it became easy to say other things. Namely that Bryan Mathews deserved what he got, for being the real power behind Skagway's worst sin palaces. Godfearing people believed this. From the wholesale condemnation of Bryan that followed, few were exempt.
As a consequence, Bryan and Milla found them
selves living in Skagway's only hotel--an establishment that happened to be owned by their nemesis Randolph--while their new house was being built. Friends were few and far between. People like Cruthers and Yesley not only shunned them socially but turned elsewhere for their leadership against crime.
When Milla heard rumors of who this new leader was to be, she was at first stunned. Then she sent out a hasty invitation for Marshal Frank Canton to visit her. Through a messenger she promised the marshal "important news."
Then it was up to her to deliver on her promise.
A couple mornings later, Milla opened her hotel room door and rewarded Canton with a winning smile.
"Thank you for coming, marshal. My husband has already left for the day. Please come in."
Hat in hand, Frank Canton entered quite puzzled. His investigation of Randolph and Mathews had been blocked at every turn. He couldn't imagine what important news Mathews' wife would be willing to give him.
"I'll get right to the point, sir," Milla said blandly. "I am led to understand that you are backing Frank Reid to form a vigilante committee to rid the town of the likes of Soapy Randolph and my husband."
"Well, I have no authority to back any so-called vigilante committee," Canton said hesitantly. "This man Reid seems to have the backing of many decent citizens. I'm not about to discourage any committee against crime, so long as its members don't resort to violence."
"You don't understand that Frank Reid is trying
drive my husband out of town so that he can take over my mother's mines."
Canton cocked an eyebrow. "That so? Well, what if he is? Frankly, I don't care what the man's motives are. Personally, I suspect your husband deserves to be driven out of town. Not only out of town but into jail. Perhaps you ought to tell me a little bit more about this--I don't yet see what your important news is, Mrs. Mathews."
"Bryan doesn't deserve the ill treatment he's been getting--from you or anybody else!" Milla said hotly. "It's all of a piece, don't you see? My mother sent Frank Reid here to look into the situation at the mines because she wasn't getting enough gold from Bryan to suit her. But Bryan couldn't send her as much as he had been--it wasn't that he didn't want.to, it's that he couldn't . . . I" 
Canton frowned. "Could you go over this again, more slowly this time, Mrs. Mathews?"
"I'm going to have a baby," Milla said suddenly. "I need Bryan!" 
Canton blinked.
"Bryan was sending the gold to my mother by-- well, overland couriers. But they were going to be robbed and maybe killed if he didn't pay a fee. And I thought that was all right, because I didn't want anybody to get hurt. But now Bryan is being hurt, badly, and I need him!" 
Canton had perked up his ears midway in her impassioned speech. "Ah, a blackmailer," he said. "And who would the blackmailer be? Soapy Randolph, by any chance?"
"Who else?" Milla said quietly. "When he wanted just twenty percent for protection, Bryan paid it. Then, when he raised the fee to fifty percent, Bryan
stopped shipping the gold and didn't pay him anything. Randolph has been blackmailing Bryan in every manner he can conceive of--that, marshal, is their only business connection."
"But your husband is still working the claims. What is he doing with the gold?"
Milla looked up in surprise.
"I never thought it my right to ask him, Marshal Canton. Now that summer is on us, I'm sure he'll figure out a way of getting it to Sitka. That is, if someone doesn't shoot him down first."
Canton scowled. "You're quite a woman, Mrs. Mathews. Are you asking me to protect your husband?"
"I am asking you to do your job," Milla said serenely.
"All right," Canton growled. "But it changes nothing. I still intend on taking him back to Oklahoma."
"Since he has learned of the baby, Marshal Canton, we have discussed that at length. You need not fear his running away. My husband is a very loyal man, sir. He feels a strong obligation to get the gold to my mother and without bloodshed. We have agreed that he will surrender himself when he has solved his present problems."
Canton stood looking at Milla. Now that they had spoken, he had a great deal of admiration for her; yet when she spoke of loyalty, he couldn't quite understand her. How, he asked himself, could a woman of her class and breeding have taken up with a two-bit outlaw like Johnny Cramer? He would keep his eyes and ears open, not for Johnny Cramer's sake but for hers.
Lon Fuller, unfortunately, had a way of obscuring Canton's vision. This locally appointed official kept collecting and disseminating more and more "evidence" to prove to the townspeople that Bryan was Soapy's secret backer, the "heavy" who was forcing the charming Randolph into all sorts of "sinful" enterprises.
As time went by, Bryan found that his earnest attempts to prove himself a good, upstanding citizen of Skagway were of no avail against the heavy abuse he was getting from all quarters. So he busied himself on a secret project. It was to be a jolly good joke on Soapy--and that was just for starters.
On the Fourth of July, Soapy put on a show for the town. Appointing himself grand marshal of a celebration parade, he encouraged every local business, including The New Russia Mining Company, to enter a float. There was, of course, method to his merrymaking. He meant to continue showing all of Skagway what a widely generous patriotic soul he was.
Bryan's entry was low-down mean, a sharp reminder to all who cared to see the point. The New Russia Company's flat-bed wagon mounted a replica of the frame shack Soapy used for a telegraph office. A sign, like an advertising banner, read "Keep in touch with home--telegraph!" But the wires on the poles outside the shack were cut and dangling, connected to nowhere.
Soapy roared with laughter when he saw the float. Some of his men didn't.
"Don't be fools," Soapy barked at them. "Did you see anybody get what he's driving at except us? You know what he's done? He's given us some damn good free advertising, that's all. Oh, I got to
hand it to Johnny boy! I'm going to let bygones be bygones! Go tell him to come by for a drink!"
Bryan accepted the invitation. It was part of his plan to accept it. The joke was not over, as far as he was concerned. In fact, it was just beginning. The float had been his way of reaching out to Soapy --to indicate they remained in cahoots on a well- kept secret.
In the private office of the saloon Soapy was calling "Jeff's Place," Soapy told him, "Johnny, that was priceless. Look, let's be friends again. You're clever. I'm clever--but we're at a stalemate right now. You're-not getting your gold out and Frank Reid is giving us both a lot of trouble. What do you say to our going back to our original twenty percent agreement?"
Bryan let himself appear to ponder for a moment. "Maybe so, Soapy. But I'll need some help. Reid took my Eskimo labor away. I'll need a couple dozen strong men to get the mine back to full operation."
"You've got it, Johnny, you've got it!"
This was what Bryan wanted. Given the bind he'd been in, he'd felt he'd had no other option but to trick Soapy into restoring an arrangement he could live with. Now the gold route to Sitka would be re-opened. Nobody would get hurt. It was all, really, that he could hope for.
"Soapy, I hope it works out," he said. "I've had Canton on me, I've had Reid on me, I've had you on me. My wife's having a baby. I want peace. I really do."
"Ah, Johnny, Johnny." Soapy smiled tolerantly at him. "You think you want peace. But that's .not what you want. Sooner or later, you want to do 
me in. It's a battle of wits, isn't it? Well, we'll see how it goes . . . ."
It went tragically, in a way that neither expected.
That same morning, Frank Reid, no shining light of honor himself, had appeared in the office shared by Marshals Fuller and Canton. Reid had been robbed of $3,000 and he was blazing mad.
"One of those sneak-thieving sidewinders Randolph has working for him came into my tent last night and stole my poke!" he bellowed.
Fuller pursed his lips. "That's quite a charge," he said. "Can you prove it?"
"Prove it! I don't have to prove it! I've been looking into Randolph's operations in this town even if you've had reason not to, Fuller!" Reid turned to Canton. "Damn it, marshal, you're the only real lawman we've got around here! I tell you it was a Randolph man who got my poke!"
Canton nodded. "Probably was."
"Well? What are you going to do about it?" Reid demanded belligerently.
Canton drawled, "Easy, mister. Let me get this straight. First, how much did you say got stolen?"
"I estimate close to $3,000."
Canton whistled. "That's a lot of money to have on you. Where'd it come from?"
"Where else?" Reid bellowed. "From the claim I've been working."
"Oh," Canton mused thoughtfully. "Well now, to set the record straight, that really wasn't your money, was it? Seems to me it really belonged to The New Russia Mining Company. Thought this feller Mathews was running that claim."
"No!" Reid shrieked. "The claim is mine! The gold is mine! I've been robbed."
Canton gave Reid a quick look. Then, "Tell you what," he said slowly. "Me and Fuller, we'll try and get the money back. Meanwhile, you go and get the paper that'll show you're the rightful owner of that claim in your own name. That all right with you?"
Reid looked at him frozenly. "You . . . can't ... do this to me, marshal," he choked. He turned and bolted from the office.
Canton grinned at Fuller. "I got a hunch we'll never see those papers. Man's as crooked as Randolph himself."
Fuller said hesitantly, "I don't like the way he went out of here. Maybe we should have listened to him more."
Frank Reid lost little time taking his indignation to people who would listen. He found them among members of the Committee of 101. Bellowing, pointing the finger at Randolph for untold crimes against the community, he led fifty men armed with shotguns, clubs and revolvers down the street towards Jeff's Place.
Bryan, who was just leaving the saloon after his discussion with Soapy, saw the approaching mob and ducked back inside. Soapy had come out of his office at the sound of the commotion. "They're coming," Bryan told him grimly. "I don't know if they're coming for you or for me, but they're coming."
"Isn't that something?" Soapy said. He was wearing a grey vest. He stood there, halfway between the rear room and the bar, with his thumbs stuck in its armpits, looking amused.
The Reid-led vigilantes were in the saloon and Harry Yesley was pushing Reid out of the way §o that he could have a go at Soapy first. 
"We're standing up against you, Randolph," he yelled. "This man was robbed of his gold and we demand that you give it back to him."
"I don't have it to give back," Soapy lied evenly. "What do you take me for, a common thief? You men either leave or step up to the bar and have a drink on the house. You're all sweated up over nothing."
"Liar!" Reid shrilled. "Don't listen to him, men --he's a two-faced liar!"
"My two faces against your half-ass, Reid," Soapy said calmly. "Prove what you're saying or clear out of here."
"Fucking liar!" Reid shrieked.
Some of the men began to mutter. Two or three moved towards the bar. Just then, Frank Canton came pushing through the crowd with revolver drawn. "Move back!" he ordered. "Let me through here."
Grudgingly, those still siding with Reid made a narrow path for him,
"It's all right, marshal," Bryan said, hoping to cool the situation. "Things are under control. Reid made a mistake, that's all."
Someone suddenly shouted, "What's he doing here? He's in it with Randolph!" 
"Quiet!" Canton barked. "If I see one more raised weapon I'll consider it a threat against the law and fire first."
"Ain't no law in this goddamn town!" someone yelled.
"I said quiet!" And the fierce tone of his voice let them know he meant it. "I am now the law in Skagway! Fuller just resigned. I'm all you got left."
The crowd went quiet.
"Randolph," Canton said, holding Soapy in a steely gaze, "Fuller spoke to me at some length before he quit. I have reason to believe you have it in your power to find Reid's gold for him. I want it put in my hands by sun-up. That's final."
"Marshal, I--" Soapy objected.
"Shut up, Soapy. I ain't finished yet." Canton turned to the silently listening vigilante group. "You men had been calling for law and order for Skagway. Well, that's fine. But it works the same way for all. Now, Reid here claims the gold was dug up from his property, and that just ain't so--or if it is, I want to see his title to it. Otherwise, the gold when I get it is going to be turned over to this Russia company--which is to say, to Mathews here as its manager."
Bryan blinked in surprise. At the same time, Reid, knowing he was otherwise doomed, started rallying the crowd to his side.
"Now the truth is out!" he roared. "Fuller may have been paid off by Randolph, but it's obvious whose pocket Canton is in. That's my claim and Canton is trying to steal it back for Mathews."
The crowd was quick to accept Reid's words as fact. The shouts against Bryan and Canton grew so loud that Canton could not make his voice heard. He fired his revolver into the ceiling, which stilled the shouts a little, if only briefly.
Bryan caught Canton by the arm. "Are you saying what I think you're saying?" he demanded.
"I'm saying you've been suckered as well as blackmailed. Make a break for it and I'll try to calm these hotheads."
In the excitement no one had seen Soapy's man
Hank slip out of the rear room and hand his boss a Winchester rifle. Reid was angrily watching the byplay between Canton and Bryan. He saw Bryan make a move towards the front door, only to be caught by a web of vigilantes and spun about again. Then, when he'd turned back the other way he saw Soapy, armed.
Many people saw what happened next, and they regaled listeners for years with their conflicting accounts of which move had led to which. The bare facts are these: Reid pulled his revolver at the same moment that Soapy raised his rifle waist high. Both men fired their weapons at point-blank range, almost simultaneously. Who was trying to kill whom --or were they both acting in self-defense? It hardly mattered. Reid was slammed backwards by Soapy's shotgun blast squarely into the arms of Bryan, who suddenly found himself on his knees, cradling the man's head while blood from Reid's belly and back oozed on him. But Bryan wasn't even looking at Reid. He was staring across the floor at Soapy Randolph. The saloon had gone abruptly quiet. Soapy was just standing there with some sort of puzzled smile on his face. He was still holding the rifle. It was as if, with nobody shooting at him or shouting at him, and with nobody to shoot at or shout at, he didn't quite know what to do next. There was a big red blotch on his vest. He looked at Bryan but had no expression in his eyes by then. He was dead on his feet. Then he fell to the floor. 
Bryan gulped. He had never been so numbly horrified in his life.
Nobody else moved either.
Canton walked over to take a look at Reid in Bryan's arms. "You ain't helping him none, son,"
the marshal said gruffly. "Put him down and go get a doctor. He's still breathing." He turned to face the hovering crowd. "The rest of you go home. Randolph's dead. The party's over."
For twelve days Frank Reid hung onto a thin string of life and was considered a great local hero. For twelve days Bryan Mathews remained villified as a cohort of Soapy's.
"Canton should drag him right out of his hotel and arrest him."
"But didn't he go get Doc Faust for Reid?"
"What else could he do with everybody watching him? Everybody in the saloon saw him trying to smooth things over for Randolph when Canton came in."
"Lew Stewart says he saw Mathews give Soapy the Winchester."
"Naw, that feller Hank did. But it's the same thing. They were all in it together."
"Why's Canton trying to protect him?"
"Don't be stupid. Canton refused to look into Reid's charge, didn't he? Just proves he's on Mathews' payroll."
"We should give Canton a one-way trip out of town, too!"
Then Frank Reid died. The funeral the town gave him made for much mourning, which helped, in its way, to cleanse people of their anger and bring the revolution to an end. Except for one revengeful point many still wanted made.
Judge George Sehlbridge of Dyea was on no one's payroll. He listened quietly to the evidence presented to him by Frank Canton and to the gossip presented to him by various members of The Committee of 101.
"It's obvious Reid had arrogated the claim to himself with forged papers," Sehlbridge mused, "but le papers can't be found to prove it, Frank."
"And who is going to believe Mathews' word against the dead man?" Canton said sullenly.
"You changing your tune on Mathews?"
"If you mean was he a partner of Randolph's, he's clean as far as I'm concerned."
"What are your plans for him?"
"I don't know."
"Take the advice of an old man. Let bygones be bygones, Frank."
Canton looked at him wonderingly.
"You can't mean that, judge. He's got a debt to pay to the state of Oklahoma."
"Perhaps," the judge mused and said no more on the subject.
For those twelve days, and the two after Reid's funeral, Bryan got up, walked around town and came home listlessly. His part in what he saw as having been a meaningless bloody Shootout preyed on his mind and sapped him of his vitality. And beneath his despondency over that affair, something else was gnawing at him. His behavior began to try Milla's patience.
"I've asked Doc Faust to come over and take a look at you," she told him quietly one morning.
"Damn Doc Faust! He can't help me!" Bryan growled. "Just leave me alone for a while. I've got to think. I'll be all right if you'll just let me think."
There was a knock at the door.
"That will be the doctor now," Milla sighed. "Perhaps he can talk some sense into you."
But it wasn't Doc Faust. Milla let out a gasp when she opened the door.
"Umalti! What a surprise! And how wonderful to see you!"
Umalti had a beaming smile for her. "I no disturb?"
"Not at all," she exulted. "It will do Bryan a world of good to see an old friend! Oh, you'll never know how happy this makes me!"
Her exuberance was short lived. Umalti, after greeting Bryan warmly, had problems of his own that he wanted to talk about. Milla started to protest, then, deciding it might help Bryan to think about someone other than himself for a change, left the two men alone.
Umalti began hesitantly. "Perhaps, if you are not feeling well, we can speak at another time?"
Bryan was in no mood for a new burden. But he said, "No. Go ahead, Umalti. You are my friend. I will listen."
"Umalti not know what to say. A man came and said the baroness had sold the overland route to him and Umalti must give up sleds and dogs owned by her. Oomua says it is the first of two bad signs she's had from Raven-Man."
"Oh?"
"No fish soon," Umalti said, trying to explain. "That is the other bad sign."
"I don't understand."
"My people, Bryan Mathews, always fish the salmon when they come from the ocean to spawn. We are old and wise fishermen and have always had plenty to sell. We wait patiently while the salmon mature at sea before they take the long journey to fresh water. Now, Umalti is told by the white
man that they don't want our fish this summer. They say they now have their own boats to fish in the ocean. Umalti has seen their big nets. They take in a day what Umalti's tribe would take in a season. Soon, no sleds for winter work and no fish to sell in summer. Umalti's people are unhappy with him."
Bryan sat for a long time and pondered. He had listened to Umalti, but his mind was still on his own problem. He forced a smile.
"I'm glad that you came, old friend. You must not worry about your tribe. We will think of something. In the meantime--"
He was about to arrange for Umalti to stay for the night when there came another knock at the door. Milla went and admitted Frank Canton, who barged in angrily with about the worst news for Bryan imaginable. He hardly glanced at Umalti.
"Mathews, that damn Committee of 101 isn't listening to a thing Judge Sehlbridge is saying to them. They're taking matters into their own hands. They've appointed a new town marshal, Si Tanner, and given him orders to arrest you to stand trial."
"Trial for what?" Milla demanded hotly.
"Mrs. Mathews, the list they've drawn up is long and packed full of lies. The most serious is that they claim to have witnesses who saw you give Soapy Randolph the rifle."
"That's absurd!" Bryan exclaimed.
"Nothing is absurd when you're dealing with a kangaroo court, son. I can't stop them, at least not for long. I'd best try to get you out of town right now."
"No!" Bryan muttered darkly. "There's something I must do first!"
"And stand the chance of ending up on the end of a noose?"
"Canton," Bryan said, "I've got to provide for my wife and baby before I go anywhere. I'd been thinking I had to go back to Oklahoma with you. Maybe I still do. I've been thinking about it a lot. Before I leave this town, there's gold I have to get for Milla."
"I'm going with you wherever you go," Milla said quietly.
"For God's sake, be reasonable, man!" Canton swore. "You don't have time to be digging gold."
Bryan shook his head. "It's already dug and in town. That wagon I built for the Fourth of July parade--do you know where it is?"
"Sure, in the lot where you left it, piled high with dirt. Nobody wants-- what! Do you mean to say--" 
Bryan nodded. "Under that dirt, Canton, is about a half million dollars in gold. I had it in mind that when I figured out how to get it to Sitka with Milla, I'd go to Oklahoma with you. Now I'm going to get it--one way or another, I'm going to get it!"
"You're not going to Oklahoma," Canton said quietly, "but you're sure as hell leaving this town. There's a ship leaving for Sitka tonight and I want you both on it."
Bryan and Milla could only stare at him.
"And I don't want any thanks," Canton went on gruffly. "Look, I think I know a way of getting your gold out of here without you risking your neck on the streets."
"How?"
Canton said, "You're not the only established
crook in town. There is--or was--Soapy Randolph."
"So?"
Canton shrugged. "Soapy's in the ice house. Nobody around here's gotten around to burying him yet. How, if I was to say all of a sudden he's wanted in Oklahoma and I got orders to get him there dead or alive, don't you think these vigilantes would sit still for that? Hell, they'd love it!" Canton snorted in disgust at the hate-filled Committee of 101, then turned to the other person in the room. "You. What did you say your name was?"
"Umalti," Umalti said.
"Umalti, be a good Indian and go steal that old wagon of Bryan's."
"Umalti's a chief. Don't talk to him that way," Bryan objected.
"That is all right, Bryan Mathews," Umalti said quietly, "I begin to understand."
Canton nodded. "There's a patch of woods about a half-mile from the ice house. Have the wagon there and wait for me. I'll get a coffin for Soapy and bring him to you around sundown. We'll bury Soapy right there in the woods and transfer the gold to the coffin. Do you understand?"
"I understand," Umalti said.
"I don't," Bryan said. "Milla and I can slip aboard that ship, but how are you going to load the coffin on it without drawing a crowd right after us?"
Canton said evenly, "The coffin won't be on that ship and neither will I. After I leave this room, I never want to see you again, Johnny. The gold will get to you in Sitka, trust me. But with Umalti here's
f 311 
kind permission and help, it's going overland by way of Juneau, with this whole town shouting good riddance to me and what they think is Soapy's corpse."
"It is Raven-Man who speaks. Once more I am to come to Camp Robber's aid," Umalti said happily. He said to Canton, "I shall have my dogsled ready for the journey to Juneau, Frank Canton." Then he asked him in wondering tones, "But why do you call my friend Johnny?"
Canton grinned. "A slip of the tongue. Goodbye, Mr. and Mrs. Mathews, it was nice knowing you "
"Little Tsarskoe Selo" had been remodeled again. It no longer seemed like home to Milla. Too overstuffed with gaudy furniture, it was also staffed with too many new servants to suit her, including an imported English butler who lorded it over Mama and even intimidated Irina to a certain extent. Milla didn't like the place at all. Irina accepted the news of her approaching motherhood with glacial calm. She was still seething over Bryan's apparent mismanagement of the Skagway operation. The gold that had reached her through such smuggling couriers as Father Nichhad been far less than she had expected and saw that Bryan, through his own foolishness, couldn't go back to get more, she had absolutely no use for him, his wife or their progeny. Bryan was the business head she had trained him to be.
Or so Irina maintained to herself, in her bitter anger.
Closer to the truth, something Irina recognized only at odd moments, she was jealous of the young couple. Milla's loveliness had caught her by surprise. An inner love for Bryan was shining through too, a love such as she had never felt during her own marriage.
Did she want to deny Milla happiness? Deep in her heart, Irina knew that wasn't the problem so much as that she wanted to deny Bryan happiness. She couldn't stand to see Bryan in love with anybody but her. She tried to deny it, but the devouring ache was always there to prove it to her. Bryan was hers! She was the one who had turned him from an animal into a compliant lover! She never should have let him go! Was there no way she could get him back? And if she couldn't, was there no way that she could still control him?
"Bryan, I--" she began, storming into his bedroom one night as though this were her right again.
"Yes?" he said quietly. "Yes, Irina?"
"I've decided to overlook what happened at Skagway. It has cost me a great deal of money, but we can recoup--"
Bryan's brows rose sharply.
"Cost you! It nearly cost me my life. It would have cost me my share if I hadn't thought to hide my gold the way I did." 
Irina flared up. "What do you mean, your gold? You speak as if you had a right to that gold. I allowed you to have it! If it were not for my good graces, you would have nothing. Do you hear me -- nothing!" 
"Oh no, Irina, oh no. You inveigled me into
sinking everything I had into those claims and into the overland route. Then you sold the overland route. You didn't even consult me on the sale--you just went ahead and sold it. I had to hear of it through Umalti. No, Irina, you cheated me and you damn well know it. Otherwise, you wouldn't have been so quick to shower your so-called good graces on me. You think of that gold as a sop to keep me mollified, but I own it--I have every moral right to it!" 
"But no legal right," Irina pointed out quickly.
Bryan hesitated. "We had an agreement. It was a family matter. You know we signed no partnership papers."
"Well then?" Irina challenged him.
Bryan said nothing.
"Bryan, Bryan, you have what you want, don't you?" Irina all but pleaded with him. "You have Milla, and it's obvious that you're in love with her now. You're going to have a child, perhaps a boy, a son, Bryan, who will bring us even closer through blood ties. There will be a Mathews-Feodorovna clan, that will transform Alaska into a--"
"What now, Irina?"
Irina blinked. She had been riding the crest of her own rhapsody and the question had upset her. "Now?" she repeated.
"The next step. You're saying good things, whether you know it or not. I do love Milla. I am looking forward to having a son. I want to know what you're getting around to ask of me." 
Irina took a deep breath. From Bryan's soft tones, tones merely of inquiry, she could see this was going to be easier than she had expected it to be. "I want you to go to work for me at Douglas
Island. Perhaps you can earn enough there to pay me back what you legally owe me. Meanwhile, I will set aside a wing of this house for you, Milla and the baby."
Bryan smiled at her. "Sounds attractive. But before I do that, I need a business loan."
She was momentarily taken aback. "What for?"
"Now that you have taken the overland route away from Umalti. I wanted to open a fish cannery with him."
"Fish?" She sniffed, as if the unpleasant odor of fish was in the room with her.
"There is money in it, Irina."
She scoffed. "I'm offering you millions in gold and you speak of dollars in fish. Why, it's utterly ludicrous!"
"But it's what I want."
"Then you're a fool! I won't let you do this to Milla--"
"She agrees," Bryan said quietly. "She's even willing to invest her $100,000 from her Nome claim."
"Hardly hers to invest!" Irina snapped. "I put the claim in her name, but she was a minor. It's really mine!"
"And I thought I was dealing with crooks in Skagway. You make them look like mere amateurs. You, Irina, are a monster of greed."
Bryan's voice was so cold now that Irina realized she had gone too far. She had to change her tactics again, dig her way back out.
"Oh, Bryan," she said humbly, "why are we fighting? I know you feel you owe Umalti something. But he will drain you dry with this fish business. For goodness sake, he's not a businessman--he's an
Eskimo. He talks to ghosts in the sky. Why, he can't even read or write, let alone add numbers!"
Bryan began to chuckle.
"I can add the numbers, Irina. But that's not the point, is it? There was a man in Skagway, Frank Canton, who could have put me in jail but didn't; I thought he was my enemy but he proved to be a friend. You're not even an enemy. You're not even human in the sense that the rest of us are. You're a dollar bill. I'm spending you."
"What is that supposed to mean? You are not leaving this house with my gold or my daughter!" Irina said coldly.
"Keep the gold, baroness. I've been down before, and I'll find my way up again. But you're wrong about Milla. She will go with me because I found a way to give her something you never did--love. I guess I was just lucky, all the way around. I was lucky to have you too--as a teacher. What I mean is, you go ahead and fight me, baroness. If I have to, I'm going to fight you back with every dirty damn trick you taught me!"
Putting Umalti's tribe into the fishing- business, Bryan found, was surprisingly simple once he had convinced the chief to move his village close to the sea. About a hundred miles south of Sitka--in Kasaan Bay off Prince of Wales Island--the tribe relocated on a previously uninhabited isle that gave their kayaks easy access to the waters of Glacier Bay and the Stikine River. Not too far north, on the southern tip of Baranov Island, Bryan found land available for a cannery and a deep-water port. A bank was sufficiently impressed by his trading experience to lend him money for his venture. With
it, Bryan invested in a mill that could produce cans locally. For his bright red labels, reading Umalti Alaska Salmon, he made a percentage deal with the same Seattle manufacturer who was supplying major American companies in the salmon industry. 
One side of this label portrayed a Chinook Salmon vigorously battling iceberg-laden waters. The other side had on it a rather fierce-looking drawing of Umalti, in fur parka and carrying a harpoon. The drawing did no justice either to Umalti's gentle disposition or to the way salmon were actually caught, but it, along with the good-tasting salmon inside the can, immediately caught the fancy of American housewives from the west coast to New York City.
In its first year of operation the Umalti Canning Corporation shipped and sold, mostly in the states, 1.5 million pounds of tinned salmon.
In October of that year Frank Canton Mathews was born.
In its second year of operation the canning company doubled its business and helped establish Mathews Point as a port city on south shore of Baronov Island.
In December of that second year John Cramer Mathews was born.
In its third year, the company bought out four rival canneries and began operations from the North Bering Sea to the shores of Canada.
That year Milla and Bryan were blessed with a daughter. She was called Marna Maria Mathews.
Only ten miles separated the children from their maternal grandmother, but the baroness might as well have been living in another world.
Interesting to note:
The area around Irina's mines had been converted into a company town. The miners who had come north to get rich were paid a minimal $90 per month and over half of it was deducted for room, board and incidentals such as a compulsory laundry service. For a drink or the company of a woman the men had to go across the channel into Juneau and be back in time for a curfew. Any man caught with the 'sickness' was fired on the spot. The men worked twelve-hour days, seven days a week, with two days off per month. Not fondly, Irina became known as the 'Tsarina' and her mine and company town as 'Siberia.'
By contrast, Bryan's salmon industry town at Mathews Point flourished on a give as well as a take basis. He too housed workers whom he didn't pay all that much--they were Chinese 'gurry' boys who came to behead and gut the salmon at $165 a season. But they got free housing, free food, the company-paid services of Chinese cooks to prepare the latter, even free rations of opium once a month. Never once did they call Bryan 'warlord.'
In the summer of 1905 Mama Stoecklov never woke from a peaceful sleep. Irina had her buried in the churchyard at St. Michael's Cathedral and Milla came up to Sitka for the services. It was the first time in years that mother and daughter had seen each other.
"I didn't bring the children," Milla said calmly. "I wanted them to remember Marna as I described her--someone who loved them."
"I see," Irina said despondently. She did not mention the matter again.
The next month Bryan took his family on a trip to San Francisco. Aside from enjoying the leisurely ocean voyage and the sights, the fact that he could afford to do this made him feel successful, established. At the same time it made him feel that he was getting on, that he wasn't getting any younger.
Leaning on the ship's rail during the return voyage, he told Milla, "You know, I'll be thirty next year."
"My Lord," she mocked, "as old as all that?"
"I'm serious. We should be taking a good look at our future."
"The cannery is our future, dear."
"But for how long?" Bryan said moodily. "We've not been very well liked since I refused to join the Alaska Packers Association."
"Deceitful name," Milla sighed. "We're the only real Alaska company left. The rest are all owned by corporations based down in the states."
"My point, darling. It's McKenzie all over again. They have the power in Washington to force us to go along with their damn rules and regulations. They won't be hurt by this tax plan before Congress because they are non-resident corporations. It is only the resident companies that they want to tax. We really need a government of our own in Alaska."
Milla smiled. "Are you thinking of going into politics?"
Bryan made a wry face. "Not hardly! But I don't like the thought of all of our eggs being in one basket either."
Returning from San Francisco through Seattle, Bryan inspected a new machine there that could clean and prepare sixty fish a minute for canning.
Bryan ordered ten of the machines for that fall season and cancelled the contract for ninety percent of his Chinese work force. Even though he knew the Chi- lese would simply return to Seattle and find work here, he did not relish letting people he liked go. But the fact was that the wages he had been paying for their labor had been going back to China, and he was determined to start keeping Alaska money in Alaska.
Daily, Bryan grew more conscious of his need to expand further. That fall he was often ill tempered and curt, even with the children, and there were days when he did not speak to Milla at all.
By way of relief from the mounting tension, he plunged into various investments in fly-by-night
schemes. Many resulted in heavy financial loss for him. Still, he would not admit that his business acumen was not on a par with that of his mother-in-law.
There was a sound in the driveway. The children's faces brightened with anticipation. Milla caught Bryan's eye on a curious look. As the children went dashing outside, they both got up from the table and followed them.
The troika-pulled sleigh had all the aspects of a visitation from Santa Claus. In red fox and white ermine, Irina sat amidst uncountable gaily wrapped boxes of every size imaginable. Her face was flushed from the ten-mile drive in the crisp air, and her eyes and laughter were full of merriment.
"Greetings," she called. "Greetings to all. Children, come and help Albert unload the sleigh. And there will be no peeking!"
"Will wonders never cease?" Milla whispered.
"I wonder what she is up to," Bryan mused suspiciously.
As though it were her normal custom to visit them at every holiday season Irina entered their home bubbling and gay. She kissed Milla on the cheek and then offered her cheek to Bryan. But they were adults and she was there for the children.
"Frank? This is Frank? Oh, my dear child, you have the best of both of your parents. What a heartbreaker you are going to be!"
The five-year-old Frank backed away cautiously when she tried to grab and hug him. "Who is she?" he demanded of his parents.
Irina wasn't set back for a moment. "Darling, I am your grandmother!"
With green eyes so like his mother's the boy eyed her narrowly. "My grandmother lives on a farm where there are horses to ride and pigs to play with."
It was left for the more spirited four-year-old Johnny to set the record straight. "Heck, she's the other one, Frankie. The lady one. The one with the pigs is in heaven."
The inquisitive and beautiful three-year-old Marna, as yet fearful of nothing in life, marched right up to Irina and stared.
"Are you? Are you our other Gramma Lady?"
"I like that," Irina chuckled. "I like that very much. Yes, darling, I am your Gramma Lady."
Little Marna Maria giggled. "You're too pretty to be a gramma."
"Well, thank you," said Irina, genuinely touched. "You're quite right, of course, but how perceptive of you!" 
"You will find, mother," Milla laughed, "that
our Marna Maria is precocious to say the least. Come on into the parlor."
So unlike herself, Irina had nothing but compliments for the house, the furniture, the children and the cleanliness of Mathews Point in general. Bryan's suspicions mounted with each new comment.
"Milla," Irina said gaily, "if I'm not mistaken, you are with child again."
Milla grinned. "You're not mistaken. It will happen sometime in April."
Except for offering her cheek on entry, Irina had all but ignored Bryan. But he had been driving her mad. She had not forgotten what a completely desirable man he was. Maturity had made him even more handsome. She could not keep her eyes from roving to him from time to time.
Because the gifts were so expensive and the children so excited over the apparent warmth and love from this 'new' grandmother, Milla insisted that Irina stay for dinner.
"I'm really not my own boss," Irina sighed. "Albert hates driving the sleigh at any time, but will throw a British tantrum if I ask him to drive back at night. Some other time, children, some other time."
Without questioning Irina's motive for it, it had pleased Milla to see her mother making friends with the children. It gave her hopes that a reconciliation was possible.
"Let Albert go on back, mother," she suggested. "Bryan has business in Sitka and can take you in the morning. We have plenty of room for you here tonight."
"Well ..." Irina demurred, waiting for the invitation to be repeated by Bryan.
"Fine with me," he said curtly.
It was a wedge Irina thought she could pry open wider. "Fine! Frankie, my boy, would you give Albert the message that I am staying the night and he may return? Thank you all, for the invitation. It shall be jolly fun and give me a chance to bury the hatchet with your father."
Bryan sat back, more amused than angry. It was clear to him that Irina had more in mind than just winnowing her way back into the family circle. But if it made Milla happy for her to stay, he could certainly bide his time with her.
After dinner, while Milla was preparing the children for bed and Irina and Bryan were alone over coffee and brandy, she got down to business.
"What do you know about copper, Bryan?"
"Nothing," he said quietly.
"Nor do I," she said. "But listen to this. Five years ago a party of eleven prospectors threaded their way through the Chitina River valley. That land, Bryan, between the Chugach and Wrankell mountain ranges, is just too rugged and inaccessible for profitable gold mining. Wouldn't you agree?"
"I would," he said laconically.
"Still, it wasn't gold that they found. At the 4,000-foot level above Bonanza Creek, they came on a region of stark, green cliffs. Those cliffs were assayed at seventy percent pure copper."
Bryan couldn't help but sit forward.
"They staked a mile-long claim," Irina continued, "and came back into Sitka. They approached my mining engineer, Stephen Birch, for advice on how to get the ore out. Everyone agreed that profits would be huge but that it would take millions before they started realizing any."
"And so it just sits?"
Irina spread her hands wide. "Well, Bryan, you know me. I take some long gambles sometimes. I had Birch buy out the eleven claim holders for $25,000 each and put him in charge of a company to explore the area further." She laughed, as though it were all a joke. "It is the world's largest discovery of copper and yet I don't dare invest another nickel in the project. The machinery, railroad and labor would drain me dry before I got the first dollar back. Am I being wise or am I being foolish?"
Bryan grinned. They were back at square one. She never asked his advice unless there was a hook hidden on the end of the line.
"I don't think I would care to comment," he said.
"I thought we were going to bury the hatchet?"
"Baroness, my back is full of scars where you have buried the hatchet before."
"All I asked for was your comment," she pouted.
"Comment on what?" Milla asked, rejoining them at that moment.
Quick to gain an ally, Irina rapidly filled her daughter in on the topic of discussion.
"Well, Bryan," Milla said, "I shouldn't butt in, I know, but it seems to me that mother has come to the proper party to comment. She had cheated us enough times for us to have the right to!"
Irina gasped and Bryan laughed.
"Does that surprise you, Irina?" he chuckled. "Milla, you can see, has become quite an outspoken person. I think I should let her comment for us both."
Irina pursed her lips. "Really! It's not as though it all won't belong to you someday."
"Mother," Milla said quietly, "that isn't it at all.
I've been putting up with your telling me what will one day come to me all my life, but I don't intend to go on putting up with it. You use people to make money any way that you can. I didn't understand that until I was married, but I do understand now. I don't want you holding that form of blackmail over our heads or our children's heads. Now, there has to be a reason why you wanted Bryan to comment. What is it?"
"But, Milla," Irina protested, "I just explained."
"No, I'm sorry. You have explained nothing. You come sailing in here like Lady Bountiful and try to buy my children with expensive presents. I will not have them spoiled that way. I won't even allow Bryan to spoil them in the way I was spoiled as a child. They will have a normal, happy upbringing."
"Now you're talking foolishness! They have a right to know of the royal blood in their veins!"
Milla gave her mother a steely look. "I shall say this once, and one time only. I shall not have false notions put into their heads. Let me hear of it, and you will never see your grandchildren as long as you live."
Milla could see the livid spots of rage appearing on her mother's cheeks. But she could see something else, too, a hint of fear in her eyes. She looked closer and saw something else as well. Her mother was aging. In two years she would be fifty and all alone. For a moment she felt pity for the woman. She had no love in her; she could only try to buy it from someone.
Irina fought to calm herself. This interview was not going as she had planned it at all. She'd thought she had to but snap her fingers and Bryan and Milla
would jump through her moneyed hoops. She still felt she could control Bryan, if not Milla. For the first time she was seeing a lot of herself in her daughter and it was not a pretty picture.
"All right," she said, "you win on that score."
"Thank you," Milla said serenely. "Now, Bryan, why don't you comment on her request?"
That won't be necessary," Irina murmured. "It was only the opening gambit in what I really need advice on. I have been approached by a representative of the international banker, J. P. Morgan. He wants the copper claims."
Bryan whistled. "He's one of the richest men in the world!"
Irina was glad he was impressed and wanted to impress him further. "He is not interested in it alone. He wants to join with the Guggenheim mining family to create an Alaska syndicate. They would then have the millions to pour into the development."
"Sure," Bryan protested, "so they could make billions!"
"What else can I do but sell out?" Irina said softly.
"One thing for sure," he insisted, "you've got to get more out of it than the $275,000 investment."
"That's the real problem," she said grimly. "They will only talk with Birch. He may be a good engineer, but he's not too sharp on money matters."
Bryan looked at her, a puzzled expression in his eyes. "Why only Birch?"
Irina laughed. It was a high, brittle sound, tinged with disgust. "The great J. P. Morgan feels that a woman's place is in the home. He won't even allow his representative to talk with me directly. I think it's all a ruse to get me to sell at the lowest figure."
"And what is that?"
"A million."
"Damn land baron!"
Irina began to breathe easier. She had stirred up Bryan's anger and curiosity.
"I know I have no right to ask this," she said very slowly, "but I need a negotiator with more drive than Birch."
Bryan studied his mother-in-law with unconcealed amazement. There was the line, but where was the hook? She had gilled him once too often and he was leery, but anxious to learn more. Several bad investments had him fairly well strapped for cash. He didn't think she could be aware of that fact, because he had been successful in keeping it even from Milla. But within two months he would need a steady cash flow to pay for the tin and solder to begin producing 2,000 cans a day for the next season.
His wife's laugh brought him out of his reverie.
"That was very neatly put, mother!" Milla said. "I take it that you are asking Bryan to be that negotiator?"
Irina hesitated, fidgeting in her seat.
Something's wrong, Milla thought. She doesn't like negotiating with me. I'm becoming too strong for her.
"Well, it's a thought," Irina murmured. "Perhaps Bryan and I can discuss it at length on our drive into Sitka tomorrow morning."
"Yes," Milla said, "you could. Only--well, mother--I don't really trust you. I don't think we are interested!"
Bryan allowed himself a small grin. Whatever his other feelings, he was suddenly very proud of his wife.
Irina stiffened, as though she had been struck. Why did I come? she thought miserably. Why did Milla have to come into the conversation before she had fully discussed the matter with Bryan? She knew she had his interest aroused, even without discussing money. Well, she would just let it drop for tonight. She would have Bryan all to herself for the ride in the morning.
Milla read her face as if it were a printed page.
"Oh, Bryan," she said sweetly, "I'm afraid we shall have to ask Umalti to drive mother in tomorrow. Have you forgotten that we are interviewing that new schoolteacher for the children in the morning?"
Bryan blinked. It was the first he had heard about it. Then he understood and nodded.
"All right!" Irina snapped. "Enough games! Now that I see who wears the pants in this family, what do you want?"
- "Only what is fair," Milla said with gentle dignity. "I know you don't want to settle for just a million, so we want ten percent of the final sale price with a cash advance of $100,000."
"That's . . . that's robbery!" Irina said brokenly.
"Is it mother?" Milla, crooned, "is it, really? It seems to me that it is about the same figure my Nome claim was worth. I never saw any of that money. But, in those days I was too much of a good little girl to call my own mother a robber."
Irina said grimly, "I'll see that he has the money tomorrow."
Milla nodded, then turned and left them without a good night.
In the stillness that followed, Bryan said pointedly
to Irina, "Amazing, isn't it? That the daughter you did everything you could to break to your will should have such spirit in her. ..."
But Irina merely smiled to herself. She had given birth to a viper and it had just come back to strike her. Well, she mused, my darling little daughter, it is only money that you are seeking and I have plenty of that. But you have only one of what I really want.
She looked at Bryan with unabashed longing. She would open doors for him ... all the doors in the world!
At first Bryan thought Milla might have gotten him in over his head. The Morgan and Guggenheim men spoke of millions as if they were discussing penny-candy purchases. They also appeared to know all the ins and outs of copper and talked about the project in jargon that often left Bryan confused and mystified. At times like those he would sit back and let them ramble on and on.
"Are we boring you, Mr. Mathews?" Fletcher Crumbe asked snidely at one point.
"Frankly, yes," Bryan answered. "You don't seem to understand that my mother-in-law has no desire to go into the copper mining business. Gold is our field. All we want to know right now is whether you're interested in purchasing the mineral rights to the property we own. Now, can we get back to discussing my last proposal?"
Harvey Otis, cut short hi that manner, hesitated before answering. "Sir, the figure you mention is outrageous. I can't understand why you Alaskans can't understand simple facts. To get to the copper will be
a job of staggering proportions. Why, to build a railroad to the site alone will--"
Bryan abruptly rose. "Gentlemen, you are repeating yourselves. I have heard countless times now about the cost of the railroad, the cost of a breakwater to protect the ships in Controller Bay, the years and years it will take just to get the copper out. I couldn't care less. That mountain has stood for a million years or more and should stand for a million more. It doesn't seem to be in any rush and neither am I. Now, if you will excuse me, I have business to attend to down in Mathews Point."
"Now you just wait!" Fletcher Crumbe barked, "I am due back in New York and want this thing settled today."
"I hope you have a very pleasant trip," Bryan said and departed.
The discussions went on throughout January and February. Irina began to feel that Bryan was holding out for too great a price, but Bryan grew more adamant day by day. He found sitting still for so long exceedingly irksome. Still, because Crumbe and Otis were replaced by Starne and Weatherby, who in turn gave way to Milton Goode and H. A. Oliver, Bryan's confidence grew---as did his demands. Each new team was older and more subtle in its dealings than the last, without being any less insatiable in its desire to swallow up the copper. Recognizing greed through all its clever disguises, he simply held on. Irina finally determined that the negotiations were in need of a woman's touch. She gave an elegant little dinner party for four. It was obvious from the start that Goode and Oliver were stunned at finding such affluence and luxury in Alaska. They had been
given to understand that this was new-gold money that could be swayed with promises of more 'bucks' that could be easily made. The woman, the house, the servants, the anecdotes told over dinner, all suggested they were dealing with a couple who were definitely uninterested in selling except at their price. Morgan had instructed them to crush the opposition and move ahead. Instead, they were the ones who were getting crushed. Inwardly, they decided to go on with Bryan's last-made proposal.
"I think we are drawing close to an agreement, baroness," was the way Milton Goode put it over dessert.
"Sorry, Mr. Goode," Bryan said quietly. "I'd like to oblige you, but I can't."
"You--you can't?" Goode gasped. "What the devil do you mean, Mathews?"
Irina turned an amazed face toward her son-in- law. The dinner had gone so well that she thought they had them at last.
"Yes, Bryan," she added, "just what do you mean?"
"Well, it's like this. As we drank champagne tonight, I sat back and listened to Mr. Oliver saying perhaps more than he wished to. I've told them all along, Irina, what our rock bottom price would be-- and it has always seemed too rock bottom to me." He looked at the jowl-cheeked Oliver and smiled. "Tonight was the first time you let me know, Mr. Oliver, that you intend to make the payments only after the claim began to show a profit. What do you take me for, a fool? I don't like doing business that way--it seems sneaky to me. The price for the mineral rights is now three million, up front!" 
"You can't do that!" Goode got out. "That's robbery!"
"I'm sure Mr. Morgan will understand," Bryan grinned. "In the past two months I've been able to do a bit of investigating myself. Is it really true that in the New York financial district they actually call him 'The Pirate'?"
"How dare you?" Goode spluttered.
H. A. Oliver began to chuckle and then roar with laughter.
"Goode," he advised, "leave well enough alone.
"This tale shall add to the legend J. P. loves to build round himself. He sent the best financial brains in Wall Street to seal the most lucrative mining deal ever negotiated. He anticipated we would be dealing with an eager beaver and not a sly fox. Not even the old man himself could have done any better. My congratulations, Mr. Bryan Mathews. Mr. Morgan himself, will probably make your name legendary and more than likely offer you a very lucrative position in his firm."
"Oh, no!" Irina insisted on a gay note. "Bryan's family will stay right here."
The moment was so heady for Bryan that he didn't hear her properly. He had tripled what Irina had originally hoped to obtain--and also tripled his own commission. Tomorrow it would be over! Tomorrow he would have ample funds not only to put the cannery fully back on its feet but expand further. He was home free!
Irina was in a mood to celebrate after the guests had departed. Bryan stayed for a few more glasses of champagne and then stood up.
"Midnight," he said. "I should be getting down to the Point."
"No. You've got to stay here for a couple of days to wind this all up. It's foolish to drive back and forth in weather like this. Besides, I have a proposition to make to you."
Bryan frowned. "I'm always leery when you use that word proposition, Irina." Then he shrugged. "But I'm willing to listen." 
"Oh, Bryan, Bryan, Bryan," she chuckled. "You have just pulled off a most handsome deal for us all and I am overwhelmed. Look at us! You slaving as a fishmonger, such a waste of your talents and time . . . and me? Oh, Bryan, you can see that I would never have been able to pull off this coup without' you. It is the same with all my enterprises. Oh, they're lucrative, to be sure. But am I being swindled by the men around me as, without you, these men would have swindled me? That worries me."
He couldn't help but laugh. "In the first place, I don't consider the salmon industry a waste of my efforts. In the second, I didn't think you knew what the word 'worry' meant, Irina."
She almost purred. "Do you know, Bryan, that tonight has been the first time you have called me by name in two months.? It almost gives me hope."
He flushed. "Hope for what?"
"For what I intend to propose," she said softly. "I need you and you need me ... Oh, don't get me wrong. You are still the most sexually attractive male I have ever met, but we need each other for stronger reasons than that. If you would really like to be the king of the salmon industry you need every bit of capital you can get. I want my gold mines to operate at their peak without my being cheated by every tinhorn manager who comes along. But let's make a game of it, Bryan. Here's what I propose. If
you can drink me under the table I'll invest heavily in your cannery and leave you alone to build it. If I outlast you, I'll still invest in your smelly industry, but others will have to run it, because you'll have to come to Douglas Island as my partner and general manager. Can you beat those odds?" 
Bryan scoffed. "You're going to out-drink me?" Then he thought for a moment. "I don't know," he said, hesitating. He had memories of his drinking that didn't sit well with him.
"Would you like to discuss it first with Milla?" Irina asked slyly. "Maybe you need her permission. ..."
Bryan stiffened. "You're going to lose, Irina. When do we begin?"
Irina unwound from her chair like a feline coming into heat. "I had Albert put a case of champagne on ice to chill. I think we've each had about an equal start on the evening."
Irina never caged her bets. For the past few years she had found life mundane and boring. More often than not, she'd spent her evenings sitting in front of the fireplace, poring over ledgers and sipping glass after glass of French champagne. Many had been the night when she had arisen, stretched her tired limbs, looked at the empty bottles strewn on the carpet and felt nothing. No giddiness, no lightheadedness, no elation. Nothing. The same nothingness that was in her life. The ledgers marked her assets in the millions, but that still did not make her a Cleopatra to some Mark Anthony. She wasn't even a Priscilla to some simple John Alden. Often, she was tempted to see herself as a lonely, aging woman and let it go at that. 
But her desire always betrayed her. She lusted in
her loneliness. Even though she might have had her pick of them, she had refused to lower herself and accept any of the general run of men in Sitka. They simply did not attract her. She wanted her prize and Bryan was it. She dreamed of him night after night, only to wake in the mornings dissatisfied, with the same lonely hunger for him.
As she chatted on about books, music, money, anything at all, Irina saw with glee the champagne's mounting effect on Bryan. She knew she would win, had known from the start she would win, but had to give him a sporting chance. She wasn't gambling on a single night of adultery; she was angling for something far more lasting than that.
It no longer mattered who he was, whom he was married to, how she was related to each. She was who she was and that was her only concern. She needed Bryan to play a dual male role in the scenario she had written: he was to service her and serve her. 
Bryan was beyond the point of remembering how he had gotten from the dining room to the guest bedroom. It was all like some slow-motion instructional dream. He was the schoolboy. As before, he let Irina be his mentor and guide.
She felt particularly robust and zesty--it was going to be a stunning conquest.
She had taught Bryan to have control; she admired him for remembering. He had been trained to wait for her, because he had been trained to please. She often marveled at his staying powers; sometimes it took her quite a while to reach orgasm.
But this night was different. After the first few thrusts, she didn't want to wait any longer. She feared that she had gotten him far too drunk and he
might momentarily pass out on her. Astride him, she pressed herself close, settling her hips down hard, and she heard his drunken moan of joy as his moves quickened.
The feathery tingles came close together; she panted, straining.
And suddenly, like a gust of wind over a sunlit hill, gathering speed, the sweet bunching in her loins commenced. Her peak came sharply, exquisitely--she sailed into it with a little glad cry.
And, quite unexpectedly, a new sensation gripped her. She moved downward, around him . . . Something strange and wonderful and heady beckoned to her; she was shaken to the roots of her being. She found herself wanting more, more! This was not the Bryan of old, but a creature with vast new experience. The boy was dead and a man had been born.
She felt his shudder, heard his moan of completion, and the bit of heaven she had tasted, but had not gulped, faded away . . .
Awareness returned swiftly. She moved away from him, seizing her robe. She realized that her role of sacher was no longer needed.
She lay quietly beside him for several moments, a kind of puzzlement building within her. Exactly how was she to handle this new relationship?
Although her climax had been better than ever with him, she didn't feel relieved. Her nerves were an edge. Bryan, automatically, reached out to touch her. Sternly, she pushed his hand away. Her sense of victory was gone.
She returned to her own bedroom and nursed her unease. The champagne would put him right to sleep, of course. In Nome, he had nearly always
fallen asleep before she did. In that respect, men were nothing more than infants; pet them and stroke them and they drifted off to sleep immediately.
She realized she was being a bit irrational. For a bare instant she felt grateful for the pleasure she had had with Bryan. But that faded. He had touched something within her that she hadn't wanted touched. For a moment she had felt weak, almost submissive . . . almost allowed him to be the master. But she wouldn't again. Never! Bryan was her inferior. She remained determined to keep him in his place.
Half a million dollars. Five hundred thousand dollars. That had been Irina's offer if Bryan would give her two years of his time at the mines.
Bryan told Milla, "For that much money, I can put up four more canneries. I don't see how I can turn it down."
"But," Milla said sourly, "she hasn't said when or how she would pay you."
"Now, hold on there!" Bryan said. "She paid me the copper commission right on time. That got our necks out of the noose. I think I'm going to trust her on this job."
"Suit yourself," Milla said, shrugging. "You'll have to work plenty hard for that half million--in more ways than one, knowing mother as we do."
Bryan said thoughtfully, "We'll see. . . . One thing for sure is that her Douglas Island mines are
a mess. She hasn't reinvested a dime in them. And everyone there thinks that he's the boss."
Milla frowned. "If she hasn't reinvested, what has she done with all that money?"
Bryan said, "Salted it away, I guess. Near as I can figure the mines have produced over $28 million. I'll get to see the books tomorrow and then I'll know more." He hesitated. "Oh, by the way, for a couple of months I think I'd best live right at the mine site. Irina has a nice little house there I can use."
He turned away quickly before she could see his guilty expression. While hung over the morning after at Irina's house, he had vowed never to let her get him in the bed again. There was no reason for sex to be part of her business deal. A couple days later, he was chuckling fondly. It hadn't been bad! It hadn't been bad at all, even though he'd been too drunk to recall all that had transpired.
He felt the guilt only when he had to face Milla. It made him uncomfortable even to mention Irina's name to her, so he called her 'your mother' or 'she.' For a while, he'd all but decided to turn down the mine job. But a half million dollars for two years!
Outside the wheelhouse window, dirty, cold sleet was falling. The steep mountain cliffs behind Juneau were shrouded in ugly slate-gray clouds.
Across the channel the smokestacks of the Alaska-Russian Mining Company spewed forth dirtier clouds. The stamp mills, aerial tramways, dormitories, offices and wharves of the company sprawled over lower Douglas Island like a slum. It was more than just mines, it was a company town under the thumb of a single dictator.
Harrison Timberson stood in the wheelhouse, gazing first at Bryan Mathews' frowning face and then out of the window. He was small and spiderlike and actively watchful. He resented being taken away from the company offices in Juneau. He resented the new general manager, although he had just met him that morning and knew nothing about him. Until now, he had reported weekly to the baroness herself and he was not a man who took kindly to change.
Bryan leaned against the window frame, his big frame loose-muscled and relaxed, but with the frown on his face.
"Ugly place," he said.
"Wasn't meant to be the garden spot of the world, Mr. Mathews."
"What's the work force?"
"Hovers around two thousand."
"Pay?"
Timberson hesitated. "It runs' $90 and up per month, depending on a man's output. I think it is more than adequate."
"Then what's all the grumbling about?"
"Who said anything about grumbling?" Timberson asked. "We do have to deduct certain fees, of course."
"What fees?"
"Those set by the tsarina."
"Tsarina?" Bryan laughed. 
Timberson colored scarlet. "I'm sorry, Mr. Mathews, it was a slip of the tongue. It's . . . it's an affectionate name given to the baroness."
Affectionate like hell, Bryan thought. If they thought of her as a tsarina then this had to be her private little Siberia.
"I'm waiting," he growled.
Timberson started. "For what, sir?"
"I asked you about the fees! I'm going to be asking a hell of a lot more questions! If you don't want to be fired by the end of the day, you'll start opening up with some proper answers."
Timberson was not easily intimidated by new general managers. He had outlasted three; he would outlast the fourth. Personally, he thought the man far too young for the position to begin with.
"The fees are quite standard," he said acidly. "We provide a clubhouse, library and gymnasium for the men. Married men do have to pay for company housing, you understand; and the bachelors are charged a third of their salaries to sleep in the dormitories and eat in the common mess." 
Bryan grunted his contempt. These were items that should have been given free to such low-paid men.
The town was even blacker close up. The streets oozed seas of black mud. Even the washday clothing on the lines beside the company houses were more black than gray.
Timberson wanted to take Bryan to the offices, but Bryan wanted to get right at the root of the problem.
"I never go near the mines," Timberson objected.
Bryan ignored him and waded through the slush and mud toward the tall mine-shaft building. He walked right up to a tall, thin man working the clanking, antiquated hoist lift.
"I'm Mathews," he said. 'This is Timberson. You the hoist boss, Frank Connors?"
"Right," Connors said. "And am I glad to see you! We need new machinery right bad!"
"Connors!" Timberson snapped. "Mr. Mathews is not here to listen to everyone's petty little gripe and personal wish. The machinery seems to be operating quite all right!"
Connors looked at the accountant with open disgust.
"It's all bailing wire and re-welded gears," he said. "It can't hoist more than five men whereas it should handle twenty."
Bryan thought it best to talk both men's language at once. "That's not very efficient. How much time are you losing getting the men to work and a shift changed?"
"They almost overlap, Mr. Mathews. Every hoist is the same, even the gold conveyor trams."
Bryan took out his big gold pocket watch. "Take me down, Mr. Connors."
"Mr. Mathews," Timberson fumed, "I have better things to do than stand around waiting for you!"
"Then do them," Bryan said. "I'm here to find out what problems there are and I might just as well start at the bottom and work my way up."
Connors grinned. "It's two thousand feet down, sir."
"Then take me all the way."
Timberson was dumbfounded. The other managers hardly budged from their desks. "Mr. Mathews," he insisted, "are you forgetting that you are the manager of the mine? There is nothing that compels you to take this risk!"
Bryan cast him so scathing a look that he blanched. Nothing compelled him other than the job he had accepted.
"Here's a lantern cap, Mr. Mathews," Connors
chuckled. He was going to like working with this man. There was nothing white-collar about him.
"Thanks, Frank. And the name is Bryan!"
The wire cage went down slowly, but after Bryan's head was below ground it began to jerk and start and would drop five to ten feet before jumping back up with a teeth-jarring jolt. For a while he could hear Connors calling down apologies for the machine.
The silence within the mine shaft pounded on his ears. It sounded as if he were inside a kettle drum. Foot by foot the cable played him down, and Bryan saw the square of light disappearing above him. Not until he was at the work level was he to ignite the tallow candle in his work cap. He was suddenly, horribly alone. He had known darkness before, but that had been in the great outdoors. Never anything like this stinking, earth-fumed darkness that closed in tighter and tighter.
How did men do this daily for a living? The trip alone was frightening, so how did they work in the narrow cramped tunnels once they were far below?
Down he went, down. There was no end to it: the shaft must end up in hell. He cursed himself for not finding out from Connors how to signal the man to stop and pull him back up. He suddenly had no desire to go farther, but he knew his shout would never carry up the shaft because he could no longer hear the clanging machinery.
Then the cage touched bottom. He felt his stomach rise to his mouth and then resettle. He stepped out into a different world.
The excavated chamber seemed as large as Irina's whole house. Tramway tracks went off in
four directions into taper-lit tunnels. He didn't feel that he needed the lantern-cap but ignited it with one of the tapers anyway.
Noise from one of the tunnels attracted him in its direction. He had gone no more than a hundred feet when a burly miner stopped him short.
"Where the hell do you think you're going, mister?" ,
"Name's Mathews! New general manager!"
The man went pop-eyed. This would be a rich story for the supper table. He had worked the mine three years and had yet to see one of the big bosses. Then he saw that the man had extended his hand and that really amazed him.
He shook Bryan's hand and said: "Luge! Luge Krueger!"
"Krueger," Bryan mused. "Sounds German. Much mining experience?"
The barrel-chested man grinned. "Saarland be my old home. Born in a coal mine."
"You a foreman, Krueger?"
The man scoffed, "Not here. They picked foreman in a strange way." Then he stopped as though he had said too much too soon.
Bryan decided not to press the matter. He had Krueger find the foreman for him, introduced himself, and asked for Krueger to guide him around and explain the whole operation. It was put in such a way that Eric Brenner couldn't refuse.
Brenner waited until the two had gone off deep into a tunnel and then went to report the news to the foreman.
Timothy Brenner scowled until his bushy eyebrows narrowed into one. "Go be telling your
brothers to look sharp today, lad. We've never been bothered before and I'll not have a new man getting the wrong impression from the first."
Like the others, Tim Brenner had never heard tell of a general manager coming down into the 'digs.' He had been the head foreman for five years and was allowed to run his little empire as he saw fit. If men wanted work, he was the one who approved them; therefore working men never questioned the fact that the eight foreman on all shifts were either his sons, sons-in-laws or nephews. They were paid by the percentage of ore their crews extracted each month and Brenner wanted his little 'family project' to last as long as possible.
Bryan took an immediate liking to Luge Krueger. He was open, honest and forthright.
"Barge dumped these timber braces into the bay. Should have been stacked to dry, but the quartermaster is always ordering short. Down in this dampness they'll never dry and will buckle in a month."
"Not very safe."
"Safe? These mines are not noted for their safety standards, sir. If you don't know already, you'll hear that we average one accidental death a day."
Bryan whistled. "We'll have to change that."
Krueger eyed him cautiously. "Sir, don't count on it. This is gold we seek and not coal. It's today project. We overlook the little veins and go after only the large ones; then a tunnel is forgotten. With coal you have to keep taking every bit of it and never let a tunnel go bad, because you may have to honeycomb back into it someday."
"Who makes those decisions?"
"Head foreman tells the tunnel chief and the word comes back down."
To the man's further surprise Bryan stayed down the whole shift. This was a far different manner of getting gold from the ground and he wanted to know everything.
Two pickmen and two shovel men would work each tram car. When it was filled a number would be chalked on its side and a pusher would give them a new car and roll the loaded one back to the conveyor hoist cage. There the number would be recorded and the contents dumped onto a conveyor belt to be pulled up to the smelting and stamping mill.
Blasting was used only to open new tunnels and to go through the hardest rock areas. Krueger didn't want trouble so refused to speculate on why blasting was not used more often.
Not until the cage had come back to the surface did Bryan have an answer to a question about which he had become curious. He had become so absorbed in the underground work itself that he hadn't bothered to ask it there.
Each man stepped from the cage, took a look at the slate about his neck and mumbled off the numbers to the head foreman. Brenner stood at an upright desk checking off the numbers against the talley sheet he had been given by the conveyor- dump operator.
Krueger seemed a little embarrassed to call out only two numbers to Brenner.
"Two!" Brenner croaked. "What the hell you been doing all day?"
With Bryan standing right behind him Krueger was unsure of how to answer.
"Put him down for ten," Bryan said, pushing his way around the big German.
Brenner eyed the dirt-smeared Bryan coldly. "If you be the new manager, then you best be paying the man out of your own pocket for wasting all of his day."
"I said put him down for ten," Bryan repeated, ignoring Krueger's pull of his arm.
"There is no way I can do that!" Brenner said doggedly.
Bryan stepped behind the upright desk and studied the dirty work sheets. Brenner tried to snatch them up but Bryan slammed them back down with the palm of his hand.
"Damn peculiar system, if you ask me. Took me an hour, sitting down there watching, to figure this scam out. Would you like to explain why the four foremen on this shift are each credited with ten trams each and I didn't see a one of them lift as much as a shovel?"
Brenner fumed. "No one has ever questioned my system before."
"No," Bryan agreed, "because there was no one a man could complain to if he wanted to keep his job."
Krueger's heart sank. He knew that the moment the new manager holed himself up in his office he would be on his way out.
"I think," Brenner said evenly, "you'd best take the whole matter up with Les Stewart. He's the tunnel boss and the man I take my orders from."
"Was!" Bryan snapped. "Until I get all of the answers I want around here there are only two bosses for you to answer to--myself and Krueger,
here, as my field assistant. Tell this Stewart I want to see him in my office."
"Ah," Brenner sighed bitingly, "the eagerness of youth! I think I had best warn you, son, that Stewart is a personal friend of the baroness and he'll have you bottled, corked and out of here in no time."
Bryan grinned. "I look forward to meeting him. Come on, Luge. Show me the house the baroness has on this desolate corner of hell."
In spite of Irina's having placed her fine furniture in the care of a housekeeper, everything in the house was covered with smelter soot. It was obvious she was just collecting her pay and not raising a dust cloth. The grate was thoroughly clogged and Bryan had to clean it before he could get a fire started. The larder was bare, but that didn't bother him. He had already decided that he wanted to try the food in the common mess hall.
He just had the fire going good when a rapid, heavy knocking came at the door.
"Mathews!" the man roared. "Why didn't you check things out with me first?" Then he came rushing in, his huge hand extended.
Bryan studied Lester Stewart closely. He was magnificently built, with a great tawny beard and a massive head. He looked like Paul Bunyan was supposed to look--and had the voice to match his appearance.
"You've got everyone upset," he thundered. "Brenner's been screaming at me for a half hour!"
"Good!" Bryan said.
"You think good? He's ready to quit!"
"Even better!"
"Then you are an ass! Brenner and his foremen
are the only ones who keep this place from having a major strike. We're dealing with highly illiterate people who have got to be handled the way he handles them."
"Do you consider Luge Krueger illiterate?"
"I think so--yes," Stewart answered.
"You think so! Don't you know?"
"I don't get involved with the men that much."
"Then what exactly is your job, Stewart?"
"Good that you asked," Stewart said slyly. Bryan could tell by his tone that he was going to hear from one more person the power of position he thought he had. "I don't know how well you know your boss, but the,baroness and I go back quite a ways. I not only plan the tunnels around here, Ma- Mathews, I am her personal eyes and ears." He winked. "A beautiful widow like that needs a man around to see to her needs. I'm giving you fair warning, Mathews, she doesn't like change."
Bryan smiled to himself. He knew Irina well enough to know that the man was, at most, her stool pigeon. He was too much of an animal ever to have seen the inside of her bedroom.
"Well," he said calmly, "I see a great deal of room for change, Stewart. You don't want it but I do. That puts us both in a very awkward position, don't you think? Shall we say, then, that I shall expect to find your resignation on my desk in the morning?"
It took Stewart a few moments to fully comprehend what Bryan had said. Then he began to bluster.
"I don't think you heard what I said before, Mathews. I am a deep, personal friend of the baroness!"
"And I am her son-in-law! So what?" 
Stewart gasped. He was unable to fight a retort like that. He had convinced too many people that he was intimate with the absent owner. He was not about to give up this battle so easily.
There was a stir in the huge dining hall and then over three hundred voices grew deadly silent. Bryan surmised at once that Stewart had spread the word rapidly. He was now a question mark in the men's minds. Too few had heard of his standing up for Luge Krueger; too many had heard that he was kin to the hated owner--and all seemed to resent his coming into their dining hall to eat.
Wordlessly, Bryan took a heavy plate from the stack and walked down the line accepting the food that was put on his plate. He had noted that at the far end of the hall were a few tables that were roped off for diners of a higher order than the miners, but he passed them by and pushed into a crowded table of silently eating miners. No one greeted him or looked his way.
He took the first forkful of food, sniffed and nearly gagged. He couldn't quite make out what it was supposed to be. He forked up a second item. It was like putting an unflavored wad of doughy flour in his mouth. He knew he would be sick if he chewed it and swallowed.
He put the wad back onto the fork and lowered it to the plate. All around him the men were eating diligently. He couldn't understand how they could force the stuff into their bellies.
"Utter pig slop," he growled.
An old miner sitting beside him chuckled. "Unless you got a chit to buy at the company store, this is all there is."
"Doesn't it get any better?"
"Nope, just worse!"
Slowly, Bryan rose and picked up the uneaten plate of food.
The old man gasped. "Don't throw it out! I'll eat it!"
Never had Bryan felt such a surge of pity overcome him. The men were cheated in the mines and charged an outlandish price for room and board. And this, in his opinion, was not proper board.
"No!" he roared. "I'll not let you eat this! No! It's not even fit for pigs!"
He crashed the plate down onto the floor with all his might. The dining hall became even quieter. Two burly cooks came flying from the kitchen door. They were quite used to putting down minor revolutions over their food.
"Clean up that goddam mess!" one of them bellowed, charging Bryan.
Bryan sprang forward, caught the man by the collar, twisted him high in the air and then threw him down to the floor. With his foot he shoved the man's face into the food and broken china and glared at the other cook.
"Do you want to help him eat it, buster? Come on! Charge me! I haven't eaten any of your crap yet, so I've still got some strength left. Now, listen and listen good. I'm coming back in exactly one hour and I'm bringing every day man in this place with me. I want a decent meal served up or I'll stand back and let them tear you and all the other cooks to shreds."
In the future, some would point to that night as the start of the miners' unrest, but no one tHought that as later they sat and ate steak and potatoes.
"Yes, Bryan," Irina declared, "I do think it was a mistake."
"Why? Things are being put in order."
"No, Bryan," Irina said gently, "they aren't. Les Stewart tells me--"
"What is he, Irina, your little lover boy?"
"Don't be crude!"
"Then don't be stupidI He hasn't been on the island since I fired him and the whole damn Brenner clan. How could he know anything?"
"He knows the same thing I know," she insisted. "My profits took a nosedive last month."
"Of course they did. They were eaten up by the new hoists, shoring timbers and smelting furnaces.
But if you would open your eyes and not listen to rumors, you'd see that you'll make it all back, and more, in a couple of months. Krueger's starting to rework the smaller veins in the old tunnels."
"I don't wish that," she said.
"Why?"
He looked down at her lounging on the sofa, with one eye squinting against the smoke of the cigarette that dangled from her hand. He hated this new smoking habit of hers.
"I don't have to give a reason, Bryan. I just don't want time wasted on something that Les says is unprofitable."
My God! he thought. Why do I waste my time coming into Sitka?
"If ever," he growled, "I hear his name again, I'm walking."
"Bryan, he is older than you and wiser. We are all entitled to mistakes. But yours are costing me a fortune."
"Which, I take it, is your latest little report from that simpering bookkeeper . . . what's his name?"
The stairs pounded with little feet and she never got to supply the name.
"Daddy! Daddy!" Frank Canton Mathews shrieked, racing into the parlor and jumping at his father. "Look at my new shoes! Look at them!"
"They're very nice," Bryan said, "What am I supposed to look at?"
Irina said, "Milla was in town to pick them up yesterday and the cobbler had made them too narrow."
"Gramma Lady called him a peasant and told him to fix them at once."
"Now, my little prince," Irina cooed, "tell the story correctly. I said he did peasant work and if he didn't fix them properly I'd never bring my little Cossack back again."
"Oh, Daddy, it was great fun! The man shook in his boots and bowed and called her baroness. Did you know that I have cousins in Russia who are grand dukes and grand duchesses?"
Bryan looked at Irina with amazement and chagrin. Nobody could daunt the woman. Given the slightest opening, she would go on defying her daughter's wishes forever.
"I don't think you should repeat that to your mother, Frank," he said.
"I know," the boy said seriously. "Gramma Lady has already warned me not to. But I don't care if momma doesn't want to live in a palace. I'm going to live in a palace, aren't I, Gramma Lady?"
"Yes, my darling little prince, you shall do just
that. Now, run and see if Albert can't find you and me cookies and milk."
"You said I didn't have to drink milk," he pouted. "Just tell Albert to fix you whatever you want, darling."
"You see?" Irina said, after Frankie had left the room. "I have no problem with that generation." 'I see, all right," Bryan said bitterly. "I see you going against everything Milla asked of you." "My home is founded in history, Bryan. How do you expect me not to pass my heritage on to my grandchildren? It shall be very important to them someday. I'm going to leave them richer than any Tsar could leave his children." "And the children of your miners poorer?" "Damn! You will not get off that, will you? There are people who are born in discontent--whose only delight is in trying to get something for nothing. All they want to do is ruin me and you seem to want to help them."
"Why can't I make you see reason, Irina? What happened to your business sense? The Brenners had been cheating you as well as the miners. We've bypassed millions, according to Krueger."
Irina leaned forward, frowning morosely into the fire.
"That simpering bookkeeper, as you called him, is Harrison Timberson," she said. "He loves to work with large figures and he keeps my figures growing larger. He doesn't like to see them dwindle because of new hoists, huge grocery bills, and everything else you've been putting in. Everyone seems to be against you, Bryan." "Except the miners who really know the work.
Irina, Krueger estimates that the mines could produce ten times the $7.2 million purchase price paid for all Alaska. You're not even halfway there. You're afraid to gamble some of the millions you got salted away to gain it all. What have I got to do to convince you that I am right and this Stewart is wrong?"
Irina smiled wickedly. "We might try discussing it in bed tonight."
Bryan was irritated. "How can you think of such a thing with Frankie in the house?"
Irina said, "Children sleep soundly . . . very soundly."
"No!" he insisted. "I couldn't!"
Irina carefully lit a new gold tipped cigarette, made especially for her in Virginia. "Do as you wish, Bryan," she said, without a trace of emotion in her voice. "Stewart does want his job back, very, very badly!"
She was treating him like a whore and Bryan's hackles rose.
"I don't even want to think about it," he stormed.
Irina filled the room with a deep, throaty laugh. "Oh, you'll think about it, Bryan. You'll think about it."
Dinner was one of the most miserable meals Bryan had ever sat through in his life. Irina acted the perfect grandmother to Frankie, a charming mother-in-law to him; she laced her conversation with motherly type stories of Milla's youth to please Frankie. The boy was awed, spellbound, and Bryan was furious.
He knew that he should have packed the boy up at once and carted him back to Mathews Point. Inwardly, he railed at Milla for having left him in
town in the first place. Then he saw the illogicality of his thought, of all his thoughts. He was here because he wanted to be here. Frankie and Milla had nothing to do with it. He'd wanted to get closer to Irina and that's all there was to it.
He paced the bedroom floor for hours. He was damned if he went to her and damned if he didn't. He weighed everything in his mind and then reweighed it.
A half a million dollars! 
"Well, it's good to see you," Irina said coyly as he came into her room.
He started. The bed was empty and he couldn't see her anywhere about. Then a curl of cigarette smoke came up from the polar bear rug in front of the fireplace. She'd wrapped it around herself. The fire was so low that he could hardly make her out.
"Put out that damn cigarette!"
She chuckled devilishly. "I was told once by an authority on the subject--a prostitute--that we women put these little tapers into our mouths because they are phallic symbols. What do you think?"
He ignored the question and came towards her.
"Why the bear skin?" he demanded.
Irina unwrapped herself from it and stretched her nude body luxuriously.
"Darling," she cooed, "I thought you were quite accustomed to doing it in the skin of the beast."
Bryan turned brick-red. "Where did you hear about that?"
Casually, she tossed the cigarette into the fireplace, sat and cuddled herself. "Milla and I have been growing quite close of late. It's quite common
¦for a mother and daughter to share little secrets out of the past. Does a bear skin bring out in you as much as a moose skin?"
"Go to hell, Irina!" he said narrowly. "Now and forever!"
He spun and was nearly to the door.
"Wait!"
Irina's face was suddenly bleak. Lose Bryan? Lose the only man she had ever desired? What was she doing? What was happening to her? There was an error in her ways. Was it beyond fixing?
"All right," she said helplessly. "You run the mines. A deal is a deal."
Bryan turned. The blood was rushing to his head. He was filled with a sense of victory and with it a sense of longing for the beautiful woman who had so suddenly yielded up her demanding arrogance.
"And what about us?" he whispered.
Irina didn't answer. She'd thought she had said it all. A deal was a deal.
It was then, from her silence, that Bryan recognized her total depravity. She expected to be paid off now; hadn't she delivered? And he recognized his own depravity as well, for didn't she deserve to be reimbursed? He knew what he was going to do. He was going to take off his clothes and crawl into the bear skin rug with her and share in the whoredom they had created together. He felt cheap doing it, like the time his father had caught him in the barn. But he was going to do it nevertheless. 
He allowed himself a small promise, a kind of relief from his guilt, as he snuggled down beside her. This was going to be the last time, he told himself; he would end it here and now and Milla would
never have to know about it and be destroyed by her knowledge.
All thoughts of Milla were washed away as Irina's kisses became endlessly provocative, hinting of everything and promising nothing.
Irina's deal, as usual, evaporated into thin air.
"Stewart?" Bryan flared at Timberson. "I didn't order any shoring timber from Stewart."
"The baroness did, sir. She is backing Stewart in a lumber mill and gave him a contract for the timber."
"Send it backI"
"I could do that. But it's already paid for."
"Then unpay for it, damn it! That wood is knotty and already splintered. It's unsafe. Even an idiot like you should be able to see that."
Harrison Timberson stiffened.
"I find your comment uncalled for, Mr. Mathews. I am not a lumberman or a miner. I am a bookkeeper."
Bryan calmed himself. "You're right, Timberson, and you've turned out to be a damn good one. That new system you came up with to replace the chalk slate method is equitable and the men seem to like it, however underpaid they remain. But let me explain something. The hardwood logs I ordered will last in a tunnel until we are long finished in the area. These are softwood and won't last six months. What did Stewart charge?"
"Dollar a log."
"Goddamn thief! Reilly was giving me hardwood for fifty cents a log. How does that stack up in your ledger books?"
Timberson gulped. He was still a man caught in
the middle, but he was seeing a different side to the man he thought was a spendthrift. "I don't think we should pay double for an inferior product, sir."
"Now you're talking my language, Timberson. Tell Reilly I need his barges over here as soon as possible."
"And what of Mr. Stewart and his lumber, sir? To get him started the baroness ordered me to prepay him."
"Well," Bryan mused, "we'll never see that money again--but he won't see any more out of us. Tell Parley, over at the company store, to have his boys saw it up and split it for firewood in the company houses. Better than taking a total loss on it."
Timberson hesitated. "Sir, about that new conveyor unit?"
"Yes?"
"Well, it's sitting on the dock in Sitka, but I've been forbidden to pay the freight charge."
"The baroness?"
Timberson flushed. "If she wasn't your kin, sir, I wouldn't even raise the subject."
Bryan laughed. "Harrison, we move quickly from a lesson on lumber to one on gold. The old conveyor unit brings up about two hundred trams a day. The new smelter oven we have can handle two thousand trams a day, which is exactly the capacity of the unit sitting on the docks in Sitka. It would pay for its freight charge in a matter of about six hours." Bryan shrugged. "Stick with me Harrison, and I'll put figures in your ledger book that will run off the page."
Harrison Timberson sighed with relief. At last he was working with a manager who could give
him solid reasons for spending money. That, in his opinion, was real success.
Irina visited the mines and said nothing about the cancellation of Stewart's contract. Instead, she prepared to spend the night.
Bryan could say little, for it was her house. They spoke at length. She really had little to complain about, because the mines were slowly coming back to peak production. But one subject she was adamant about.
"I don't wish to discuss it, Bryan. I feel the miners are adequately paid. If they wish to quit, hire new ones. Men are looking for work everywhere."
If Irina detected a coolness in Bryan's sexual activity, she did not mention it. She was woman enough to see the long hours he was putting into the mine, and was really quite proud of the comments she heard concerning him.
One night of coolness did not mean a complete withdrawal.
Bryan cursed himself for not making his feelings better known. He wanted the affair finished, ended. He had the mine operating on a sound basis and he felt like going home now to get his canneries operating just as well.
He never thought of discussing his departure with Irina. Never thought it was important. Krueger was now the real boss and he was little more than a paper shuffler.
Although he had come to Mathews Point on occasional weekends, Milla could at last feel that he was home for a while. It made her tremble and
come near to tears. She needed him. The children were growing fast and needed their father around. She wondered if she should tell him of the grand ideas that were forever popping into little Frankie's head.
She didn't have to be told that the ideas were coming from her mother. She cursed the day she started letting the fond relationship develop between grandmother and grandson. But was it wrong? Hadn't she also been raised on Irina's fantasies of glorious Russia? Frankie was young, she had concluded, and would grow out of his wide-eyed awe, just as she had grown out of it. Besides, she, herself, had felt a new affection for her mother during the months of Bryan's absence. Irina had been attentive, adoring and concerned. Milla couldn't fault her.
Then Bryan was home! She felt that something ancient and terrible and grand had come back into her life. He was also like a child returned to his box of toys. He worked tirelessly in the canneries, played endlessly with the children, and made love as if they were the two people who had invented the act.
But his pride lay in the new cradle in the nursery. The baby was like the first child he had ever seen--bright eyed, constantly making its own noises of communication, forever reaching up to grasp at Bryan's finger.
"I like his name, Milla, but it still makes me feel a little funny."
"Bryan Mathews II," she mused. "I thought it was right appropriate."
Bryan gulped. "I know I'm touched and" proud. Maybe it is appropriate. Name's been with me for
so long that it seems natural for him to carry it on."
Spontaneously, Milla flung her arms around his neck, locked his mouth to hers in a hard kiss.
"He's our love child," she whispered. "I was never so sure of you as when we conceived him."
Bryan pulled away at the sound of a horse and carriage clopping up their pathway. "Now what the hell is that?"
He went to the window and Milla could see his profile tightening.
"It's your mother," he said darkly.
"Oh, the children will be thrilled! She's been coming out on weekends quite regularly."
But Irina came storming in like a harridan, her voice poisonous with fury.
"I was under the impression," she shot at Bryan, "that you were looking out after my interests."
Bryan was taken aback. "Why? Has something gone wrong?"
Irina's lips curled slightly.
"You would know if you were there?"
"Irina," he pleaded, "be reasonable. I only came down to look after my own affairs."
"You have no affairs!" she shrieked. "Your only affairs are my affairs. Now, get in the carriage so I can take you back."
"Mother, please," Milla interceded, "if you would just tell us what is troubling you."
Irina glared at her. "I turned over a multimillion dollar company to this dunderhead and find that he has left it in the hands of radical mischief- makers."
"Are those Lester Stewart's words?" Bryan demanded.
"It doesn't matter whose words they are! The
fact is that your dear Mr. Krueger has been filling the miners' heads with union talk."
"Irina," he protested, "that talk has been going on for months. It's not just Krueger. Even I believe that a union might have some advantages for us."
Irina was appalled. "Get in the carriage."
"No," Bryan said quietly. "I intend to get the canneries going full speed before I come back to the mine."
"All right." Irina looked at Bryan shrewdly. "Would you leave us for a moment?" she said. "There is a family matter I wish to discuss with Milla."
To mask his sudden apprehension, Bryan laughed.
"And I am no longer considered family?"
Irina was pleased at his alarmed expression. "You're not acting like it," she said acidly.
"Mother!" Milla interrupted. "Now you are being unfair. Bryan does have a responsibility to his own business and family."
Irina snapped, "Your Eskimo friend can run that fish business. I'll not have that communistic German running my mines. If you want to save his job for him, then Bryan, you will do as I say!"
Bryan knew that Luge Krueger was no more a radical than he. The man just wanted better safety standards, better pay and more humane treatment for the miners. As an employer interested in higher profits in the long run, the requests all made sense to him. Irina had spoken one truth; yes, Umalti could keep running the cannery without him for a while.
"All right, I'm coming back," he growled, "but on the condition that you fire no one without my say-so!"
Irina nodded, but made no comment aloud. Then, while Bryan went to pack, she changed her tactics.'
"As long as I am here," she told Milla sweetly, "I'll just take Frankie back with me for a few days."
"He is not here, mother. He went with Umalti and his children to the fishing village for a few days."
Irina stared at her and said:
"Ludmilla! You've allowed my grandson to do such a thing?"
"Why? It's good training." 
"It's--it's common. No child in his position should--"
"I think," Milla said cruelly, "I will determine what is common or uncommon for my children!"
"Oh!" Irina faltered for a moment, then returned to the attack. "And you think it's advisable for Frankie to associate with your husband's bastard son?"
Milla's back stiffened, although her face went white and still.
"I can't fault the child, mother. You thought you were going to shock me with that bit of information, but Bryan told me all about it when we settled here. Kaam is a lovely child and a good playmate--something I was never allowed to have. Once I asked you to stay out of the rearing of my children; now I'm telling you to do so."
Irina hid a smile behind her hand. No one told her what to do, especially her daughter and especially when it interfered with her right to make a proper little Russian gentleman of Frankie. Immediately, she began to formulate a plan.
Driving back into Sitka she was lighthearted
while Bryan sat quiet and morose. The tug Nancy Dee was awaiting Bryan at the wharf and Irina stepped blithely aboard. 
"Where are you going?" Bryan demanded.
Irina smiled. "Until this matter is settled, I am going to stay at the mine."
"But you can't! It may take weeks! You can't stay at the house. What will people say?"
"Nothing," Irina replied, "unless they have very dirty minds. After all, you are my son-in-law."
Bryan felt dirty and guilty already.
To his great surprise Irina did not impose herself on the running of the mines except, oddly, as a kind of benevolent despot. That is, while refusing to sanction further mine improvements and better wages, she personally saw to the building of a new bowling alley and social hall for the men--where they might play cards, for example. But even here, she behaved like a Roman empress giving her people circuses when they wanted bread. Bryan couldn't persuade her to do otherwise. In bed she would promise him the moon and leave him with a hand full of ashes a day later.
Though he continued to do so, Bryan grew weary of fighting her for his causes. He was almost thankful for the respites sir:: gave them when, on certain days, she spent the majority of her hours in Harrison Timberson's office. Whatever they were discussing, he felt he could count on Timberson to support his views or at least to hold Irina at a standoff while he regained energy to battle her some more. He did not know that Timberson, buckling under Irina's threats and demands, had hired Les Stewart to initiate a special little project of hers.
The Alaskans * * *
"I've had it!" Luge Krueger said. "That accident was not the man's fault, Bryan. How can that blackhearted witch refuse to pay the family its benefits? We've always paid for the funeral and seen to the transportation of the family back home. No more! The strike talk grows daily and I can't blame the men. I've had it!"
"I heard you. Let me talk with her tonight."
"I'm sorry, Bryan, but I've heard you say that too many times. You've built up our hopes too many times quoting her promises. Her promises are goddam lies!"
"I'll get her to come around," Bryan said.
Krueger looked at him sadly. His disgust for the baroness was bottomless, but his feeling for Bryan was now pure pity. The words had to be said, although they stuck in his throat like gall.
"You'll never get her to come around," he said, "and the men know it. She has made you a mockery in their eyes. They can't trust you anymore. I'm sorry, but I've got to side with them. I'm going to fight her to the bitter end."
Bryan sighed. "When does it start?"
"The moment I walk out this door."
Bryan nodded. For the moment he would not interfere.
He left the office without a word as to his whereabouts and went home. He took a bottle of champagne from Irina's cabinet and got drunk. When Irina came in, she found him sprawled across the bed.
"Why isn't the machinery running?" she demanded.
"No one to run it," he said, without lifting his head.
"So," she said slowly, "they've finally gone and done it."
"Seems so."
"And you did nothing to stop them?"
He sat up and glared at her with pure hatred. "What was I supposed to do? This isn't Siberia! I couldn't whip them back down into the tunnels! What was I supposed to do?"
"A man would have thought of something to do," she sneered. 
Bryan laughed viciously. "But I'm no longer that, Irina. You've cut my balls off. Happy? Old pal, I hope they stomp the shit out of you!"
Without a word she turned and went to her room. And locked the door.
The strike did not get off to a roaring start. Half of the 6 a.m. crew reported for. work. Bryan was forced to name a replacement for Krueger, who did not report. The man he picked was not to Irina's liking and he had to be replaced by someone else.
The 6 p.m. crew came in at a quarter of its regular force. Bryan thought it anti-productive to work so few men, but Irina was adamant that the mine stay open even if only one miner went down the shaft.
Bryan tried to get her to negotiate with the committee the miners had formed. She not only refused to but denied him the authority to speak to them on her behalf.
He had become a puppet useless to either the management or labor side.
After a week it appeared as if Irina was going to
win out. Daily, the number of working miners started to climb again.
"We won't win this way!" Krueger protested to them.
"Tell that to my old lady and kids, Krueger. They got to eat, you know."
"If it's funds you're low on, Tim, don't worry. We've got a strike fund started."
"Ain't funds," Tim O'Brien said sullenly. "Money ain't no good around here no more."
"What are you talking about?"
"Company store ain't taking money for groceries no more, is what I'm talking about. Those that work get chits. Those that don't get shit."
Krueger convinced the committee to use the strike fund for a different purpose. Two days later a food-laden barge was tied up at the wharf. It was a one-time deal because the company tug was disallowed from ever again towing private barges and the wharf was closed to all but company shipping. But Krueger had purchased wisely. Every family had at least a four-week supply of staples. It was early in the summer and nearly every woman had a garden planted; Men hunted the rugged hills and children picked wild berries.
The mines were soon totally out of operation.
It was ironic that Irina was benevolent when it came to the bachelors.
In answer to Timberson's question, she told him, "We do absolutely nothing about the bachelor quarters and dining hall, Harrison. Just keep subtracting the charges from the money we hold for them. They are one group that we can't lose on."
"As you wish." Timberson hesitated. It rankled him to see his assets column decrease. "Baroness,
Stewart was in again yesterday. He says that you approved another advance of $300,000."
"That's quite correct."
He frowned. "That's nearly two million that you have approved for him."
"So?" she snapped. "If he needs it I shall approve a second amount of that size."
Timberson didn't quite understand. As a good bookkeeper he liked to keep things neat and tidy.
"It's really quite a dangerous gamble, you know."
"You are being very shortsighted, Harrison. It's no gamble at all. I am purchasing through Stewart all Umalti Alaska products for this year at a very reasonable quantity price. I shall have no trouble re-selling them. When I have cornered the market, we shall see how long my son-in-law desires to stay in that smelly business."
"Wouldn't it have been cheaper just to buy him out of his canneries?"
"Harrison, you don't understand. I am doing this for my grandson."
No, Harrison didn't understand. The statement was so illogical that it left him baffled. But there were many illogical and baffling things about the baroness lately that he didn't understand.
The day before he had presented her with a long sheet of figures that Bryan had asked him to make up. They proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that production as well as profits would increase if she stopped paying monthly wages and let each man earn according to what he produced.
"Who asked you to waste your time on this?" she had demanded. .
"Mr. Mathews."
"Then I have no desire to see the figures. I will
not buckle under to these radicals. They will work for my wages or they will not work at all!"
Still, five minutes later she was giving Timberson orders to place an ad in the Sitka Journal for miners who would work for $100 a month and room and board. That was $10 more a month than she was paying at present--plus free room and board. 
Yes, to Timberson's way of thinking, she was becoming most illogical and baffling.
They straggled into Juneau in ones and twos. The miners on Douglas Island weren't aware of them until it was too late. They were the unsuccessful sourdoughs, the misbegotten derelicts of every Alaska saloon, the luckless scavengers who would work a month and feel themselves rich.
The Nancy Dee carted them across the channel on two barges. Leading them, and issuing orders, was Les Stewart. 
Bryan raced from the office and shouted:
"Stop right there, Stewart! You're not bringing scabs onto this property!"
Stewart's grin was mocking. "I don't think you have anything to say about it, Mathews!"
"I do as long as I still run the mine!"
"That's my point." Stewart laughed. "As of right now I run things around here again. I'm starting up the mine. If the strikers are smart they'll come back to work for me. Those who don't have until sunset to get off the island."
"Force us off!" Krueger called out. He'd come from a sidestreet at the head of a column of men.
Stewart raised his hand and Bryan saw with apprehension what the man's tactics would be. Every one of the two hundred strikebreakers were armed with a club or length of pipe.
"There will be no violence," Bryan shouted at the Krueger-led group. "They'll slaughter you!" But he couldn't control the instructions Irina had given Stewart. She wanted a quick example set. Even as Bryan was shouting, Stewart was dropping his arm.
It was like the unleashing of savage jungle beasts. With a deep, dull growl in their throats, the strikebreakers surged as one. On the barges they had been plied with bottles of redeye and the promise of a $10 bonus for each skull cracked. Their courage had been increased with the assurance that the miners would be unarmed.
And the miners were not armed, save for what they could quickly grab up before the mob descended on them.
Bryan started running toward the struggling forces. Before he could reach them, a strikebreaker ran up and aimed a length of pipe at the side of his head. Bryan ducked quickly aside. He swung back and caught the man on the back of the neck with the edge of his palm. The man's eyes bulged and he fell forward. His pipe was quickly retrieved by one of the miners.
The clubs and pipes took a horrible early toll, and the miners ran off, zigzagging through the streets and setting up an alarm.
Bryan could see Stewart, roaring like an angry bull, directing the slaughter of the miners before they could get away. He raced after him, gaining steadily, and he was about ready to nab him and put a stop to this madness when the first shot was fired.
"Don't shoot!" Stewart screamed fearfully. "We aren't armed!"
It was such an outlandish statement that Bryan stopped and looked at the man incredulously.
"Tell the bastards to lay down their clubs!" he said angrily then.
"Enough! Enough!" Stewart bellowed, but his voice was lost in the crack of revolver fire and the boom of the rifles and shotguns the miners had procured from their quarters.
Stewart broke and ran back toward the wharf. Bryan started to pursue him, but collided with a strikebreaker also bent on saving his own skin. Bryan crashed to the street and rolled away before other feet trampled him from behind. The leaderless force knew when enough was enough. Dropping their clubs and pipes, they were nearly killing each other as they ran frantically to keep from being shot.
Bryan rose quickly. His main aim was to get his hands on Stewart. The Nancy Dee was already pulling the barges away from the wharf when he arrived and the strikebreakers were having to jump into the icy channel and swim to safety. 
"Come back, damn you!" Bryan yelled. "Come back, you lousy bastard!"
Stewart's answer from the departing boat was a single raised digit.
Bryan felt a slow sickness spreading through his middle as he walked back from the wharf. Men were lying all about him, dead or wounded. It hardly mattered that some were miners and some strikebreakers. They should not have been fighting each other; it was wrong, all wrong.
In his grief, he could barely walk and had to drag one foot after the other. He felt deeply responsible
for the tragedy. He should have been more of a man and stood up to Irina. This never should have happened.
He was aware, after a time, that Krueger was walking beside him.
"Thirty-three of them and seven of us," Krueger said.
Bryan did not answer.
"I want to thank you," Krueger continued. "You tried to stop it, but ... it didn't work. The whole thing didn't work. Tell her the men will go back to work tomorrow."
"No!" Bryan growled. "No, they can't! That's giving in to murderers!"
He felt the hot tears starting to burn his eyes. The street scene would be in his nightmares forever. There was no place to run. He had to stay and fight her or never be able to call himself a man again.
He wanted to hurt her. But how? Nothing seemed to hurt her. She was not the gold but the iron baroness. She wore armor that couldn't be penetrated.
Inside the house he went to her bedroom and gazed around. He wanted to smash and rip and tear everything that was a part of her. But that wouldn't work, he knew. She would only laugh at him. Or she would reprove him, as she would a child.
His head ached dully and he knew he must lie down before he collapsed. He stretched out on her feather bed and the coil springs groaned under his weight. He lay there trying not to think. For how long he did not know, because he dozed off. It was at least an hour later--perhaps even two--when he became aware that he was not alone.
He sat up. His lips came apart, but he said nothing. He was too shocked to say anything.
Irina stood by the bed. She was stark naked.
"You win," she said. "I'll meet their demands. The Nancy Dee is taking the bodies back and forth now." 
It was a gesture at simplicity. He could not believe it. He sat there a moment longer, looking from her slim white neck to the thrust of her breasts, and finally to the chestnut pubic curls that seemed more provocative because of the stance of her legs. The moment seemed unreal. While flagrantly suggesting that she be invited into the bed, she was talking about the bodies as if they were so many sacks of flour.
He was filled with searing rage; never had she disgusted him more. It would be blasphemy to make love to her at this point.
But he could fuck her--he could fuck her!
As she came and stretched out beside him on the bed, he rolled toward her just as he always had. When he was close she drew his face near and began to kiss him--soft, clinging kisses, provocative and inviting and forgiving.
Suddenly, convulsively, he sprang atop her and began rubbing his clothed body on her with fierce roughness.
"Bryan!" she gasped hoarsely. "You're hurting me! Take off your clothes!"
"Go to hell!" he swore. "You'll take it the way I want to give it!"
"Bryan stop!" she insisted.
"Shut up!"
"Bryan, please stop!" Her voice rose to a wail. "You really are hurting me!"
"What the hell do I care--you goddam bitch!"
A sound and a movement at the front door reached Irina's consciousness. She had no way of knowing who had entered the house, but she was determined to take her advantage. She let her voice rise to a scream:
"Oh God, no! Please, don't rape me, please!"
Bryan reared back his head and let his laughter spew forth. Rape her? The notion was so asinine that it gave him a split-second taste of revenge. But that pleasure was short-lived. Someone was standing in the bedroom doorway. It was Milla, and she was standing still, as if petrified.
Bryan stared at her. Irina was beneath him, thrashing.
Then suddenly, softly, Milla began to laugh. It was a hollow laugh, more as if she were seeing ghosts on the bed rather than people. But her slim body was shaking.
"Oh, damn!" Bryan groaned, rolling from the bed.
"Thank god! Thank god!" Irina wailed. "He was trying to rape me, baby!"
"Don't listen to her lies! You don't know what's been going on around here!"
"Lies?" Irina shrieked. "Didn't you see and hear him with your own eyes? I've warned you about him, time and time again. Now you have seen for yourself."
"Milla!" Bryan stormed. "Don't listen to her! This is not the first time. I've been in and out of her bed since before we were married!"
It was the worst possible defense he could have put up. It came off sounding like the biggest lie
yet and Milla collapsed on the floor and broke into wild, bitter sobs.
"Now look what you have done!" Irina hissed. "Get out! Get out of our lives! You're finished, fired, through!"
Bryan cursed. "I'm not leaving without my wife."
"You no longer have a wife," Irina spat at him. "If you come near her or my grandchildren, I'll have the hounds on you."
"I wonder," Bryan shot back, "how long you can keep juggling all your lies in the air."
The moment he said it, he regretted it.
Irina screamed, "I said, get out, and you can forget what I said about the mine. I won't give in, ever. I will see you in jail for keeping the miners I hired from going to work. I will see you in jail for revolution and murder. I have the power! You are nothing! Scum! Trash! Get out!"
Bryan ignored her. He reached over and touched Milla on the arm.
"Milla," he said gently, "Are you coming?"
She inched away from him in revulsion.
"Don't touch me," she warned. Her contempt- filled voice sent a cold chill up his spine. "Don't you ever try to touch me or see me again." 
Bryan's face turned gray. He was trembling and wanted only to get out of that house for now, lest he put his hands around Irina's throat and throttle her to death. How could he stand there and fight her lies when caught in so devastating a half-truth of his own?
He gave Milla one last loving look, then strode from the house.
Umalti had long since come to regard Bryan as more man than god. But a man he regarded with deep respect and admiration.
"Every man," he told Bryan quietly, "is part bad. He thinks himself wholly good only when his badness is not discovered."
The words did not soothe Bryan. He fretted and swore and was very bad company, continually trying Umalti's patience. Yet, as he well knew, he had reason to fret, for Irina attacked ceaselessly and with consummate ingenuity. With the now compliant Milla's brain to pick, she could resort to even more cunning and devious methods than she had used in the past.
"She wiped out our Sitka bank account," Bryan explained. "I can't believe Milla knew about it, but what can I do? The new canning machines arrive next week and I don't even have the freight
charges. I've a journey for you, Umalti--if you'll take it."
"Where must I go?" Umalti said simply.
"To the other canneries that have been working with us. See if they'll take the machines off our hands."
The chief went and returned desolate.
"The other canneries in our group are not interested in the new machines," he explained, "They are not in control of their fish this season."
Bryan looked at him wonderingly.
"I have learned," Umalti went on, "that these fishermen have sold their catches, at lesser and lesser prices. Some will not even fish this year. Everywhere, Umalti hears one name again and again. Stewart."
"Damn her black hide--" Bryan began. "Hell, she can't beat us, can she? Our own fishermen are having an exceptional year. We've got enough cans to last us the whole season."
"And the new machines?"
Bryan shrugged. "The manufacturer will just have to take them back and we'll have to stand the loss of what we've invested in them already. I'd try to get a loan from a bank, but I'm sure she's been to them already."
Stewart had been to many places under Irina's orders.
The Chinese labor supplier, for instance, was adamant in his demands..
"You think I am insane!" Bryan stormed. "I am not about to pay their yearly salary in advance. What if they skip out on me? I've never done it before and I'm not about to do it now!"
"You can understand our worry," the Chinaman
said, "We hear you bring in more and more machines. Machines mean less Chinese. How do we know you won't tell us to go when the machines arrive?"
"I will have no more machines than what you see right now," Bryan insisted.
The Chinaman shook his head. "I am sorry."
Bryan cursed. "Did the Baroness Feodorovna put you up to this?"
The Chinaman repeated stonily, "I am sorry."
Now the canning operation had to be taken over by Umalti's tribe again. Every man, woman and child came from the Indian village to help the once huge factory become a small cottage industry. The old men would stand at a table and do the coarse work of cutting off the head and tail, then definning and slitting the belly of a seven-pound salmon. Oomua trained the women to chop the fish crossways to the exact size to fill a one-pound can. Meanwhile, the children were priming the cans with salt and sending them on a conveyor belt to be packed, watered, crimped and soldered, and eventually boiled until the salmon was thoroughly cooked. The next day the cans would be lacquered against rust, and the day after that the women were labeling them and packing them 48 to the case. It was a slower operation than when the skilled Chinese were doing it with machines, but Bryan was satisfied that progress was being made.
But Irina still held a few trump cards.
Fifteen years before Congress had appropriated limited funds for the inspection of fish canneries along the entire Alaskan coastline. Only three inspection teams went out each year, and Bryan and Umalti had never been visited by any of them. This
year inspectors came repeatedly. The partners were given twelve separate citations for violations--each bearing a large fine. They protested, since the citations were of the nit-picking sort, but their pleas fell on deaf ears. They would have to pay up or close up.
Each time they were cited, Umalti would amaze Bryan by coming up with the money. But he had taken it out of his small personal savings, and it was clear that this well would soon run dry. Umalti Alaska was falling on hard days.
Yet Bryan's hopes grew as the work continued and the season neared its end. Another week of canning and they might just be home free. They had packed the best red salmon available. Bryan felt their product could well bring a prime price. Indeed, it would have to if they were to survive.
The buyers for The Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company had not done business with Bryan in a year. He was taken aback by the change he saw in the man. Bryan, worried and overworked, had lost weight. He was thin and bent, his cheeks were hollow and there were great dark circles under his eyes.
The buyer, whose name was Worth, felt sorry for the man, but business, after all, was business. He had a can of salmon opened for him and tasted it while Bryan looked on nervously.
A look of surprise and delight crossed Worth's face. "This is good, really good," he said. "I've tasted so much salmon along this coast that it's coming out of my ears. But this is superior, no question about it." *
Bryan's spirits soared. "Thank you, Mr. Worth.
And the best part of it is that the price is the same as last year. Twenty five cents a can."
Worth frowned, "Well, there's the rub. I suppose you know, Mr. Mathews, that every other canner in Alaska has brokered out its product to one concern, Salmon Produce, Inc. I like your product, and I mean that, but the fact is I can get salmon my company can market just as easily for seven cents a can. And I can get all I want."
"Impossible!" Bryan exclaimed. "They can't sell at that price--they'll go bankrupt!"
"But they're doing it, Mr. Mathews! They're doing it!"
Bryan looked stunned.
Worth hesitated. "See here, Mr. Mathews, I'm sent to Alaska to make the best deals I can . . . However, because of the excellence of your product, I might be able to go as high as ten cents a can."
"I'll be damned and in hell first!" Bryan retorted.
"All right, if that's your answer," Worth said quietly, "I will be staying at the Pacific Hotel in Sitka for a few more days. Come see me if you change your mind."
Bryan had no intention of changing his mind. Gross sales at a dime a can would barely recover his expenditures for tin and solder, let alone pay Umalti's people for their work.
But his pride could not sustain him. Over the next few days many other American buyers came to Alaska for their yearly purchases, but the word on Bryan's stubbornness was apparently out: none approached him. Despondent, Bryan swallowed his pride and went into Sitka to make a deal with Worth.
He didn't have to go up to the buyer's room at the Pacific Hotel; he found him in the lobby, standing with a group of his competitors and holding a loud, intense discussion with them. Worth looked bewildered. In fact, all the buyers seemed terribly upset about something.
Bryan approached the group. "Mr. Worth?" he said.
Worth glanced at him. "Oh, it's you, Mathews. I'm glad you're here. Perhaps you can shed some light on what's going on."
"What is going on?" Bryan said. 
One of the other buyers spoke up. "Sheer madness, man. That Salmon Produce company has cancelled each and every contract it's made with us. Instead, it's put its entire output up for sale this morning at a new price."
Bryan was overjoyed. "But that's fine," he said. "I told you they couldn't sell at seven cents. Now it's competitive. Now you can buy my salmon at a fair return for me."
Worth shook his head. "You don't understand. When my friend here says madness, he means madness. I can no longer offer you ten cents a can or anything like it. Mathews, Salmon Produce is lowering its price. They have a man, Stewart, who's coming downstairs in a few minutes to settle with us at three cents a can. They seem to want to go broke!" 
Bryan felt instantly sick. "Oh, my God!" he muttered. "She's out of her mind--completely out of her mind. . . ."
"She?" said Worth, puzzled. "Who's she? What are you saying, Mathews? What's going on here?"
"Nothing. Nothing at all."
Miserable to the depths of his being, Bryan was already walking away. He could not, would not explain anything to these men. He had an overwhelming sense of shame, as much on Irina's behalf as his own. That her desire for revenge had driven her mad, that he had incited her to that desire--it was all too much for him to absorb at that moment. He had to get away from Worth and the others.
He stood in a far corner of the lobby, dully waiting for Stewart to come down. It would be like watching the end of a boring play, he thought, one that you couldn't leave because you detested it so much and wanted to punish yourself for having chosen to attend it in the first place. Except that he hadn't chosen it. That was the problem. All along, to this very moment of his doom, he'd chosen nothing--he'd just drifted into Irina's clutches. And now she was throwing away millions just to ruin him. 
A timid man touched him on the shoulder. Bryan looked and saw it was Timberson.
"Harrison," he said thickly. "Are you in on it, too?"
The bookkeeper made a sad face. "I'm here to collect the money on their new contracts," he said. "What there is of it to collect. I wish you could stop this, Mr. Mathews."
"I wish I could, too."
Timberson looked guilty. "I didn't know you were the baroness's target. Quite the contrary, at first. I anticipated that once she had cornered the market, she would have Stewart hold off and force the price of all salmon up. Then you, as her son-in-law, would profit as well. It was only later that I--"
"How much does she plan on losing?" Bryan cut in bitterly.
Timberson winced. "At least $3 million. I don't even want to think about it."
"Some price," Bryan chuckled, "to spend on a son-in-law."
Timberson hesitated. "Perhaps I shouldn't say anything, Mr. Mathews, but you always treated me fairly. Your wife is back here in Sitka."
"Oh? You mean their wonderful new mother- daughter relationship didn't last too long?" Bryan asked sarcastically.
"Please don't say you heard it from me, but they had quite a fight in my office the day after you left. The baroness wanted her grandson to come and live with her permanently on Douglas Island. She . . . she said she wanted to purge every bit of you out of the boy."
"The evil Bryan Mathews, is that it?"
"Would . . . would you like your wife's address?"
Bryan looked at the man in surprise. "If she's in Sitka, isn't she at the Feodorovna house?"
"No, sir! She told her mother that she wouldn't accept anything from her."
Bryan hesitated, then said softly, "Yes, I would like the address. No one will know where I got it from."
"Thank you, Mr. Mathews." Timberson gave him a house number on Fifth Street. "Oh, there's Stewart coming down to start the sale. Goodbye for now."
Bryan nodded and watched Timberson go off to join the buyers and await Stewart's approach. It would begin now--the last scene of the dull play.
But he didn't have to stay and see it now. He had Milla to go to, for better or worse.
He watched the buyers flock around Stewart. For all their previous consternation on a matter of business ethics, they were now, he thought, like seagulls pecking at a hand full of crumbs. He turned and left the hotel.
The house Milla had moved into was small and comfortable. What it lacked were the little touches she had added to the homes they had shared together.
Bryan stood in the doorway, looked at her quiet, suspicious face, and broke a promise.
"Timberson gave me the address," he said. "I came to say I'm sorry."
"I'd rather you didn't say that, Bryan," Milla answered. "Just come in if you'd like."
Bryan came in hesitantly and sat on a couch in the living room. He hardly noticed the impersonal surroundings.
"If you would just let me explain."
He saw the tears immediately gathering in her eyes.
"Don't cry," he said. "Don't--"
"Don't don't me any don'ts," she blurted. "I don't want to hear any explanations. I've heard them all before. Why must you always give me explanations and then turn up to hurt me again?"
"Oh, damn!" Bryan said.
"That's what I am, Bryan. Damned! I--I fought with mother after you left. She wanted me to divorce you. But I don't want to be divorced from you --nor do I want to live with you. Perhaps it's the
only way I have to make you suffer. Every time you are with another woman you will have to remember that you have a wife and children."
"I'll never be with another woman again," he said darkly.
Milla laughed bitterly. "I seem to have heard that line before. Now, what did you come to tell me--other than that you're sorry?"
Bryan shrugged. "Only that your mother just broke my back."
"Oh?" She showed a flicker of interest. Bryan told her about what Irina had done in an effort to drive him out of the cannery business. When he was finished, Milla was silent for a moment. "Now I'm sorry," she said then. "Truly sorry--for you, Bryan. But you'll make out. You always have. As for me, I can't help you. The children are out for a ride with Albert and I would appreciate your being gone before they return."
"Damn it all," he began, "they are my--"
"You're right," she said, cutting him short. "They're your children. But I am the one who must now cope with them daily. I don't think it's fair for you to barge in and out of their lives at the drop of a hat." He started to protest and she stopped him with a wave of her hand. "No, Bryan, be honest with yourself. In this past year you've been a total stranger to them. I don't want mother here, either. Her interest is focused entirely on Frankie."
"So I've noticed," he scowled.
"She thought she was being quite generous--she offered to purchase her grandson from me for one million dollars."
"Good God!"
"Her words exactly," Milla laughed, "when I
turned her down. It was as if she couldn't believe that neither my children nor myself are for sale. Both of you have bartered me around like a bolt of cloth. I will not let her--or you--do to the children what was done to me."
"Nobly said," Bryan replied. "But how will you survive?"
Milla stood there, eyeing him.
"I suppose it won't hurt for you to know. When mother pulled strings to have your Sitka bank account closed, Harrison Timberson lied to her about the amount in it. This is Harrison's house. He charges me a modest rent to live here and he filters me money from the amount that he held back from mother."
Bryan swore. "Damn decent of Timberson. But that account wasn't just mine--it was ours. You're entitled to it. I want you to get it through to Timberson that you're not beholden to him for anything. I want you to have as much of that money as you want, whenever you want it. Pay him a fee. You don't need him to do you any favors--that's my point!" 
Milla studied him quietly.
"And where will you be, Bryan?"
Bryan heard his own voice, far off, saying:
"I don't know, Milla, I really don't. But I'll talk to Umalti . . . we'll get something or other underway again." And he groaned inwardly, knowing that by not telling Milla about how much he had come to need her, he was in a sense lying to her again. But he had to lie--what else could he do? Could he show her how weak and vulnerable he himself felt at this moment in time? He was losing her forever, and he had to play the man about it.
She kept regarding him closely. "I see," she said finally. Impulse told her to run into his arms, caution held her back. She was torn. She wanted to forgive him, but the wound had gone deep and she was not yet ready to.
"Goodbye, Bryan," she said.
He turned and strode from the small house, closing the door softly behind him. He had done his duty, but it was almost like dying.
It was hardly a wilderness settlement or frontier town that Bryan and Umalti came upon. It wasn't like coming into Nome or Skagway at all. This was a boom town they'd caught at its crest. This was Fairbanks. Here, though neither could know it, was the site of a gold boom that would last another two decades, not petering out until the dawn of the 1920s.
"Aiyee!" Umalti exclaimed, "where has this come from?"
Bryan was as full of wonder as he.
There were signs of permanence and stability in Fairbanks, for one thing. Modern communications and transportation facilities had arrived. The town itself sprawled along a mile of riverfront. It boasted a population of 5,000. Another 5,000 lived in about a dozen mining camps in what could be conceived of as Fairbanks' suburbs, since they were linked to it through a narrow-gauge railroad. There was also an efficiently run telegraph line and a road of sorts that connected the town to the port of Valdez, 376 miles to the southwest.
Bryan and Umalti felt like cheekakos, newcomers to a world they never made. They grew apprehensive when they saw the railroad, which was 
regularly feeding in gold ore into town for export by riverboat along the Chena and Yukon Rivers.
"Perhaps we've come too late," Umalti said despondently. He dared not repeat the ill omens Oomua had foreseen for this venture. Because Bryan had left his wife and children, she feared that Raven-Man would be sorely angry at him and bring down on his head even harder times than he had had. She had pleaded with Umalti not to make the journey with a man in such disfavor. But Umalti had not heeded her. It was no longer Camp Robber he followed but Bryan Mathews, and he believed in the man still.
"Let's find the Mexican," Bryan said hurriedly, before his own misgivings took over. The Mexican was Felix Pedro, a contact in Fairbanks that Krueger had put him onto, a man who had a contract with the baroness but had a less than sanguine reputation in his dealings with her.
Looking for Pedro, Bryan and Umalti kept running into faces from the past--sourdoughs from the Klondike, from Nome, from Skagway, in Fairbanks now to try their luck anew. One of these loners was Archie Burns, the old nag-riding geezer Umalti had long before in his village mistaken for a monster. Now Umalti could see Burns for what he was, a hard-luck prospector still looking for his big strike. Their greeting was cordial.
"The gold is here," Burns advised them sadly, "but I'm on my way out. It's not for the smalltime operator. It's going to take some mighty big machines to really get at it."
Felix Pedro, when they found him, told them about the same thing.
"It is the same I tell to all, senor. The bending 
of a back in common labor will make the living and that is about all."
Bryan took a look around the comfortable shack Pedro was living in.
"You seem to be doing well enough," he said.
The Mexican shrugged. "A little here and a little there, senor" 
"And no one to answer to?"
Pedro frowned. "I do not understand these words."
"No partner, no contract, no commitment to a larger company?"
"Aha!" Pedro chuckled, revealing a mouth of gold-capped teeth. "It is so, senor, and shall stay that way. Many men would like to be the partner of Felix Pedro, but he says his own man." 
Bryan nodded. "Fair enough. But what of the baroness?"
The Mexican's face turned pasty. "What do you know of her?" he said nervously.
Bryan cast him a look of amused contempt. "She's my mother-in-law. And," he said, "she's sent me here on, shall we say, a journey of discovery?"
His lie had its intended effect. Pedro signed, as if he'd just been caught with his hand in another man's pocket. "Tomorrow," he said weakly, "tomorrow we talk about the matter, senor. Then you will learn the reason for my long silence." 
Their talk had to wait, however.
Near midnight in their hotel room, Umalti woke up coughing and gasping for air. At first he thought it was just the room's stuffiness that had disturbed him. Then he saw the room was aglow from a light outside.
Bryan woke up a moment later, coughing as well. He smelled the smoke and raced to the window. Three buildings to the east of the hotel were already awash with flames.
"Holy Christ!" he shouted. "Let's get out of here!"
The two of them quickly joined a mass exodus from the business district. There was no gale wind, such as in Nome, but Fairbanks was bone dry from lack of rain and a mere spark had started a sweeping conflagration.
"Good God!" Bryan cursed as they ran. "Does every goddam city in Alaska have to burn down?"
There was truth in his passionate outcry. Alaska's timber towns were burning down frequently at the time.
The fire spread quickly throughout the whole business district. The Chena River was very low and the fire-fighting teams were hampered by the low water pressure in the town's mains.
As Bryan and Umalti ran up to volunteer their services to one of these teams, somebody already there yelled at them: "If the power plant don't develop enough water pressure soon, the whole town's done for!" They pitched in and did what they could with the trickling hoses available to them. It wasn't much. Then, a short time later, a stocky little man came running up to them and shouted at them in a voice of authority:
"You men! Drop what you're doing and come with me!"
Bryan, Umalti and some others responded without question. The man led them towards the power plant, stopping first at the establishment next door
to it--the Northern Commercial Company warehouse, which was loaded with wooden supply crates. The fire hadn't reached this part of town but it soon might. The man, who was Volney Richmond, owner of the company, flung his warehouse doors open. It hurt him to give the order but give it he did: "Dump the crates into the power plant furnaces--any of them you can carry, anything at all!"
There was no time to unpack the crates. Within a very few minutes a steady stream of men were throwing boxes full of food and clothing into the furnaces. Soon, bacon had been consumed and the boilers began to produce sufficient steam to boost the water pressure. Later the work team split: some, like Bryan and Umalti, returning to man the hoses and some staying to feed the fire. It was an all- night fight, but the town of Fairbanks was saved.
In the aftermath, a couple days later, Bryan reflected on what Volney Richmond and other businessmen had done and were doing to keep Fairbanks going. The bank had burned down but already a tent was up on its site and loans were being made to the destitute. He watched the proceedings with Umalti and mused:
"There wasn't a life lost, was there? You know, I like this town, Umalti. It's got a spirit I haven't seen anywhere else in Alaska. See, over there in the square, those women handing out coffee and doughnuts? Who did that in Nome? And can you imagine the baroness burning her goods in a power plant boiler? Maybe this disaster told me something I should have known. I mean, that this is my kind of town." 
Umalti said quietly, "It's a family town, Bryan Mathews."
Bryan scowled.
Umalti said doggedly, "Umalti maybe shouldn't intrude, but think this is the place for you to bring your woman."
"I don't have a woman to bring."
Umalti glared at him. "You do have a woman to bring. She is only woman for you. You bring her even if she kick and scream. That is Eskimo way." 
Bryan said, looking at Umalti sharply, "The way you brought Oomua with you?"
"Umm." The chief grunted. "I am with Oomua many moons now. Could care less."
Bryan laughed. "I see what you mean." He grew serious. "I also hear what you're telling me. Perhaps you're right. Thank you for your advice. I'll think about it."
Umalti clenched his teeth. "Thinking not good enough!" he muttered.
Bryan's postponed meeting with Felix Pedro took place during the following week. The Mexican was ready for him with well-kept ledgers, claim maps and assay reports--in short, a thorough defense of his position with regard to the baroness.
"I cheat no one!" he proclaimed. "You see, here, an amount set aside in the Fairbanks bank equal to the grub-stake the baroness gave me. I could return it to her now, with interest, but did not because I have hopes of far greater rewards for her. Here, you see this--my first major strike! Seven feet of pay dirt I found at the bottom of a hole. The Virgin blessed me, senor. She opened the hole for Pedro, but there are no more holes. The gold, 
she is hard in the ground, and a man of wisdom must figure out how she is to be uncovered. Felix Pedro is not that wise."
Bryan looked at him in amazement. "I believe you," he said. "I confess I thought you were a crook, but I believe now that you are telling the truth!"
Felix Pedro took the comment in good grace, if he heard it at all. "I am telling the truth in everything I say," he went on, "including the fact that I am not wise." 
"Well, perhaps I am," Bryan said quietly. "At least, I can try to get the gold out. I know where to get help. In the meantime, I need your permission on something, Felix."
"What would that be?"
"I want to re-survey all of your claims."
Pedro blinked as if he were still being called a liar.
"I think," Bryan added quickly, "that we can then come to some sort of agreement on your contract with the baroness. As you know, her deep mines on Douglas Island are quite successful, through machinery. I have a hunch these mines won't prove to be as deep, but you can understand that I have to check them to determine exactly what machinery should be brought in."
"She's going to take it all away from me!" the Mexican wailed.
"Nonsense!" Bryan said firmly. "But I do have her authority to negotiate with you. You've got the claims and I've got the knowledge and finances to get the proper equipment."
Umalti's eyes rolled to the back of his head on hearing such a lie.
The Mexican sat forward now with avid interest.
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"Go on, senor." 
"We'll cancel the old contract," Bryan said confidentially, "because it is now meaningless. You've got six claims. You deed three of them to me-- any three that you choose--and in exchange I'll supply you, free of charge, with all the heavy equipment you need to operate your claims."
A gleam stole into the Mexican's eyes.
"And then a percent of your three claims?" he suggested.
"All right," Bryan agreed at once.
"We drink to it!" Felix Pedro exulted. "I have the tequila!" 
Umalti held his silence until they were finished toasting the deal and were outside.
"Oh, Bryan Mathews," he moaned, "where are we to get such money as you said we have?"
"Why, from the baroness herself," Bryan said, smiling. "I guess I'll just have to eat crow---or pretend to be doing it. I'm going back to the barracuda, Umalti. She's quick to forgive when her greed gets whetted. I'll kiss her goddam pink butt if I have to. Did you see the size of those claims? Lord, they must cover twelve miles of the Tanana Valley!"
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