justify a man's breaking the law. I did take his rifle away when he tried to shoot my woman. I guess it was Siwashes bruck into that cabin.'
'I'm pretty certain of it,' said Clallam.
'You? What makes you?'
John began the tale of the galloping dots, and Jake stopped walking to listen the harder. 'Yes,' he said; 'that's bad. That's jest bad. They hev carried a lot off to drink. That's the worst.'
He had little to say after this, but talked under his tongue as they went to the house, where he offered a bed to Clallam and Mart. They would not turn him out, so he showed them over to a haystack, where they crawled in and went to sleep.
Most white men know when they have had enough whiskey. Most Indians do not. This is a difference between the races of which government has taken notice. Government says that 'no ardent spirits shall be introduced under any presence into the Indian country.' It also says that the white man who attempts to break this law 'shall be punished by imprisonment for not more than two years and by a fine of not more than three hundred dollars.' It further says that if any superintendent of Indian affairs has reason to suspect a man, he may cause the 'boats, stores, packages, wagons, sleds, and places of deposit' of such person to be searched, and if ardent spirits be found it shall be forfeit, together with the boats and all other substances with it connected, one half to the informer and the other half to the use of the United States. The courts and all legal machines necessary for trial and punishment of offenders are oiled and ready; two years is a long while in jail; three hundred dollars and confiscation sounds heavy; altogether the penalty looks severe on the printed page—and all the while there's no brisker success in our far West than selling whiskey to Indians. Very few people know what the whiskey is made of, and the Indian does not care. He drinks till he drops senseless. If he has killed nobody and nobody him during the process, it is a good thing, for then the matter ends with his getting sober and going home to his tent till such happy time when he can put his hand on some further possession to trade away. The white offender is caught now and then; but Okanagon County lies pretty snug from the arm of the law. It's against Canada to the north, and the empty county of Stevens to the east; south of it rushes the Columbia, with the naked horrible Big Bend beyond, and to its west rises a domain of unfooted mountains. There is law up in the top of it at Conconully sometimes, but not much even to-day, for that is still a new country, where flow the Methow, the Ashinola, and the Similikameen.
Consequently a cabin like Wild-Goose Jake's was a holiday place. The blanketed denizens of the reservation crossed to it, and the citizens who had neighboring cabins along the trail repaired here to spend what money they had. As Mrs. Clallam lay in her bed she heard customers arrive. Two or three loud voices spoke in English, and several Indians and squaws seemed to be with the party, bantering in Chinook. The visitors were in too strong force for Jake's word about coming some other night to be of any avail.
'Open your cellar and quit your talk,' Elizabeth heard, and next she heard some door that stuck, pulled open with a shriek of the warped timber. Next they were gambling, and made not much noise over it at first; but the Indians in due time began to lose to the soberer whites, becoming quarrelsome, and raising a clumsy disturbance, though it was plain the whites had their own way and were feared. The voices rose, and soon there was no moment that several were not shouting curses at once, till Mrs. Clallam stopped her ears. She was still for a time, hearing only in a muffled way, when all at once the smell of drink and tobacco, that had sifted only a little through the cracks, grew heavy in the room, and she felt Nancy shrink close to her side.
'Mother, mother,' the child whispered, 'what's that?'
It had gone beyond card-playing with the company in the saloon; they seemed now to be having a savage horse-play, those on their feet tramping in their scuffles upon others on the floor, who bellowed incoherently. Elizabeth Clallam took Nancy in her arms and told her that nobody would come where they were.
But the child was shaking. 'Yes, they will,' she whispered, in terror. 'They are!' And she began a tearless sobbing, holding her mother with her whole strength.
A little sound came close by the bed, and Elizabeth's senses stopped so that for half a minute she could not stir. She stayed rigid beneath the quilt, and Nancy clung to her. Something was moving over the floor. It came quite near, but turned, and its slight rustle crawled away towards the window.
'Who is that?' demanded Mrs. Clallam, sitting up.
