“And I'll stick to my end of the bargain!” the sergeant exclaimed heartily. “When do you want to start?”
“It makes damned little odds to me!” Three-Ace Artie answered gruffly. “Suit yourself.”
“All right,” said the sergeant. “In that case I'll put in a few hours' sleep, and we'll get away before the camp is stirring.” He buttoned up his overcoat, put on his cap, and moved toward the door. “I've got a team of huskies, and there's room on the sled for anything you want to bring along. You can get it ready, and I'll call for you here.”
Three-Ace Artie nodded curtly.
Sergeant Marden reached out to open the door, and, with his hand on the latch, hesitated.
“Don't go up there, Leroy,” he said earnestly, jerking his head in the direction of the upper end of the camp. “Canuck John is unconscious, as I told you—there's nothing you could do.”
But Three-Ace Artie had turned his back. To Canuck John and Sergeant Marden he was equally oblivious for the moment. He heard the door close, heard the sergeant's footsteps outside recede and die away. He was staring now at the bag of gold upon the table. It seemed to mock and jeer at him, and suddenly his hands at his sides curled into clenched and knotted fists—and after a moment he spoke aloud in French.
“It was the first decent thing I ever did in my life”—he was smiling in a sort of horrible mirth. “Do you appreciate that, my very dear friend Raymond? It is exquisite! Sacré nom de Dieu, it is magnificent! It was the first decent thing you ever did in your life—think of that, mon brave! And see how well you are paid for it! They are running you out of camp!”
He turned and flung himself down on the bunk, his hands still fiercely clenched. Black-balled, Sergeant Marden had called it! Well, it was not the first time he had been black-balled! Here, in the Yukon, the name of Three-Ace Artie was to be a stench to the nostrils; elsewhere, in the city of his birth, he, last of his race, had already dragged an honoured and patrician name in the mire.
A red flame of anger swept his cheeks. What devil's juggling with the cards had brought that young fool across his path, and brought the memories of the days gone by, and brought him an indulgence in weak, mawkish sentimentality! A debt, he had told the boy!