“Oh,” was the answer, “the Count and old Victor Chauvet and me. Do you know, I think the Count is the one to be really sorry for. Dave Walsh never did know that she was false to him. And she does not suffer. Her darkness is merciful to her.”
I lay silently under the blankets for the space of a minute.
“Is the Count still in the country?” I asked.
But there was a gentle sound of heavy breathing, and I knew Lon McFane was asleep.
THE PASSING OF MARCUS O’BRIEN
“It is the judgment of this court that you vamose the camp . . . in the customary way, sir, in the customary way.”
Judge Marcus O’Brien was absent-minded, and Mucluc Charley nudged him in the ribs. Marcus O’Brien cleared his throat and went on—
“Weighing the gravity of the offence, sir, and the extenuating circumstances, it is the opinion of this court, and its verdict, that you be outfitted with three days’ grub. That will do, I think.”
Arizona Jack cast a bleak glance out over the Yukon. It was a swollen, chocolate flood, running a mile wide and nobody knew how deep. The earth-bank on which he stood was ordinarily a dozen feet above the water, but the river was now growling at the top of the bank, devouring, instant by instant, tiny portions of the top-standing soil. These portions went into the gaping mouths of the endless army of brown swirls and vanished away. Several inches more, and Red Cow would be flooded.
“It won’t do,” Arizona Jack said bitterly. “Three days’ grub ain’t enough.”