Stampede rubbed a hand over his smooth, prominent chin and nodded apologetically.
“It’s me,” he conceded. “I had to do it. It was give one or t’other up—my whiskers or her. They went hard, too. I flipped dice, an’ the whiskers won. I cut cards, an’ the whiskers won. I played Klondike ag’in’ ’em, an’ the whiskers busted the bank. Then I got mad an’ shaved ’em. Do I look so bad, Alan?”
“You look twenty years younger,” declared Alan, stifling his desire to laugh when he saw the other’s seriousness.
Stampede was thoughtfully stroking his chin. “Then why the devil did they laugh!” he demanded. “Mary Standish didn’t laugh. She cried. Just stood an’ cried, an’ then sat down an’ cried, she thought I was that blamed funny! And Keok laughed until she was sick an’ had to go to bed. That little devil of a Keok calls me Pinkey now, and Miss Standish says it wasn’t because I was funny that she laughed, but that the change in me was so sudden she couldn’t help it. Nawadlook says I’ve got a character-ful chin—”
Alan gripped his hand, and a swift change came over Stampede’s face. A steely glitter shot into the blue of his eyes, and his chin hardened. Nature no longer disguised the Stampede Smith of other days, and Alan felt a new thrill and a new regard for the man whose hand he held. This, at last, was the man whose name had gone before him up and down the old trails; the man whose cool and calculating courage, whose fearlessness of death and quickness with the gun had written pages in Alaskan history which would never be forgotten. Where his first impulse had been to laugh, he now felt the grim thrill and admiration of men of other days, who, when in Stampede’s presence, knew they were in the presence of a master. The old Stampede had come to life again. And Alan knew why. The grip of his hand tightened, and Stampede returned it.
“Some day, if we’re lucky, there always comes a woman to make the world worth living in, Stampede,” he said.
“There does,” replied Stampede.
He looked steadily at Alan.
“And I take it you love Mary Standish,” he added, “and that you’d fight for her if you had to.”
“I would,” said Alan.