THE ADVENTURERS WERE OF ALL SORTS. THEY WERE DRAWN ON BY THE LUST FOR RICHES.
The huskies yelped and snarled in fierce rivalry. Harry, the Dog-Man, snapped his whip with a vicious crack like the report of a gun. The dogs strained against the breast-straps in their fierce lunge forward. Along the line was everywhere impetuous, eager movement. The stampede had begun.
Dangerous Dan McGrew, who rode beside his wife, spoke to her softly, so that his question would not be overheard by Sam Ward, who rode on her other side:
"What does he say?"
Lou answered in a whisper:
"He'll leave to-night, when the camp's quiet, for his own claim."
CHAPTER XIII
From a nook on the mountainside, a lone man watched scornfully the long, thin line of the stampede.
Those same threads spun by the Fates had caught another in their mesh. In a lonely hut, there in the desolate Northland, Jim Maxwell had his home. His presence was needful for the weaving of that design by which right should be realized in the final presentation of life's tapestry. He had traveled thus far beyond the confines of civilization under the urge of that immutable purpose which drove him in all his wanderings throughout the years—to find the man he hated, and the woman he loved. He had sought vainly over all the world in the usual haunts of men—in many that were unusual. Never, anywhere, had he found a trace. He had come into this forbidding land, not for the lure of gold, as the others had come; but for the lure of vengeance against the man who had despoiled him, and for the lure of love toward the woman who had his heart in her keeping.