The Winds of Chance

Joe McCaskey was not a coward, neither was he a superstitious man, but he had imagination. The steady strain of his and Frank's long flight, the certainty of pursuit close behin...

Tom Linton and Jerry Quirk toiled slowly up the trail toward their cabin. Both men were bundled thickly in clothing, both bewhiskered visages bore grotesque breath-masks of ice;...

A chilly twilight had fallen by the time the castaways arrived at the encampment above the rapids. Kirby and his daughter were shaking from the cold. The Countess Courteau hurri...

Pierce Phillips possessed the average young American's capacities for good or evil. Had he fallen among healthy surroundings upon his arrival at Dawson, in all probability he wo...

Rouletta Kirby could not manage to get warm. The longer she sat beside the stove the colder she became. This was not strange, for the room was draughty, people were constantly c...

It was a still, clear morning, but autumn was in the air and a pale sun lacked the necessary heat to melt a skin of ice which, during the night, had covered stagnant pools. The...

A certain romantic glamour attaches to all new countries, but not every man is responsive to it. To the person who finds enjoyment, preoccupation, in studying a ruin or in conte...

From Dawson City the Yukon flows in a northwesterly direction toward the International Boundary, and although the camp is scarcely more than fifty miles due east of American ter...

Having crossed the high barrens, Phillips and his companion dropped down to timber-line and soon arrived at Linderman, their journey's end. This was perhaps the most feverishly...

"The gentleman wins and the gambler loses!" Mr. Broad proclaimed to the world. "The eye is quicker than the hand, and the dealer's moans is music to the stranger's ear." With pr...

The headwaters of the Dyea River spring from a giant's punch-bowl. Three miles above timber-line the valley bottom widens out into a flinty field strewn with boulders which in a...

"Why, he wants his liberty! He wants this absurd charge against him dismissed! It's a shame to hold a boy of his character, his breeding, on the mere word of a man like Count Co...

Although 'Poleon had spoken with confidence, he found, upon arriving at Police Headquarters, that the situation was by no means as simple as it had appeared, and that something...

The story of the first trial at Sheep Camp is an old one, but it differs with every telling. In the hectic hurry of that gold-rush many incidents were soon forgotten and such sa...

To the early Klondikers, Chilkoot Pass was a personality, a Presence at once sinister, cruel, and forbidding. So, too, only in greater measure, was Miles Canon. The Chilkoot toy...

"He say if she get cold once more--pouf! She die lak dat! Plenty fire, plenty blanket, medicine every hour, dat's all. I'm prayin' for come along some woman--any kin' of woman a...

Rouletta Kirby spent an anxious and a thoughtful night. The more she dwelt upon Laure's peculiar behavior the more it roused her suspicions and the more she felt justified in se...

The change in the weather had not escaped Pierce Phillips' notice, and before going to bed he stepped out of his tent to study the sky. It was threatening. Recalling extravagant...

Once again Tom and Jerry's skiff had been halved, once again its owners smarted under the memory of insults unwarranted, of gibes that no apology could atone for. This time it h...

In taking charge of a sick girl, a helpless, hopeless stranger, 'Poleon Doret had assumed a responsibility far greater than he had anticipated, and that responsibility had grown...

"Wal, w'at I tol' you?" 'Poleon Doret exclaimed, cheerfully. "Me, I'm cut off for poor man. If one dose El Dorado millionaire' give me his pay-dump, all de gold disappear biffor...

Although scows larger than the Rouletta had run Miles Canon and the rapids below in safety, perhaps none more unwieldy had ever done so. Royal had built his barge stoutly, to be...

Every new and prosperous mining-camp has an Arabian Nights atmosphere, characteristic, peculiar, indescribable. Especially noticeable was this atmosphere in the early Arctic cam...

Sam Kirby's outfit was one of the largest, one of the costliest, and one of the most complete that had ever been landed on the Dyea beach, for Kirby was a man who did things in...

Morris Best's new partner was a square gambler, so called. People there were who sneered at this description and considered it a contradiction as absurd as a square circle or an...

With 'Poleon Doret to be busy was to be contented, and these were busy times for him. His daily routine, with trap and gun, had made of him an early riser and had bred in him a...

The news of Count Courteau's death traveled fast. 'Poleon Doret was not long in hearing of it, and of course he went at once in search of Rouletta. By the time he found her the...

Rouletta Kirby was awakened by the sound of chopping; in the still, frosty morning the blows of the ax rang out loudly. For a moment she lay staring upward at the sloping tent-r...

Laure had no cause to repeat her admonition, for, in the days that followed, Pierce Phillips maintained toward the women members of the party an admirable attitude of aloofness....

"Looked kind of salty for a spell, didn't it?" The grizzled leader of the posse, he who had effected the capture of the thieves, was speaking to Pierce. "Well, I'm due for a pri...