The back yard is unfenced, and extends to the
skyline and an unascertainable bit beyond. There are no other
houses in sight, though the Toyaats sometimes pitch a winter camp a
mile or two down the Yukon. And this is Twenty Mile, one tentacle
of the many-tentacled P. C. Company. Here the agent, with an
assistant, barters with the Indians for their furs, and does an
erratic trade on a gold-dust basis with the wandering miners.
Here, also, the agent and his assistant yearn all winter for the
spring, and when the spring comes, camp blasphemously on the roof
while the Yukon washes out the establishment. And here, also, in
the fourth year of his sojourn in the land, came Neil Bonner to
take charge.
He had displaced no agent; for the man that previously ran the post
had made away with himself; "because of the rigours of the place,"
said the assistant, who still remained; though the Toyaats, by
their fires, had another version. The assistant was a shrunken-
shouldered, hollow-chested man, with a cadaverous face and
cavernous cheeks that his sparse black beard could not hide. He
coughed much, as though consumption gripped his lungs, while his
eyes had that mad, fevered light common to consumptives in the last
stage. Pentley was his name--Amos Pentley--and Bonner did not like
him, though he felt a pity for the forlorn and hopeless devil.
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