"I came back another way, in order to take in a little group of houses on a small pay-creek," was the reply. "But it was comin' back from that trip, on the Koatak River, that I had quite a time, although I was not the sufferer. We had been havin' a hard spell of weather, but there come a week when conditions on the trail were much better an' we were reelin' off the miles in great shape. I hadn't a place on my map for about sixty miles, when in the distance I saw a little hut, just in the fringe of some stunted cottonwoods and some scraggy willows, for we were not far from the timber limit. "'Billy,' I called to the Indian, 'ever see that hut before?' "The Indian shook his head, but knowin' that I wanted to see an' count everybody in the district, he turned off the trail--he said it was a trail but I couldn't see it--an' led the way to the hut. I went in an' found a man lying on a couple of planks, just about dead. He was one of the survivors of the wrecked steamer _Filarleon_, and had frozen all the fingers of both hands. Two or three were turnin' gangrenous; an' one of these had got so bad that with his other crippled hand, he had sawed off the decomposin' member with his pocket-knife. One foot also was frozen an' had turned black, but that afterwards recovered." "What did you do for him?" asked the boy. "Put him on the sled, of course," the Alaskan answered, "an' took him to the nearest settlement. I afterwards heard that a doctor happened in to camp soon after I left, an' got at his hurts right away, an' that he was put back into fair condition all but the one finger.--That's no tenderfoot's country up there." "I wonder you stuck it out," said Hamilton. "But then," he added a moment later, "I can see how a fellow would hate to quit." "It was tough," reluctantly admitted the narrator, "an' I'll tell you what I did. I'm not much of a hand with the pen, but right in the middle of the work I found a man who was goin' down the river, an' I sat down and wrote a long letter to the supervisor. It was about as plaintive a thing as I ever read. I had no reason to expect an answer, but by chance another party was comin' up that way, an' some weeks later I received a reply. What do you suppose he said!" "I haven't the least idea," answered the boy. "His answer read just this way: "'I chose you because you were experienced in the treeless coast. Go to it. We are expecting you to make good.'" "And," Hamilton said, his eyes shining, "I'll bet you did!" CHAPTER IX CONFRONTED WITH THE BLACK HAND