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Data Structures & Algorithms in Python
 Data Structures & Algorithms in
Python

John Canning
Alan Broder
Robert Lafore

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 To my mother, who gave me a thirst for knowledge, to my father, who
taught me the joys of engineering, and to June, who made it possible to
pursue both.

John Canning

For my father Sol Broder, a computer science pioneer, who inspired me to

follow in his footsteps.

To my mother Marilyn Broder, for showing me the satisfaction of teaching

others.

To Fran, for making my life complete.

Alan Broder
 Contents
1. Overview

2. Arrays

3. Simple Sorting

4. Stacks and Queues

5. Linked Lists

6. Recursion

7. Advanced Sorting

8. Binary Trees

9. 2-3-4 Trees and External Storage

10. AVL and Red-Black Trees

11. Hash Tables

12. Spatial Data Structures

13. Heaps

14. Graphs

15. Weighted Graphs

16. What to Use and Why

Appendix A. Running the Visualizations

Appendix B. Further Reading

Appendix C. Answers to Questions

 Table of Contents
1. Overview
What Are Data Structures and Algorithms?
Overview of Data Structures
Overview of Algorithms
Some Definitions
Programming in Python
Object-Oriented Programming
Summary
Questions
Experiments

2. Arrays
The Array Visualization Tool
Using Python Lists to Implement the Array Class
The Ordered Array Visualization Tool
Python Code for an Ordered Array Class
Logarithms
Storing Objects
Big O Notation
Why Not Use Arrays for Everything?
Summary
Questions
Experiments
Programming Projects

3. Simple Sorting
How Would You Do It?
Bubble Sort
Selection Sort
nsertion Sort
Comparing the Simple Sorts
Summary
Questions
Experiments
Programming Projects

4. Stacks and Queues

Different Structures for Different Use Cases
Stacks
Queues
Priority Queues
Parsing Arithmetic Expressions
Summary
Questions
Experiments
Programming Projects

5. Linked Lists
Links
The Linked List Visualization Tool
A Simple Linked List
Linked List Efficiency
Abstract Data Types and Objects
Ordered Lists
Doubly Linked Lists
Circular Lists
terators
Summary
Questions
Experiments
Programming Projects
6. Recursion
Triangular Numbers
Factorials
Anagrams
A Recursive Binary Search
The Tower of Hanoi
Sorting with mergesort
Eliminating Recursion
Some Interesting Recursive Applications
Summary
Questions
Experiments
Programming Projects

7. Advanced Sorting
Shellsort
Partitioning
Quicksort
Degenerates to O(N2) Performance
Radix Sort
Timsort
Summary
Questions
Experiments
Programming Projects

8. Binary Trees
Why Use Binary Trees?
Tree Terminology
An Analogy
How Do Binary Search Trees Work?
Finding a Node
nserting a Node
Traversing the Tree
Finding Minimum and Maximum Key Values
Deleting a Node
The Efficiency of Binary Search Trees
Trees Represented as Arrays
Printing Trees
Duplicate Keys
The BinarySearchTreeTester.py Program
The Huffman Code
Summary
Questions
Experiments
Programming Projects

9. 2-3-4 Trees and External Storage

ntroduction to 2-3-4 Trees
The Tree234 Visualization Tool
Python Code for a 2-3-4 Tree
Efficiency of 2-3-4 Trees
-3 Trees
External Storage
Summary
Questions
Experiments
Programming Projects

10. AVL and Red-Black Trees

Our Approach to the Discussion
Balanced and Unbalanced Trees
AVL Trees
The Efficiency of AVL Trees
Red-Black Trees
Using the Red-Black Tree Visualization Tool
Experimenting with the Visualization Tool
Rotations in Red-Black Trees
 nserting a New Node
Deletion
The Efficiency of Red-Black Trees
-3-4 Trees and Red-Black Trees
Red-Black Tree Implementation
Summary
Questions
Experiments
Programming Projects

11. Hash Tables

ntroduction to Hashing
Open Addressing
Separate Chaining
Hash Functions
Hashing Efficiency
Hashing and External Storage
Summary
Questions
Experiments
Programming Projects

12. Spatial Data Structures

Spatial Data
Computing Distances Between Points
Circles and Bounding Boxes
Searching Spatial Data
Lists of Points
Grids
Quadtrees
Theoretical Performance and Optimizations
Practical Considerations
Further Extensions
Summary
Questions
Experiments
Programming Projects

13. Heaps
ntroduction to Heaps
The Heap Visualization Tool
Python Code for Heaps
A Tree-Based Heap
Heapsort
Order Statistics
Summary
Questions
Experiments
Programming Projects

14. Graphs
ntroduction to Graphs
Traversal and Search
Minimum Spanning Trees
Topological Sorting
Connectivity in Directed Graphs
Summary
Questions
Experiments
Programming Projects

15. Weighted Graphs

Minimum Spanning Tree with Weighted Graphs
The Shortest-Path Problem
The All-Pairs Shortest-Path Problem
Efficiency
ntractable Problems
Summary
Questions
Experiments
Programming Projects

16. What to Use and Why

Analyzing the Problem
Foundational Data Structures
Special-Ordering Data Structures
Sorting
Specialty Data Structures
External Storage
Onward

Appendix A. Running the Visualizations

For Developers: Running and Changing the Visualizations
For Managers: Downloading and Running the Visualizations
For Others: Viewing the Visualizations on the Internet
Using the Visualizations

Appendix B. Further Reading

Data Structures and Algorithms
Object-Oriented Programming Languages
Object-Oriented Design (OOD) and Software Engineering

Appendix C. Answers to Questions

Chapter 1, “Overview”
Chapter 2, “Arrays”
Chapter 3, “Simple Sorting”
Chapter 4, “Stacks and Queues”
Chapter 5, “Linked Lists”
Chapter 6, “Recursion”
Chapter 7, “Advanced Sorting”
Chapter 8, “Binary Trees”
Chapter 9, “2-3-4 Trees and External Storage”
Chapter 10, “AVL and Red-Black Trees”
Chapter 11, “Hash Tables”
Chapter 12, “Spatial Data Structures”
Chapter 13, “Heaps”
Chapter 14, “Graphs”
Chapter 15, “Weighted Graphs”
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Acknowledgments
From John Canning and Alan Broder
Robert Lafore’s Java-based version of this book has been a mainstay in
Data Structures courses and professionals’ reference shelves around the
world for many years. When Alan’s Data Structures course at Stern College
for Women of Yeshiva University moved on to Python, the inability to use
Lafore’s book in the course was a real loss. We’re thus especially happy to
bring this new and revised edition to the world of Python programmers and
students.
We’d like to thank the many students at Stern who contributed to this book
either directly or indirectly over the past several years. Initial Python
versions of Lafore’s Java implementations were central to Alan’s Python-
based courses, and Stern student feedback helped improve the code’s
clarity, enhanced its performance, and sometimes even identified and fixed
bugs!
For their valuable feedback and recommendations on early drafts of this
new edition, we are grateful to many students in Alan’s Data Structures
courses, including Estee Brooks, Adina Bruce, Julia Chase, Hanna Fischer,
Limor Kohanim, Elisheva Kohn, Shira Orlian, Shira Pahmer, Jennie Peled,
Alexandra Roffe, Avigail Royzenberg, Batia Segal, Penina Waghalter, and
Esther Werblowsky. Our apologies if we’ve omitted anyone’s name.
An open-source package of data structure visualizations is available to
enhance your study of this book, and Stern students played an active role in
the development of the visualization software. John and Alan extend many
thanks to the Stern student pioneers and leaders of this project, including
Ilana Radinsky, Elana Apfelbaum, Ayliana Teitelbaum, and Lily Polonetsky,
as well as the following past and present Stern student contributors: Zoe
Abboudi, Ayelet Aharon, Lara Amar, Natania Birnbaum, Adina Bruce,
Chani Dubin, Sarah Engel, Sarah Graff, Avigayil Helman, Michal
Kaufman, Sarina Kofman, Rachel Leiser, Talia Leitner, Shani Lewis, Rina
Melincoff, Atara Neugroschl, Shira Pahmer, Miriam Rabinovich, Etta Rapp,
Shira Sassoon, Mazal Schoenwald, Shira Schneider, Shira Smith, Riva
Tropp, Alexandra Volchek, and Esther Werblowsky. Our apologies if we
have left anyone off this list.
Many thanks go to Professor David Matuszek of the University of
Pennsylvania for his early contributions of ideas and PowerPoint slides
when Alan first started teaching Data Structures at Stern. Many of the slides
available in the Instructors Resources section have their origin in his clear
and well-designed slides. Also, we are grateful to Professor Marian Gidea
of the Department of Mathematics of Yeshiva University for his insights
into spherical trigonometry.
Finally, we owe a great debt to the talented editors at Pearson who made
this book a reality: Mark Taber, Kim Spenceley, Mandie Frank, and Chris
Zahn. Without their many talents and patient help, this project would just be
an odd collection of text files, drawings, and source code.
From Robert Lafore for the Java-based versions of the book

Acknowledgments to the First Edition

My gratitude for the following people (and many others) cannot be fully
expressed in this short acknowledgment. As always, Mitch Waite had the
Java thing figured out before anyone else. He also let me bounce the applets
off him until they did the job, and extracted the overall form of the project
from a miasma of speculation. My editor, Kurt Stephan, found great
reviewers, made sure everyone was on the same page, kept the ball rolling,
and gently but firmly ensured that I did what I was supposed to do. Harry
Henderson provided a skilled appraisal of the first draft, along with many
valuable suggestions. Richard S. Wright, Jr., as technical editor, corrected
numerous problems with his keen eye for detail. Jaime Niño, Ph.D., of the
University of New Orleans, attempted to save me from myself and
occasionally succeeded, but should bear no responsibility for my approach
or coding details. Susan Walton has been a staunch and much-appreciated
supporter in helping to convey the essence of the project to the
nontechnical. Carmela Carvajal was invaluable in extending our contacts
with the academic world. Dan Scherf not only put the CD-ROM together,
but was tireless in keeping me up to date on rapidly evolving software
changes. Finally, Cecile Kaufman ably shepherded the book through its
transition from the editing to the production process.

Acknowledgments to the Second Edition

My thanks to the following people at Sams Publishing for their competence,
effort, and patience in the development of this second edition. Acquisitions
Editor Carol Ackerman and Development Editor Songlin Qiu ably guided
this edition through the complex production process. Project Editor Matt
Purcell corrected a semi-infinite number of grammatical errors and made
sure everything made sense. Tech Editor Mike Kopak reviewed the
programs and saved me from several problems. Last but not least, Dan
Scherf, an old friend from a previous era, provides skilled management of
my code and applets on the Sams website.
About the Author
Dr. John Canning is an engineer, computer scientist, and researcher. He
earned an S.B. degree in electrical engineering from the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the
University of Maryland at College Park. His varied professions include
being a professor of computer science, a researcher and software engineer
in industry, and a company vice president. He now is president of
Shakumant Software.
Alan Broder is clinical professor and chair of the Department of Computer
Science at Stern College for Women of Yeshiva University in New York
City. He teaches introductory and advanced courses in Python
programming, data structures, and data science. Before joining Stern
College, he was a software engineer, designing and building large-scale
data analysis systems. He founded and led White Oak Technologies, Inc. as
its CEO, and later served as the chairman and fellow of its successor
company, Novetta, in Fairfax, Virginia.
Introduction
What’s in this book? This book is designed to be a practical introduction to
data structures and algorithms for students who have just begun to write
computer programs. This introduction will tell you more about the book,
how it is organized, what experience we expect readers will have before
starting the book, and what knowledge you will get by reading it and doing
the exercises.

Who This Book Is For

Data structures and algorithms are the core of computer science. If you’ve
ever wanted to understand what computers can do, how they do it, and what
they can’t do, then you need a deep understanding of both (it’s probably
better to say “what computers have difficulty doing” instead of what they
can’t do). This book may be used as a text in a data structures and/or
algorithms course, frequently taught in the second year of a university
computer science curriculum. The text, however, is also designed for
professional programmers, for high school students, and for anyone else
who needs to take the next step up from merely knowing a programming
language. Because it’s easy to understand, it is also appropriate as a
supplemental text to a more formal course. It is loaded with examples,
exercises, and supplemental materials, so it can be used for self-study
outside of a classroom setting.
Our approach in writing this book is to make it easy for readers to
understand how data structures operate and how to apply them in practice.
That’s different from some other texts that emphasize the mathematical
theory, or how those structures are implemented in a particular language or
software library. We’ve selected examples with real-world applications and
avoid using math-only or obscure examples. We use figures and
visualization programs to help communicate key ideas. We still cover the
complexity of the algorithms and the math needed to show how complexity
impacts performance.

What You Need to Know Before You Read This

Book
The prerequisites for using this book are: knowledge of some programming
language and some mathematics. Although the sample code is written in
Python, you don’t need to know Python to follow what’s happening. Python
is not hard to understand, if you’ve done some procedural and/or object-
oriented programming. We’ve kept the syntax in the examples as general as
possible,
More specifically, we use Python version 3 syntax. This version differs
somewhat from Python 2, but not greatly. Python is a rich language with
many built-in data types and libraries that extend its capabilities. Our
examples, however, use the more basic constructs for two reasons: it makes
them easier to understand for programmers familiar with other languages,
and it illustrates the details of the data structures more explicitly. In later
chapters, we do make use of some Python features not found in other
languages such as generators and list comprehensions. We explain what
these are and how they benefit the programmer.
Of course, it will help if you’re already familiar with Python (version 2 or
3). Perhaps you’ve used some of Python’s many data structures and are
curious about how they are implemented. We review Python syntax in
Chapter 1, “Overview,” for those who need an introduction or refresher. If
you’ve programmed in languages like Java, C++, C#, JavaScript, or Perl,
many of the constructs should be familiar. If you’ve only programmed
using functional or domain-specific languages, you may need to spend more
time becoming familiar with basic elements of Python. Beyond this text,
there are many resources available for novice Python programmers,
including many tutorials on the Internet.
Besides a programming language, what should every programmer know? A
good knowledge of math from arithmetic through algebra is essential.
Computer programming is symbol manipulation. Just like algebra, there are
ways of transforming expressions to rearrange terms, put them in different
forms, and make certain parts more prominent, all while preserving the
same meaning. It’s also critical to understand exponentials in math. Much
of computer science is based on knowing what raising one number to a
power of another means. Beyond math, a good sense of organization is also
beneficial for all programming. Knowing how to organize items in different
ways (by time, by function, by size, by complexity, and so on) is crucial to
making programs efficient and maintainable. When we talk about efficiency
and maintainability, they have particular meanings in computer science.
Efficiency is mostly about how much time it takes to compute things but can
also be about the amount of space it takes. Maintainability refers to the ease
of understanding and modifying your programs by other programmers as
well as yourself.
You’ll also need knowledge of how to find things on the Internet, download
and install software, and run them on a computer. The instructions for
downloading and running the visualization programs can be found in
Appendix A of this book. The Internet has made it very easy to access a
cornucopia of tools, including tools for learning programming and
computer science. We expect readers to already know how to find useful
resources and avoid sources that might provide malicious software.

What You Can Learn from This Book

As you might expect from its title, this book can teach you about how data
structures make programs (and programmers) more efficient in their work.
You can learn how data organization and its coupling with appropriate
algorithms greatly affect what can be computed with a given amount of
computing resources. This book can give you a thorough understanding of
how to implement the data structures, and that should enable you to
implement them in any programming language. You can learn the process
of deciding what data structure(s) and algorithms are the most appropriate
to meet a particular programming request. Perhaps most importantly, you
can learn when an algorithm and/or data structure will fail in a given use
case. Understanding data structures and algorithms is the core of computer
science, which is different from being a Python (or other language)
programmer.
The book teaches the fundamental data structures that every programmer
should know. Readers should understand that there are many more. These
basic data structures work in a wide variety of situations. With the skills
you develop in this book, you should be able to read a description of
another data structure or algorithm and begin to analyze whether or not it
will outperform or perform worse than the ones you’ve already learned in
particular use cases.
This book explains some Python syntax and structure, but it will not teach
you all its capabilities. The book uses a subset of Python’s full capabilities
to illustrate how more complex data structures are built from the simpler
constructs. It is not designed to teach the basics of programming to
someone who has never programmed. Python is a very high-level language
with many built-in data structures. Using some of the more primitive types
such as arrays of integers or record structures, as you might find in C or
C++, is somewhat more difficult in Python. Because the book’s focus is the
implementation and analysis of data structures, our examples use
approximations to these primitive types. Some Python programmers may
find these examples unnecessarily complex, knowing about the more
elegant constructs provided with the language in standard libraries. If you
want to understand computer science, and in particular, the complexity of
algorithms, you must understand the underlying operations on the
primitives. When you use a data structure provided in a programming
language or from one of its add-on modules, you will often have to know its
complexity to know whether it will work well for your use case.
Understanding the core data structures, their complexities, and trade-offs
will help you understand the ones built on top of them.
All the data structures are developed using object-oriented programming
(OOP). If that’s a new concept for you, the review in Chapter 1 of how
classes are defined and used in Python provides a basic introduction to
OOP. You should not expect to learn the full power and benefits of OOP
from this text. Instead, you will learn to implement each data structure as a
class. These classes are the types of objects in OOP and make it easier to
develop software that can be reused by many different applications in a
reliable way.
The book uses many examples, but this is not a book about a particular
application area of computer science such as databases, user interfaces, or
artificial intelligence. The examples are chosen to illustrate typical
applications of programs, but all programs are written in a particular
context, and that changes over time. A database program written in 1970
may have appeared very advanced at that time, but it might seem very
trivial today. The examples presented in this text are designed to teach how
data structures are implemented, how they perform, and how to compare
them when designing a new program. The examples should not be taken as
the most comprehensive or best implementation possible of each data
structure, nor as a thorough review of all the potential data structures that
could be appropriate for a particular application area.

Structure
Each chapter presents a particular group of data structures and associated
algorithms. At the end of the chapters, we provide review questions
covering the key points in the chapter and sometimes relationships to
previous chapters. The answers for these can be found in Appendix C,
“Answers to Questions.” These questions are intended as a self-test for
readers, to ensure you understood all the material.
Many chapters suggest experiments for readers to try. These can be
individual thought experiments, team assignments, or exercises with the
software tools provided with the book. These are designed to apply the
knowledge just learned to some other area and help deepen your
understanding.
Programming projects are longer, more challenging programming exercises.
We provide a range of projects of different levels of difficulty. These
projects might be used in classroom settings as homework assignments.
Sample solutions to the programming projects are available to qualified
instructors from the publisher.

History
Mitchell Waite and Robert Lafore developed the first version of this book
and titled it Data Structures and Algorithms in Java. The first edition was
published in 1998, and the second edition, by Robert, came out in 2002.
John Canning and Alan Broder developed this version using Python due to
its popularity in education and commercial and noncommercial software
development. Java is widely used and an important language for computer
scientists to know. With many schools adopting Python as a first
programming language, the need for textbooks that introduce new concepts
in an already familiar language drove the development of this book. We
expanded the coverage of data structures and updated many of the
examples.
We’ve tried to make the learning process as painless as possible. We hope
this text makes the core, and frankly, the beauty of computer science
accessible to all. Beyond just understanding, we hope you find learning
these ideas fun. Enjoy yourself!
1. Overview
You have written some programs and learned enough to think that
programming is fun, or at least interesting. Some parts are easy, and some parts
are hard. You’d like to know more about how to make the process easier, get
past the hard parts, and conquer more complex tasks. You are starting to study
the heart of computer science, and that brings up many questions. This chapter
sets the stage for learning how to make programs that work properly and fast. It
explains a bunch of new terms and fills in background about the programming
language that we use in the examples.

In This Chapter
• What Are Data Structures and Algorithms?
• Overview of Data Structures
• Overview of Algorithms
• Some Definitions
• Programming in Python
• Object-Oriented Programming

What Are Data Structures and Algorithms?

Data organizations are ways data is arranged in the computer using its various
storage media (such as random-access memory, or RAM, and disk) and how
that data is interpreted to represent something. Algorithms are the procedures
used to manipulate the data in these structures. The way data is arranged can
simplify the algorithms and make algorithms run faster or slower. Together, the
data organization and the algorithm form a data structure. The data structures
act like building blocks, with more complex data structures using other data
structures as components with appropriate algorithms.
Does the way data is arranged and the algorithm used to manipulate it make a
difference? The answer is a definite yes. From the perspective of
nonprogrammers, it often seems as though computers can do anything and do it
very fast. That’s not really true. To see why, let’s look at a nonprogramming
example.
When you cook a meal, a collection of ingredients needs to be combined and
manipulated in specific ways. There is a huge variety of ways that you could
go about the individual steps needed to complete the meal. Some of those
methods are going to be more efficient than others. Let’s assume that you have
a written recipe, but are working in an unfamiliar kitchen, perhaps while
visiting a friend. One method for making the meal would be Method A:
1. Read through the full recipe noting all the ingredients it mentions, their
quantities, and any equipment needed to process them.
2. Find the ingredients, measure out the quantity needed, and store them.
3. Get out all the equipment needed to complete the steps in the recipe.
4. Go through the steps of the recipe in the order specified.
Let’s compare that to Method B:
1. Read the recipe until you identify the first set of ingredients or equipment
that is needed to complete the first step.
2. Find the identified ingredients or equipment.
3. Measure any ingredients found.
4. Perform the first step with the equipment and ingredients already found.
5. Return to the beginning of this method and repeat the instructions
replacing the word first with next. If there is no next step, then quit.
Both methods are complete in that that they should finish the complete recipe if
all the ingredients and equipment are available. For simple recipes, they should
take about the same amount of time too. The methods differ as the recipes get
more complex. For example, what if you can’t find the fifth ingredient? In
method A, that issue is identified at the beginning before any other ingredients
are combined. While neither method really explains what to do about
exceptions like a missing ingredient, you can still compare them under the
assumption that you handle the exceptions the same way.
A missing ingredient could be handled in several ways: find a substitute
ingredient, broaden the search for the ingredient (look in other rooms, ask a
neighbor, go to the market), or ignore the ingredient (an optional garnish). Each
of those remedies takes some time. If there is one missing ingredient and two
cooks using the different methods handle it in the same way, both are delayed
the same amount of time. If there are multiple missing ingredients, however,
Method A should identify those earlier and allow for the possibility of getting
all the missing ingredients in one visit to a neighbor or a market. The time
savings of combining the tasks of replacing missing ingredients could be
significant (imagine the market being far away or neighbors who want to talk
for hours on every visit).
The order of performing the operations could have significant impact on the
time needed to complete the meal. Another difference could be in the quality of
the meal. For example, in Method B the cook would perform the first “step”
and then move on to the next step. Let’s assume those use two different groups
of ingredients or equipment. If finding or measuring the ingredients, or getting
the equipment for the later steps takes significant time, then the results of the
first step sit around for a significant time. That can have a bad effect on the
quality of the meal. The cook might be able to overcome that effect in some
circumstances by, say, putting the results of the first step in a freezer or
refrigerator and then bringing them back to room temperature later. The cook
would be preserving the quality of the food at the expense of the time needed
to prepare it.
Would Method B ever be desirable if it takes longer or risks degrading the
quality of the food? Perhaps. Imagine that the cook is preparing this meal in the
unfamiliar kitchen of a family relative. The kitchen is full of family members,
and each one is trying to make part of the meal. In this crowded situation, it
could be difficult for each cook to get out all of their ingredients and equipment
at once. There might not be enough counter space, or mixing bowls, or knives,
for example, for each cook to have all their items assembled at the beginning.
The cooks could be constrained to work on individual steps while waiting for
equipment, space, or ingredients to become available. In this case, Method B
could have advantages over asking all the cooks to work one at a time using
Method A.
Coming back to programming, the algorithm specifies the sequence of
operations that are to be performed, much like the steps in the recipe. The data
organizations are somewhat analogous to how the ingredients are stored, laid
out in the kitchen, and their proximity to other ingredients and equipment. For
example, having the ingredient in the kitchen makes the process much faster
than if the ingredient needs to be retrieved from a neighbor or the market. You
can think of the amount of space taken up by spreading out the ingredients in
various locations as the amount of space needed for the algorithm. Even if all
the ingredients are in the kitchen where the cook is, there are ways of setting up
the ingredients to make the cooking tasks go faster. Having them compactly
arranged in the order they are needed minimizes the amount of moving around
the cook must do. The organization of the ingredients can also help if a cook
must be replaced by another cook in the middle of the preparation;
understanding where each of the ingredients fits in to the recipe is faster if the
layout is organized. This is another reason why good data organization is
important. It also reinforces that concept that the algorithm and the data
organization work together to make the data structure.
Data structures are important not just for speed but also to properly model the
meaning of the data. Let’s say there’s an event that many people want to attend
and they need to submit their phone number to have a chance to get tickets.
Each person can request multiple tickets. If there are fewer tickets than the
number of people who want to get them, some method needs to be applied to
decide which phone numbers to contact first and determine the number of
tickets they will receive. One method would be to go through the phone
numbers one at a time and total up the number of tickets until all are given out,
then go through the remaining numbers to let them know the tickets are gone.
That might be a fair method if the numbers were put in an ordered list defined
in a way that potential recipients understood— for example, a chronological
list of phone numbers submitted by people interested in the tickets. If the
tickets are to be awarded as a sort of lottery, then going through them
sequentially means following any bias that is implicit in the order of the list.
Randomly choosing a number from the list, contacting the buyer, and then
removing the number would be fairer in a lottery system.
Data structures model systems by assigning specific meanings to each of the
pieces and how they interact. The “systems” are real-world things like first-
come, first-served ticket sales, or a lottery giveaway, or how roads connect
cities. For the list of phone numbers with ticket requests, a first-come, first-
served system needs the list in chronological order, some pointer to where in
the list the next number should be taken, and a pointer to where any newly
arriving number should be added (after all previous list entries). The lottery
system would need a different organization, and modeling the map of roads and
cities needs another. In this book we examine a lot of different data structures.
Each one has its strengths and weaknesses and is applicable to different kinds
of real-world problems. It’s important to understand how each one operates,
whether it correctly models the behavior needed by a particular problem area,
whether it will operate efficiently to perform the operations, and whether it can
“scale” well. We say a data structure or algorithm scales well if it will perform
as efficiently as possible as the amount of data grows.

Overview of Data Structures

As we’ve discussed, not every data structure models every type of problem. Or
perhaps a better way to put it is that the structures model the problem
awkwardly or inefficiently. You can generalize the data structures somewhat by
looking at the common operations that you are likely to do across all of them.
For example, to manage the requests for tickets, you need to
• Add a new phone number (for someone who wants one or more tickets)
• Remove a phone number (for someone who later decides they don’t want
tickets)
• Find a particular phone number (the next one to get a ticket by some
method, or to look up one by its characteristics)
• List all the phone numbers (show all the phone numbers exactly once,
that is, without repeats except, perhaps, for cases where multiple
identical entries were made)
These four operations are needed for almost every data structure that manages
a large collection of similar items. We call them insertion, deletion, search,
and traversal.
Here’s a list of the data structures covered in this book and some of their
advantages and disadvantages with respect to the four operations. Table 1-1
shows a very high-level view of the structures; we look at them in much more
detail in the following chapters. One aspect mentioned in this table is the data
structure’s complexity. In this context, we’re referring to the structure’s ability
to be understood easily by programmers, not how quickly it can be
manipulated by the computer.
Table 1-1 Comparison of Different Data Types
Overview of Algorithms
Algorithms are ways to implement an operation using a data structure or group
of structures. A single algorithm can sometimes be applied to multiple data
structures with each data structure needing some variations in the algorithm.
For example, a depth first search algorithm applies to all the tree data
structures, perhaps the graph, and maybe even stacks and queues (consider a
stack as a tree with branching factor of 1). In most cases, however, algorithms
are intimately tied to particular data structures and don’t generalize easily to
others. For example, the way to insert new items or search for the presence of
an item is very specific to each data structure. We examine the algorithms for
insertion, search, deletion, and traversal for all the data structures. That
illustrates how much they vary by data structure and the complexity involved
in those structures.
Another core algorithm is sorting, where a collection of items is put in a
particular order. Ordering the items makes searching for items faster. There are
many ways to perform sort operations, and we devote Chapter 3, “Simple
Sorting,” to this topic, and revisit the problem in Chapter 7, “Advanced
Sorting.”
Algorithms are often defined recursively, where part of the algorithm refers to
executing the algorithm again on some subset of the data. This very important
concept can simplify the definition of algorithms and make it very easy to
prove the correctness of an implementation. We study that topic in more detail
in Chapter 6, “Recursion.”

Some Definitions
This section provides some definitions of key terms.

Database
We use the term database to refer to the complete collection of data that’s
being processed in a particular situation. Using the example of people
interested in tickets, the database could contain the phone numbers, the names,
the desired number of tickets, and the tickets awarded. This is a broader
definition than what’s meant by a relational database or object-oriented
database.
Record
Records group related data and are the units into which a database is divided.
They provide a format for storing information. In the ticket distribution
example, a record could contain a person’s name, a person’s phone number, a
desired number of tickets, and a number of awarded tickets. A record typically
includes all the information about some entity, in a situation in which there are
many such entities. A record might correspond to a user of a banking
application, a car part in an auto supply inventory, or a stored video in a
collection of videos.

Field
Records are usually divided into several fields. Each field holds a particular
kind of data. In the ticket distribution example, the fields could be as shown in
Figure 1-1.

Figure 1-1 A record definition for ticket distribution

The fields are named and have values. Figure 1-1 shows an empty box
representing the storage space for the value. In many systems, the type of value
is restricted to a single or small range of data types, just like variables are in
many programming languages. For example, the desired number of tickets
could be restricted to only integers, or only non-negative integers. In object-
oriented systems, objects often represent records, and each object’s attributes
are the fields of that record. The terminology can be different in the various
programming languages. Object attributes might be called members, fields, or
variables.

Key
When searching for records or sorting them, one of the fields is called the key
(or search key or sort key). Search algorithms look for an exact match of the
key value to some target value and return the record containing it. The program
calling the search routine can then access all the fields in the record. For
example, in the ticket distribution system, you might search for a record by a
particular phone number and then look at the number of desired tickets in that
record. Another kind of search could use a different key. For example, you
could search for a record using the desired tickets as search key and look for
people who want three tickets. Note in this case that you could define the
search to return the first such record it finds or a collection of all records where
the desired number of tickets is three.

Databases vs. Data Structures

The collection of records representing a database is going to require a data
structure to implement it. Each record within the database may also be
considered a data structure with its own data organization and algorithms. This
decomposition of the data into smaller and smaller units goes on until you get
to primitive data structures like integers, floating-point numbers, characters,
and Boolean values. Not all data structures can be considered databases; they
must support insertion, search, deletion, and traversal of records to implement a
database.

Programming in Python
Python is a programming language that debuted in 1991. It embraces object-
oriented programming and introduced syntax that made many common
operations very concise and elegant. One of the first things that programmers
new to Python notice is that certain whitespace is significant to the meaning of
the program. That means that when you edit Python programs, you should use
an editor that recognizes its syntax and helps you create the program as you
intend it to work. Many editors do this, and even editors that don’t recognize
the syntax by filename extension or the first few lines of text can often be
configured to use Python syntax for a particular file.

Interpreter
Python is an interpreted language, which means that even though there is a
compiler, you can execute programs and individual expressions and statements
by passing the text to an interpreter program. The compiler works by
translating the source code of a program into bytecode that is more easily read
by the machine and more efficient to process. Many Python programmers
never have to think about the compiler because the Python interpreter runs it
automatically, when appropriate.
Interpreted languages have the great benefit of allowing you to try out parts of
your code using an interactive command-line interpreter. There are often
multiple ways to start a Python interpreter, depending on how Python was
installed on the computer. If you use an Integrated Development Environment
(IDE) such as IDLE, which comes with most Python distributions, there is a
window that runs the command-line interpreter. The method for starting the
interpreter differs between IDEs. When IDLE is launched, it automatically
starts the command-line interpreter and calls it the Shell.
On computers that don’t have a Python IDE installed, you can still launch the
Python interpreter from a command-line interface (sometimes called a terminal
window, or shell, or console). In that command-line interface, type python and
then press the Return or Enter key. It should display the version of Python you
are using along with some other information, and then wait for you to type
some expression in Python. After reading the expression, the interpreter
decides if it’s complete, and if it is, computes the value of the expression and
prints it. The example in Listing 1-1 shows using the Python interpreter to
compute some math results.

Listing 1-1 Using the Python Interpreter to Do Math

$ python
Python 3.6.0 (default, Dec 23 2016, 13:19:00)
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> 2019 - 1991
28
>>> 2**32 - 1
4294967295
>>> 10**27 + 1
1000000000000000000000000001
>>> 10**27 + 1.001
1e+27
>>>

In Listing 1-1, we’ve colored the text that you type in blue italics. The first
dollar sign ($) is the prompt from command-line interpreter. The Python
interpreter prints out the rest of the text. The Python we use in this book is
version 3. If you see Python 2… on the first line, then you have an older version
of the Python interpreter. Try running python3 in the command-line interface
to see if Python version 3 is already installed on the computer. If not, either
upgrade the version of Python or find a different computer that has python3.
The differences between Python 2 and 3 can be subtle and difficult to
understand for new programmers, so it’s important to get the right version.
There are also differences between every minor release version of Python, for
example, between versions 3.8 and 3.9. Check the online documentation at
https://docs.python.org to find the changes.
The interpreter continues prompting for Python expressions, evaluating them,
and printing their values until you ask it to stop. The Python interpreter
prompts for expressions using >>>. If you want to terminate the interpreter and
you’re using an IDE, you typically quit the IDE application. For interpreters
launched in a command-line interface, you can press Ctrl-D or sometimes Ctrl-
C to exit the Python interpreter. In this book, we show all of the Python
examples being launched from a command line, with a command that starts
with $ python3.
In Listing 1-1, you can see that simple arithmetic expressions produce results
like other programming languages. What might be less obvious is that small
integers and very large integers (bigger than what fits in 32 or 64 bits of data)
can be calculated and used just like smaller integers. For example, look at the
result of the expression 10**27 + 1. Note that these big integers are not the
same as floating-point numbers. When adding integers and floating-point
numbers as in 10**27 + 1.0001, the big integer is converted to floating-point
representation. Because floating-point numbers only have enough precision for
a fixed number of decimal places, the result is rounded to 1e+27 or 1 × 1027.
Whitespace syntax is important even when using the Python interpreter
interactively. Nested expressions use indentation instead of a visible character
to enclose the expressions that are evaluated conditionally. For example,
Python if statements demarcate the then-expression and the else-expression
by indentation. In C++ and JavaScript, you could write

if (x / 2 == 1) {do_two(x)}
else {do_other(x)}

The curly braces enclose the two expressions. In Python, you would write
if x / 2 == 1:
do_two(x)
else:
do_other(x)

You must indent the two procedure call lines for the interpreter to recognize
their relation to the line before it. You must be consistent in the indentation,
using the same tabs or spaces, on each indented line for the interpreter to know
the nested expressions are at the same level. Think of the indentation changes
as replacements for the open curly brace and the close curly brace. When the
indent increases, it’s a left brace. When it decreases, it is a right brace.
When you enter the preceding expression interactively, the Python interpreter
prompts for additional lines with the ellipsis prompt (…). These prompts
continue until you enter an empty line to signal the end of the top-level
expression. The transcript looks like this, assuming that x is 3 and the
do_other() procedure prints a message:

>>> if x / 2 == 1:
... do_two(x)
... else:
... do_other(x)
...
Processing other value
>>>

Note, if you’ve only used Python 2 before, the preceding result might surprise
you, and you should read the details of the differences between the two
versions at https://docs.python.org. To get integer division in Python 3, use the
double slash (//) operator.
Python requires that the indentation of logical lines be the same if they are at
the same level of nesting. Logical lines are complete statements or expressions.
A logical line might span multiple lines of text, such as the previous if
statement. The next logical line to be executed after the if statement’s then or
else clause should start at the same indentation as the if statement does. The
deeper indentation indicates statements that are to be executed later (as in a
function definition), conditionally (as in an else clause), repeatedly (as in a
loop), or as parts of larger construct (as in a class definition). If you have long
expressions that you would prefer to split across multiple lines, they either
 • Need to be inside parentheses or one of the other bracketed expression
types (lists, tuples, sets, or dictionaries), or
• Need to terminate with the backslash character (\) in all but the last line
of the expression
Inside of parentheses/brackets, the indentation can be whatever you like
because the closing parenthesis/bracket determines where the expression ends.
When the logical line containing the expression ends, the next logical line
should be at the same level of indentation as the one just finished. The
following example shows some unusual indentation to illustrate the idea:

>>> x = 9
>>> if (x %
... 2 == 0):
... if (x %
... 3 == 0):
... ’Divisible by 6’
... else:
... ’Divisible by 2’
... else:
... if (x %
... 3 == 0):
... ’Divisible by 3’
... else:
... ’Not divisble by 2 or 3’
...
’Divisible by 3’

The tests of divisibility in the example occur within parentheses and are split
across lines in an arbitrary way. Because the parentheses are balanced, the
Python interpreter knows where the if test expressions end and doesn’t
complain about the odd indentation. The nested if statements, however, must
have the same indentation to be recognized as being at equal levels within the
conditional tests. The else clauses must be at the same indentation as the
corresponding if statement for the interpreter to recognize their relationship. If
the first else clause is omitted as in the following example,

>>> if (x %
... 2 == 0):
... if (x %
... 3 == 0):
... ’Divisible by 6’
... else:
... if (x %
... 3 == 0):
... ’Divisible by 3’
... else:
... ’Not divisble by 2 or 3’
...
’Divisible by 3’

then the indentation makes clear that the first else clause now belongs to the
if (x % 2 == 0) and not the nested if (x % 3 == 0). If x is 4, then the
statement would evaluate to None because the else clause was omitted. The
mandatory indentation makes the structure clearer, and mixing in
unconventional indentation makes the program very hard to read!
Whitespace inside of strings is important and is preserved. Simple strings are
enclosed in single (‘) or double (“) quote characters. They cannot span lines but
may contain escaped whitespace such as newline (\n) or tab (\t) characters,
e.g.,

>>> "Plank’s constant:\n quantum of action:\t6.6e-34"

"Plank’s constant:\n quantum of action:\t6.6e-34"
>>> print("Plank’s constant:\n quantum of action:\t6.6e-34")
Plank’s constant:
quantum of action: 6.6e-34

The interpreter reads the double-quoted string from the input and shows it in
printed representation form, essentially the same as the way it would be
entered in source code with the backslashes used to escape the special
whitespace. If that same double-quoted string is given to the print function, it
prints the embedded whitespace in output form. To create long strings with
many embedded newlines, you can enclose the string in triple quote characters
(either single or double quotes).

>>> """Python
... enforces readability
... using structured
... indentation.
... """
’Python\nenforces readability\nusing structured\nindentation.\n’
Long, multiline strings are especially useful as documentation strings in
function definitions.
You can add comments to the code by starting them with the pound symbol (#)
and continuing to the end of the line. Multiline comments must each have their
own pound symbol on the left. For example:

def within(x, lo, hi): # Check if x is within the [lo, hi] range
return lo <= x and x <= hi # Include hi in the range

We’ve added some color highlights to the comments and reserved words used
by Python like def, return, and and, to improve readability. We discuss the
meaning of those terms shortly. Note that comments are visible in the source
code files but not available in the runtime environment. The documentation
strings mentioned previously are attached to objects in the code, like function
definitions, and are available at runtime.

Dynamic Typing
The next most noticeable difference between Python and some other languages
is that it uses dynamic typing. That means that the data types of variables are
determined at runtime, not declared at compile time. In fact, Python doesn’t
require any variable declarations at all; simply assigning a value to variable
identifier creates the variable. You can change the value and type in later
assignments. For example,

>>> x = 2
>>> x
2
>>> x = 2.71828
>>> x
2.71828
>>> x = ’two’
>>> x
’two’

The assignment statement itself doesn’t return a value, so nothing is printed

after each assignment statement (more precisely, Python’s None value is
returned, and the interpreter does not print anything when the typed expression
evaluates to None). In Python 3.8, a new operator, :=, was introduced that
Other documents randomly have
different content
 CHAPTER XII
YOUTH SUPREME

The silence of the night was broken by the sounds of youthful

voices, and the gentle splash of the driving paddles. There was
laughter, and the passing backwards and forwards of care-free, light-
hearted banter. Now and again came the deeper note of strong
men’s voices, but for the most part it was the shriller treble of early
youth that invaded the serene hush of the night.
The two small canoes glided rapidly up the winding ribbon of
moon-lit waters. They were driven by eager, skilful hands, hands
with a life-training for the work. And so they sped on in that smooth
fashion which the rhythmic dip of the paddle never fails to yield.
The Kid was at the foremost strut of the leading canoe with Big
Bill Wilder at the stern. Their passenger was the irrepressible Perse,
who lounged amidships on a folded blanket. Behind them came the
sturdy form of Chilcoot Massy guiding the destiny of the second
vessel which carried the youth, Clarence, and the sedate form of
Mary Justicia lifted, for the moment, out of the sense of her
responsibility, which years of deputising for her mother in the care of
her brothers and sisters had impressed upon her young mind.
Hearts were light enough as they glided through the chill night air.
Even Chilcoot Massy, so perilously near to middle life—and perhaps
because of it—found the youthful gaiety of his guests irresistible. It
was a journey of delighted, frothing spirits rising triumphant over the
dour brooding of the cold heart of the desolate territory which had
given them birth.
 The cold moon had driven forth the earlier bankings of snow-
clouds. It lit the low-spread earth from end to end, a precious
beacon, which, in the months to come, would be the reigning
heavenly light. The velvet heavens, studded with myriads of
sparkling jewels, and slashed again and again from end to end with
the lightning streak of shooting stars, were filled with a superlative
vision of dancing northern light. The ghostliness of it all was teeming
with a sense of romance, the romance which fills the dreams of later
life when the softening of recollection has rubbed down the
harshnesses of the living reality.
The delight of this sudden break in the crudeness of life waxed in
the hearts of these children of the North. There were moments
when silence fell, and the hush of the world crowded full of the
ominous threat which lies at the back of everything as the winter
season approaches. But all such moments were swiftly dismissed, as
though, subconsciously, its dampening influence were felt, and the
moment was ripe for sheer rebellion. It was an expression of the
sturdy spirit which the Northland breeds.
There was no thought of lurking danger other than the dangers
they were bred to. How should there be? Was not this Caribou River,
with its spring floodings, with its summer meanderings, with its
winter casing of ice, right down to the very heart of its bed, their
very own highway and play ground? Did not these folk know its
every vagary from the icy moods of winter, to its beneficent summer
delights? How then could it hold for them the least shadow of terror
on a night to be given up to a gaiety such as their lives rarely
enough knew?
Yet the shadow was there, a grim, voiceless shadow, soundless as
death, and as unrelenting in its pursuit. A kyak moved over the
silvery bosom of the water hard behind the rear-most canoe of the
revellers, driven by a brown hand which made no sound as the
paddle it grasped passed to and fro, without lifting, through the
gleaming water.
It was a light hide kyak, a mere shell that scarce had the weight of
a thing of feathers. And the brown man driving it was its only
burden, unless the long old rifle lying thrusting up from its prow
could be counted. It crept through the shallows dangerously near to
the river bank, and every turn in the twisting course of the silver
highway was utilized as a screen from any chance glance cast
backwards by those whose course it was dogging.
The shadowy pursuit went on. It went on right up to within a
furlong of the final landing. For the mood of the brown man was
relentless with every passion of original man stirring. But he never
shortened by a yard the distance that lay between him and his
quarry. And as the leading boats drew into the side, and the beacon
light of a great camp fire suddenly changed the silvery tone of the
night, the pursuing kyak shot into the bank far behind, and the
brown man leapt ashore.

The feast was over. And what a feast it had been. There had been
mountain trout, caught and prepared by the grizzled camp cook,
whose atmosphere of general uncleanness emphasised his calling,
and who was the only other living creature in this camp on the
gravel flats. There had been baked duck, stuffed with some
conglomeration of chopped “sow-belly,” the mixing of which was the
cook’s most profound secret. There had been syrupy canned fruit,
and canned sweet corn, and canned beans with tomato. There had
been real coffee. Not the everlasting stewed tea of the trail. And
then there had been canned milk full of real cream.
That was the feast. But there had been much more than the
simple joy of feasting. There had been laughter and high spirits, and
a wild delight. How Perse had eaten and talked. How Clarence had
eaten and listened. How the Kid had shyly smiled, while Bill Wilder
played his part as host, and looked to the comfort of everybody.
Then Mary Justicia. There was no cleaning to do after. There was no
Janey to wipe at intervals. So she had given all her generous
attention to the profound yarning of the trail-bounded Chilcoot
Massy.
 The happy interim was drawing to a close. The camp fire was
blazing mountains high, a prodigal waste of precious fuel at such a
season. And the revellers were squatting around at a respectful
distance, contemplating it, and settling to a calm sobriety in various
conditions of delighted repletion.
The cold moonlight was forgotten. The chill of the air could no
longer be felt with the proximity of the fire. The Coming season gave
no pause for a moment’s regret. The only thought to disturb utter
contentment was that soon, all too soon, the routine of life would
close down again, and, one and all, it would envelop them.
Bill was lounging on a spread of skin rug, and the Kid and Mary
Justicia shared it with him. A yard away Chilcoot, who could never
rise above a seat on an upturned camp pot, was smoking and
addressing Clarence, and the more restless Perse, much in the
fashion of a mentor. Their talk was of the trail, the gold trail, as it
was bound to be with the veteran guiding it. He was narrating
stories of “strikes,” rich “strikes,” and wild rushes. He was recounting
adventures which seemed literally to stream out of his cells of
memory to the huge enjoyment, and wonder, and excitement of his
youthful audience. And it was into the midst of this calm delight the
final uplift of the night’s entertainment came.
The whole thing was planned and worked up to. Chilcoot had led
along the road through his wealth of narrative. He was telling the
story of Eighty-Mile Creek. Of the great bonanza that had fallen into
the laps of himself and Bill Wilder. Of the tremendous rush after he
and his partner had secured their claims.
“It was us boys who located the whole darn ‘strike’” he said
appreciatively. “Us two. Bill an’ me. Say, they laffed. How they laffed
when we beat it up Eighty-Mile. Gold? Gee! Ther’ wasn’t colour other
than grey mud anywheres along its crazy course. That’s how the
boys said. They said: ‘Beat it right up it an’ feed the timber wolves.’
They said—But, say, I jest can’t hand you haf the things them
hoodlams chucked at us. But Bill’s got a nose fer gold that ’ud locate
it on a skunk farm. He knew, an’ I was ready to foiler him if it meant
feedin’ any old thing my carkiss. My, I want to laff. It was the same
as your Mum said when she heard we’d come along here chasin’
gold, only worse. She couldn’t hand the stuff the boys could. An’
queer enough, now I think it, Eighty-Mile was as nigh like this dam
creek as two shucks. Ther’s the mud, an’ the queer gravel, an’ the
granite. Guess ther’ ain’t the cabbige around this lay out like ther’
was to Eighty-Mile. You see, we’re a heap further north, right here.
No. Ther’ was spruce, an’ pine, an’ tamarack to Eighty-Mile. Ther’s
nothing better than dyin’ skitters an’ hies you can smell a mile to
Caribou. But the formation’s like. Sure it is. An’ Bill’s nose—”
“Cut out the nose, Chilcoot, old friend,” Wilder broke in with a
laugh. “Ther’s a deal too much of my nose to this precious yarn.
What you coming to?”
A merry laugh from the Kid found an echo in Perse’s noisy grin.
“It’s good listenin’ to a yarn of gold,” he said. “It don’t hurt
hanging it up so we get the gold plenty at the end.”
“That’s so boy,” Chilcoot nodded approvingly. “That’s the gold man
talkin’. That’s how it was on Eighty-Mile. Ther’ was just tons of gold,
an’ we netted the stuff till we was plumb sick to death countin’ it.
Gold? Gee! Bill’s bank roll is that stuffed with it he could buy a—
territory. Yes, that was Eighty-Mile, the same as it is on—Caribou!”
“Caribou?”
Perse had leapt to his feet staring wide-eyed in his amazement.
The Kid had faced round gazing incredulously into Wilder’s smiling
face. Even Mary Justicia was drawing deep breaths under her
habitual restraint. The one apparently unmoved member of the
happy party was Clarence. But even his attitude was feigned.
“Same as it is on—Caribou?” he said, in a voice whose tone
hovered between youth and manhood. “Have you struck it on—
Caribou?”
His final question was tense with suppressed excitement.
Chilcoot nodded in Bill’s direction.
“Ask him,” he said, with a smile twinkling in his eyes. “It’s that he
got you kids for right here this night. Jest to ask him that question.
Have you made the ‘strike,’ Bill? Did your darn old nose smell out
right? You best tell these folks, or you’ll hand ’em a nightmare they
won’t get over in a week. You best tell ’em. Or maybe you ken show
’em. Ther’s folk in the world like to see, when gold’s bein’ talked, an’
I guess Perse here’s one of ’em. Will you?”
All eyes were on Big Bill. The girls sat voicelessly waiting, and the
smiles on their faces were fixed with the intensity of the feeling
behind them. Clarence, like Perse, had stood up in his agitation, and
both boys gazed wide-eyed as the tall figure leapt to its feet and
passed back to the low “A” tent, which was his quarters.
While he was gone Chilcoot strove to fill in the interval with
appropriate comment.
“Yes,” he said, “Caribou’s chock full of the dust, an’—”
But no one was listening. Four pair of eyes were gazing after Big
Bill, four hearts were hammering in four youthful bosoms under
stress of feelings which in all human life the magic of gold never fails
to arouse. It was the same with these simple creatures, who had
never known a sight of gold, as it was with the most hardened
labourer of the gold trail. Everything but the prize these men had
won was forgotten in that thrilling moment.
Wilder came back almost at once. He was bearing a riffled pan,
one of those primitive manufactures which is so great a thing in the
life of the man who worships at the golden shrine. He was bearing it
in both hands as though its contents were weighty. And as he came,
the Kid, no less eagerly than the others, hurriedly dashed to his side
to peer at the thing he was carrying.
But the pan was covered with bagging. And the man smilingly
denied them all.
“Get right along back,” he laughed. “Sit around and I’ll show you.”
Then his eyes gazed down into the Kid’s upturned face, and he
realised her moment of sheer excitement had passed and something
else was stirring behind the pretty eyes that had come to mean so
much to him. He nodded.
 “Don’t be worried, Kid,” he said quietly. “Maybe I guess the thing
that’s troubling. I’m going to fix that, the same as I reckon to fix
anything else that’s going to make you feel bad.”
The girl made no reply. In her mind the shadow of Usak had
arisen. And even to her, in the circumstances, it was a threatening
shadow. She remembered the thing the savage had said to her in his
violent protest. “Him mans your enemy. Him come steal all thing
what are yours. Him river. Him land. Him—gold.” There was nothing
in her thought that this man was stealing from her. Such a thing
could never have entered her mind. It was the culminating threat of
the savage that had robbed her of her delight, and made the thing
in the pan almost hateful to her. Usak had deliberately threatened
the life of this man, and the full force of that threat, hitherto almost
disregarded, now overwhelmed her with a terror such as she had
never known before.
She was the last to take her place on the spread of skins before
the fire. The others were crowding round the man with the pan. But
he kept them waiting till the girl had taken her place beside him.
Then, and not till then, without a word he squatted on the rugs and
slowly withdrew the bagging.
It was a breathless moment. Everything was forgotten but the
amazing revelation. Even the Kid, in that supreme moment, found
the shadow of Usak less haunting. The bagging was drawn clear.
There it lay in the bottom of the pan. A number of dull, yellow,
jagged nuggets lying on a bed of yellow dust nearly half an inch
thick.
It was Perse who found the first words.
“Phew!” he cried with something resembling a whistle. “Dollars an’
dollars! How many? Did you get it on— Caribou?”
“Sure. Right on Caribou.”
Wilder nodded, his eyes contemplating his treasure.
“Where?”
It was Clarence who asked the vital question.
 “You can’t get that—yet.” Wilder shook his head without looking
up.
“Mum would be crazy to see this,” ventured the thoughtful Mary
Justicia.
The Kid looked up. She had been dazzled by the splendid vision.
Now again terror was gripping her.
“You’ll not say a word of this. None of you,” she said sharply.
“Mum shall know. Oh, yes. But not a word to—Usak.”
Wilder raised his eyes to the girl’s troubled face.
“Don’t worry a thing,” he said gravely. “Usak’s going to know. I’m
going to hand him the talk myself.” Then he laughed. And the tone
of his laugh added further to the girl’s unease. It was so care-free
and delighted. “Sit around, kids,” he cried. “All of you.”
He was promptly obeyed by the two boys who had remained
standing. They seated themselves opposite him. Then he dipped into
the pan and picked out the largest of the nuggets of pure gold and
offered it to the Kid.
“That’s for your Mum,” he said quietly. “It’s pure gold, same as the
woman she is. Here,” he went on, quickly selecting the next biggest.
“That’s yours Kid— by right.”
Then he passed one each to the two boys and Mary Justicia, and
finally shot the remainder of the precious wash-up into the bag that
had covered the pan and held it out to the Kid.
“There it is,” he cried. “Take it. It’s for you, an’ all those folk
belonging to you. It’s just a kind of sample of the thing that’s yours,
an’ is going to be yours. Guess old Perse, here, was right. It’s the
gold from Caribou, an’ right out of your dead father’s ‘strike’— which
is for you, Kid. Say, you’re a rich woman, for the best claim on it is
yours, an’ it’s the richest ‘strike’ I’ve ever nosed out. Richer even
than Chilcoot’s Eighty-Mile.”

The party was over. The journey back to the homestead was
completed. The full moon had smiled frigidly down upon a scene of
such excitement as was rare enough in her northern domain. Maybe
the sight of the thing she had witnessed had offended her. Perhaps,
with her wealth of cold experience, she condemned the humanness
of the thing she had gazed upon. For on the journey home she had
refused the beneficence of her pale smile, and had hidden her face
amidst those night shadows which she had forthwith summoned to
her domain.
But her displeasure had in nowise concerned. A landmark in life
had been set up, a radiant beacon which would shine in the minds of
each and every one of these children of the North so long as
memory remained to them.
Somehow the order of return home to the homestead had become
changed. Neither Wilder nor the Kid realised the thing that had
taken place until it had been accomplished. It seemed likely that it
was the deliberate work of Chilcoot, who, for all his roughness, was
not without a world of kindly sentiment somewhere stowed away
deep down in his heart. Perhaps it had been the arrangement of the
less demonstrative Mary Justicia, who was so nearly approaching her
own years of womanhood. However it had come to pass Chilcoot
had carried off the bulk of the visitors, with Mary and Perse and
Clarence for his freight, leaving Bill and the Kid to their own
company in following his lead.
It was the ultimate crowning of the night’s episodes for the Kid.
Bill had demanded that she become his passenger; that the sole
work of paddling should be his. And he had had his way. The Kid
was in the mood for yielding to his lightest wish. If he had desired to
walk to the homestead she would not have demurred. So she
lounged on skin rugs amidships in the little canoe, with her
shoulders propped against the forward strut, and yielded herself to
the delight with which the talk and presence of this great, strong,
youthful man filled her. The shadow of Usak still haunted her silent
moments, but even that, in this wonderful presence, had less power
to disturb.
The impulse of the man had been to abandon all caution, and
bask in the delight and happiness with which this child of nature
filled him. Her beauty and sweet womanhood compelled him utterly,
while her innocence was beyond words in the sense of tender
responsibility it inspired in him. He loved her with all the strength of
his own simple being. And the sordid world in which he dwelt so
long only the more surely left him headlong in his great desire.
But out of his wisdom he restrained the impulse. Time was with
him and he feared to frighten her. He realised that for all her
courage, for all her wonderful spirit in the fierce northern battle, the
woman’s crown of life must be as yet something little more than a
hazy vision, a nebulous thing whose reality would only come to her,
stealing softly upon her as the budding soul expanded. Yes, he could
afford to wait. And so he held guard over himself, and the journey
was made while he told her all those details of the thing that had
brought him to Caribou.
His mind was very clear on the things he desired to tell, and the
things he did not. And he confined himself to a sufficient outline of
the reasons of the thing he was doing with his discovery on Caribou,
and the things he contemplated before the opening after the coming
winter.
The journey down the river sufficed for this outline of his purpose,
and the distance was covered almost before they were aware of it.
At the landing they looked for the others. But they only discovered
Chilcoot’s empty boat, which left them no alternative but to walk up
to the homestead.
As they approached the clearing the girl held out a hand. “Will I
take that—bag?” she asked. “I—I’d like to show it to Mum with my
own hands. You know, Bill, I can’t get it all yet. All it means. It’s a
sort of dream yet, an’ all the time I sort of feel I’ll wake right up an’
set out for Placer to make our winter trade.”
She laughed. But her laugh was cut short. And as the man passed
her the bag of dust he had been carrying a spasm of renewed fear
gripped her.
“Yes. I’d forgotten,” she went on. “I’d forgotten Usak. This thing’s
kind of beaten everything out of my fool head. You’re going to tell
him, Bill? When?” They had reached the clearing and halted a few
yards from the home the Kid had always known. The sound of voices
came to them from within. There was laughter and excitement
reigning, when, usually, the whole household should have been
wrapped in slumber.
“Right away. Maybe to-morrow.”
Bill stood before her silhouetted against the lamplight shining
through the cotton-covered window of the kitchen-place. There was
something comforting in the man’s bulk, and in the strong tones of
his voice. The Kid’s fears relaxed, but anxiety was still hers.
“Say, little gal,” he went on at once, in that tender fashion he had
come to use in his talk with her. “That feller’s got you scared.” He
laughed. “I guess he’s the only thing to scare you in this queer
territory. But he doesn’t scare me a thing. I’ve got him beat all the
while—when it comes to a show-down.”
“Maybe you have in a—show-down.”
The man shook his head.
“I get your meaning,” he said. “But don’t worry.”
“But I do. I can’t help it.” The Kid’s tone was a little desperate.
“You see, I know Usak. I’ve known him all my life. He threatened
your life to me the night he found you on the river. I jumped in on
him and beat that talk out of him. But—you see, he reckons you’re
out to steal our land, our river, our—gold. It’s the last that scares
me. If he knows the stuff’s found, and unless he knows right away
the big things you’re doing—Don’t you see? Oh, I’m scared for you,
Bill. Usak’s crazy mad if he thinks folk are going to hurt me. You’ll
tell him quick, won’t you? I won’t sleep till I’m—sure. You see, if a
thing happened to you—”
“Nothing’s goin’ to happen, little Kid. I sure promise you.”
The man’s words came deep, and low, and thrilling with
something he could not keep out of them. It was the girl’s unfeigned
solicitude that stirred him. And again the old headlong impulse was
striving to gain the upper hand. He resisted it, as he had resisted it
before.
 But this time he sought the coward’s refuge. He reached out a
hand and laid it gently on the girl’s soft shoulder.
“Come right in, an’—show your Mum,” he said. “Hark at ’em.
That’s Perse. I’d know his laugh in a thousand. Say, we’re missing all
sorts of a time.”

The two men were back at their camp. They were seated over the
remains of their generous camp fire. It had sadly fallen from its
great estate. It was no longer a prodigal expression of their
hospitality, but a mere, ruddy heap of hot cinders with a wisp of
smoke rising out of its glowing heart. Still, however, it yielded a
welcome temperature to the bitter chill of the now frowning night.
Chilcoot remained faithful to his up-turned camp kettle, but Bill
concerned himself with no such luxury. He was squatting Indian-
fashion on his haunches, with his hands clasped about his knees. It
was a moment of deep contemplation before seeking their blankets,
and both were smoking.
It was the older man who broke the long silence. He was in a
mood to talk, for the events of the night had stirred him even more
deeply than he knew.
“They felt mighty good,” he observed contentedly. “Them queer
bits o’ life.”
His gaze remained on the heart of the fire for his words were in
the manner of a thought spoken aloud.
Bill nodded.
“Pore kids,” he said.
In a moment the older man’s eyes were turned upon him, and
their smiling depths were full of amiable derision.
“Pore?” he exclaimed. Then his hands were outspread in an
expressive gesture. “Say, you’ve handed ’em a prize-packet that
needs to cut that darn word right out of your talk.”
He looked for reply to his challenge, but none was forthcoming.
And he returned again to his happy contemplation of the fire.
 Bill smoked on. But somehow there was none of the other’s easy
contentment in his enjoyment. He was smoking rapidly, in the
manner of a mind that was restless, of a thought unpleasantly pre-
occupied. The expression of his eyes, too, was entirely different.
They were plainly alert, and a light pucker of concentration had
drawn his even brows together. He seemed to be listening. Nor was
his listening for the sound of his companion’s voice.
At long last Chilcoot bestirred himself and knocked out his pipe,
and his eyes again sought his silent partner.
“The blankets fer me,” he said, and rose to his feet. He laughed
quietly. “I’ll sure dream of kids an’ things all mussed up with fool
men who don’t know better.”
“Sure.” Bill nodded without turning. Then he added: “You best
make ’em. I’ll sit awhile.”
Chilcoot’s gaze sharpened as he contemplated the squatting
figure.
“Kind o’ feel like thinkin’ some?” he observed shrewdly.
“Maybe.”
The older man grinned.
“She’d take most boys o’ your years—thinkin’!”
“Ye—es.”
Bill had turned, and was gazing up into the other’s smiling face.
But there was no invitation to continue the talk in his regard. On the
contrary. And Chilcoot’s smile passed abruptly.
“Guess I’ll beat it,” he said a little hurriedly. And the sitting man
made no attempt to detain him.

The man at the fire was no longer gazing into it. He was peering
out into the dark of the night. Furthermore he was no longer
squatting on his haunches. He had shifted his position, lying on his
side so that his range of vision avoided the fire-light as he searched
in the direction of the water’s edge below him. His heavy pea-jacket
had been unfastened, and his right hand was thrust deep in its
pocket.
The fire had been replenished and raked together. It was burning
merrily, as though the man before it contemplated a prolonged vigil.
The night sounds were few enough just now in the northern
wilderness. The flies and mosquitoes were no longer the burden
they were in summer. The frigid night seemed to have silenced their
hum, as it had silenced most other sounds. The voice of the sluggish
river alone went on with that soothing monotony which would
continue until the final freeze-up.
But Wilder was alert in every fibre. He had reason to be. For all
the silence he knew there was movement going on. Secret
movement which would have to be dealt with before the night was
out. His ears had long since detected it. They had detected it on the
river, both going down and returning. And imagination had supplied
interpretation. Now he was awaiting that development he felt would
surely come.
He had not long to wait. A sound of moccasined feet padding over
the loose gravel of the river bed suddenly developed. It was
approaching him. And he strained in the darkness for a vision of his
visitor. After awhile a shadowy outline took definite shape. It was of
the tall, burly figure of a man coming up from the water’s edge.
He came rapidly, and without a word he took his place at the
opposite side of the fire.
Bill made no move. He offered no greeting. He understood. It was
the thing he had looked for and prepared for. It was Usak. And he
watched the Indian as he laid his long rifle across his knees, and
held out his hands to the crackling blaze.
The Indian seemed in no way concerned with the coolness of his
reception. It was almost as if his actions were an expression of the
thing he considered his simple right. And having taken up his
position he returned the silent scrutiny of his host with eyes so
narrowed that they revealed nothing but the fierce gleam of the
firelight they reflected.
 He leant forward and deliberately spat into the fire. Then the
sound of his voice came, and his eyes widened till their coal black
depths revealed something of the savage mood that lay behind
them.
“I see him, all thing this night,” he said. “So I come. I, Usak, say
him this thing. I tell ’em all peoples white-mans no good. Whitemans
steal ’em all thing. White-mans him look, look all time. Him look on
the face of white girl. Him talk plenty much. Him show her much
thing. Gold? Yes. Him buy her, this whiteman. Him buy her with gold
which he steal from her land.”
He raised one lean brown hand and thrust up three fingers.
“I tak him this gun,” he went on fiercely. “Him ready to my eye.
One—two—three time I so stand. You dead all time so I mak him.
Now I say you go. One day. You not go? Then I mak ’em so kill
quick.”
Wilder moved. But it was only to withdraw his hand from the
pocket of his pea-jacket. He was grasping an automatic pistol of
heavy calibre. He drew up a knee in his lolling position, and rested
hand and weapon upon it. The muzzle was deliberately covering the
broad bosom of the man beyond the fire, and his finger was ready
to compress on the instant.
“That’s all right, Usak,” he said calmly. “What are we going to do?
Talk or—shoot?” His eyes smiled in the calm fashion out of which he
was rarely disturbed. “I’m no Euralian man to leave you with the
drop on me.”
The final thrust was not without effect. For an instant the Indian’s
eyes widened further. Then they narrowed suddenly to the cat-like
watchfulness his manner so much resembled.
“We talk,” he said, after a brief conflict with his angry mood, his
gaze on the ready automatic whose presence and whose offence he
fully appreciated.
Bill nodded.
“That’s better,” he said. Then he went on after a pause. “Say boy,
if you’d been a whiteman I’d have shot you in your darn tracks for
the thing you just said, and the thing you kind of hinted at. I had
you covered right away as you came along up. But you’re an Indian.
An’ more than that you belong to Marty Le Gros’ lone Kid. You’ve
raised her, an’ acted father an’ mother to her, an’ you guess the sun
just rises an’ sets in her. I’m glad. An’ I’m glad ther’ isn’t to be any
fool shooting—yet. But, anyway, when ther’ is I want you to get a
grip on this. I’m right in the business, an’ I’ve got your darn ole gun
a mile beaten. I guess that makes things clear some, an’ we can get
busy with our talk.”
The Indian made no reply, but there was a flicker of the eyelid,
and an added sparkle in the man’s eyes as he listened to the
whiteman’s scathing words.
Bill suddenly sat up and clasped his hands about his knees while
the automatic pistol was thrust even more prominently.
“Here, Usak,” he went on, in the same quiet fashion, but with a
note of conciliation in his tone. “You’re guessing all sorts of fool
Indian things about that gal coming along up here to my camp. You
talk of buying her with the gold I’ve stolen from her. If you’d been
the man you guess you are you’d have got around, and sat in an’
heard all the talk of the whole thing. But you’re an Indian man, a
low grade boy that guesses to steal around on the end of a gun,
ready to play any dirty old game. No. Keep cool till I’ve done.”
Wilder’s gun was raised ever so slightly, and he waited while the
leaping wrath of the Indian subsided. He nodded.
“That’s better,” he went on quickly. “You got to listen till I’m done.
I’m goin’ to tell you things, not because I’m scared a cent of you,
but because you’ve been good to the Kid, and you’re loyal, an’
maybe someday you’re going to feel that way to me. See? But right
away I want you to get this into your fool head. I came along for
two reasons to Caribou. One was to locate Marty Le Gros’ gold, an’
pass it over to the gal who belongs to it, an’ the other was to marry
Felice Le Gros, the same as her father married her mother, an’ you, I
guess, in your own fashion, married Pri-loo, who the Euralians killed
for you. Now you get that? I don’t want the Kid’s gold, or land, or
farm. They cut no ice with me. I’m so rich I hate the sight of gold.
But I want the Kid. I want to marry her and take her right away
where the sun shines and the world’s worth living in. Where she
won’t need to worry for food or trade, an’ won’t need to wear
reindeer buckskin all the time. And anyway won’t have to live the life
of a white-Indian.”
The keen gaze of the whiteman held the Indian fast. There was no
smile in his eyes. But there was infinite command and frank honesty.
Usak stirred uneasily. It was an expression of the reaction taking
place in him.
“Him marry my good boss, Kid?”
The savage had gone out of the man’s tone. The narrowed eyes
had widened, and a curious shining light filled them.
“You give him all him gold? The gold of my good boss, Marty?” he
went on, as though striving for conviction that he had heard aright.
“Sure? You mak him this? You not mak back to Placer wher’ all him
white-woman live? You want only him Kid, same lak Usak want him
Pri-loo all time? Only him Kid? Yes?”
Bill nodded with a dawning smile.
“You big man all much gold?” the Indian went on urgently. “You
not mak want him gold of the good boss, Marty?”
Bill shook his head and his smile deepened.
“Guess I just want the—Kid,” he said.
The Indian moved. He laid his rifle aside as though it had
suddenly become a hateful thing he desired to spurn. Then he
reached out, thrusting a hand across the fire to grip that of the
whiteman.
But no response was forthcoming. Bill remained motionless with
his hands about his knees and his weapon thrusting. Usak waited a
moment. Then his hand was sharply withdrawn. His quick
intelligence was swift to realise the deliberate slight. But that which
the crude savage in him had no power to do was to remain silent.
 “You not shake by the hand?” he said doubtfully. “You say all ’em
good thing by the Kid? It all mush good. Oh, yes. Yet you—” He
broke off and a great light of passion suddenly leapt to his black
eyes. “Tcha!” he cried. “What is it this? The tongue speak an’ him
heart think mush. No, no!” he went on with growing ferocity. “The
good boss, Marty, say heap plenty. Him tell ’em Indian man all time.
Him whitemans no shake, then him not mean the thing him tongue
say.”
“You’re dead wrong, Usak. Plumb wrong. That’s not the reason I
don’t guess to grip your hand.”
Bill’s gaze was compelling. There was that in it which denied the
other’s accusations in a fashion that even the mind of the savage
could not fail to interpret.
The anger in the Indian’s eyes died down.
“Indian man’s hand good so as the white man,” he said. “Yet him
not shake so this thing is mush good. This Kid. Him mak wife to you.
You give her all thing good plenty. So. That thing you say big. Usak
give her all, too. Usak think lak she is the child of Pri-loo. Usak love
him good boss, Marty, her father. Oh, yes. All time plenty. Usak fight,
kill. All him life no thing so him Kid only know good.”
Bill inclined his head. The man was speaking out of the depth of
his fierce heart, and he warmed to the simple sturdiness of his
graphic pleading.
“I know all that,” he said.
“Then—?”
The Indian’s hand was slowly, almost timidly thrust towards him
again. But the movement remained uncompleted.
“Usak,” Bill began deliberately, and in the tone of a purpose
arrived at. “I know you for the good feller you’ve been to all these
folk. I know you better than I guess even they know you. I guess it
don’t take me figgering to know if I’d hurt a soul of them you’d
never quit till you’d shot me to pieces. I know all that. Let it go at
that. A whiteman grips the other feller by the hand when he knows
the things back of that other feller’s mind. Do you get that? Ther’s a
mighty big stain of blood on the hand you’re askin’ me to grip, an’
I’m not yearning to shake the hand of a—murderer.”
The men were gazing eye to eye. The calm cold of Wilder’s grey
eyes was inflexible. The Indian’s had lit with renewed fire. But his
resentment, the burning fires of his savage bosom were no match
for the whiteman’s almost mesmeric power. The gaze of the black
eyes wavered. Their lids slowly drooped, as though the search of the
other’s was reading him through and through and he desired to
avoid them.
“Well?”
The whiteman’s challenge came with patient determination.
The Indian drew a deep breath. Then he nodded slowly.
“I tell him all thing,” he said simply.
“Good.”
Wilder released his knees and spread himself out on the ground,
and almost ostentatiously returned his pistol to his pocket.
“Go ahead,” he said, as he propped himself on his elbow.
Usak talked at long length in his queer, broken fashion. His mind
was flung back to those far-off years when the great avenging
madness had taken possession of him. He told the story of Marty Le
Gros from its beginning. He told the story of the man’s great hopes
and strivings for the Eskimo he looked upon as children. He told of
the birth of the Kid, and the ultimate death of the missionary’s wife.
Then had come the time of his boss’s gold “strike,” the whereabouts
of which he kept secret even from him, Usak. Then came the time of
the murderous descent of the Euralians, and the killing and burning
that accompanied it. And how he had returned to the Mission to find
the dead remains of Pri-loo his wife, and of his good boss, Marty,
and the living child flung into the wood which sheltered its home.
He told how he went mad with desire to kill, and set out to wreak
his vengeance. He had long since by chance discovered where these
people hid themselves in the far-off mountains, and he went there,
and waited until they returned from their war trail.
 Now for the first time Wilder learned all the intimate details of the
terrible slaughter which this single savage had contrived to inflict.
Nor did the horror of the story lose in the man’s telling. He missed
nothing of it, seeming to revel in a riot of furious memory. Once or
twice, as he gloated over the fall of an enemy, he reached out, and
his lean hand patted the butt of his queer old rifle almost lovingly.
And with the final account of his struggle with the leader himself,
even Wilder shrank before the merciless joy the man displayed as he
contemplated the end of the battle with the man’s sockets emptied
of the tawny eyes that had gazed upon the murder of those poor,
defenceless creatures the Indian had been powerless to protect.
“Oh, yes,” he said in conclusion. “Him see nothing more, never.
Him have no eyes never no more. Him live, yes. I leave him woman.
So I go. So I come back. I come back to the little Kid, him good
boss, Marty, leave. I live. Oh, yes. I live for him Kid. I mak big work
for him Kid. Big trade. So him grow lak the tree, him flower, an’ I
think much for him. It all good. It mak me feel good all inside. Him
to me lak the child of Pri-loo. You marry him Kid? Good. You give
him gold? Good. Usak plenty happy. Now I mak him one big trip.
Then no more. Then I do so as the good whiteman of him Kid say.
Yes.”
The Indian spread out his hands in a final gesture. Then he drew
up his knees, and clasped them tightly, while his burning eyes dwelt
broodingly upon the leaping fire.
“Why this trip?” Bill’s question came sharply.
The Indian raised his eyes. Then they dropped again to the fire
and he shook his head.
“You won’t tell me? Why?” Bill demanded again. “Ther’s no need
for any trip. Ther’s work right here for you, for all. Ther’s gold,
plenty, which you can share. Why?”
Again came the Indian’s shake of the head. His eyes were raised
again for a moment and Bill read and interpreted the brooding light
that gazed out of them. The man seemed about to speak, but his
hard mouth tightened visibly, and again he stubbornly shook his
head and returned to his contemplation of the fire.
Suddenly Bill sprang to his feet and held out his hand. In an
instant the Indian was on his feet, and his dark face was even
smiling. His tenacious hand closed over that of the whiteman.
“That’s all right, Usak,” Bill said quietly. “I’m glad to take your
hand. You’re a big man. You’re a big Indian savage. But you’re a
good man, anyway. Get right back to your shanty now, an’ take that
darn old gun with you. You don’t need that fer shooting me up,
anyway. Just keep it—to guard the Kid, and those others. Just one
word before you go. Marty kept his gold secret. You keep it secret,
too, until the Kid lets you speak. I’ve got to make a big trip to secure
the claims before we can talk. When I done that talk don’t matter.
Say, an’ not a word to the Kid of our talk. Not one word. I want to
marry her. And being white folk it’s our way to ask the girl first. See?
I haven’t asked her yet. An’ if you were to boost in your spoke,
maybe she’d get angry, and—”
“Usak savee.”
The Indian was grinning in a fashion that left the whiteman
satisfied. Their hands fell apart, and Usak picked up his gun. Then
he turned away without another word and the night swallowed him
up.
Wilder stood gazing after him, There was no smile in his eyes. He
was thinking hard. And his thought was of that one, big, last trip the
Indian had threatened to make.
 CHAPTER XIII
A WHITEMAN’S PURPOSE

Bill Wilder and Chilcoot moved slowly up from the water’s edge.
The outlook was grey and the wind was piercing. The river behind
them was ruffled out of its usual oily calm, and the two small laden
canoes, lying against the bank, and the final stowing of which the
men had been engaged upon, were rocking and straining at their
raw-hide moorings.
The change of season was advancing with that suddenness which
drives the northern man hard. Still, however, the first snow had not
yet fallen, although for days the threat of it had hung over the
world. The ground was iron hard with frost, and each morning a skin
of ice stretched out on the waters of the river from the low, shelving
banks. But the grip of it was not permanent. There was still melting
warmth in the body of the stream, and, each day, the ice yielded up
its hold.
It was three days since the camp had witnessed the gathering of
children about its camp fire. Three days which Bill had devoted to
those preparations, careful in the last detail, for the rush down to
Placer before the world was overwhelmed by the long winter terror.
Now, at last, all was in readiness for the start on the morrow. All,
that is, but the one important matter of Red Mike’s return to camp.
Until that happened the start would have to be delayed.
Everything had been planned with great deliberation.
Clarence McLeod had even been called upon to assist, in view of
the race against time which the task these men had set themselves
represented. Three days ago he had been despatched up the river to
recall the Irishman. His immediate return was looked for. Chilcoot
had hoped for it earlier. But this third day was allowed as a margin in
case the gold instinct had carried Mike farther afield than was
calculated.
The last of the brief day was almost gone. And only a belt of grey
daylight was visible in the cloud banks to the south-west. Half way
up to the camp Wilder paused and gazed out over the ruffled water,
seeking to discover any sign of the man’s return in the darkening
twilight. He stood beating his mitted hands while Chilcoot passed on
up to the camp fire.
There was no sign, no sound. And a feeling of keen
disappointment took possession of the expectant man. So much
depended on Mike’s return. Under ordinary circumstances the season
was not the greatest concern, and Wilder would have been content
enough to wait. But the circumstances were by no means ordinary.
There was that lying back of his mind which disturbed him in a
fashion he was rarely disturbed. And it was a thought and concern
he had imparted to no one, not even to his loyal partner, Chilcoot.
He moved on up to the camp, and the keenness of his
disappointment displayed itself in his eyes, and in the tone of his
voice as he conveyed the result of his search to his comrade.
“Not a dam sight of ’em,” he said peevishly.
He had halted at the fire over which Chilcoot was endeavouring to
encourage some warmth into his chilled fingers. He removed his
mitts and held his hands to the blaze.
“I was kind of wondering,” he went on, “about that boy, Clarence.
Maybe he’s hit up against things. Maybe—Say—”
A faint, far-off echo came down stream. It was a call. A familiar
cry in a voice both men promptly recognised. Chilcoot grinned.
“That’s Mike,” he said. Then he added: “Sure as hell.”
Wilder breathed a deep sigh of relief.
“I’m glad. I’m mighty thankful,” he exclaimed with a short laugh.
“We’ll be away to-morrow after all.”
 Chilcoot eyed his companion speculatively.
“I hadn’t worried fer that,” he said. “Guess we can’t make Placer in
open weather.” He shrugged a pair of shoulders that were enormous
under his fur parka. “It’ll be dead winter ’fore we’re haf way. It’ll be
black night in two weeks, anyway. The big river don’t freeze right
over till late winter, but ther’ll be ice floes ’most all the way. I can’t
see a day more or less is going to worry us a thing.”
“No.”
Bill was searching the heart of the fire.
“The Hekor don’t freeze right up easy,” he went on. “That’s so. But
it’ll sure be black night.” Then he looked up, and Chilcoot recognised
his half smile of contentment. “It don’t matter anyway. The thing’s
worth it.”
“What thing?”
Bill laughed.
“Why the jump we’re making.”
There was a brief pause. Then Chilcoot’s eyes twinkled.
“You scared of the winter trail, Bill?” he asked quietly.
“Not a thing.”
The older man nodded.
“It would ha’ been the first time in your life,” he said. “I’ve seen
you take the chances of a crazy man.”

“Don’t it beat Hell?”

The Irishman had listened to the story of the “strike” and sat
raking his great fingers through the thick stubble of flaming beard he
had developed, and grinned first across at his chief, Bill Wilder, then
at the twinkling, deep-set eyes of Chilcoot.
They were all gathered about the fire, that centre of everything to
the northern man. The youth Clarence was sprawled full length on
the ground, happy in the thought that he was playing his part in the
great game on which these men were engaged. He was content to
listen while the others talked. But he drank in every word with the
appetite of healthy youth, digesting and learning as his young mind
so ardently desired.
“An’ it’s rich? Full o’ the stuff?” Mike’s lips almost smacked as he
persisted.
“So full you’ll get a nightmare reckonin’ it.”
Chilcoot nodded while his eyes sparkled. Mike drew a deep breath.
The two summers behind them looked like a happy picnic instead of
the months of wasted endeavour they had seemed to his impetuous
soul.
“Ther’s more than a hundred claims on it we know of,” Bill said
soberly. “Maybe ther’s miles of it up that queer, crazy stream. We
haven’t worried farther. The stakes are in fer the whole of our
bunch, an’ the folks across the water. That’s as far as we’re
concerned. We’re beating it to Placer to-morrow to register. Say,” he
went on impressively, “ther’ll be a rush like the days of ’98, and we
can’t take chances. If the thing’s like what I guess we’ll cheapen
gold worse than the Yukon boom did. Does it hit you?”
“Between the eyes.” Mike laughed out of his boisterous feelings.
“We ken get the bunch right down, an’ get a dump of stuff out
before the freeze-up,” he went on eagerly. “What’s it to be? A pool
or claim work?”
“Ther’s goin’ to be no pool. An’ ther’s goin’ to be no rake over till
spring.” Wilder’s tone was decided, and the grin died out of the
Irishman’s eyes. “I told you we’re takin’ no chances. Chilcoot and I
have planned this thing right out. Of the three best claims we’re sure
about, one is yours. But you don’t pan an ounce of soil till the
register’s made, and you’ve got your ‘brief.’ Then it’s yours on your
own, the same as the others belong to each of the other folk. An’
you can work how you darn please. But you won’t see the place,
even, till we get right back from Placer. An’ the boys aren’t hearing a
word of it till spring. It’s this I sent Clarence, here, up to get you
around for. I want you to sit tight, right here, till we get back with
the whole thing fixed. It’s worth waiting for, Mike. It’s so good you
just haven’t figgers enough in your fool head to count your luck.
You’ll act this way, boy. I promised you haf a million dollars if you hit
back to Placer without a colour. That still goes, but you won’t need a
thing from me. You’ll play our hand right?”
Mike’s disappointment was all the keener for his mercurial
temperament, but he nodded readily and Wilder was satisfied.
“Sure I’ll play it right, the way you want it. But I don’t see we
need act like ther’ was spooks around waitin’ to jump in on us before
the register’s fixed.”
Wilder smiled back at the protesting man.
“But ther’ are,” he said. “If you’d the experience I’ve had of this
blamed old North you’d be scared to death for our ‘strike.’ It’s a
ghost-haunted country this, and most of the spooks have got a kind
of wireless of their own that ’ud beat anything we Christian folk ever
heard tell of. Ther’s six months of winter ahead, and most of that
we’ll be on the trail, or fixing things. It just needs one half-breed pelt
hunter to get wise to the game happening around, or a stray bunch
of Euralian murderers, and we’d have haf the north on us before the
Commissioner could sign our ‘briefs.’ No, boy, get it from me, and
just sit around till daylight comes again, an’ dream of the hooch
you’re going to drink to the luck of the Kid. It’s the Kid’s luck that’s
handed us this thing. It’s the luck her father reckoned was to be
hers. And by no sort of crazy act are we going to queer it. I’m taking
your scow, and beating it down stream. Clarence’ll feel like gettin’ to
home.”
The grinning eyes of Mike followed the tall figure of his leader,
with the youth, Clarence, striding beside him, as it vanished in the
darkness on its way to the water’s edge. And as they passed from
view he turned to the man who displayed no desire to quit the
comfort of the fire.
“I’d guessed he’d fallen for it two summers back,” he said. “You
can locate it with both eyes shut, an’ cotton batten stuffed in your
brain box. That gal had him fast by the back of the neck on sight.
The Kid, eh? It’s not Bill Wilder’s way of playing safe on a gold
‘strike.’ That gal’s got him scared to death for the plum he guesses
to hand her. No, sirree,” he went on, with a shake of his disreputable
head, “the Jezebels o’ Placer for mine, an’ a bunch o’ hooch you
could drown a battleship in. It’s easy game that don’t hand you a
nightmare, if it’s liable to empty your sack o’ dust. That Kid! What’s
he goin’ to do?”
Chilcoot shrugged. Mike was not the man he felt like opening out
to.
“He ain’t crazy enough to—marry her?” Mike went on
contemptuously. “No. He’s no fool kid.”
A deep flush mounted to the veteran’s temples. His deepset eyes
sparkled as he surveyed the other through the smoke of the fire.
“You best ask Bill the things you want to know,” he said coldly. “It
don’t matter what you think. It don’t matter what any darn fool
thinks. Bill’s mostly spent his life playin’ the game as he sees it. An’ I
guess he’ll go right on doin’ the same. And the game he plays is a
right game. An’ he’s as ready to hand it out to a hooch-soused no-
account, as he is to a gal with a dandy pair of blue eyes.”

It had been a quiet, almost subdued evening at the homestead.

Somehow Bill Wilder’s manner had been graver than was its wont,
and these simple folk, who, since his re-discovery of Marty Le Gros’
gold “strike,” had so quickly come to regard him as something in the
nature of the arbiter of their destinies, had been clearly affected by
his change of manner.
He had shared their supper, and listened to Clarence’s story of his
search for Red Mike. He had found it easier to listen than to talk.
Hesther, too, had spent her time in listening, while the children
chattered all unconscious of the real mood of their elders.
For the Kid it was a time of quiet happiness, marred only by the
thought that with the first streak of brief daylight on the morrow this
man would be speeding on his race with the season to ensure her
own, and the good fortunes of all those she loved.
 The girl looked forward to the coming months of winter clarkness
without any glimmer of that happy, contented philosophy which had
always been hers. Looking ahead the whole prospect seemed so
dark and empty. The days since Bill’s coming to the Caribou had
been so overflowing, so thrilling with happy events and delirious joy
that the contrasting prospect was only the more deplorably void.
And with all the untamed spirit in her she rebelled at the coming
parting.
Yet she understood the necessity. She realised the enormous stake
he was playing for on their behalf, and so she was determined that
no act or word of hers should hinder him. There had been moments
when the impulse to plead permission to accompany him was almost
irresistible. It filled her heart with delighted dreams of displaying, for
his appreciation, her skill and sturdy nerve on the winter trail. She
felt that for all her sex she could easily accept more than her due
share of the labour, and could increase his comfort a hundredfold.
But in sober moments she knew it could not be. If nothing else the
woman instinct in her forbade it.
The girl never for one moment paused to question her feelings.
Why should she? The life she knew, the life she had always lived,
had left her free of every convention which encompasses a woman’s
life in civilization. Bill Wilder had leapt into her life as her dream
man. He was her all in all, the whole focus of her simple heart. Why
then should she deny it? Why then should she attempt to blind
herself? There had been no word of love between them. It almost
seemed unnecessary. She loved his steady grey eyes, with their calm
smile. She revelled in his unfailing, kindly confidence. His spoken
word was always sufficient, backed as it was by his great figure, so
full of manhood’s youthful strength. Then he was of her own
country. That vast Northland which claimed their deepest affection
for all its terror. Oh, yes, she loved him with her whole soul and
body. And her love inspired the surging rebellion which her sturdy
sense refused outlet or display.
No. She had long since learned patience. It was the thing her
country taught her as surely as anything on earth. Besides, the
planning was all Bill’s. Every detail had been weighed and measured
by him. Even it was his veto that had been set on her own journey
for trade. He had urged its abandonment, demanding both her and
Usak’s presence on the river during his absence. So it must be.
For the girl this last evening together passed all too swiftly. Much
of the time, while the others chattered, she remained scarcely
heeding sufficiently to respond intelligently to the occasional appeals
made to her. And then, when the time came for Bill’s going, she rose
quickly from her seat beside the stove and slipped her fur parka over
her buckskin clothing. She regarded the privilege she contemplated
as her right.
Hesther observed, but wisely refrained from comment. But her
children were less merciful. Perse grinned impishly.
“Wher’ you goin’, Kid?” he demanded.
The ready mother instantly leapt to the girl’s assistance.
“Lightin’ Bill to the landin’,” she said sharply. “Which the scallawag
menfolk around this shanty don’t seem yearnin’ to do.”
“She don’t need to,” Clarence protested.
“Don’t she?” The mother laughed. “You’re too late, boy. Guess Bill,
here, ’ud hate to be lit by folks who need reminding the thing’s due.
You boys beat it to your blankets. Kid’ll see Bill on his way.”
The man was ready. He bulked tremendously under the thick fur
of his outer clothing. He pulled his fur cap low down on his head,
while the Kid lit the queer old hurricane lamp with a burning brand
from the stove. Hesther’s diminutive figure was further dwarfed
beside him as she prepared to make her farewell.
“It’ll be quite a piece before you get along again,” she said, in a
voice that was not quite steady. And the man laughed shortly for all
there seemed no reason.
“I just can’t figger how soon before I’m along back,” he said. “I’d
like to fix it, but it wouldn’t be reasonable anyway. You see, mam,”
he went on, his gaze turned on the girl who shut the lamp with a
slam, “Gold Commissioners have their ways, and sort of make their
own time. And though I reckon to pull some wires I can’t say when
I’ll get through. And then ther’s always the winter trail. But I’ll sure
be along back before the spring break.”
His gaze came back to the little woman who was regarding him
with wistful eyes of affection, as though he were one of her own
boys, and he thrust out a hand which was instantly clasped between
both her rough palms.
“I just got to be back then,” he went on. “And when I come you
can gamble I got things fixed so tight you’ll only need to sit around
and act the way I tell you.” He smiled down into the misty brown
eyes. “You keep a right good fire, mam,” he said gently. “Ther’s no
trouble for you while I’m gone. Mike’s not a thing but a nightmare to
look at, but he’s got clear orders while Chilcoot and I are on the trail.
And he’ll put ’em through to the limit. You won’t need for a thing he
can hand you. So long.”
The mist in the mother’s eyes had developed into real tears, and
they overflowed down her worn cheeks.
“God bless you, Bill,” she stammered, as she released his hand
with obvious reluctance. “I’ll sure do my best. I just can’t say the
things in here,” she went on, clasping her thin bosom with both
hands. Then she struggled to smile. “Guess we’ll all be countin’ up
till you get back, an’ it can’t be a day sooner than we’re all wishin’.
So long, boy.”
Bill turned to the elder children who had remained to speed him
on his way and nodded comprehensively.
“So long, folks,” he said. “See you again.”
He passed quickly to the door, where the Kid was awaiting him,
and moved out. And a final glance back revealed Hesther framed in
the open doorway, with the yellow light of the room behind her,
silhouetting her fragile figure, as she waved a farewell in the
direction of the swinging lantern.

The Kid’s pretty blue eyes were raised to the smiling face looking
down into hers. It was a moment tense with feeling. It was that
moment of parting when she felt that all sense of joy, all sense of
happiness was to be snuffed right out of her life. And the responsive
smile she forced to her eyes was perilously near to tears.
The lantern in her hand revealed the canoe hauled up against the
crude landing. Its rays found reflection in the dark spread of water
where a skin of ice was already forming, seeking to embed the frail
craft at its mooring.
There was little enough relief from the darkness under the heavy
night clouds. There was no visible moon. That was screened behind
the stormy threat, yet it contrived a faint twilight over the world. Not
a single star was to be seen anywhere and the ghostly northern
lights were deeply curtained.
Now, in these last moments of parting, the youth in Bill Wilder was
once more surging with impulse. As he gazed down into the bravely
smiling eyes a hundred desires were beating in his brain. And he
yearned desperately to fling every caution to the winds and abandon
himself to the love which left him without a thought but of the
delight with which the Kid’s presence filled him.
Somehow it seemed to his big nature a wanton cruelty that this
girl should be charged with the cares of a struggle for existence in
this far-flung northern wilderness. Perhaps as great a feeling as any
that stirred him at this moment was a desire to relieve her of the last
shadow of anxiety in the monstrous season about to descend upon
them. And yet he was compelled to leave her to face alone the very
hardships he would have saved her from. And this with an acute
understanding of the uncertainty of the outcome of the thing he had
planned to accomplish in the darkness of the long winter night. For
once in his life his usual confidence was undermined by curious
forebodings. But he gave no outward sign, while he listened to the
urgent little story the girl had to tell of the Indian Usak.
“He’s a queer feller,” he said thoughtfully. Then he added: “You
told him clear out ther’s to be no trading trip to Placer? An’ still he’s
making ready a trip?”
 The girl laughed shortly. There was no mirth in it. It was a little
nervous expression of feeling.
“You just can’t get back of that feller’s mind,” she said. “Usak’s
dead obstinate. He’s obstinate as a young bull caribou when he feels
like it. It was when I told him it was your plan we shouldn’t make
Placer. I sort of read it in his queer black eyes, even though he took
the order without a kick. Maybe he was disappointed. You see, he’s
got that swell black fox. Next day I found him fixing for a trip on his
own. I asked him right away about it, an’ his answer left me worried
an’ guessing. ‘That all right,’ he said, ‘I know us not mak Placer. So.
Then I mak one big trip.’”
The girl’s imitation of the Indian’s broken talk brought a deepening
smile to Bill’s eyes for all the concern her story inspired.
“I told him right away you guessed it best for him to stop around,”
she went on. “An’ it was then he got mulish. He snapped me like an
angry wolf. ‘Who this whiteman say I not mak big trip? Him not all
thing, this man. No. I mak big trip.’ He went right on fixing his outfit
after that and wouldn’t say another word. He’s right up ther’ in his
shanty now. I saw the lamp burning as we came down. He means to
go his trip, and-”
“Nothing’s goin’ to stop him.” The man’s jaws shut with a snap.
“He’s surely got a mule beat.”
He remained buried in deep thought for some moments while the
girl watched him, wondering anxiously at his interpretation of Usak’s
attitude. She was filled with an unease she could not shake off.
Quite suddenly Bill’s manner underwent a change. He laughed
quietly, and his gaze, which had passed to the dark river came again
to the troubled face beside him.
“Just don’t worry a thing, Kid,” he said, with an assumption of
lightness which drew a responsive sigh of relief. “It don’t matter.
Ther’s the boys around, and Mike, and my bunch. Usak’s full of his
own notions, an’ it’s best not to drive him too hard. If he guesses to
make a trip, just let him beat it. No. Don’t you worry a thing.”
“No.”
 The Kid sighed again. And the man understood that the comfort
he had desired for her had been achieved.
Again came his quiet laugh.
“Anyway we can’t worry with Usak—to-night.”
The girl shook her head. In a moment she had forgotten the
Indian and remembered only the thing about to happen. It was their
farewell that had yet to be spoken, and this man would be speeding
up the darkened river to his camp, and it would be months—long,
dreary months before she would witness again those calm smiling
grey eyes, and hear again the voice that somehow made the
heaviest burdens of her life on the river something that was a joy to
contemplate. The desolation of his going appalled her now that the
moment of parting had actually arrived.
“Gee! It’s going to be a long night to—Spring.”
Bill spoke with a surge of feeling he could no longer deny.
The girl remained silent, and her blue eyes sought the dark course
of the river in self-defence.
“What’ll you be doing—all the time?”
Bill’s voice had lowered. There was a wonderful depth of
tenderness in its tone.
“Waitin’—mostly.”
It was a little wistful, a little desperate. For the first time the girl’s
voice had become unsteady.
Bill drew a deep breath.
“Waiting?”
He turned swiftly in the shadow that hid them up. His eyes were
no longer calm. They were hot with those passions which are only
the deeper and stronger for the strong man’s restraint. Suddenly he
thrust a hand into the bosom of his parka and withdrew the folded
plans of Marty Le Gros’ gold “strike.”
“Here, Kid,” he said urgently. “You best have these. They’re yours
anyway whatever happens. You never can guess in this queer old