When Shan Tung, the long-cued Chinaman from Vancouver, started up theFrazer River in the old days when the Telegraph Trail and theheadwaters of the Peace were the Meccas of half the gold-huntingpopulation of British Columbia, he did not foresee tragedy ahead ofhim. He was a clever man, was Shan Tung, a cha-sukeed, a very devil inthe collecting of gold, and far-seeing. But he could not look fortyyears into the future, and when Shan Tung set off into the north, thatwinter, he was in reality touching fire to the end of a fuse that wasto burn through four decades before the explosion came.
With Shan Tung went Tao, a Great Dane. The Chinaman had picked him upsomewhere on the coast and had trained him as one trains a horse. Taowas the biggest dog ever seen about the Height of Land, the mostpowerful, and at times the most terrible. Of two things Shan Tung wasenormously proud in his silent and mysterious oriental way—of Tao, thedog, and of his long, shining cue which fell to the crook of his kneeswhen he let it down. It had been the longest cue in Vancouver, andtherefore it was the longest cue in British Columbia. The cue and thedog formed the combination which set the forty-year fuse of romance andtragedy burning. Shan Tung started for the El Dorados early in thewinter, and Tao alone pulled his sledge and outfit. It was no more thanan ordinary task for the monstrous Great Dane, and Shan Tungsubserviently but with hidden triumph passed outfit after outfitexhausted by the way. He had reached Copper Creek Camp, which wasboiling and frothing with the excitement of gold-maddened men, and wascongratulating himself that he would soon be at the camps west of thePeace, when the thing happened. A drunken Irishman, filled with a grimand unfortunate sense of humor, spotted Shan Tung's wonderful cue andcoveted it. Wherefore there followed a bit of excitement in which ShanTung passed into his empyrean home with a bullet through his heart, andthe drunken Irishman was strung up for his misdeed fifteen minuteslater. Tao, the Great Dane, was taken by the leader of the men whopulled on the rope. Tao's new master was a "drifter," and as hedrifted, his face was always set to the north, until at last a newhumor struck him and he turned eastward to the Mackenzie. As theseasons passed, Tao found mates along the way and left a string of hisprogeny behind him, and he had new masters, one after another, until hewas grown old and his muzzle was turning gray. And never did one ofthese masters tur