Ramsay Cartou leaned on the rail of the ponderous side-wheeler, the H. H. Holter, and watched without interest while a horse-drawn truck brought another load of cattle hides on board. The sweating stevedores who were loading the Holter and the belaboring mate who supervised them began stowing the hides into the hold. The Holter's winch, either ruined by an inexpert operator or about to fall apart anyhow, was broken. All the work had to be done by hand.

Ramsay turned to breathe the clean air that swept in from Lake Michigan. It was impossible, anywhere on the Holter, to get away from the smell of the hides, but at least he did not have to look at them.

Not since he had left the brawling young city of Chicago two days before, to make his way north to the equally lusty young city of Milwaukee, had the sun shone. In those two days, while he waited for repairs to the engine hauling the train in which he was riding, he had seen nothing of the lake. Now, from the mouth of the river where the Holter was anchored, he had a clear view, and it was exciting.

The grays of the sky and the grays of the lake were indefinable, with no clear separation. Ramsay shivered slightly.

The lake was a cat, he thought, a great sinewy cat, and the whitecaps rolling into the harbor were its sheathed and unsheathed claws. It was an awesome thing, but at the same time a wonderful one. A trembling excitement rose within him. The lake was at once a challenge and a promise—a threat and a mighty lure. He stared, fascinated, and tried to trace the rolling course of the waves as they surged toward the bank. It was impossible to follow just one for, as soon as it swelled, it retreated, to lose itself in the immense lake and renew itself in endless forward surges. Like recklessly charging soldiers, the waves cast themselves up on the bank and, exhausted, fell back.

So absorbed was he in the spectacle and so fascinated by the lake, that for a moment he was unaware of the man beside him or of the words he spoke. Then a rough hand grasped his shoulder and, reacting instantly, Ramsay whirled around.

"Why ain't you at work with the rest, boy?"

"Take your hand off me!"

The man who stood beside him was oddly like a rock, a great granite boulder. Two inches taller than Ramsay's six feet, he had a barrel chest and long, powerful arms. A leather jacket, with the sleeves cut off, hung loosely on his upper body, and beneath it he wore a homespun shirt. His black trousers had been fashioned by an exacting tailor but sadly misused. They were torn and patched with anything that might have been at hand. Black hair straggled from beneath his crushed black hat and the hair needed cutting. His eyes, colorless, were oddly inanimate, like two glass balls with no special warmth or feeling. A black beard sprouted from his cheeks and half-hid his face, but the beard did not hide thick, coarse lips. He repeated, "Them hides got to be loaded! Get to work!"

"Load them yourself!"

"I'll give you a lesson you won't forget, boy!"

"Do that!" Ramsay tensed, awaiting the anticipated attack of the bigger, heavier man. He felt almost a grim pleasure. He had learned his fighting the hard way, as anybody brought up on the New York water-front, and with an irresponsible father had to learn it. The man who faced him was heavier by a good sixty pounds, but he was a bull of a man and, probably, he would fight like a bull. Would he know about matadors?

The man's eyes were narrowed to pinpoints, and they seemed to spark. Sheer rage made his face livid, while his lips were distorted in a snarl. He drew back, readying himself for the spring that would overwhelm this brash youth who had dared dispute him. Ramsay poised on lithe feet, prepared to side-step.

Then fat, fussy little Captain Schultz, skipper of the Holter, stepped between them. He wheezed like an over-fat lap-dog, "Vot you doin'?"

"I want them hides loaded and the ship under way!" the man who faced Ramsay snarled.

"Ach! Dis man payin' passenger!"

A deck hand, his eyes downcast, hurried past. The man who had ordered Ramsay to get to work stood still for a moment, glaring. Then, furiously, soundlessly, he turned on his heel and strode up the gangplank to the pier. Ramsay watched him go, and he knew that, even if there had not been unpleasantness between them, he could never like this man. No matter where they met, or how, they would never get along together.

Captain Schultz also turned to watch the man depart. Then he gave his attention to Ramsay.

"Ach! You should be careful 'pout startin' fights, poy."

"So should other people!" Ramsay said, still smarting.

"You should, too. Yaah!"

And, as though he had settled that once and for all, Captain Schultz waddled away to speak to the mate who was supervising the stevedores. A little uncertainty arose in Ramsay.

This—this half-wilderness, half-civilization in which he found himself was a land of strong contradictions. Lake Michigan, with all its fear and all its terror, and all its inspiration, lapped the Wisconsin shores. Yet some man could be so little impressed by the vast lake that he could name a boat for himself. Possibly a man capable of building or owning a ship like the Holter had a right to think of himself.

Ramsay turned again to look at the lake, and his mind projected him far away from the worn, slippery decks of the Holter. Almost he was unaware of the two silver dollars in his pocket, all the money he had left in the world, and of the uncertain future. At the same time, while his inmost being feasted on the lake, a part of his mind reviewed the events that had brought him here. He had an abrupt, uncomfortable revival of a New York memory.

There was a lion, a great, black-maned lion, in the New York zoo. It was well fed and well cared for, its every need attended. But most times the lion had still seemed restless and unhappy, and sometimes it had been a tired thing. Then it was hardly a lion at all but just a weary, living thing. Ramsay had wondered often how that lion felt.

He had never decided exactly how it did feel; within himself there were a dozen conflicting opinions. The lion paced its cage, and coming to the end of the very narrow limits granted to it, it turned and went back the other way. Coming to the end of the cage, it turned again. But all it ever found was the place it had already left. Once in a great while the lion had been very alert and very attentive. It was as though, now and again, the great animal could scent a wind of which nothing else was aware. That wind brought him memories of freedom, and happiness and the unhampered jungle life that had been.

Ramsay had gone often to see the lion, and though he never understood why, he always felt as though he had something in common with it, and he understood it partially. New York offered an abundance of opportunities, but they were well bound and well defined. There had always been a wild longing, a reckless yearning, within him, and often he thought that the newspapers which carried stories of the undeveloped Midwest were to him what the faint jungle scents had been to the lion. He had devoured every story eagerly. The Midwest was new, the papers had said. Good farm land, if one wanted to be a farmer, could be had for as little as four dollars an acre. It was the land of the future.

Again Ramsay jingled the two dollars in his pocket. He had answered the call of the Midwest because he could not help answering it. He had to try and to go and see for himself, but at the same time a caution, inborn in his Scotch mother and transplanted to him, could not be ignored. Before he burned his bridges behind him he had wanted to make sure that there were some ahead, and correspondence with the manager of the Three Points tannery had led to the offer of a job when he came. A dollar and twenty-five cents a day the tannery was offering able-bodied men, and there were too few men.

Ramsay looked out upon the lake, and a little thrill of excitement swept through him. Sometimes he had felt doubts about the wisdom of having left New York for the Midwest. He had been sure of a place to sleep and enough to eat as long as he stayed in New York, and again he felt the two dollars in his pocket.

Troubled, he looked out on the surging lake, and knew an instant peace. It was worth seeing. It was something few New Yorkers ever saw. The ocean was at their doorstep, and few of them even bothered looking at that; but the ocean was not like this. Lake Michigan was fresh and clean, different, wild and, as the papers had promised, new. Ramsay tasted the wet air, liking it as he did so.

He turned at a sudden squealing and clatter on the pier, and saw four men trying to fight a little black horse onto the ship. The horse, not trusting this strange craft and certainly not liking it, lashed out with striking hooves. Dodging, the men finally fought it into a sort of small cage they had prepared. The horse thrust its head over the side and bugled shrilly.

Ramsay watched interestedly, distracted for the few minutes the men needed to get the horse into its cage. It reared as though it would climb over the confining bars, then stood quietly. A sensible horse, Ramsay decided, and a good one. Only fools, whether they were animals or men, fought when there was no chance of winning or battered their brains out against a stone wall. Good animals and good men never considered anything hopeless, but they tried to fight with intelligence as well as brawn. Ramsay glanced again at the horse.

It was standing quietly but not resignedly. Its head was up. Its ears were alert and its eyes bright. It still did not like the ship, but it had not just given in. Rather, it was waiting a good chance to get away. Ramsay grinned. The next time, he decided, they would have a little more trouble getting that horse onto anything that floated. Then he returned his attention to the loading of the Holter.

A continuous line of horse-drawn trucks loaded with hides was coming alongside the ship, and the stevedores were laboring mightily to stow the hides away. Obviously whoever owned the Holter intended to load her with every last pound she would carry. He wanted a paying cargo that would pay off to the last cent. Almost imperceptibly the ship settled into the water. The gangplank, that had been almost even with the deck, now tilted downward.

Once or twice Ramsay saw the bearded, jacketed man with whom he had quarreled. But the man did not venture onto the Holter again. Rather, he seemed more interested in getting the hides loaded. Ramsay speculated on the scene he was witnessing, and then he found the whys and wherefores, the reasons behind it.

This Wisconsin country was still more than half a wilderness. It had its full share of wilderness men, but its fertile farm lands were attracting many Dutch, Swiss and German farmers. Struggling with a half-tamed country, they did anything they could to earn a livelihood, and some of them raised beef cattle. The hides were a by-product and the world markets needed leather. But the leather could not be processed without necessary materials, and the hemlock trees which provided tan bark were being cut at Three Points. It was cheaper, and easier, to transport the hides to Three Points than it was to carry the cumbersome tan bark to Milwaukee or Chicago. From Three Points, harness leather, sole leather and almost every other kind, was shipped by boat to Chicago and from there it was carried to the eastern markets by rail.

It was not until mid-afternoon that the last of the hides were loaded and the hatches battened down. The side wheel began to turn and the Holter moved cumbersomely down the river into Lake Michigan. Standing in his enclosure, the little horse stamped restlessly and neighed again. He was nervous, but he was not afraid.

Ramsay approved. The little black horse didn't like his cage, but he would meet the situation as it existed rather than lose his head or become panic-stricken. Ramsay walked over to the cage and the horse thrust his velvet muzzle against the bars. When the boy rubbed his nose, the horse twitched his ears and looked at him with friendly eyes.

Thick smoke belched from the Holter's stack and made a long plume over the lake, behind the plodding side-wheeler. A strong wind was screaming in from the north and lashing the water angrily into leaping waves. The ship nosed into the trough created by the waves and rose again on the opposite side. Ramsay walked to the bow and leaned over the rail, and a mighty excitement rose anew within him.

This, it seemed, was what he had wanted to find when he left New York to go roving. The lake, storm-lashed, was a wild and terrible thing. It was a beast, but something with a vast appeal lay behind its fury and its anger. Lake Michigan was the place for a man. It would never be free of challenge if there was anyone who dared to pick up the gauntlet it cast.

There was motion beside Ramsay, and the deck hand who had passed while he argued with the bearded man fell in beside him. He glanced at the man. The deck hand was about thirty-six, older than Ramsay by eighteen years, and there was a seasoned, weather-beaten look about him. It was as though he had turned his face to many a raging storm and many a fierce wind.

He grinned amiably. "Hi!"

"Hi!" Ramsay said.

The deck hand chuckled. "Boy, I thought you were in trouble sure when you were ruckusin' with old Devil Chad."

"Devil Chad?"

"Yeah. The one who told you to help load hides. He'd of cleaned the deck with you."

"Maybe he would," Ramsay said. "And then again, maybe he wouldn't."

"He would," the deck hand asserted. "He can lick anybody or anything. Owns half the country 'round here, he does, includin' most of the Holter. What's more, he aims to keep it. One of the richest men in Wisconsin."

"Quite a man," Ramsay said drily.

"Yeah, an' quite a fighter. On'y reason he didn't clean your clock was on account Captain Schultz told him you was a payin' passenger. Devil Chad, he gets half the fare every passenger on the Holter pays, he does."

Ramsay knew a rising irritation. "What makes you so sure he can't be cut down to size?"

"Never has been, never will be," the deck hand asserted. He regarded the surging lake morosely, and then said, "One of these days this old tub is goin' to end up right at the bottom of Michigan, it is. Either that or on the beach. Wish I was some'res else."

"Why don't you go somewhere else?"

"One of these days I will," the deck hand threatened. "I'll just haul off an' go back to the ocean boats, I will. I was on 'em for fourteen years, an' quit to come here on account I got scar't of storms at sea. Ha! Worstest thing I ever see on the Atlantic ain't nothin' to what this lake can throw at you."

"Is it really that bad?" Ramsay asked eagerly.

"Bad?" the deck hand said. "Boy, I've seen waves here taller'n a ship. In course nobody ever goes out when it's that bad on account, if they did, nobody'd ever get back." He scanned the horizon. "We're goin' to hit weather afore we ever gets to Three Points. Goin' to hit it sure. Wish this old tub wasn't loaded so heavy, an' with hides at that."

A wave struck the bow, crested and broke in foaming spray that cast itself up and over the ship. Ramsay felt it, cool on his face, and he licked eager lips. Lake Michigan was fresh water, not salt like the ocean, and it was as pure as an ice-cold artesian well. It was also, he thought, almost as cold.

He looked into the clouded horizon, studying the storm that battered the Holter. He smiled to himself.

Suddenly he became all eager interest, peering out into the driving waves and focusing his attention on one place. He thought he had seen something there, but because of the angry lake he could not be sure. It might have been just a drifting shadow, or just one more of the dark waves which seemed to fill the lake and to be of all shades. Then, and plainly, he saw it again.

It was a boat, a little boat no more than twenty-four feet from bowsprit to stern, and it was carrying almost a full load of sail as it tacked back and forth into the wind. Ramsay had not seen the sails because, when he first spotted the boat, it had been heeled over so far that the sails did not show. Now they were showing and full, and the little boat sailed like a proud swan with its wings spread.

Ramsay forgot the Holter, the man beside him and everything else save the little boat. The Holter and nothing on it, with the possible exception of the little black horse, was even remotely interesting. But this was. Ramsay breathed a sigh of relief.

He should have known. He should have understood from the first that, when any water was as mighty and as exciting as Lake Michigan, there would be some to meet its challenge with daring, grace and spirit. The tiny craft was a mere cockleshell of a boat, a ridiculously small thing with which to venture upon such a water, but Ramsay could not help feeling that it would be much better to sail on the little boat than on the Holter.

He kept fascinated eyes on it as it tacked back into the wind. Again it heeled over, so far that it was almost hidden in the trough of a vast wave. Saucily, jauntily it bobbed up again.

The Holter, that workhorse of the water, plodded stolidly on its appointed way. Ramsay continued to watch the little boat, and now they were near enough so that he could see its crew of four. He gasped involuntarily.

Working into the wind, the little boat was coming back, and its course took it directly across the Holter's right of way. Ramsay clenched his fingers and bit his lip fiercely. A collision seemed inevitable. Wide-eyed, he watched the little boat.

Now he saw its name, not painted on with stencils but written in a fine, free-flowing script, Spray, and the carved Valkyrie maiden that was its figurehead. A big gull, obviously its tame one, sat on the very top of the mast and flapped its wings. The Spray had a crew of four, but Ramsay concentrated on just one of them.

He was huge, fully as tall as the black beard who had accosted Ramsay and just as heavy, but he was a different kind of man. He balanced on his little boat's swaying deck with all the grace of a dancer, while he clung almost carelessly to a line that ran through a pulley.

No inch of the man's shirt and trousers, which were all the clothing he wore, for he was bare-footed, remained dry, and the shaggy blond curls that carpeted his head were dripping. White teeth gleamed as he looked up at the Holter and laughed. Ramsay leaned forward excitedly. He warmed to this man, even as he had been repelled by the black beard the deck hand called Devil Chad. The man on the boat was gay and spirited, and he seemed complete master of everything about him.

The deck hand put cupped hands to his mouth and screamed, "Sheer off! Sheer off!"

Captain Schultz's voice was heard. "Dumkopf! Go 'way!"

Then, just as it seemed that collision could not be avoided, more sail bloomed on the Spray's mast and she danced lightly out of the way. The man with the shaggy curls looked back and waved a taunting hand. Ramsay turned to watch, but the Spray disappeared in a curtain of mist that had draped itself between the Holter and the shore. His eyes shining, the boy turned to the deck hand.

"Who was that?"

"A crazy Dutch fisherman, named Hans Van Doorst," the deck hand growled. "He'd sail that peanut shell right in to see Old Nick hisself, an' one of these days he will. He ain't even afraid of the White Sturgeon."

"What's the White Sturgeon?"

The deck hand looked at him queerly. "How long you been here, boy?"

"A couple of days."

"Well, that accounts for it. You see the White Sturgeon; you start prayin' right after. You'll need to. Nobody except that crazy Van Doorst has ever saw him an' lived to tell about it. Well, got to get to work."

The deck hand wandered away. Ramsay turned again to face the storm and let spray blow into his face. He thought of all that had happened since he had, at last, reached Lake Michigan. This Wisconsin country was indeed a land of sharp contrasts.

The Holter and the Spray. Captain Schultz and the deck hand. Devil Chad and Hans Van Doorst. A tannery and a fisherman. Local superstition about a white sturgeon. Ramsay knew a rising satisfaction. This semi-wilderness, lapped by a vast inland sea, might be a strange land, but nobody could say that it was not an interesting or a strong one. His last lingering doubts were set at rest and for the first time he was entirely satisfied because he had come. A strong country was always the place for strong people.

Ramsay raised his head, puzzled by something which, suddenly, seemed to be out of place. For a second he did not know what it was. Then he realized that the crying gulls which had been following the Holter in the hope that scraps or garbage would be tossed to them or else interested in whatever debris the side wheel might churn up, were no longer there.

Ramsay knew a second's uneasiness, and he could not explain it. He did not know why he missed the gulls. It was just that they and their crying had seemed a part of the lake. Now that they were gone, the lake was incomplete. The boy braced himself against a sudden, vicious burst of wind.

Even a land-lubber could tell that the storm's fury was increasing. A sharp patter of rain sliced like a shower of cold knives across the Holter's deck, and Ramsay ducked his head. He raised it again, grinning sheepishly as he did so, then gripped the rail to steady himself. He watched with much interest as the storm raged even more strongly.

It was driving directly out of the northwest, and it seemed to be perpetually re-born in the dark clouds that had possession of the sky. A howling wind accompanied it, and more shrapnel-bursts of rain.

The waves rose to prodigious heights. Dipping into them, the Holter seemed no more than a leaf on this tossing sea. Turning, Ramsay saw the helmsman clinging almost fiercely to his wheel, as though he would somehow soften the storm's rage by doing that. In his cage the little black horse nickered uncertainly.

Then there came something that was instantly apparent, even above the screaming wind. The rough rhythm of the Holter's throbbing engines seemed to halt. The ship shivered mightily, as though in pain.

The engines stopped.