Summary
A snow-battered odyssey unfolds when David Summers, greenhorn gentleman from the temperate states, staggers half-dead across the Alaskan whiteout and is salvaged by a flame-haired huntress known only as Tiger’s Cub—her nickname a brand left by the gambler-patriarch who swears she is blood of his blood. In the candle-smoke of a cedar cabin, affection sparks between rescuer and rescued, yet every caress is shadowed: the girl’s supposed sire, the swaggering Tiger, and his cadaverous partner Bill Slack have only days earlier fleeced and shot David’s father over a crooked poker hand, flinging the corpse to an icy ravine. When Tiger returns from the diggings, he barters his daughter—like a sack of nuggets—for Slack’s half-share in the very claim he stole, threatening to abandon the girl’s tubercular mother to the wolves unless the marriage oath is sworn. Under that blackmail, the wedding proceeds; the nuptial night becomes attempted rape, halted by David’s timely axe-handle through the door and by the spectral gunshot of Slack’s long-abandoned wife, Hilda, whose bullet delivers frontier justice. Tiger is clapped in irons for the murder, a paternity lie collapses—he is no father at all—and the lovers step into the pale dawn, freed by blood, snow, and the death of false names.
Synopsis
David Summers, who has ventured to Alaska in search of his father, falls victim to the elements and is rescued by Tiger's Cub, so named because the man who claims her as his daughter uses the pseudonym of Tiger. Unknown to David, a few days prior to his arrival, the Tiger and his partner, Bill Slack, had cheated David's father in a crooked poker game and then killed him. After he is rescued, David goes home with the girl, whose mother is ill, and the two fall in love. Soon after, Tiger returns, having promised his daughter to Slack in return for half interest in the mine which they stole from David's father. Presented with the ultimatum of consenting to the marriage or having her invalid mother cast into the snow, the girl consents to the sacrifice. After the ceremony, Slack attempts to rape the Cub, but David arrives in time to rescue her, while Slack is killed by the unseen hand of Hilda, the wife he deserted. Tiger is arrested for the murder, and with the revelation that he is not the Cub's real father, the path is cleared for a happy union between David and Tiger's Cub.
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