INDIANA UNIVERSITY LIBRARY INDIANA UNIVERSITY LIBRARY __ A DAUGHTER OF THE SNOWS sh E BLEW THROUGH THE GAP OF THE PASS IN A WHIRLWIND OF WAPOR See page 40 -- OF THE SNOWs p4 ſr} Ê- T CD P <！? G y “To prevint ye walkin' blind into danger?” “If you wish to put it that way, yes.” He growled deep down in his throat. “What is it you are saying?” she asked. “That ye may shut me mouth, but that ye can't bind me arm.” “But you mustn't, Matt, dear, you mustn't.” Again he answered with a subterranean murmur. I73 A DAUGHTER OF THE SNOWS “And I want you to promise me, now, that you will not interfere in my life that way, by word or deed.” “I’ll not promise.” “But you must.” “I’ll not. Further, it's gettin' cold on the stoop, an’ ye'll be frostin' yer toes, the pink little toes I fished splinters out iv at Dyea. So it's in with ye, Frona girl, an' good-night.” He thrust her inside and departed. When he reached the corner he stopped suddenly and regarded his shadow on the snow. “Matt McCarthy, yer a damned fool! Who iver heard iv a Welse not knowin' their own mind? As though ye’d niver had dalin's with the stiff-necked breed, ye calamitous son iv mis- fortune!” Then he went his way, still growling deeply, and at every growl the curious wolf-dog at his heels bristled and bared its fangs. 174 CHAPTER XVII “TIRED P” Jacob Welse put both hands on Frona's shoulders, and his eyes spoke the love his stiff tongue could not compass. The tree and the excitement and the pleas- ure were over with, a score or so of children had gone home frostily happy across the snow, the last guest had departed, and Christmas Eve and Christmas Day were blending into one. She returned his fondness with glad-eyed interest, and they dropped into huge comfortable chairs on either side the fireplace, in which the back-log was falling to ruddy ruin. “And this time next year?” He put the question seemingly to the glowing log, and, as if in ominous foreshadow, it flared brightly and crumbled away in a burst of sparks. “It is marvellous,” he went on, dismissing the fu- ture in an effort to shake himself into a wholesomer frame of mind. “It has been one long continuous miracle, the last few months, since you have been with me. We have seen very little of each other, you know, since your childhood, and when I think upon it soberly it is hard to realize that you are really mine, sprung from me, bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh. As the tangle-haired wild young creature of Dyea, a healthy, little, natural animal and nothing more, it I75 A DAUGHTER OF THE SNOWS required no imagination to accept you as one of the breed of Welse. But as Frona, the woman, as you were to-night, as you are now as I look at you, as you have been since you came down the Yukon, it is hard . . . . I cannot realize . . . . I . . . .” He faltered and threw up his hands helplessly. “I almost wish that I had given you no education, that I had kept you with me, faring with me, adventuring with me, achieving with me, and failing with me. I would have known you, now, as we sit by the fire. As it is, I do not. To that which I did know there has been added, somehow (what shall I call it?), a subtlety, com- plexity,+favorite words of yours, which is beyond Ine. “No.” He waved the speech abruptly from her lips. She came over and knelt at his feet, resting her head on his knee and clasping his hand in firm sympathy. “No, that is not true. Those are not the words. I cannot find them. I fail to say what I feel. Let me try again. Underneath all you do carry the stamp of the breed. I knew I risked the loss of that when I sent you away, but I had faith in the persistence of the blood and I took the chance; doubted and feared when you were gone; waited and prayed dumbly, and hoped oftentimes hopelessly; and then the day dawned, the day of days! When they said your boat was coming, death rose and walked on the one hand of me, and on the other life everlasting. Made or marred; made or marred,—the words rang through my brain till they maddened me. Would the Welse remain the Welse? Would the blood persist? Would the young shoot rise straight and tall and strong, green with sap and fresh and vigorous? Or would it droop limp and 176 A DAUGHTER OF THE SNOWS me to get that which I had not, dreaming that we would still be one. As though two could be added to two and still remain two. So, to sum up, the breed still holds, but you have learned an alien tongue. When you speak it I am deaf. And bitterest of all, I know that the new tongue is the greater. I do not know why I have said all this, made my confession of weakness 27 “Oh, father mine, greatest of men!” She raised her head and laughed into his eyes, the while brush- ing back the thick iron-gray hair which thatched the dome of his forehead. “You, who have wrestled more mightily, done greater things than these painters and versifiers. You who know so well the law of change. Might not the same plaint fall from your father's lips were he to sit now beside you and look upon your work and you?” “Yes, yes. I have said that I understand. Do not let us discuss it . . . . a moment's weakness. My father was a great man.” “And so mine.” “A struggler to the end of his days. He fought the great lone fight »y “And so mine.” “And died fighting.” “And so shall mine. So shall we all, we Welses.” He shook her playfully, in token of returning spirits. “But I intend to sell out, mines, Company, every- thing, and study Browning.” “Still the fight. You can't discount the blood, father.” - “Why were you not a boy?” he demanded, ab- ruptly. “You would have been a splendid one. As 179 A DAUGHTER OF THE SNows it is, a woman, made to be the delight of some man, you must pass from me—to-morrow, next day, this time next year, who knows how soon? Ah! now I know the direction my thought has been trending. Just as I know you do, so do I recognize the inevi- tableness of it and the justness. But the man, Frona, the man?” “Don’t,” she demurred. “Tell me of your father's fight, the last fight, the great lone fight at Treasure City. Ten to one it was, and well fought. Tell me.” “No, Frona. Do you realize that for the first time in our lives we talk together seriously, as father and daughter, for the first time? You have had no mother to advise; no father, for I trusted the blood, and wisely, and let you go. But there comes a time when the mother's counsel is needed, and you, you who never knew one?” Frona yielded, in instant recognition, and waiting, snuggled more closely to him. “This man, St. Vincent—how is it between you?” “I . . . . I do not know. How do you mean?” “Remember always, Frona, that you have free choice, yours is the last word. Still, I would like to understand. I could . . . . perhaps . . . . I might be able to suggest. But nothing more. Still, a suggestion . 33 There was something inexpressibly sacred about it, yet she found herself tongue-tied. Instead of the one definite thing to say, a muddle of ideas fluttered in her brain. After all, could he understand? Was there not a difference which prevented him from compre- hending the motives which, for her, were impelling? For all her harking back to the primitive and stout 180 A DAUGHTER OF THE SNOWS defence of its sanity and truth, did his native philoso- phy give him the same code which she drew from her acquired philosophy? Then she stood aside and regarded herself and the queries she put, and drew apart from them, for they breathed of treason. “There is nothing between us, father,” she spoke up resolutely. “Mr. St. Vincent has said nothing, noth- ing. We are good friends, we like each other, we are very good friends. I think that is all.” “But you like each other; you like him. Is it in the way a woman must like a man before she can honestly share her life with him, lose herself in him? Do you feel with Ruth, so that when the time comes you can say, ‘Thy people are my people, and thy God my God’?” “N—o. It may be; but I cannot, dare not face it, say it or not say it, think it or not think it—now. It is the great affirmation. When it comes it must come no one may know how or why, in a great white flash, like a revelation, hiding nothing, revealing everything in dazzling, blinding truth. At least I so imagine.” Jacob Welse nodded his head with the slow medi- tation of one who understands, yet stops to ponder and weigh again. “But why have you asked, father? Why has Mr. St. Vincent been raised? I have been friends with other men.” “But I have not felt about other men as I do of St. Vincent. We may be truthful, you and I, and forgive the pain we give each other. My opinion counts for no more than another's. Fallibility is the commonest of curses. Nor can I explain why I feel as I do—I suppose much in the way you expect to when your 181 ; i | A DAUGHTER OF THE SNOws —but it is said that he did not act as a man ought that night.” “But as you say, father, men are men. We would like to have them other than they are, for the world surely would be better; but we must take them as they are. Lucile—” “No, no; you misunderstand. I did not refer to her, but to the fight. He did not . . . . he was cow- ardly.” “But as you say, it is said. He told me about it, not long afterwards, and I do not think he would have dared had there been anything—” “But I do not make it as a charge,” Jacob Welse hastily broke in. “Merely hearsay, and the prejudice of the men would be sufficient to account for the tale. And it has no bearing, anyway. I should not have brought it up, for I have known good men funk in my time—buck fever, as it were. And now let us dismiss it all from our minds. I merely wished to suggest, and I suppose I have bungled. But understand this, Frona,” turning her face up to his, “understand above all things and in spite of them, first, last, and always, that you are my daughter, and that I believe your life is sacredly yours, not mine, yours to deal with and to make or mar. Your life is yours to live, and in so far that I influence it you will not have lived your life, nor would your life have been yours. Nor would you have been a Welse, for there was never a Welse yet who suffered dictation. They died first, or went away to pioneer on the edge of things. “Why, if you thought the dance house the proper or natural medium for self-expression, I might be sad, but to-morrow I would sanction your going down to ~~~~~~~ | 183 A DAUGHTER OF THE SNOWS the Opera House. It would be unwise to stop you, and, further, it is not our way. The Welses have ever stood by, in many a lost cause and forlorn hope, knee to knee and shoulder to shoulder. Conventions are worthless for such as we. They are for the swine who without them would wallow deeper. The weak must obey or be crushed; not so with the strong. The mass is nothing; the individual everything; and it is the individual, always, that rules the mass and gives the law. A fig for what the world says If the Welse should procreate a bastard line this day, it would be the way of the Welse, and you would be a daughter of the Welse, and in the face of hell and heaven, of God himself, we would stand together, we of the one blood, Frona, you and I.” “You are larger than I,” she whispered, kissing his forehead, and the caress of her lips seemed to him the soft impact of a leaf falling through the still autumn alſ. And as the heat of the room ebbed away, he told of her foremother and of his, and of the sturdy Welse who fought the great lone fight, and died, fighting, at Treasure City. 184 CHAPTER XVIII THE “Doll's House” was a success. Mrs. Scho- ville ecstasized over it in terms so immeasurable, so unqualifiable, that Jacob Welse, standing near, bent a glittering gaze upon her plump white throat and un- consciously clutched and closed his hand on an invis- ible windpipe. Dave Harney proclaimed its excellence effusively, though he questioned the soundness of Nora's philosophy and swore by his Puritan gods that Torvald was the longest-eared jack in two hemi- spheres. Even Miss Mortimer, antagonistic as she was to the whole school, conceded that the players had redeemed it; while Matt McCarthy announced that he didn't blame Nora darlin' the least bit, though he told the Gold Commissioner privately that a song or so and a skirt dance wouldn't have hurt the per- formance. “Iv course the Nora girl was right,” he insisted to Harney, both of whom were walking on the heels of Frona and St. Vincent. “I’d be seein’—” “Rubber y? “Rubber yer gran'mother!” Matt wrathfully ex- claimed. “Ez I was sayin’,” Harney continued, imperturba- bly, “rubber boots is goin' to go sky-high 'bout the time of wash-up. Three ounces the pair, an' you kin put your chips on that for a high card. You kin 185 A DAUGHTER OF THE SNOWS gather 'em in now for an ounce a pair and clear two on the deal. A cinch, Matt, a dead open an' shut.” “The devil take you an’ yer cinches! It's Nora darlin' I have in me mind the while.” They bade good-by to Frona and St. Vincent and went off disputing under the stars in the direction of the Opera House. Gregory St. Vincent heaved an audible sigh. “At last.” “At last what?” Frona asked, incuriously. “At last the first opportunity for me to tell you how well you did. You carried off the final scene wonderfully; so well that it seemed you were really passing out of my life forever.” “What a misfortune!” “It was terrible.” & 4 No.” “But, yes. I took the whole condition upon myself. You were not Nora, you were Frona; nor I Torvald, but Gregory. When you made your exit, capped and jacketed and travelling-bag in hand, it seemed I could not possibly stay and finish my lines. And when the door slammed and you were gone, the only thing that saved me was the curtain. It brought me to myself, or else I would have rushed after you in the face of the audience.” “It is strange how a simulated part may react upon one,” Frona speculated. “Or rather?” St. Vincent suggested. Frona made no answer, and they walked on without speech. She was still under the spell of the evening, and the exaltation which had come to her as Nora had not yet departed. Besides, she read between the 186 - A DAUGHTER OF THE SNOWS lines of St. Vincent's conversation, and was oppressed by the timidity which comes over woman when she faces man on the verge of the greater intimacy. It was a clear, cold night, not over-cold,—not more than forty below, and the land was bathed in a soft, diffused flood of light which found its source not in the stars, nor yet in the moon, which was somewhere over on the other side of the world. From the south- east to the northwest a pale-greenish glow fringed the rim of the heavens, and it was from this the dim radi- ance was exhaled. Suddenly, like the ray of a search-light, a band of white light ploughed overhead. Night turned to ghostly day on the instant, then blacker night de- scended. But to the southeast a noiseless commotion was apparent. The glowing greenish gauze was in a ferment, Dubbling, uprearing, downfalling, and tenta- tively thrusting huge bodiless hands into the upper ether. Once more a cyclopean rocket twisted its fiery way across the sky, from horizon to zenith, and on, and on, in tremendous flight, to horizon again. But the span could not hold, and in its wake the black night brooded. And yet again, broader, stronger, deeper, lavishly spilling streamers to right and left, it flaunted the midmost zenith with its gorgeous flare, and passed on and down to the further edge of the world. Heaven was bridged at last, and the bridge endured At this flaming triumph the silence of earth was broken, and ten thousand wolf-dogs, in long-drawn unisoned howls, sobbed their dismay and grief. Frona shivered, and St. Vincent passed his arm about her waist. The woman in her was aware of the touch of 187 A DAUGHTER OF THE SNOWS man, and of a slight tingling thrill of vague delight; but she made no resistance. And as the wolf-dogs mourned at her feet and the aurora wantoned over- head, she felt herself drawn against him closely. “Need I tell my story?” he whispered. She drooped her head in tired content on his shoul- der, and together they watched the burning vault wherein the stars dimmed and vanished. Ebbing, flowing, pulsing to some tremendous rhythm, the prism colors hurled themselves in luminous deluge across the firmament. Then the canopy of heaven became a mighty loom, wherein imperial purple and deep sea-green blended, wove, and interwove, with blazing woof and flashing warp, till the most delicate of tulles, fluorescent and bewildering, was daintily and airily shaken in the face of the astonished night. Without warning the span was sundered by an arro- gant arm of black. The arch dissolved in blushing confusion. Chasms of blackness yawned, grew, and rushed together. Broken masses of strayed color and fading fire stole timidly towards the sky-line. Then the dome of night towered imponderable, immense, and the stars came back one by one, and the wolf-dogs mourned anew. - “I can offer you so little, dear,” the man said with a slightly perceptible bitterness. “The precarious fortunes of a gypsy wanderer.” And the woman, placing his hand and pressing it against her heart, said, as a great woman had said before her, “A tent and a crust of bread with you, Richard.” l I88 CHAPTER XIX How-HA was only an Indian woman, bred of a long line of fish-eating, meat-rending carnivora, and her ethics were as crude and simple as her blood. But long contact with the whites had given her an insight into their way of looking at things, and though she grunted contemptuously in her secret soul, she none the less understood their way perfectly. Ten years previous she had cooked for Jacob Welse, and served him in one fashion or another ever since; and when on a dreary January morning she opened the front door in response to the deep-tongued knocker, even her stolid presence was shaken as she recognized the visitor. Not that the average man or woman would have so recognized. But How-ha's faculties of ob- serving and remembering details had been developed in a hard school where death dealt his blow to the lax and life saluted the vigilant. How-ha looked up and down the woman who stood before her. Through the heavy veil she could barely distinguish the flash of the eyes, while the hood of the parka effectually concealed the hair, and the parka proper the particular outlines of the body. But How-ha paused and looked again. There was some- thing familiar in the vague general outline. She quested back to the shrouded head again, and knew the unmistakable poise. Then How-ha's eyes went 189 A DAUGHTER OF THE SNOWS blear as she traversed the simple windings of her own brain, inspecting the bare shelves taciturnly stored with the impressions of a meagre life. No disorder; no confused mingling of records; no devious and interminable impress of complex emotions, tangled theories, and bewildering abstractions — nothing but simple facts, neatly classified and conveniently collated. Unerringly from the stores of the past she picked and chose and put together in the instant present, till obscurity dropped from the woman before her, and she knew her, word and deed and look and history. “Much better you go 'way quickety-quick,” How-ha informed her. “Miss Welse. I wish to see her.” The strange woman spoke in firm, even tones which betokened the will behind, but which failed to move How-ha. “Much better you go,” she repeated, stolidly. “Here, take this to Frona Welse, and—ah! would you!” (thrusting her knee between the door and jamb) “and leave the door open.” How-ha scowled, but took the note; for she could not shake off the grip of the ten years of servitude to the superior race. May I see you? LUCILE. So the note ran. Frona glanced up expectantly at the Indian woman. “Um kick toes outside,” How-ha explained. “Me tell um go 'way quickety-quick? Eh? You tink yes? Um no good. Um—” 190 A DAUGHTER OF THE SNOWS “No. Take her,”—Frona was thinking quickly,– “no; bring her up here.” “Much better 92 & 4 Go p" How-ha grunted, and yielded up the obedience she could not withhold; though, as she went down the stairs to the door, in a tenebrous, glimmering way she wondered that the accident of white skin or swart made master or servant as the case might be. In the one sweep of vision, Lucile took in Frona smiling with extended hand in the foreground, the dainty dressing-table, the simple finery, the thousand girlish evidences; and with the sweet wholesomeness of it pervading her nostrils, her own girlhood rose up and smote her. Then she turned a bleak eye and cold ear on outward things. “I am glad you came,” Frona was saying. “I have so wanted to see you again, and — but do get that heavy parka off, please. How thick it is, and what splendid fur and workmanship!” “Yes, from Siberia.” A present from St. Vin- cent, Lucile felt like adding, but said instead, “The Siberians have not yet learned to scamp their work, you know.” She sank down into the low-seated rocker with a native grace which could not escape the beauty-loving eye of the girl, and with proud-poised head and silent tongue listened to Frona as the minutes ticked away, and observed with impersonal amusement Frona's painful toil at making conversation. “What has she come for?” Frona asked herself, as she talked on furs and weather and indifferent things. 19t A DAUGHTER OF THE SNOWS “If you do not say something, Lucile, I shall get nervous, soon,” she ventured at last in desperation. “Has anything happened?” Lucile went over to the mirror and picked up, from among the trinkets beneath, a tiny open-work minia- ture of Frona. “This is you? How old were you?” “Sixteen.” “A sylph, but a cold northern one.” “The blood warms late with us,” Frona reproved; “but is »y “None the less warm for that,” Lucile laughed. “And how old are you now?” “Twenty.” “Twenty,” Lucile repeated, slowly. “Twenty,” and resumed her seat. “You are twenty. And I am twenty-four.” - “So little difference as that l” “But our blood warms early.” Lucile voiced her reproach across the unfathomable gulf which four years could not plumb. Frona could hardly hide her vexation. Lucile went over and looked at the miniature again and returned. “What do you think of love?” she asked abruptly, her face softening unheralded into a smile. “Love?” the girl quavered. “Yes, love. What do you know about it? What do you think of it?” A flood of definitions, glowing and rosy, sped to her tongue, but Frona swept them aside and answered, “Love is immolation.” “Very good—sacrifice. And, now, does it pay?” “Yes, it pays. Of course it pays. Who can doubt it?” Lucile's eyes twinkled amusedly. I92 A DAUGHTER OF THE SNOWS “No,” Lucile lied, swallowing her astonishment. “I had not thought that any action of his would affect you. I knew you were too great for that. But—have you considered me?” Frona caught her breath for a moment. Then she straightened out her arms to hold the man in challenge to the arms of Lucile. “Your father over again!” Lucile exclaimed. “Oh, you impossible Welses” “But he is not worthy of you, Frona Welse,” she continued; “ of me, yes. He is not a nice man, a great man, nor a good. His love cannot match with yours. Bah! He does not possess love; passion, of one sort and another, is the best he may lay claim to. That you do not want. It is all, at the best, he can give you. And you, pray what may you give him? ..Yourself? A prodigious waste! But your father's yellow 33 “Don’t go on, or I shall refuse to listen. It is wrong of you.” So Frona made her cease, and then, with bold inconsistency, “And what may the woman Lucile give him P” “Some few wild moments,” was the prompt re- sponse; “a burning burst of happiness, and the regrets of hell—which latter he deserves, as do I. So the balance is maintained, and all is well.” “But—but—” “For there is a devil in him,” she held on, “a most alluring devil, which delights me, on my soul it does, and which, pray God, Frona, you may never know. For you have no devil; mine matches his and mates. I am free to confess that the whole thing is only an attraction. There is nothing permanent about him, nor I95 A DAUGHTER OF THE SNOWS about me. And there's the beauty, the balance is pre- served.” Frona lay back in her chair and lazily regarded her visitor. Lucile waited for her to speak. It was very quiet. “Well?” Lucile at last demanded, in a low, curious tone, at the same time rising to slip into her parka. “Nothing. I was only waiting.” “I am done.” “Then let me say that I do not understand you,” Frona summed up, coldly. “I cannot somehow just catch your motive. There is a flat ring to what you have said. However, of this I am sure: for some unaccountable reason you have been untrue to your- self to-day. Do not ask me, for, as I said before, I do not know where or how; yet I am none the less convinced. This I do know, you are not the Lucile I met by the wood trail across the river. That was the true Lucile, little though I saw of her. The woman who is here to-day is a strange woman. I do not know her. Sometimes it has seemed she was Lucile, but rarely. This woman has lied, lied to me, and lied to me about herself. As to what she said of the man, at the worst that is merely an opinion. It may be she has lied about him likewise. The chance is large that she has. What do you think about it?” “That you are a very clever girl, Frona. That vou speak sometimes more truly than you know, and that at others you are blinder than you dream.” “There is something I could love in you, but you have hidden it away so that I cannot find it.” Lucile's lips trembled on the verge of speech. But she settled her parka about her and turned to go. 196 A DAUGHTER OF THE SNOWS “I should say so. And you understand. It's easy to see, Matt, you've had some experience in your time.” “In me time? I'll have ye know I'm not too old to still enjoy a bit iv a fling.” “Certainly, certainly. One can read it in your eyes. The warm heart and the roving eye, Matt!” He slapped his visitor on the shoulder with a hearty laugh. “An' I've none the best iv ye, Vincent. 'Tis a wicked lad ye are, with a takin' way with the ladies— as plain as the nose on yer face. Manny's the idle kiss ye've given, an’ mannv's the heart ye’ve broke. But, Vincent, bye, did ye iver know the rale thing?” “How do you mean?” “The rale thing, the rale thing—tl.at is—well, have ye been iver a father?” St. Vincent shook his head. “And niver have I. But have ye felt the love iv a father, thin P” “I hardly know. I don't think so.” “Well, I have. An' it's the rale thing, I'll tell ye. If iver a man suckled a child, I did, or the next door to it. A girl child at that, an’ she's woman grown, now, an’ if the thing is possible, I love her more than her own blood-father. Bad luck, exciptin' her, there was niver but one woman I loved, an’ that woman had mated beforetime. No. a soul did Ibrathe a word to, trust me, nor even herself. But she died, God's love be with her.” His chin went down upon his chest and he quested back to a flaxen-haired Saxon woman, strayed like a bit of sunshine into the log store by the Dyea River. He looked up suddenly, and caught St. Vincent's stare bent blankly to the floor as he mused on other things. 198 A DAUGHTER OF THE SNOWS “A truce to foolishness, Vincent.” The correspondent returned to himself with an effort and found the Irishman's small blue eyes boring into him. “Are ye a brave man, Vincent?” For a second's space they searched each other's souls. And in that space Matt could have sworn he saw the faintest possible flicker or flutter in the man's eyes. He brought his fist down on the table with a tri- umphant crash. “By God, yer not!” The correspondent pulled the tobacco jug over to him and rolled a cigarette. He rolled it carefully, the delicate rice paper crisping in his hand without a tremor; but all the while a red tide mounting up from beneath the collar of his shirt, deepening in the hol- lows of the cheeks and thinning against the cheek- bones above, creeping, spreading, till all his face was aflame. “”Tis good. An’ likely it saves me fingers a dirty job. Vincent, man, the girl child which is woman grown slapes in Dawson this night. God help us, you an’ me, but we'll niver hit again the pillow as clane an' pure as shel Vincent, a word to the wise: ye’ll niver lay holy hand or otherwise upon her.” The devil, which Lucile had proclaimed, began to quicken, a fuming, fretting, irrational devil. “I do not like ye. I kape me raysons to meself. It is sufficient. But take this to heart, an’ take it well: should ye be mad enough to make her yer wife, iv that damned day ye'll niver see the inding, nor lay eye upon the bridal bed. Why, man, I cud bate ye to death with me two fists if need be. But it's to be hoped I'll do a nater job. Rest aisy. I promise ye.” I99 CHAPTER XX WHERE nature shows the rough hand, the sons of men are apt to respond with kindred roughness. The amenities of life spring up only in mellow lands, where the sun is warm and the earth fat. The damp and soggy climate of Britain drives men to strong drink; the rosy Orient lures to the dream splendors of the lotus. The big-bodied, white-skinned northern dweller, rude and ferocious, bellows his anger un- couthly and drives a gross fist into the face of his foe. The supple south-sojourner, silken of smile and lazy of gesture, waits, and does his work from behind, when no man looketh, gracefully and without offence. Their ends are one; the difference lies in their ways, and therein the climate, and the cumulative effect thereof, is the determining factor. Both are sinners, as men born of women have ever been; but the one does his sin openly, in the clear sight of God; the other—as though God could not see—veils his iniquity with shimmering fancies, hiding it like it were some splendid mystery. These be the ways of men, each as the sun shines upon him and the wind blows against him, according to his kind, and the seed of his father, and the milk of his mother. Each is the resultant of many forces which go to make a pressure mightier than he, and which moulds him in the predestined shape. But, with sound legs under him, he may run away, and meet 2OI A DAUGHTER OF THE SNOWS with a new pressure. He may continue running, each new pressure prodding him as he goes, until he dies, and his final form will be that predestined of the many pressures. An exchange of cradle-babes, and the base-born slave may wear the purple imperially, and the royal infant begs an alms as wheedlingly or cringe to the lash as abjectly as his meanest subject. A Chesterfield, with an empty belly, chancing upon good fare, will gorge as faithfully as the swine in the next sty. And an Epicurus, in the dirt-igloo of the Eski- mos, will wax eloquent over the whale oil and walrus blubber, or die. Thus, in the young Northland, frosty and grim and menacing, men stripped off the sloth of the south and gave battle greatly. And they stripped likewise much of the veneer of civilization—all of its follies, most of its foibles, and perhaps a few of its virtues. Maybe so; but they reserved the great traditions and at least lived frankly, laughed honestly, and looked one another in the eyes. And so it is not well for women, born south of fifty- three and reared gently, to knock loosely about the Northland, unless they be great of heart. They may be soft and tender and sensitive, possessed of eyes which have not lost the lustre and the wonder, and of ears used only to sweet sounds; but if their philoso- phy is sane and stable, large enough to understand and to forgive, they will come to no harm and attain comprehension. If not, they will see things and hear things which hurt, and they will suffer greatly, and lose faith in man—which is the greatest evil that may happen them. Such should be sedulously cherished, and it were well to depute this to their men-folk, the 2O2 A DAUGHTER OF THE SNOWS “Th—th—that's all very well,” Bishop spluttered, wrestling with an obstructing piece of ice until it was wrenched from his upper lip and slammed stoveward with a bang. “How cold do you make it, Del? Fifty?” “Fifty?” the pocket-miner demanded with unutter- able scorn, wiping his face. “Quicksilver's been solid for hours, and it's been gittin' colder an' colder ever since. Fifty? I'll bet my new mittens against your old moccasins that it ain't a notch below seventy.” “Think So?” “D'ye want to bet?” Vance nodded laughingly. “Centigrade or Fahrenheit?” Bishop asked, sud- denly suspicious. “Oh, well, if you want my old moccasins so badly,” Vance rejoined, feigning to be hurt by the other's lack of faith, “why, you can have them without betting.” Del snorted and flung himself down on the opposite bunk. “Think yer funny, don't you?” No answer forthcoming, he deemed the retort conclusive, rolled over, and fell to studying the moss chinks. Fifteen minutes of this diversion sufficed. “Play you a rubber of crib before bed,” he challenged across to the other bunk. “I’ll go you.” Corliss got up, stretched, and moved the kerosene lamp from the shelf to the table. “Think it will hold out?” he asked, surveying the oil-level through the cheap glass. Bishop threw down the crib-board and cards, and measured the contents of the lamp with his eye. “For- got to fill it, didn't I? Too late now. Do it to-morrow. It'll last the rubber out, sure.” 2O4 A DAUGHTER OF THE SNOWS Corliss took up the cards, but paused in the shuffling. “We’ve a big trip before us, Del, about a month from now, the middle of March as near as I can plan it, up the Stuart River to McQuestion; up McQuestion and back again down the Mayo; then across country to Mazy May, winding up at Henderson Creek 23. “On the Indian River?” “No,” Corliss replied, as he dealt the hands; “just below where the Stuart taps the Yukon. And then back to Dawson before the ice breaks.” The pocket-miner's eyes sparkled. “Keep us hus- tlin'; but, say, it's a trip, isn't it! Hunch?” “I’ve received word from the Parker outfit on the Mayo, and McPherson isn't asleep on Henderson— you don't know him. They're keeping quiet, and of course one can't tell, but . . . .” Bishop nodded his head sagely, while Corliss turned the trump he had cut. A sure vision of a “twenty- four” hand was dazzling him, when there was a sound of voices without and the door shook to a heavy knock. “Come in 1” he bawled. “An' don't make such a row about it! Look at that”—to Corliss, at the same time facing his hand—“fifteen-eight, fifteen-sixteen, and eight are twenty-four. Just my luck!” Corliss started swiftly to his feet. Bishop jerked his head about. Two women and a man had staggered clumsily in through the door, and were standing just inside, momentarily blinded by the light. “By all the Prophets' Cornell!” The pocket-miner wrung the man's hand and led him forward. “You recollect Cornell, Corliss? Jake Cornell, Thirty-Seven and a Half Eldorado.” “How could I forget?” the engineer acknowledged 205 A DAUGHTER OF THE SNOWS warmly, shaking his hand. “That was a miserable night you put us up last fall, about as miserable as the moose-steak was good that you gave us for breakfast.” Jake Cornell, hirsute and cadaverous of aspect, nodded his head with emphasis and deposited a cor- pulent demijohn on the table. Again he nodded his head, and glared wildly about him. The stove caught his eye and he strode over to it, lifted a lid, and spat out a mouthful of amber-colored juice. Another stride and he was back. “’Course I recollect the night,” he rumbled, the ice clattering from his hairy jaws. “And I'm danged glad to see you, that's a fact.” He seemed suddenly to remember himself, and added a little sheepishly, “The fact is, we're all danged glad to see you, ain't we, girls?” He twisted his head about and nodded his com- panions up. “Blanche, my dear, Mr. Corliss—hem— it gives me . . . . hem . . . . it gives me pleasure to make you acquainted. Cariboo Blanche, sir, Cariboo Blanche.” “Pleased to meet you.” Cariboo Blanche put out a frank hand and looked him over keenly. She was a fair-featured, blondish woman, originally not unpleas- ing of appearance, but now with lines all deepened and hardened as on the faces of men who have endured much weather-beat. Congratulating himself upon his social proficiency, Jake Cornell cleared his throat and marshalled the second woman to the front. “Mr. Corliss, the Virgin; I make you both acquainted. Hem!” in response to the query in Vance's eyes—“Yes, the Virgin. That's all, just the Virgin.” She smiled and bowed, but did not shake hands. 206 A DAUGHTER OF THE SNOWS “A toff” was her secret comment upon the engineer; and from her limited experience she had been led to understand that it was not good form among “toffs" to shake hands. Corliss fumbled his hand, then bowed, and looked at her curiously. She was a pretty, low-browed creature; darkly pretty, with a well-favored body, and for all that the type was mean, he could not escape the charm of her over-brimming vitality. She seemed bursting with it, and every quick, spontaneous movement ap- peared to spring from very excess of red blood and superabundant energy. “Pretty healthy proposition, ain't she?” Jake Cornell demanded, following his host's gaze with approval. “None o' your gammon, Jake,” the Virgin snapped back, with lip curled contemptuously for Vance's espe- cial benefit. “I fancy it'd be more in keeping if you'd look to pore Blanche, there.” “Fact is, we're plum ding dong played out,” Jake said. “An' Blanche went through the ice just down the trail, and her feet's like to freezin’.” Blanche smiled as Corliss piloted her to a stool by the fire, and her stern mouth gave no indication of the pain she was suffering. He turned away when the Virgin addressed herself to removing the wet foot- gear, while Bishop went rummaging for socks and moccasins. “Didn't go in more'n to the ankles,” Cornell ex- plained confidentially; “but that's plenty a night like this.” Corliss agreed with a nod of the head. “Spotted your light, and—hem—and so we come. Don't mind, do you?” 207 A DAUGHTER OF THE SNOWS was learning life, was adding to his sum of human generalizations. The phrase was hers, and he rolled it over a couple of times. Then, again, her engagement with St. Vincent crept into his thought, and he charmed the Virgin by asking her to sing. But she was coy, and only after Bishop had rendered the sev- eral score stanzas of “Flying Cloud” did she comply. Her voice, in a weakly way, probably registered an octave and a half; below that point it underwent strange metamorphoses, while on the upper levels it was devious and rickety. Nevertheless she sang “Take Back Your Gold” with touching effect, which brought a fiery moisture into the eyes of the Fraction King, who listened greedily, for the time being ex- periencing unwonted ethical yearnings. The applause was generous, followed immediately by Bishop, who toasted the singer as the “Enchantress of Bow Bells,” to the reverberating “bottoms up !” of Jake Cornell. Two hours later, Frona Welse rapped. It was a sharp, insistent rap, penetrating the din within and bringing Corliss to the door. She gave a glad little cry when she saw who it was. “Oh! it is you, Vance! I didn't know you lived here.” He shook hands and blocked the doorway with his body. Behind him the Virgin was laughing and Jake Cornell roaring: “Oh, cable this message along the track: The Prod's out West, but he's coming back; Put plenty of veal for one on the rack, Trolla lala, la la la, la laſ" 2IO A DAUGHTER OF THE SNOWS “What is it?” Vance questioned. “Anything up?” “I think you might ask me in.” There was a fiint of reproach in Frona's voice, and of haste. “I blun- dered through the ice, and my feet are freezing.” “O Gawd!” in the exuberant tones of the Virgin, came whirling over Vance's shoulder, and the voices of Blanche and Bishop joining in a laugh against Cor- nell, and that worthy's vociferous protestations. It seemed to him that all the blood of his body had rushed into his face. “But you can't come in, Frona. Don't you hear them?” “But I must,” she insisted. “My feet are freezing.” With a gesture of resignation he stepped aside and closed the door after her. Coming suddenly in from the darkness, she hesitated a moment, but in that mo- ment recovered her sight and took in the scene. The air was thick with tobacco smoke, and the odor of it, in the close room, was sickening to one fresh from the pure outside. On the table a column of steam was ascending from the big mixing-pan. The Virgin, fleeing before Cornell, was defending herself with a long mustard-spoon. Evading him and watching her chance, she continually daubed his nose and cheeks with the yellow smear. Blanche had twisted about from the stove to see the fun, and Del Bishop, with a mug at rest half-way to his lips, was applauding the successive strokes. The faces of all were flushed. Vance leaned nervelessly against the door. The whole situation seemed so unthinkably impossible. An insane desire to laugh came over him, which resolved itself into a coughing fit. But Frona, realizing her own pressing need by the growing absence of sensa- tion in her feet, stepped forward. 2II A DAUGHTER OF THE SNOWS “Hello, Del !” she called. The mirth froze on his face at the familiar sound, and he slowly and unwilling turned his head to meet her. She had slipped the hood of her parka back, and her face, outlined against the dark fur, rosy with the cold and bright, was like a shaft of the sun shot into the murk of a boozing-ken. They all knew her, for who did not know Jacob Welse's daughter? The Vir- gin dropped the mustard-spoon with a startled shriek, while Cornell, passing a dazed hand across his yellow markings and consummating the general smear, col- lapsed on the nearest stool. Cariboo Blanche alone retained her self-possession, and laughed softly. Bishop managed to articulate “Hello!” but was unable to stave off the silence which settled down. Frona waited a second, and then said, “Good-even- ing, all.” “This way.” Vance had recovered himself, and seated her by the stove opposite Blanche. “Better get your things off quickly, and be careful of the heat. I'll see what I can find for you.” “Some cold water, please,” she asked. “It will take the frost out. Del will get it.” “I hope it is not serious?” “No.” She shook her head and smiled up to him, at the same time working away at her ice-coated moc- casins. “There hasn't been time for more than sur- face-freezing. At the worst the skin will peel off.” An unearthly silence brooded in the cabin, broken only by Bishop filling a basin from the water-bucket, and by Corliss seeking out his smallest and daintiest house-moccasins and his warmest socks. Frona, rubbing her feet vigorously, paused and 2I2 A DAUGHTER OF THE SNOWS looked up. “Don’t let me chill the festivities just because I’m cold,” she laughed. “Please go on.” Jake Cornell straightened up and cleared his throat inanely, and the Virgin looked over-dignified; but Blanche came over and took the towel out of Frona's hands. “I wet my feet in the same place,” she said, kneel- ing down and bringing a glow to the frosted feet. “I suppose you can manage some sort of a fit with them. Here!” Vance tossed over the house-mocca- sins and woollen wrappings, which the two women, with low laughs and confidential undertones, proceeded to utilize. “But what in the world were you doing on trail, alone, at this time of night?” Vance asked. In his heart he was marvelling at the coolness and pluck with which she was carrying off the situation. “I know beforehand that you will censure me,” she replied, helping Blanche arrange the wet gear over the fire. “I was at Mrs. Stanton's; but first, you must know, Miss Mortimer and I are staying at the Pently's for a week. Now, to start fresh again. I intended to leave Mrs. Stanton's before dark; but her baby got into the kerosene, her husband had gone down to Daw- son, and—well, we weren't sure of the baby up to half an hour ago. She wouldn't hear of me returning alone; but there was nothing to fear; only I had not expected soft ice in such a snap.” “How'd you fix the kid?” Del asked, intent on keep- ing the talk going now that it had started. “Chewing tobacco.” And when the laughter had subsided, she went on: “There wasn't any mustard, and it was the best I could think of. Besides, Matt y 2I3 A DAUGHTER OF THE SNOWS McCarthy saved my life with it once, down at Dyea, when I had the croup. But you were singing when I came in,” she suggested. “Do go on.” Jake Cornell hawed prodigiously. “And I got done.” “Then you, Del. Sing ‘Flying Cloud’ as you used to coming down the river.” “Oh, 'e 'as 1” said the Virgin. “Then you sing. I am sure you do.” She smiled into the Virgin's eyes, and that lady delivered herself of a coster ballad with more art than she was aware. The chill of Frona's advent was quickly dissipated, and song and toast and merriment went round again. Nor was Frona above touching lips to the jelly glass in fellowship; and she con- tributed her quota by singing “Annie Laurie” and “Ben Bolt.” Also, but privily, she watched the drink saturating the besotted souls of Cornell and the Virgin. It was an experience, and she was glad of it, though sorry in a way for Corliss, who played the host lamely. But he had little need of pity. “Any other woman—” he said to himself a score of times, look- ing at Frona and trying to picture numerous women he had known by his mother's teapot, knocking at the door and coming in as Frona had done. Then, again, it was only yesterday that it would have hurt him, Blanche's rubbing her feet; but now he gloried in Frona's permitting it, and his heart went out in a more kindly way to Blanche. Perhaps it was the elevation of the liquor, but he seemed to discover new virtues in her rugged face. Frona had put on her dried moccasins and risen to 2I4 A DAUGHTER OF THE SNOWS her feet, and was listening patiently to Jake Cornell, who hiccoughed a last incoherent toast. “To the hic—man,” he rumbled, cavernously, “the man—hic—that made—that made—” “The blessed country,” volunteered the Virgin. “True, my dear—hic. To the man that made the blessed country. To-hic—to Jacob Welse!” “And a rider!” Blanche cried. “To Jacob Welse's daughter!” “Ay! Standing ! And bottoms up!” “Oh! she's a jolly good fellow !” Del led off, the drink ruddying his cheek. “I’d like to shake hands with you, just once,” Blanche said in a low voice, while the rest were cho- rusing. Frona slipped her mitten, which she had already put on, and the pressure was firm between them. “No,” she said to Corliss, who had put on his cap and was tying the ear-flaps; “Blanche tells me the Pently's are only half a mile from here. The trail is straight. I'll not hear of any one accompanying me. “No!” This time she spoke so authoritatively that he tossed his cap into the bunk. “Good-night, all!” she called, sweeping the roisterers with a smile. But Corliss saw her to the door and stepped outside. She glanced up to him. Her hood was pulled only partly up, and her face shone alluringly under the starlight. “I—Frona . . . . I wish 37 “Don’t be alarmed,” she whispered. “I’ll not tell on you, Vance.” He saw the mocking glint in her eyes, but tried to go on. “I wish to explain just how 32 215 A DAUGHTER OF THE SNOWS “No need. I understand. But at the same time I must confess I do not particularly admire your taste—” “Frona!” The evident pain in his voice reached her. “Oh, you big foolish ſ” she laughed. “Don’t I know? Didn't Blanche tell me she wet her feet?” Corliss bowed his head. “Truly, Frona, you are the most consistent woman I ever met. Furthermore,” with a straightening of his form and a dominant asser- tion in his voice, “this is not the last.” She tried to stop him, but he continued. “I feel, I know that things will turn out differently. To fling your own words back at you, all the factors have not been taken into consideration. As for St. Vincent . . . I’ll have you yet. For that matter, now could not be too soon!” He flashed out hungry arms to her, but she read quicker than he moved, and, laughing, eluded him and ran lightly down the trail. “Come back, Fronal Come back!” he called. “I am sorry.” “No, you're not,” came the answer. “And I’d be sorry if you were. Good-night.” He watched her merge into the shadows, then en- tered the cabin. He had utterly forgotten the scene within, and at the first glance it startled him. Cariboo Blanche was crying softly to herself. Her eyes were luminous and moist, and, as he looked, a lone tear stole down her cheek. Bishop's face had gone serious. The Virgin had sprawled head and shoulders on the table, amid overturned mugs and dripping lees, and Cornell was tittubating over her, hiccoughing, and repeating 216 A DAUGHTER OF THE SNOWS with the shadow of a forgiving smile, as she passed Out. “You’re a toff That's wot you are, a bloomin' toff" the Virgin howled back as he shut the door. He looked blankly at Del Bishop and surveyed the sodden confusion on the table. Then he walked over and threw himself down on his bunk. Bishop leaned an elbow on the table and pulled at his wheezy pipe. The lamp smoked, flickered, and went out; but still he remained, filling his pipe again and again and striking endless matches. “Del! Are you awake?” Corliss called at last. Del grunted. “I was a cur to turn them out into the snow. I am ashamed.” “Sure,” was the affirmation. A long silence followed. Del knocked the ashes out and raised up. “’Sleep?” he called. There was no reply, and he walked to the bunk softly and pulled the blankets over the engineer. 218 > CHAPTER XXI “Yes; what does it all mean?” Corliss stretched lazily, and cocked up his feet on the table. He was not especially interested, but Colonel Trethaway per- sisted in talking seriously. “That's it! The very thing — the old and ever young demand which man slaps into the face of the universe.” The colonel searched among the scraps in his note-book. “See,” holding up a soiled slip of typed paper, “I copied this out years ago. Listen. “What a monstrous spectre is this man, this disease of the agglutinated dust, lifting alternate feet or lying drugged with slumber; killing, feeding, grow- ing, bringing forth small copies of himself; grown up with hair like grass, fitted with eyes that glitter in his face; a thing to set children screaming. Poor soul, here for so little, cast among so many hardships, filled with desires so incommensurate and so inconsistent; savagely surrounded, savagely descended, irremediably condemned to prey upon his fellow-lives. Infinitely childish, often admirably valiant, often touchingly kind; sitting down to debate of right or wrong and the attributes of the deity; rising up to battle for an egg or die for an idea!' “And all to what end?” he demanded, hotly, throw- ing down the paper, “this disease of the agglutinated dust?” 219 A DAUGHTER OF THE SNOWS Corliss yawned in reply. He had been on trail all day and was yearning for between-blankets. “Here am I, Colonel Trethaway, modestly along in years, fairly well preserved, a place in the community, a comfortable bank account, no need to ever exert myself again, yet enduring life bleakly and working ridiculously with a zest worthy of a man half my years. And to what end? I can only eat so much, smoke so much, sleep so much, and this tail-dump of earth men call Alaska is the worst of all possible places in the matter of grub, tobacco, and blankets.” “But it is the living strenuously which holds you,” Corliss interjected. “Frona's philosophy,” the colonel sneered. “And my philosophy, and yours.” “And of the agglutinated dust—” “Which is quickened with a passion you do not take into account, the passion of duty, of race, of God ''' “And the compensation?” Trethaway demanded. “Each breath you draw. The Mayfly lives an hour.” “I don’t see it.” “Blood and sweat! Blood and sweat! You cried that after the rough and tumble in the Opera House, and every word of it was receipt in full.” “Frona's philosophy.” “And yours and mine.” The colonel threw up his shoulders, and after a pause confessed. “You see, try as I will, I can't make a pessimist out of myself. We are all compensated, and I more fully than most men. What end? I asked, and the answer forthcame: Since the ultimate end is 220 A DAUGHTER OF THE SNOWS beyond us, then the immediate. More compensation, here and now !” “Quite hedonistic.” “And rational. I shall look to it at once. I can buy grub and blankets for a score; I can eat and sleep for only one; ergo, why not for two?” Corliss took his feet down and sat up. “In other words?” “I shall get married, and—give the community a shock. Communities like shocks. That's one of their compensations for being agglutinative.” “I can't think of but one woman,” Corliss essayed tentatively, putting out his hand. Trethaway shook it slowly. “It is she.” Corliss let go, and misgiving shot into his face. “But St. Vincent?” “Is your problem, not mine.” “Then Lucile—?” “Certainly not. She played a quixotic little game of her own and botched it beautifully.” “I—I do not undcrstand.” Corliss brushed his brows in a dazed sort of way. Trethaway parted his lips in a superior smile. “It is not necessary that you should. The question is, Will you stand up with me?” “Surely. But what a confoundedly long way around you took. It is not your usual method.” “Nor was it with her,” the colonel declared, twisting his moustache proudly. A captain of the North-West Mounted Police, by virtue of his magisterial office, may perform marriages in time of stress as well as execute exemplary justice. 22I A DAUGHTER OF THE SNOWS So Captain Alexander received a call from Colonel Trethaway, and after he left jotted down an engage- ment for the next morning. Then the impending groom went to see Frona. Lucile did not make the request, he hastened to explain, but—well, the fact was she did not know any women, and, furthermore, he (the colonel) knew whom Lucile would like to ask, did she dare. So he did it upon his own responsibility. And coming as a surprise, he knew it would be a great joy to her. Frona was taken aback by the suddenness of it. Only the other day, it was, that Lucile had made a plea to her for St. Vincent, and now it was Colonel Treth- away! True, there had been a false quantity some- where, but now it seemed doubly false. Could it be, after all, that Lucile was mercenary? These thoughts crowded upon her swiftly, with the colonel anxiously watching her face the while. She knew she must answer quickly, yet was distracted by an involuntary admiration for his bravery. So she followed, perforce, the lead of her heart, and consented. Yet the whole thing was rather strained when the four of them came together, next day, in Captain Alex- ander's private office. There was a gloomy chill about it. Lucile seemed ready to cry, and showed a repressed perturbation quite unexpected of her; while, try as she would, Frona could not call upon her usual sympathy to drive away the coldness which obtruded intangibly between them. This, in turn, had a consequent effect on Vance, and gave a certain distance to his manner which forced him out of touch even with the colonel. Colonel Trethaway seemed to have thrown twenty years off his erect shoulders, and the discrepancy in the 222 A DAUGHTER OF THE SNOWS ! match which Frona had felt vanished as she looked at him. “He has lived the years well,” she thought, and prompted mysteriously, almost with vague apprehen- sion, she turned her eyes to Corliss. But if the groom had thrown off twenty years, Vance was not a whit behind. Since their last meeting he had sacrificed his brown moustache to the frost, and his smooth face, smitten with health and vigor, looked uncommonly boyish; and yet, withal, the naked upper lip advertised a stiffness and resolution hitherto concealed. Further- more, his features portrayed a growth, and his eyes, which had been softly firm, were now firm with the added harshness or hardness which is bred of coping with things and coping quickly,–the stamp of execu- tiveness which is pressed upon men who do, and upon all men who do, whether they drive dogs, buck the sea, or dictate the policies of empires. When the simple ceremony was over, Frona kissed Lucile; but Lucile felt that there was a subtle some- thing wanting, and her eyes filled with unshed tears. Trethaway, who had felt the aloofness from the start, caught an opportunity with Frona while Captain Alex- ander and Corliss were being pleasant to Mrs. Tretha- way. “What's the matter, Frona” the colonel demanded, bluntly. “I hope you did not come under protest. I am sorry, not for you, because lack of frankness de- serves nothing, but for Lucile. It is not fair to her.” “There has been a lack of frankness throughout.” Her voice trembled. “I tried my best,--I thought I could do better, but I cannot feign what I do not feel. I am sorry, but I . . . . I am disappointed. No, I cannot explain, and to you least of all.” 223 A DAUGHTER OF THE SNOWS “Let’s be above-board, Frona. St. Vincent's con- cerned?” She nodded. “And I can put my hand right on the spot. First place,” he looked to the side and saw Lucile steal- ing an anxious glance to him, “first place, only the other day she gave you a song about St. Vincent. Second place, and therefore, you think her heart's not in this present proposition; that she doesn't care a rap for me; in short, that she's marrying me for reinstate- ment and spoils. Isn't that it?” “And isn't it enough? Oh, I am disappointed, Colonel Trethaway, grievously, in her, in you, in my- self.” “Don’t be a fool! I like you too well to see you make yourself one. The play's been too quick, that is all. Your eye lost it. Listen. We've kept it quiet, but she's in with the elect on French Hill. Her claim's prospected the richest of the outfit. Present indication half a million at least. In her own name, no strings attached. Couldn't she take that and go anywhere in the world and reinstate herself? And for that matter, you might presume that I am marrying her for spoils. Frona, she cares for me, and in your ear, she's too good for me. My hope is that the future will make up. But never mind that—haven't got the time now. “You consider her affection sudden, eh? Let me tell You we’ve been growing into each other from the time I came into the country, and with our eyes open. St. Vincent? Pshawl I knew it all the time. She got it into her head that the whole of him wasn't worth a little finger of you, and she tried to break things up. You'll never know how she worked with him. I told 224 A DAUGHTER OF THE SNOWS her she didn't know the Welse, and she said so, too, after. So there it is; take it or leave it.” “But what do you think about St. Vincent?” “What I think is neither here nor there; but I’ll tell you honestly that I back her judgment. But that's not the point. What are you going to do about it? about her? now P” She did not answer, but went back to the waiting group. Lucile saw her coming and watched her face. “He’s been telling you P” “That I am a fool,” Frona answered. “And I think I am.” And with a smile, “I take it on faith that I am, anyway. I—I can't reason it out just now, but. . . .” Captain Alexander discovered a prenuptial joke just about then, and led the way over to the stove to crack it upon the colonel, and Vance went along to see fair play. “It's the first time,” Lucile was saying, “and it means more to me, so much more, than to . . . most women. I am afraid. It is a terrible thing for me to do. But I do love him, I do!” And when the joke had been duly digested and they came back, she was sobbing, “Dear, dear Frona.” It was just the moment, better than he could have chosen; and capped and mittened, without knocking, Jacob Welse came in. “The uninvited guest,” was his greeting. “Is it all over? So?” And he swallowed Lucile up in his huge bearskin. “Colonel, your hand, and your pardon for my intruding, and your regrets for not giving me the word. Come, out with them! Hello, Corliss' Captain Alexander, a good day.” I5 225 A DAUGHTER OF THE SNOWS “What have I done?” Frona wailed, received the bear-hug, and managed to press his hand till it almost hurt. “Had to back the game,” he whispered; and this time his hand did hurt. “Now, colonel, I don't know what your plans are, and I don't care. Call them off. I’ve got a little spread down to the house, and the only honest case of champagne this side of Circle. Of course, you're coming, Corliss, and ” His eye roved past Cap- tain Alexander with hardly a pause. “Of course,” came the answer like a flash, though the Chief Magistrate of the Northwest had had time to canvass the possible results of such unofficial action. “Got a hack?” Jacob Welse laughed and held up a moccasined foot. “Walking be—chucked 1” The captain started im- pulsively towards the door. “I’ll have the sleds up before you're ready. Three of them, and bells galore!” So Trethaway's forecast was correct, and Dawson vindicated its agglutinativeness by rubbing its eyes when three sleds, with three scarlet-tuniced policemen swinging the whips, tore down its main street; and it rubbed its eyes again when it saw the occupants thereof. “We shall live quietly,” Lucile told Frona. “The Klondike is not all the world, and the best is yet to come.” But Jacob Welse said otherwise. “We’ve got to make this thing go,” he said to Captain Alexander, and Captain Alexander said that he was unaccustomed to backing out. 226 A DAUGHTER OF THE SNOWS Mrs. Schoville emitted preliminary thunders, mar- shalled the other women, and became chronically seis- mic and unsafe. Lucile went nowhere save to Frona's. But Jacob Welse, who rarely went anywhere, was often to be found by Colonel Trethaway's fireside, and not only was he to be found there, but he usually brought some- body along. “Anything on hand this evening?” he was wont to say on casual meeting. “No? Then come along with me.” Sometimes he said it with lamb- like innocence, sometimes with a challenge brooding under his bushy brows, and rarely did he fail to get his man. These men had wives, and thus were the germs of dissolution sown in the ranks of the opposition. Then, again, at Colonel Trethaway's there was something to be found besides weak tea and small talk; and the correspondents, engineers, and gentlemen rovers kept the trail well packed in that direction, though it was the Kings, to a man, who first broke the way. So the Trethaway cabin became the centre of things, and, backed commercially, financially, and offi- cially, it could not fail to succeed socially. The only bad effect of all this was to make the lives of Mrs. Schoville and divers others of her sex more monotonous, and to cause them to lose faith in certain hoary and inconsequent maxims. Furthermore, Cap- tain Alexander, as highest official, was a power in the land, and Jacob Welse was the Company, and there was a superstition extant concerning the unwisdom of being on indifferent terms with the Company. And the time was not long till probably a bare half-dozen remained in outer cold, and they were considered a warped lot, anyway. 227 CHAPTER XXII QUITE an exodus took place in Dawson in the spring. Men, because they had made stakes, and other men, because they had made none, bought up the available dogs and rushed out for Dyea over the last ice. Inci- dentally, it was discovered that Dave Harney possessed most of these dogs. “Going out?” Jacob Welse asked him on a day when the meridian sun for the first time felt faintly warm to the naked skin. “Well, I calkilate not. I'm clearin’ three dollars a pair on the moccasins I cornered, to say nothing but saw wood on the boots. Say, Welse, not that my nose is out of joint, but you jest cinched me everlastin' on sugar, didn't you?” Jacob Welse smiled. “And by the Jimcracky I'm squared Got any rub- ber boots?” “No; went out of stock early in the winter.” Dave snickered slowly. “And I'm the pertickler party that hocus-pocused 'em.” “Not you. I gave special orders to the clerks. They weren't sold in lots.” “No more they wa'n't. One man to the pair and one pair to the man, and a couple of hundred of them; but it was my dust they chucked into the scales an’ nobody else's. Drink? Don't mind. Easy! Put up 228 A DAUGHTER OF THE SNOWS your sack. Call it rebate, for I kin afford it. . Goin' out? Not this year, I guess. Wash-up's comin’.” A strike on Henderson the middle of April, which promised to be sensational, drew St. Vincent to Stew- art River. And a little later, Jacob Welse, interested on Gallagher Gulch and with an eye riveted on the copper mines of White River, went up into the same district, and with him went Frona, for it was more vacation than business. In the mean time, Corliss and Bishop, who had been on trail for a month or more running over the Mayo and McQuestion Country, rounded up on the left fork of Henderson, where a block of claims waited to be surveyed. But by May, spring was so far advanced that travel on the creeks became perilous, and on the last of the thawing ice the miners travelled down to the bunch of islands below the mouth of the Stewart, where they went into temporary quarters or crowded the hospital- ity of those who possessed cabins. Corliss and Bishop located on Split-up Island (so called through the habit parties from the Outside had of dividing there and going several ways), where Tommy McPherson was comfortably situated. A couple of days later, Jacob Welse and Frona arrived from a hazardous trip out of White River, and pitched tent on the high ground at the upper end of Split-up. A few chechaquos, the first of the spring rush, strung in exhausted and went into camp against the breaking of the river. Also, there were still men going out who, barred by the rotten ice, came ashore to build poling-boats and await the break-up or to negotiate with the residents for canoes. Notably among these was the Baron Courbertin. “Ah! Excruciating ! Magnificent! Is it not?” 229 A DAUGHTER of THE SNows So Frona first ran across him on the following day. “What?” she asked, giving him her hand. “You ! You!” doffing his cap. “It is a delight!” “I am sure—” she began. “No! No!” He shook his curly mop warmly. “It is not you. See?” He turned to a Peterborough, for which McPherson had just mulcted him of thrice its value. “The canoe! Is it not—not—what you Yan- kees call—a bute?” - “Oh, the canoe,” she repeated, with a falling inflec- tion of chagrin. “No! No! Pardon" He stamped angrily upon the ground. “It is not so. It is not you. It is not the canoe. It is—ah! I have it now ! It is your promise. One day, do you not remember, at Madame Schoville's, we talked of the canoe, and of my ignorance, which was sad, and you promised, you said—” “I would give you your first lesson?” “And is it not delightful? Listen! Do you not hear? The rippling—ah! the rippling!—deep down at the heart of things! Soon will the water run free. Here is the canoel Here we meet! The first lessonſ Delightfull Delightful!” The next island below Split-up was known as Rou- beau's Island, and was separated from the former by a narrow back-channel. Here, when the bottom had about dropped out of the trail, and with the dogs swimming as often as not, arrived St. Vincent—the last man to travel the winter trail. He went into the cabin of John Borg, a taciturn, gloomy individual, prone to segregate himself from his kind. It was the mischance of St. Vincent's life that of all cabins he chose Borg's for an abiding-place against the break-up. 230 A DAUGHTER OF THE SNOWS “All right,” the man said, when questioned by him. “Throw your blankets into the corner. Bella’ll clear the litter out of the spare bunk.” Not till evening did he speak again, and then, “You’re big enough to do your own cooking. When the woman's done with the stove you can fire away.” The woman, or Bella, was a comely Indian girl, young, and the prettiest St. Vincent had run across. Instead of the customary greased swarthiness of the race, her skin was clear and of a light-bronze tone, and her features less harsh, more felicitously curved, than those common to the blood. After supper, Borg, both elbows on table and huge misshapen hands supporting chin and jaws, sat puffing stinking Siwash tobacco and staring straight before him. It would have seemed ruminative, the stare, had his eyes been softer or had he blinked; as it was, his face was set and trance-like. “Have you been in the country long?” St. Vincent asked, endeavoring to make conversation. Borg turned his sullen-black eyes upon him, and seemed to look into him and through him and beyond him, and, still regarding him, to have forgotten all about him. It was as though he pondered some great and weighty matter — probably his sins, the corre- spondent mused nervously, rolling himself a cigarette. When the yellow cube had dissipated itself in curling fragrance, and he was deliberating about rolling a sec- ond, Borg suddenly spoke. “Fifteen years,” he said, and returned to his tre- mendous cogitation. Thereat, and for half an hour thereafter, St. Vin- cent, fascinated, studied his inscrutable countenance. 23I A DAUGHTER OF THE SNOWS To begin with, it was a massive head, abnormal and top-heavy, and its only excuse for being was the huge bull-throat which supported it. It had been cast in a mould of elemental generousness, and everything about it partook of the asymmetrical crudeness of the elemental. The hair, rank of growth, thick and un- kempt, matted itself here and there into curious splotches of gray; and again, grinning at age, twisted itself into curling locks of lustreless black—locks of unusual thickness, like crooked fingers, heavy and solid. The shaggy whiskers, almost bare in places, and in others massing into bunchgrass-like clumps, were plentifully splashed with gray. They rioted monstrously over his face and fell raggedly to his chest, but failed to hide the great hollowed cheeks or the twisted mouth. The latter was thin-lipped and cruel, but cruel only in a passionless sort of way. But the forehead was the anomaly,–the anomaly required to complete the irregularity of the face. For it was a perfect forehead, full and broad, and rising superbly strong to its high dome. It was as the seat and bul- wark of some vast intelligence; omniscience might have brooded there. Bella, washing the dishes and placing them away on the shelf behind Borg's back, dropped a heavy tin cup. The cabin was very still, and the sharp rattle came without warning. On the instant, with a brute roar, the chair was overturned and Borg was on his feet, eyes blazing and face convulsed. Bella gave an inarticulate, animal-like cry of fear and cowered at his feet. St. Vincent felt his hair bristling, and an uncanny chill, like a jet of cold air, played up and down his spine. Then Borg righted the chair and sank back 232 A DAUGHTER OF THE SNOWS into his old position, chin on hands and brooding pon- derously. Not a word was spoken, and Bella went on unconcernedly with the dishes, while St. Vincent rolled a shaky cigarette and wondered if it had been a dream. Jacob Welse laughed when the correspondent told him. “Just his way,” he said; “for his ways are like his looks,—unusual. He's an unsociable beast. Been in the country more years than he can number ac- quaintances. Truth to say, I don't think he has a friend in all Alaska, not even among the Indians, and he's chummed thick with them off and on. ‘Johnny Sorehead, they call him, but it might as well be ‘Johnny Break-um-head,' for he's got a quick temper and a rough hand. Temper! Some little misunder- standing popped up between him and the agent at Arctic City. He was in the right, too, agent's mis- take, but he tabooed the Company on the spot and lived on straight meat for a year. Then I happened to run across him at Tanana Station, and after due expla- nations he consented to buy from us again.” “Got the girl from up the head-waters of the White,” Bill Brown told St. Vincent. “Welse thinks he's pioneering in that direction, but Borg could give him cards and spades on it and then win out. He's been over the ground years ago. Yes, strange sort of a chap. Wouldn't hanker to be bunk-mates with him.” But St. Vincent did not mind the eccentricities of the man, for he spent most of his time on Split-up Island with Frona and the Baron. One day, however, and innocently, he ran foul of him. Two Swedes, hunt- ing tree-squirrels from the other end of Roubeau Island, had stopped to ask for matches and to yarn a while in the warm sunshine of the clearing. St. Vin- 233 A DAUGHTER OF THE SNOWS cent and Borg were accommodating them, the latter for the most part in meditative monosyllables. Just to the rear, by the cabin-door, Bella was washing clothes. The tub was a cumbersome home-made affair, and, half-full of water, was more than a fair match for an ordinary woman. The correspondent noticed her struggling with it, and stepped back quickly to her aid. With the tub between them, they proceeded to carry it to one side in order to dump it where the ground drained from the cabin. St. Vincent slipped in the thawing snow and the soapy water splashed up. Then Bella slipped, and then they both slipped. Bella gig- gled and laughed, and St. Vincent laughed back. The spring was in the air and in their blood, and it was very good to be alive. Only a wintry heart could deny a smile on such a day. Bella slipped again, tried to recover, slipped with the other foot, and sat down ab- ruptly. Laughing gleefully, both of them, the corre- spondent caught her hands to pull her to her feet. With a bound and a bellow, Borg was upon them. Their hands were torn apart and St. Vincent thrust heavily backward. He staggered for a couple of yards and almost fell. Then the scene of the cabin was re- peated. Bella cowered and grovelled in the muck, and her lord towered wrathfully over her. “Look you,” he said in stifled gutturals, turning to St. Vincent. “You sleep in my cabin and you cook. That is enough. Let my woman alone.” Things went on after that as though nothing had happened; St. Vincent gave Bella a wide berth and seemed to have forgotten her existence. But the Swedes went back to their end of the island, laughing at the trivial happening which was destined to be significant. 234 CHAPTER XXIII SPRING, smiting with soft, warm hands, had come like a miracle, and now lingered for a dreamy spell before bursting into full-blown summer. The snow had left the bottoms and valleys and nestled only on the north slopes of the ice-scarred ridges. The glacial drip was already in evidence, and every creek in roar- ing spate. Each day the sun rose earlier and stayed later. It was now chill day by three o'clock and mel- low twilight at nine. Soon a golden circle would be drawn around the sky, and deep midnight become bright as high noon. The willows and aspens had long since budded, and were now decking themselves in liveries of fresh young green, and the sap was rising in the pines. Mother nature had heaved her waking sigh and gone about her brief business. Crickets sang of nights in the stilly cabins, and in the sunshine mosquitoes crept from out hollow logs and snug crevices among the rocks,—big, noisy, harmless fellows, that had procreated the year gone, lain frozen through the winter, and were now rejuvenated to buzz through swift senility to second death. All sorts of creeping, crawling, fluttering life came forth from the warming earth and hastened to mature, reproduce, and cease. Just a breath of balmy air, and then the long cold frost again—ah! they knew it well and lost no time. Sand 235 A DAUGHTER OF THE SNOWS martins were driving their ancient tunnels into the soft clay banks, and robins singing on the spruce- garbed islands. Overhead the woodpecker knocked insistently, and in the forest depths the partridge boom-boomed and strutted in virile glory. But in all this nervous haste the Yukon took no part. For many a thousand miles it lay cold, un- smiling, dead. Wild fowl, driving up from the south in wind-jamming wedges, halted, looked vainly for open water, and quested dauntlessly on into the north. From bank to bank stretched the savage ice. Here and there the water burst through and flooded over, but in the chill nights froze solidly as ever. Tradition has it that of old time the Yukon lay unbroken through three long summers, and on the face of it there be tra- ditions less easy of belief. So summer waited for open water, and the tardy Yukon took to stretching of days and cracking its stiff joints. Now an air-hole ate into the ice, and ate and ate; or a fissure formed, and grew, and failed to freeze again. Then the ice ripped from the shore and uprose bodily a yard. But still the river was loth to loose its grip. It was a slow travail, and man, used to nursing nature with pigmy skill, able to burst waterspouts and harness waterfalls, could avail nothing against the bil- lions of frigid tons which refused to run down the hill to Bering Sea. On Split-up Island all were ready for the break-up. Waterways have ever been first highways, and the Yukon was the sole highway in all the land. So those bound up-river pitched their poling-boats and shod their poles with iron, and those bound down caulked their scows and barges and shaped spare sweeps with 236 A DAUGHTER OF THE SNOWS axe and drawing-knife. Jacob Welse loafed and joyed in the utter cessation from work, and Frona joyed with him in that it was good. But Baron Courbertin was in a fever at the delay. His hot blood grew riotous after the long hibernation, and the warm sunshine daz- zled him with warmer fancies. “Oh! Oh! It will never break! Never!” And he stood gazing at the surly ice and raining politely phrased anathema upon it. “It is a conspiracy, poor La Bijou, a conspiracy!” He caressed La Bijou like it were a horse, for so he had christened the glistening Peterborough canoe. Frona and St. Vincent laughed and preached him the gospel of patience, which he proceeded to tuck away into the deepest abysses of perdition till inter- rupted by Jacob Welse. “Look, Courbertin' Over there, south of the bluff. Do you make out anything? Moving?” “Yes; a dog.” “It moves too slowly for a dog. Frona, get the glasses.” Courbertin and St. Vincent sprang after them, but the latter knew their abiding-place and returned tri- umphant. Jacob Welse put the binoculars to his eyes and gazed steadily across the river. It was a sheer mile from the island to the farther bank, and the sun- glare on the ice was a sore task to the vision. “It is a man.” He passed the glasses to the Baron and strained absently with his naked eyes. “And something is up.” “He creeps l’’ the baron exclaimed. “The man creeps, he crawls, on hand and knee! Look! Seel” He thrust the glasses tremblingly into Frona's hands. 237 A DAUGHTER OF THE SNOWS Looking across the void of shimmering white, it was difficult to discern a dark object of such size when dimly outlined against an equally dark background of brush and earth. But Frona could make the man out with fair distinctness; and as she grew accustomed to the strain she could distinguish each movement, and especially so when he came to a wind-thrown pine. She watched painfully. Twice, after tortuous effort, squirming and twisting, he failed in breasting the big trunk, and on the third attempt, after infinite exertion, he cleared it only to topple helplessly forward and fall on his face in the tangled undergrowth. “It is a man.” She turned the glasses over to St. Vincent. “And he is crawling feebly. He fell just then this side of the log.” “Does he move?” Jacob Welse asked, and, on a shake of St. Vincent's head, brought his rifle from the tent. He fired six shots skyward in rapid succession. “He moves " The correspondent followed him closely. “He is crawling to the bank. Ah! . . No; one moment . . . . Yes! He lies on the ground and raises his hat, or something, on a stick. He is waving it.” (Jacob Welse fired six more shots.) “He waves again. Now he has dropped it and lies quite still.” All three looked inquiringly to Jacob Welse. He shrugged his shoulders. “How should I know? A white man or an Indian; starvation most likely, or else he is injured.” “But he may be dying,” Frona pleaded, as though her father, who had done most things, could do all things. 238 A DAUGHTER OF THE SNOWS “We can do nothing.” “Ah! Terrible! terrible!” The baron wrung his hands. “Before our very eyes, and we can do noth- ing ! No!” he exclaimed, with swift resolution, “it shall not bel I will cross the ice!” He would have started precipitately down the bank had not Jacob Welse caught his arm. “Not such a rush, baron. Keep your head.” 4 & But—” “But nothing. Does the man want food, or medi- cine, or what? Wait a moment. We will try it together.” “Count me in,” St. Vincent volunteered promptly, and Frona's eyes sparkled. While she made up a bundle of food in the tent, the men provided and rigged themselves with sixty or sev- enty feet of light rope. Jacob Welse and St. Vincent made themselves fast to it at either end, and the baron in the middle. He claimed the food as his portion, and strapped it to his broad shoulders. Frona watched their progress from the bank. The first hundred yards were easy going, but she noticed at once the change when they had passed the limit of the fairly solid shore-ice. Her father led sturdily, feeling ahead and to the side with his staff and changing direction continually. St. Vincent, at the rear of the extended line, was the first to go through, but he fell with the pole thrust deftly across the opening and resting on the ice. His head did not go under, though the current sucked powerfully, and the two men dragged him out after a sharp pull. Frona saw them consult together for a minute, with much pointing and gesticulating on the 239 A DAUGHTER OF THE SNOWS part of the baron, and then St. Vincent detach him- self and turn shoreward. “Br-r-r-r,” he shivered, coming up the bank to her. “It's impossible.” “But why didn't they come in?” she asked, a slight note of displeasure manifest in her voice. “Said they were going to make one more try, first. That Courbertin is hot-headed, you know.” “And my father just, as bull-headed,” she smiled. “But hadn't you better change? There are spare things in the tent.” “Oh, no.” He threw himself down beside her. “It's warm in the sun.” For an hour they watched the two men, who had be- come mere specks of black in the distance; for they had managed to gain the middle of the river and at the same time had worked nearly a mile up-stream. Frona followed them closely with the glasses, though often they were lost to sight behind the ice-ridges. “It was unfair of them,” she heard St. Vincent com- plain, “to say they were only going to have one more try. Otherwise I should not have turned back. Yet they can't make it—absolutely impossible.” “Yes . . . . No . . . . Yes! They're turning back,” she announced. “But listen! What is that?” A hoarse rumble, like distant thunder, rose from the midst of the ice. She sprang to her feet. “Gregory, the river can't be breaking!” “No, no; surely not. See, it is gone.” The noise which had come from above had died away down- Stream. “But there ! There !” Another rumble, hoarser and more ominous than 240 A DAUGHTER OF THE SNOWS “The under-tow ice has jammed below among the islands,” Jacob Welse explained. “That's what caused the rise. Then, again, it has jammed at the mouth of the Stewart and is backing up. When that breaks through, it will go down underneath and stick on the lower jam.” “And then? and then P” The baron exulted. “La Bijou will swim again.” As the light grew stronger, they searched for the man across the river. He had not moved, but in re- sponse to their rifle-shots waved feebly. “Nothing for it till the river breaks, baron, and then a dash with La Bijou. St. Vincent, you had bet- ter bring your blankets up and sleep here to-night. We'll need three paddles, and I think we can get Mc- Pherson.” “No need,” the correspondent hastened to reply. “The back-channel is like adamant, and I'll be up by daybreak.” “But I? Why not?” Baron Courbertin demanded. Frona laughed. “Remember, we haven't given you your first lessons yet.” “And there'll hardly be time to-morrow,” Jacob Welse added. “When she goes, she goes with a rush. St. Vincent, McPherson, and I will have to make the crew, I'm afraid. Sorry, baron. Stay with us another year and you'll be fit.” But Baron Courbertin was inconsolable, and sulked for a full half-hour. CHAPTER XXIV “Awake! You dreamers, wake!” Frona was out of her sleeping-furs at Del Bishop's first call; but ere she had slipped a skirt on and bare feet into moccasins, her father, beyond the blanket- curtain, had thrown back the flaps of the tent and stumbled out. The river was up. In the chill gray light she could see the ice rubbing softly against the very crest of the bank; it even topped it in places, and the huge cakes worked inshore many feet. A hundred yards out the white field merged into the dim dawn and the gray sky. Subdued splits and splutters whispered from out the obscureness, and a gentle grinding could be heard. “When will it go?” she asked of Del. “Not a bit too lively for us. See there!” He pointed with his toe to the water lapping out from under the ice and creeping greedily towards them. “A foot rise every ten minutes.” “Danger?” he scoffed. “Not on your life. It's got to go. Them islands”—waving his hand indefinitely down river—“can't hold up under more pressure. If they don't let go the ice, the ice'll scour them clean out of the bed of the Yukon. Sure! But I’ve got to be chasin' back. Lower ground down our way. Fifteen inches on the cabin floor, and McPherson and Corliss hustlin’ perishables into the bunks.” 244 A DAUGHTER OF THE SNOWS “Tell McPherson to be ready for a call,” Jacob Welse shouted after him. And then to Frona, “ Now’s the time for St. Vincent to cross the back-channel.” The baron, shivering barefooted, pulled out his watch. “Ten minutes to three,” he chattered. “Hadn't you better go back and get your mocca- sins P” Frona asked. “There will be time.” “And miss the magnificence? Hark!” From nowhere in particular a brisk crackling arose, then died away. The ice was in motion. Slowly, very slowly, it proceeded down stream. There was no com- motion, no ear-splitting thunder, no splendid display of force; simply a silent flood of white, an orderly procession of tight-packed ice—packed so closely that not a drop of water was in evidence. It was there, somewhere, down underneath; but it had to be taken on faith. There was a dull hum or muffled grating, but so low in pitch that the ear strained to catch it. “Ah! Where is the magnificence? It is a fake!” The baron shook his fists angrily at the river, and Jacob Welse's thick brows seemed to draw down in order to hide the grim smile in his eyes. “Ha! haſ I laugh! I snap my fingers! See? I defy!” As the challenge left his lips, Baron Courbertin stepped upon a cake which rubbed lightly past at his feet. So unexpected was it, that when Jacob Welse reached after him he was gone. The ice was picking up in momentum, and the hum growing louder and more threatening. Balancing gracefully, like a circus-rider, the Frenchman whirled away along the rim of the bank. Fifty precarious feet he rode, his mount becoming more unstable every 245 A DAUGHTER OF THE SNOWS instant, and he leaped neatly to the shore. He came back laughing, and received for his pains two or three of the choicest phrases Jacob Welse could select from the essentially masculine portion of his vocabulary. “And for why?” Courbertin demanded, stung to the quick. - “For why?” Jacob Welse mimicked wrathfully, pointing into the sleek stream sliding by. A great cake had driven its nose into the bed of the river thirty feet below and was struggling to up-end. All the frigid flood behind crinkled and bent back like so much paper. Then the stalled cake turned com- pletely over and thrust its muddy nose skyward. But the squeeze caught it, while cake mounted cake at its back, and its fifty feet of muck and gouge were hurled into the air. It crashed upon the moving mass be- neath, and flying fragments landed at the feet of those? that watched. Caught broadside in a chaos of press- ures, it crumbled into scattered pieces and disappeared. “God!” The baron spoke the word reverently and with awe. Frona caught his hand on the one side and her father's on the other. The ice was now leaping past in feverish haste. Somewhere below a heavy cake butted into the bank, and the ground swayed under their feet. Another followed it, nearer the surface, and as they sprang back, upreared mightily, and, with a ton or so of soil on its broad back, bowled insolently onward. And yet another, reaching inshore like a huge hand, ripped three careless pines out by the roots and bore them away. Day had broken, and the driving white gorged the Yukon from shore to shore. What of the pressure 246 A DAUGHTER OF THE SNOWS Jacob Welse regarded him gravely. “Ah! There will be?” he asked, picking up hope. Frona looked inquiringly at her father. “Jams are not always nice,” he said, with a short laugh. “It all depends where they take place and where you happen to be.” “But the river! Look! It falls; I can see it before my eyes.” “It is not too late.” He swept the island-studded bend and saw the ice-mountains larger and reaching out one to the other. “Go into the tent, Courbertin, and put on the pair of moccasins you'll find by the stove. Go on. You won't miss anything. And you, Frona, start the fire and get the coffee under way.” Half an hour after, though the river had fallen twenty feet, they found the ice still pounding along. “Now the fun begins. Here, take a squint, you hot-headed Gaul. The left-hand channel, man. Now she takes it!” Courbertin saw the left-hand channel close, and then a great white barrier heave up and travel from island to island. The ice before them slowed down and came to rest. Then followed the instant rise of the river. Up it came in a swift rush, as though nothing short of the sky could stop it. As when they were first awakened, the cakes rubbed and slid inshore over the crest of the bank, the muddy water creeping in ad- vance and marking the way. - “Mon Dieu ! But this is not nice ſ” “But magnificent, baron,” Frona teased. “In the meanwhile you are getting your feet wet.” He retreated out of the water, and in time, for a small avalanche of cakes rattled down upon the place 248 A DAUGHTER OF THE SNOWS he had just left. The rising water had forced the ice up till it stood breast-high above the island like a wall. “But it will go down soon when the jam breaks. See, even now it comes up not so swift. It has broken.” Frona was watching the barrier. “No, it hasn't,” she denied. “But the water no longer rises like a race-horse.” “Nor does it stop rising.” He was puzzled for the nonce. Then his face bright- ened. “Ah! I have it! Above, somewhere, there is another jam. Most excellent, is it not?” She caught his excited hand in hers and detained him. “But, listen. Suppose the upper jam breaks and the lower jam holds?” He looked at her steadily till he grasped the full import. His face flushed, and with a quick intake of the breath he straightened up and threw back his head. He made a sweeping gesture as though to include the island. “Then you, and I, the tent, the boats, cabins, trees, everything, and La Bijou ! Poufl and all are gone, to the devil!” Frona shook her head. “It is too bad.” “Bad? Pardon. Magnificent!” “No, no, baron; not that. But that you are not an Anglo-Saxon. The race could well be proud of you.” “And you, Frona, would you not glorify the French l’’ º “At it again, eh? Throwing bouquets at your- selves.” Del Bishop grinned at them, and made to depart as quickly as he had come. “But twist your- 249 A DAUGHTER OF THE SNOWS selves. Some sick men in a cabin down here. Got to get ’em out. You're needed. And don't be all day about it,” he shouted over his shoulder as he disap- peared among the trees. The river was still rising, though more slowly, and as soon as they left the high ground they were splash- ing along ankle-deep in the water. Winding in and out among the trees, they came upon a boat which had been hauled out the previous fall. And three checha- quos, who had managed to get into the country thus far over the ice, had piled themselves into it, also their tent, sleds, and dogs. But the boat was perilously near the ice-gorge, which growled and wrestled and over- topped it a bare dozen feet away. “Come! Get out of this, you fools!” Jacob Welse shouted as he went past. Del Bishop had told them to “get the hell out of there” when he ran by, and they could not understand. One of them turned up an unheeding, terrified face. Another lay prone and listless across the thwarts as though bereft of strength; while the third, with the face of a clerk, rocked back and forth and moaned monotonously, “My God! My God!” The baron stopped long enough to shake him. “Damn!” he cried. “Your legs, man!—not God, but your legs l Ah! ah!—hump yourself! Yes, hump! Get a move on 1 Twist! Get back from the bank! The woods, the trees, anywhere!” He tried to drag him out, but the man struck at him savagely and held back. “How one collects the vernacular,” he confided proudly to Frona as they hurried on. “Twist! It is a strong word, and suitable.” 250 A DAUGHTER OF THE SNOWS “You should travel with Del,” she laughed. “He’d increase your stock in no time.” “You don't say so.” “Yes, but I do.” “Ah! Your idioms. I shall never learn.” And he shook his head despairingly with both his hands. They came out in a clearing, where a cabin stood close to the river. On its flat earth-roof two sick men, swathed in blankets, were lying, while Bishop, Corliss, and Jacob Welse were splashing about inside the cabin after the clothes-bags and general outfit. The mean depth of the flood was a couple of feet, but the floor of the cabin had been dug out for purposes of warmth, and there the water was to the waist. “Keep the tobacco dry,” one of the sick men said feebly from the roof. “Tobacco, hell!” his companion advised. “Look out for the flour. And the sugar,” he added, as an afterthought. “That's 'cause Bill he don't smoke, miss,” the first man explained. “But keep an eye on it, won't you?” he pleaded. “Here. Now shut up.” Del tossed the canister be- side him, and the man clutched it as though it were a sack of nuggets. “Can I be of any use?” she asked, looking up at them. “Nope. Scurvy. Nothing’ll do ’em any good but God's country and raw potatoes.” The pocket-miner regarded her for a moment. “What are you doing here, anyway? Go on back to high ground.” But with a groan and a crash, the ice-wall bulged in, A fifty-ton cake ended over, splashing them with 25I A DAUGHTER OF THE SNOWS circle, paused, and looked every man in the eyes before he spoke. “Is there a man here'll say I'm a coward?” he de- manded without preface. Again he looked each one in the eyes. “Or is there a man who'll even hint that I ever did a curlike act?” And yet again he searched the circle. “Well and good. I hate the water, but I’ve never been afraid of it. I don't know how to swim, yet I’ve been over the side more times than it's good to remember. I can't pull an oar without batting my back on the bottom of the boat. As for steering— well, authorities say there's thirty-two points to the compass, but there's at least thirty more when I get started. And as sure as God made little apples, I don't know my elbow from my knee about a paddle. I’ve capsized damn near every canoe I ever set foot in. I've gone right through the bottom of two. I've turned turtle in the Canyon and been pulled out below the White Horse. I can only keep stroke with one man, and that man's yours truly. But, gentlemen, if the call comes, I'll take my place in La Bijou and take her to hell if she don't turn over on the way.” Baron Courbertin threw his arms about him, crying, “As sure as God made little apples, thou art a man!” Tommy's face was white, and he sought refuge in speech from the silence which settled down. “I’ll no deny I lift a guid paddle, nor that my wind is fair; but gin ye gang a tithe the way the next jam’ll be on us. For my pairt I conseeder it ay rash. Bide a wee till the river's clear, say I.” “It's no go, Tommy,” Jacob Welse admonished. “You can't cash excuses here.” “But, mon! It doesna need discreemeenation—' > 256 A DAUGHTER OF THE SNOWS “That'll do!” from Corliss. “You’re coming.” “I’ll naething o' the sort. I’ll—” “Shut up!” Del had come into the world with lungs of leather and larynx of brass, and when he thus jerked out the stops the Scotsman quailed and shrank down. “Oyez! Oyez!” In contrast to Del's siren tones, Frona's were purest silver as they rippled down-island through the trees. “Oyez! Oyez! Open water Open water | And wait a minute. I’ll be with you.” Three miles up-stream, where the Yukon curved grandly in from the west, a bit of water appeared. It seemed too marvellous for belief, after the granite winter; but McPherson, untouched of imagination, began a crafty retreat. “Bide a wee, bide a wee,” he protested, when col- lared by the pocket-miner. “A've forgot my pipe.” “Then you'll bide with us, Tommy,” Del sneered. “And I’d let you have a draw of mine if your own wasn't sticking out of your pocket.” “’Twas the baccy I’d in mind.” “Then dig into this.” He shoved his pouch into McPherson's shaking hands. “You’d better shed your coat. Here! I'll help you. And private, Tommy, if you don't act the man, I won't do a thing to you. Sure.” Corliss had stripped his heavy flannel shirt for free- dom; and it was plain, when Frona joined them, that she also had been shedding. Jacket and skirt were gone, and her underskirt of dark cloth ceased midway below the knee. “You’ll do,” Del commended. Jacob Welse looked at her anxiously, and went over 17 257 A DAUGHTER OF THE SNOWS to where she was testing the grips of the several pad- dles. “You’re not ?” he began. She nodded. “You're a guid girl,” McPherson broke in. “Now, a’ve a wumman to home, to say naething o' three bairns—” “All ready!” Corliss lifted the bow of La Bijou and looked back. The turbid water lashed by on the heels of the ice- run. Courbertin took the stern in the steep descent, and Del marshalled Tommy's reluctant rear. A flat floe, dipping into the water at a slight incline, served as the embarking-stage. “Into the bow with you, Tommy!” The Scotsman groaned, felt Bishop breathe heavily at his back, and obeyed; Frona meeting his weight by slipping into the stern. “I can steer,” she assured Corliss, who for the first time was aware that she was coming. He glanced up to Jacob Welse, as though for con- sent, and received it. “Hit 'er up! Hit 'er up!” Del urged impatiently. “You’re burnin’ daylight!” - -, 258 CHAPTER XXV LA BIJoU was a perfect expression of all that was dainty and delicate in the boat-builder's soul. Light as an egg-shell, and as fragile, her three-eighths-inch skin offered no protection from a driving chunk of ice as small as a man's head. Nor, though the water was open, did she find a clear way, for the river was full of scattered floes which had crumbled down from the rim-ice. And here, at once, through skilful handling, Corliss took to himself confidence in Frona. It was a great picture: the river rushing blackly between its crystalline walls; beyond, the green woods stretching upward to touch the cloud-flecked summer sky; and over all, like a furnace blast, the hot sun beating down. A great picture, but somehow Corliss's mind turned to his mother and her perennial tea, the soft carpets, the prim New England maid-servants, the canaries singing in the wide windows, and he won- dered if she could understand. And when he thought of the woman behind him, and felt the dip and lift, dip and lift, of her paddle, his mother's women came back to him, one by one, and passed in long review, pale, glimmering ghosts, he thought, caricatures of the stock which had replenished the earth, and which would continue to replenish the earth. La Bijou skirted a pivoting floe, darted into a nip- 259 A DAUGHTER OF THE SNOWS ping channel, and shot out into the open with the walls grinding together behind. Tommy groaned. “Well done!” Corliss encouraged. “The fule wumman!” came the backward snarl. “Why couldna she bide a bit?” Frona caught his words and flung a laugh defiantly. Vance darted a glance over his shoulder to her, and her smile was witchery. Her cap, perched precari- ously, was sliding off, while her flying hair, aglint in the sunshine, framed her face as he had seen it framed on the Dyea Trail. “How I should like to sing, if it weren't for saving one's breath. Say the ‘Song of the Sword,' or the ‘Anchor Chanty.’” “Or the “First Chanty,’” Corliss answered. “‘Mine was the woman, darkling I found her,’” he hummed, significantly. She flashed her paddle into the water on the oppo- site side in order to go wide of a jagged cake, and seemed not to hear. “I could go on this way for- ever.” “And I,” Corliss affirmed, warmly. But she refused to take notice, saying, instead, “Vance, do you know I'm glad we're friends?” “No fault of mine we're not more.” “You’re losing your stroke, sir,” she reprimanded; and he bent silently to the work. La Bijou was driving against the current at an angle of forty-five degrees, and her resultant course was a line at right angles to the river. Thus, she would tap the western bank directly opposite the starting-point, where she could work up-stream in the slacker flood. But a mile of indented shore, and then a hundred yards 260 A DAUGHTER OF THE SNOWS “Wheest, will ye!” Tommy fiercely whispered. “Your gabble'll bring it doon aboot oor heads.” Life is brief in the Northland, and fulfilment ever clutters the heels of prophecy. A premonitory tremor sighed down the air, and the rainbow wall swayed above them. The three paddles gripped the water with common accord. La Bijou leaped out from under. Broadside after broadside flared and crashed, and a thousand frigid tons thundered down behind them. The displaced water surged outward in a foamy, upstanding circle, and La Bijou, striving wildly to rise, ducked through the stiff overhang of the crest and wallowed, half-full, in the trough. “Dinna I tell ye, ye gabbling fules" “Sit still, and bail!” Corliss checked him sharply. “Or you'll not have the comfort of telling us any- thing.” He shook his head at Frona, and she winked back; then they both chuckled, much like children over an escapade which looks disastrous but turns out well. Creeping timidly under the shadow of the impending avalanches, La Bijou slipped noiselessly up the last eddy. A corner of the bluff rose savagely from the river—a monstrous mass of naked rock, scarred and battered of the centuries; hating the river that gnawed it ever; hating the rain that graved its grim face with unsightly seams; hating the sun that re- fused to mate with it, whereof green life might come forth and hide its hideousness. The whole force of the river hurled in against it, waged furious war along its battlements, and caromed off into mid-stream again. Down all its length the stiff waves stood in serried 262 A DAUGHTER OF THE SNOWS nities, and between the eternities, ever lifting, ever falling, they pulsed in vast rhythmical movement. They were no longer humans, but rhythms. They surged in till their paddles touched the bitter rock, but they did not know; surged out, where chance piloted them unscathed through the lashing ice, but they did not see. Nor did they feel the shock of the smitten waves, nor the driving spray that cooled their faces. . . . La Bijou veered out into the stream, and their paddles, flashing mechanically in the sunshine, held her to the return angle across the river. As time and matter came back to them, and Split-up Island dawned upon their eyes like the foreshore of a new world, they settled down to the long easy stroke wherein breath and strength may be recovered. “A third attempt would have been useless,” Corliss said, in a dry, cracked whisper. And Frona answered, “Yes; our hearts would have surely broken.” "Life, and the pleasant camp-fire, and the quiet rest in the noonday shade, came back to Tommy as the shore drew near, and more than all, blessed Toronto, its houses that never moved, and its jostling streets. Each time his head sank forward and he reached out and clutched the water with his paddle, the streets enlarged, as though gazing through a telescope and adjusting to a nearer focus. And each time the pad- dle drove clear and his head was raised, the island bounded forward. His head sank, and the streets were of the size of life; it raised, and Jacob Welse and the two men stood on the bank three lengths away. “Dinna I tell ye!” he shouted to them, triumphantly. 266 A DAUGHTER OF THE SNOWS hear. Tommy? Oh, his heart's weak. Nothing serious.” She saluted with her paddle. “We’ll be back in no time, father mine. In no time.” Stewart River was wide open, and they ascended it a quarter of a mile before they shot its mouth and continued up the Yukon. But when they were well abreast of the man on the opposite bank a new obstacle faced them. A mile above, a wreck of an island clung desperately to the river bed. Its tail dwindled to a sand-spit which bisected the river as far down as the impassable bluffs. Further, a few hundred thousand tons of ice had grounded upon the spit and upreared a glittering ridge. “We'll have to portage,” Corliss said, as Frona turned the canoe from the bank. La Bijou darted across the narrower channel to the sand-spit and slipped up a little ice ravine, where the walls were less precipitous. They landed on an out- jutting cake, which, without support, overhung the water for sheer thirty feet. How far its other end could be buried in the mass was matter for conjec- ture. They climbed to the summit, dragging the canoe after them, and looked out over the dazzie. Floe was piled on floe in titanic confusion. Huge blocks topped and overtopped one another, only to serve as pedestals for great white masses, which blazed and scintillated in the sun like monstrous jewels. “A bonny place for a bit walk,” Tommy sneered, “wi' the next jam fair to come ony time.” He sat down resolutely. “No, thank ye kindly, I'll no try it.” Frona and Corliss clambered on, the canoe between them. “The Persians lashed their slaves into battle,” she 268 A DAUGHTER OF THE SNOWS “By the way you grumble, they're leading you fast enough,” Corliss answered angrily. “Forty mile an hour,” Tommy retorted, as he walked away, gloating over having the last word. “One moment. You've two shirts. Lend me one.” The Scotsman's face lighted inquisitively, till he comprehended. Then he shook his head and started on again. - Frona scrambled to her feet. “What's the matter?” “Nothing. Sit down.” “But what is the matter?” Corliss put his hands on her shoulders and pressed her back. “Your feet. You can't go on in such shape. They're in ribbons. Seel” He brushed the sole of one of them and held up a blood-dripping palm. “Why didn't you tell me?” “Oh, they didn't bother—much.” “Give me one of your skirts,” he demanded. “I . . . .” She faltered. “I only have one.” He looked about him. Tommy had disappeared among the ice-floes. “We must be getting on,” Frona said, attempting to rise. But he held her back. “Not another step till I fix you.' Here goes, so shut your eyes.” She obeyed, and when she opened them he was naked to the waist, and his undershirt, torn in strips, was being bound about her feet. “You were in the rear, and I did not know “Don’t apologize, pray,” she interrupted. “I could have spoken.” - “I’m not; I’m reproaching you. Now, the other one. Put it up!” sy 271 A DAUGHTER OF THE SNOWS “Do keep quiet,” he broke in, roughly, “ or I'll be making a gorgeous fool of myself.” “Kiss all my toes,” she finished. He grunted, but did not deign a reply. The work quickly took their breath, and they went on in silence till they descended the last steep to where McPherson waited by the open river. “Del hates St. Vincent,” she said boldly. “Why?” “Yes, it seems that way.” He glanced back at her curiously. “And wherever he goes, Del lugs an old Russian book, which he can't read but which he never- the less regards, in some sort of way, as St. Vincent's Nemesis. And do you know, Frona, he has such faith in it that I can't help catching a little myself. I don't know whether you'll come to me, or whether I'll go to you, but—” She dropped her end of the canoe and broke out in laughter. He was annoyed, and a hurt spread of blood ruddied his face. “If I have—” he began. “Stupid!” she laughed. “Don’t be silly! And above all don't be dignified. It doesn't exactly be- come you at the present moment, your hair all tangled, a murderous knife in your belt, and naked to the waist like a pirate stripped for battle. Be fierce, frown, swear, anything, but please don't be dignified. I do wish I had my camera. In after years I could say: ‘This, my friends, is Corliss, the great Arctic explorer, just as he looked at the conclusion of his world-famous trip Through Darkest Alaska.’” He pointed an ominous finger at her and said sternly, “Where is your skirt?” She involuntarily looked down. But its tatterde- 18 273 · FRONA PANTED CAN KEEP AHEAD,” “WE A DAUGHTER OF THE SNOWS “When the chance comes, drive her in, bow on,” Corliss counselled; “and when she strikes, jump and run for it.” “Climb, rather. I’m glad my skirt is short.” Repulsed by the bluffs of the left bank, the ice was forced towards the right. The big floe, in advance, drove in upon the precise point of Split-up Island. “If you look back, I'll brain you with the paddle,” Corliss threatened. “Ay,” Tommy groaned. But Corliss looked back, and so did Frona. The great berg struck the land with an earthquake shock. For fifty feet the soft island was demolished. A score of pines swayed frantically and went down, and where they went down rose up a mountain of ice, which rose, and fell, and rose again. Below, and but a few feet away, Del Bishop ran out to the bank, and above the roar they could hear faintly his “Hit 'er up! Hit 'er up!” Then the ice-rim wrinkled up and he sprang back to escape it. “The first opening,” Corliss gasped. Frona's lips spread apart; she tried to speak but failed, then nodded her head that she had heard. They swung along in rapid rhythm under the rainbow-wall, looking for a place where it might be quickly cleared. And down all the length of Split-up Island they raced vainly, the shore crashing behind them as they fled. As they darted across the mouth of the back-channel to Roubeau Island they found themselves heading directly for an opening in the rim-ice. La Bijou drove into it full tilt, and went half her length out of water on a shelving cake. The three leaped together, but while the two of them gripped the canoe to run it up, 277 A DAUGHTER OF THE SNOWS “Yes,” she answered. “I rapped him on the knuckles. It was terrible. But the chance is we’ve a better man in the canoe, and we must care for him at once. Hello! Look there!” Through the trees, not a score of feet away, she saw the wall of a large cabin. “Nobody in sight. It must be deserted, or else they're visiting, whoever they are. You look to our man, Vance,—I'm more presentable, and I’ll go and see.” She skirted the cabin, which was a large one for the Yukon country, and came around to where it fronted on the river. The door stood open, and, as she paused to knock, the whole interior flashed upon her in an astounding picture, a cumulative picture, or series of pictures, as it were. For first she was aware of a crowd of men, and of some great common purpose upon which all were seriously bent. At her knock they instinctively divided, so that a lane opened up, flanked by their pressed bodies, to the far end of the room. And there, in the long bunks on either side, sat two grave rows of men. And midway between, against the wall, was a table. This table seemed the centre of interest. Fresh from the sun-dazzle, the light within was dim and murky, but she managed to make out a bearded American sitting by the table and hammering it with a heavy caulking-mallet. And on the opposite side sat St. Vincent. She had time to note his worn and haggard face, before a man of Scandinavian appearance slouched up to the table. The man with the mallet raised his right hand and said glibly, “You do most solemnly swear that what you are about to give before the court ” He ab- 28o A DAUGHTER OF THE SNOWS ruptly stopped and glowered at the man before him. “Take off your hat!” he roared, and a snicker went up from the crowd as the man obeyed. Then he of the mallet began again. “You do most solemnly swear that what you are about to give before the court shall be the truth, the whole truth, and noth- ing but the truth, so help you God?” - The Scandinavian nodded and dropped his hand. “One moment, gentlemen.” Frona advanced up the lane, which closed behind her. St. Vincent sprang to his feet and stretched out his arms to her. “Frona,” he cried, “oh, Frona, I am innocent!” * - It struck her like a blow, the unexpectedness of it, and for the instant, in the sickly light, she was con- scious only of the ring of white faces, each face set with eyes that burned. Innocent of what? she thought, and as she looked at St. Vincent, arms still extended, she was aware, in a vague, troubled way, of something distasteful. Innocent of what? He might have had more reserve. He might have waited till he was charged. She did not know that he was charged with anything. “Friend of the prisoner,” the man with the mallet said authoritatively. “Bring a stool for’ard, some of you.” “One moment . . . .” She staggered against the table and rested a hand on it. “I do not understand. This is all new . . . .” But her eyes happened to come to rest on her feet, wrapped in dirty rags, and she knew that she was clad in a short and tattered skirt, that her arm peeped forth through a rent in her sleeve, and that her hair was down and flying. Her >> 281 A DAUGHTER OF THE SNOWS cheek and neck on one side seemed coated with some curious substance. She brushed it with her hand, and caked mud rattled to the floor. “That will do,” the man said, not unkindly. “Sit down. We're in the same box. We do not under- stand. But take my word for it, we're here to find out. So sit down.” She raised her hand. “One moment 35 “Sit down l’’ he thundered. “The court cannot be disturbed.” A hum went up from the crowd, words of dissent, and the man pounded the table for silence. But Frona resolutely kept her feet. When the noise had subsided, she addressed the man in the chair. “Mr. Chairman: I take it that this is a miners' meeting.” (The man nodded.) “Then, having an equal voice in the managing of this com- munity's affairs, I demand to be heard. It is important that I should be heard.” “But you are out of order, Miss—er “Welse!” half a dozen voices prompted. “Miss Welse,” he went on, an added respect mark- ing his demeanor, “it grieves me to inform you that you are out of order. You had best sit down.” “I will not,” she answered. “I rise to a question of privilege, and if I am not heard, I shall appeal to the meeting.” She swept the crowd with her eyes, and cries went up that she be given a fair show. The chairman yielded and motioned her to go on. “Mr. Chairman and men: I do not know the busi- ness you have at present before you, but I do know that I have more important business to place before 32 282 A DAUGHTER OF THE SNOWS you. Just outside this cabin is a man probably dying from starvation. We have brought him from across the river. We should not have bothered you, but we were unable to make our own island. This man I speak of needs immediate attention.” “A couple of you nearest the door go out and look after him,” the chairman ordered. “And you, Doc Holiday, go along and see what you can do.” “Ask for a recess,” St. Vincent whispered. Frona nodded her head. “And, Mr. Chairman, I make a motion for a recess until the man is cared for.” Cries of “No recess!” and “Go on with the busi- ness!” greeted the putting of it, and the motion was lost. “Now, Gregory,” with a smile and salutation as she took the stool beside him, “what is it?” He gripped her hand tightly. “Don’t believe them, Frona. They are trying to”—with a gulping swallow —“to kill me.” “Why? Do be calm. Tell me.” “Why, last night,” he began hurriedly, but broke off to listen to the Scandinavian previously sworn, who was speaking with ponderous slowness. “I wake wide open quick,” he was saying. “I coom to the door. I there hear one shot more.” He was interrupted by a warm-complexioned man clad in faded mackinaws. “What did you think?” he asked. “Eh P’’ the witness queried, his face dark and troubled with perplexity. “When you came to the door, what was your first thought?” “A-w-w,” the man sighed, his face clearing and 283 - A DAUGHTER OF THE SNOWS infinite comprehension sounding in his voice. “I have no moccasins. It'ink pretty damn cold.” His satis- fied expression changed to naive surprise when an outburst of laughter greeted his statement, but he went on stolidly. “One more shot I hear, and I run down the trail.” Then Corliss pressed in through the crowd to Frona, and she lost what the man was saying. “What's up?” the engineer was asking. “Any- thing serious? Can I be of any use?” “Yes, yes.” She caught his hand gratefully. “Get over the back-channel somehow and tell my father to come. Tell him that Gregory St. Vincent is in trou- ble; that he is charged with— What are you charged with, Gregory?” she asked, turning to him. “Murder.” “Murder?” from Corliss. “Yes, yes. Say that he is charged with murder; that I am here; and that I need him. And tell him to bring me some clothes. And, Vance,”—with a pressure of the hand and swift upward look, “don’t take any . . . . any big chances, but do try to make it.” “Oh, I’ll make it all right.” He tossed his head confidently and proceeded to elbow his way towards the door. “Who is helping you in your defence?” she asked St. Vincent. He shook his head. “No. They wanted to appoint some one,—a renegade lawyer from the States, Bill Brown, but I declined him. He's taken the other side, now. It's lynch law, you know, and their minds are made up. They're bound to get me.” A DAUGHTER OF THE SNOWS “I wish there were time to hear your side.” “But, Frona, I am innocent. I—” “S-sh!” She laid her hand on his arm to hush him, and turned her attention to the witness. “So the noospaper feller, he fight like anything; but Pierre and me, we pull him into the shack. He cry and stand in one place—” “Who cried?” interrupted the prosecuting law- yer. “Him. That feller there.” The Scandinavian pointed directly at St. Vincent. “And I make a light. The slush-lamp I find spilt over most every- thing, but I have a candle in my pocket. It is good practice to carry a candle in the pocket,” he affirmed gravely. “And Borg he lay on the floor dead. And the squaw say he did it, and then she die, too.” “Said who did it?” Again his accusing finger singled out St. Vincent. “Him. That feller there.” “Did she?” Frona whispered. “Yes,” St. Vincent whispered back, “she did. But I cannot imagine what prompted her. She must have been out of her head.” The warm-faced man in the faded mackinaws then put the witness through a searching examination, which Frona followed closely, but which elicited little Inew. “You have the right to cross-examine the witness,” the chairman informed St. Vincent. “Any questions you want to ask?” The correspondent shook his head. “Go on,” Frona urged. “What's the use?” he asked, hopelessly. “I’m fore- 285 A DAUGHTER OF THE SNOWS - the shoulders and flash of teeth—was a breed. He was born somewhere in the Barrens, on a hunting trip, he did not know where. Ah, oui, men called him an old-timer. He had come into the country in the days of Jack McQuestion, across the Rockies from the Great Slave. On being told to go ahead with what he knew of the matter in hand, he deliberated a moment, as though casting about for the best departure. “In the spring it is good to sleep with the open door,” he began, his words sounding clear and flute- like and marked by haunting memories of the accents his forbears put into the tongue. “And so I sleep last night. But I sleep like the cat. The fall of the leaf, the breath of the wind, and my ears whisper to me, whisper, whisper, all the night long. So, the first shot,” with a quick snap of the fingers, “and I am awake, just like that, and I am at the door.” St. Vincent leaned forward to Frona. “It was not the first shot.” She nodded, with her eyes still bent on La Flitche, who gallantly waited. “Then two more shot,” he went on, “quick, to- gether, boom-boom, just like that. ‘Borg's shack,' I say to myself, and run down the trail. I think Borg kill Bella, which was bad. Bella very fine girl,” he confided with one of his irresistible smiles. “I like Bella. So I run. And John he run from his cabin like a fat cow, with great noise. ‘What the matter?” he say; and I say, ‘I don't know.’ And then some- thing come, wheugh 1 out of the dark, just like that, and knock John down, and knock me down. We grab everywhere all at once. It is a man. He is in undress. 287 A DAUGHTER OF THE SNOWS He fight. He cry, ‘Oh! Oh! Oh!’ just like that. We hold him tight, and bime-by pretty quick, he stop. Then we get up, and I say, ‘Come along back.’” “Who was the man?” La Flitche turned partly, and rested his eyes on St. Vincent. & 4 Go on.” “So? The man he will not go back; but John and I say yes, and he go.” “Did he say anything?” “I ask him what the matter; but he cry, he . . . . he sob, huh-tsch, huh-tsch, just like that.” “Did you see anything peculiar about him?” La Flitche's brows drew up interrogatively. “Anything uncommon, out of the ordinary?” “Ah, oui; blood on the hands.” Disregarding the murmur in the room, he went on, his facile play of feature and gesture giving dramatic value to the re- cital. “John make a light, and Bella groan, like the hair-seal when you shoot him in the body, just like that, when you shoot him in the body under the flipper. And Borg lay over in the corner. I look. He no breathe 'tall. “Then Bella open her eyes, and I look in her eyes, and I know she know me, La Flitche. ‘Who did it, Bella?' I ask. And she roll her head on the floor and whisper, so low, so slow, ‘Him dead?' I know she mean Borg, and I say yes. Then she lift up on one elbow, and look about quick, in big hurry, and when she see Vincent she look no more, only she look at Vincent all the time. Then she point at him, just like that.” Suiting the action to the word, La Flitche turned and thrust a wavering finger at the prisoner. 288 A DAUGHTER OF THE SNOWS “And she say, ‘Him, him, him.’ And I say, ‘Bella, who did it?’ And she say, ‘Him, him, him. St. Vincha, him do it.’ And then”—La Flitche’s head fell limply forward on his chest, and came back naturally erect, as he finished, with a flash of teeth, “Dead.” The warm-faced man, Bill Brown, put the quarter- breed through the customary direct examination, which served to strengthen his testimony and to bring out the fact that a terrible struggle must have taken place in the killing of Borg. The heavy table was smashed, the stool and the bunk-board splintered, and the stove over- thrown. “Never did I see anything like it,” La Flitche concluded his description of the wreck. “No, never.” Brown turned him over to Frona with a bow, which a smile of hers paid for in full. She did not deem it unwise to cultivate cordiality with the lawyer. What she was working for was time—time for her father to come, time to be closeted with St. Vincent and learn all the details of what really had occurred. So she put questions, questions, interminable questions, to La Flitche. Twice only did anything of moment crop up. “You spoke of the first shot, Mr. La Flitche. Now, the walls of a log cabin are quite thick. Had your door been closed, do you think you could have heard that first shot?” He shook his head, though his dark eyes told her he divined the point she was endeavoring to establish. “And had the door of Borg's cabin been closed, would you have heard?” Again he shook his head. “Then, Mr. La Flitche, when you say the first shot, you do not mean necessarily the first shot fired, but rather the first shot you heard fired?” I9 289 A DAUGHTER OF THE SNOWS He nodded, and though she had scored her point she could not see that it had any material bearing after all. Again she worked up craftily to another and stronger climax, though she felt all the time that La Flitche fathomed her. “You say it was very dark, Mr. La Flitche?” “Ah, oui; quite dark.” “How dark? How did you know it was John you met?” “John make much noise when he run. I know that kind of noise.” “Could you see him so as to know that it was he?” “Ah, no.” “Then, Mr. La Flitche,” she demanded, trium- phantly, “will you please state how you knew there was blood on the hands of Mr. St. Vincent?” His lip lifted in a dazzling smile, and he paused a moment. “How 2 I feel it warm on his hands. And my nose—ah, the smoke of the hunter camp long way off, the hole where the rabbit hide, the track of the moose which has gone before, does not my nose tell me?” He flung his head back, and with tense face, eyes closed, nostrils quivering and dilated, he simulated the quiescence of all the senses save one and the con- centration of his whole being upon that one. Then his eyes fluttered partly open and he regarded her dream- ily. “I smell the blood on his hands, the warm blood, the hot blood on his hands.” “And by gad he can do it!” some man exclaimed. And so convinced was Frona that she glanced in- voluntarily at St. Vincent's hands, and saw there the rusty-brown stains on the cuffs of his flannel shirt. As La Flitche left the stand, Bill Brown came over | 290 CHAPTER XXVII FRONA turned to St. Vincent as the last of the crowd filed out. He clutched her hands spasmodically, like a drowning man. “Do believe me, Frona. Promise me.” Her face flushed. “You are excited,” she said, “ or you would not say such things. Not that I blame you,” she relented. “I hardly imagine the situation can be anything else but exciting.” “Yes, and well I know it,” he answered, bitterly. “I am acting like a fool, and I can't help it. The strain has been terrible. And as though the horror of Borg's end were not enough, to be considered the mur- derer, and haled up for mob justicel Forgive me, Frona. I am beside myself. Of course, I know that you will believe me.” “Then tell me, Gregory.” “In the first place, the woman, Bella, lied. She must have been crazed to make that dying statement when I fought as I did for her and Borg. That is the only explanation sy “Begin at the beginning,” she interrupted. “Re- member, I know nothing.” He settled himself more comfortably on the stool, and rolled a cigarette as he took up the history of the previous night. “It must have been about one in the morning when I was awakened by the lighting of the slush-lamp. I 292 A DAUGHTER OF THE SNOWS thought it was Borg; wondered what he was prowling about for, and was on the verge of dropping off to sleep, when, though I do not know what prompted me, I opened my eyes. Two strange men were in the cabin. Both wore masks and fur caps with the flaps pulled down, so that I could see nothing of their faces save the glistening of the eyes through the eye-slits. “I had no first thought, unless it was that danger threatened. I lay quietly for a second and deliberated. Borg had borrowed my pistol, and I was actually un- armed. My rifle was by the door. I decided to make a rush for it. But no sooner had I struck the floor than one of the men turned on me, at the same time firing his revolver. That was the first shot, and the one La Flitche did not hear. It was in the struggle afterwards that the door was burst open, which enabled him to hear the last three. “Well, I was so close to the man, and my leap out of the bunk was so unexpected, that he missed me. The next moment we grappled and rolled on the floor. Of course, Borg was aroused, and the second man turned his attention to him and Bella. It was this second man who did the killing, for my man, naturally, had his hands full. You heard the testimony. From the way the cabin was wrecked, you can picture the struggle. We rolled and tossed about and fought till stools, table, shelves—everything was smashed. “Oh, Frona, it was terrible! Borg fighting for life, Bella helping him, though wounded and groaning, and I unable to aid. But finally, in a very short while, I began to conquer the man with whom I was struggling. I had got him down on his back, pinioned his arms with my knees, and was slowly throttling him, when 293 A DAUGHTER OF THE SNOWS the other man finished his work and turned on me also. What could I do? Two to one, and winded ! So I was thrown into the corner, and they made their escape. I confess that I must have been badly rattled by that time, for as soon as I caught my breath I took out after them, and without a weapon. Then I collided with La Flitche and John, and—and you know the rest. Only,” he knit his brows in puzzlement, “only, I can- not understand why Bella should accuse me.” He looked at her appealingly, and, though she pressed his hand sympathetically, she remained silent, weighing pro and con what she had heard. - She shook her head slowly. “It’s a bad case, and the thing is to convince them 39 “But, my God, Frona, I am innocent! I have not been a saint, perhaps, but my hands are clean from blood.” “But remember, Gregory,” she said, gently, “I am not to judge you. Unhappily, it rests with the men of this miners' meeting, and the problem is: how are they to be convinced of your innocence? The two main points are against you, --Bella's dying words and the blood on your sleeve.” “The place was areek with blood,” St. Vincent cried passionately, springing to his feet. “I tell you it was areek! How could I avoid floundering in it, fighting as I was for life? Can you not take my word—” “There, there, Gregory. Sit down. You are truly beside yourself. If your case rested with me, you know you would go free and clean. But these men, you know what mob rule is, how are we to persuade them to let you go? Don't you see? You have no witnesses. 294 A DAUGHTER OF THE SNOWS fore dark, and with him came Del, the baron, and Cor- liss. While Frona retired to change her clothes in one of the smaller cabins, which the masculine owners readily turned over to her, her father saw to the welfare of the mail-carrier. The despatches were of serious import, so serious that long after Jacob Welse had read and re-read them his face was dark and clouded; but he put the anxiety from him when he returned to Frona. St. Vincent, who was confined in an adjoining cabin, was permitted to see them. “It looks bad,” Jacob Welse said, on parting for the night. “But rest assured, St. Vincent, bad or not, you'll not be stretched up so long as I've a hand to play in the rumpus. I am certain you did not kill Borg, and there's my fist on it.” “A long day,” Corliss remarked, as he walked back with Frona to her cabin. “And a longer to-morrow,” she answered, wearily. “And I’m so sleepy.” “You’re a brave little woman, and I’m proud of you.” It was ten o'clock, and he looked out through the dim twilight to the ghostly ice drifting steadily by. “And in this trouble,” he went on, “depend upon me in any way.” “In any way?” she queried, with a catch in her voice. “If I were a hero of the melodrama I'd say, “To the death !’ but as I'm not, I'll just repeat, in any way.” “You are good to me, Vance. I can never repay—” - “Tut! tut! I do not put myself on sale. Love is service, I believe.” She looked at him for a long time; but while her 296 A DAUGHTER OF THE SNOWS face betrayed soft wonder, at heart she was troubled, she knew not why, and the events of the day, and of all the days since she had known him, came fluttering through her mind. “Do you believe in a white friendship?” she asked at last. “For I do hope that such a bond may hold us always. A bright, white friendship, a comradeship, as it were?” And as she asked, she was aware that the phrase did not quite express what she felt and would desire. And when he shook his head, she experienced a glad little inexplicable thrill. “A comradeship?” he questioned. “When you know I love you?” “Yes,” she affirmed in a low voice. “I am afraid, after all, that your knowledge of man is very limited. Believe me, we are not made of such clay. A comradeship? A coming in out of the cold to sit by your fire? Good. But a coming in when an- other man sits with you by your fire? No. Comrade- ship would demand that I delight in your delights, and yet, do you think for a moment that I could see you with another man's child in your arms, a child which might have been mine; with that other man looking out at me through the child's eyes, laughing at me through its mouth? I say, do you think I could delight in your delights? No, no; love cannot shackle itself with white friendships.” She put her hand on his arm. “Do you think I am wrong?” he asked, bewildered by the strange look in her face. She was sobbing quietly. “You are tired and overwrought. So there, good- night. You must get to bed.” 297 A DAUGHTER OF THE SNOWS “No, don't go, not yet.” And she arrested him. “No, no; I am foolish. As you say, I am tired. But listen, Vance. There is much to be done. We must plan to-morrow's work. Come inside. Father and Baron Courbertin are together, and if the worst comes, we four must do big things.” “Spectacular,” Jacob Welse commented, when Frona had briefly outlined the course of action and assigned them their parts. “But its very unexpected- ness ought to carry it through.” “A coup d'état!” was the Baron's verdict. “Mag- nificent! Ah! I feel warm all over at the thought. ‘Hands up!' I cry, thus, and very fierce. “And if they do not hold up their hands?” he ap- pealed to Jacob Welse. “Then shoot. Never bluff when you're behind a gun, Courbertin. It's held by good authorities to be unhealthy.” “And you are to take charge of La Bijou, Vance,” Frona said. “Father thinks there will be little ice to- morrow if it doesn't jam to-night. All you've to do is to have the canoe by the bank just before the door. Of course, you won't know what is happening until St. Vincent comes running. Then in with him, and away you go—Dawson | So I'll say good-night and good-by now, for I may not have the opportunity in the morning.” “And keep the left-hand channel till you're past the bend,” Jacob Welse counselled him; “then take the cut-offs to the right and follow the swiftest water. Now off with you and into your blankets. It's seventy miles to Dawson, and you'll have to make it at one clip.” 298 A DAUGHTER OF THE SNOWS “Pocket-miner!” sneered a red-shirted, patriarchal- looking man, a man who had washed his first pan in the Californian diggings in the early fifties. “Yep,” Del affirmed. “Now, look here, young feller,” his interlocutor con- tinued, “ d'ye mean to tell me you ever struck it in such-fangled way?” & 4 Yep.” “Don’t believe it,” with a contemptuous shrug. Del swallowed fast and raised his head with a jerk. “Mr. Chairman, I rise to make a statement. I won't interfere with the dignity of the court, but I just wish to simply and distinctly state that after the meeting's over I’m going to punch the head of every man that gets gay. Understand?” “You’re out of order,” the chairman replied, rapping the table with the caulking-mallet. “And your head, too,” Del cried, turning upon him. “Damn poor order you preserve. Pocketing's got nothing to do with this here trial, and why don't you shut such fool questions out? I'll take care of you afterwards, you potwolloper!” “You will, will you?” The chairman grew red in the face, dropped the mallet, and sprang to his feet. Del stepped forward to meet him, but Bill Brown sprang in between and held them apart. “Order, gentlemen, order,” he begged. “This is no time for unseemly exhibitions. And remember there are ladies present.” The two men grunted and subsided, and Bill Brown asked, “Mr. Bishop, we understand that you are well acquainted with the prisoner. Will you please tell the court what you know of his general character?” 30I A DAUGHTER OF THE SNOWS Del broadened into a smile. “Well, in the first place, he's an extremely quarrelsome disposition yy “Hold! I won't have it!” The prisoner was on his feet, trembling with anger. “You shall not swear my life away in such fashion' To bring a madman, whom I have only met once in my life, to testify as to my character!” The pocket-miner turned to him. “So you don't know me, eh, Gregory St. Vincent?” “No,” St. Vincent replied, coldly, “I do not know you, my man.” “Don’t you man me!” Del shouted, hotly. But St. Vincent ignored him, turning to the crowd. “I never saw the fellow but once before, and then for a few brief moments in Dawson.” “You’ll remember before I'm done,” Del sneered; “so hold your hush and let me say my little say. I come into the country with him way back in '84.” St. Vincent regarded him with sudden interest. “Yep, Mr. Gregory St. Vincent. I see you begin to recollect. I sported whiskers and my name was Brown, Joe Brown, in them days.” He grinned vindictively, and the correspondent seemed to lose all interest. “Is it true, Gregory?” Frona whispered. “I begin to recognize,” he muttered, slowly. “I don't know . . . . no, folly! The man must have died.” “You say in '84, Mr. Bishop?” Bill Brown prompted. “Yep, in '84. He was a newspaper-man, bound round the world by way of Alaska and Siberia. I'd run away from a whaler at Sitka, -that squares it with - 302 A DAUGHTER OF THE SNOWS Brown, and I engaged with him for forty a month and found. Well, he quarrelled with me—” A snicker, beginning from nowhere in particular, but passing on from man to man and swelling in vol- ume, greeted this statement. Even Frona and Del himself were forced to smile, and the only sober face was the prisoner's. “But he quarrelled with Old Andy at Dyea, and with Chief George of the Chilcoots, and the Factor at Pelly, and so on down the line. He got us into no end of trouble, and 'specially woman-trouble. He was always monkeying around 22 “Mr. Chairman, I object.” Frona stood up, her face quite calm and blood under control. “There is no necessity for bringing in the amours of Mr. St. Vincent. They have no bearing whatsoever upon the case; and, further, none of the men of this meeting are clean enough to be prompted by the right motive in conducting such an inquiry. So I demand that the prosecution at least confine itself to relevant testi- mony.” Bill Brown came up smugly complacent and smiling. “Mr. Chairman, we willingly accede to the request made by the defence. Whatever we have brought out has been relevant and material. Whatever we intend to bring out shall be relevant and material. Mr. Bishop is our star witness, and his testimony is to the point. It must be taken into consideration that we have no direct evidence as to the murder of John Borg. We can bring no eye-witnesses into court. Whatever we have is circumstantial. It is incumbent upon us to show cause. To show cause it is necessary to go into the character of the accused. This we intend to do. 303 A DAUGHTER OF THE SNOWS When I talked it over with him in a fatherly way he got wrathy, and I had to take him out on the bank and give him a threshing. Then he got sulky, and didn't brighten up till we ran into the mouth of the Reindeer River, where a camp of Siwashes were fishing salmon. But he had it in for me all the time, only I didn't know it, was ready any time to give me the double cross. “Now, there's no denying he's got a taking way with women. All he has to do is to whistle 'em up like dogs. Most remarkable faculty, that. There was the wick- edest, prettiest squaw among the Reindeers. Never saw her beat, excepting Bella. Well, I guess he whis- tled her up, for he delayed in the camp longer than was necessary. Being partial to women—” “That will do, Mr. Bishop,” interrupted the chair- man, who, from profitless watching of Frona's immo- bile face, had turned to her hand, the nervous twitch- ing and clinching of which revealed what her face had hidden. “That will do, Mr. Bishop. I think we have had enough of squaws.” “Pray do not temper the testimony,” Frona chir- ruped, sweetly. “It seems very important.” “Do you know what I am going to say next?” Del demanded hotly of the chairman. “You don't, eh? Then shut up. I’m running this particular side- show.” - Bill Brown sprang in to avert hostilities, but the chairman restrained himself, and Bishop went on. “I’d been done with the whole shooting-match, squaws and all, if you hadn't broke me off. Well, as I said, he had it in for me, and the first thing I didn't know, he'd hit me on the head with a rifle-stock, bun- dled the squaw into the canoe, and pulled out. You all 2O 305 A DAUGHTER OF THE SNOWS know what the Yukon country was in '84. And there I was, without an outfit, left alone, a thousand miles from anywhere. I got out all right, though there's no need of telling how, and so did he. You've all heard of his adventures in Siberia. Well,” with an impres- sive pause, “I happen to know a thing or two myself.” He shoved a hand into the big pocket of his mack- inaw jacket and pulled out a dingy leather-bound vol- ume of venerable appearance. “I got this from Pete Whipple's old woman,— Whipple of Eldorado. It concerns her grand-uncle or great-grand-uncle, I don't know which ; and if there s anybody here can read Russian, why, it'll go into the details of that Siberian trip. But as there's no one here that can—” “Courbertin' He can read it!” some one called in the crowd. - A way was made for the Frenchman forthwith, and he was pushed and shoved, protestingly, to the front. “Savve the lingo?” Del demanded. “Yes; but so poorly, so miserable,” Courbertin de- murred. “It is a long time. I forget.” “Go ahead. We won't criticise.” “No, but—” “Go ahead ſ” the chairman commanded. Del thrust the book into his hands, opened at the yellow title-page. “I’ve been itching to get my paws on some buck like you for months and months,” he assured him, gleefully. “And now I've got you, you can't shake me, Charley. So fire away.” Courbertin began hesitatingly: “‘The Journal of Father Yakontsk, Comprising an Account in Brief of his Life in the Benedictine Monastery at Obidorsky, 306 A DAUGHTER OF THE SNOWS and in Full of his Marvellous Adventures in East Siberia among the Deer Men.’” The baron looked up for instructions. “Tell us when it was printed,” Del ordered him. “In Warsaw, 1807.” The pocket-miner turned triumphantly to the room. “Did you hear that? Just keep track of it. 1807, re- member 1’’ The baron took up the opening paragraph. “‘It was because of Tamerlane,’” he commenced, uncon- sciously putting his translation into a construction with which he was already familiar. At his first words Frona turned white, and she re- mained white throughout the reading. Once she stole a glance at her father, and was glad that he was look- ing straight before him, for she did not feel able to meet his gaze just them. On the other hand, though she knew St. Vincent was eying her narrowly, she took no notice of him, and all he could see was a white face devoid of expression. “‘When Tamerlane swept with fire and sword over Eastern Asia,’” Courbertin read slowly, “‘states were disrupted, cities overthrown, and tribes scattered like —like star-dust. A vast people was hurled broad- cast over the land. Fleeing before the conquerors,'— no, no, - before the mad lust of the conquerors, these refugees swung far into Siberia, circling, circling to the north and east and fringing the rim of the polar basin with a spray of Mongol tribes.’” “'Skip a few pages,” Bill Brown advised, “and read here and there. We haven't got all night.” Courbertin complied. “‘The coast people are Es- kimo stock, merry of nature and not offensive. They 307 A DAUGHTER OF THE SNOWS - to the stand by the chairman. She turned to her father, and the tears rushed up into her eyes when he rested his hand on hers. “Do you care to pull out?” he asked after a mo- mentary hesitation. She shook her head, and St. Vincent began to speak. It was the same story he had told her, though told now a little more fully, and in nowise did it conflict with the evidence of La Flitche and John. He acknowl- edged the wash-tub incident, caused, he explained, by an act of simple courtesy on his part and by John Borg's unreasoning anger. He acknowledged that Bella had been killed by his own pistol, but stated that the pistol had been borrowed by Borg several days previously and not returned. Concerning Bella's accu- sation he could say nothing. He could not see why she should die with a lie on her lips. He had never in the slightest way incurred her displeasure, so even revenge could not be advanced. It was inexplicable. As for the testimony of Bishop, he did not care to discuss it. It was a tissue of falsehood cunningly in- terwoven with truth. It was true the man had gone into Alaska with him in 1888, but his version of the things which happened there was maliciously untrue. Regarding the baron, there was a slight mistake in the dates, that was all. In questioning him, Bill Brown brought out one little surprise. From the prisoner's story, he had made a hard fight against the two mysterious men. “If,” Brown asked, “such were the case, how can you ex- plain away the fact that you came out of the struggle unmarked? On examination of the body of John Borg, many bruises and contusions were noticeable. 3IO A DAUGHTER OF THE SNOWS verbial in the community; that it had prevented him having friends and had made him many enemies. Was it not very probable, therefore, that the masked men were two such enemies? As to what particular motive actuated these two men, she could not say; but it rested with them, the judges, to know whether in all Alaska there were or were not two men whom John Borg could have given cause sufficient for them to take his life. Witness had testified that no traces had been found of these two men; but the witness had not testified that no traces had been found of St. Vincent, Pierre La Flitche, or John the Swede. And there was no need for them so to testify. Everybody knew that no foot-marks were left when St. Vincent ran up the trail, and when he came back with La Flitche and the other man. Everybody knew the condition of the trail, that it was a hard-packed groove in the ground, on which a soft moccasin could leave no impression; and that had the ice not gone down the river, no traces would have been left by the murderers in passing from and to the mainland. At this juncture La Flitche nodded his head in ap- probation, and she went on. Capital had been made out of the blood on St. Vin- cent's hands. If they chose to examine the moccasins at that moment on the feet of Mr. La Flitche, they would also find blood. That did not argue that Mr. La Flitche had been a party to the shedding of the blood. Mr. Brown had drawn attention to the fact that the prisoner had not been bruised or marked in the savage encounter which had taken place. She thanked him 3I2 A DAUGHTER OF THE SNOWS for having done so. John Borg's body showed that it had been roughly used. He was a larger, stronger, heavier man than St. Vincent. If, as charged, St. Vincent had committed the murder, and necessarily, therefore, engaged in a struggle severe enough to bruise John Borg, how was it that he had come out unharmed? That was a point worthy of considera- tion. Another one was, why did he run down the trail? It was inconceivable, if he had committed the murder, that he should, without dressing or preparation for escape, run towards the other cabins. It was, how- ever, easily conceivable that he should take up the pursuit of the real murderers, and in the darkness— exhausted, breathless, and certainly somewhat excited —run blindly down the trail. Her summing up was a strong piece of synthesis; and when she had done, the meeting applauded her roundly. But she was angry and hurt, for she knew the demonstration was for her sex rather than for her cause and the work she had done. Bill Brown, somewhat of a shyster, and his ear ever cocked to the crowd, was not above taking advantage when opportunity offered, and when it did not offer, to dogmatize artfully. In this his native humor was a strong factor, and when he had finished with the mys- terious masked men they were as exploded sun-myths, —which phrase he promptly applied to them. They could not have got off the island. The condi- tion of the ice for the three or four hours preceding the break-up would not have permitted it. The pris- oner had implicated none of the residents of the island, while every one of them, with the exception of the 3I3 A DAUGHTER OF THE SNOWS prisoner, had been accounted for elsewhere. Possibly the prisoner was excited when he ran down the trail into the arms of La Flitche and John the Swede. One should have thought, however, that he had grown used to such things in Siberia. But that was imma- terial; the facts were that he was undoubtedly in an abnormal state of excitement, that he was hysterically excited, and that a murderer under such circumstances would take little account of where he ran. Such things had happened before. Many a man had butted into his own retribution. In the matter of the relations of Borg, Bella, and St. Vincent, he made a strong appeal to the instinctive prejudices of his listeners, and for the time being abandoned matter-of-fact reasoning for all-potent sen- timental platitudes. He granted that circumstantial evidence never proved anything absolutely. It was not necessary it should. Beyond the shadow of a rea- sonable doubt was all that was required. That this had been done, he went on to review the testimony. “And, finally,” he said, “you can't get around Bella's last words. We know nothing of our own direct knowledge. We've been feeling around in the dark, clutching at little things, and trying to figure it all out. But, gentlemen,” he paused to search the faces of his listeners, “Bella knew the truth. Hers is no circumstantial evidence. With quick, anguished breath, and life-blood ebbing from her, and eyeballs glazing, she spoke the truth. With dark night coming on, and the death-rattle in her throat, she raised her- self weakly and pointed a shaking finger at the ac- cused, thus, and she said, “Him, him, him. St. Vincha, him do it.’” 3I4 A DAUGHTER OF THE SNOWS floor. He made no effort to recover it. Frona stooped hurriedly, but Pierre La Flitche had set his foot upon it. She looked up and saw his hands above his head and his eyes fixed absently on Jacob Welse. She pushed at his leg, and the muscles were tense and hard, giving the lie to the indifference on his face. St. Vin- cent looked down helplessly, as though he could not understand. But this delay drew the attention of Jacob Welse, and, as he tried to make out the cause, the chairman found his chance. Without crooking, his right arm swept out and down, the heavy caulking-mallet leap- ing from his hand. It spanned the short distance and smote Jacob Welse below the ear. His revolver went off as he fell, and John the Swede grunted and clapped a hand to his thigh. Simultaneous with this the baron was overcome. Del Bishop, with hands still above his head and eyes fixed innocently before him, had simply kicked the pickle-keg out from under the Frenchman and brought him to the floor. His bullet, however, sped harmlessly through the roof. La Flitche seized Frona in his arms. St. Vincent, suddenly awakening, sprang for the door, but was tripped up by the breed's ready foot. The chairman pounded the table with his fist and concluded his broken sentence, “Gentlemen, the pris- oner is found guilty as charged.” 317 A DAUGHTER OF THE SNOWS you! Leggo!” “Step on his fingers, Tim I’” “Break that grip!” “Ouch! Ow!” “Pry his mouth open!" Frona saw a knot of struggling men about St. Vin- cent, and ran over. He had thrown himself down qn the floor and, tooth and nail, was fighting like a mad- man. Tim Dugan, a stalwart Celt, had come to close quarters with him, and St. Vincent's teeth were sunk in the man's arm. “Smash 'm, Tim Smash 'm “How can I, ye fule? Get a pry on his mouth, will ye?” “One moment, please.” The men made way for her, drawing back and leaving St. Vincent and Tim. Frona knelt down by him. “Leave go, Gregory. Do leave go.” He looked up at her, and his eyes did not seem human. He breathed stertorously, and in his throat were the queer little gasping noises of one over- wrought. “It is I, Gregory.” She brushed her hand sooth- ingly across his brow. “Don’t you understand? It is I, Frona. Do leave go.” His whole body slowly relaxed, and a peaceful ex- pression grew upon his face. His jaw dropped, and the man’s arm was withdrawn. “Now listen, Gregory. Though you are to die “But I cannot I cannot!” he groaned. “You said that I could trust to you, that all would come well.” She thought of the chance which had been given, but said nothing. “Oh, Fronal Fronal” He sobbed and buried his face in her lap. p” 5 p. 319 A DAUGHTER OF THE SNOWS “At least you can be a man. It is all that re- mains.” “Come on!” Tim Dugan commanded. “Sorry to bother ye, miss, but we've got to fetch 'm along. Drag 'm out, you fellys Catch 'm by the legs, Blackey, and you, too, Johnson.” St. Vincent's body stiffened at the words, the rational gleam went out of his eyes, and his fingers closed spasmodically on Frona's. She looked entreaty at the men, and they hesitated. “Give me a minute with him,” she begged, “just a minute.” “He ain't worth it,” Dugan sneered, after they had drawn apart. “Look at 'm.” “It's a damned shame,” corroborated Blackey, squinting sidewise at Frona whispering in St. Vin- cent's ear, the while her hand wandered caressingly through his hair. What she said they did not hear, but she got him on his feet and led him forward. He walked as a dead man might walk, and when he entered the open air gazed forth wonderingly upon the muddy sweep of the Yukon. The crowd had formed by the bank, about a pine tree. A boy, engaged in running a rope over one of the branches, finished his task and slid down the trunk to the ground. He looked quickly at the palms of his hands and blew upon them, and a laugh went up. A couple of wolf-dogs, on the outskirts, bristled up to each other and bared their fangs. Men encour- aged them. They closed in and rolled over, but were kicked aside to make room for St. Vincent. Corliss came up the bank to Frona. “What's up?” he whispered. “Is it off?” 320 A DAUGHTER OF THE SNOWS murder I awoke with the feeling that some one was moving around. The slush-lamp was burning low, and I saw Bella at the door. Borg was snoring; I could hear him plainly. Bella was taking down the bread-pan, and she exercised great care about it. Then she opened the door, and an Indian came in softly. He had no mask, and I should know him if ever I see him again, for a scar ran along the forehead and down over one eye.” “I suppose you sprang out of bed and gave the alarm P” “No, I didn't,” St. Vincent answered, with a defiant toss of the head, as though he might as well get the worst over with. “I just lay there and waited.” “What did you think?” “That Bella was in collusion with the Indian, and that Borg was to be murdered. It came to me at once.” “And you did nothing?” “Nothing.” His voice sank, and his eyes dropped to Frona, leaning against the box beneath him and steadying it. She did not seem to be affected. “Bella came over to me, but I closed my eyes and breathed regularly. She held the slush-lamp to me, but I played sleep naturally enough to fool her. Then I heard a snort of sudden awakening and alarm, and a cry, and I looked out. The Indian was hacking at Borg with a knife, and Borg was warding off with his arms and trying to grapple him. When they did grapple, Bella crept up from behind and threw her arm in a strangle- hold about her husband's neck. She put her knee into the small of his back, and bent him backward and, with the Indian helping, threw him to the floor.” 323 A DAUGHTER OF THE SNOWS “And what did you do?” “I watched.” “Had you a revolver?” “Yes.” “The one you previously said John Borg had bor- rowed P” “Yes; but I watched.” “Did John Borg call for help?” 4- Yes.” “Can you give his words?” “He called, “St. Vincent! Oh, St. Vincent! Oh, my God! Oh, St. Vincent, help me!’” He shuddered at the recollection, and added, “It was terrible.” “I should say so,” Brown grunted. “And you?” “I watched,” was the dogged reply, while a groan went up from the crowd. “Borg shook clear of them, however, and got on his legs. He hurled Bella across the cabin with a back-sweep of the arm and turned upon the Indian. Then they fought. The Indian had dropped the knife, and the sound of Borg's blows was sickening. I thought he would surely beat the Indian to death. That was when the furniture was smashed. They rolled and snarled and struggled like wild beasts. I wondered the Indian's chest did not cave in under some of Borg's blows. But Bella got the knife and stabbed her husband repeatedly about the body. The Indian had clinched with him, and his arms were not free; so he kicked out at her sideways. He must have broken her legs, for she cried out and fell down, and though she tried, she never stood up again. Then he went down, with the Indian under him, across the stove.” “Did he call any more for help?” 324 A DAUGHTER OF THE SNOWS “He begged me to come to him.” “And P” “I watched. He managed to get clear of the In- dian and staggered over to me. He was streaming blood, and I could see he was very weak. ‘Give me your gun,’ he said; “quick, give me it.’ He felt around blindly. Then his mind seemed to clear a bit, and he reached across me to the holster hanging on the wall and took the pistol. The Indian came at him with the knife again, but he did not try to defend himself. Instead, he went on towards Bella, with the Indian still hanging to him and hacking at him. The Indian seemed to bother and irritate him, and he shoved him away. He knelt down and turned Bella's face up to the light; but his own face was covered with blood and he could not see. So he stopped long enough to brush the blood from his eyes. He appeared to look in order to make sure. Then he put the revolver to her breast and fired. “The Indian went wild at this, and rushed at him with the knife, at the same time knocking the pistol out of his hand. It was then the shelf with the slush- lamp was knocked down. They continued to fight in the darkness, and there were more shots fired, though I do not know by whom. I crawled out of the bunk, but they struck against me in their struggles, and I fell over Bella. That's when the blood got on my hands. As I ran out the door, more shots were fired. Then I met La Flitche and John, and . . . . and you know the rest. This is the truth I have told you, I swear it!” He looked down at Frona. She was steadying the box, and her face was composed. He looked out over the crowd and saw unbelief. Many were laughing. 325 A DAUGHTER OF THE SNOWS “Why did you not tell this story at first?” Bill Brown demanded. “Because . . . . because . . . . “Well?” “Because I might have helped.” There was more laughter at this, and Bill Brown turned away from him. “Gentlemen, you have heard this pipe dream. It is a wilder fairy story than his first. At the beginning of the trial we promised to show that the truth was not in him. That we suc- ceeded, your verdict is ample testimony. But that he should likewise succeed, and more brilliantly, we did not expect. That he has, you cannot doubt. What do you think of him? Lie upon lie he has given us; he has been proven a chronic liar; are you to believe this last and fearfully impossible lie? Gentlemen, I can only ask that you reaffirm your judgment. And to those who may doubt his mendacity, surely there are but few, let me state, that if his story is true; if he broke salt with this man, John Borg, and lay in his blankets while murder was done; if he did hear, un- moved, the voice of the man calling to him for help; if he did lie there and watch that carnival of butchery without his manhood prompting him, let me state, gentlemen, I say, let me state that he is none the less deserveful of hanging. We cannot make a mistake. What shall it be?” “Death !” “String him up !” “Stretch 'm I" were the cries. But the crowd suddenly turned its attention to the river, and even Blackey refrained from his official task. A large raft, worked by a sweep at either end, was slipping past the tail of Split-up Island, close to the yy 326 A DAUGHTER OF THE SNOWS shore. When it was at their feet, its nose was slewed into the bank, and while its free end swung into the stream to make the consequent circle, a snubbing-rope was flung ashore and several turns taken about the tree under which St. Vincent stood. A cargo of moose-meat, red and raw, cut into quarters, peeped from beneath a cool covering of spruce boughs. And because of this, the two men on the raft looked up to those on the bank with pride in their eyes. “Tryin' to make Dawson with it,” one of them explained, “and the sun's all-fired hot.” “Nope,” said his comrade, in reply to a query, “don’t care to stop and trade. It's worth a dollar and a half a pound down below, and we're hustlin' to get there. But we've got some pieces of a man we want to leave with you.” He turned and pointed to a loose heap of blankets which slightly disclosed the form of a man beneath. “We gathered him in this mornin', 'bout thirty mile up the Stewart, I should judge.” “Stands in need of doctorin’,” the other man spoke up, “and the meat's spoilin', and we ain't got time for nothin’.” “Beggar don't have anythin' to say. Don't savve the burro.” “Looks as he might have been mixin' things with a grizzly or somethin', all battered and gouged. Injured internally, from the looks of it. Where'll you have him?” Frona, standing by St. Vincent, saw the injured man borne over the crest of the bank and through the crowd. A bronzed hand drooped down and a bronzed face showed from out the blankets. The bearers halted near them while a decision could be reached as to where he should be carried. Frona felt a sudden fierce grip on her arm. 327 A DAUGHTER OF THE SNOWS to, and once a sober, mirthless laugh shaped the mouths of them. “So? It is good,” La Flitche said, when the In- dian's head dropped back. “This man make true talk. He come from White River, way up. He cannot un- derstand. He surprised very much, so many white men. He never think so many white men in the world. He die soon. His name Gow. “Long time ago, three year, this man John Borg go to this man Gow's country. He hunt, he bring plenty meat to the camp, wherefore White River Sticks like him. Gow have one squaw, Pisk-ku. Bime-by John Borg make preparation to go 'way. He go to Gow, and he say, ‘Give me your squaw. We trade. For her I give you many things.' But Gow say no. Pisk-ku good squaw. No woman sew moc- casin like she. She tan moose-skin the best, and make the softest leather. He like Pisk-ku. Then John Borg say he don't care; he want Pisk-ku. Then they have a skookum big fight, and Pisk-ku go 'way with John Borg. She no want to go 'way, but she go anyway. Borg call her “Bella,’ and give her plenty good things, but she like Gow all the time.” La Flitche pointed to the scar which ran down the forehead and past the eye of the Indian. “John Borg he do that. “Long time Gow pretty near die. Then he get well, but his head sick. He don't know nobody. Don't know his father, his mother, or anything. Just like a little baby, just like that. Then one day, quick, click! something snap, and his head get well all at once. He know his father and mother, he remember Pisk-ku, he remember everything. His father say John Borg go down river. Then Gow go down river. Spring- 329 A DAUGHTER OF THE SNOWS time, ice very bad. He very much afraid, so, many white men, and when he come to this place he travel by night. Nobody see him 'tall, but he see everybody. He like a cat, see in the dark. Somehow, he come straight to John Borg's cabin. He do not know how this was, except that the work he had to do was good work.” St. Vincent pressed Frona's hand, but she shook her fingers clear and withdrew a step. “He see Pisk-ku feed the dogs, and he have talk with her. That night he come and she open the door. Then you know that which was done. St. Vincent do nothing. Borg kill Bella. Gow kill Borg. Borg kill Gow, for Gow die pretty quick. Borg have strong arm. Gow sick inside, all smashed up. Gow no care; Pisk-ku dead. “After that he go 'cross ice to the land. I tell him all you people say it cannot be; no man can cross the ice at that time. He laugh, and say that it is, and what is, must be. Anyway, he have very hard time, but he get 'cross all right. He very sick inside. Bime-by he cannot walk; he crawl. Long time he come to Stewart River. Can go no more, so he lay down to die. Two white men find him and bring him to this place. He don't care. He die anyway.” La Flitche finished abruptly, but nobody spoke. Then he added, “I think Gow damn good man.” Frona came up to Jacob Welse. “Take me away, father,” she said. “I am so tired.” A DAUGHTER OF THE SNOWS action were for the time being distasteful. It was more pleasant, even, to dwell on Tommy, on Tommy of the bitter tongue and craven heart; and she made a note that the wife and children in Toronto should not be forgotten when the Northland paid its dividends to the Welse. The crackle of a foot on a dead willow-twig roused her, and her eyes met St. Vincent's. “You have not congratulated me upon my escape,” he began, breezily. “But you must have been dead- tired last night. I know I was. And you had that hard pull on the river besides.” He watched her furtively, trying to catch some cue as to her attitude and mood. - “You’re a heroine, that's what you are, Frona,” he began again, with exuberance. “And not only did you save the mail-man, but by the delay you wrought in the trial you saved me. If one more witness had gone on the stand that first day, I should have been duly hanged before Gow put in an appearance. Fine chap, Gow. Too bad he's going to die.” “I am glad that I could be of help,” she replied, wondering the while what she could say. “And of course I am to be congratulated ** “Your trial is hardly a thing for congratulation,” she spoke up quickly, looking him straight in the eyes for the moment. “I am glad that it came out as it did, but surely you cannot expect me to congratulate you.” “O-o-o,” with long-drawn inflection. “So that's where it pinches.” He smiled good-humoredly, and moved as though to sit down, but she made no room for him, and he remained standing. “I can certainly explain. If there have been women—” 332 A DAUGHTER OF THE SNOWS Frona had been clinching her hand nervously, but at the word burst out in laughter. “Women?” she queried. “Women?” she repeated. “Do not be ridiculous, Gregory.” “After the way you stood by me through the trial,” he began, reproachfully, “I thought—” “Oh, you do not understand,” she said, hopelessly. “You do not understand. Look at me, Gregory, and see if I can make you understand. Your presence is painful to me. Your kisses hurt me. The memory of them still burns my cheek, and my lips feel unclean. And why? Because of women, which you may ex- plain away? How little do you understand! But shall I tell you?” Voices of men came to her from down the river- bank, and the splashing of water. She glanced quickly and saw Del Bishop guiding a poling-boat against the current, and Corliss on the bank, bending to the tow- rope. “Shall I tell you why, Gregory St. Vincent?” she said again. “Tell you why your kisses have cheap- ened me? Because you broke the faith of food and blanket. Because you broke salt with a man, and then watched that man fight unequally for life with- out lifting your hand. Why, I had rather you had died in defending him; the memory of you would have been good. Yes, I had rather you had killed him yourself. At least, it would have shown there was blood in your body.” “So this is what you would call love?” he began, scornfully, his fretting, fuming devil beginning to rouse. “A fair-weather love, truly. But, Lord, how we men learn l’” 333 A DAUGHTER OF THE SNOWS “I had thought you were well lessoned,” she re- torted; “what of the other women?” “But what do you intend to do?” he demanded, taking no notice. “I am not an easy man to cross. You cannot throw me over with impunity. I shall not stand for it, I warn you. You have dared do things in this country which would blacken you were they known. I have ears. I have not been asleep. You will find it no child's play to explain away things which you may declare most innocent.” She looked at him with a smile which carried pity in its cold mirth, and it goaded him. “I am down, a thing to make a jest upon, a thing to pity, but I promise you that I can drag you with me. My kisses have cheapened you, eh? Then how must you have felt at Happy Camp on the Dyea Trail?” As though in answer, Corliss swung down upon them with the tow-rope. Frona beckoned a greeting to him. “Vance,” she said, “the mail-carrier has brought important news to father, so important that he must go outside. He starts this afternoon with Baron Courbertin in La Bijou. Will you take me down to Dawson? I should like to go at once, to-day. - “He . . . . he suggested you,” she added shyly, indicating St. Vincent. THE END. JACK RAYMOND. By E. L. VOYNICH. 12mo. Cloth, $1.5o. “The strongest novel that the present season has produced.”— Pall Mall Gazette, London. “Wonderful and terrible; wonderful in its intellectual effect, ter. rible for the intensity of feeling effects.”—Boston Courier. “One of the uniquely interesting stories of the year.”—The World, New York. SISTER TERESA. By GEORGE MOORE. 12mo. Cloth, $1.5o. “A psychological study of extraordinary power, revealing the fine- ness of George Moore's literary methods.”—Philadelphia Press. “Absorbing to the end as a narrative, “Sister Teresa' is also a remarkable exhibit of finished thought and skill.”—New York World. J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY, PHILADELPHIA DATE DUE GAY Lord print Ed in u. s. A