A Daughter of the Snows

lling satchel. In addition, she carried for alpenstock the willow pole of Neepoosa. Her dress was of the mountaineering

o in. She would need somebody. If she had not picked any one yet, why he was just the man. He had forgotten to tell her the day he took her ashore that he had been in the country years before and knew all about it. True, he hated the water, and it was mainly a water journey; but he was not afraid of it. He was afraid of nothing. Further, he would fight for her at the drop

m them lightly. They joked with one another, and with the passers-by, in a meaningless tongue, and their great chests rumbled with cavern-echoing laughs. Men stood aside for them, and looked after them enviously; for they took the rises of the trail on the run, and rattled down the counter slopes, and ground the iron-rimmed wheels harshly over the rocks. Plunging through a dark stretch of woods, they came out upon the river at the ford. A drowned man lay on his back on the sand-bar, staring upward, unblinking, at t

king the inventory turned to watch. The current rose nigh to their hips, but it was swift and they staggered, while now and again the cart slipped sideways with the stream. The worst was over, and Frona found herself holding her breath. The water had sunk to the knees of the two foremost men, when a strap snapped on one nearest the cart. His pack swung suddenly to the side, overbalancing him. At the same

, still loaded, showed first, smashing a wheel and turning over and over into the next plunge. The men followed in a miserable tangle. They were beaten against the submerged rocks and swept on, all but one. Frona, in a canoe (a dozen canoes were already in pursuit), saw him grip the rock with ble

as requisitioned from an up-coming boat, and a pair of horses from a pack-train on the bank, and the ghastly jetsam hauled ashore. Frona looked at the five young giants lying in the mud, broken-boned, limp, uncaring. They were

ought new paths, till there were many paths. And on such a path Frona came upon a man spread carelessly in the mud. He lay on his side, legs apart and one arm buried beneath him, pinn

he greeted her. "Been waiti

st unbuckle that strap. The pesky thing!

hurt?"

his muddy hands on a low-bowed spruce. "Just my luck; but I got a good rest, so what's the good of makin' a beef about it? You see, I tripped on that little root ther

n't you call

h. If any other man 'd make me climb up just because he'd slipped down, I'd take him out o' the mud all right, all right

propriating Del Bishop's phras

s pack and starting off at a lively c

hty feet it stretched in ticklish insecurity. Frona stepped upon it, felt it move beneath her, heard the bellowing of the water, saw the mad rush-and shrank back. She slipped the knot of her shoe-laces and pretended great care in the tying thereof as a bunch of Indians came out of the woods above and

s hot, for she sat disgraced in her own sight; but she gave no sign. The leader stood aside, and one by one, and never more than one at a time, they made the perilous passage. At the bend in the middle their weight forced the tree under, and t

the mountain side. "Much better you tak

e, but upon the pride of her race; and it was a greater demand than her demand, just as the race was greater than she

ck, clumsily strapped, sprawled on the ground. He had taken

er?" she asked, h

Dyea River cut the gloomy darkness with its living silv

?" she repeated. "C

e raw, and my back is nearly broken, and I am a

ho have just landed on the beach. It will take them ten days or two w

nd then think of my wife and babies. I left them down in the States. Oh, if they could only see me now! I can't go back to them, and I can't go on. It's too much

ur comrades

ecause I could not pack as much or as l

r roughed it?

N

strong. Weigh probably o

and seventy,"

ugh you had ever been

an inv

-n

mrades? They

me. That's what makes it so hard, don't you see! We'd known one another

of heart. You cannot work like a horse because you will not. Therefore the country has no use for you. The north wants strong men,-strong of soul, not body. The body does not count. So go

yet slippery with the slime of the flood, and men were rummaging disconsolately in the rubbish of overthrown tents and caches. But here and there they worked with nervous haste, and the stark corpses by the trail-side atteste

ess. Above towered storm-beaten Chilcoot. Up its gaunt and ragged front crawled a slender string of men. But it was an endless string. It came out of the last fringe of dwarfed shrub below, drew a black line across a dazzling stre

e day, and a deep gloom prevailed; but Frona knew that somewhere up there, clinging and climbing and immortally striving, the long line of ants still twisted towards the sky.

apped, and though a hundred caches were waiting ferriage, no boats were plying back and forth. A rickety skeleton of sticks, in a shell of greased canvas, lay upon the rocks. Frona sought out the owner, a bright-faced young fellow, with sharp black

take me, surel

n boats won't tackle it. The last that tried, with a gang of packers aboard, was blown over on the west shore. We co

here," Frona smiled winsomely, but there was no appeal in the smile; no feminine helplessness

N

ive you

I s

ot afraid,

t to explain. But on second thought she, too, remained silent; for she read him, and knew that it was perhaps the only way for her to gain her point. They stood there, bodies inclined to the storm in

k, and tossed the oars aboard. "Climb in! I'll take you, but not fo

for a score of feet. The spray drove inboard in a continuous stin

ng forward to the oars. "It would be embarrassi

e for both of us,-a night without tent, blankets,

lt the water out. On either side uprose bare wet walls of rock. A heavy sleet was fal

," he advised, thankin

t. "Two miles of stiff

you get there, so yo

d-b

ook his hand, and said,

urned the grip with usury

ted her brutally about. Once, through a canvas wall, she heard a man apostrophizing gorgeously, and felt sure that it was Del Bishop. But a peep into the interior told a different tale; so she wandered fruitlessly