So
they said nothing, these two men who had taken the half-frozen woman into
their tent three days back, and who had warmed her, and fed her, and
rescued her goods from the Indian packers. This latter had necessitated
the payment of numerous dollars, to say nothing of a demonstration in
force--Dick Humphries squinting along the sights of a Winchester while
Tommy apportioned their wages among them at his own appraisement. It had
been a little thing in itself, but it meant much to a woman playing a
desperate single-hand in the equally desperate Klondike rush of '97. Men
were occupied with their own pressing needs, nor did they approve of
women playing, single-handed, the odds of the arctic winter. "If I was a
man, I know what I would do." Thus reiterated Molly, she of the flashing
eyes, and therein spoke the cumulative grit of five American-born
generations.
In the succeeding silence, Tommy thrust a pan of biscuits into the Yukon
stove and piled on fresh fuel. A reddish flood pounded along under his
sun-tanned skin, and as he stooped, the skin of his neck was scarlet.
Dick palmed a three-cornered sail needle through a set of broken pack
straps, his good nature in nowise disturbed by the feminine cataclysm
which was threatening to burst in the storm-beaten tent.
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