"If I was a man--" Her words were in themselves indecisive, but the withering contempt which flashed from her black eyes was not lost upon the men-folk in the tent.
Tommy, the English sailor, squirmed, but chivalrous old Dick Humphries, Cornish fisherman and erstwhile American salmon capitalist, beamed upon her benevolently as ever.He bore women too large a portion of his rough heart to mind them, as he said, when they were in the doldrums, or when their limited vision would not permit them to see all around a thing.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, Iknow 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.
"And if you was a man?" he asked, his voice vibrant with kindness.
The three-cornered needle jammed in the damp leather, and he suspended work for the moment.
"I'd be a man.I'd put the straps on my back and light out.Iwouldn't lay in camp here, with the Yukon like to freeze most any day, and the goods not half over the portage.And you--you are men, and you sit here, holding your hands, afraid of a little wind and wet.I tell you straight, Yankee-men are made of different stuff.They'd be hitting the trail for Dawson if they had to wade through hell-fire.And you, you--I wish I was a man.""I'm very glad, my dear, that you're not." Dick Humphries threw the bight of the sail twine over the point of the needle and drew it clear with a couple of deft turns and a jerk.
A snort of the gale dealt the tent a broad-handed slap as it hurtled past, and the sleet rat-tat-tatted with snappy spite against the thin canvas.The smoke, smothered in its exit, drove back through the fire-box door, carrying with it the pungent odor of green spruce.
"Good Gawd! Why can't a woman listen to reason?" Tommy lifted his head from the denser depths and turned upon her a pair of smoke-outraged eyes.
"And why can't a man show his manhood?"
Tommy sprang to his feet with an oath which would have shocked a woman of lesser heart, ripped loose the sturdy reef-knots and flung back the flaps of the tent.
The trio peered out.It was not a heartening spectacle.A few water-soaked tents formed the miserable foreground, from which the streaming ground sloped to a foaming gorge.Down this ramped a mountain torrent.Here and there, dwarf spruce, rooting and grovelling in the shallow alluvium, marked the proximity of the timber line.Beyond, on the opposing slope, the vague outlines of a glacier loomed dead-white through the driving rain.Even as they looked, its massive front crumbled into the valley, on the breast of some subterranean vomit, and it lifted its hoarse thunder above the screeching voice of the storm.Involuntarily, Molly shrank back.
"Look, woman! Look with all your eyes! Three miles in the teeth of the gale to Crater Lake, across two glaciers, along the slippery rim-rock, knee-deep in a howling river! Look, I say, you Yankee woman! Look! There's your Yankee-men!" Tommy pointed a passionate hand in the direction of the struggling tents.
"Yankees, the last mother's son of them.Are they on trail? Is there one of them with the straps to his back? And you would teach us men our work? Look, I say!"Another tremendous section of the glacier rumbled earthward.The wind whipped in at the open doorway, bulging out the sides of the tent till it swayed like a huge bladder at its guy ropes.The smoke swirled about them, and the sleet drove sharply into their flesh.Tommy pulled the flaps together hastily, and returned to his tearful task at the fire-box.Dick Humphries threw the mended pack straps into a corner and lighted his pipe.Even Molly was for the moment persuaded.
"There's my clothes," she half-whimpered, the feminine for the moment prevailing."They're right at the top of the cache, and they'll be ruined! I tell you, ruined!""There, there," Dick interposed, when the last quavering syllable had wailed itself out."Don't let that worry you, little woman.
I'm old enough to be your father's brother, and I've a daughter older than you, and I'll tog you out in fripperies when we get to Dawson if it takes my last dollar.""When we get to Dawson!" The scorn had come back to her throat with a sudden surge."You'll rot on the way, first.You'll drown in a mudhole.You--you--Britishers!"The last word, explosive, intensive, had strained the limits of her vituperation.If that would not stir these men, what could?
Tommy's neck ran red again, but he kept his tongue between his teeth.Dick's eyes mellowed.He had the advantage over Tommy, for he had once had a white woman for a wife.
The blood of five American-born generations is, under certain circumstances, an uncomfortable heritage; and among these circumstances might be enumerated that of being quartered with next of kin.These men were Britons.On sea and land her ancestry and the generations thereof had thrashed them and theirs.
