ick' froze. Can't be done. I wonder who they are?"

He "kowtowed" some more, and at the answer of the chattering savage
we looked at Annie.

"Him called Lund," shivered the Siwash.

I never see anybody harder hit than her. I love a scrap, but I
thinks "Billy, she's having a stiffer fight than you ever associated
with."

Finally she says, kind of slow and quiet: "Who knows where the
'Cut-off' starts?"

Nobody answers, and up speaks the U. S. man again.

"You've got your nerve, to ask a man out on such a night."

"If there was one here, I wouldn't have to ask him. There's people
freezing within five miles of here, and you hug the stove, saying:
'It's stormy, and we'll get cold.' Of course it is. If it wasn't
stormy they'd be here too, and it's so cold, you'll probably freeze.
What's that got to do with it? Ever have your mother talk to you
about duty? Thank Heaven I travelled that portage once, and I can
find it again if somebody will go with me."

'Twas a blush raising talk, but nobody upset any furniture getting
dressed.

She continues:

"So I'm the woman of this crowd and I hide behind my skirts. Mr.
Mail Man, show what a glorious creature you are. Throw yourself--get
up and stretch and roar. Oh, you barn-yard bantam! Has it had its
pap to-night? I've a grand commercial enterprise; I'll take all of
your bust measurements and send out to the States for a line of
corsets. Ain't there half a man among you?"

She continued in this vein, pollutin' the air, and, having no means
of defence, we found ourselves follerin' her out into a yelling storm
that beat and roared over us like waves of flame.

Swede luck had guided their shaft onto the richest pay-streak in
seven districts, and Swede luck now led us to the Lund boys, curled
up in the drifted snow beside their dogs; but it was the level head
and cool judgment of a woman that steered us home in the grey whirl
of the dawn.

During the deathly weariness of that night I saw past the calloused
hide of that woman and sighted the splendid courage cached away
beneath her bitter oratory and hosstyle syllogisms. "There's a story
there," thinks I, "an' maybe a man moved in it--though I can't
imagine her softened by much affection." It pleased some guy to
state that woman's the cause of all our troubles, but I figger
they're like whisky--all good, though some a heap better'n others, of
course, and when a frail, little, ninety pound woman gets to bucki