o Andy and swung out on the trail. Fastened
tightly to her back were her camera and a small travelling satchel. In
addition, she carried for alpenstock the willow pole of Neepoosa. Her
dress was of the mountaineering sort, short-skirted and scant, allowing
the greatest play with the least material, and withal gray of color and
modest.

Her outfit, on the backs of a dozen Indians and in charge of Del
Bishop, had got under way hours before. The previous day, on her
return with Matt McCarthy from the Siwash camp, she had found Del
Bishop at the store waiting her. His business was quickly transacted,
for the proposition he made was terse and to the point. She was going
into the country. He was intending to go 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
of the hat. As for pay, when they got to Dawson, a good word from her
to Jacob Welse, and a year's outfit would be his. No, no; no
grub-stake about it, no strings on him! He would pay for the outfit
later on when his sack was dusted. What did she think about it,
anyway? And Frona did think about it, for ere she had finished
breakfast he was out hustling the packers together.

She found herself making better speed than the majority of her fellows,
who were heavily laden and had to rest their packs every few hundred
yards. Yet she found herself hard put to keep the pace of a bunch of
Scandinavians ahead of her. They were huge strapping blond-haired
giants, each striding along with a hundred pounds on his back, and all
harnessed to a go-cart which carried fully six hundred more. Their
faces were as laughing suns, and the joy of life was in them. The toil
seemed child's play and slipped from 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