Saskatchewan. It was a
woman, reading a book.

As he saw her, I heard a great breath heave up inside Thornton's chest.
The woman looked up, stared for a moment, and then dropped her book
with a welcoming cry such as I had never heard before in my life. She
sprang down the steps, and Thornton leaped from the wagon. They met
there a dozen paces from me, Thornton catching her in his arms, and the
woman clasping her arms about his neck.

I heard her sobbing, and I saw Thornton kissing her again and again,
and then the woman pulled his blond head down close to her face. It was
sickening, knowing what I did, and I began helping the driver to throw
off our dunnage.

In about two minutes I heard Thornton calling me.

I didn't turn my head. Then Thornton came to me, and as he straightened
me around by the shoulders I caught a glimpse of the woman. He was
right--she was very beautiful.

"I told you that her husband was a scoundrel and a rake," he said
gently. "Well, he was--and I was that scoundrel! I came up here for a
chance of redeeming myself, and your big, glorious North has made a man
of me. Will you come and meet my wife?"

THE STRENGTH OF MEN

There was the scent of battle in the air. The whole of Porcupine City
knew that it was coming, and every man and woman in its two hundred
population held their breath in anticipation of the struggle between
two men for a fortune--and a girl. For in some mysterious manner rumor
of the girl had got abroad, passing from lip to lip, until even the
children knew that there was some other thing than gold that would play
a part in the fight between Clarry O'Grady and Jan Larose. On the
surface it was not scheduled to be a fight with fists or guns. But in
Porcupine City there were a few who knew the "inner story"--the story
of the girl, as well as the gold, and those among them who feared the
law would have arbitrated in a different manner for the two men if it
had been in their power. But law is law, and the code was the code.
There was no alternative. It was an unusual situation, and yet
apparently simple of solution. Eighty miles north, as the canoe was
driven, young Jan Larose had one day staked out a rich "find" at the
headwaters of Pelican Creek. The same day, but later, Clarry O'Grady
had driven his stakes beside Jan's. It had been a race to the mining
recorder's office, and they had come in neck and neck. Popular
sentiment favored Larose, the slim, quiet, dark-eyed