"I allow the women's part is most as hard as ours, and Carrie hit it
when she said I had to make good."

Jim nodded. "I like your sister, and your mother's very fine. I want
to help you help them all I can."

"Sure, I know," said Jake, and then his eyes twinkled, for he had noted
Jim's slight awkwardness. "You went rather farther than you meant,
didn't you? Your English streak makes you shy, but you won't hurt my
feelings; I'm all Canadian. Now, however, you are going to bed."

Jim went to bed and soon went to sleep. He was not well yet and had
had an exciting day.

CHAPTER IV

ON THE TRAIL

Heavy rain swept the valley, the evening was cold, and Jim stood near
the big rusty stove at Tillicum House, drying his wet clothes. He had
eaten a very bad supper and imagined the wooden hotel on the North
trail was perhaps the worst at which he had stopped. The floor was
torn by lumbermen's spiked boots; burned matches and the ends of cheap
cigars lay about. The board walls were cracked and stained by resin
and drops of tarry liquid fell from the bend where the stove pipe went
through the ceiling. A door opened on a passage where a small, wet
towel hung above a row of tin basins filled with dirty water. There
was no effort for comfort and Jake, who was tired and did not like the
hard chairs, sat, smoking, on a box.

Outside, shabby frame houses ran down hill to the angry green river
where drifting ice-floes shocked. Dark woods rolled up the other bank
and trails of mist crawled among the pines. Patches of snow checkered
the rocks above; in the distance a white range glimmered against leaden
cloud. The settlement looked strangely desolate in the driving rain,
but the small ugly houses were the last Jim's party would see for long.
The wagon road ended there and a very rough pack trail led into the
wilds. There was another hotel, to which the men Jim had engaged had
gone.

"Where's Carrie?" he asked by and by.

"I guess she's tired," Jake replied. "It has been pretty fierce for
Carrie since we left the cars."

Jim frowned. They had been some days on the road and the rain had not
stopped. It was cold rain; belts of road were washed away and the rest
was full of holes, in which the loaded wagons sometimes stuck. The men
got wet and their clothes could not be dried, and Carrie was not
sheltered much by a rubber sheet, while when they struck a wash-out all
were forced to carry their tools and stor