t see those people with a field-glass. They simply
scandalized him to death.

"I love to dance," said he, one night, as we looked on, "and the music
sends thrills through me, but I won't do it."

"Why not?" I asked. "This is Alaska. Be democratic. You're not so
awfully nice that a dance-hall girl will contaminate you."

"It's not democracy that I lack, nor contamination that I'm afraid of,"
he replied. "It's the principle back of it all. If we encourage these
girls in the lives they lead, we're just as bad as they are."

"Look here, son, when I quit salt water I left all that garbage and
bilge-water talk about 'guilt' and 'responsibility' behind. The days are
too short, the nights are too cold, and grub is too dear for me to spare
time to theorize. I take people the way I take work and play--just as
they come--and I'd advise you to do the same."

"No, sir; I won't associate with gamblers and crooks, so why should I
hobnob with these women? They're worse than the men, for all the
gamblers have lost is their honesty. Every time I see these girls I
think of the little mother back home. It's awful. Suppose she saw me
dancing with them?"

Well, that's a bad line of talk and I couldn't say much.

Of course, when the actresses found out how he felt they came back at
him strong, but he wrapped himself up in his dignity and held himself
aloof when he came to town, so he didn't seem to mind it.

It was one afternoon in January, cold and sharp, that Ollie Marceau's
team went through the ice just below our camp. She was a great
dog-puncher and had the best team in camp--seven fine malamoots--which
she drove every day. When the animals smelled our place they ran away
and dragged her into the open water below the hot springs. She was wet
for ten minutes, and by the time she had got out and stumbled to our
bunk-house she was all in. Another ten minutes with the "quick" at
thirty below would have finished her, but we rushed her in by the fire
and made her drink a glass of "hootch." Martin got her parka off somehow
while I slashed the strings to her mukluks and had her little feet
rubbed red as berries before she'd quit apologizing for the trouble
she'd made. A fellow learns to watch toes pretty close in the winter.

"Lord! stop your talk," we said. "This is the first chance we have had
to do anything for a lady in two years. It's a downright pleasure for us
to take you in this way."

"Indeed!" she chattered. "Well, it isn't