king what
all the North knew, that she was the first person to take the Dog Nose
Rapids in a canoe, down the great river scarce a stone's-throw from her
door; and that she had done it in safety many times. Not in all the
West and North were there a half-dozen people who could take a canoe
to Bindon, and they were not here. She knew that he meant to ask her to
paddle him down the swift stream with its murderous rocks, to Bindon.
She glanced at the white petticoat on the chair, and her lips tightened.
To-morrow-tomorrow was as much to her here as it would be to this man
before her, or the man he would save at Bindon. "What do you want?" she
asked, hardening her heart. "Can't you see? I want you to hide me here
till tonight. There's a full moon, an' it would be as plain goin' as by
day. They told me about you up North, and I said to myself, 'If I git to
Jenny Long, an' tell her about my friend at Bindon, an' my little gal,
she'll take me down to Bindon in time.' My little gal would have paid
her own debt if she'd ever had the chance. She didn't--she's lying up on
Mazy Mountain. But one woman'll do a lot for the sake of another woman.
Say, you'll do it, won't you? If I don't git there by to-morrow noon,
it's no good."

She would not answer. He was asking more than he knew. Why should she be
sacrificed? Was it her duty to pay the "little gal's debt," to save the
man at Bindon? To-morrow was to be the great day in her own life. The
one man in all the world was coming to marry her to-morrow. After four
years' waiting, after a bitter quarrel in which both had been to blame,
he was coming from the mining town of Selby to marry her to-morrow.

"What will happen? Why will your friend lose his life if you don't get
to Bindon?"

"By noon to-morrow, by twelve o'clock noon; that's the plot; that's what
they've schemed. Three days ago, I heard. I got a man free from trouble
North--he was no good, but I thought he ought to have another chance,
and I got him free. He told me of what was to be done at Bindon. There'd
been a strike in the mine, an' my friend had took it in hand with
knuckle-dusters on. He isn't the kind to fell a tree with a jack-knife.
Then three of the strikers that had been turned away--they was the
ringleaders--they laid a plan that'd make the devil sick. They've put a
machine in the mine, an' timed it, an' it'll go off when my friend comes
out of the mine at noon to-morrow."

Her face was pale now, and her eyes ha