rail.

Leaving the two to the drying of their footgear, Sitka Charley turned
back over the course he had come. He, too, had a mighty longing to sit
by the fire and tend his complaining flesh, but the honor and the law
forbade. He toiled painfully over the frozen field, each step a
protest, every muscle in revolt. Several times, where the open water
between the jams had recently crusted, he was forced to miserably
accelerate his movements as the fragile footing swayed and threatened
beneath him. In such places death was quick and easy; but it was not
his desire to endure no more.

His deepening anxiety vanished as two Indians dragged into view round a
bend in the river. They staggered and panted like men under heavy
burdens; yet the packs on their backs were a matter of but a few
pounds. He questioned them eagerly, and their replies seemed to relieve
him. He hurried on. Next came two white men, supporting between them a
woman. They also behaved as though drunken, and their limbs shook with
weakness. But the woman leaned lightly upon them, choosing to carry
herself forward with her own strength. At the sight of her a flash of
joy cast its fleeting light across Sitka Charley's face. He cherished a
very great regard for Mrs. Eppingwell. He had seen many white women,
but this was the first to travel the trail with him. When Captain
Eppingwell proposed the hazardous undertaking and made him an offer for
his services, he had shaken his head gravely; for it was an unknown
journey through the dismal vastnesses of the Northland, and he knew it
to be of the kind that try to the uttermost the souls of men.

But when he learned that the captain's wife was to accompany them, he
had refused flatly to have anything further to do with it. Had it been
a woman of his own race he would have harbored no objections; but these
women of the Southland--no, no, they were too soft, too tender, for
such enterprises.

Sitka Charley did not know this kind of woman. Five minutes before, he
did not even dream of taking charge of the expedition; but when she
came to him with her wonderful smile and her straight clean English,
and talked to the point, without pleading or persuading, he had
incontinently yielded. Had there been a softness and appeal to mercy in
the eyes, a tremble to the voice, a taking advantage of sex, he would
have stiffened to steel; instead her clear-searching eyes and
clear-ringing voice, her utter frankness and tacit assumptio