three guests the like of
which might never come under a man's roof in a lifetime. The Strange
One, whom Malemute Kid had surnamed Ulysses, still fascinated him; but
his interest chiefly gravitated between Axel Gunderson and Axel
Gunderson's wife. She felt the day's journey, for she had softened in
comfortable cabins during the many days since her husband mastered the
wealth of frozen pay streaks, and she was tired. She rested against his
great breast like a slender flower against a wall, replying lazily to
Malemute Kid's good-natured banter, and stirring Prince's blood
strangely with an occasional sweep of her deep, dark eyes. For Prince
was a man, and healthy, and had seen few women in many months. And she
was older than he, and an Indian besides. But she was different from
all native wives he had met: she had traveled--had been in his country
among others, he gathered from the conversation; and she knew most of
the things the women of his own race knew, and much more that it was
not in the nature of things for them to know. She could make a meal of
sun-dried fish or a bed in the snow; yet she teased them with
tantalizing details of many-course dinners, and caused strange internal
dissensions to arise at the mention of various quondam dishes which
they had well-nigh forgotten. She knew the ways of the moose, the bear,
and the little blue fox, and of the wild amphibians of the Northern
seas; she was skilled in the lore of the woods, and the streams, and
the tale writ by man and bird and beast upon the delicate snow crust
was to her an open book; yet Prince caught the appreciative twinkle in
her eye as she read the Rules of the Camp. These rules had been
fathered by the Unquenchable Bettles at a time when his blood ran high,
and were remarkable for the terse simplicity of their humor.

Prince always turned them to the wall before the arrival of ladies; but
who could suspect that this native wife--Well, it was too late now.

This, then, was the wife of Axel Gunderson, a woman whose name and fame
had traveled with her husband's, hand in hand, through all the
Northland. At table, Malemute Kid baited her with the assurance of an
old friend, and Prince shook off the shyness of first acquaintance and
joined in. But she held her own in the unequal contest, while her
husband, slower in wit, ventured naught but applause. And he was very
proud of her; his every look and action revealed the magnitude of the
place she occupied in h