swim the riffle last fall, bad water an' mush-ice runnin'-on a dare. They ain't nothin' they won't tackle. An' she's 'most as bad. Not afraid some herself. She'll do anything Rocky'll let her. But he's almighty careful with her. Treats her like a queen. No camp-work or such for her. That's why another man an' me are hired on good wages. They've got slathers of money an' they're sure dippy on each other. 'Looks like good huntin',' says Rocky, when they struck that section last fall. 'Let's make a camp then,' says Harry. An' me all the time thinkin' they was lookin' for gold. Ain't ben a prospect pan washed the whole winter.'
Linday's anger mounted. 'I haven't any patience with fools. For two cents I'd turn back.'
'No you wouldn't,' Daw assured him confidently. 'They ain't enough grub to turn back, an' we'll be there to-morrow. Just got to cross that last divide an' drop down to the cabin. An' they's a better reason. You're too far from home, an' I just naturally wouldn't let you turn back.'
Exhausted as Linday was, the flash in his black eyes warned Daw that he had overreached himself. His hand went out.
'My mistake, Doc. Forget it. I reckon I'm gettin' some cranky what of losin' them dawgs.'
III
Not one day, but three days later, the two men, after being snowed in on the summit by a spring blizzard, staggered up to a cabin that stood in a fat bottom beside the roaring Little Peco. Coming in from the bright sunshine to the dark cabin, Linday observed little of its occupants. He was no more than aware of two men and a woman. But he was not interested in them. He went directly to the bunk where lay the injured man. The latter was lying on his back, with eyes closed, and Linday noted the slender stencilling of the brows and the kinky silkiness of the brown hair. Thin and wan, the face seemed too small for the muscular neck, yet the delicate features, despite their waste, were firmly moulded.
'What dressings have you been using?' Linday asked of the woman.
'Corrosive, sublimate, regular solution,' came the answer.
He glanced quickly at her, shot an even quicker glance at the face of the injured man, and stood erect. She breathed sharply, abruptly biting off the respiration with an effort of will. Linday turned to the men.
'You clear out-chop wood or something. Clear out.'
One of them demurred.
'This is a serious case,' Linday went on. 'I want to talk to his wife.'
'I'm his brother,' said the other.
To him the woman looked, praying him with her eyes. He nodded reluctantly and turned toward the door.
'Me, too?' Daw queried from the bench where he had flung himself down.
'You, too.'
Linday busied himself with a superficial examination of the patient while the cabin was emptying.
'So?' he said. 'So that's your Rex Strang.'
She dropped her eyes to the man in the bunk as if to reassure herself of his identity, and then in silence returned Linday's gaze.
'Why don't you speak?'
She shrugged her shoulders. 'What is the use? You know it is Rex Strang.'
'Thank you. Though I might remind you that it is the first time I have ever seen him. Sit down.' He waved her to a stool, himself taking the bench. 'I'm really about all in, you know. There's no turnpike from the Yukon here.'
He drew a penknife and began extracting a thorn from his thumb.
'What are you going to do?' she asked, after a minute's wait.
'Eat and rest up before I start back.'
'What are you going to do about…' She inclined her head toward the unconscious man.
'Nothing.'
She went over to the bunk and rested her fingers lightly on the tight-curled hair.
'You mean you will kill him,' she said slowly. 'Kill him by doing nothing, for you can save him if you will.'
'Take it that way.' He considered a moment, and stated his thought with a harsh little laugh. 'From time immemorial in this weary old world it has been a not uncommon custom so to dispose of wife-stealers.'
'You are unfair, Grant,' she answered gently. 'You forget that I was willing and that I desired. I was a free agent. Rex never stole me. It was you who lost me. I went with him, willing and eager, with song on my lips. As well accuse me of stealing him. We went together.'
'A good way of looking at it,' Linday conceded. 'I see you are as keen a thinker as ever, Madge. That must have bothered him.'
'A keen thinker can be a good lover-'
'And not so foolish,' he broke in.
'Then you admit the wisdom of my course?'
He threw up his hands. 'That's the devil of it, talking with clever women. A man always forgets and traps himself. I wouldn't wonder if you won him with a syllogism.'
Her reply was the hint of a smile in her straight-looking blue eyes and a seeming emanation of sex pride from all the physical being of her.
'No, I take that back, Madge. If you'd been a numbskull you'd have won him, or any one else, on your looks, and form, and carriage. I ought to know. I've been through that particular mill, and, the devil take me, I'm not through it yet.'
His speech was quick and nervous and irritable, as it always was, and, as she knew, it was always candid. She took her cue from his last remark.
'Do you remember Lake Geneva?'
'I ought to. I was rather absurdly happy.'
She nodded, and her eyes were luminous. 'There is such a thing as old sake. Won't you, Grant, please, just remember back… a little… oh, so little… of what we were to each other… then?'
'Now you're taking advantage,' he smiled, and returned to the attack on his thumb. He drew the thorn out, inspected it critically, then concluded. 'No, thank you. I'm not playing the Good Samaritan.'
'Yet you made this hard journey for an unknown man,' she urged.
His impatience was sharply manifest. 'Do you fancy I'd have moved a step had I known he was my wife's lover?'
'But you are here… now. And there he lies. What are you going to do?'
'Nothing. Why should I? I am not at the man's service. He pilfered me.'
She was about to speak, when a knock came on the door.
'Get out!' he shouted.
'If you want any assistance-'
'Get out! Get a bucket of water! Set it down outside!'
'You are going to…?' she began tremulously.
'Wash up.'
She recoiled from the brutality, and her lips tightened.
'Listen, Grant,' she said steadily. 'I shall tell his brother. I know the Strang breed. If you can forget old sake, so can I. If you don't do something, he'll kill you. Why, even Tom Daw would if I asked.'
'You should know me better than to threaten,' he reproved gravely, then added, with a sneer: 'Besides, I don't see how killing me will help your Rex Strang.'
She gave a low gasp, closed her lips tightly, and watched his quick eyes take note of the trembling that had beset her.
'It's not hysteria, Grant,' she cried hastily and anxiously, with clicking teeth. 'You never saw me with hysteria. I've never had it. I don't know what it is, but I'll control it. I am merely beside myself. It's partly anger-
