al distress, nothing soft and sloppy, but
hard, wrenchy, deep ones, like you hear at a melodrayma. 'Twas only
back in '99 that I seen an awful crying match, though both of the
ladies had been drinking, so I felt like I was useder to emotion than
the balance of the boys, and it was up to me to take a holt.

"Madam," says I, and somehow the word didn't seem out of place any
more--"Madam, why do you want to avoid this party?"

"Take me away," she says. "It's my daughter. She's going to find me
this way, all rough and immodest and made fun of. But that's the
worst you can say, isn't it? I'm a square woman--you know I am,
don't you, boys?" and she looked at us fierce and pleadin'.

"Sure," says Joe. "We'll boost you with the girl all right."

"She thinks her father's dead, but he isn't--he ran away with a show
woman--a year after we were married. I never told her about it, and
I've tried to make a little lady of her."

We found out afterwards that she had put the girl in a
boarding-school, but couldn't seem to make enough for both of them,
and when the Klondyke was struck thought she saw a chance. She came
north, insulted by deck hands and laughed at by the officers. At
Skagway she nursed a man through typhoid, and when he could walk he
robbed her. The mounted police took everything else she had and
mocked at her. "Your kind always has money," they said.

That's how it had been everywhere, and that's why she was so hard and
bitter. She'd worked and fought like a man, but she'd suffered like
a woman.

"I've lied and starved and stolen for her," said Annie, "to make her
think I was doing well. She said she was coming in to me, but I knew
winter would catch her at Dawson, and I thought I could head her off
by spring."

"Now, she's here; but, men, as your mothers loved you, save me from
my little girl."

She buried her face, and when I looked at the boys, tears stood in
Joe Slisco's eyes and the others breathed hard. Ole Lund, him that
was froze worst about the hands, spoke up:

"Someboady tak de corner dat blanket an' blow may nose."

Then we heard voices outside.

"Hello, in there."

Annie stood up, clutching at her throat, and stepped behind the
corner of the bunks as the door opened, framing the prettiest picture
this old range rider ever saw.

'Twas a girl, glowing pink and red where the cold had kissed her
cheeks, with yellow curlicues of hair wandering out under her yarn
cap. Her little f