ox-trimmed parka quit at the knees, showing the
daintiest pair of--I can't say it. Anyhow, they wasn't, they just
looked like 'em, only nicer.

She stood blinking at us, coming from the bright light outside, as
cute as a new faro box--then:

"Can you tell me where Mrs. Bradshaw lives? She's somewhere in this
district. I'm her daughter--come all the way from the States to see
her."

When she smiled I could hear the heart-strings of those ragged,
whiskered, frost-bit "mushers" bustin' like banjo strings.

"You know her, don't you?" she says, turning to me.

"Know her, Miss? Well, I should snort! There ain't a prospector on
the range that ain't proud and honoured to call her a friend.
Leastways, if there is I'll bust his block," and I cast the bad eye
on the boys to wise 'em up.

"Ain't I right, Joe?"

"Betcher dam life," says Joe, sort of over-stepping the conventions.

"Then tell me where her claim is. It's quite rich, and you must know
it," says she, appealing to him.

Up against it? Say! I seen the whites of his eyes show like he was
drownding, and he grinned joyful as a man kicked in the stummick.

"Er--er--I just bought in here, and ain't acquainted much," says he.
"Have a drink," and, in his confusions, he sets out the bottle of
alkalies that he dignifies by the alias of booze. Then he continues
with reg'lar human intelligence.

"Bill, here, he can tell you where the ground is," and the whelp
indicates me.

Lord knows my finish, but for Ole Lund. He sits up in his bunk,
swaddled in Annie Black's bandages, and through slits between his
frost bites, he moults the follering rhetoric:

"Aye tole you vere de claim iss. She own de Nomber Twenty fraction
on Buster Creek, 'longside may and may broder. She's dam good
fraction, too."

I consider that a blamed white stunt for Swedes; paying for their
lives with the mine they swindled her out of.

Anyhow, it knocked us galley-west.

I'd formulated a swell climax, involving the discovery of the mother,
when the mail man spoke up, him that had been her particular
abomination, a queer kind of a break in his voice:

"Come out of that."

Mrs. Bradshaw moved out into the light, and, if I'm any judge, the
joy that showed in her face rubbed away the bitterness of the past
years. With an aching little cry the girl ran to her, and hid in her
arms like a quail.

We men-folks got accumulated up into a dark corner where we shook
hands and swore soft a