his
life--p'r'aps twenty men--I dunno; but one man sure. To-morrow, it's go or
stay with him. He was good--Lord, but he was good!--to my little gal years
back. She'd only been married to me a year when he saved her, riskin' his
own life. No one else had the pluck. My little gal, only twenty she was,
an' pretty as a picture, an' me fifty miles away when the fire broke out
in the hotel where she was. He'd have gone down to hell for a friend, an'
he saved my little gal. I had her for five years after that. That's why I
got to git to Bindon to-morrow. If I don't, I don't want to see to-morrow.
I got to go down the river to-night."

She knew what he was going to ask her. She knew he was thinking what all
the North knew, that she was the first person to take the Dog Nose Rapids
in a canoe, down the great river scarce a stone's-throw from her door; and
that she had done it in safety many times. Not in all the West and North
were there a half dozen people who could take a canoe to Bindon, and they
were not here. She knew that he meant to ask her to paddle him down the
swift stream, with its murderous rocks, to Bindon. She glanced at the
white petticoat on the chair, and her lips tightened. To-morrow--to-morrow
was as much to her here as it would be to this man before her, or the man
he would save at Bindon.

"What do you want?" she asked, hardening her heart.

"Can't you see? I want you to hide me here till to-night. There's a full
moon, an' it would be as plain goin' as by day. They told me about you up
North, and I said to myself, 'If I git to Jenny Long, an' tell her about
my friend at Bindon, an' my little gal, she'll take me down to Bindon in
time.' My little gal would have paid her own debt if she'd ever had the
chance. She didn't--she's lying up on Mazy Mountain. But one woman'll do a
lot for the sake of another woman. Say, you'll do it, won't you? If I
don't git there by to-morrow noon, it's no good."

She would not answer. He was asking more than he knew. Why should she be
sacrificed? Was it her duty to pay the "little gal's debt," to save the
man at Bindon? To-morrow was to be the great day in her own life. The one
man in all the world was coming to marry her to-morrow. After four years'
waiting, after a bitter quarrel in which both had been to blame, he was
coming from the mining town of Selby to marry her to-morrow.

"What will happen? Why will your friend lose his life if you don't get to
Bindon?"

"By noon t