ught him to face the storms and evil spirits of Unaga."
She laughed without any lightness. "Will you be content to hear the
things I may tell you--without asking me to show you how it is these
things are so?" she demanded.

"I don't ask a thing," the man replied promptly. "I don't need to know a
thing. You don't get the way I feel. You're a girl. You need furs for
trade. Guess that trade means the whole of everything to you, and is
liable to make you plenty happy. Well--why, it pleases me to death to
help you. That's all."

For a moment Keeko let her wide blue eyes dwell on the man's youthful
face.

"That only makes me want to say things more," she retorted, with a
slight flush dyeing her soft cheeks. "So I'm just going to say those
things right away, and I don't care what secret I hand out doing it.
When a man's generosity gets busy it's to limits mostly a long way
ahead. Well, when it's that way I don't reckon a woman feels like
slamming the door in his face. I've a step-father and a mother. My
mother's sick--sick to death. She's all I've got, and all I care for.
She's kind of a weak woman who's been up against most of the worry and
kicks a world can hand her. And now she's sick to death, and looks like
getting that peace that life never seemed to be able to hand her. My
step-father's a tough man, and I hate him. Say, you guess that my scare
isn't worth two cents. I'm scared of my step-father like nothing else in
the world. Oh, I'm not scared that he might raise a club at me. That
wouldn't worry me a thing. Guess I could deal with that--right. No. I'm
not scared that way. It's something different, and it's come through
nothing he's ever done or threatened against--me. No, it's my poor
mother. I tell you he's letting her die. He's been letting her die all
these years when I wasn't old enough to understand. He wants to be rid
of her. He's just a murderer at heart, because he's letting her die
through neglect he's figgered out. And my mother isn't only a sick woman
dying of the consumption the life he's exposed her to has brought on.
She's got a broken heart that he's handed her. But sick as she is, she's
wise, and she lies abed thinking not for herself but for me--all the
time. And lying there she's worked out a way so I'll be able to get free
of my step-father, and play a hand in life on my own when she's gone. It
was she taught me to handle a rifle when I'd got hands strong enough to
hold it. It was she who set me