e
between the best of what both the wilderness and the humming cities had
to offer them? It seemed treason to Bill to long for other voices and
other faces. Yet she could not help the feeling. She wondered if he,
too, did not sometimes long for company besides her own. And the
thought stirred up a perverse jealousy. They two, perfectly mated in
all things, should be able to make their own little world complete--but
they could not, she knew. Life was altogether too complex an affair to
be solved in so primitive a fashion. She felt that continued living
under such conditions would drive her mad; that if she stayed long
enough under the somber shadow of the Klappan Range she would hate the
North and all it contained.

That would have been both unjust and absurd, so she set herself
resolutely to overcome that feeling of oppression. She was too
well-balanced to drift unwittingly along this perilous road of thought.
She schooled herself to endure and to fight off introspection. She had
absorbed enough of her husband's sturdy philosophy of life to try and
make the best of a bad job. After all, she frequently assured herself,
the badness of the job was mostly a state of mind. And she had a
growing conviction that Bill sensed the struggle, and that it hurt him.
For that reason, if for no other, she did her best to make light of the
grim environment, and to wait patiently for spring.

February and March stormed a path furiously across the calendar.
Higher and higher the drifts piled about the cabin, till at length it
was banked to the eaves with snow save where Bill shoveled it away to
let light to the windows. Day after day they kept indoors, stoking up
the fire, listening to the triumphant whoop of the winds.

"Snow, snow!" Hazel burst out one day. "Frost that cuts you like a
knife. I wonder if there's ever going to be an end to it? I wish we
were home again--or some place."

"So do I, little person," Bill said gently. "But spring's almost at
the door. Hang on a little longer. We've made a fair stake, anyway,
if we don't wash an ounce of gold."

Hazel let her gaze wander over the pelts hanging thick from ridge log
and wall. Bill had fared well at his trapping. Over two thousand
dollars he estimated the value of his catch.

"How are we going to get it all out?" She voiced a troublesome thought.

"Shoulder pack to the Skeena," he answered laconically. "Build a
dugout there, and float downstream. Por