d have seen me hitting the high places for the
sloop as soon as I was clear of them, they'd thought my own medicine had
got after me. Tilly'd kept warm by chopping the ice away, and was all
ready to cast off. Gawd! how we ran before it, the Taku howling after us
and the freezing seas sweeping over at every clip. With everything
battened down, me a-steering and Tilly chopping ice, we held on half the
night, till I plumped the sloop ashore on Porcupine Island, and we
shivered it out on the beach; blankets wet, and Tilly drying the matches
on her breast.

"So I think I know something about it. Seven years, Dick, man and wife,
in rough sailing and smooth. And then she died, in the heart of the
winter, died in childbirth, up there on the Chilcat Station. She held my
hand to the last, the ice creeping up inside the door and spreading thick
on the gut of the window. Outside, the lone howl of the wolf and the
Silence; inside, death and the Silence. You've never heard the Silence
yet, Dick, and Gawd grant you don't ever have to hear it when you sit by
the side of death. Hear it? Ay, till the breath whistles like a siren,
and the heart booms, booms, booms, like the surf on the shore.

"Siwash, Dick, but a woman. White, Dick, white, clear through. Towards
the last she says, 'Keep my feather bed, Tommy, keep it always.' And I
agreed. Then she opened her eyes, full with the pain. 'I've been a good
woman to you, Tommy, and because of that I want you to promise--to
promise'--the words seemed to stick in her throat--'that when you marry,
the woman be white. No more Siwash, Tommy. I know. Plenty white women
down to Juneau now. I know. Your people call you "squaw-man," your
women turn their heads to the one side on the street, and you do not go
to their cabins like other men. Why? Your wife Siwash. Is it not so?
And this is not good. Wherefore I die. Promise me. Kiss me in token of
your promise.'

"I kissed her, and she dozed off, whispering, 'It is good.' At the end,
that near gone my ear was at her lips, she roused for the last time.
'Remember, Tommy; remember my feather bed.' Then she died, in
childbirth, up there on the Chilcat Station."

The tent heeled over and half flattened before the gale. Dick refilled
his pipe, while Tommy drew the tea and set it aside against Molly's
return.

And she of the flashing eyes and Yankee blood? Blinded, falling,
crawling on hand and knee, the wind thrust back in h