In the succeeding silence, Tommy thrust a pan of biscuits into the Yukon
stove and piled on fresh fuel. A reddish flood pounded along under his
sun-tanned skin, and as he stooped, the skin of his neck was scarlet.
Dick palmed a three-cornered sail needle through a set of broken pack
straps, his good nature in nowise disturbed by the feminine cataclysm
which was threatening to burst in the storm-beaten tent.

"And if you was a man?" he asked, his voice vibrant with kindness. The
three-cornered needle jammed in the damp leather, and he suspended work
for the moment.

"I'd be a man. I'd put the straps on my back and light out. I wouldn't
lay in camp here, with the Yukon like to freeze most any day, and the
goods not half over the portage. And you--you are men, and you sit here,
holding your hands, afraid of a little wind and wet. I tell you
straight, Yankee-men are made of different stuff. They'd be hitting the
trail for Dawson if they had to wade through hell-fire. And you, you--I
wish I was a man."

"I'm very glad, my dear, that you're not." Dick Humphries threw the
bight of the sail twine over the point of the needle and drew it clear
with a couple of deft turns and a jerk.

A snort of the gale dealt the tent a broad-handed slap as it hurtled
past, and the sleet rat-tat-tatted with snappy spite against the thin
canvas. The smoke, smothered in its exit, drove back through the fire-
box door, carrying with it the pungent odor of green spruce.

"Good Gawd! Why can't a woman listen to reason?" Tommy lifted his head
from the denser depths and turned upon her a pair of smoke-outraged eyes.

"And why can't a man show his manhood?"

Tommy sprang to his feet with an oath which would have shocked a woman of
lesser heart, ripped loose the sturdy reef-knots and flung back the flaps
of the tent.

The trio peered out. It was not a heartening spectacle. A few water-
soaked tents formed the miserable foreground, from which the streaming
ground sloped to a foaming gorge. Down this ramped a mountain torrent.
Here and there, dwarf spruce, rooting and grovelling in the shallow
alluvium, marked the proximity of the timber line. Beyond, on the
opposing slope, the vague outlines of a glacier loomed dead-white through
the driving rain. Even as they looked, its massive front crumbled into
the valley, on the breast of some subterranean vomit, and it lifted its
hoarse thunder above the screeching voice of the storm.