Involuntarily,
Molly shrank back.

"Look, woman! Look with all your eyes! Three miles in the teeth of the
gale to Crater Lake, across two glaciers, along the slippery rim-rock,
knee-deep in a howling river! Look, I say, you Yankee woman! Look!
There's your Yankee-men!" Tommy pointed a passionate hand in the
direction of the struggling tents. "Yankees, the last mother's son of
them. Are they on trail? Is there one of them with the straps to his
back? And you would teach us men our work? Look, I say!"

Another tremendous section of the glacier rumbled earthward. The wind
whipped in at the open doorway, bulging out the sides of the tent till it
swayed like a huge bladder at its guy ropes. The smoke swirled about
them, and the sleet drove sharply into their flesh. Tommy pulled the
flaps together hastily, and returned to his tearful task at the fire-box.
Dick Humphries threw the mended pack straps into a corner and lighted his
pipe. Even Molly was for the moment persuaded.

"There's my clothes," she half-whimpered, the feminine for the moment
prevailing. "They're right at the top of the cache, and they'll be
ruined! I tell you, ruined!"

"There, there," Dick interposed, when the last quavering syllable had
wailed itself out. "Don't let that worry you, little woman. I'm old
enough to be your father's brother, and I've a daughter older than you,
and I'll tog you out in fripperies when we get to Dawson if it takes my
last dollar."

"When we get to Dawson!" The scorn had come back to her throat with a
sudden surge. "You'll rot on the way, first. You'll drown in a mudhole.
You--you--Britishers!"

The last word, explosive, intensive, had strained the limits of her
vituperation. If that would not stir these men, what could? Tommy's
neck ran red again, but he kept his tongue between his teeth. Dick's
eyes mellowed. He had the advantage over Tommy, for he had once had a
white woman for a wife.

The blood of five American-born generations is, under certain
circumstances, an uncomfortable heritage; and among these circumstances
might be enumerated that of being quartered with next of kin. These men
were Britons. On sea and land her ancestry and the generations thereof
had thrashed them and theirs. On sea and land they would continue to do
so. The traditions of her race clamored for vindication. She was but a
woman of the present, but in her bubbled the whole mighty past. It was
not alone Molly Tr