avis who pulled on gum boots, mackintosh, and straps;
for the phantom hands of ten thousand forbears drew tight the buckles,
just so as they squared her jaw and set her eyes with determination. She,
Molly Travis, intended to shame these Britishers; they, the innumerable
shades, were asserting the dominance of the common race.

The men-folk did not interfere. Once Dick suggested that she take his
oilskins, as her mackintosh was worth no more than paper in such a storm.
But she sniffed her independence so sharply that he communed with his
pipe till she tied the flaps on the outside and slushed away on the
flooded trail.

"Think she'll make it?" Dick's face belied the indifference of his
voice.

"Make it? If she stands the pressure till she gets to the cache, what of
the cold and misery, she'll be stark, raving mad. Stand it? She'll be
dumb-crazed. You know it yourself, Dick. You've wind-jammed round the
Horn. You know what it is to lay out on a topsail yard in the thick of
it, bucking sleet and snow and frozen canvas till you're ready to just
let go and cry like a baby. Clothes? She won't be able to tell a bundle
of skirts from a gold pan or a tea-kettle."

"Kind of think we were wrong in letting her go, then?"

"Not a bit of it. So help me, Dick, she'd 'a' made this tent a hell for
the rest of the trip if we hadn't. Trouble with her she's got too much
spirit. This'll tone it down a bit."

"Yes," Dick admitted, "she's too ambitious. But then Molly's all right.
A cussed little fool to tackle a trip like this, but a plucky sight
better than those pick-me-up-and-carry-me kind of women. She's the stock
that carried you and me, Tommy, and you've got to make allowance for the
spirit. Takes a woman to breed a man. You can't suck manhood from the
dugs of a creature whose only claim to womanhood is her petticoats. Takes
a she-cat, not a cow, to mother a tiger."

"And when they're unreasonable we've got to put up with it, eh?"

"The proposition. A sharp sheath-knife cuts deeper on a slip than a dull
one; but that's no reason for to hack the edge off over a capstan bar."

"All right, if you say so, but when it comes to woman, I guess I'll take
mine with a little less edge."

"What do you know about it?" Dick demanded.

"Some." Tommy reached over for a pair of Molly's wet stockings and
stretched them across his knees to dry.

Dick, eying him querulously, went fishing in her hand satchel, then
hitche