"Tell 'm it's on me, double dose, an' jest excuse me not
drinkin' with you, fer I'm goin' to stay."
The Klondike was throwing a thick flow of ice, partly mush and partly
solid, and swept the boat out towards the middle of the Yukon. They
could see the struggle plainly from the bank,--four men standing up and
poling a way through the jarring cakes. A Yukon stove aboard was
sending up a trailing pillar of blue smoke, and, as the boat drew
closer, they could see a woman in the stern working the long
steering-sweep. At sight of this there was a snap and sparkle in Jacob
Welse's eyes. It was the first omen, and it was good, he thought. She
was still a Welse; a struggler and a fighter. The years of her culture
had not weakened her. Though tasting of the fruits of the first remove
from the soil, she was not afraid of the soil; she could return to it
gleefully and naturally.
So he mused till the boat drove in, ice-rimed and battered, against the
edge of the rim-ice. The one white man aboard sprang: out, painter in
hand, to slow it down and work into the channel. But the rim-ice was
formed of the night, and the front of it shelved off with him into the
current. The nose of the boat sheered out under the pressure of a
heavy cake, so that he came up at the stern. The woman's arm flashed
over the side to his collar, and at the same instant, sharp and
authoritative, her voice rang out to the Indian oarsmen to back water.
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