Kitty was ironing clothes in the kitchen of the living shack. She and her father had been alone in camp for four days. It had rained in the interim and the greens of Milburn gulch were freshly polished and gilded. Inside the shack the cherry-coloured embers glowed on the grate, and a blue gingham dress was falling into crisp and immaculate folds as it was turned on the ironing board. The door stood open, and a single big fly buzzed in and out over the sill, as if he couldn't make up his mind whether he preferred sunshine or shadow.
While Kitty propelled the iron she thought a girl's thoughts, which alight on a subject as delicately as butterflies, and as lightly sheer away. Since she had beheld the eager light in Bill's eyes at the sight of the dark girl, a fluttering disquiet winged in Kitty's mind. She was thinking of men and women now.
"Annie knows much more"——thus it ran in her head. "I wish she would tell me. I ought to know. But why do I want to know what is ugly? But it's neither ugly nor beautiful; it's mixed. Men are not angels. That's only silly dreaming that leaves you flat. I wouldn't want a man to be too good, really. Just a spice of danger and uncertainty."
Kitty blushed, and looked around her guiltily as if this dreadful thought might have been overheard. She applied herself to her ironing with prim lips.
"I am a fool!" she thought. "Annie is wise. I wish she would come."
Kitty's thoughts were broken in upon by the sound of a footstep outside the shack. Something heavy and unfamiliar in the fall of it caused her to call out sharply: "Is that you, dad?"
There was no answer. She started around the ironing-board to investigate. At the same moment the doorway was darkened by the figure of a stranger, a piteous, ghastly, unkempt travesty of manhood. For a moment he wavered there, then pitched headlong to Kitty's feet. One arm reached toward her as in supplication; the other was grotesquely doubled under him.
Kitty screamed, and stood rooted to the spot. The man lay without moving. He had uttered no sound. Jim Sholto came running from the works with a blanched face. He all but fell over the body, and stood like his daughter, turned into stone with astonishment, His admirable composure quickly asserted itself. He dropped to his knees.
"Help me to turn him over, lass," he said quietly.
The face that was revealed with its sunken, bearded cheeks and painfully drawn lips seemed aged to Kitty. The eyes were closed. Jim lowered his head to listen at the man's breast.