"Look yonder!" cried Boyd.
"What?"
"Cherry has got—a crew!" His voice broke, and he bolted toward the door as Big George leaped to the window.
"Injuns, by God!" shouted the giant, and without stopping to stamp his feet into his boots, he rushed out barefoot after Boyd and Fraser; together, the three men reached the dock in time to help Cherry up the ladder.
"What does this mean?" Boyd asked her, breathlessly. "Will these fellows work?"
"That's what they're here for," said the girl. After her swarmed a crowd of slant-eyed, copper-hued Aleuts; those in the kyaks astern cast off and paddled toward the beach.
"I've got fifty men, the best on the river; I tried to get more, but—there aren't any more."
"Fingerless" Fraser slapped himself resoundingly upon the thigh and exploded profanely; Boyd seized the girl's hands in his and wrung them.
"Cherry, you're a treasure!" The memory of his desperate resolution of a moment before swept over him suddenly, and his voice trembled with a great thankfulness.
"Don't thank me!" Cherry exclaimed. "It was more Constantine's work than mine."