“Isn’t that dreadful?” she shuddered. “Oh, and I must see him to-night!” She stamped impatiently. “I must see him alone.”
“No, you mustn’t,” said Glenister, with equal decision. “In the first place, he wouldn’t know what you were talking about, and in the second place—I know Struve. He’s too drunk to talk business and too sober to—well, to see you alone.”
“But I must see him,” she insisted. “It’s what brought me here. You don’t understand.”
“I understand more than he could. He’s in no condition to act on any important matter. You come around to-morrow when he’s sober.”
“It means so much,” breathed the girl. “The beast!”
Glenister noted that she had not wrung her hands nor even hinted at tears, though plainly her disappointment and anxiety were consuming her.
“Well, I suppose I’ll have to wait, but I don’t know where to go—some hotel, I suppose.”
“There aren’t any. They’re building two, but to-night you couldn’t hire a room in Nome for money. I was about to say ‘love or money.’ Have you no other friends here—no women? Then you must let me find a place for you. I have a friend whose wife will take you in.”
She rebelled at this. Was she never to have done with this man’s favors? She thought of returning to the ship, but dismissed that. She undertook to decline his aid, but he was half-way down the stairs and paid no attention to her beginning—so she followed him.
It was then that Helen Chester witnessed her first tragedy of the frontier, and through it came to know better the man whom she disliked and with whom she had been thrown so fatefully. Already she had thrilled at the spell of this country, but she had not learned that strength and license carry blood and violence as corollaries.