“Any bears up there?” Bill asked.
“Plenty of ’em. But I don’t bother ’em and they don’t bother me.”
“I’d bother them,” Bill cried.
“Yes,” Florence thought. “Bill would bother them.” She remembered the high-powered rifle that decorated Bill’s tent.
“Temptation,” she thought, “does not belong to great cities alone. Here boys are tempted to go after big game, to search for gold, to chase rainbows.” Already Bill’s young brain was on fire.
To her consternation, she suddenly realized that her blood too was racing. Had she caught the gleam of gold on the horizon? Would she listen to the call of wild adventure until it led her away into those snow-capped mountains?
“No,” she whispered fiercely. She had come to this valley to help those she loved, Mary, Mark, and their mother, to assist them in securing for themselves a home. She would cling to that purpose. She would! She stamped her foot so hard the dishes rattled and Bill in the other room gave a sudden start.
“Probably thought I was a bear,” she laughed low.
Then a thought struck her with the force of a blow. “He said he’d been in Alaska since ’97. That old man said that,” she whispered. “Perhaps—” She sprang to the door.
“Mister—er,” she hesitated.