The back room was but a logged-in annex to the main room and without window or door. A bunk constituted its only furnishing, and it appeared to be used as a store-room, for grub-bags and odds and ends were piled neatly in its corners.
Blera set the candle on a pile of sacks and ferreted out the dunnage-bag from under the bunk. Its lashings were loose, and she tumbled the contents out on the floor where each could pick what was needed.
The rapid run from the river to the cabin and the genial atmosphere of the cabin itself had somewhat warmed their blood as well as partly thawed their mail-like garments. Hastily they ripped off the clammy parkas, mackinaws and woolens and began the process of replacing them with dry ones.
For the most part Blera dressed like Jose in arctic underwear, flannel shirt, German socks and moccasins, but when it came to outer garments she searched in the heart of the disorderly pile on the floor for the woman’s things the owner of the cabin had mentioned.
Finally she fished them out, a buckskin waist and a mackinaw skirt with a pronounced plaid pattern.
The waist went on like any waist, but at sight of the skirt Blera’s breath whistled in her throat. Her face convulsed in an appalling discovery. She held the plaid mackinaw close to the candle, examining the band and the vent at the back.
“What’s wrong with it?” asked Cantine, looking up from his own dressing. “Lousy?”
“Jose, it’s the same! Here’s the band leather sewn on to keep the sheath-knife from wearing it and the hooks and eyes of copper wire on the vent. Jose, it’s my skirt!
And he’s—”
“Sark!” roared Jose.