A cheery voice cried, "Oh, you dear old man, you. I've been watching for you every day for two weeks. I was so afraid you weren't coming!"
Joe's welcome, though not so demonstrative, was none the less hearty. It was worth dog-mushing two hundred and fifty miles to have such a reception. As soon as I stepped into the house I was made keenly aware that I was in the home of hunters and trappers. In all my wide experience of wilderness homes I had never seen one like this. The long, low cabin had two rooms. The smaller was kitchen and dining-room, having a sheet-iron range and home-made tables, shelves and chairs. The larger room had a good sized sheet-iron heating stove in the center, and was almost filled with bunks in tiers of three each, built in double rows the length of the room. A little chamber enclosed with snowy caribou buck-skin, the skins sewn together most skillfully with sinew thread, was Nina's bedroom. The poles which formed the floors had been hewn and laid so carefully that they looked like boards. The tables and shelves were of whipsawed lumber, every article showing painstaking skill.
"Joe and I made the cabin and everything in and about it, all ourselves," Nina boasted.
"What!" I exclaimed, "you two rolled up these heavy logs, without any help?"
"Yes, indeed. We used block-and-tackle. It isn't so hard when you know how; and it was great fun."
"But the lumber for the doors and tables and window-sash—it's so true and smooth and beautiful; how did you get that?" I asked.
"Whipsawed and hand-planed it all," she replied. "You see, we came here two years ago this month, just after we were married. The Government was surveying this trail, and we thought we'd build this roadhouse and pick up a few dollars taking care of travelers. But chiefly we chose this place because it was so beautiful and such a game country. Then it has never been prospected for gold.
"Joe and I each had a good dog-team and sled when we were married. We loaded the sleds with tools, hardware, stoves and dishes, glass for the windows, some flour, sugar, beans and a few other groceries, and brought our traps and plenty of ammunition for our guns. It was hard breaking trail through the deep snow on the east side of the Alaska Range, but nice going on this side. We mushed the two hundred and fifty miles from the coast in two weeks; and had some time for trapping before warm weather."
"How do you get 'outside' in the summer time?" I inquired.
"We can't, and we don't need to. We spent that first summer building this house, making garden, gathering berries, drying fish, hunting and getting ready for the winter. Almost all our wants are supplied right here. From the middle of April till the middle of October we don't see a human being, except now and then an Indian, or a stray prospector."