Deadly as was their fear, the two Englishmen, who had jumped to the ground, stood and stared to see her turn in beside the standing horse and, without any ceremony, cut his traces and reins. He reared and plunged; Justin caught his bridle.
“Mount quick!” she shouted. And before he could grasp the situation she had pushed Dudley to her roan, almost thrown him into the saddle, and mounted behind.
As the snorting horses bounded away, the roar was almost on their flanks. It rose to its climax in a great, dull crash. Looking back, the girl saw that they were no longer followed. The dust-cloud was a whirlpool that rolled and tumbled over the spot where the wagon had been. For only a minute; the cowboys closed in, and the panic was over. Slowly the men beat back the sullen, sated demons. And when the press split there was no wagon at all—only broken wheels and scattered bits of woodwork, and flattened belongings and blood—blood and gleaming gray hairs trampled into everything.
The two men dismounted and turned to the girl. Then was she first aware of her skirts tucked about her hips, and of the manner in which she had ridden. Her color rose, and she jumped down. She turned redder a moment later when Dudley Latimer took her in his arms and, for the second time that morning, kissed her.
And that time he kissed her in deadly earnest.
THE WHITE GRAVE
By C. Alfred
Harrison and his wife were evidently tenderfeet. Worse than that, they had never been outside the City of New York before; and why an inexperienced, city-bred young man like Harrison should have attempted to move a year’s outfit, which weighs a ton, over the Chilkoot Pass, and tempt Fate in the bleakness of the Yukon country, no one knew.
The reason really was Harrison’s wife. Tired of a living salary in the city, she was ready, when news of the Klondike gold-fields reached the world in 1897, to catch the gold fever; caught it, and argued Harrison into resigning his clerkship in an insurance company, and into taking her with him to Alaska. They were very much in love, and could not be separated. So they invested their savings in sacks of flour, and blankets, and tins of coffee, and in tickets to Dyea.
They landed there in December. This, of course, was an idiotic time to arrive, but they didn’t know, and there were lots of other idiots just then. When Harrison grasped the fact that he must, himself, pull all his pile of provisions over the desolate mountain range that ran upward in front of him, his heart failed him; as the Yukoners say, he got cold feet. But his wife cheered him. Mrs. Harrison was young, and, therefore, hopeful. Moreover, she was a pretty little woman, with a great mass of flaxen hair, and on her account many a rough packer on the trail gave Harrison a lift with his load in the steeper places.