“Yes. You see—you’ll know it sooner or later—the Domestic Dye Works sent me here to learn the formula for your royal purple.”
And the door slammed shut behind A. Slivowitz’s private secretary.
NORTH OF FIFTY-THREE
By Mary Woodbury Caswell
The short winter day of Alaska was brightening as Gertrude pushed her chair back from the breakfast table and announced that she proposed to go at once for her constitutional. Her brother placidly assented, but Keith interposed with a worried look.
“Hadn’t you better go with her, Bob? I suppose I’ve grown to be an old granny, but since Jacques told us of that outlaw who threatened to kidnap a white girl for his wife, I don’t like to have Gertrude get out of sight.”
The girl bent over him caressingly.
“Don’t worry, dear,” she said. “Jacques had been drinking hard when he told you of this mythical exile. Besides, I am no Helen of Troy to be abducted for my beauty. I’d really much rather have Bob stay with you.”
And she kissed him, put on warm wraps, took her snowshoes and started for the daily tramp that had kept her fit ever since she had come up on the last boat, hastily summoned by a cable from Bob when her fiancé had his shoulder crushed, and it would be impossible for the young men to return to the States with their stake. She and Bob had nursed him into convalescence, but it had been a hard winter for him, and she did not wonder that he had developed some nervousness, though she considered his fear for her wholly unnecessary, as, indeed, did Bob.
When she was a half-mile from the cabin and a slight rise of ground hid it from her, she saw a dog team approaching, and smiled, thinking that Keith would surely consider that danger was near. As it met her the driver touched his cap, and she had a swift impression of a very different type than she had recently met, and one that made Jacques’s fantastic tale seem less absurd. As she involuntarily glanced back she saw, and now with alarm, that the stranger had turned and was coming toward her. He stopped the dogs close to her and inquired courteously, and with a foreign accent: