A Girl of the Klondike

by Victoria Cross

"No, oh no, dear Steve, only it's all so strange; let's go back to the other room."

They returned, as she wished, and found that Talbot had laid the dinner for them,—a dinner he had spent all the morning in preparing,—and they sat down to it with a gaiety that made up for the shortness of supplies. After dinner they drew close round the fire and prolonged the roasting and eating of chestnuts and drinking whisky throughout the afternoon,—for whisky was there, strongly as Stephen objected to see her drink it; still it was their wedding day, and he let it pass. As darkness came down a whirling snow-storm swept through the gulch; they could see the thin sharp flakes fly past the window on the cutting wind, and hear the whistling roar of the storm as it struck and beat upon the cabin. They only flung more logs into the stove, and gave a backward glance over their shoulders from time to time towards the window. By nine in the evening, when Talbot was leaving them to go to his own cabin, it had calmed down a little, though the wind still moaned in the hollows of the gulch.

Stephen and Katrine stood at the window a second after he had gone, looking out into the curious misty whiteness and blackness commingled of the night.

"I am sorry there should be such a storm the first day you are here, darling," said Stephen softly, putting his arm round her waist.

"Why, what does that matter? I do not mind, I have you to protect me. You will always now, Steve, won't you, from everything? I don't want ever to go back to that gambling life again."

He drew her into his arms.

"Of course, of course I will," he said, kissing her. "I will always take care of you."

Her arms were interlaced about his neck, they looked into each other's eyes, and neither knew any more whether it was a storm or a calm in the night outside.

For the first few weeks after their marriage Katrine was more than happy, and it seemed to those lonely beings, sheltered from the savage siege of Nature only by those frail little cabins built by their own hands on the edge of the snow-filled gulch, that a new life had blossomed for them suddenly—a perfect spring in winter. The girl's wonderful health and unfailing spirits were in themselves a delight, and she was possessed of such a sweet and even temper, that it seemed to smooth out and round off the hard edges of their rough, comfortless existence. Nothing seemed to have the power to disturb her, the most irritating and annoying incident never even brought a frown to her face; it filled her with consternation for the men, and an immediate desire to smooth it over for them, if possible to prevent their being ruffled by it. For herself, she seemed above the reach of any circumstance to disconcert. One morning the men had an instance of this. They were all three living together in Stephen's cabin now. That is to say, Talbot took all his meals there, and used it as his own home in every way, except that he still went back to his cabin to sleep. It had seemed cheerless to both Katrine and Stephen for Talbot to be eating alone a few yards from them, and though it gave the girl more work, and for that reason Talbot was slow to accept the arrangement, she herself coaxed him into it. They came in late from the claims to lunch, and found her bending over the fire, with flushed cheeks and happy eyes. She was stirring a great saucepan of inviting looking and smelling stew, that she had spent the whole morning in preparing. The large handle of the pan projected from the stove some distance, and as Stephen threw off his overcoat he managed in some way to tip up the saucepan with a sudden jerk that sent the contents half into the fire, half over the girl's bare arm, from which her sleeve was rolled to the elbow. She did not utter a sound as the scalding liquid ran burning over her flesh, but Talbot saw her face grow deadly pale with the sickening pain. After a second of agony, when she found her voice, and Stephen was remorsefully spreading fat over the blistered, cracking flesh, the first thing she said, with her eyes full of disappointed tears, was, "Oh dear! how unlucky! Now you won't get anything hot for lunch." And as soon as a bandage was twisted round her scalded arm, she was over at the cupboard collecting all the best of her cold supplies and laying them out on the table.

There was not a word of anger or reproof to Stephen for his carelessness, not a word of her own pain. The great sorrow that she was anxious to smooth over and atone for to them was that they would have to put up with a cold luncheon!