It was a primitive life, that of her childhood, with few conventions, but such as there were, stern ones.  And they might be epitomized, as she had read somewhere in her later years, as “the faith of food and blanket.”  This faith had her father kept, she thought, remembering that his name sounded well on the lips of men.  And this was the faith she had learned,—­the faith she had carried with her across the Abyss and into the world, where men had wandered away from the old truths and made themselves selfish dogmas and casuistries of the subtlest kinds; the faith she had brought back with her, still fresh, and young, and joyous.  And it was all so simple, she had contended; why should not their faith be as her faith—­the faith of food and blanket?  The faith of trail and hunting camp?  The faith with which strong clean men faced the quick danger and sudden death by field and flood?  Why not?  The faith of Jacob Welse?  Of Matt McCarthy?  Of the Indian boys she had played with?  Of the Indian girls she had led to Amazonian war?  Of the very wolf-dogs straining in the harnesses and running with her across the snow?  It was healthy, it was real, it was good, she thought, and she was glad.

The rich notes of a robin saluted her from the birch wood, and opened her ears to the day.  A partridge boomed afar in the forest, and a tree-squirrel launched unerringly into space above her head, and went on, from limb to limb and tree to tree, scolding graciously the while.  From the hidden river rose the shouts of the toiling adventurers, already parted from sleep and fighting their way towards the Pole.

Frona arose, shook back her hair, and took instinctively the old path between the trees to the camp of Chief George and the Dyea tribesmen.  She came upon a boy, breech-clouted and bare, like a copper god.  He was gathering wood, and looked at her keenly over his bronze shoulder.  She bade him good-morning, blithely, in the Dyea tongue; but he shook his head, and laughed insultingly, and paused in his work to hurl shameful words after her.  She did not understand, for this was not the old way, and when she passed a great and glowering Sitkan buck she kept her tongue between her teeth.  At the fringe of the forest, the camp confronted her.  And she was startled.  It was not the old camp of a score or more of lodges clustering and huddling together in the open as though for company, but a mighty camp.  It began at the very forest, and flowed in and out among the scattered tree-clumps on the flat, and spilled over and down to the river bank where the long canoes were lined up ten and twelve deep.  It was a gathering of the tribes, like unto none in all the past, and a thousand miles of coast made up the tally.  They were all strange Indians, with wives and chattels and dogs.  She rubbed shoulders with Juneau and Wrangel men, and was jostled by wild-eyed Sticks from over the Passes, fierce Chilcats, and Queen Charlotte Islanders.  And the looks they cast upon her were black and frowning, save—­and far worse—­where the merrier souls leered patronizingly into her face and chuckled unmentionable things.