“Am I not bailing satisfactorily?” she demanded, indignantly.

“Yep.  You’re doin’ all right; but, but, you are—­are—­”

“Just what I was before you knew who I was.  Now you go on rowing,—­that’s your share of the work; and I’ll take care of mine.”

“Oh, you’ll do!” he murmured ecstatically, bending afresh to the oars.  “And Jacob Welse is your old man?  I oughter ’a known it, sure!”

When they reached the sand-spit, crowded with heterogeneous piles of merchandise and buzzing with men, she stopped long enough to shake hands with her ferryman.  And though such a proceeding on the part of his feminine patrons was certainly unusual, Del Bishop squared it easily with the fact that she was Jacob Welse’s daughter.

“Remember, my last bit of grub is yours,” he reassured her, still holding her hand.

“And your last shirt, too; don’t forget.”

“Well, you’re a—­a—­a crackerjack!” he exploded with a final squeeze.  “Sure!”

Her short skirt did not block the free movement of her limbs, and she discovered with pleasurable surprise that the quick tripping step of the city pavement had departed from her, and that she was swinging off in the long easy stride which is born of the trail and which comes only after much travail and endeavor.  More than one gold-rusher, shooting keen glances at her ankles and gray-gaitered calves, affirmed Del Bishop’s judgment.  And more than one glanced up at her face, and glanced again; for her gaze was frank, with the frankness of comradeship; and in her eyes there was always a smiling light, just trembling on the verge of dawn; and did the onlooker smile, her eyes smiled also.  And the smiling light was protean-mooded,—­merry, sympathetic, joyous, quizzical,—­the complement of whatsoever kindled it.  And sometimes the light spread over all her face, till the smile prefigured by it was realized.  But it was always in frank and open comradeship.

And there was much to cause her to smile as she hurried through the crowd, across the sand-spit, and over the flat towards the log-building she had pointed out to Mr. Thurston.  Time had rolled back, and locomotion and transportation were once again in the most primitive stages.  Men who had never carried more than parcels in all their lives had now become bearers of burdens.  They no longer walked upright under the sun, but stooped the body forward and bowed the head to the earth.  Every back had become a pack-saddle, and the strap-galls were beginning to form.  They staggered beneath the unwonted effort, and legs became drunken with weariness and titubated in divers directions till the sunlight darkened and bearer and burden fell by the way.  Other men, exulting secretly, piled their goods on two-wheeled go-carts and pulled out blithely enough, only to stall at the first spot where the great round boulders invaded the trail.  Whereat they generalized anew upon the principles of Alaskan travel, discarded the go-cart, or trundled it back to the beach and sold it at fabulous price to the last man landed.  Tenderfeet, with ten pounds of Colt’s revolvers, cartridges, and hunting-knives belted about them, wandered valiantly up the trail, and crept back softly, shedding revolvers, cartridges, and knives in despairing showers.  And so, in gasping and bitter sweat, these sons of Adam suffered for Adam’s sin.