’Thank God, we’ve got slathers of tea!  I’ve seen it growing, down in Tennessee.  What wouldn’t I give for a hot corn pone just now!  Never mind, Ruth; you won’t starve much longer, nor wear moccasins either.’  The woman threw off her gloom at this, and in her eyes welled up a great love for her white lord—­the first white man she had ever seen—­the first man whom she had known to treat a woman as something better than a mere animal or beast of burden.

‘Yes, Ruth,’ continued her husband, having recourse to the macaronic jargon in which it was alone possible for them to understand each other; ’wait till we clean up and pull for the Outside.  We’ll take the White Man’s canoe and go to the Salt Water.  Yes, bad water, rough water—­great mountains dance up and down all the time.  And so big, so far, so far away—­you travel ten sleep, twenty sleep, forty sleep’—­he graphically enumerated the days on his fingers—­’all the time water, bad water.  Then you come to great village, plenty people, just the same mosquitoes next summer.  Wigwams oh, so high—­ten, twenty pines.

‘Hi-yu skookum!’ He paused impotently, cast an appealing glance at Malemute Kid, then laboriously placed the twenty pines, end on end, by sign language.  Malemute Kid smiled with cheery cynicism; but Ruth’s eyes were wide with wonder, and with pleasure; for she half believed he was joking, and such condescension pleased her poor woman’s heart.

‘And then you step into a—­a box, and pouf! up you go.’  He tossed his empty cup in the air by way of illustration and, as he deftly caught it, cried:  ’And biff! down you come.  Oh, great medicine men!  You go Fort Yukon.  I go Arctic City—­twenty-five sleep—­big string, all the time—­I catch him string—­I say, “Hello, Ruth!  How are ye?”—­and you say, “Is that my good husband?”—­and I say, “Yes”—­and you say, “No can bake good bread, no more soda”—­then I say, “Look in cache, under flour; good-by.”  You look and catch plenty soda.  All the time you Fort Yukon, me Arctic City.  Hi-yu medicine man!’ Ruth smiled so ingenuously at the fairy story that both men burst into laughter.  A row among the dogs cut short the wonders of the Outside, and by the time the snarling combatants were separated, she had lashed the sleds and all was ready for the trail.—­’Mush!  Baldy!  Hi!  Mush on!’ Mason worked his whip smartly and, as the dogs whined low in the traces, broke out the sled with the gee pole.  Ruth followed with the second team, leaving Malemute Kid, who had helped her start, to bring up the rear.  Strong man, brute that he was, capable of felling an ox at a blow, he could not bear to beat the poor animals, but humored them as a dog driver rarely does—­nay, almost wept with them in their misery.

‘Come, mush on there, you poor sore-footed brutes!’ he murmured, after several ineffectual attempts to start the load.  But his patience was at last rewarded, and though whimpering with pain, they hastened to join their fellows.