A few days before Thanksgiving Night, Malemute Kid made another call on Mrs. Eppingwell.  She promptly overhauled her feminine fripperies, paid a protracted visit to the dry-goods department of the P. C. Company, and returned with the Kid to make Madeline’s acquaintance.  After that came a period such as the cabin had never seen before, and what with cutting, and fitting, and basting, and stitching, and numerous other wonderful and unknowable things, the male conspirators were more often banished the premises than not.  At such times the Opera House opened its double storm-doors to them.

So often did they put their heads together, and so deeply did they drink to curious toasts, that the loungers scented unknown creeks of incalculable richness, and it is known that several checha-quas and at least one Old-Timer kept their stampeding packs stored behind the bar, ready to hit the trail at a moment’s notice.

Mrs. Eppingwell was a woman of capacity; so, when she turned Madeline over to her trainers on Thanksgiving Night she was so transformed that they were almost afraid of her.  Prince wrapped a Hudson Bay blanket about her with a mock reverence more real than feigned, while Malemute Kid, whose arm she had taken, found it a severe trial to resume his wonted mentorship.  Harrington, with the list of purchases still running through his head, dragged along in the rear, nor opened his mouth once all the way down into the town.  When they came to the back door of the Opera House they took the blanket from Madeline’s shoulders and spread it on the snow.  Slipping out of Prince’s moccasins, she stepped upon it in new satin slippers.  The masquerade was at its height.  She hesitated, but they jerked open the door and shoved her in.  Then they ran around to come in by the front entrance.

III

‘Where is Freda?’ the Old-Timers questioned, while the che-cha-quas were equally energetic in asking who Freda was.  The ballroom buzzed with her name.

It was on everybody’s lips.  Grizzled ‘sour-dough boys,’ day-laborers at the mines but proud of their degree, either patronized the spruce-looking tenderfeet and lied eloquently—­the ‘sour-dough boys’ being specially created to toy with truth—­or gave them savage looks of indignation because of their ignorance.  Perhaps forty kings of the Upper and Lower Countries were on the floor, each deeming himself hot on the trail and sturdily backing his judgment with the yellow dust of the realm.  An assistant was sent to the man at the scales, upon whom had fallen the burden of weighing up the sacks, while several of the gamblers, with the rules of chance at their finger-ends, made up alluring books on the field and favorites.