“Every blame’ thing,” Linton agreed.

Side by side they set off heavily through the woods.

Quarrels similar to this were of daily occurrence on the trail, but especially common were they here at Linderman, for of all the devices of the devil the one most trying to human patience is a whip-saw.  It is a saying in the North that to know a man one must eat a sack of flour with him; it is also generally recognized that a partnership which survives the vexations of a saw-pit is time and weather proof—­a predestined union more sacred and more perfect even than that of matrimony.  Few indeed have stood the test.

It was in this loosening of sentimental ties, in the breach of friendships and the birth of bitter enmities, where lay the deepest tragedy of the Chilkoot and the Chilkat trails.  Under ordinary, normal circumstances men of opposite temperaments may live with each other in harmony and die in mutual accord, but circumstances here were extraordinary, abnormal.  Hardship, monotony, fatigue score the very soul; constant close association renders men absurdly petulant and childishly quarrelsome.  Many are the heartaches charged against those early days and those early trails.

Of course there was much less internal friction in outfits like Kirby’s or the Countess Courteau’s, where the men worked under orders, but even there relations were often strained.  Both Danny Royal and Pierce Phillips had had their troubles, their problems—­ nobody could escape them—­but I on the whole they had held their men together pretty well and had made fast progress, all things considered.  Royal had experience to draw upon, while Phillips had none; nevertheless, the Countess was a good counselor and this brief training in authority was of extreme value to the younger man, who developed some of the qualities of leadership.  As a result of their frequent conferences a frank, free intimacy had sprung up between Pierce and his employer, an intimacy both gratifying and disappointing to him.  Just how it affected the woman he could not tell.  As a matter of fact he made little effort to learn, being for the moment too deeply concerned in the great change that had come over him.

Pierce Phillips made no effort to deceive himself:  he was in love, yes, desperately in love, and his infatuation grew with every hour.  It was his first serious affair and quite naturally its newness took his breath.  He had heard of puppy love and he scorned it, but this was not that kind, he told himself; his was an epic adoration, a full-grown, deathless man’s affection such as comes to none but the favored of the gods and then but once in a lifetime.  The reason was patent—­it lay in the fact that the object of his soul-consuming worship was not an ordinary woman.  No, the Countess was cast in heroic mold and she inspired love of a character to match her individuality; she was one of those rare, flaming creatures the like of whom illuminate the pages of history.  She was another Cleopatra, a regal, matchless creature.