They rounded a bend and saw the Sign of the Sled cradled below them where the trail dipped to a stream which tumbled from the comb above into the river twisting like a silver thread through the distant valley.  A peeled flag-pole topped by a spruce bough stood in front of the tavern, while over the door hung a sled suspended from a beam.  The house itself was a quaint structure, rambling and amorphous, from whose sod roof sprang blooming flowers, and whose high-banked walls were pierced here and there with sleepy windows.  It had been built by a homesick foreigner of unknown nationality whom the army of “mushers” who paid for his clean and orderly hospitality had dubbed duly and as a matter of course a “Swede.”  When travel had changed to the river trail, leaving the house lonesome and high as though left by a receding wave, Struve had taken it over on a debt, and now ran it for the convenience of a slender traffic, mainly stampeders, who chose the higher route towards the interior.  His hireling spent the idle hours in prospecting a hungry quartz lead and in doing assessment work on near-by claims.

Shortz took the horses and answered his employer’s questions curtly, flashing a curious look at Helen.  Under other conditions the girl would have been delighted with the place, for this was the quaintest spot she had found in the north country.  The main room held bar and gold-scales, a rude table, and a huge iron heater, while its walls and ceiling were sheeted with white cloth so cunningly stitched and tacked that it seemed a cavern hollowed from chalk.  It was filled with trophies of the hills, stuffed birds and animals, skins and antlers, from which depended, in careless confusion, dog harness, snow-shoes, guns, and articles of clothing.  A door to the left led into the bunk-room where travellers had been wont to sleep in tiers three deep.  To the rear was a kitchen and cache, to the right a compartment which Struve called the art gallery.  Here, free reign had been allowed the original owner’s artistic fancies, and he had covered the place with pictures clipped from gazettes of questionable repute till it was a bewildering arrangement of pink ladies in tights, pugilists in scanty trunks, prize bulldogs, and other less moral characters of the sporting world.

“This is probably the worst company you were ever in,” Struve observed to Helen, with a forced attempt at lightness.

“Are there no guests here?” she asked him, her anxiety very near the surface.

“Travel is light at this time of the year.  They’ll come in later, perhaps.”

A fire was burning in this pink room where the landlord had begun spreading the table for two, and its warmth was grateful to the girl.  Her companion, thoroughly at his ease, stretched himself on a fur-covered couch and smoked.

“Let me see the papers, now, Mr. Struve,” she began, but he put her off.

“No, not now.  Business must wait on our dinner.  Don’t spoil our little party, for there’s time enough and to spare.”