The Green Forest tribune., 1918-02-08

pleted, Kah-Chucte and Gowhee pro- ceeded to take care of their feet. Their fce-bound moccasins were sadly worn by much travel, and the sharp ice of the river jams had cut them to rags. Their SiwaSh socks were similarly conditioned, and when these had been thawed and removed, the dead-white tips of the toes, in the various stages of modification, told their simple tale of the trail.
 Leaving the two to the drying of their footgear, Sitka Charley turned back over the course he had come. He, too, had a mighty longing to sit by the fire and tend his complaining flesh, but the honor and the law forbade. He toiled painfully over the frozen field, each step a protest, every mus cle in revolt. Several times, where the open water between the jams had re gently crusted, he was fcrced to miser- ably accelerate his movements as the fragile footing swayed and threatened beneath him. In such places death was quick and easy; but it was not his desire to endure more.
 His deepening anxiety vanished as two Indians dragged into view round bend in the river. They staggered dens; yet the packs on their backs were a matter of but few pounds. He questioned them eagerly, and their re- plies seemed to relieve him. He hur- ried on. Next came two white men, supporting between them a woman. They also behaved as though drunken, and their limbs shook with weakness. But the woman leaned lightly upon them, choosing to carry herself for ward with her own strength. At sight of her, flash of joy cast it's fleeting light across Sitka Charley's face. He cherished very great regard for Mrs. Eppingwell He had seen many white women, but this was the first to travel the trail with him. When Captain Ep- pingwell proposed the hazardous un- dertaking and made him an offer for his services, he had shaken his head grayely; for it was an unknown jour ney through the dismal vastnesses of lIc 1NOI tilIuhNl, dlItI ut hlltM It lD Dc of the kind that try to the uttermost the souls of men. But when he learn ed that the captains wife was to ae- company them, he had refused flatly to have anything further to do with it. Had it been woman of his own race he would have narbored no objec- tions; but these women of the North land-no, no, they were too soft, too tender, for such enterprises.
 Sitka Charley did not know this kind of woman. Five minutes before, he did not even dream of taking charge of the expedition; but when she came to him with her wonderful smile and her straight clean English, and talked to the point, without pleading or per suading he had incontinently yielded. Had there been softness and appeal to mercy in the eyes, a tremble to the voice, taking advantage of sex he would have stiffened to steel; instead her clear-searching eyes and clear ringing voice, her utter frankness and tacit assumption of equality, had rob bed him of his reason. He felt, then, that this was new breed of woman; and ere they had been trail mates for many days, he knew why the sons of such women mastered the land and sea, and why the sons of his own wom- ankind could not prevail against them. Tender and soft! Day after day he watched her. muscle-weary, exhausted, indomitable, and the words beat in up- on him in a perennial refrain. Tender and soft! He knew her feet had been born to easy paths and sunny lands, strangers to the moccasined pain of the