"'Divorcin' you and me,' I says. 'I'm headin' for tall timber
and where I belong.'"

"'No you don't," he says, reaching for me to stop me. "The
cooking has got on your head. You listen to me talk before you
up and do anything brash.'"

"'But I pulled a gun-a little Colt's forty-four--and says,
"This does my talkin' for me.'"

"'And I left.'"

Trefethan emptied his glass and called for another.

"Boys, do you know what that girl did? She was twenty-two. She
had spent her life over the dish-pan and she knew no more about
the world than I do of the fourth dimension, or the fifth. All
roads led to her desire. No; she didn't head for the
dance-halls. On the Alaskan Pan-handle it is preferable to
travel by water. She went down to the beach. An Indian canoe
was starting for Dyea--you know the kind, carved out of a
single tree, narrow and deep and sixty feet long. She gave them
a couple of dollars and got on board.

"'Romance?' she told me. 'It was Romance from the jump. There
were three families altogether in that canoe, and that crowded
there wasn't room to turn around, with dogs and Indian babies
sprawling over everything, and everybody dipping a paddle and
making that canoe go.' And all around the great solemn
mountains, and tangled drifts of clouds and sunshine. And oh,