At the instant Fortune's left breast and the sight flashed into line with
his eye, he pulled the trigger. Fortune did not whirl, but gay San
Francisco dimmed and faded, and as the sun-bright snow turned black and
blacker, he breathed his last malediction on the Chance he had misplayed.




SIWASH


"If I was a man--" Her words were in themselves indecisive, but the
withering contempt which flashed from her black eyes was not lost upon
the men-folk in the tent.

Tommy, the English sailor, squirmed, but chivalrous old Dick Humphries,
Cornish fisherman and erstwhile American salmon capitalist, beamed upon
her benevolently as ever. He bore women too large a portion of his rough
heart to mind them, as he said, when they were in the doldrums, or when
their limited vision would not permit them to see all around a thing. So
they said nothing, these two men who had taken the half-frozen woman into
their tent three days back, and who had warmed her, and fed her, and
rescued her goods from the Indian packers. This latter had necessitated
the payment of numerous dollars, to say nothing of a demonstration in
force--Dick Humphries squinting along the sights of a Winchester while
Tommy apportioned their wages among them at his own appraisement. It had
been a little thing in itself, but it meant much to a woman playing a
desperate single-hand in the equally desperate Klondike rush of '97. Men
were occupied with their own pressing needs, nor did they approve of
women playing, single-handed, the odds of the arctic winter. "If I was a