in Tennessee. What wouldn't I give for a hot corn pone just now!
Never mind, Ruth; you won't starve much longer, nor wear
moccasins either.' The woman threw off her gloom at this, and in
her eyes welled up a great love for her white lord--the first
white man she had ever seen--the first man whom she had known to
treat a woman as something better than a mere animal or beast of
burden.

'Yes, Ruth,' continued her husband, having recourse to the
macaronic jargon in which it was alone possible for them to
understand each other; 'wait till we clean up and pull for the
Outside. We'll take the White Man's canoe and go to the Salt
Water. Yes, bad water, rough water--great mountains dance up and
down all the time. And so big, so far, so far away--you travel
ten sleep, twenty sleep, forty sleep'--he graphically enumerated
the days on his fingers--'all the time water, bad water. Then you
come to great village, plenty people, just the same mosquitoes
next summer. Wigwams oh, so high--ten, twenty pines.

'Hi-yu skookum!' He paused impotently, cast an appealing glance
at Malemute Kid, then laboriously placed the twenty pines, end on
end, by sign language. Malemute Kid smiled with cheery cynicism;
but Ruth's eyes were wide with wonder, and with pleasure; for she
half believed he was joking, and such condescension pleased her
poor woman's heart.

'And then you step into a--a box, and pouf! up you go.' He tossed
his empty cup in the air by way of illustration and, as he deftly
caught it, cried: 'And biff! down you come. Oh, great medicine
men! You go Fort Yukon. I go Arctic City--twenty-five sleep--big