the sky, that they looked very large and peculiar--there was something in
the air to magnify. They stopped for a minute on the top of the Divide,
and it seemed like a messenger out of the strange country at the farthest
north--the place of legends. But, of course, it was only a traveller like
ourselves, for in a half-hour she was with us.

"Yes, it was a girl dressed as a man. She did not try to hide it; she
dressed so for ease. She would make a man's heart leap in his mouth--if
he was like Macavoy, or the pious Mowley there."

Pierre's last three words had a touch of irony, for he knew that the
Trapper had a precious tongue for Scripture when a missionary passed that
way, and a bad name with women to give it point. Mowley smiled sourly;
but Macavoy laughed outright, and smacked his lips on his pipe-stem
luxuriously.

"Aw now, Pierre--all me little failin's--aw!" he protested.

Pierre swung round on the bench, leaning upon the other elbow, and,
cherishing his cigarette, presently continued:

"She had come far and was tired to death, so stiff that she could hardly
get from her horse; and the horse too was ready to drop. Handsome enough
she looked, for all that, in man's clothes and a peaked cap, with a
pistol in her belt. She wasn't big built--just a feathery kind of
sapling--but she was set fair on her legs like a man, and a hand that was
as good as I have seen, so strong, and like silk and iron with a horse.
Well, what was the trouble?--for I saw there was trouble. Her eyes had a
hunted look, and her nose breathed like a deer's in the chase. All at
once, when she saw Hilton's wife, a cry came from her and she reached out