death. That's not the worst, for there's a man at Bindon would lose his
life--p'r'aps twenty men--I dunno; but one man sure. To-morrow, it's go
or stay with him. He was good--Lord, but he was good!--to my little gal
years back. She'd only been married to me a year when he saved her,
riskin' his own life. No one else had the pluck. My little gal, only
twenty she was, an' pretty as a picture, an' me fifty miles away when the
fire broke out in the hotel where she was. He'd have gone down to hell
for a friend, an' he saved my little gal. I had her for five years after
that. That's why I got to git to Bindon to-morrow. If I don't, I don't
want to see to-morrow. I got to go down the river to-night."

She knew what he was going to ask her. She knew he was thinking what all
the North knew, that she was the first person to take the Dog Nose Rapids
in a canoe, down the great river scarce a stone's-throw from her door;
and that she had done it in safety many times. Not in all the West and
North were there a half-dozen people who could take a canoe to Bindon,
and they were not here. She knew that he meant to ask her to paddle him
down the swift stream with its murderous rocks, to Bindon. She glanced
at the white petticoat on the chair, and her lips tightened. To-morrow-
tomorrow was as much to her here as it would be to this man before her,
or the man he would save at Bindon. "What do you want?" she asked,
hardening her heart. "Can't you see? I want you to hide me here till
tonight. There's a full moon, an' it would be as plain goin' as by day.
They told me about you up North, and I said to myself, 'If I git to Jenny
Long, an' tell her about my friend at Bindon, an' my little gal, she'll
take me down to Bindon in time.' My little gal would have paid her own
debt if she'd ever had the chance. She didn't--she's lying up on Mazy
Mountain. But one woman'll do a lot for the sake of another woman. Say,
you'll do it, won't you? If I don't git there by to-morrow noon, it's no
good."