city-dweller, and she knew how to throw the hitch best suited for
any particular kind of pack. Also, she could build a fire of wet
wood in a downpour of rain and not lose her temper. In short, in
all its guises she mastered the unexpected. But the Great
Unexpected was yet to come into her life and put its test upon her.

The gold-seeking tide was flooding northward into Alaska, and it
was inevitable that Hans Nelson and his wife should he caught up by
the stream and swept toward the Klondike. The fall of 1897 found
them at Dyea, but without the money to carry an outfit across
Chilcoot Pass and float it down to Dawson. So Hans Nelson worked
at his trade that winter and helped rear the mushroom outfitting-
town of Skaguay.

He was on the edge of things, and throughout the winter he heard
all Alaska calling to him. Latuya Bay called loudest, so that the
summer of 1898 found him and his wife threading the mazes of the
broken coast-line in seventy-foot Siwash canoes. With them were
Indians, also three other men. The Indians landed them and their
supplies in a lonely bight of land a hundred miles or so beyond
Latuya Bay, and returned to Skaguay; but the three other men
remained, for they were members of the organized party. Each had
put an equal share of capital into the outfitting, and the profits
were to he divided equally. In that Edith Nelson undertook to cook
for the outfit, a man's share was to be her portion.

First, spruce trees were cut down and a three-room cabin
constructed. To keep this cabin was Edith Nelson's task. The task
of the men was to search for gold, which they did; and to find
gold, which they likewise did. It was not a startling find, merely