The glow of it still clung to the face of the broad Yukon,
as a flush does to the soft, wrinkled cheek of a girl just roused from
deep sleep.
Except for a faint murkiness in the air it was still day. There was
light enough for the four men playing pinochle on the upper deck, though
the women of their party, gossiping in chairs grouped near at hand, had
at last put aside their embroidery. The girl who sat by herself at a
little distance held a magazine still open on her lap. If she were not
reading, her attitude suggested it was less because of the dusk than
that she had surrendered herself to the spell of the mysterious beauty
which for this hour at least had transfigured the North to a land all
light and atmosphere and color.
Gordon Elliot had taken the boat at Pierre's Portage, fifty miles
farther down the river. He had come direct from the creeks, and his
impressions of the motley pioneer life at the gold-diggings were so
vivid that he had found an isolated corner of the deck where he could
scribble them in a notebook while still fresh.
But he had not been too busy to see that the girl in the wicker chair
was as much of an outsider as he was. Plainly this was her first trip
in.
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