It came about
in the fall of 1897. He was returning from one of his dashes,
this time to inspect Henderson, a creek that entered the Yukon
just below the Stewart. Winter had come on with a rush, and he
fought his way down the Yukon seventy miles in a frail
Peterborough canoe in the midst of a run of mush-ice. Hugging
the rim-ice that had already solidly formed, he shot across the
ice-spewing mouth of the Klondike just in time to see a lone man
dancing excitedly on the rim and pointing into the water. Next,
he saw the fur-clad body of a woman, face under, sinking in the
midst of the driving mush-ice. A lane opening in the swirl of
the current, it was a matter of seconds to drive the canoe to the
spot, reach to the shoulder in the water, and draw the woman
gingerly to the canoe's side. It was Freda. And all might yet
have been well with him, had she not, later, when brought back to
consciousness, blazed at him with angry blue eyes and demanded:
"Why did you? Oh, why did you?"
This worried him. In the nights that followed, instead of
sinking immediately to sleep as was his wont, he lay awake,
visioning her face and that blue blaze of wrath, and conning her
words over and over.
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