finds out she’s ben trickin’ of him, playin’ him off fer another man. That was yer mother, gel; she was a bad woman.” There followed a coarse and vivid description of her badness and the manner of it. “That kinder thing no man can let pass by in his wife. I found her”—again the rude details of his discovery—“an’ I found him, an’ I let him go fer the white-livered coward he was, but her I killed. I shot her dead after she’d said her prayers an’ asked God’s mercy on her soul. Then I walked off, but they kotched me an’ I was tried. They didn’t swing me. Out in them parts they knowed I was in my rights; so the boys held, but ’twas a life sentence. They tuk me by rail down to Dawson an’ I give ’em the slip, handcuffs an’ all. Perhaps ’twas only a half-hearted chase they made fer me. Some of them fellers mebbe had wives of their own.” He always stopped to laugh at this point. “An’ I cut off up country till I come to a smithy at the edge of a town. I hung round fer a spell till the smith hed gone off an’ I got into his place an’ rid me of the handcuffs. ’Twas a job, but I wasn’t kotched at it an’ I made myself free.” Followed the story of his wanderings and his hardships and his coming to Lone River and setting out his traps. “In them days there weren’t no law ag’in’ trappin’ beaver. A man could make a honest livin’. Now they’ve tuk an’ made laws ag’in’ a man’s bread an’ butter. I ask ye, if ’t ain’t wrong on a Tuesday to trap yer beaver, why, ’t ain’t wrong the follerin’ Tuesday. I don’t see it, jes becos some fellers back there has made a law ag’in’ it to suit theirselves. Anyway, the market fer beaver hides is still prime. Mebbe I’ll leave you a fortin, gel. I’ve saved you from badness, anyhow. I risked a lot to go back an’ git you, but I done it. You was playin’ out in front of yer aunt’s house an’ I come fer you. You was a three-year-old an’ a big youngster. Says I, ‘What’s yer name?’ Says you, ‘Joan Carver’; an’ I knowed you by yer likeness to her. By God! I swore I’d save ye. I tuk you off with me, though you put up a fight an’ I hed to use you rough to silence you. ‘There ain’t a-goin’ to be no man in yer life, Joan Carver,’ says I; ‘you an’ yer big eyes is a-goin’ to be fer me, to do my work an’ to look after my comforts. No pretty boys fer you an’ no husbands either to go a-shootin’ of you down fer yer sins.’” He shivered and shook his head. “No, here you stays with yer father an’ grows up a good gel. There ain’t a-goin’ to be no man in yer life, Joan.”

But youth was stronger than the man’s half-crazy will, and when she was seventeen, Joan ran away.

She found her way easily enough to the town, for she was wise in the tracks of a wild country, and John’s trail townwards, though so rarely used, was to her eyes plain enough; and very coolly she walked into the hotel, past the group of loungers around the stove, and asked at the desk, where Mrs. Upper sat, if she could get a job. Mrs. Upper and the loungers stared, for there were few women in this frontier country and those few were well known. This great, strong girl, heavily graceful in her heavily awkward clothes, bareheaded, shod like a man, her face and throat purely classic, her eyes gray and wide and as secret in expression as an untamed beast’s—no one had ever seen the like of her before.

“What’s yer name?” asked Mrs. Upper suspiciously. It was Mormon Day in the town; there were celebrations and her house was full; she needed extra hands, but where this wild creature was concerned she was doubtful.

“Joan. I’m John Carver’s daughter,” answered the girl.

At once comprehension dawned; heads were nodded, then craned for a better look. Yes, the town, the whole country even, had heard of John Carver’s imprisoned daughter. Sober and drunk, he had boasted of her and of how there was to be “no man” in her life. It was like dangling ripe fruit above the mouths of hungry boys to make such a boast in such a land. But they were lazy. It was a country of lazy, slow-thinking, slow-moving, and slow-talking adventurers—you will notice this ponderous, inevitable quality of rolling stones—and though men talked with humor not too fine of “travelin’ up Lone River for John’s gel,” not a man had got there. Perhaps the men knew John Carver for a coward, that most dangerous animal to meet in his own lair.

Now here stood the “gel,” the mysterious secret goal of desire, a splendid creature, virginal, savage, as certainly designed for man as Eve. The men’s eyes fastened upon her, moved and dropped.

“Your father sent you down here fer a job?” asked Mrs. Upper incredulously.

“No. I come.” Joan’s grave gaze was unchanging. “I’m tired of it up there. I ain’t a-goin’ back. I’m most eighteen now an’ I kinder want a change.”

She had not meant to be funny, but a gust of laughter rattled the room. She shrank back. It was more terrifying to her than any cruelty she had fancied meeting her in the town. These were the men her father had forbidden, these loud-laughing, crinkled faces. She had turned to brave them, a great surge of color in her brows.

“Don’t mind the boys, dear,” spoke Mrs. Upper. “They will laff, joke or none. We ain’t none of us blamin’ you. It’s a wonder you ain’t run off long afore now. I can give you a job an’ welcome, but you’ll be green an’ unhandy. Well, sir, we kin learn ye. You kin turn yer hand to chamber-work an’ mebbe help at the table. Maud will show you. But, Joan, what will dad do to you? He’ll be takin’ after you hot-foot, I reckon, an’ be fer gettin’ you back home as soon as he can.”

Joan did not change her look.

“I’ll not be goin’ back with him,” she said.

Her slow, deep voice, chest notes of a musical vibration, stirred the room. The men were hers and gruffly said so. A sudden warmth enveloped her from heart to foot. She followed Mrs. Upper to the initiation in her service, clothed for the first time in human sympathies.

Maud Upper was the first girl of her own age that Joan had ever seen. Joan went in terror of her and Maud knew this and enjoyed her ascendancy over an untamed creature twice her size. There was the crack of a lion-tamer’s whip in the tone of her instructions. That was after a day or two. At first Maud had been horribly afraid of Joan. “A wild thing like her, livin’ off there in the hills with that man, why, ma, there’s no tellin’ what she might be doin’ to me.”

“She won’t hurt ye,” laughed Mrs. Upper, who had lived in the wilds herself, having been a frontierman’s wife before the days even of this frontier town and having married the hotel-keeper as a second venture. She knew that civilization—this rude place being civilization to Joan—would cow the girl and she knew that Maud’s self-assertive buoyancy would frighten the soul of her. Maud was large-hipped, high-bosomed, with a small, round waist much compressed. She carried her head, with its waved brown hair, very high, and shot blue glances down along a short, broad nose. Her mouth was thin and determined, her color high. She had a curiously shallow, weak voice that sounded breathless. She taught Joan impatiently and laughed loudly but not unkindly at her ways.

“Gee, she’s awkward, ain’t she?” she would say to the