our new home! Three cheers for Alaska!”

Over all this darkness had fallen. After a cold supper, having pitched their tents and spread their blankets, they had stretched out on the rough surface of the dock to sleep, if sleep they could. And now Florence was hearing that distressing moan of a child.

“Near at hand,” she thought, raising herself on an elbow to listen once more, this time more closely. “A strange sort of cry. Can’t be a child from our party. I’ve heard them all cry.”

Indeed she had. The long journey half way across America, then along the coast to Alaska had been hard on the children.

“A ticket to adventure,” she whispered once again. They had come here, their little party of four, to begin life anew, to secure for themselves a home and if possible, a modest fortune. Would they win? With God’s help, could they? And was true adventure to be thrown in for good measure? The girl thrilled at the thought, for, ambitious as she undoubtedly was, she was human as well, and who does not feel his blood race at thought of adventure?

However, at this moment something other than adventure called, the cry of a child in the night. Florence dearly loved small children. She could not bear to have them suffer.

“I—I’ve just got to get out and hunt her up,” she murmured.

With a shudder she dragged her feet from the warmth of the blankets, slipped on knickers and shoes, then crept out into the cheerless night.

She did not have far to go. Huddled in a corner, out of the wind, she discovered two blanket-wrapped figures. Girls they were, one small, one large. Indians, she saw as she threw her light upon their dark faces.

“What’s the matter?” she asked, striving to keep her teeth from chattering.

“Dog bite her,” the older girl spoke in a slow, deep tone. “White man dog. Strange white man dog. Come steamboat this day.”

“Yes,” Florence moved closer. “We all came by steamboat. There are many dogs. Too many! Let me see.”

The small child thrust a trembling hand from a greasy blanket.

“Ah!” Florence breathed. “That’s rather bad. Not very deep, but dog bites are bad. It must be dressed. I’ll be back.”

Stepping quickly to the tent she poured warm water from a thermos bottle into a basin, snatched up a first-aid kit, then hurried back.

“Here you are,” she said cheerily. “First we wash it. Then we dry it. Then—this will hurt a little, quite a bit, I guess.” She produced a bottle of iodine. “You tell her. Tell her it will hurt.” She spoke to the older girl, who said some words in her own language to the attentive child. When she had finished, Florence received her first reward—nor was it to be the last—for this bit of personal sacrifice, the child fixed upon her a look that registered perfect faith and confidence.

Florence applied the severe remedy. Then she watched the child’s face. A single tear crept from the corner of her eye and ran down her cheek.

It hurt, that iodine, hurt terribly for the moment. Florence knew that. Yet not a muscle of the child’s face moved.

“This,” Florence thought, with a little tightening at the throat, “is the spirit of the North. It is with this spirit that we all must face the trials and dangers that lie before us in this world. If we do this, we shall be real pioneers and we shall win.

“We shall win!” she whispered hoarsely, as standing erect, hands clenched tight, she stood for a moment facing the bitter Arctic gale.

“Feel better now?” she asked, dropping again to the child’s side.

The child nodded.

“All right. Now we’ll bind it up tight and it will be fine.”

Five minutes later Florence saw the child’s head fall against her older sister’s side. Her pain gone, her cry stilled, she had fallen asleep. That was Florence’s second reward, but not her last.

As she once more crept beneath the warm covers in her tent, she felt the slender arms of Mary, her cousin, close about her and heard her murmur with a shudder: “It is so far and so cold!”

“She’s talking in her sleep again,” Florence told herself. Then, out of sympathy for the frailer girl, she too shuddered.

Yes, it had been a long way and even though it was early June, it was cold. Yet Florence thrilled at thought of it all. That journey, how it had unfolded, first on paper, second in their minds, then in reality!

Mark and Mary had lived with their mother in the Copper Country of Michigan. Because she had few relatives and was in need of a home, Florence had joined them there.

No copper was being mined, so there was no work and, struggle as they might, they had grown poorer and poorer.

Then had come word of what appeared to them a wonderful opportunity. The government was to send two hundred or more families to the rich Matamuska Valley in Alaska. They were to be given land and to be loaned money that they might make a fresh start.

“Pioneers! They will be pioneers in a new land!” Florence, who was of true pioneer stock, young, sturdy and strong, had exclaimed. “Why should we not go?”

Why, indeed? They had applied, had been accepted, and here they were at the seaport of the railroad that was to bear them on to their new world.

“Tomorrow,” she whispered softly to herself. “Tomorrow, to—” At that she fell fast asleep.

If the scene of confusion on the dock at Anchorage with the trucks, tractors, tents, and groceries had seemed strange, the picture before Florence, Mary and Mark a few days later might, to a casual observer, have seemed even more strange. Palmer, dream city of the future, lay before them. And such a city! A city of tents. Yet, city of tents as it was, it did not lack signs of excitement. This was the great day. On this day the future home owners of this rich valley, surrounded by its snow-capped mountains, were to draw lots for their tracts of land. Some tracts were close to Palmer, some ten or twelve miles away. A few settlers there were who wished for solitude in the far-off spots. Many hoped for tracts close in, where they might walk into town for their mail and to join in the latest gossip. Florence, Mary, and Mark had sensed the bleak loneliness of distant farms during the long winter. They too hoped for a spot close at hand.

“Now,” Florence whispered as, after a long time of waiting in line, Mark approached the drawing stand. “Now it is your turn!”

Mark’s hand trembled as it went out. Florence felt her heart pause, then go leaping. It meant so much, so very much, that tiny square of paper with a number on it.

Turning away from the curious throng, Mark cupped his hand, then together they all three peered at that magic number.

“One hundred and twelve!” Florence whispered tensely. “Here—here is our map. Where is our farm? Here! Here! Let’s look!”

One moment of hurried search, then a sigh of disappointment. “Seven miles from town.” Mary dropped limply down upon a stump.

“Might have been twelve,” Mark said cheerfully. “Bet there’s a bear or a moose right in the middle of it waiting to be made into hamburger. But then,” he sighed, “we couldn’t kill him. Can’t get a hunting license for a year.”

Two hours later Mark and Mary with their mother and Florence close at hand were listening to a tempting offer. Ramsey McGregor, a huge man from the western plains, had drawn a tract of land only a half mile from town. He had no cow. The Hughes family owned a cow, a very good milker. If they would trade