And it was all so simple, she had contended; why should not their faith be as her faith--_the faith of food and blanket_?
The faith of trail and hunting camp?
The faith with which strong clean men faced the quick danger and sudden death by field and flood?
Why not?
The faith of Jacob Welse?
Of Matt McCarthy?
Of the Indian boys she had played with?
Of the Indian girls she had led to Amazonian war?
Of the very wolf-dogs straining in the harnesses and running with her across the snow?
It was healthy, it was real, it was good, she thought, and she was glad.
The rich notes of a robin saluted her from the birch wood, and opened her ears to the day.

A partridge boomed afar in the forest, and a tree-squirrel launched unerringly into space above her head, and went on, from limb to limb and tree to tree, scolding graciously the while.
From the hidden river rose the shouts of the toiling adventurers, already parted from sleep and fighting their way towards the Pole.
Frona arose, shook back her hair, and took instinctively the old path between the trees to the camp of Chief George and the Dyea tribesmen.
She came upon a boy, breech-clouted and bare, like a copper god.

He was gathering wood, and looked at her keenly over his bronze shoulder.
She bade him good-morning, blithely, in the Dyea tongue; but he shook his head, and laughed insultingly, and paused in his work to hurl shameful words after her.

She did not understand, for this was not the old way, and when she passed a great and glowering Sitkan buck she kept her tongue between her teeth.

At the fringe of the forest, the camp confronted her.