Snow is falling. There is
wind, much wind that blows fair. Also, there is a woman who sits
in the snow alongside. She is white woman, she is young, very
pretty, maybe she is twenty years old, maybe twenty-five years old.
She look at me. I look at her. She is very tired. She is no
dance-woman. I see that right away. She is good woman, and she is
very tired.
"'You are Sitka Charley,' she says. I get up quick and roll
blankets so snow does not get inside. 'I go to Dawson,' she says.
'I go in your canoe - how much?'
"I do not want anybody in my canoe. I do not like to say no. So I
say, 'One thousand dollars.' Just for fun I say it, so woman
cannot come with me, much better than say no. She look at me very
hard, then she says, 'When you start?' I say right away. Then she
says all right, she will give me one thousand dollars.
"What can I say? I do not want the woman, yet have I given my word
that for one thousand dollars she can come. I am surprised. Maybe
she make fun, too, so I say, 'Let me see thousand dollars.' And
that woman, that young woman, all alone on the trail, there in the
snow, she take out one thousand dollars, in greenbacks, and she put
them in my hand.
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