Chapter VI. Wherein Boreas Takes a Hand

All that day the men busied themselves in preparation for the start. Balt was ferociously exultant, Emerson was boiling with impatience, while Fraser, whose calm nothing disturbed, slept most of the time, observing that this was his last good bed for a while, and therefore he wished to make it work.

Beneath her quiet cheerfulness, Cherry nursed a forlorn heart; for when these men were gone she would be left alone and friendless again, buried in the heart of an inaccessible wilderness, given over to her fears and the intrigues of her enemies. She had eyes mainly for Emerson, and although in her glance there was good-fellowship, in her heart was hot resentment--first at him because he had awakened in her the warm interest she felt for him, and, second, at herself for harboring any such interest. Why should this self-centred youth, wrapped up in his own affairs to her own utter exclusion, give her cause to worry? Why should she allow him to step into her quiet life and upset her well-ordered existence?

"How do you like him?" she asked Balt, once.

"He's my style, all right," said the big man. "He's desp'rate, and he'll fight; that's what I want--somebody that won't blench at anything when the time comes." He ground his teeth, and his red eyes flamed, reflecting the sense of injury that seared his brain. "What he don't know about the business, I do, and we'll make it win. But, say, ain't he awful at asking questions? My head aches and my back is lame from answering him. Seems like he remembers it all, too."

Goaded by the wrong he had suffered, and almost maniacal in his eagerness for the coming struggle, the giant's frenzy told Cherry that the fight would be an unrelenting one, and again a vague tremor of regret at having drawn this youth into the affair crept over her and sharpened the growing pain at her heart.

During the evening Emerson left the two other men in the store, and, seeking her out in the little parlor, asked her to play for him. She consented gladly, and, as on their first evening together, he sang with her. Again the blending of their voices brought them closer, his aloofness wore off, and he became an agreeable, accomplished companion whose merry wit and boyish sympathy stirred emotions in the girl that threatened her peace of mind. This had been the only companionship with her own kind she had enjoyed for months, and with his melting mood came a softening of her own nature, in which she appeared before him gracious and irresistible. Banteringly, and rising out of his elation, he tried to please her, and, in the same spirit that calls the bird to its mate, she responded. It was their last hour together before embarking on his perilous journey in search of the Golden Fleece, and his starved affections clamored for sympathy, while the iron in his blood felt the magnetic propinquity of sex. When he said good-night it was with a wholly new