Save him who
has done the like, no man may know what she endured in traveling
a hundred miles on the rim-ice; nor may they understand the toil
and hardship of breaking the two hundred miles of packed ice
which remained after the river froze for good. But Madeline was
an Indian woman, so she did these things, and one night there
came a knock at Malemute Kid's door. Thereat he fed a team of
starving dogs, put a healthy youngster to bed, and turned his
attention to an exhausted woman. He removed her icebound
moccasins while he listened to her tale, and stuck the point of
his knife into her feet that he might see how far they were
frozen.
Despite his tremendous virility, Malemute Kid was possessed of a
softer, womanly element, which could win the confidence of a
snarling wolf-dog or draw confessions from the most wintry heart.
Nor did he seek them. Hearts opened to him as spontaneously as
flowers to the sun. Even the priest, Father Roubeau, had been
known to confess to him, while the men and women of the Northland
were ever knocking at his door--a door from which the latch-string
hung always out. To Madeline, he could do no wrong, make no
mistake. She had known him from the time she first cast her lot
among the people of her father's race; and to her half-barbaric
mind it seemed that in him was centered the wisdom of the ages,
that between his vision and the future there could be no
intervening veil.
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