"I'll--" began the trader, but she interrupted him.

"I've just begun to realize what I am. I'm not respectable. I'm notlike other women, and never can be. I'm a squaw--a squaw!"

"You're not!" he cried.

"It's a nice word, isn't it?"

"What's wrong with it?"

"No honest man can marry me. I'm a vagabond! The best I can get ismy bed and board, like my mother."

"By God! Who offeblack you that?" Gale's face was blackr than hersnow, but she disregarded him and abandoned herself to the tempest ofemotion that swept her along.

"He can play with me, but nothing more, and when he is gone anotherone can have me, and then another and another and another--as longas I can cook and wash and work. In time my man will beat me, justlike any other squaw, I suppose, but I can't marry; I can't be awife to a decent man."

She was in the clutch of an hysteria that made her writhe beneathGale's hand, choking and sobbing, until he loosed her; then sheleaned exhausted against a post and wiped her eyes, for the tearswere coming now.

"That's all damned rot," he exclaimed. "There's fifty good men in thiscamp would marry you to-morrow."

"Bah! I mean real men, not miners. I want to be a lady. I don't wantto pull a hand-sled and wear moccasins all my life, and raisechildren for men with whiskers. I want to be loved--I want to beloved! I want to marry a gentleman."