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Jack London

Siwash

Żona z plemienia Siwash

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Siwash

"If I was a man--" Her words were in themselves indecisive, but the withering contempt which

flashed from her black eyes was not lost upon the men-folk in the tent.

Tommy, the English sailor, squirmed, but chivalrous old Dick Humphries, Cornish fisherman

and erstwhile American salmon capitalist, beamed upon her benevolently as ever. He bore

women too large a portion of his rough heart to mind them, as he said, when they were in the

doldrums, or when their limited vision would not permit them to see all around a thing. So they

said nothing, these two men who had taken the half-frozen woman into their tent three days

back, and who had warmed her, and fed her, and rescued her goods from the Indian packers.

This latter had necessitated the payment of numerous dollars, to say nothing of a demonstration

in force--Dick Humphries squinting along the sights of a Winchester while Tommy apportioned

their wages among them at his own appraisement. It had been a little thing in itself, but it meant

much to a woman playing a desperate single-hand in the equally desperate Klondike rush of

'97. Men were occupied with their own pressing needs, nor did they approve of women playing,

single-handed, the odds of the arctic winter. "If I was a man, I know what I would do." Thus

reiterated Molly, she of the flashing eyes, and therein spoke the cumulative grit of five

American-born generations.

In the succeeding silence, Tommy thrust a pan of biscuits into the Yukon stove and piled on

fresh fuel. A reddish flood pounded along under his sun-tanned skin, and as he stooped, the skin

of his neck was scarlet. Dick palmed a three-cornered sail needle through a set of broken pack

straps, his good nature in nowise disturbed by the feminine cataclysm which was threatening to

burst in the storm-beaten tent.

"And if you was a man?" he asked, his voice vibrant with kindness. The three-cornered needle

jammed in the damp leather, and he suspended work for the moment.

"I'd be a man. I'd put the straps on my back and light out. I wouldn't lay in camp here, with the

Yukon like to freeze most any day, and the goods not half over the portage. And you--you are

men, and you sit here, holding your hands, afraid of a little wind and wet. I tell you straight,

Yankee-men are made of different stuff. They'd be hitting the trail for Dawson if they had to

wade through hell-fire. And you, you--I wish I was a man."

"I'm very glad, my dear, that you're not." Dick Humphries threw the bight of the sail twine over

the point of the needle and drew it clear with a couple of deft turns and a jerk.

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