With that, Swiftwater’s face would take on a smile as innocent as that of a babe. There was always the warm, soft clasp of the womanish hand--the low pitched voice of Swiftwater to keep it company. And now, as I remember how innocent Bera was, how girlish she looked, how confiding she was in me, yet never for a moment forgetting, perhaps, the lure of the gold studded gravel banks of Eldorado which Swiftwater held constantly before her, it seems to my mind that no woman can be wronged as deeply and as eternally as that woman whose daughter is stolen from her through guile and soft deceit. We had been in Skagway but a trifle more than a week, when, one evening, returning to the hotel, I found my room empty and Bera missing. “I have gone with Swiftwater to Dawson, Mamma. He loves me and I love him.” This was what Bera had written and left on her dresser. That was all. There was one chance only to prevent the kidnaping of Bera. That was for me to get to the lakes on the other side of the mountains, at the head of navigation on the Yukon and seek the aid of the Canadian mounted police. At White Horse, there was trace of Swiftwater and Bera, but they had twenty-four hours the start of me and, when I finally found that they had gone through to Dawson, I simply quit. Down the Upper Yukon there was a constant stream of barges, small boats and rafts. Miles Canyon, with its madly rushing, white-capped waters, extending over five miles of rock-ribbed river bed and sand bar, was scattered o’er with timbers, boards, boxes and casks containing the outfits and all the worldly possessions of scores of unfortunates. “On, on, and ever and eternally on, down the Yukon to Dawson!” That was the cry in those days and it bore, as unresistingly and as mercilessly as the tide of the ocean carries the flotsam and jetsam of seacoast harbors, the brave and the strong, the weak and crippled, the wise and the foolish, in one inchoate mass of humanity to that magic spot where more gold lay underground waiting for the pick of the poverty-struck miner than the world had ever known of--“The Klondike.” All things finally come to an end. I was in Dawson. At the little temporary dock on the Yukon’s bank, stood Bera and Swiftwater. The miner did not wait till I landed from the little boat. He went up the gang plank and grasped me in his arms. “Mrs. Beebe,” he said, “we’re married. Come with us to our cabin. We are waiting for you, and dinner is on the table.” Swiftwater during all that summer and winter in Dawson was the very soul of chivalry and attention both to Bera and myself. There was nothing too good for us in the little market places at Dawson and a box of candy at $5 a box just to please Bera or to satisfy my own taste for sweetmeats was no more to Swiftwater than the average man spending a two-bit piece on the outside.