I was washing some of the baby’s clothes in the kitchen and drying them on a line over the fire, when Swiftwater came in from the diggings, clad in his rubber boots which reached to his hips. The miner asked for some hot water and a towel and began to shave the three weeks’ black growth from his chin. “What are you going to do now, Swiftwater?” I asked. “I’m going down to town.” For two days the cabin had been without food except some mush and a few dried potatoes and a can of condensed milk for the baby. Swiftwater had sent a man over the trail to Dawson for food two days before. “You’ll not go without Bera! You are not going to leave us here to starve,” said I. “Bera cannot possibly go,” said Bill. I turned and went to Bera’s room and told her to dress immediately. Then I washed the baby, put an entire new change of clothes on him, wrapped up his freshly ironed garments in a package, got a bottle of soothing syrup and a can of condensed milk. It was always my belief and is now, that Swiftwater’s mind contained a plan to abandon Bera, the baby and me, and to run away from the Yukon to escape his troubles. We got a small boat and filled one end of it with fir boughs, covered them over with rugs, and put Bera and the baby there. Then Swiftwater and I got in the boat and pushed off down stream. Swiftwater confessed to me for the first time that he was in serious trouble. “There have been three strange men from Dawson out here on our claims,” said Swiftwater, “and I know who sent them out. They are watching me.” As I look back upon that awful trip down Indian River, with poor, wan, white-faced Bera hugging the little three weeks’ old baby to her bosom, so sick that she could hardly talk, I wonder if there is any hardship, and peril, and privation, and suffering, a woman cannot endure. The boat was heavy--terribly heavy. In the small stretches of still water it was desperately hard, bone-racking toil to keep moving. In the rushes of the river, where rapids tore at mill-race speed over boulders and pebbly stretches, we were constantly in danger of being upset. An hour of this sort of work made me almost ready for any sort of fate. Finally we struck a big rock and the current carried us on a stretch of sandy beach. Swiftwater and I got out and waded up to our armpits in the cold stream to get the boat started again. Then we climbed aboard and once more shot down the rocky canyon to another stretch of still water beyond. By nightfall we had reached an old cabin half way to Dawson, in which the fall before Swiftwater had cached provisions. The baby’s food was all gone, and Bera, in a fit of anger, had thrown what little bread and butter sandwiches we had put up for ourselves, overboard. I had not eaten all day, nor had Swiftwater.