"Joe and I each had a good dog-team and sled when we were married. We loaded the sleds with tools, hardware, stoves and dishes, glass for the windows, some flour, sugar, beans and a few other groceries, and brought our traps and plenty of ammunition for our guns. It was hard breaking trail through the deep snow on the east side of the Alaska Range, but nice going on this side. We mushed the two hundred and fifty miles from the coast in two weeks; and had some time for trapping before warm weather."
"How do you get 'outside' in the summer time?" I inquired.
"We can't, and we don't need to. We spent that first summer building this house, making garden, gathering berries, drying fish, hunting and getting ready for the winter. Almost all our wants are supplied right here. From the middle of April till the middle of October we don't see a human being, except now and then an Indian, or a stray prospector."
"Now, Doctor, I know you don't mean that," protested Nina. "Why, this is the most companionable place in the world. It is full of friendly creatures. The winter before I was married I spent three months in San Francisco. I nearly died, I was so lonely and homesick. I'd meet thousands of people on the streets every day, and not get a word or smile from one of them. I wouldn't give my little 'Red' for the whole crowd."
Nina leaned forward and made a squeaking noise with her lips. Instantly a little furry creature of a bright scarlet color, with a short tail, jumped out of a box in the corner, ran to her and up her hand and arm to her shoulder and then down to her knee, where he stood stiffly erect like a soldier at attention. He was so quick and comical in his motions and so full of tricks that he kept us laughing.
"I had three Reds," explained Nina, "but a weasel got two of them before I got the weasel. I have had many other pets besides the wood-mice. There isn't a creature in all the forest that would do me harm unless I hurt it first. And I don't have a grudge against any of them, except the hawks and owls that come after my chickens."
The most striking feature about the cabin, however, was the abundance and variety of furs and other trophies of the chase. Adorning and almost covering one end of the room was an enormous moose head. At the other end was a wonderful caribou head. Over the windows were beautiful heads of the white mountain sheep, the bighorn of the Northwest.