THE SCORN OF WOMEN
Once Freda and Mrs. Eppingwell clashed.
Now Freda was a Greek girl and a dancer. At least she purported
to be Greek; but this was doubted by many, for her classic face
had over-much strength in it, and the tides of hell which rose in
her eyes made at rare moments her ethnology the more dubious. To
a few--men--this sight had been vouchsafed, and though long years
may have passed, they have not forgotten, nor will they ever
forget. She never talked of herself, so that it were well to let
it go down that when in repose, expurgated, Greek she certainly
was. Her furs were the most magnificent in all the country from
Chilcoot to St. Michael's, and her name was common on the lips of
men. But Mrs. Eppingwell was the wife of a captain; also a social
constellation of the first magnitude, the path of her orbit
marking the most select coterie in Dawson,--a coterie captioned by
the profane as the "official clique." Sitka Charley had travelled
trail with her once, when famine drew tight and a man's life was
less than a cup of flour, and his judgment placed her above all
women. Sitka Charley was an Indian; his criteria were primitive;
but his word was flat, and his verdict a hall-mark in every camp
under the circle.
These two women were man-conquering, man-subduing machines, each
in her own way, and their ways were different. Mrs. Eppingwell
ruled in her own house, and at the Barracks, where were younger
sons galore, to say nothing of the chiefs of the police, the
executive, and the judiciary. Freda ruled down in the town; but
the men she ruled were the same who functioned socially at the
Barracks or were fed tea and canned preserves at the hand of Mrs.
Eppingwell in her hillside cabin of rough-hewn logs. Each knew
the other existed; but their lives were apart as the Poles, and
while they must have heard stray bits of news and were curious,
they were never known to ask a question. And there would have
been no trouble had not a free lance in the shape of the model-
woman come into the land on the first ice, with a spanking dog-
team and a cosmopolitan reputation. Loraine Lisznayi--
alliterative, dramatic, and Hungarian--precipitated the strife,
and because of her Mrs. Eppingwell left her hillside and invaded
Freda's domain, and Freda likewise went up from the town to spread
confusion and embarrassment at the Governor's ball.
All of which may be ancient history so far as the Klondike is
concerned, but very few, even in Dawson, know the inner truth of
the matter; nor beyond those few are there any fit to measure the
wife of the captain or the Greek dancer. And that all are now
permitted to understand, let honor be accorded Sitka Charley.
From his lips fell the main facts in the screed herewith
presented. It ill befits that Freda herself should have waxed
confidential to a mere scribbler of words, or that Mrs. Eppingwell
made mention of the things which happened. They may have spoken,
but it is unlikely.
