This day she was a little late. The herd began passing before she had climbed half way up the ridge. She paused to watch them pass. Then, undecided whether to climb on up the slope or turn back to camp, she stood there until the uncertain light of the low Arctic sun had faded and night had come. Just as she had decided to turn her deer toward home, she caught a purple gleam on the hill directly above her.
“The purple flame!” she exclaimed. “And not a quarter of a mile above me. I could climb up there in fifteen minutes.”
For a moment she stood undecided. Then, seized by a sudden touch of daring, she whirled her deer about, tethered him to his sled, and went scouting up a gully toward the spot where the mysterious flame had flashed for a moment, then had gone out.
“I’ll see something, anyway,” she told herself as she strove in vain to still the painful fluttering of her heart.
She had worked her way to a position on the side of the hill where the outlines of a tent, with its extension of stovepipe standing out black above it, was outlined against the sky. Then, to her consternation, she saw the flaps of the tent move.
“Someone is coming out,” she whispered to herself. “Perhaps they have been watching me through a hole in the tent. Perhaps—”
Her heart stopped beating at thought of the dangers that might be threatening. Should she turn and flee, or should she flatten herself against the snow and hope that she might not be seen? Suddenly remembering that her parka, made of white fawnskin, would blend perfectly with the snow, she decided on the latter course.
There was not a second to lose. Hardly had she melted into the background of snow when a person appeared at the entrance of the tent.
Then it was that Patsy received a thrilling shock. She had been prepared to see a bearded miner, an Eskimo, most any type of man. But the person she saw was not a man, but _a woman_; scarcely that—little more than a girl.
It was with the utmost difficulty that Patsy suppressed an audible exclamation. Closing her lips tight, she took one startled look at the strange girl.
Carefully dressed in short plaid skirt, bright checkered mackinaw, and a blue knit hood; the girl stood perfectly silhouetted against the sky. Her eyes and hair were brown; Patsy was sure of that. Her features were fine. There was a deep shade of healthy pink in her cheeks.