To her hand clung a little boy of ten, and about her
hovered some twenty young fellows, gay in the scarlet tunics, the
flashing buffalo-head buttons, that bespoke the soldierly uniform
of the Canadian North-West Mounted Police. They were the first
detachment bound for the Yukon, and were under her husband's
command.
She was the only woman in the "company." The major had purposely
selected unmarried men for his staff, for in the early nineties the
Arctic was no place for a woman. But when the Government at Ottawa
saw fit to commission Major Lysle to face the frozen North, and
with a handful of men build and garrison a fort at the rim of the
Polar Seas, Mrs. Lysle quietly remarked, "I shall accompany you, so
shall the boy," and the major blessed her in his heart, for had she
not so decided, it would mean absolute separation from wife and
child for from three to five years, as in those days no railways,
no telegraph lines, stretched their pulsing fingers into the
Klondyke. One mail went in, one mail came out, each year--that was
all.
"It's good-bye, Graham lad," said one of the scarlet-coated
soldiers, tossing the little boy to his back. "Look your longest
at those paved streets, and the green, green things.
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