The "Fort" was just about
completed before things froze up--narrow, small quarters
constructed of rough logs, surrounded by a stockade--but above its
roof the Union Jack floated, and beneath it flashed the scarlet
tunics, the buffalo-head buttons, the clanking spurs of as brave
a band of men, "queened over" by as courageous a woman, as ever
Gibraltar or the Throne Room knew.
As time went on the major's wife began to find herself "Mother o'
the Men" (as an old Klondyker named her), as well as of her own
boy. Those blizzard-blown, snow-hardened, ice-toughened soldiers
went to her for everything--sympathy, assistance, advice--for in
that lonely outpost military lines were less strictly drawn, and
she could oftentimes do for the men what would be considered
amazingly unofficial, were those little humane kindnesses done in
barracks at Regina or Macleod or Calgary. She nursed the men
through every illness, preparing the food herself for the invalids.
She attended to many a frozen face and foot and finger. She
smoothed out their differences, inspirited them when they grew
discouraged, talked to them of their own people, so that their
home ties should not be entirely severed because they could write
letters or receive them but once a year.
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