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Show 80 One night we camped on a high bank of Lake Marsh because we needed firewood. Since it was high and rocky, the mosquitoes did not bother us. The next morning I unpacked my Winchester rifle, which I had bought at Lake Bennett, and went into the forest to hunt. I was hunting moose, but I ended up picking wild raspberries and onions. The queen gathered flowers-lupines and bluebells, pink wild roses, yellow arctic poppies, and scarlet fireweed. And she decorated the raft. She said we looked like one of those floating gardens in Old Mexico. I thought we looked more like a floating coffin, but I did not say so. I watched her interlace a ring of pink roses in her hair, and then admire herself in the emerald lake. "Are you turning back into a girl now?" I asked. I always thought of her as a girl, but she still passed as a boy. We were less conspicuous as two boys. She smiled, then shook the flowers into the water. "It isn't permanent, you know," I added hopefully. "I know," she said. "My mother thought it best, at least until I get to Dawson City." "Then what?" I asked a question that I had been avoiding. "When you get to Dawson City?" "You mean-am I going to join the Flower Girls or stay |
