Chapter: TWO years after I left Lincoln I completed my academic course at Harvard.
Before I entered the Law School I went home for the summer vacation. On
the night of my arrival Mrs. Harling and Frances and Sally came over to
greet me. Everything seemed just as it used to be. My grandparents looked
very little older. Frances Harling was married now, and she and her
husband managed the Harling interests in Black Hawk. When we gathered in
grandmother's parlor, I could hardly believe that I had been away at all.
One subject, however, we avoided all evening.

When I was walking home with Frances, after we had left Mrs. Harling at
her gate, she said simply, "You know, of course, about poor Antonia."

Poor Antonia! Every one would be saying that now, I thought bitterly. I
replied that grandmother had written me how Antonia went away to marry
Larry Donovan at some place where he was working; that he had deserted
her, and that there was now a baby. This was all I knew.

"He never married her," Frances said. "I have n't seen her since she came
back. She lives at home, on the farm, and almost never comes to town. She
brought the baby in to show it to mama once. I'm afraid she's settled down
to be Ambrosch's drudge for good."

I tried to shut Antonia out of my mind. I was bitterly disappointed in
her. I could not forgive her for becoming an object of pity, while Lena
Lingard, for whom people had always foretold trouble, was now the leading
dressmaker of Lincoln, much respected in Black Hawk. Lena gave her heart
away when she felt like it, but she kept her head for her business and had
got on in the world.

Just then it was the fashion to speak indulgently of Lena and severely of
Tiny Soderball, who had quietly gone West to try her fortune the year
before. A Black Hawk boy, just back from Seattle, brought the news that
Tiny had not gone to the coast on a venture, as she had allowed people to
think, but with very definite plans. One of the roving promoters that used
to stop at Mrs. Gardener's hotel owned idle property along the water-front
in Seattle, and he had offered to set Tiny up in business in one of his
empty buildings. She was now conducting a sailors' lodging-house. This,
every one said, would be the end of Tiny. Even if she had begun by running
a decent place, she could n't keep it up; all sailors' boarding-houses
were alike.

When I thought about it, I discovered that I had never known Tiny as well
as I knew the other girls. I remembered her tripping briskly about the
dining-room on her high heels, carrying a big tray full of dishes,
glancing rather pertly at the spruce traveling men, and contemptuously at
the scrubby ones--who were so afraid of her that they did n't dare to ask
for two kinds of pie. Now it occurred to me that perhaps the sailors, too,
might be afraid of Tiny. How astonished we would have been, as we sat
talking about her on Frances Harling's front porch, if we could have known
what her future was really to be! Of all the girls and boys who grew up
together in Black Hawk, Tiny Soderball was to lead the most adventurous
life and to achieve the most solid worldly success.

This is what actually happened to Tiny: While she was running her
lodging-house in Seattle, gold was discovered in Alaska. Miners and
sailors came back from the North with wonderful stories and pouches of
gold. Tiny saw it and weighed it in her hands. That daring which nobody
had ever suspected in her, awoke. She sold her business and set out for
Circle City, in company with a carpenter and his wife whom she had
persuaded to go along with her. They reached Skaguay in a snowstorm, went
in dog sledges over the Chilkoot Pass, and shot the Yukon in flatboats.
They reached Circle City on the very day when some Siwash Indians came
into the settlement with the report that there had been a rich gold strike
farther up the river, on a certain Klondike Creek. Two days later Tiny and
her friends, and nearly every one else in Circle City, started for the
Klondike fields on the last steamer that went up the Yukon before it froze
for the winter. That boatload of people founded Dawson City. Within a few
weeks there were fifteen hundred homeless men in camp. Tiny and the
carpenter's wife began to cook for them, in a tent. The miners gave her a
lot, and the carpenter put up a log hotel for her. There she sometimes fed
a hundred and fifty men a day. Miners came in on snowshoes from their
placer claims twenty miles away to buy fresh bread from her, and paid for
it in gold.

That winter Tiny kept in her hotel a Swede whose legs had been frozen one
night in a storm when he was trying to find his way back to his cabin. The
poor fellow thought it great good fortune to be cared for by a woman, and
a woman who spoke his own tongue. When he was told that his feet must be
amputated, he said he hoped he would not get well; what could a
working-man do in this hard world without feet? He did, in fact, die from
the operation, but not before he had deeded Tiny Soderball his claim on
Hunker Creek. Tiny sold her hotel, invested half her money in Dawson
building lots, and with the rest she developed her claim. She went off
into the wilds and lived on it. She bought other claims from discouraged
miners, traded or sold them on percentages.

After nearly ten years in the Klondike, Tiny returned, with a considerable
fortune, to live in San Francisco. I met her in Salt Lake City in 1908.
She was a thin, hard-faced woman, very well-dressed, very reserved in
manner. Curiously enough, she reminded me of Mrs. Gardener, for whom she
had worked in Black Hawk so long ago. She told me about some of the
desperate chances she had taken in the gold country, but the thrill of
them was quite gone. She said frankly that nothing interested her much now
but making money. The only two human beings of whom she spoke with any
feeling were the Swede, Johnson, who had given her his claim, and Lena
Lingard. She had persuaded Lena to come to San Francisco and go into
business there.

"Lincoln was never any place for her," Tiny remarked. "In a town of that
size Lena would always be gossiped about. Frisco's the right field for
her. She has a fine class of trade. Oh, she's just the same as she always
was! She's careless, but she's level-headed. She's the only person I know
who never gets any older. It's fine for me to have her there; somebody who
enjoys things like that. She keeps an eye on me and won't let me be
shabby. When she thinks I need a new dress, she makes it and sends it
home--with a bill that's long enough, I can tell you!"

Tiny limped slightly when she walked. The claim on Hunker Creek took toll
from its possessors. Tiny had been caught in a sudden turn of weather,
like poor Johnson. She lost three toes from one of those pretty little
feet that used to trip about Black Hawk in pointed slippers and striped
stockings. Tiny mentioned this mutilation quite casually--did n't seem
sensitive about it. She was satisfied with her success, but not elated.
She was like some one in whom the faculty of becoming interested is worn
out.

 Two years later Jim graduates from Harvard and is ready to start law school there. He comes home for the summer vacation. The night he gets back some of the Harlings come over to see him. Afterwards he walks them home and Frances she tells him about Antonia. Jim already knows some of the story because his grandmother wrote him while he was away at school. It turns out that Antonia went away to marry Larry Donovan and that he deserted her and now she has his baby and is a single mom. She lives at home with Ambrosch. Jim is disappointed in Antonia. He notes that everyone pities her now while everyone respects Lena. We learn that Tiny ended up conducting a lodging-house in Seattle. Jim reflects that he never knew her that well, and that she was always a little intimidating. It turns out that after she set up her lodging house in Seattle she ended up going to Alaska in a gold rush. She ran a hotel up there and made a ton of money from the prospecting men who needed a place to stay. Once she nursed a Swede who ended up dying. He deeded Tiny his claim on a piece of land. Tiny ended up buying other claims from other men and making a lot of money. She came to live in San Francisco. Jim met her in 1908 in Salt Lake City. She reminded him of Mrs. Gardener. It turned out that by this time Lena was living with her in San Francisco and still making dresses. Tiny limped a bit on account of an injury but was doing fine.

