till
spring has melted off the snow and made it fit for a decent body to
live in."

"Well, all right," said Sours. "You may go; Jud and me are good for
it."

"Mercy sakes!" cried Mrs. Sours, "do you suppose I'm going to leave
you here to be frozen to death, and starved to death, and killed by
the wolves that we already hear howling every night, and murdered by
Indians, and shot by Pike and that wretched band of horse-thieves
that the Billings sheriffs who stopped here the other night was
looking for? No, Henry; when I go I am going to take you with me."

Sours tried to argue with her a little, but it did no sort of good,
and the next day they both went off and I was left in charge of the
hotel for the winter with three boarders--Tom Carr, the station agent
and telegraph operator; Frank Valentine, the postmaster; and a
Norwegian named Andrew, who was to take my place in the barn. Allenham
had gone before the blizzard. Some others went on the same train with
Mr. Sours and his wife. We were twenty-six, all told, that night.

The weather remained bad, and the train was often late or did not come
at all. On the last day of November there were an even fourteen of us
left. On the morning of that day week Tom Carr came over from the
station and brought word that he had just got a telegram from
headquarters saying that for the rest of the winter the train would
run to Track's End but once a week, coming up Wednesday and going back
Thursday.

"Well, that settles it with _me_," said Harvey Tucker. "I shall go
back with it the first Thursday it goes."

"Same with me," said a man named West. "I know when I've got enough,
and I've got enough of Track's End."

Mr. Clerkinwell, who happened to be present, laughed cheerfully. He
was by far the oldest man left, but he always seemed the least
discouraged.

"Oh," he said to the others, "that's nothing. The train does us no
good except to bring the mail, and it can bring it just as well once a
week as twice. We were really pampered with that train coming to us
twice a week," and he laughed again and went out.

It was just another week and a day that poor Mr. Clerkinwell was taken
sick. He had begun boarding at the hotel, and that night did not come
to supper. I went over to his rooms to see what the trouble was. I
found him on the bed in a high fever. His talk was rambling and
flighty. It was a good deal about his daughter Florence, whom he had
told me of before. Then he wande