dded a cursory greeting. His horse lifted its head to
look, decided that it wanted another swallow or two, and lowered its
muzzle again to the water.

Billy Louise could not form any opinion of the man's age or
personality, for he was encased in a wolfskin coat which covered him
completely from hatbrim to ankles. She got an impression of a thin,
dark face, and a sharp glance from eyes that seemed dark also. There
was a thin, high nose, and beyond that Billy Louise did not look. If
she had, the mouth must certainly have reassured her somewhat.

Blue stepped nonchalantly down into the stream beside the strange horse
and went across without stopping to drink. The strange horse moved on
also, as if that were the natural thing to do--which it was, since
chance sent them traveling the same trail. Billy Louise set her teeth
together with the queer little vicious click that had always been her
habit when she felt thwarted and constrained to yield to circumstances,
and straightened herself in the saddle.

"Looks like a storm," the fur-coated one observed, with a perfectly
transparent attempt to lighten the awkwardness.

Billy Louise tilted her chin upward and gazed at the gray sweep of
clouds moving sullenly toward the mountains at her back. She glanced
at the man and caught him looking intently at her face.

He did not look away immediately, as he should have done, and Billy
Louise felt a little heat-wave of embarrassment, emphasized by
resentment.

"Are you going far?" he queried in the same tone he had employed before.

"Six miles," she answered shortly, though she tried to be decently
civil.

"I've about eighteen," he said. "Looks like we'll both get caught out
in a blizzard."

Certainly, he had a pleasant enough voice--and after all it was not his
fault that he happened to be at the crossing when she rode out of the
gorge. Billy Louise, in common justice, laid aside her resentment and
looked at him with a hint of a smile at the corners of her lips.

"That's what we have to expect when we travel in this country in the
winter," she replied. "Eighteen miles will take you long after dark."

"Well, I was sort of figuring on putting up at some ranch, if it got
too bad. There's a ranch somewhere ahead, on the Wolverine, isn't
there?"

"Yes." Billy Louise bit her lip; but hospitality is an unwritten law
of the West--a law not to be lightly broken. "That's where I live.
We'll be glad to have you stop ther