would still be worth
while. But she had Harold to show her the way through the winter woods.
It was true that they would have to rely on the fallen grizzly for meat:
an uncomfortable experience, but nothing to compare with any further
movement through the cruel drifts. Harold would come back and claim the
mine; perhaps he would even erect his own notice before his departure,
and the Rutheford family would know the full fruits of their crime of
long ago. But it didn't matter. The only thing that mattered now was
rest and sleep.

Slowly he sank down in the snow.

XXIV

When the Chinook wind, moving northwest at a faster pace than the
waterfowl move south, struck the home cabin, Virginia's first thought
was for Bill. She heard it come, faint at first, then blustering, just
as Bill had heard it; she saw it rock down a few dead trees, and she
listened to its raging complaints at the window.

"I'll show you my might," it seemed to say. "You have dared my silent
places, come into my fastness, but now I will have revenge. I'll pay
you--in secret ways that you don't know."

It so happened that Harold's first thought was also of Bill. It was a
curious fact that his heart seemed to leap as if the wind had smitten
it. He knew what the Chinook could do to a snow crust. He estimated
that Bill was about halfway between the two cabins, and he didn't know
about the little, deserted cabin where Bill could find refuge during the
night. His eyes gleamed with high anticipations.

Harold's thought was curiously intertwined with the remembrance of the
dark cavern he had entered yesterday, the gravel laden with gold. If
indeed all things went as it seemed likely that they would go, Bill
would never carry the word of his find down to the recorder's office.
It was something to think of, something to dream about. Yellow
gold,--and no further trouble in seeking it. Such a development would
also save the labor of further planning. It was a friend of his, this
wind at the window.

"Won't this Chinook melt the snow crust?" Virginia asked him.

He started. He hadn't realized that this newfound sweetheart of his
knew the ways of Chinook winds and snow crusts. "Oh, no," he responded.
"Why should it? Wind makes crusts, not softens them."

Virginia was satisfied for the moment. Then her mind went back to
certain things Bill had told her on one of their little expeditions.
Strangely, she took Bill's word rather than Harold