She was saying: "Won't you speak to her now?"

A little pause. Then: "No, not until evenin'."

"Please, Dan."

"She's got to learn."

A little exclamation of unhappiness and then the door moved open; Vic
found himself looking up to the face with the golden hair which he
remembered out of his nightmare. She nodded to him cheerily.

"I'm so happy that you're better," she said. "Dan says that the fever is
nearly gone." She rested a large tray she carried on the foot of the bed
and Vic discovered, to his great content, that it was not hard to meet
her eyes. Usually girls embarrassed him, but he recognized so much of
Joan in the features of the mother that he felt well acquainted at once.
Motherhood, surely, sat as lightly on her shoulders as fatherhood did on
Dan Barry, yet he felt a great pity as he looked at her, this flowerlike
beauty lost in the rocks and snow with only one man near her. She was
like music played without an audience except senseless things.

"Yep, I'm a lot better," he answered, "but it sure makes me terrible
sorry, ma'am, that I got your little girl in trouble. Mostly, it was my
fault."

She waved away all need of apology.

"Don't think an instant about that, Mr. Gregg. Joan needs a great deal
of disciplining." She laughed a little. "She has so much of her father
in her, you see. Now, are you strong enough to lift yourself higher in
the pillows?"

They managed it between them, for he was weaker than he thought and when
he was padded into position with cushions she laid the tray across his
knees. His head swam at sight of it. Forty-eight hours of fasting had
sharpened his appetite, and the loaded tray whetted a razor edge, for a
great bowl of broth steamed forth an exquisite fragrance on one side
and beside it she lifted a napkin to let him peek at a slice of venison
steak. Then there was butter, yellow as the gold for which he had been
digging all winter, and real cream for his coffee--a whole pitcher of
it--and snowy bread. Best of all, she did not stay to embarrass him with
her watching while he ate, since above all things in the world a hungry
man hates observation when the board is spread.

Afterwards, consuming sleep rippled over him from his feet to his eyes
to his brain. He partially roused when the tray was removed, and the
pillows slipped from under his back, but with a vague understanding that
expert hands were setting the bed in order his senses fled once more.

Hours and hours