our backs now," he remarked. "I guess we may as
well keep on and see where this fence goes to."

His tone was too elaborately cheerful to be very cheering. He was
wondering if the girl was dressed warmly. It had been so warm and sunny
before the blizzard struck, but now the wind searched out the thin
places in one's clothing and ran lead in one's bones, where should be
simply marrow. He fancied that her voice, when she spoke, gave evidence
of actual suffering--and the heart of Rowdy Vaughan was ever soft toward
a woman.

"If you're cold," he began, "I'll open up my bed and get out a blanket."
He held Dixie in tentatively.

"Oh, don't trouble to do that," she protested; but there was that in her
voice which hardened his impulse into fixed resolution.

"I ought to have thought of it before," he lamented, and swung down
stiffly into the snow.

Her eyes followed his movement with a very evident interest while
he unbuckled the pack Chub had carried since sunrise and drew out a
blanket.

"Stand in your stirrup," he commanded briskly "and I'll wrap you up.
It's a Navajo, and the wind will have a time trying to find a thin
spot."

"You're thoughtful." She snuggled into it thankfully. "I was cold."

Vaughan tucked it around her with more care than haste. He was pretty
uncomfortable himself, and for that reason he was the more anxious
that the girl should be warm. It came to him that she was a cute little
schoolma'am, all right; he was glad she belonged close around the Cross
L. He also wished he knew her name--and so he set about finding it out,
with much guile.

"How's that?" he wanted to know, when he had made sure that her
feet--such tiny feet--were well covered. He thought it lucky that she
did not ride astride, after the manner of the latter-day young woman,
because then he could not have covered her so completely. "Hold on! That
windy side's going to make trouble." He unbuckled the strap he wore
to hold his own coat snug about him, and put it around the girl's slim
waist, feeling idiotically happy and guilty the while. "It don't come
within a mile of you," he complained; "but it'll help some."

Sheltered in the thick folds of the Navajo, she laughed, and the sound
of it sent the blood galloping through Rowdy Vaughan's body so that he
was almost warm. He went and scraped the snow out of his saddle, and
swung up, feeling that, after all, there are worse things in the
world than being lost and hungry in a blizza