in that wilderness of peaks, the sombre frown of Hardesty; through it the
sun came now, flooding his work as he had left it. The last page of
manuscript on which he had been working was in his typewriter. He sat down
to begin where he had left off in that pivotal situation in his
masterpiece.

He read and re-read the last two or three pages of the manuscript,
struggling to pick up the threads where he had dropped them. With each
reading he became more convinced that his work for that afternoon was
spoiled. And by whom? By _what?_ A little fiercely he packed his pipe with
fresh tobacco. Then he leaned back, lighted it, and laughed. More and more
as the minutes passed he permitted himself to think of the strange young
woman whose beauty and personality had literally projected themselves into
his workshop. He marvelled at the crudity of the questions which he asked
himself, and yet he persisted in asking them. Who was she? What could be
her mission at Tete Jaune Cache? She had repeated to him what she had said
to the girl in the coach--that at Tete Jaune she had no friends. Beyond
that, and her name, she had offered no enlightenment.

In the brief space that he had been with her he had mentally tabulated her
age as twenty-eight--no older. Her beauty alone, the purity of her eyes,
the freshness of her lips, and the slender girlishness of her figure, might
have made him say twenty, but with those things he had found the maturer
poise of the woman. It had been a flashlight picture, but one that he was
sure of.

Several times during the next hour he turned to his work, and at last gave
up his efforts entirely. From a peg in the wall he took down a little
rifle. He had found it convenient to do much of his own cooking, and he had
broken a few laws. The partridges were out of season, but temptingly fat
and tender. With a brace of young broilers in mind for supper, he left the
cabin and followed the narrow foot-trail up the river. He hunted for half
an hour before he stirred a covey of birds. Two of these he shot.
Concealing his meat and his gun near the trail he continued toward the ford
half a mile farther up, wondering if Stevens, who was due to cross that
day, had got his outfit over. Not until then did he look at his watch. He
was surprised to find that the Tete Jaune train had been gone three
quarters of an hour. For some unaccountable reason he felt easier. He went
on, whistling.

At the ford he found Stevens standing