quarter of a mile from her door she found
the body of Waite beside that of his pony, crushed out of its familiar
form into something unspeakably shapeless. In her excitement she half
dragged, half carried that mutilated body home, and then ran up her
signal of alarm on the stick that Waite himself had erected for her
convenience. She thought it would be a long time before any one reached
her, but she had hardly had time to bathe the disfigured face and
straighten the disfigured body before Henderson was pounding at her
door. Outside stood his pony panting from its terrific exertions.
Henderson had not seen her before for six weeks. Now he stared at her
with frightened eyes.

"What is it? What is it?" he cried. "What has happened to you, my--my
love?"

At least afterward, thinking it over as she worked by day or tossed in
her narrow bunk at night, it seemed to Catherine that those were the
words he spoke. Yet she could never feel sure; nothing in his manner
after that justified the impassioned anxiety of his manner in those
first few uncertain moments; for a second later he saw the body of his
friend and learned the little that Catherine knew. They buried him
the next day in a little hollow where there was a spring and some wild
aspens.

"He never liked the prairie," Catherine said, when she selected the
spot. "And I want him to lie as sheltered as possible."

After he had been laid at rest, and she was back, busy with tidying her
neglected shack, she fell to crying so that the children were scared.

"There's no one left to care what becomes of us," she told them,
bitterly. "We might starve out here for all that any one cares."

And all through the night her tears fell, and she told herself that they
were all for the man whose last thought was for her and her babies; she
told herself over and over again that her tears were all for him. After
this the autumn began to hurry on, and the snow fell capriciously, days
of biting cold giving place to retrospective glances at summer. The last
of the vegetables were taken out of the garden and buried in the cellar;
and a few tons of coal--dear almost as diamonds--were brought out to
provide against the severest weather. Ordinarily buffalo chips were
the fuel. Catherine was alarmed at the way her wretched little store of
money began to vanish. The baby was fretful with its teething, and was
really more care than when she nursed it. The days shortened, and it
seemed to her th