talk with you."

She awoke slowly, blinked at him, and only drew her blanket higher about
her chin.

"I am tired," she answered petulantly. "Don't you realize that a
girl..."

"I realize," he cut into her sleepy expostulation, "that you are weak
and frightened and useless. And that those are three of the many things
you've got to get over the shortest way if you don't want to die here."

"I don't know that I care to live," she began, turning with her old
instinct toward an attitude which before now had robbed him of his
harshness. But his plan was set in cold determination, and he cut her
short again.

"If you don't care, I do. And I am going to pull you through with me, if
for no other reason simply because I have set out to do it, and am not
going to lie down on the job. What's more, you've got to do your share.
I have built the fire; will you get up?"

"No," she flashed out at him, thoroughly awake now. "I won't!"

He stooped, caught the corner of her blankets, and whipped them off.
Instinctively, she sought to draw the under-bedding over her, forgetting
that she had not undressed.

"You brute!" she screamed at him.

"Get up," he told her sternly, "or, by heaven, I'll make you!"

She saw his face plainly now as his crackling fire burned higher. It was
hard, his eyes were ominous. She hesitated and saw in his eyes and in a
stir of his body that he was going to jerk her to her feet. She flung
out of bed at that and upon the far side from him.

"Get your boots on," he ordered. "I don't want you catching cold from
idiotic carelessness, and I won't have you going sick on my hands. For
the first and last time I'll admit that I don't enjoy driving you like a
cursed galley-slave. But I'll do it, and do a thorough job of it, if you
force me to it."

She drew on her boots hastily and came to the fire and laced them. He
was a new man this morning and relentless. She was afraid of him after a
new, bewildered fashion.

"I never saw a storm worse than this," he told her. He had cooked the
breakfast because he was in a hurry, and did not care to trust her
wasteful fingers with their already precious food. "There must be two or
three feet on the level places by now; ploughing through snow like that
is killing work for a man, and you wouldn't last at it ten minutes." He
had no intention of speaking contemptuously; she knew that his thought
was not trifling with such matters as her feelings. He was merely
indulging in