of snow and bark and broken twigs and stripped needles from
the resisting branches in their path. She was afraid, so she went as
fast as she could, consoling her fear with the shrewd thought that the
storm would serve to hold back the sheriff and give Jack time to get
away somewhere. No one would dream of his traveling on such a day as
this, she kept telling herself over and over. It was getting worse
instead of better; the snow was coming thicker and the sleet was
lessening. It was going to be quite a climb to the cave; the wind must
be simply terrible up there, but she could see now that Jack would
never expect her out in such weather, and so he would stay close to
the camp fire.

At the top of the hill the wind swooped upon her and flung clouds of
snow into her face so that she was half blinded. She turned her back
upon it, blinked rapidly until her vision cleared again, and stood
there panting, tempted to turn back. No one would be crazy enough to
venture out today. They would wait until the storm cleared.

She looked back down the trail she had followed. Wherever the wind
had a clean sweep her tracks were filling already with snow. If she
did not wait, and if Jack got away now, they couldn't track him at
all. She really owed him that much of a chance to beat them. She put
up her muff, shielded her face from the sting of frozen snowflakes,
and went on, buffeted down the steep slope where Kate had sprained her
ankle, and thinking that she must be careful where she set her feet,
because it would be frightful if she had such an accident herself.

She did not expect to meet Jack on the farther edge of the gulch, but
she stood a minute beside the great pine, looking at the trampled snow
and thinking of Hank Brown's leering insinuations. Whatever had
started the fellow to suspecting such things? Uneasily she followed
Hank's cunning reasoning: Because Jack had never once gone in to
Quincy, except to settle with the Forest Service for his summer's
work; because Jack had not filed upon any claim in the mountains, yet
stayed there apart from his kind; because he avoided people--such
little things they were that made up the sum of Hank's suspicions!
Well, she was to blame for this present emergency, at any rate. If she
had not told Kate something she had no right to tell, she would not
have quite so much to worry about.

She turned and began to climb again, making her way through the
thicket that fringed the long ridge be