st the sheltered side of a
dark-trunked spruce whose branches were thick and wide-spread enough
to shield her. The physical labor of fighting her way thus far, and
the high altitude to which she had attained, made her pant like a
runner just after the race. She held her muff to her face again for
the sense of warmth and well-being its soft fur gave to her cheeks.
Certainly, no one else would be fool enough to come out on such a day,
she thought. And what a surprise to Jack, seeing her come puffing into
his cave! She had not been there since the snow fell, just before
Thanksgiving. Now it was nearly Christmas--a month of solitary
grandeur Jack had endured.

She glanced up at the tossing boughs above her; felt the great tree
trunk quiver when a fresh blast swept the top; looked out at the misty
whiteness of the storm, clouded with swaying pine branches. What a
world it was! But she was not afraid of it; somehow she felt its big,
rough friendliness even now. It did not occur to her that the
mountains could work her ill, though she reminded herself that
standing still was not the best way to keep warm on such a day.

She started up again, ignorantly keeping among the trees, that a
mountaineer would have shunned. But straightway she stopped and looked
around her puzzled. Surely she had not come down this way when she
skirted the manzanita. She remembered coming in among the trees from
the right. She turned and went that way, saw her filling footprints in
the snow, and plodded back. There were tracks coming down the hill,
and she had not made them. They must surely be Jack's.

With the new wisdom of having tramped nearly every day through snow,
she studied these new tracks and her own where she had come to the
spruce tree. These other tracks, she decided, had been made
lately--she must have missed by minutes seeing him pass before her.
Perhaps she could overtake him. So she faced the wind and ran gasping
down the slope, following the tracks. She nearly caught Mike unaware,
but she did not know it. She hurried unsuspectingly past the tree
where he was hiding, his rifle held ready to fire if she looked his
way. He was hesitating, mumbling there with his finger on the trigger
when she went out of sight around a bush, still following where the
tracks led. Mike stepped out from behind the tree and came bowlegging
after her, walking with that peculiar, flat-footed gait of the
mountain trained man.

Luck was with her. Jack had