other remark--an opinion
that she was making uncommon good time for a woman.

"You'll want all the wind you got before you get back," she said
shortly, and silence fell on the stampeders.

Some of the young men behind were catching up. Maudie set
her mouth very firm and quickened her pace. This spectacle touched
up those that followed; they broke into a canter, floundered in a
drift, recovered, and passed on. Maudie pulled up.

"That's all right! Let 'em get good and tired, half-way. We got to save
all the run we got in us for the last lap."

The sun was hotter, the surface less good.

She loosened her shoulder-straps, released her snow-shoes, and put them
on. As she tightened her little pack the ex-Governor came puffing up
with apoplectic face.

"Why, she can throw the diamond hitch!" he gasped with admiration.

"S'pose you thought the squaw hitch would be good enough for me."

"Well, it is for me," he laughed breathlessly.

"That's 'cause you're an ex-Governor"; and steadily she tramped along.

In twenty minutes Maudie's party came upon those same young men who had
passed running. They sat in a row on a fallen spruce. One had no rubber
boots, the other had come off in such a hurry he had forgotten his
snow-shoes. Already they were wet to the waist.

"Step out, Maudie," said one with short-breathed hilarity; "we'll be
treadin' on your heels in a minute;" but they were badly blown.

Maudie wasted not a syllable. Her mouth began to look drawn. There were
violet shadows under the straight-looking eyes.

The Colonel glanced at her now and then. Is she thinking about that
four-year-old? Is Maudie stampedin' through the snow so that other
little woman need never dance at the Alcazar? No, the Colonel knew well
enough that Maudie rather liked this stampedin' business.

She had passed one of those men who had got the long start of her. He
carried a pack. Once in a while she would turn her strained-looking
face over her shoulder, glancing back, with the frank eyes of an enemy,
at her fellow-citizens labouring along the trail.

"Come on, Colonel!" she commanded, with a new sharpness. "Keep up your
lick."

But the Colonel had had about enough of this gait. From now on he fell
more and more behind. But the Boy was with her neck and neck.

"Guess you're goin' to get there."

"Guess I am."

Some men behind them began to run. They passed. They had pulled off
their parkis, and left them where they fell. They thre