ll, because wasn't he already
working like a beaver? Possibly, said the lady. And beavers might be all
right in their place. What she needed at this precise time was someone
working like a blacksmith--someone!

Over her shoulder she had flung the word at him, blackened with emphasis.

"Any one hurt in the runaway?" I asked, observing her glance to linger
upon this snarl of wagon parts.

"Four wagons was mortally hurt," said the lady, "but of course not a
mule skinner touched. Talk about charmed lives! Besides, they wasn't
accidents; they was just incidents. It was part of our winter sports."

"I didn't know you had winter sports up here."

"I didn't either till I got down to Red Gap last winter and found out
that was what we had been having. Here I been gritting along winter after
winter, calling it work, and come to find out it's what parties go a long
distance to indulge in and have to wear careful clothes for it. Yes, sir;
society is mad about it. Red Gap itself was mad about it last winter,
when it got a taste of the big-league stuff. Next winter I'll try to get
the real sporting spirit into this gang of sedentaries up here; buy 'em
uniforms and start a winter-sports club. Their ideal winter sport so far
is to calk up every chink in the bunk house, fill the air-tight stove
full of pitch pine and set down with a good book by Elinor Glyn. They
never been at all mad about romping out in the keen frosty air that sets
the blood tingling and brings back the roses to their wan cheeks.

"Take last winter. Not knowing it was sport it seemed at times like
toil. First it snowed early and caught a lot of my cows and calves in
the mountains. While we sported round with these, working 'em down into
the valley, the weather changed. It snowed harder. Just oodles of the
most perfectly darling snow. Then distemper broke out among the saddle
horses. Then being already shorthanded, what does the fool vaquero boss
do but pick a splinter out of his thumb with a pin and get blood poison
enough to lay him off? Too much trouble for cussing. I tried that out
scientifically. So I had to get out and make a hand. If I heard someone
say I did as much as any three of these mollycoddles up here I'd just
simper in silence and look down. Only I wish I'd known it was a
fashionable winter sport. I'd of been more carefree.

"Then come the best of our winter sports--wood hauling through the drifts
over a rocky road down the mountains. My lands, bu