"Come on, come near," she had called; "I want to see you."

Eager to prove his good intent, he had hastened forward; and she, just
as eager to show her thankfulness, had led him into the house. There,
with the distrustful eye of the section-boss upon him, and with Marylyn
watching in trepidation from a distance, he had eaten and drunk at
Dallas' bidding.

At the very moment when Dallas decided to confide in him, Squaw Charley
was not unmindful of her. Where the river-bluffs back of Brannon shoved
their dark shoulders through the snow, the wind having swept their tops
clean of the last downfall, he was working away like a muskrat. To and
fro, he went, searching diligently for buffalo-chips. A sack followed
him on a rope tied to his leather belt, so that he could beat his hands
against his breast as he covered every square rod of dead, curly grass
on the uplands. The bag crammed to the top, he took off his blanket
and, despite the cold, began to fill it also. For he knew, and fully as
well as they who watched the thermometer hanging just outside the
entrance at headquarters, that the night would require much fuel.

As he hunted along the bare ridge, something more than the frigid gusts
that whipped the skirt about his lean shanks urged him to finish his
gathering and go riverward. In the little snug cabin out on the prairie
a cheery welcome awaited him; before the glowing coals in the stone
fireplace he could warm his shaking legs; there was good food for his
empty stomach. But, better than all else, there a kindly face always
smiled a greeting.

The blanket piled so high with chips that its weight balanced the
grain-sack, he prepared to start riverward. But first, prompted by an
old habit, he climbed to a high point of bluff near by, and, standing
where lookouts had maintained a post before severe weather compelled
their withdrawal, carefully scanned the white horizon. To the west, from
where--the band in the stockade boasted--warriors of their tribe would
come in the spring to make a rescue; to the north, on either side of the
ice-bound Missouri; to the east, in the wide gap between the distant
ranges of hills, he saw no creature moving. But facing southward, his
hands shading his eyes carefully from the glare, he spied, on the
eastern bank, and at not a great distance, the approach of a familiar
milk-white horse, drawing a heavy pung.

The stooping pariah was transformed by the sight. He threw up his arms
with a