with fat pine knots that will blaze
up at the touch of a match. My books are there, along the wall. The
bedding's in the cedar chest, and the lamps are filled. There's tinned
stuff in the pantry. And the mountains are there, girl, to make you
clean and whole again...."

She stepped up to the little log-pillared porch and turned the key in
the lock. She opened the door wide, and walked in. And then she shut her
eyes for a moment. Because, if it shouldn't be true----

But there was a fire laid with fat pine knots. She walked straight over
to it, and took her box of matches from her bag, struck one, and held
it to the wood. They blazed like a torch. Books! Along the four walls,
books. Fat, comfortable, used-looking books. Hundreds of them. A lamp on
the table, and beside it a pipe, blackened from much use. Fanny picked
it up, smiling. She held it a moment in her hand, as though she expected
to find it still warm.

"It's like one of the fairy tales," she thought, "the kind that repeats
and repeats. The kind that says, `and she went into the next room, and
it was as the good fairy had said.'"

There's tinned stuff in the pantry. She went into the tiny kitchen and
opened the pantry door cautiously, being wary of mice. But it met her
eye in spotless array. Orderly rows of tins. Orderly rows of bottles.
Coffee. Condensed milk. Beans. Spaghetti. Flour. Peaches. Pears.

Off the bedroom there was an absurdly adequate little bathroom, with a
zinc tub and an elaborate water-heating arrangement.

Fanny threw back her head and laughed as she hadn't laughed in months.
"Wild life in the Rockies," she said aloud. She went back to the
book-lined living room. The fire was crackling gloriously. It was a
many-windowed room, and each window framed an enchanting glimpse of
mountain, flaming with aspens up to timber-line, and snow-capped at the
top. Fanny decided to wait until the fire had died down to a coal-bed.
Then she banked it carefully, put on a heavy sweater and a cap, and made
for the outdoors. She struck out briskly, tenderfoot that she was. In
five minutes she was panting. Her heart was hammering suffocatingly. Her
lungs ached. She stopped, trembling. Then she remembered. The altitude,
of course. Heyl had boasted that his cabin stood at an altitude of over
nine thousand feet. Well, she would have to get used to it. But she was
soon striding forward as briskly as before. She was a natural mountain
dweller. The air, the altitude,