house. And where there is a
house, there must be housekeeping and"--her voice wavered--"a woman."

"Of course," he answered. "And we have at least two hours of daylight
left. Don't worry; I am going now to hurry that carriage around."

He had said "of course," but while he went back to the buggy, his mind
reviewed the sordid shelters he had found in just such solitudes, where a
woman's housekeeping was the exception. Men in communities employed camp
cooks, but most prospectors, ranchers, and cattlemen depended on
themselves. There had been times when he himself had been forced to make
bread. He had learned that first winter he had spent in Alaska with
Weatherbee. At the thought of that experimental mixture, he smiled grimly.
Then, suddenly, he imagined this gently nurtured woman confronted by a
night in such a shack as they had occupied. He saw her waiting expectantly
for that impossible chaperon; and, grasping the situation, struggling
pluckily to cover her amazement and dismay; he saw himself and Weatherbee
nerving each other to offer her that miserable fare. He hoped they would
find a housekeeper at the first house on that mountain road, but that
lunch of Lighter's gave him a sense of security, like a reserve fund,
inadequate, yet something against imminent panic.

Miss Armitage did not return to her seat when he was gone. She fell to
pacing the level; to the upper spur and back; to the lower wall and
return; then, finally, it was a few yards further to the bend, to discover
what progress Tisdale had made. The buggy was not yet in sight, but the
new rope stretched diagonally from beyond the breach in the road to a
standing tree on the bluff above her, and he was at work with the hatchet,
cutting away an upright bough on the fallen pine. Other broken limbs,
gathered from the debris, were piled along the slide to build up the edge.
When his branch dropped, he sprang down and dragged it lengthwise to
reinforce the rest. Presently he was on the log again, reaching now for
the buggy tongue, he set his knee as a brace on the stump of the limb,
his muscular body bent, lifted, strained. Then the front wheels rolled up
across the bole; he slipped to the ground and grasped the outer one,
steadying it down. After a moment, when he had taken in the slack of the
line, the remaining tires slowly followed, and he began to ease the
vehicle along the patched roadway. The rain of rock was renewed; fragments
of granite shifted under