em we are drowned--no one will believe we could
have gotten out of the canyon, dressed like we were and on a night like
last night. If they thought we were alive and suffering, the whole male
population would take a search party and come to our aid. Instead they
know--or rather, they think they know--that we're dead. There won't
be any horses, it will be a fool's errand, and mushing through those
feet of soft snow is a job they won't undertake."

"But the river will freeze soon."

"Yes. Even this cataract freezes, but it likely won't be safe to cross
for some weeks--maybe clear into January or February. That depends on
the weather. You see, Miss Tremont, we don't have the awful low
temperatures early in the winter they get further east and north. We're
on the wet side of the mountains. But we do get the snow, week after
week of it when you simply can't travel, and plenty of thirty and forty,
sometimes more, below zero. But the river will freeze if we give it
time. And the snow will pack and crust late in the winter. And then,
in those clear, cold days, we can make a sled and mush out."

"And it means--we're tied up here for weeks--and maybe months?"

"That's it. Just as sure as if we had iron chains around our ankles."

Then the girl's tears flowed again, unchecked. Bill stood beside her,
his shoulders drooping, but in no situation of his life had he ever felt
more helpless, more incapable of aid. "Don't cry," he pleaded. "Don't
cry, Miss Tremont. I'll take care of you. Don't you know I will?"

Her grief rent him to the depths, but there was nothing he could say or
do. He drew the blankets higher about her.

"Perhaps you can get some more sleep," he urged. "Your body's torn to
pieces, of course."

Fearful and lonely and miserable, the girl cried herself to sleep. Bill
sat beside her a long time, and the snow sifted down in the forest and
the silence lay over the land. He left her at last, and for a while was
busy among the supplies that he found on a shelf behind the stove. And
she wakened to find him bending over her.

His face was anxious and his eyes gentle as a woman's. "Do you think
you can eat?" he asked. "I've warmed up soup--and I've got coffee,
too."

He had put the liquids in cups and had drawn the little table beside her
bed. She shook her head, but she softened at the swift look of
disappointment in his face. "I'll take some coffee," she told him.

He held the cup for he