vel. Don't worry your head any more about
what you are to do. I'll put you off at Wolfville, and though it looks a
bit cloudy, as though it might mean to blow up a bit of snow, I expect
you'll manage to get back to the Ralston Ranch, somehow, before night."

Olive, satisfied that this kind-hearted stranger would look out for her,
dozed on, half waking and half sleeping. Neither she nor her new friend
knew how exhausted she was. She had passed through several weeks of
dreadful hardship, exposure and unhappiness, and now she felt too happy
to think or care because her head ached dully, and her legs shook so she
could hardly stand on them. She would be home soon with Frieda and Jean
and Jack!

Several hours went by. The trainman left the car and attended to his
duties. But Olive had entire faith that he would not forget her.

At a little past five o'clock in the afternoon the freight train came to
a stop near the little town of Wolfville, which was only a matter of ten
miles from Rainbow Ranch. The wind was blowing with a queer, ominous
rattling sound and a few flakes of snow were falling.

Olive's new friend gazed at her a little queerly, as he lifted her out
on the platform. There were no people in sight except the station
master, for it was almost dark and the stopping of a freight train was
of little interest.

"Sure you know how to get to your friends from here?" the Irishman asked
Olive. She took time to nod and wave her hand, then ran swiftly away
from the station in the direction of Rainbow Ranch.

If Olive had gone into the town, someone would have driven her to the
Lodge, or else sent word to Jim Colter or the Ralston girls that she was
in safe-keeping for the night. A prairie snowstorm was approaching and
few people would have cared to trust themselves to a ten-mile drive at
this hour of the winter evening.

But Olive did not think of further danger. Ten miles seemed to her to be
so near home that she could not bear a second's delay in trying to reach
there. For the first few miles she ran swiftly along, as she knew the
trail and it was not too dark to follow it. The stinging wind cut her
face and at times the snow blinded her. But the distance was only a
short walk for a girl who had spent all her life out of doors in the
great West. Yet Olive should have known what a snowstorm in Wyoming,
with a heavy pall of gray clouds and a scudding blast, meant.

After a while, her feet in her worn shoes felt like