business. When
you see him again--if you ever do--will you tell him I did exactly as
he said?"

She did not answer. What was there to say? In the cabin was no sound
except that of her dry, sobbing breath.

Whaley rose and came across the room. He had thrown aside the
gambler's mask of impassivity. His eyes were shining strangely.

"I'm going--now--out into the storm. What about you? If you're here
when West comes back, you know what it means. Make your choice. Will
you go with me or stay with him?"

"You're going home?"

"Yes." His smile was enigmatic. It carried neither warmth nor
conviction.

The man had played his cards well. He had let West give her a
foretaste of the hell in store for her. Anything rather than that, she
thought. And surely Whaley would take her home. He was no outlaw, but
a responsible citizen who must go back to Faraway to live. He had to
face her father and Winthrop Beresford of the Mounted--and Tom Morse.
He would not harm her. He dared not.

But she took one vain precaution. "You promise to take me to my
father. You'll not--be like him." A lift of the head indicated the man
who had just gone out.

"He's a fool. I'm not. That's the difference." He shrugged his
shoulders. "Make your own choice. If you'd rather stay here--"

But she had made it. She was getting hurriedly into her furs and was
putting on her mittens. Already she had adjusted the snowshoes.

"We'd better hurry," she urged. "He might come back."

"It'll be bad luck for him if he does," the gambler said coolly. "You
ready?"

She nodded that she was.

In another moment they were out of the warm room and into the storm.
The wind was coming in whistling gusts, carrying with it a fine sleet
that whipped the face and stung the eyeballs. Before she had been out
in the storm five minutes, Jessie had lost all sense of direction.

Whaley was an expert woodsman. He plunged into the forest, without
hesitation, so surely that she felt he must know where he was going.
The girl followed at his heels, head down against the blast.

Before this day she had not for months taken a long trip on webs. Leg
muscles, called into use without training, were sore and stiff. In the
darkness the soft snow piled up on the shoes. Each step became a drag.
The lacings and straps lacerated her tender flesh till she knew her
duffles were soaked with blood. More than once she dropped back so far
that she lost sight of Whaley. Each time he came back w