is same voice, gruffened in its beard, had told her that
ten thousand of the Horde had gone up ahead of them. Then it whispered
something that made her hands suddenly tighten and a hot flush sweep
through her. She lifted her veil and rose slowly from her seat, as if to
rearrange her dress. Casually she looked straight into the faces of the
bearded man and his companion in the seat behind. They stared. After that
she heard nothing more of the Straying Angels, but only a wildly mysterious
confabulation about "rock hogs," and "coyotes" that blew up whole
mountains, and a hundred and one things about the "rail end." She learned
that it was taking five hundred steers a week to feed the Horde that lay
along the Grand Trunk Pacific between Hogan's Camp and the sea, and that
there were two thousand souls at Tete Jaune Cache, which until a few months
before had slumbered in a century-old quiet broken only by the Indian and
his trade. Then the train stopped in its twisting trail, and the bearded
man and his companion left the car. As they passed her they glanced down.
Again the veil was drawn close. A shimmering tress of hair had escaped its
bondage; that was all they saw.

[Illustration: "Look at MacDonald.... It's not the gold, but MacDonald,
that's taking me north, Ladygray.... Up there, another grave is calling
MacDonald."]

The veiled woman drew a deeper breath when they were gone. She saw that
most of the others were getting off. In her end of the car the
hollow-cheeked girl and she were alone. Even in their aloneness these two
women had not dared to speak until now. The one raised her veil again, and
their eyes met across the aisle. For a moment the big, dark, sick-looking
eyes of the "angel" stared. Like the bearded man and his companion, she,
too, understood, and an embarrassed flush added to the colour of the rouge
on her cheeks. The eyes that looked across at her were blue--deep, quiet,
beautiful. The lifted veil had disclosed to her a face that she could not
associate with the Horde. The lips smiled at her--the wonderful eyes
softened with a look of understanding, and then the veil was lowered again.
The flush in the girl's cheek died out, and she smiled back.

"You are going to Tete Jaune?" she asked.

"Yes. May I sit with you for a few minutes? I want to ask questions--so
many!"

The hollow-cheeked girl made room for her at her side.

"You are new?"

"Quite new--to this."

The words, and the manner in which