pirit's disturbance plain beneath it. There was pathos
in its courage and its failure. He averted his eyes, shook his arm
free of her hand, and, moving toward the water, said:

"Go back to the tent and go to bed."

"What are you going to do?" she called after him, her voice sounding
plaintive. Its wistful note gave him strength:

"Walk for a while. I'm not tired. I'll be back in an hour," and he
walked away, down the edge of the current, past the pits and into the
darkness.

She watched him, not understanding, vaguely alarmed, then turned and
went back to the tent.

CHAPTER III

The stretch of the river where the McMurdos had settled was richer than
Courant's location. Had Glen been as mighty a man with the pick, even
in the short season left to him, he might have accumulated a goodly
store. But he was a slack worker. His training as a carpenter made
him useful, finding expression in an improvement on Daddy John's
rocker, so they overlooked his inclination to lie off in the sun with
his ragged hat pulled over his eyes. In Courant's camp Bella was
regarded as the best man of the two. To her multiform duties she added
that of assistant in the diggings, squatting beside her husband in the
mud, keeping the rocker going, and when Glen was worked out, not above
taking a hand at the shovel. Her camp showed a comfortable neatness,
and the children's nakedness was covered with garments fashioned by the
firelight from old flour sacks.

There was no crisp coming of autumn. A yellowing of the leafage along
the river's edge was all that denoted the season's change. Nature
seemed loth to lay a desecrating hand on the region's tranquil beauty.
They had been told at the Fort that they might look for the first rains
in November. When October was upon them they left the pits and set to
work felling trees for two log huts.

Susan saw her home rising on the knoll, a square of logs, log roofed,
with a door of woven saplings over which canvas was nailed. They built
a chimney of stones rounded by the water's action, and for a hearth
found a slab of granite which they sunk in the earth before the
fireplace. The bunk was a frame of young pines with canvas stretched
across, and cushioned with spruce boughs and buffalo robes. She
watched as they nailed up shelves of small, split trunks and sawed the
larger ones into sections for seats. The bottom of the wagon came out
and, poised on four log supports, made the ta