he said with a grin.

After he had taken off his mukluks and his frozen socks they wrapped
him in their furs while he toasted before the stove. Mrs. Olson thawed
out the pudding and the chocolates in the oven and made a kind of mush
out of some oats Pete had saved from the horse feed. They ate their
one-sided meal in high spirits. The freeze had saved their lives. If it
held clear till to-morrow they could reach Smith's Crossing on the crust
of the snow.

Swiftwater broke up the chairs for fuel and demolished the legs of the
table, after which he lay down before the stove and fell at once into a
sodden sleep.

Presently Mrs. Olson lay down on the bed and began to snore regularly.
Sheba could not sleep. The boards tired her bones and she was cold.
Sometimes she slipped into cat naps that were full of bad dreams. She
thought she was walking on the snow-comb of a precipice and that Colby
Macdonald pushed her from her precarious footing and laughed at her as
she slid swiftly toward the gulf below. When she wakened with a start it
was to find that the fire had died down. She was shivering from lack of
cover. Quietly the girl replenished the fire and lay down again.

When she wakened with a start it was morning. A faint light sifted
through the single window of the shack. Sheba whispered to the older
woman that she was going out for a little walk.

"Be careful, dearie," advised Mrs. Olson. "I wouldn't try to go too
far."

Sheba smiled to herself at the warning. It was not likely that she would
go far enough to get lost with all these millions of tons of snow piled
up around her in every direction.

She had come out because she was restless and was tired of the dingy
and uncomfortable room. Without any definite intentions, she naturally
followed the trail that Swiftwater had broken the day before. No wind
stirred and the sky was clear. But it was very cold. The sun would not
be up for half an hour.

As she worked her way down the gulch Sheba wondered whether the news of
their loss had reached Kusiak. Were search parties out already to rescue
them? Colby Macdonald had gone out into the blizzard years ago to save
her father. Perhaps he might have been out all night trying to save her
father's daughter. Peter would go, of course,--and Gordon Elliot. The
work in the mines would stop and men would volunteer by scores. That was
one fine thing about the North. It responded to the unwritten law that a
man must risk his own