the land-office. However, swift on
its remembrance, came a comforting certainty in David Bond's sympathy
and aid. At once she told him of the necessity of her father's going.

"Shadrach and I will start with him to-morrow," was his ready response.
He put out a hand to part the Navajo blankets. But an unshaped thought
made him pause. "You will be alone."

"Why, we're not afraid."

"Brave girl!" he said. Her confident answer drove away the moment's
vague uneasiness without its having taken the form or the connection he
might have given it.

"Good-night," she called softly.

"Good-night, daughter," he answered, and the swinging blankets met
behind him.

CHAPTER VIII

BEFORE THE WARPED DOOR

The section-boss was thoroughly surprised and not altogether delighted
at being roused early the following morning with the news that he could
start at once for Bismarck. As Dallas' voice penetrated the partition,
he returned the only reply his ice-bound moustache and goatee would
permit--a muffled growl. She did not hear it, yet she knew how he felt.
The previous day, though a casual observer might have been misled by his
garrulous fretting over Ben's lameness, she was quick to note, and with
a pang, that, secretly, he was relieved. But her pain at his laxity and
indifference was not unmixed with pity. For to her crippled father,
whose crutches, in the snow, hindered rather than helped him, she
guessed how long and lonely and bitter cold seemed the way to the
land-office.

Yet it was something more than these aspects of the journey that caused
Lancaster to view it unfavourably. He knew that in another thirty-six
hours, when the original applicant's half-year was up, he, and not the
other, would have the clearer right to the quarter-section. Therefore,
he regarded the proposed declaration of abandonment, the cancelling of
the old entry and the filing of a new, as forms which need not be gone
through with hurriedly (since the first claimant had undoubtedly
disappeared for good and all), but which might be attended to quite as
well the coming spring, when the roads would be open and the days warm.
Confident of his perfect security on the peninsula, and possessed by a
sneaking, but denied, abhorrence for rush and discomfort, he rejoiced at
delay. So, having left his snug bed to fumble about in the dark for his
clothes, and, these donned, having loosed his speech before the grateful
blaze in the fireplace, he did not arg