stumbling,
through the snow. Gavotte said he suspected they were short of
"needfuls," so he had filled his pockets with coffee and sugar, took in
a bottle some of the milk I brought for Baby, and his own flask of
whiskey, without which he never travels.

At last, after what seemed to me hours of scrambling through the snow,
through deepest gloom where pines were thickest, and out again into
patches of white moonlight, we reached the ugly clearing where the new
camp stood. Gavotte escorted us to the door and then returned to our
camp. Entering, we saw the poor, little soon-to-be mother huddled on
her poor bed, while an older woman stood near warning her that the oil
would soon be all gone and they would be in darkness. She told us that
the sick one had been in pain all the day before and much of the night,
and that she herself was worn completely out. So Mrs. O'Shaughnessy
sent her to bed and we took charge.

Secretly, I felt it all to be a big nuisance to be dragged out from my
warm, comfortable bed to traipse through the snow at that time of the
night. But the moment poor little Molly spoke I was glad I was living,
because she was a poor little Southern girl whose husband is a Mormon.
He had been sent on a mission to Alabama, and the poor girl had fallen
in love with his handsome face and knew nothing of Mormonism, so she
had run away with him. She thought it would be so grand to live in the
glorious West with so splendid a man as she believed her husband to
be. But now she believed she was going to die and she was glad of it
because she could not return to her "folks," and she said she knew her
husband was dead because he and the other woman's husband, both of whom
had intended to stay there all winter and cut logs, had gone two weeks
before to get their summer's wages and buy supplies. Neither man had
come back and there was not a horse or any other way to get out of the
mountains to hunt them, so they believed the men to be frozen somewhere
on the road. Rather a dismal prospect, wasn't it? Molly was just
longing for some little familiar thing, so I was glad I have not yet
gotten rid of my Southern way of talking. No Westerner can ever
understand a Southerner's need of sympathy, and, however kind their
hearts, they are unable to give it. Only a Southerner can understand
how dear are our peculiar words and phrases, and poor little Molly took
new courage when she found I knew what she meant when she said she was
jus