--"well-balanced, strong, would have kept the danger down. I should
never be afraid--for you. But," she hurried on, "I can understand too how
in the great solitudes some men are drawn together. You have shown me. I
did not know before I heard your story how much a man can endure for a
friend--and sacrifice."

Tisdale looked off over the desert. "Friendship up there does mean
something," he answered quietly. "Mere companionship in the Alaska
wilderness is a test. I don't know whether it's the darkness of those
interminable winters, or the monotony that plays on a man's nerves, but I
have seen the closest partners get beyond speaking to each other. It's a
life to bring out the good and the bad in a man; a life to make men hate;
and it can forge two men together. But David Weatherbee never had an
enemy. He never failed a man. In a crisis he was great. If things had been
reversed"--he set his lips, his face hardened--"if Weatherbee had been in
my place, there at Nome, with a letter of mine in his hands, he wouldn't
have thrown away those four days."

"Yes, he would. Consider. He must have taken time to prepare for that
terrible journey. How else could he have carried it through?" She leaned
forward a little, compelling his glance, trying to reason down the tragedy
in his face.

"How can you blame yourself?" she finished brokenly. "You must not. I will
not--let you."

"Thank you for saying that." Tisdale's rugged features worked. He laid his
hand for an instant over hers. "If any one in the world can set me right
with myself, it is you."

After that they both were silent. They began to round the bold promontory
at the end of the Wenatchee range; the Badger loomed on the rim of the
desert, then Old Baldy seemed to swing his sheer front like an opened
portal to let the blue flood of the Columbia through. The interest crept
back to her face. Between them and those guardian peaks a steel bridge,
fine as a spider web, was etched on the river, then a first orchard broke
the areas of sage, the rows of young trees radiating from a small, new
dwelling, like a geometrical pattern. Finally she said: "I would like to
know a little more about Mrs. Barbour. Did you ever see her again, Mr.
Tisdale? Or the child?"

"Oh, yes. I made it a point the next winter, when I was in Washington, to
run down into Virginia and look them up. And I have always kept in touch
with them. She sends me new pictures of the boy every year. He keeps her
bu