the steps. It had an air of hurry and escape. A small, slim figure, it
came along the path and through the gate; then, after just an instant of
hesitation, it turned away from Dickie and sped up the wide street.

Dickie named it at once. "That's the girl," he said; and possessed by
his curiosity and by the sense of adventure which whiskey had fortified,
he began to walk rapidly in the same direction. Out there, where the
short street ended, began the steep side of a mesa. The snow on the road
that was graded along its front was packed by the runners of freighting
sleighs, but it was rough. He could not believe the girl meant to go for
a walk alone. And yet, would she be out visiting already, she, a
stranger? At the end of the street the small, determined figure did not
stop; it went on, a little more slowly, but as decidedly as ever, up the
slope. On the hard, frozen crust, her feet made hardly a sound. Above the
level top of the white hill, the peak that looked remote from Hudson's
yard became immediate. It seemed to peer--to lean forward, bright as a
silver helmet against the purple sky. Dickie could see that "the girl"
walked with her head tilted back as though she were looking at the sky.
Perhaps it was the sheer beauty of the winter night that had brought her
out. Following slowly up the hill, he felt a sense of nearness, of
warmth; his aching, lifelong loneliness was remotely comforted because a
girl, skimming ahead of him, had tilted her chin up so that she could see
the stars. She reached the top of the mesa several minutes before he did
and disappeared. She was now, he knew, on the edge of a great plateau, in
summer covered with the greenish silver of sagebrush, now an unbroken,
glittering expanse. He stood still to get his breath and listen to the
very light crunch of her steps. He could hear a coyote wailing off there
in the foothills, and the rushing noise of the small mountain river that
hurled itself down upon Millings, ran through it at frenzied speed, and
made for the canon on the other side of the valley. Below him Millings