shack here. You won't be able to go to your home much longer now
at night; it gets dark so early, and the snows are too heavy."

"I go home at night," she repeated.

"But you can't all winter," he exclaimed. "If there was one single
horse we could spare from the grade work, I'd see you got it for
your journeys, but there isn't. We're terribly short now; every
animal in the Pass is overworked as it is. You'd better not try
going home any more."

"I go home at night," she repeated.

Wingate frowned impatiently; then in afterthought he smiled. "All
right, Catharine," he said, "but I warn you. You'll have a
search-party out after you some dark morning, and you know it won't
be pleasant to be lost in the snows up that canyon."

"But I go home, night-time," she persisted, and that ended the
controversy.

But the catastrophe he predicted was inevitable. Morning after
morning he would open the door of the shack he occupied with the
other officials, and, looking up the white wastes through the
gray-blue dawn, he would watch the distances with an anxiety that
meant more than a consideration for his breakfast. The woman
interested him. She was so silent, so capable, so stubborn. What
was behind all this strength of character? What had given that
depth of mournfulness to her eyes? Often he had surprised her
watching him, with an odd longing in her face; it was something of