As long as he was in
sight he saw her standing there, waving her handkerchief to him in
encouragement. Her slight, dark figure, outlined against the snow, was the
last thing his eyes fell upon before he turned a corner of the gulch and
dropped downward toward the plains.
But when he was surely gone, after one fearful look at the white sea which
encompassed her, the girl fled to the cabin, slammed the door after her,
and flung herself on the bed to weep out her lonely terror in an ecstasy
of tears. She had spent the first violence of her grief, and was sitting
crouched on the rug before the open fire when the sound of a footstep,
crunching the snow, startled her. The door opened, to let in the man who
had just left her.
"You are back--already," she cried, her tear? stained face lifted toward
him.
"Yes," he smiled' from the doorway. "Come here, little partner."
And when she had obediently joined him her eye followed his finger up the
mountain-trail to a bend round which men and horses were coming.
"It's a relief-party," he said, and caught up his field-glasses to look
them over more certainly.
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