Part 26

"They are; but your father told me to always dry my boots on my feet, otherwise they'd shrink out of shape."

"That's right, too; but you'd better take 'em off and wring out your socks or else put on dry ones."

"You insist on my playing the invalid," he complained, "and that makes me angry. When I've been over here a month you'll find me a glutton for hardship. I shall be a bear, a grizzly, fearful to contemplate. My roar will affright you."

She laughed like a child at his ferocity. "You'll have to change a whole lot," she said, and drew the blanket closer about his shoulders. "Just now your job is to keep warm and dry. I hope you won't get lonesome over here."

"I'm not going to open a book or read a newspaper. I'm not going to write to a single soul except you. I'll be obliged to report to you, won't I?"

"I'm not the Supervisor."

"You're the next thing to it," he quickly retorted. "You've been my board of health from the very first. I should have fled for home long ago had it not been for you."

Her eyes fell under his glance. "You'll get pretty tired of things over here. It's one of the lonesomest stations in the forest."

"I'll get lonesome for you; but not for the East." This remark, or rather the tone in which it was uttered, brought another flush of consciousness to the girl's face.

"What time is it now?" she asked, abruptly.

He looked at his watch. "Half after eight."

"If father isn't on this side of the divide now he won't try to cross. If he's coming down the slope he'll be here in an hour, although that trail is a tolerably tough proposition this minute. A patch of dead timber on a dark night is sure a nuisance, even to a good man. He may not make it."

"Shall I fire my gun?"

"What for?"

"As a signal to him."

This amused her. "Daddy don't need any hint about direction--what he needs is a light to see the twist of the trail through those fallen logs."

"Couldn't I rig up a torch and go to meet him?"

She put her hand on his arm. "You stay right here!" she commanded. "You couldn't follow that trail five minutes."

"You have a very poor opinion of my skill."

"No, I haven't; but I know how hard it is to keep direction on a night like this and I don't want you wandering around in the timber. Father can take care of himself. He's probably sitting under a big tree smoking his pipe before his fire--or else he's at home. He knows we're all right, and we are. We have wood and grub, and plenty of blankets, and a roof over us. You can make your bed under this fly," she said, looking up at the canvas. "It beats the old balsam as a roof. You mustn't sleep cold again."

"I think I'd better sit up and keep the fire going," he replied, heroically. "There's a big log out there that I'm going to bring in to roll up on the windward side."

"It'll be cold and wet early in the morning, and I don't like to hunt kindling in the snow," she said. "I always get everything ready the night before. I wish you had a better bed. It seems selfish of me to have the tent while you are cold."

One by one--under her supervision--he made preparations for morning. He cut some shavings from a dead, dry branch of fir and put them under the fly, and brought a bucket of water from the creek, and then together they dragged up the dead tree.

Had the young man been other than he was, the girl's purity, candor, and self-reliance would have conquered him, and when she withdrew to the little tent and let fall the frail barrier between them, she was as safe from intrusion as if she had taken refuge behind gates of triple brass. Nothing in all his life had moved him so deeply as her solicitude, her sweet trust in his honor, and he sat long in profound meditation. Any man would be rich in the ownership of her love, he admitted. That he possessed her pity and her friendship he knew, and he began to wonder if he had made a deeper appeal to her than this.

"Can it be that I am really a man to her," he thought, "I who am only a poor weakling whom the rain and snow can appall?"

Then he thought of the effect of this night upon her life. What would Clifford Belden do now? To what deeps would his rage descend if he should come to know of it?

Berrie was serene. Twice she spoke from her couch to say: "You'd better go to bed. Daddy can't get here till to-morrow now."

"I'll stay up awhile yet. My boots aren't entirely dried out."