Weekly journal-miner., 1919-12-10

the ores all right. If it is, you're go- ing to have a silk dress the first thing and a new bonnet, and rings for every finger if you want 'em."
 And a dishpan, Jont. l want a Think of it! Here we've been keep ing house most two years, and noth- ing to wash dishes in but the frying par"
 It is pretty bad; but anyway, Honey, there ain't many to wash, and dishpan is mighty unhandy thing to lug in hundred miles on a pack horse. I tell you what; when we sell the mine we'll go and live where dish pans grow-and a rose bush in the front yard; maw always wanted one so bad. We'll get out of here next month, anyway"
 The girl was singing as she raked down the coals on the hearth and set ! the Dutch oven in a red nest of them, with another pile on the lid. They would be rich after a while and have a cook stove, but a fireplace was better than the old camp under the trees-and there was wild black berry pie for dinner, the last berries of the season.
 Jont was late, so late that she ran up the path to the tunnel calling, for the pie would be spoiled. She peered into the entrance, blinded a moment by the sunlight outside. Somewhere back of the darkness a very whisper of a moan reached her and she hur- ried in. As her eyes grew used to the dusk she saw great gray slide from the hanging wall blocking the way; and under it, face forward, hands reached out as if to meet her, law Jont, white and still.
 She did not faint; she never thought of screaming; but her face went white as his own, and her lips took the straight line they had held that other day when a band of fleeing settlers sought refuge in a little way post only to find it a charred ruin and its keepers prone on the red stained sand.
 My God! what shall we do?" cried a frightened woman, huddling her children in her arms. "Do?" said this white slip of girl, handling her carbine with cool skill that sent one brown pursuer reeling from his horse Get under cover and fight"
 The line was still in her lips hours later when Jont lay swathed and bandaged in the cabin. Look at your hands, Honey" he said weakly, and all at once she saw that they were as bruised and torn as his own.
 The great October snow of l87-| came literally like a thief in the night" The squirrels that heaped their snug tree-hollows with acorns and rifed the pinon cones for nuts as early as August, may have known The first warning to their human companions came when they woke one morning and found long slender snow drifts across the floor, slowly rising as the powdery flakes sifted through the cracks and whirled around the unChinked corners.
 Outside the air was one white, pal pitating mass, as if the whole heavens were suddenly turned into an invert- ed snow bank. The tall pines stood up ghostly with limbs bending and needles swept downward under deep cloaks of ermine, their gnarled feet buried knce-deep in the drifts.
 The two ill the cabin looked at each other, each choking down the un- named fear.
 And today we were to start! Never mind" said the girl bravely, | I've can go tomorrow, and your leg will be strongerP
 Tomorrow it was tomorrow still | Faster and faster, as still and soft as down from the ahgelS wings, the | white mass descended. If crept log by log up the cabin; 1t hemmed the | lake i'll a strange white wall; and | Doll and Gray huddlcd against the | house with the dumb appeal for hu- man companionship that horses all i ways show in great storm. Jont pulled himself out on his crutches and cut bundles of quakenasp boughs | for them to browse on, and soothed | them with betting and the old words of the trail.
 Day after day they said "tomor- row." and still the old crater seemed | like a whirlpool in an ocean of snow. | The wind swept down and beat and | drifted, bowling like some gaunt beast of prey; and above its snarling rose a tiny cry, sharp and keen, from the corner where the girl lay, white as the snow that sifted i'll across her
 Jont knelt in dumb agony beside | her, fighting with unskilled hands for the life ebbing so fast. There, there" she whispered, putting up a weak hand to touch his cheek. You mustn't take on so. Maybe it had to be. And I'd rather go from here where we've been so happy"
 How long it was he never knew but at last that small insistent cry aroused him. He unclasped the stiffening fingers from his own and | drew the covers straight around her She lay smiling, like one in happy | dream.
 Doll came at his call, rubbing a soft nose against his arm and pcering curiously into the cabin as he smoothed the blankets and set the longunused side-saddle on her back, thinking all the while of the girl and | how she stood up in 1t that first day with her hand on his shoulder
 In the hollow ofthe saddle he made nest of blankets Efelded over and over the now sleepfrfg child. and |