“What’s happening?”

“It’s got out,” she exploded indignantly.  “They’re comin’, too!”

She turned, flew down the steep incline, and then settled into a steady, determined gait, that made her gain on the men who had got so long a start.  Her late companions stood looking back in sheer amazement, for the town end of the trail was black with figures.  The Boy began to laugh.

“Look! if there isn’t old Jansen and his squaw wife.”

The rheumatic cripple, huddled on a sled, was drawn by a native man and pushed by a native woman.  They could hear him swearing at both impartially in broken English and Chinook.

The Colonel and the Boy hurried after Maudie.  It was some minutes before they caught up.  The Boy, feeling that he couldn’t be stand-offish in the very act of profiting by her acquaintance, began to tell her about the crippled but undaunted Swede.  She made no answer, just trotted steadily on.  The Boy hazarded another remark—­an opinion that she was making uncommon good time for a woman.

“You’ll want all the wind you got before you get back,” she said shortly, and silence fell on the stampeders.

Some of the young men behind were catching up.  Maudie set her mouth very firm and quickened her pace.  This spectacle touched up those that followed; they broke into a canter, floundered in a drift, recovered, and passed on.  Maudie pulled up.

“That’s all right!  Let ’em get good and tired, half-way.  We got to save all the run we got in us for the last lap.”

The sun was hotter, the surface less good.

She loosened her shoulder-straps, released her snow-shoes, and put them on.  As she tightened her little pack the ex-Governor came puffing up with apoplectic face.

“Why, she can throw the diamond hitch!” he gasped with admiration.

“S’pose you thought the squaw hitch would be good enough for me.”

“Well, it is for me,” he laughed breathlessly.

“That’s ’cause you’re an ex-Governor”; and steadily she tramped along.

In twenty minutes Maudie’s party came upon those same young men who had passed running.  They sat in a row on a fallen spruce.  One had no rubber boots, the other had come off in such a hurry he had forgotten his snow-shoes.  Already they were wet to the waist.

“Step out, Maudie,” said one with short-breathed hilarity; “we’ll be treadin’ on your heels in a minute;” but they were badly blown.

Maudie wasted not a syllable.  Her mouth began to look drawn.  There were violet shadows under the straight-looking eyes.

The Colonel glanced at her now and then.  Is she thinking about that four-year-old?  Is Maudie stampedin’ through the snow so that other little woman need never dance at the Alcazar?  No, the Colonel knew well enough that Maudie rather liked this stampedin’ business.

She had passed one of those men who had got the long start of her.  He carried a pack.  Once in a while she would turn her strained-looking face over her shoulder, glancing back, with the frank eyes of an enemy, at her fellow-citizens labouring along the trail.