“Your nose is white, too.  Thaw it out.”

Abruptly Dan indicated a bench against the wall where the two men seated would take up less space.

“I’m—­” The stranger’s voice was unsteady.  “I—­,” but Dan had turned his back and his attention to the homesteader.

The eight by ten room constituted the entire home.  A shed roof slanted from eight feet high on the door and window side to a bit more than five on the other.  A bed in one corner took up most of the space, and the remaining necessities were bestowed with the compactness of a ship’s cabin.  The rough boards of the roof and walls had been hidden by a covering of newspapers, with a row of illustrations pasted picture height.  Cushions and curtains of turkey-red calico brightened the homely shack.

The driver had slipped off his buffalo coat and was bending over a baby exhaustedly fighting for breath that whistled shrilly through a closing throat.  The mother, scarcely more than a girl, held her in tensely extended arms.

“How long’s she been this way?”

“She began to choke up day before yesterday, just after you passed on the down trip.”

The driver laid big finger tips on the restless wrist.

“She always has the croup when she cuts a tooth, Dan, but this is different.  I’ve used all the medicines I have—­nothing relieves the choking.”

The girl lifted heavy eyelids above blue semicircles of fatigue and the compelling terror back of her eyes forced a question through dry lips.

“Dan, do you know what membranous croup is like?  Is this it?”

The stage-driver picked up the lamp and held it close to the child’s face, bringing out with distressing clearness the blue-veined pallour, sunken eyes, and effort of impeded breathing.  He frowned, putting the lamp back quickly.

“Mebbe it is, Mis’ Clark, but don’t you be scared.  We’ll help you a spell.”

Dan lifted the red curtain from the cupboard, found an emptied lard-pail, half filled it with water and placed it on an oil-stove that stood in the center of the room.  He looked questioningly about the four walls, discovered a cleverly contrived tool-box beneath the cupboard shelves, sorted out a pair of pincers and bits of iron, laying the latter in a row over the oil blaze.  He took down a can of condensed milk, poured a spoonful of the thick stuff into a cup of water and made room for it near the bits of heating iron.

He turned to the girl, opened his lips as if to speak and stood with a face full of pity.

Along the four-foot space between the end of the bed and the opposite wall the girl walked, crooning to the sick child she carried.  As they watched, the low song died away, her shoulder rubbed heavily against the boarding, her eyelids dropped and she stood sound asleep.  The next hard-drawn breath of the baby roused her and she stumbled on, crooning a lullaby.

Smith clutched the younger man’s shoulder.  “God, Hillas, look where she’s marked the wall rubbing against it!  Do you suppose she’s been walking that way for three days and nights?  Why, she’s only a child—­no older than my own daughter!”