rising signs of excitement and to regret audibly that they had not “gathered him in.”  But in a few minutes he was back, his arms filled with loose hay from the barn.  He spread it out in a corner, down by the long table.  The table itself he drew out of the way.  On the hay he smoothed out her quilt.  Then, after a brief word with Poke Drury, he made another expedition into the night, returning with a strip of weather beaten, patched canvas; this he hung by the corners from the nails he hammered into a beam of the low ceiling, letting the thing drop partition-wise across the room.  It had been then that he said quietly:  “You’d better lie down there and get some sleep.  Good night.”

“Good night,” she answered him.  And as it was with his eyes that again he told her frankly what he thought of her, so was it with her eyes that she thanked him.

The night passed somehow.  She lay down and slept, awoke, moved her body for more comfort, slept again.  And through her sleep and dreams and wakeful moments she heard the quiet voices of the men who had no beds to go to; that monotonous sound and an occasional clink of glass and bottle neck or the rustling of shuffled cards.  Once she got up and looked through a hole in the canvas; she had taken off her shoes and made no noise to draw attention to her spying.  It must have been chance, therefore, which prompted Thornton to lift his head quickly and look toward her.  The light was all on his side of the room; she knew that he had not heard her and could not see her; the tear in her flimsy wall was scarcely more than a pin-hole.  He was playing cards; furthermore he was winning, there being a high stack of blue and red and white chips in front of him and a sprinkling of gold.  But she saw no sign of the gambling fever in his eyes.  Rather, there was in them a look which made her draw back guiltily; which sent her creeping back to her rude bed with suffused cheeks.  He was still thinking of her, solely of her, despite the spoils of chance at his hand....

All night the storm beat at the lone house in the mountain pass, rattling at doors and windows, whistling down the chimney, shaking the building with its fierce gusts.  The rain ceased only briefly when the cold congealed it into a flurry of beating hail stones; thereafter came the rain again, scarcely less noisy.  And in the morning when she awoke with a start and smelled boiling coffee the wind was still raging, the rain was falling heavily and steadily.

In the dark and with the lamps burning on palely into the dim day she breakfasted.  Together with several of the men she ate in the kitchen where a fire roared in an old stove, and where a table was placed conveniently.  Ma Drury was about, sniffling with her cold, but cooking and serving her guests sourly, slamming down the enamelled ware in front of them and challenging them with a look to find fault anywhere.  She reported that in some mysterious way, for which God be thanked, there were no dead men in her house this morning.  Bert Stone was alive and showed signs of continuing to live, a thing to marvel at.  And the man whom Buck Thornton had winged, beyond displaying a sore arm and disposition, was for the present a mere negligible and disagreeable quantity.