like the others.  But even that general suggestion was not needed! the little head, the symmetrical curves visible even at that distance, were quite enough to indicate that it was a woman!  The easy smile faded from Jack’s face, and was succeeded by a look of concern and then of resignation.  He had no choice now; he must go!  There was a woman there, and that settled it.  Yet he had arrived at this conclusion from no sense of gallantry, nor, indeed, of chivalrous transport, but as a matter of simple duty to the sex.  He was giving up his sleep, was going down six hundred feet of steep trail to offer his services during the rest of the night as much as a matter of course as an Eastern man would have offered his seat in an omnibus to a woman, and with as little expectation of return for his courtesy.

Having resumed his coat, with a bottle of whiskey thrust into its pocket, he put on a pair of india-rubber boots reaching to his thighs, and, catching the blanket from his bunk, started with an axe and shovel on his shoulder on his downward journey.  When the distance was half completed he shouted to the travelers below; the cry was joyously answered by the three men; he saw the fourth figure, now unmistakably that of a slender youthful woman, in a cloak, helped back into the wagon, as if deliverance was now sure and immediate.  But Jack on arriving speedily dissipated that illusive hope; they could only get through the gorge by taking off the wheels of the wagon, placing the axle on rude sledge-runners of split saplings, which, with their assistance, he would fashion in a couple of hours at his cabin and bring down to the gorge.  The only other alternative would be for them to come to his cabin and remain there while he went for assistance to the nearest station, but that would take several hours and necessitate a double journey for the sledge if he was lucky enough to find one.  The party quickly acquiesced in Jack’s first suggestion.

“Very well,” said Jack, “then there’s no time to be lost; unhitch your horses and we’ll dig a hole in that bank for them to stand in out of the snow.”  This was speedily done.  “Now,” continued Jack, “you’ll just follow me up to my cabin; it’s a pretty tough climb, but I’ll want your help to bring down the runners.”

Here the man who seemed to be the head of the party—­of middle age and a superior, professional type—­for the first time hesitated.  “I forgot to say that there is a lady with us,—­my daughter,” he began, glancing towards the wagon.

“I reckoned as much,” interrupted Jack simply, “and I allowed to carry her up myself the roughest part of the way.  She kin make herself warm and comf’ble in the cabin until we’ve got the runners ready.”

“You hear what our friend says, Amy?” suggested the gentleman, appealingly, to the closed leather curtains of the wagon.