He measured the corporal with his deep-searching gaze. "There were two of us hunting Crill up to this afternoon. You know what happened to poor Graves. Crill and his friends are out to get the police before the police get them. And after I'm gone you'll be playing a lone hand. You'll be careful, Dexter."
"Sure," said the corporal lightly.
"I'll send you reinforcements," the colonel pursued, "but I doubt if anybody can get in here in time to beat the snows. You may have to hold out by yourself until spring. But rest assured that the first thaw will bring men to your help."
"Thanks, chief," said Dexter. "And don't worry about me. I'll manage."
He left camp for a few minutes to saunter down into the gulley where he had dropped his saddle packs, and when he returned he brought a blanket to spread on the ground across the fire from the tent. For a while longer he and the colonel sat together arranging their final plans, but at length they kicked off their boots, donned their night woolens, and rolled up together in the common blanket.
Both were light sleepers, accustomed to arousing at the least disturbing sound. There was a little of downwood scattered about under the snow, and they had no fear of an enemy approaching unannounced, or of their prisoner's escaping.
Twice during the night Dexter got up automatically to replenish the fire, and on another occasion he awakened sharply to find the girl tiptoeing out of her tent. He was on his feet, almost before his eyes had opened, and smiled grimly at the sight of her startled face. "It's too early to get up now," he remarked pleasantly. "We'll call you when it's time."
She gave him a disconcerted glance, and then turned slowly, without a word, and crept back under the shelter-cloth. Dexter tossed a couple of billets of wood on the fire, and calmly returned to his blanket. After that he got in two hours of unbroken rest before the approach of dawn finally banished sleep.
He and Devreaux awakened at about the same moment and bestirred themselves in the lingering darkness. While the superintendent was poking up the embers of the fire, Dexter went to the brook to chop a wash basin in the ice. He came back, bearing a filled bucket, his hands and face tingling after a heroic soaping in the chilly water.
When breakfast was ready they called the girl, and she came forth, drowsy and shivering, to sit by the tiny fire. There was a little droop of dejection about her shoulders, but the courage of her blue eyes was not yet dimmed. As Dexter observed her covertly in the steel gray dawn, some vagrant stirring of memory brought back to him for an instant the lovely image of a nameless blue and white flower he had one day discovered, blooming valiantly and unaccountably beside a mountain snow drift. To him this woman seemed as much out of place in a bleak camp of the police, as the pretty, stray blossom that had got lost above timberline.