"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.
"Come on, Colonel!" she commanded, with a new sharpness. "Keep up your lick."
But the Colonel had had about enough of this gait. From now on he fell more and more behind. But the Boy was with her neck and neck.