Only occasionally would Gertrude interrupt. "Don't strip the poor man of everything, auntie. If it must come to family—the De Gallons and Cirodes and Glovers were lords of the Mississippi when our Hessian forefathers were hiding from Washington in the Trenton hazelbushes."
She could meet her aunt's fears with jests and her tears with smiles until the worried lady chancing on a deeper chord disarmed her. "You know you are my pet, Gertrude. I am your foster-mother, dear, and I have tried to be mother to you and Marie, and sister to my brother every day of my life since your mother died. And if you——"
Then Gertrude's arms would enfold her and her head hide on her aunt's shoulder, and they would part utterly miserable.
One morning when Gertrude woke it was snowing and Medicine Bend was cut completely off from the western end of the division. The cold in the desert districts had made it impossible to move freights. During the night they had been snowed in on sidings all the way from Sleepy Cat east. By night every wire was down; the last message in was a private one from Glover, with the ploughs, dated at Nine Mile.
Solomon brought the telegram up to Gertrude with the intimation that, confidentially, Mr. Blood's assistant, in charge of the Wickiup, would be glad to hear any news it might contain about the blockade, as communication was now cut entirely off.
Gertrude told the messenger only that she understood the blockade in the eighth district had been lifted and that the ploughs were headed east. Then as the lad looked wonderingly at her, she started. Have I, she asked herself, already become a part of this life, that they come to me for information? But she did not add that the signer of the message had promised to be with her in twenty-four hours.
That day for the first time in eighteen years, no trains ran in or out of Medicine Bend, and an entire regiment of cavalry bound for the Philippines was known to be buried in a snowdrift near San Pete. The big hotel swarmed with snow-bound travellers. The snow fell all day, but to Gertrude's relief her father and the men of the party were at the Wickiup with Bucks, who had come in during the night with reinforcements from McCloud. Unfortunately, the batteries that followed him were compelled to double about next morning to open the line back across the plains.
The gravity of the situation about her, the spectacle of the struggle, now vast and all absorbing, made by the operating department to cope with the storm and cold, and the anxieties of her own position plunged Gertrude into a gloom she had never before conceived of. Her aunt's forebodings and tears, her father's unbending silence and aloofness, made escape from her depression impossible. When Solomon appeared she besought him surreptitiously for news, but though Solomon fairly staggered with the responsibilities of his position he could supply nothing beyond rumors—rumors all tending to magnify the reliance placed on Glover's capabilities in stress of this sort, but not at the moment definitely locating him.
Next morning the creeping eastern light had not yet entered her room when a timid rap aroused her. Solomon was outside the door with news. "The ploughs will be here in an hour," he whispered.
"The ploughs?"