"No," with an intonation that sounded rather heartless; "you never catch cold."
The fact that she had not lost her old spirit, if she had her voice, was a great point in her favor, and he had a full appreciation of it. She was tired out, and hoarse, but still had pluck enough to attempt the trip to the ranch.
"We've got to make it," she decided, when the subject was broached; "we can make it to-night as well as to-morrow, if you know the trail. Did you say you had some biscuits? Well, I'm hungry."
"You generally are," he remarked, with a dryness in no way related to the delight with which he got the biscuits for her and insisted on her swallowing some more of the whisky. "Are you cold?"
"No—not a bit; and that seems funny, too. If it hadn't been such a soft, warm snow, I should have been frozen."
He left her and went to find the mare, which he did without much trouble; and in leading her back over the little plateau he was struck with a sense of being on familiar ground. It was such a tiny little shelf jutting out from the mountain.
Swathed in snow as it was, and with the darkness above it, he felt so confident that he walked straight out to where the edge should be if he was right. Yes, there was the sudden shelving that left the little plot inaccessible from one side.
"Do you know where we are, my girl?" he asked as he rejoined her.
"Somewhere on Scot's Mountain," she hazarded; the possessive term used by him had a way of depriving her of decided opinions.
"You're just about the same place where you watched the sun come up once—may be you remember?"