Olive's new friend gazed at her a little queerly, as he lifted her out on the platform. There were no people in sight except the station master, for it was almost dark and the stopping of a freight train was of little interest.
"Sure you know how to get to your friends from here?" the Irishman asked Olive. She took time to nod and wave her hand, then ran swiftly away from the station in the direction of Rainbow Ranch.
If Olive had gone into the town, someone would have driven her to the Lodge, or else sent word to Jim Colter or the Ralston girls that she was in safe-keeping for the night. A prairie snowstorm was approaching and few people would have cared to trust themselves to a ten-mile drive at this hour of the winter evening.
But Olive did not think of further danger. Ten miles seemed to her to be so near home that she could not bear a second's delay in trying to reach there. For the first few miles she ran swiftly along, as she knew the trail and it was not too dark to follow it. The stinging wind cut her face and at times the snow blinded her. But the distance was only a short walk for a girl who had spent all her life out of doors in the great West. Yet Olive should have known what a snowstorm in Wyoming, with a heavy pall of gray clouds and a scudding blast, meant.
After a while, her feet in her worn shoes felt like wooden pegs stumping on the frozen earth. Her hands had lost all feeling, although she managed to draw the rabbit-skin furs that Carlos had given her, over her head and to keep her hands under them. The snow no longer fell in flakes but in white sheets, lashed and driven by the force of the storm.
The trail across the plains to the Ralston Ranch was quickly hidden. Mountains of snow piled up in front of Olive, deep gullies appeared at her feet, where the land was usually as level as a table, and she had no idea in which direction she should try to travel. But she fought her way on, thinking perhaps that another wanderer might overtake her, or that she might catch a glimpse of the lights of some ranch house. If she could find an objective point ahead of her, she felt that she might get to it. But to move blindly in a circle of snow, brought no hope of any relief.
Yet Olive knew she must keep moving if she wished to live. She did not suffer the same agony from the cold, that she had at first. The wind blew her about, as though she had been a bit of paper. She staggered and fell in the snowdrifts, got up and pressed on wishing that even a wild animal would scurry past her on the way to its retreat. But animals are always wiser than human beings before the approach of a storm. Every head of cattle, every horse on the plains, every beast in the forest had found a rude shelter. Olive felt herself entirely alone in a savage, white world.
But in quiet natures like Olive's, there is a wonderful power of resistance. She had endured so much, she had learned the fortitude that comes with misfortune.
She prayed silently through the hours she struggled. There were moments when she believed she spied the light of Rainbow Lodge gleaming on the cruel surface of the snow. She would fight her way to this place, only to discover that her own blind desire had led her astray.
Night came on, but there was little change from the twilight. The few stars that broke through the clouds only made the way more blinding.