Although the storm still raged daylight now struggled through the wind-swept screen of snow, and there was no great danger in making the short trip from Twenty-two to Fourteen. Jack confessed that Marjorie was uneasy for me so I went home very soon after his arrival.
Marjorie flew into my arms as I opened the door. "I was so frightened, Frank, so frightened!" she whispered, in half sobs. "I didn't know it was going to be such a storm. I was almost sure you'd come back and when you didn't I couldn't help wondering, and every little while through the night I would waken and see you fighting in the snow; fighting, and stumbling, and falling." She wrapped her arms about me and pressed her cheek against my face. "Oh Frank, Frank, it's good to have you here!" she murmured.
I had never known Marjorie to be so demonstrative. She came of solid old Eastern stock that carries its heart a long, long way in. I was not psychologist enough to realize that if ever there was to be a time when Marjorie would be very human she was now entering it.
"There, there," I said, comforting her as best I could. "It's all over now. And listen—I have great news. Jean and I are to be——"
"At last!" she interrupted. "Well, that shows what a little planning will do. You dear old silly, did you suppose——"
"I know all about it—now. Jack confessed. But your little joke nearly cost me my life," and I went on to tell of my battle with the storm, taking care that it should lose nothing in the telling. In this I hope I measured up to the established standard of the typical Westerner.
Marjorie was penitent. "I am so sorry," she said. "I had no idea that might happen. Oh, Frank, wouldn't it have been dreadful?"
"It would, but it isn't. On the contrary, it is worth it."
I am tempted to dwell upon the days that followed, but you cannot be interested in our journeyings across the gully now piled deep with snow, nor how it fell about that Jack spent most of his evenings on Fourteen while I spent mine on Twenty-two. This became so much a habit that Jack laughingly remarked that he and I seemed to have traded residence duties, and he hoped it would not come to the ears of the Homestead Inspector!
Spoof drove over one Sunday early in December after an absence of three weeks. The fact was we were beginning to be concerned about Spoof, and had it not been that every fine day—and most of the days were bright and fine, now that the first blizzard of the winter had spent itself,—we could see a blue taper of smoke curling up from the shanty on section Two, Jack or I would before this have gone over to investigate. These little columns of neighbourly smoke were the semaphores by which the community kept itself advised that all was well, or nearly so.