Young Dan was astonished at the sight, but he did nothing to show it. The intruder shook himself free of snow, halted and stood straight. He was on snowshoes and carried a rifle in a blanket stocking. Young Dan noticed that his rough jacket and trousers were old and patched and that they appeared to be several sizes too large for him.
“Have you anything to eat?” asked the stranger, in a voice that puzzled the trapper. “If you have, please give me a bite.”
Young Dan produced the remaining sandwiches from his pocket and handed them over without a word. The stranger crouched by the little fire and bit off a very small corner of frozen bread and frosty bacon.
“I was watchin’ you quite a spell,” he said. “When I seen you was only a young feller I wasn’t scart.”
“Only a young feller!” exclaimed Young Dan. “Is that so? Well, what of it? You don’t look like much of a man yerself.”
“Which I ain’t, nor don’t pretend to be,” replied the stranger, swallowing hard on the chilly fare. “I wisht you had yer teakittle along. No, I ain’t much of a man. I’m a married woman, with a husband sick a-bed not five mile from here, an’ my name is Mrs. May Conley—an’ me an’ Jim Conley an’ the younguns are jist about starved, if you want to know. Whereabouts is yer camp from here?”
“About six mile from this, dead south. I got a partner there, old Andy Mace; and we’ve got quite a store of grub, of one kind and another—condensed milk, too.”
“We ain’t got a cent to buy grub with. Jim was away till a few weeks back, an’ then he come home to us without a dollar of his summer wages an’ went sick.”
“That’ll be all right about the money; but what ails yer husband?”
Mrs. Conley’s answer to that was a cheerless smile and a shake of the head.