Then came a day when she returned from the dog kennels to find the cabin empty. Her father’s mukluks and parka, and his heavy mittens were not on their accustomed place. She breathed a sigh of relief. At last he had taken interest in life. Removing her outer gear, she built up the fire, and settled herself to read. An hour later she laid down her book, and leaped to her feet with a start. Where was her father? A sudden fear gripped her, a nameless terror that struck a chill to her very heart. It was one of the coldest days of the winter. The thermometer recorded sixty-six below zero. And for weeks he had hardly touched his food! Frantically she drew on her heavy clothing, and dashed out into the gloom. Tracks led toward the boiler, whose iron side showed gaunt and black on the bank of the creek above the rim of a huge snowdrift. The wind, swirling and eddying about it had whipped the ground bare of snow and left the hideous black shape in the center of a pit. Upon the edge of the surrounding drift the girl paused and stared down into this cavity. Before the open door of the fire-box crouched the figure of her father, barely distinguishable in the darkness. She called loudly, but there was no response--not so much as a turning of the head. And with a low cry of terror she leaped into the pit and stooped over the crouching figure. One glance into the marble-white face, that showed above the grizzled beard, one grip upon the iron-hard shoulder that resisted the clutch of her mittened fingers, and she drew swiftly back. For a full minute she stood stunned, her hands pressing her breast, her eyes closed. Then with tight-pressed lips, she returned slowly to the cabin and harnessed her dogs. It required two hours of hard labor to remove the frozen body to the cabin, and two days of thawing beside the roaring stove before the doubled limbs could be straightened--days during which Lou Gordon returned to the cabin only to wait for her gravel-thawing fire to eat into the adamantine ground. Close beside the grave of her mother, she was burning in for this new grave. Side by side they should lie deep in the eternal frost, their bodies preserved without decay until the end of time. Bravely, in dry-eyed silence she worked, and made no plan for the future. A journey to Nolan for assistance in her grewsome labor was out of the question. Sled travel in the deep loose snow was impossible, and she had no toboggan. So she worked alone. When the body had thawed, she straightened the limbs, folded the hands upon the breast, and wrapping it tightly in a wet blanket, removed it to the wood-shed, where the strong cold converted the blanket into a shroud of iron.