"Don't know who she is. She came riding in from the south. When she saw us hustling round, she asked what had happened and jumped off her horse and inquired of the Doc whether she could be of any help. He looked at her, then said yes. She's in there now. One of the men is caring for her horse." "A bay horse?" "Yes. And a pretty girl, too. I'd almost lose an arm to have a good-looker like her hovering over me." "All right, Jenks. You can go back now. Get another man for your crew from Morgan. I'll obtain this fellow's name and his address, if he has any, from the time-keeper, in case he passes in his checks." The foreman started away. The group before the door disintegrated and presently disappeared. Pat glanced at the sun, lighted a cigar, and asked: "Do we start a night shift?" "Yes; whenever you can bring in the men." "Then I'll wire for some right away. The thermometer was five below this morning, and only twenty-two above this noon. She's cold at last." "Go to it, Pat. I'll stay here till Doc is through." When Carrigan had left him, Bryant sat down on a discarded oil tin lying on the ground--one of the square ten-gallon cans common about camps. He gazed at the door of the hospital shack. He could hear faint sounds from within, a footfall on the board floor, an indistinct word or murmur. Behind him and farther down the street, in the big cook tents where the crews ate, was the rattle of pans and an occasional oath or burst of laughter. There the cooks were peeling potatoes and mixing great pans of biscuit dough and exchanging jests, while here in the shack a fight was going on for a life. Bryant saw again that unshaven, heavy-faced workman, with the terribly mangled arm, whom he had brought hither. Poor devil! Some oversight, some carelessness, some mistake on the part of himself or another; and if not a dead man, then one-armed for the rest of his days. He, Bryant, could not consider these accidents with Pat Carrigan's philosophic calm--a calm acquired from decades of camp tragedies and disasters. They harrowed his spirit. Though they appeared inevitable where men delved or builded or flung forth great spans, they made the cost of constructive works seem too great. They took the glamor from projects and left them hard, grim, uninspiring tasks. Lee felt a weariness like that of age. The strain under which he laboured, the sustained effort of driving this furrow through earth that was like iron, his unavailing endeavours to reclaim Ruth, afflictions such as this of the past hour, the uncertainty of everything--all sapped his energy and shook his faith. Yet before him there were weeks of the same, or worse. He had put his hand to the plow; he could not turn back.