Joe, Ellis and Jim Snedeker, continued to work on Snedeker's new building and Joe knew that the old Mountain Man hoped he would stay until it was completed. He said nothing; Snedeker had always gone where he wished when he wanted to go there and he never asked any man's permission. It went without saying that everybody else had the same freedom of choice and he would not try to hold Joe. But Snedeker was old. He could not erect the building himself and there was no certainty as to when he would find another emigrant willing to trade his labor for money or supplies. Snedeker needed help now. Because he wanted to help him, and because he found in hard work an anodyne for growing restlessness, Joe drove himself and Ellis furiously. Ellis kept his mouth shut and followed Joe's orders. They laid sills on the site Snedeker had chosen and used skids to roll logs on top of them. When the walls were as high as they must be, the roof was made of poles overlaid and braced with more poles. Joe showed Ellis how to split shakes from a block of cedar. One blow of the ax did it, and though the shakes were not uniform in size they were a better roof than the mixed clay and mud that thatched the other buildings. Snedeker had covered his roofs with the same material he used for chinking. But, even as he worked, Joe fretted. The fuzzy aspen buds gave way to tiny leaves, and only in places that the sun seldom touched did snow linger in dirty gray patches. A pregnant earth was taut with labor pains and about to give birth to all its fullness. They worked from daylight to dark, but after they were finished Joe and Emma could not stay in the cabin. The Trail wound past Snedeker's post and disappeared in the west. At the end of the Trail was a dream come true, and every night, hand in hand, they walked down it. In the darkness Joe got to his hands and knees to feel for grass, without which there could be no travel. Only when he had assured himself that there was not yet enough did his soul know any peace. Joe's impatience mounted and he controlled it only by working furiously on Snedeker's new building. It was to be half again as big as the present store which would become a warehouse for buffalo robes, and Snedeker had made more concessions to comfort. In the post he and Ellis slept on the floor, using buffalo robes as a mattress and more for covering, but here there would be bunks. There was also to be a fireplace in Snedeker's private quarters, and that was a real revolution because never before had he had one. Snedeker and Ellis rose and dressed in their freezing quarters at the post.