"I've been planning to go, and I'm almost ready--in fact, I could leave now without much loss, but I didn't come prepared for anything so sudden. My office furniture don't amount to much, and this team is Bailey's"--he mused a moment. "_Come!_" he said, with sudden resolution, "it's go now--we'll never have a better chance." She turned white with dread--now that she neared the actual deed. "Oh, Jim! I _wish_ there was some other way." He was a little rough. Her feminine hesitation he could not sympathize with. "Well, there isn't. We've got to get right out of this. Hurry on your things. The wind is rising, and we must make Wheatland by five o'clock. I came out to hold down my claim, but it ain't worth it. I reckon I've squeezed all the juice out of this lemon. This climate is a little boisterous for me." He brought in a blanket and warmed it at the fire while she wrapped herself in cloak and shawl. "I'd better write a little note to--him." "What for? I've got nothing against him, except that he saw you first. But I guess he's out of the running now. It's you and me from this day on." "I hate to go without saying good-bye," she said, tremulously. "He's always been good to me," she added, smitten with sudden realization of her husband's kindness. He perceived that she was in earnest. "All right--only it does no good, and delays us. Every minute is valuable now. The outlook is owly." The plain was getting gray as they came out of the door, and the woman shrank and shivered with an instant chill, but Rivers tenderly tucked the robe about her and leaped into the sleigh. "Now boys, git!" he shouted to the humped and wind-ruffled team, and they sprang away into the currents of powdered snow, which were running along the ground in streams as smooth as oil and almost as silent. The sleigh rose and fell over the ridges like a ship. Off in the west the sun was shining through a peculiar smoky cloud, gray-white, vapory, with glittering edges where it lay against the cold, yellow sky. Every sign was ominous, and the long drive seemed a desperate venture to the woman, but she trusted her lover as a child depends upon a father. She nestled close down under his left arm, clothed in its shaggy buffalo-skin coat, a splendid elation in her heart. She was at last with the strong man to whom she belonged. This elation did not last long. Her sense of safety died slowly out, just as the blood chilled in her veins. She was not properly clothed, and her feet soon ached with cold, and she drew her breath through her teeth to prevent the utterance of moans of pain. She was never free now from the feeling of guardianship which is the delight and the haunting uneasiness of motherhood. "I must be warm," she thought, "for _its_ sake." She heard his voice above. "I never'll settle in a prairie country again--not but what I've done well enough as a land-agent, but there's no big thing here for anybody--nothing for the land-agent now."