"I've been thinking about that. Miss Tremont, they won't come till spring, and then they'll likely only half look for us. I know this northern country. Death is too common a thing to cause much stir. Lounsbury will tell them we are drowned--no one will believe we could have gotten out of the canyon, dressed like we were and on a night like last night. If they thought we were alive and suffering, the whole male population would take a search party and come to our aid. Instead they know--or rather, they think they know--that we're dead. There won't be any horses, it will be a fool's errand, and mushing through those feet of soft snow is a job they won't undertake." "But the river will freeze soon." "Yes. Even this cataract freezes, but it likely won't be safe to cross for some weeks--maybe clear into January or February. That depends on the weather. You see, Miss Tremont, we don't have the awful low temperatures early in the winter they get further east and north. We're on the wet side of the mountains. But we do get the snow, week after week of it when you simply can't travel, and plenty of thirty and forty, sometimes more, below zero. But the river will freeze if we give it time. And the snow will pack and crust late in the winter. And then, in those clear, cold days, we can make a sled and mush out." "And it means--we're tied up here for weeks--and maybe months?" "That's it. Just as sure as if we had iron chains around our ankles." Then the girl's tears flowed again, unchecked. Bill stood beside her, his shoulders drooping, but in no situation of his life had he ever felt more helpless, more incapable of aid. "Don't cry," he pleaded. "Don't cry, Miss Tremont. I'll take care of you. Don't you know I will?" Her grief rent him to the depths, but there was nothing he could say or do. He drew the blankets higher about her. "Perhaps you can get some more sleep," he urged. "Your body's torn to pieces, of course." Fearful and lonely and miserable, the girl cried herself to sleep. Bill sat beside her a long time, and the snow sifted down in the forest and the silence lay over the land. He left her at last, and for a while was busy among the supplies that he found on a shelf behind the stove. And she wakened to find him bending over her. His face was anxious and his eyes gentle as a woman's. "Do you think you can eat?" he asked. "I've warmed up soup--and I've got coffee, too." He had put the liquids in cups and had drawn the little table beside her bed. She shook her head, but she softened at the swift look of disappointment in his face. "I'll take some coffee," she told him. He held the cup for her, and she drank a little of the bracing liquid. Then she pushed the cup away. He waited beside a moment, curiously anxious. "Give me your hand," he said. "Why?"