All through this time of dread and danger, of plot and counterplot and intrigue, of brooding war and half-awakened pillage, the doctor went on peacefully collecting his funny little statistics, utterly oblivious to everything but their accumulation and arrangement. Every morning of the warmer months he went out into the hills for the day. There he would grub about among his ledges and leads, pecking away at the rocks with his little hand pick, filling his canvas bags, jotting down notes and statistics in his notebook. During its progress he was blind to everything but his work. One day, as he walked along the top of a ridge, a huge bear rose up in his path. The doctor politely lifted his hat and passed to one side. The decline of the sun alone he noticed. When the shadow of Harney crept out to him he turned toward home. As he neared the log cabin his placid eyes fairly beamed through his spectacles. When he came in sight of it he ran forward, his specimen bags swinging heavily against his legs, caught up the child stumbling to meet him and carried her, laughing and struggling, to the woman in the doorway. Then they had supper all together--bacon, or perhaps game, with vegetables from the garden, and corn bread. Occasionally they had white bread and coffee, and always fresh water from the cold mountain creek. After supper the doctor went outdoors to arrange his specimens and plot out his notes as long as the daylight lasted. His wife moved about inside softly. After a time she brought out the little girl in her nightdress to be kissed. So the twilight neared, and the long day was done. As the yellow glow crept down, she came outdoors too, and sat pensively looking over the peaks of the lower mountains to the distant Cheyenne and the prairies. Beyond them was the East. There were cities and books and other women and the beat of human life in the air. Here was a still, lonely grandeur that even the wind in the pines did not relieve. The doctor finally had to put aside his work for lack of light, and sat at her feet leaning against the logs of the cabin. She looked down on his little figure, his round shoulders, his forehead even now abstract and wrinkled with speculation, his kindly blue eyes, his sensitive mouth, and then she softly reached out and took his hand. The two sat there until the moon rose over the Bad Lands. Then they went inside. In moments such as this the woman lived.