During the night winter had set the white seal of his sovereignty upon the world.  The snarling wind had died in its own fierceness, giving over to a still, calm air, through which steadily the big flakes fell.  Now they clung to bush and tree everywhere; the limbs had grown thick and heavy, drooping like countless plumes.  Fat mats of snow lay on the level spaces, upon flat rocks, curling over and down at the edges.  Where he stood King sank ankle-deep in the fluffy stuff.  As he moved along the cliffs and down the slope toward a dead tree he stepped now and then into drifts where the snow was gathering swiftly.  As he looked up, seeking to penetrate the skies above him and judge their import, he saw only myriads of grey particles high up, swirling but slightly in some softly stirring air-current, for the most part dropping, floating, falling almost vertically.  Nowhere was there a hint or hope of cessation.  The winter, a full four weeks early, had come.

In the noose of his rope he dragged up the cliff much dead wood, riven from a fallen pine.  Throughout the noise of his comings and goings the girl slept heavily.  He got a big fire blazing without waking her and set about getting breakfast.  While he waited for the coffee to boil he took careful stock of provisions.  For two people there was enough for some twenty meals, food for about a week.  Time to conserve the grease from the frying-pan; to hoard the smallest bit of bacon rind.  He even counted his rounds of ammunition; here alone he was affluent.  He had in the neighbourhood of a hundred cartridges for the rifle.  While he was setting the gun aside he felt Gloria’s eyes upon him.

During the night and now, during this inventory, he had been granted both ample time and cause for his decision.  He addressed her with prompt frankness.

“Inside fifteen minutes we’ve got to be on our way out.  As we go we’ll look for the horse.  But, find it or not, we’re going.”

She lay looking up at him thoughtfully.  She had rested; she resented his coolly assumed mastery; she had not forgotten that there were other men near by.  But she merely said, by way of beginning: 

“The storm is over, then?”

“No.  But we are not going to wait.  We have food for only six or seven days, at the most.”

She let her eyes droop to the fire so that the lids hid them from him.  It was not yet full day; it was still snowing.  Gratton and the men with him would, of course, have ample supplies.  She yearned feverishly to be rid of King and his intolerable domineering.  She estimated swiftly that, paradoxically, her only power over him was that of powerlessness; while she lay here hers was, in a way, the advantage.  On her feet, following him, he would be again to her the brute he had been coming in.

“I am tired out,” she said faintly, still not looking up.  “I am sick.  I have a pain here.”  She moved her hand to her side where, in reality, she was conscious of a troublesome soreness.  “I can’t go on.”