They had, however, won his admiration, which he was somewhat slow of according city folk, for although there had been times when, as he dragged the worn-out team up steep hillsides through the blinding snow, he almost despaired of reaching Somasco, he had heard no complaint from either Deringham or his daughter.  The man had helped him where he could, and when there was nothing that he could do sat silent beside him smoking tranquilly, while, with the flung-up snow whirling about them, the team went floundering down almost precipitous gully or rutted declivity, where a stumble would have hurled them all into the tops of the pines below.  Nor had a cry escaped the girl who sat behind them, gripping the side of the bouncing vehicle, when once a horse went down, and on another occasion the wagon left the trail and drove into a hemlock.  Okanagan also remembered that though it had been necessary to lift her down when twice they stopped to change the team at a lonely ranch, she rose smiling with blue lips when it was time to go on again.

“Yes, sir,” he afterwards said to Seaforth, “there wasn’t any weakening down in either of them, and the girl’s a daisy.”

Deringham, however, was now sitting amidst the straw in the bottom of the wagon, with his arm about his daughter, who nestled close to him for the sake of warmth.  A bitter frost had set in during the last hour or so, and the snow was frozen in white patches upon her wrappings, while it was with numbed senses she vacantly watched the pines flit past her.  It seemed that they would crawl up out of the darkness and slide by, white beneath the moonlight, forever.

Nor could she recollect much of the journey, which had only left a hazy memory of biting cold and blinding snow, fierce struggles through the drifts, and brief interludes of warmth and brightness in forest-shrouded ranches, where her chilled flesh shrank from the task before her when she rose to go on again.  There was Alton blood in Alice Deringham, and more than a trace of the Alton pride, but she did not know what motive had sustained her or why she had borne it all so patiently, and in this she differed from her father.  Deringham seldom did anything without a purpose, and he had one now.

His daughter had been asleep with her head on his shoulder when a shout roused her two hours earlier, and with a drumming of hoofs they came lurching into the settlement.  For a blissful moment she fancied the journey was at an end, for there were lights and voices and a pleasant smell of firwood smoke, but Okanagan shouted to his team, and the lights faded away behind as they plunged into the silence beneath the pines again.

“Father,” she said faintly, “do you think he has gone the wrong way?  It seems ever so long since we left the settlement.”

Okanagan may have heard her, though the words were almost indistinguishable.  “You lie right where you are for another ten minutes, and keep warm, miss,” he said; “then I’ll show you something.”