She made the timber, and stood leaning against the sheltered side of a dark-trunked spruce whose branches were thick and wide-spread enough to shield her.  The physical labor of fighting her way thus far, and the high altitude to which she had attained, made her pant like a runner just after the race.  She held her muff to her face again for the sense of warmth and well-being its soft fur gave to her cheeks.  Certainly, no one else would be fool enough to come out on such a day, she thought.  And what a surprise to Jack, seeing her come puffing into his cave!  She had not been there since the snow fell, just before Thanksgiving.  Now it was nearly Christmas—­a month of solitary grandeur Jack had endured.

She glanced up at the tossing boughs above her; felt the great tree trunk quiver when a fresh blast swept the top; looked out at the misty whiteness of the storm, clouded with swaying pine branches.  What a world it was!  But she was not afraid of it; somehow she felt its big, rough friendliness even now.  It did not occur to her that the mountains could work her ill, though she reminded herself that standing still was not the best way to keep warm on such a day.

She started up again, ignorantly keeping among the trees, that a mountaineer would have shunned.  But straightway she stopped and looked around her puzzled.  Surely she had not come down this way when she skirted the manzanita.  She remembered coming in among the trees from the right.  She turned and went that way, saw her filling footprints in the snow, and plodded back.  There were tracks coming down the hill, and she had not made them.  They must surely be Jack’s.

With the new wisdom of having tramped nearly every day through snow, she studied these new tracks and her own where she had come to the spruce tree.  These other tracks, she decided, had been made lately—­she must have missed by minutes seeing him pass before her.  Perhaps she could overtake him.  So she faced the wind and ran gasping down the slope, following the tracks.  She nearly caught Mike unaware, but she did not know it.  She hurried unsuspectingly past the tree where he was hiding, his rifle held ready to fire if she looked his way.  He was hesitating, mumbling there with his finger on the trigger when she went out of sight around a bush, still following where the tracks led.  Mike stepped out from behind the tree and came bowlegging after her, walking with that peculiar, flat-footed gait of the mountain trained man.

Luck was with her.  Jack had gone down a gully rim, thinking to cross it farther on, ran into rocks and a precipitous bank, and was coming back upon his trail.  He met Marion face to face.  She gave a cry that had in it both tears and laughter, and stood looking at him big-eyed over her muff.

“Well, forevermore!  I thought I never would catch you!  I was going to the cave—­” Something in Jack’s scrutinizing, unfriendly eyes stopped her.