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Rivers sat down beside Blanche. “It would be death to attempt Wheatland to-night,” he said. “I could make it all right, but it would be the end of you.”

Bailey could not hear the words she spoke in reply. “Supper’s ready,” said he. “We all have to eat, no matter what comes.”

Something in his voice and manner affected Blanche deeply. She buried her face in her hands and wept while Rivers sat helplessly looking at her. She could not rise and walk before him yet. The shame of her sin weighed her down.

Bailey poured some tea and gave it to Rivers.

“Take this to her while I toast her some bread.”

She drank the tea but refused food, and Rivers sat down again still wearing an air of defiance, though Bailey did not appear to notice it. He ate a hearty supper, making a commonplace remark now and again.

Once he said, “We’re in for a hard winter.”

“It’s hell on the squatters,” Rivers replied, for want of other words. “I don’t know what they’ll do. No money and no work for most of them. They’ll have to burn hay. If it hadn’t been for the price on buffalo bones, I guess some of them would starve.”

Rising from the table, Bailey moved about doing up the work. He was very thoughtful, and the constraint increased in tension.

The storm steadily increased. Its lashings of sleet grew each hour more furious. The cabin did not reel, for it sat close in a socket of sods–it endured in the rush of snow like a rock set in the swash of savage seas. The icy dust came in around the stovepipe and fell in a fine shower down upon Bailey’s hands, fell with a faintly stinging touch, and the circle of warmth about the fire grew less wide each hour. “If the horses don’t all freeze we’ll be in luck,” said he.

The stove roared as a chained leopard might do in answer to a lion outside. Slender mice came from their dark corners and skittered across the floor before the silent men, their sleek sides palpitating with timorous excitement.

Bailey hovered over the stove, trying to figure up some accounts. Rivers sat beside Blanche. With watchful care he kept her shawl upon her shoulders and her feet wrapped in a blanket. He spoke to her now and then in a voice inaudible to Bailey, who studied them with an occasional keen glance.

“Well, now,” he said, at last, “no use sitting here like images; we might as well turn in. Jim, you take the bunk over there; and, Mrs. Burke, you occupy the bed. I’ll make up a shake-down here by the stove and keep the fire going.”

Rivers sullenly acquiesced, and Blanche lay down without removing her outside garments, in the same bed in which she had slept that first night in this wild land–that beautiful, buoyant spring night. How far away it all was now!

Rivers heaped blankets upon her and tenderly tucked her in, whispered good-night, and without a word to Bailey rolled himself in a fur robe and stretched himself on his creaking, narrow couch.

So, in the darkness, while the storm intensified with shrieking, wild voices, with whistling roar and fluttering tumult, Bailey gave his whole thought to the elemental war within. His mind went out first to Burke, who seemed some way to be the wronged man and chief sufferer, cut off from help, alone in the cold and snow. By contrast, Rivers seemed lustful and savage and treacherous.

Such a drama had never before come into Bailey’s life. He had read of somewhat similar cases in the papers, and had passed harsh judgment on the man and woman. He had called the woman wanton and the man a villain, but here the verdict was less easy to render. He liked Mrs. Burke, and he loved his friend. He had looked into their faces many times during the last six months without detecting any signs of degradation; on the contrary, Blanche had apparently grown in womanly qualities; and as for Jim, he had never been more manly, more generous and kind. If their acts were crimes, why could they remain so clear of eye?