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Show ll DICEL iff of rim "M 1 11 tSsoic Jm copy&soxrr 7Sjzo little, s 7?ot suvz coaa Ary. It It was the voice of Tits own dautrft-ter, dautrft-ter, Snowbird, calling for him. H tried to answer her. It was only a whisper, at first. Tet she was coming nearer; and her own voice sounded louder. "Here. Snow- j bird." he called again. She heard him ; then: he could tell by the startled, I tune of her reply. The next instant she was at his side, her tears drop-pins drop-pins on his face. With a tremendous effort of wil! he recalled his speeding faculties. "I don't think I'm badly hurt." he told her very quietly. "A few rilis broken and a leg. F.ut we'll have 10 winter here on the Divide. Snowbird mine." "What dues it matter, if you live?" she cried. She crawled along the pins needles beside him. and tore his shirt from his breast. He was rapidly sinking sink-ing into unconsciousness. The thing she dreaded most that his back might he broken was evidently not true. There were, as he said, broken ribs and evidently one severe fracture of the leg bone. Whether he had sustained sus-tained Internal injuries that would end his life before the morning, she had no way of knowing. At this point, the problem of saving her father's life fell wholly into her hands. His broken body could not bj carried over the mountain road to physicians in the valleys. They must be transported to the ranch. It would take them a full day to make the trip, even if site could get word, to them at once; and twenty-four hours without medical attention would probably cost her father his life. The nearest telephone tele-phone was at the ranger station, twelve miles distant over a mountain trail. The' telephone line to Bald mountain, four miles off, had been disconnected dis-connected when the rains had ended the peril of the forest fire. CHAPTER III Continued. 12 The rains fell unceasingly for seven days: not a downpour hut a constant drizzle that made the distant ridges smoke. The parched earth seemed to smaek its lips, and little rivulets began be-gan to fall and tumble over the beds of the dry streams. II danger of forest for-est fire was at once removed, and Snowbird was no longer needed as a lookout on old Fald mountain. She went to her own home, her companion back to the valley: and now that his sister had taken his place as housekeeper. house-keeper. Bill had gone down to the lower foothills with a great part of the live stock. Dan spent these rainy days in toil on the hillsides, building himself physically so that he might pay his debts. It was no great pleasure, these rainy days. He would have greatly liked to have lingered Id the square mountain house, listening to the quiet murmur of the rain on the roof and watching Snowbird at her household tasks. She could, as her father had said, make a biscuit. She could also roll up sleeves over trim, brown arms and with entire good humor do a week's laundry for three hard-working men. He would have liked to sit with her. through the long afternoons, as she knitted beside the fireplace to watch the play of her graceful fingers fin-gers and perhaps, now and then, to touch her hands when he held the skeins. But none of these things transpired. tran-spired. He drove himself from daylight day-light till dark, developing his body for the tests that were sure to come. The first few days nearly killed him. He over-exercised ,in the chill rain. into his car and drive down tb the valleys. The fall roundup would soon he completed. Bill would return for a few days from the valleys with new ! equipment to replace the broken light-i?ig light-i?ig system on the car, and they could avoid the bitter cold and snow that Lennox had known so long. He chopped at a great log and wondered what would suit him better the comfort com-fort and safety of the valleys or the rugged glory of the ridges. . But at that instant, the question of whether or not he would winter on the Divide was decided for him. And an instant was all that was needed. For the period of one breath he forgot to be watchful and a certain dread Spirit that abides much in the forest saw its chance. Perhaps he had lived too long in the mountains and grown careless of them : an attitude that is usually punished with death. He had just felled a tree, and the trunk was still attached to the stump by a strip of bark to which a little of the wood adhered. He struck a furious blow at' it with his ax. He hadn't considered that the tree , lay on a steep slope. As the blade fell, the great trunk simply seemed to leap. Lennox leaped too, in a frenzied effort to save his life; but already the leafy bows, like the tendrils of some great amphibian, had whipped around his legs. He fell, struggling; and then a curious darkness, streaked with flame, dropped .town i'pon him. An hour later he found himself lying on the still hillside, knowing only a great wonderment. UX. first his only impulse was to go back to sleep. He didn't understand the grayness that Kiel WW It all depended upon her. Bill was driving cattle into the valleys, and he and his men had in use all the horses on the ranch with one exception. The remaining horse had been ridden by Dan to some distant marshes, and as Dan would shoot until sunset, that meant he would not return until ten o'clock. There was no road for a car to the ranger station, only a rough steep trail, and she remembered, with a sinking heart, that one of Bill's missions mis-sions in the valley was to procure a new lighting system. By no conceivable conceiv-able possibility could she drive down that mountain road in the darkness. But she was somewhat relieved by the thought that in all probability she could walk twelve miles across the mountains to the ranger station in much less time than she could drive, by automobile, seventy miles down to the ranches at the foothills about the valley. Pesides, she remembered with a gladdening heart that Richards, one of the rangers, had been a student at a medical college and had taken a position po-sition with the forest service to regain re-gain his health. She would cross the ridge to the station, phone for a doctor doc-tor In the valleys, and would return on horseback with Richards for such first aid as he could give. The only problem that remained was that of getting her father into the house. He was stirring a little now. Evidently Evi-dently consciousness was returning to him. And then she thanked heavert for the few simple lessons In first aid that her father had taught her In the days before carelessness had come upon him. One of his lessons had been that of carrying an unconscious human form a method by which even a woman may carry, for a short distance, dis-tance, a heavy man. It was approximately approxi-mately the method used in carrying wounded In No Man's Land: the body thrown over the shoulders, one arm through the fork, of the legs to the wounded man's hand. Her father was not a particularly heavy num. and she was an exceptionally strong young woman. She knew at once that this problem was solved. The hardest part was lifting him to her shoulders. Only by calling upon her last ounce of strength, and tugging tug-ging upward with her arms, was she able to do it. But it was fairly easy, in her desperation, to carry him down the hill. What rest she got she took by leaning against a tree, the limp body still across hefshoulders. It was a distance of one hundred yards In all. No muscles but those trained by the outdoors, no lungs except ex-cept those made strong by the mountain moun-tain air, could have stood that test. She laid him on his own bed, on the lower floor, and set his broken limbs the best she could. She covered him up with thick, fleecy blankets, and set a bottle of whisky beside the bed. Then she wrote a note to Dan and fastened it upon one of the Interior doors. She drew on her hob-nailed boots needed sorely for the sleep climb and pocketed her plslnl. She thrust a handful of jerked venison into the pocket of her co:it anil lighted the lantern. lan-tern. Tlip forest night bad fallen, soft and vibrant and tremulous, over tbe heads of the dark trees when she started out. (TO BE CONTINUED.) and one anxious night he developed all the symptoms of pneumonia. Such a sickness would have beeD the one thing needed to make the doctor's prophecy come true. But with Snowbird's Snow-bird's aid, and numerous hot drinks, he fought It off. She had made him go to bed, and no human memory could be so dull as to forget the little, whispered message that she gave him with his last spoonful spoon-ful of medicine. She said she'd pray for him, and she meant it too literal, entreating prayer that could not go unheard. un-heard. She was a mountain girl, and her beliefs were those of her ancestors ances-tors simple and true and wholly without affectation. But he hadn't relaxed thereafter. lie knew the time had come to make the test. Night after night he would go to bed half-sick half-sick from fatigue, but the mornings would find him fresh. And after two weeks, he knew he had passed the crisis and was on the direct road to complete recovery. Sometimes he cut wood in the forest for-est : first the felling of some tall pine, then the trimming and hewing Into two-foot lengths. The blisters came on his hands, broke and bled, but finally hardened into callosities. He learned the most effective stroke to hurl a shower of chips from beneath the blade. His back and limbs hardened hard-ened from the handling of heavy wood and the cough was practically gone. His frame filled out. His face became swarthy from constant exposure. He gained In weight. One cloudy afternoon in early November No-vember found Silas Lennox cutting wood on the ridge behind his house. It was still an open question with him whether he and his daughter would attempt to winter on the Divide. Dan of course wanted to remain, yet there were certain reasons, some very definite defi-nite and others extremelv vague, why the prospect of the winter in the snow fields did not appeal to the mountaineer. moun-taineer. In the first place, all signs pointed to a hard season. Although the fall had come late, the snows were exceptionally early. The duck flight was completed two weeks before its usual time, and the rodents had dug their burrows unusually deep. Ho-sldes. Ho-sldes. too many months of snow weigh henvilv imon the snirlt. The wolf He Fell Struggling. had come upon the mountain world, his own strange feeling of numbness, of endless soaring through infinite spaces. But he was a mountain man, and that meant he was schooled, beyond be-yond all things, to keep his self-control. He made himself remember. Yes he had been cutting wood on the hillside, and the shadows had been long. He had heen wondering whether wheth-er or not they should go down to the valleys. He remembered now: the last blow and the rolling log. He tried to turn his head to look up to the hill. He found, himself wholly unable to do it. Something wracked him in his neck when he tried to move. But he did glance down. And yes. he could turn In this direction. And he saw the great tree trunk lying twenty feet below him. wedged in between the packs sing endlessly on the ridges, and many unpleasant things may happen. hap-pen. On previous years, some of I be cabins on the ridges below had human occupants: this winter the whole region, re-gion, for nearly seventy miles across tbe mountain to tbe foothills, would be wholly deserted by human beings. Even the ranger station, twelve miles across a steep ridge, would soon be empty. Of course a few ranchers had homes a few miles beyond the river, hot the wild cataracts did not freeze In the coldest of seasons, and there were no bridges. Resides, most of the more prosperous fanners wintered In the valleys. Only n few more days irould the road be passable for his far; and no time must be lost In making mak-ing his decision. Once the snows came In reality, there was nothing to do but stay. Sev-rnty Sev-rnty miles across the uncharted ridges on snowshoee an nndertaklng for which even a mountaineer has no 1 fondness. It might be the wisest thing, ftv all, to load Snowbird and Dan young pines. Ho was surrounded hy broken fragments frag-ments of limbs, iind it was evident that tbe tree had not struck him a full hi ow. Tbe limbs had protected him to some extent. No man Is of such mold as to be crushed under the solid weight of the trunk and live to remember it. He wondered if this were the frontier of death the grey-ne-;s that lingered over him. He seemed to be searing. He brought himself hack to earth and tried again to remember. Of course, the twilight bad fallen. It hail been late afternoon when he had cut the tree. His hand stole along his body; and then, for the first time, a hideous sickness came upon him. His hand was warm and wet wt-en he brought It up. The other hnd he couldn't stretch at all. The forest was silent around him, except a bird calling somewhere near the house a full voice, rich and clear, and It seemed to him that It had a quality of distress. Then he recognized |