“Do you remember,” said Nancy, as she and Beatrice viewed each other across a wilderness of overflowing trunks, half-unpacked boxes of bedding, baskets of china, and packages of groceries, “do you remember how that Englishman at your sorority dance used to talk about an affair like this as ‘settling in’? Settling wouldn’t be so hard, but settling in! Will all this stuff ever go inside this house?”

“I don’t know,” replied Beatrice abstractedly. “It will have to go in somehow. Surely we need everything that is here.”

She spoke absently, for the mention of the dance had brought a sudden flood of memories and of odd fancies. It had been the last one she had attended before the doctor’s verdict concerning Aunt Anna’s health, which had upset all their plans and driven them West. It must have been in another world, she thought, that evening at the country club with the moonlight coming in on the polished floor, with the whirling maze of colored dresses, the swinging music, and the soft sound of multitudes of sliding feet. She stepped out upon the stone doorstep, and looked down between the giant red trunks of the pine-trees down upon the white thread of road winding to the valley, upon the huddle of box-like houses, with the slow smoke rising from the blackened ruins in the midst.

A wave of panic seized her. Would she know how to manage affairs in this strange new world, this place of rugged, lonely peaks, pine-forested mountainsides, of narrow valleys filled with rioting men? Yet panic was followed by sudden exhilaration, born, perhaps, of the strange clearness of the thin air and the brilliance of the morning sunshine. She remembered the dance again, how she had been manager of it and how the evening had been full of congratulations on the success of her arrangements. Yet in the midst of it she had felt a vague discontent, a sudden wonder whether this was all the pleasure that life had to offer. Well, she thought now, with a long breath of fresh, sparkling air, if she could hold her own in that world, she could in this also, and she returned to her work.

Nancy, quite untroubled by any doubts or fancies, was plodding steadily ahead at the task in hand. It had been no hardship for her to arise early, explore the possibilities of the kitchen, concoct a breakfast out of such supplies as they had brought with them, and carry it in on a tray with a beaming and triumphant smile.

Aunt Anna seemed to have suffered little harm from the midnight flitting, and was sleeping late after the excitements of the night before. She had been made comfortable at once in the one room that was in tolerable order; for the girls had only to make up the couch with the bedding they had brought, to build a fire out of the pine cones that lay so thickly under the trees, and the apartment was ready for the invalid. Christina had taken charge of the place for the former occupants, and had left it very clean and in order. In the dry Montana air, no house, even when closed for months, grows damp, nor, in the clean pine woods, even very dusty. Aunt Anna had remained long awake, however; for, two hours later when it was almost dawn, Beatrice had stolen in and found her staring wide-eyed at the fire.

“Can I do anything for you? Aren’t you very tired?” the girl had asked, but her aunt only smiled and shook her head.

“I am very comfortable,” she said. “I think we are going to be very happy in this strange little house. I am glad you had the courage to bring me here, my child.”

Beatrice stood beside the bed and straightened the coverlid.

“Won’t you tell me why you wanted so much to stay?” she begged. “I wish I might know.”

Her aunt did not answer for a moment.

“I used to think,” she said at last, “that you might never know, but perhaps, since last night, I have changed my mind. Yes, whatever happens, I believe I will tell you, but not just now; for I am too weary to go through with such a thing. Move my pillow a little, my dear; I am going to sleep. The music of that waterfall would make anybody drowsy.”

Before they had finished breakfast, Christina had appeared, with Sam, heavy-laden, following her, bringing more of their things from the village.

“I just packed everything that I thought you would need and had Sam fetch it up,” said Christina. “No, you can’t go down to the town until things have quieted a little. There was fighting last night, and Dan O’Leary has been shot.”

“Just through the leg,” Sam reassured them, seeing Nancy’s horrified face. “Dan has been foreman of one of the ditching gangs, but he owns the livery-stable and one of the stores, so being a property holder makes him more careful than the rest. He’s hot-headed enough, though, and was leader of all the workmen until this fellow out of Russia, Thorvik, came to town. He goes Dan one better, and there is no knowing what he won’t stir up.”

“Is the strike going to last long?” Beatrice asked.

Sam chuckled.

“It’s not a strike; that’s just where the pinch is. While they were holding their meeting last night, and arguing about how soon they should quit, there comes word from the company that the work is shut down until further notice. Something has gone wrong with the money end of the business, people say, and there’s nothing to go on with. Anyway, there’s no strike; the men higher up beat them to it. Christina is right. The City of Ely is no place for young ladies to be going just now.”

He carried in the boxes and went down the path for more.

“There’s room in the shed for your horse, Miss Beatrice,” he announced, when he had made his last trip. “I can bring him up if you like, only you would have to take care of him yourself. We can haul up enough feed to keep him, and there’s some grazing land higher up the hill.”

Accordingly it was settled that Buck, also, was to be a part of their establishment, although Beatrice felt a little appalled at the prospect of taking care of a horse single-handed.

“Bless you, he’s that wise he can almost take care of himself,” Sam reassured her. “He’s a little light on his feet when you go to saddle him, but beyond that he hasn’t a fault. It will be a good thing to have a horse on the place.”

Toward noon the two girls, with Christina’s assistance, began to bring some order out of the confusion. The cabin possessed four rooms downstairs; the large living-room, into which the front door opened; the bedroom off it; the lean-to kitchen; and, wonder of wonders, a tiny bath-room with a shining white porcelain tub.

“Those engineers who used the place just settled down to make themselves comfortable,” Christina explained. “They put in the water-pipes themselves, and I’ll never forget the day they brought up that tub, packed on a mule. He bucked it off once and it slid down the hill until it caught between two pine-trees.”

The enterprising former tenants had also introduced electricity from the power plant of the nearest mine, so that the two most difficult housekeeping problems of water and light were thus already solved. The heavy table and straight clumsy chairs must also have been brought there by their predecessors, and the bunks in the two little rooms under the roof must have been their work. The men had evidently slept on pine branches; but for the girls Sam brought mattresses from the house in the village and a comfortable bed for Aunt Anna.

“Now,” said Nancy at last, “we have everything we need except milk and eggs.”

“I believe,” said Christina, who was scrubbing the big table, “that over at John Herrick’s—he’s your nearest neighbor—they could spare you what milk and eggs you want. I know they have a cow and that his girl, Hester, makes a great deal of her chickens!”

Neighbors! Beatrice had forgotten that house, nearly hidden by the shoulder of the mountain, but visible from the trail below. There was a girl there, too, perhaps of their own age. She was eager to go and investigate at once and scarcely waited to hear how to find the way.

It was a long walk down to the road beyond the bars and then up the hill to the next house. Beatrice realized, as she tramped along, that distances are deceitful in high altitudes and that the presence of Buck would be a great convenience. The house, when she reached it, was even larger than she had thought—a long, low dwelling, with a row of sheds and stables and an enclosed corral! She had just reached the front steps when she saw the door fly open and a brown-haired girl, with very bright, dancing eyes, come running out in a flutter of dark curls and flying blue and white skirts.

“Oh, oh!” cried Hester Herrick, grasping Beatrice’s hand in her cordial brown one. “I thought there was smoke in your chimney and I couldn’t wait to know who was living in the cabin. To have neighbors—you can’t think what it means on this mountain! Come in, come in.”

To Beatrice, who had observed with some distaste the flimsy houses of the village, the sagging board walks and streets full of ruts and boulders, this place was a delightful surprise, with its air of spruce neatness and picturesque charm. She liked the outside of the building, the pointed gables and wide eaves; but, as Hester conducted her within, she gave a little gasp of wonder, for the house was really beautiful inside. Beauty in a house, to her, had always meant shining white woodwork, softly colored rugs, and polished mahogany, but there was nothing of all that here. The low room with its windows opening toward the distant mountains, was full of rich colors, the dull red of the unceiled pine walls and bookcases, the odd browns and yellows in the bearskin rugs, the clear flame-color of the bowl of wild lilies that stood on the broad window-sill. Hester seated her guest in the corner of a huge comfortable couch and sat down beside her with a smile of broad satisfaction.

It was difficult to bring up such a prosaic subject as milk and eggs in such pleasant surroundings; but when that had been disposed of, the two were soon chattering as though they had known each other for years.

“Yes,” commented Hester, nodding sagely, as she heard the tale of their departure for the cabin on the hill, “there is going to be real trouble in Ely, so Roddy says, and he won’t let me go down there just now. How glad I am that you didn’t go away!”

Beatrice’s eyes had been roving about the room, observing the white birch log on the hearth, the tawny-orange shade of the homespun curtains, and even the pictures on the wall.

“Why,” she exclaimed, her glance arrested by a photograph hanging near the window, “we have that same picture at home, in my father’s study. It is of the school where he used to go.”

Hester looked up at the vine-covered archway showing a tree-lined walk beyond.

“I don’t know where Roddy got it,” she said. “It has always been there, over his desk, for as long as I can remember.”

“Who is Roddy, your brother?” Beatrice asked.

“No, he is my—my sort of father, but not really. He is too young to be my father, I suppose. He adopted me when I was very little. His name is John Rodman Herrick, so, as he’s only fifteen years older, I call him Roddy. I can’t remember when I didn’t live in this house with him, and with old Julia and her husband Tim, to do the work for us. There is Roddy now.”

The stride of heavy boots sounded along the veranda, and a man came in, a handsome vigorous person who, as Hester had said, looked too young to be her father. Nor were they the least alike in appearance, since he was very fair, with thick, light hair and blue eyes that contrasted oddly with his very sunburnt skin. He wore ordinary riding clothes, but seemed to carry an air of distinction in his clean-cut profile and straight shoulders.

He listened to Hester’s rather confused account of Beatrice’s arrival and shook hands with her gravely.

“Are you going to be comfortable in the cabin?” he asked. “Who is helping you get settled?”

“There is a Finnish woman who is doing everything for us,” Beatrice told him. “I have never seen any one who worked so hard.”

She told how she had first met Christina in the wood, and what gratitude and assistance the woman had given them later.

“Poor Christina, she can never put that boy out of her mind,” John Herrick said. “He was a good fellow, Olaf Jensen, and I have missed him since he left Ely. He was always in some mischief or other and his last escapade before he went to sea came near to being serious. There are still men in the village telling what they will do to him when he comes back.”

“What was it he did?” Beatrice asked.

John Herrick began to laugh.

“Olaf was working with one of our ditching gangs, and a good workman he was. Suddenly, one day while they were digging near the river, Olaf pointed to a high rock opposite, called Mason’s Bluff, a well-known and dangerous place. There seemed to be a man hanging by a rope halfway down the face of it, unable, apparently, to get either up or down. The laborers didn’t take much interest—said any one was a fool who would try such a climb; and not one of them would budge an inch to help him. Then Olaf remarked casually, ‘It must be that scientist fellow who was in our camp yesterday. Do you remember that rich tenderfoot who went around spending money and tapping rocks?’ Every man dropped his tools, for if there is a chance for a reward these Bohunks are on the job at once. You should have seen them scurrying down to the river, getting across any way they could, and running like rabbits through the brush, each one determined to be first on the spot.”

“And did they save him?” Beatrice inquired eagerly.

“The first ones were within a hundred yards when the man fell.”

She gasped, but he went on with a dry chuckle.

“They went nearer to pick him up and found he was a dummy man, stuffed with straw. Then they remembered that Olaf had been laughing at them for being willing to do anything for money and nothing without it, and they came back to camp vowing to have his blood. Even I was surprised at what an ugly temper they showed, but Olaf was wise enough to know how they would feel, and when they came back he was gone. Probably he meant to go anyway and wanted to have one final fling.”

Beatrice, glancing at the clock, was horrified to see how long she had stayed and rose at once to go. Both her new friends came to the door with her.

“By the way,” said John Herrick as Beatrice stood on the step below, “my Hester is too informal a person for introductions, and she has not even told me your name. Indeed, I doubt if she knows it herself. Won’t you tell us who you are and who is at the cabin with you?”

What a cordial, friendly smile, he had, Beatrice thought, and how it lighted his brown face!

“My Aunt Anna and my sister Nancy are at the cottage with me,” she said. “The place is mine; my father gave it to me. My name is Beatrice Deems.”

Never had she seen a countenance change so abruptly as did John Herrick’s as he turned suddenly and went into the house, leaving Hester to say her good-bys alone.

It was at the end of a very laborious but satisfactory day that Nancy came up to her sister’s room to find Beatrice writing at the rough pine table.

“Everything is in order, and Christina and Sam have just gone,” said Nancy. “There wasn’t anything more you wanted them to do, was there?”

“Oh, I wanted them to mail my letters,” exclaimed Beatrice, seizing her envelopes and jumping up. “It took me so long to write everything to dad that I only just finished this one that I promised Christina for her boy, Olaf. Perhaps I can catch Sam at the gate.”

She sped down the path through the pines and was able to overtake Christina and Sam where they had paused to put up the bars. Beatrice was just explaining to the Finnish woman what she had written, when a heavy slouching figure came up the road through the shadows and Thorvik, in his broken English, addressed his sister roughly.

“You spend the whole day here—spend the night too? I have not yet my supper!”

It was evident that he wished Beatrice, also, to know of his displeasure, or he would have used his own tongue. He grasped Christina angrily by the arm and shot the girl a scowling glance of such fierce enmity that involuntarily she shrank back behind the gate. It was difficult, under that frowning scrutiny, to hand the two letters to Sam,—the more so since Christina eyed one of the envelopes with such nervous apprehension. Even a duller eye than Thorvik’s might have noted that the letter was of special importance to her.

The sullen animosity deepened on the man’s face.

“You make nothing more with my sister; see?” he said, as he led Christina away.

Sam nodded a subdued good night, clucked low-spiritedly to his horses, and drove slowly after the two. Even his unquenched cheerfulness seemed affected by instinctive dread of Thorvik’s sour ill-temper. Nor was it with a very cheerful heart that Beatrice walked back alone up the path. It rendered her task of living by no means easier to realize that she had made an enemy of such a man as Thorvik. Yet the light from her cabin, shining small and yellow beneath the giant pines, seemed somehow to rekindle her failing courage. Those two dearly loved people were there within, Nancy and Aunt Anna. Surely the way would be shown to her to care for them and keep them safe.