Page:Lost Ecstasy (1927).pdf/155

 After a while she got up. Tom had made coffee but she would not touch it. She went to the window and stood staring out at the falling snow.

"I can't leave him here," she said, without turning. "We've got to get him back somehow."

They knew what she meant. If the snow kept on soon the roads would be closed entirely, and they would have tr bury him there. And every hour counted. There might not be time even to send for the body; they would have to take it along.

Tom went with them, supporting Jake in the rear of the car. Mrs. Mallory sat in front, and not once did she turn around. She sat staring ahead of her, thinking of God knows what; remembering, no doubt, after the fashion of women at such times, the small contentions, the missed affections of all those years; blaming herself; looking back. Looking back.

When the funeral was over Tom went back to the cabin. There was nothing else to do. The stock required some sort of supervision. He carried back with him tar-paper to line the shack, groceries, what not. But his heart was heavy. One thing he did at once on his return. He took the half emptied pint of whisky the doctor had left, and put it out of sight on a rafter.

"Now," he said grimly to himself, "we'll see how much of a man you are, Tom McNair."

He never touched it. There were times later on when he came in, frozen to the bone, and looked up at the rafter with eyes almost swollen shut with snow blindness and the hard cold winds; once he even drew a chair under it. But he flung the chair away violently, and made himself some hot coffee instead.

The days were not so bad. He rode out, examining the fences, cutting water holes in the creek with an ax. Before his death Jake had leased some additional land, and the cattle fed along the bare ridges where the wind had blown the snow away. But the nights were terrible.

There were times, sitting by his fire, when he seemed to