Page:Resurrection Rock (1920).pdf/33

 done, became more and more infrequent. The train puffed past burnt-over ground with the black tops of stumps protruding from the snow or through bare-boughed forests of second growth through which the morning sun glared down, dazzling and glistening. Huge, blue shadows denoted the survival of clumps of pine and the regrowth of cedar.

"Quesnel!" the brakeman called when next he opened the car door, and Ethel stood up, buttoning her coat close to her throat. The dark-haired young man looked about interrogatively; she nodded, and he arose and also prepared to go out. When she stooped for her bag, he came quickly down the aisle and took the bag from her. The train halted beside a platform heaped high with snow and with a shelter shed in the middle from which white streaks of wood smoke wafted in the morning air.

They stepped down upon the platform, and the train immediately puffed on. No one else had left the cars at Quesnel; and no one had got on. There seemed to be no one at the station just now except a middle-aged Indian man in mackinaw coat and cap and with brown leggings who stepped from the shelter, carrying a pair of skis and with another pair, smaller and newer, strapped to his back.

"B'jou," he said to Ethel.

"Good morning, Asa," she hailed, offering her gloved hand. "Every one well at St. Florentin?"

"Everybody," the Indian asserted. Big snow last night again. Nobody breaks road yet." He was explaining his appearance with the skis. "Sam perhaps try to go to Rest Cabin with team later, maybe. Got to walk from here now." His eyes shifted from her to the stranger.