"How old are you?" she asked suddenly.

He stirred in his seat nervously. "Why, fifty, about," he answered with
confusion.

"Then you'll be wise not to go looking for anniversaries in blizzards,
when they're few at the best," she said with a gentle and dangerous
smile.

"Fifty-why, I'm as young as most men of thirty," he responded with an
uncertain laugh. "I'd have come here to-day if it had been snowing
pitchforks and chain-lightning. I made up my mind I would. You saved my
life, that's dead sure; and I'd be down among the: moles if it wasn't for
you and that Piegan pony of yours. Piegan ponies are wonders in a storm-
seem to know their way by instinct. You, too--why, I bin on the plains
all my life, and was no better than a baby that day; but you--why, you
had Piegan in you, why, yes--"

He stopped short for a moment, checked by the look in her face, then went
blindly on: "And you've got Blackfoot in you, too; and you just felt your
way through the tornado and over the blind prairie like a, bird reaching
for the hills. It was as easy to you as picking out a moverick in a
bunch of steers to me. But I never could make out what you was doing on
the prairie that terrible day. I've thought of it a hundred times. What
was you doing, if it ain't cheek to ask?"

"I was trying to lose a life," she answered quietly, her eyes dwelling
on his face, yet not seeing him; for it all came back on her, the agony
which had driven her out into the tempest to be lost evermore.