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notion you’ve got. It’s durned bad. Look here!” He pointed steadily out of doors until we were both forced to follow his finger. “You’re in here for more’n a week yet.” After allowing this fact to sink in, he barked out at Ross: “Can you cook?” Then at me: “Can you cook?” Then he looked at the wreck of Étienne and sniffed.

There was an embarrassing silence as Ross and I thought solemnly of a foodless week.

“If you just use hoss sense,” concluded George, “and don’t go for to hurt my feelin’s, all I want to do is to take this young gal down to Hicksville; and then I’ll head back here and cook fer you.”

The horse and Miss Adams arrived simultaneously, both of them very serious and quiet. The horse because he knew what he had before him in that weather; the girl because of what she had left behind.

Then all at once I awoke to a realization of what the cook was doing. “My God, man!” I cried, “aren’t you afraid to go out in that snow?”

Behind my back I heard Ross mutter, “Not him.”

George lifted the girl daintily up behind the saddle, drew on his gloves, put his foot in the stirrup, and turned to inspect me leisurely.

As I passed slowly in his review, I saw in my mind’s eye the algebraic equation of Snow, the equals sign, and the answer in the man before me. “Snow is my last name,” said George. He swung into the saddle and they started cautiously out into the darkening swirl of fresh new currency just issuing