The cold that dried the new-fallen snow to powder sent the mercury down until it broke all records.
While the improvident did, indeed, wonder what they had done with their summer wages, the thrifty contemplated their piles of wood and their winter vegetables with a strong feeling of satisfaction.
Speaking colloquially, the Toomeys were "ga'nted considerably," and in their usual state of semistarvation, but were in no immediate danger of freezing, owing to the fact that Toomey had succeeded in exchanging a mounted deer head for four tons of local coal mined from a "surface blossom," which was being exploited by the Grit as one of the country's resources.
Vastly delighted with his bargain, until he discovered that he no sooner had arrived from the coalhouse with a bucket of coal than it was necessary for him to make a return trip with a bucket of ashes, Toomey now hurled anathemas upon the embryo coal baron. It was not empty verbiage when he asserted that, by spring, at the rate he was wearing a trench to the ash can, nothing but the top of his head would be visible.
Mrs. Toomey, however, was grateful, for she felt that if there was one thing worse than being hungry it was being cold, so she stoked the kitchen range with a free hand and luxuriated in the warmth though it necessitated frequent trips outside in Toomey's absence.
Mrs. Toomey was returning from the ash can when she saw Mormon Joe going into his shack on the diagonal corner. She slackened her trot to a walk and watched while he unlocked the door, as though to read from his back something of his intentions in regard to the loan Kate had promised so confidently.
It had seemed too good to be realized, so she had not told Jap of their meeting. She must not count on it, however--she had been disappointed so often that she dreaded the feeling. Ugh! What frightful cold! Mrs. Toomey ran into the house and forgot the incident.
Later in the afternoon Toomey came home in high spirits.
"They got in!" he announced. "I hardly thought they'd start, such weather. It's twenty-five below now and getting colder."
"Who?" inquired Mrs. Toomey, absently.
"The show people."
"Oh, did they?"
"Might as well take it in, mightn't we?" in feigned indifference.
"How can we? It's a dollar a ticket, isn't it?"
For answer he produced two strips of pink pasteboard from his waistcoat pocket.
"Jap?" wonderingly.
"Yes'm."
"Where did you get the money?"
"I raised it."
"But how?"
He hesitated, looking sheepish.
"On the range."
Mrs. Toomey sat down weakly.