Cook worked it out. If he got to the tunnel and McEwan wasn’t there, then the men would most likely finish the broth before he could get back and serve him a bowl. He should check now, and if McEwan was indeed sitting brooding in his spartan quarters at least he would have first shout at the soup. The man must be starving. Plus, he was the man who hired and fired, and the pragmatist in him knew it was worth keeping him sweet.

Saul scooped up a tin plate from the stack waiting for their cold sled ride, and filled it with broth. He broke off a piece of the coarse unleavened bread he’d made yesterday and dropped it in the plate, and with his free hand put a spoon in his pocket and placed a cloth over the dish to keep the snow out of his creation.

He opened the door and stepped out to make a dash through the snow to McEwan’s cabin, which lay about fifty yards away between a clump of lodgepole pines. Cursing the thickness of the falling snow, the cook tried to hurry without spilling his steaming burden. The cabins all sported brownish stamped areas of ice surrounding the doors, where the men came and went, foiling the snow’s attempts to cover their tracks. Off the main pathway between the wooden structures, McEwan’s snow had won. The thick, unbroken wall of snow covering the track that led to his door suggested he had not left his hut since yesterday, although a glance at the smokeless chimney seemed to imply he was absent altogether.

Saul waded through the drift, soaking his thin cotton pants to the thigh, and kicked on the door with his foot.

‘Mr McEwan. It’s Cook with some broth.’

There was no reply.

‘Mr McEwan. May I come in?’

Nothing. Obviously he wasn’t there. All the signs said he wasn’t there. Saul turned to go back, and then stopped. What if McEwan were ill and no one had checked? Everyone would simply assume he was somewhere else. The man was forever striding out in his snowshoes to the head of the pass like a scout, to see if the lines were showing any sign of clearing, or visiting the tunnel at dusk when the men had stopped work.

He could be in the cabin, weak and cold in bed, waiting for someone to come and tend him and re-light his stove.

Saul sighed, put the broth on the snow bank and pulled down the latch on the door. It swung open and he held it there with his foot while he bent to pick up the tin plate.