The solitary rider stood for a moment in silhouette against the somber sky-line, his keen eyes searching the lowering clouds.
"Getting its back up for a blizzard," he muttered to himself, as he touched his pony with the spur.
Dark, heavy billows banked in the west, piling over each other as they drove forward.Already the advance-guard had swept the sunlight from the earth, except for a flutter of it that still protested near the horizon.Scattering snowflakes were flying, and even in a few minutes the temperature had fallen many degrees.
The rider knew the signs of old.He recognized the sudden stealthy approach that transformed a sun-drenched, friendly plain into an unknown arctic waste.Not for nothing had he been last year one of a search-party to find the bodies of three miners frozen to death not fifty yards from their own cabin.He understood perfectly what it meant to be caught away from shelter when the driven white pall wiped out distance and direction; made long familiar landmarks strange, and numbed the will to a helpless surrender.The knowledge of it was spur enough to make him ride fast while he still retained the sense of direction.
But silently, steadily, the storm increased, and he was forced to slacken his pace.As the blinding snow grew thick, the sound of the wind deadened, unable to penetrate the dense white wall through which he forced his way.The world narrowed to a space whose boundaries he could touch with his extended hands.In this white mystery that wrapped him, nothing was left but stinging snow, bitter cold, and the silence of the dead.
So he thought one moment, and the next was almost flung by his swerving horse into a vehicle that blocked the road.Its blurred outlines presently resolved themselves into an automobile, crouched in the bottom of which was an inert huddle of humanity.
He shouted, forgetting that no voice could carry through the muffled scream of the storm.When he got no answer, he guided his horse close to the machine and reached down to snatch away the rug already heavy with snow.To his surprise, it was a girl's despairing face that looked up at him.
She tried to rise, but fell back, her muscles too numb to serve."Don't leave me," she implored, stretching her, arms toward him.He reached out and lifted her to his horse."Are you alone?""Yes.He went for help when the machine broke down--before the storm," she sobbed.He had to put his ear to her mouth to catch the words.
"Come, keep up your heart." There was that in his voice pealed like a trumpet-call to her courage.
"I'm freezing to death," she moaned.
She was exhausted and benumbed, her lips blue, her flesh gray.It was plain to him that she had reached the limit of endurance, that she was ready to sink into the last torpor.He ripped open his overcoat and shook the snow from it, then gathered her close so that she might get the warmth of his body.The rugs from the automobile he wrapped round them both.
"Courage!" he cried."There's a miner's cabin near.Don't give up, child."But his own courage was of the heart and will, not of the head.He had small hope of reaching the hut at the entrance of Dead Man's Gulch or, if he could struggle so far, of finding it in the white swirl that clutched at them.Near and far are words not coined for a blizzard.He might stagger past with safety only a dozen feet from him.He might lie down and die at the very threshold of the door.Or he might wander in an opposite direction and miss the cabin by a mile.
Yet it was not in the man to give up.He must stagger on till he could no longer stand.He must fight so long as life was in him.He must crawl forward, though his forlorn hope had vanished.And he did.When the worn-out horse slipped down and could not be coaxed to its feet again, he picked up the bundle of rugs and plowed forward blindly, soul and body racked, but teeth still set fast with the primal instinct never to give up.The intense cold of the air, thick with gray sifted ice, searched the warmth from his body and sapped his vitality.His numbed legs doubled under him like springs.He was down and up again a dozen times, but always the call of life drove him on, dragging his helpless burden with him.
That he did find the safety of the cabin in the end was due to no wisdom on his part.He had followed unconsciously the dip of the groundthat led him into the little draw where it had been built, and by sheer luck stumbled against it.His strength was gone, but the door gave to his weight, and he buckled across the threshold like a man helpless with drink.He dropped to the floor, ready to sink into a stupor, but he shook sleep from him and dragged himself to his feet.Presently his numb fingers found a match, a newspaper, and some wood.As soon as he had control over his hands, he fell to chafing hers.He slipped off her dainty shoes, pathetically inadequate for such an experience, and rubbed her feet back to feeling.She had been torpid, but when the blood began to circulate, she cried out in agony at the pain.
