CHAPTER 3. ONE TO ONE

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.