added fuel to my fire, put on the coffeepot; and commenced to study out the situation. There might be some way of getting out that I'd overlooked.
With daylight, the first thing would be to find and kill a deer or two. As long as the cold held I'd not have to worry about the meat spoiling. 'Dawn came under a sky of cold gray clouds. I went out and started to hunt for a deer. The appaloosa moved to the edge of the ice that sparkled the grass and began to paw at it to get at the grass. He was a Montana horse and used to such.
Shortly before noon I found a buck.
nightfall it was colder, if anything. I'd butchered my deer and hung the meat up. I'd skinned properly and saved the hide. If I was here for the winter I was going to need as many such hides as I could get. And all the game I would have a chance at was right there in the valley now.
Huddled in my blankets, I sat over the fire all night long. I was going to have to wall up the mouth of that cave. The wind crept in there, fluttered my fire, and brought the cold with it. The morning broke with the flat gray clouds still shielding the sun, the wind knife-edged and raw, the glassy branches shaking slightly, clashing one against the other like skeleton arms.
The horses tugged woefully at the frozen grass, and the ice cut their lips until they came to me, whimpering. Down by the stream where the grass grew taller, I shattered the ice and cut the grass to take back to them.
This could not go on. Somehow I was going to have to get down the mountain. I wanted to take the horses with me if it could be done. Yet I knew it could not. ... And without me in this high valley they would die.
That night I broiled a venison steak, and ate it, hunched over the fire, cutting it in strips to handle it better.
Snow fell that night, and when day came one of my pack horses was down with a broken leg. The shot that killed him echoed down the ice-choked valley.
Through lightly falling snow, I went down the valley to the chute. The stream was frozen over, and the chute was a solid mass of ice. The water had risen still more, and the ledge down which the trail wound was now under several feet of water. To get out by that route was out of the question. Ange had lasted out a winter up here with her grandfather. How had they done it?
Their cave was bigger and better sheltered, and there was a lifetime of firewood in the huge old logs that lay among the boulders . . . but could I get down the trail to the bottom?
Could I even get to the canyon? Up where the bristlecone pines grew the wind had a full sweep, and it would be even colder than here. The trail, if I could reach it, was five hundred feet down a sheer face that was probably sheeted in ice.
That would be a last resort. For the time being I would remain where I was and try to last out the storm.
Taking the shovel, I went out and knocked more ice from the grass to give the horses a fighting chance. They knew how to get at it themselves, but the ice roughed up their lips and bloodied
their hocks. The snow kept falling, covering the ice with a mantle, making the ice all the more dangerous. Suddenly the appaloosa's head came up sharply and his ears pricked.
I got out my Winchester. Nothing moved within the limited area I could see through the drifting snow. Listening, I could hear nothing.
Walking with extreme care, I went to the willows at the edge of the creek and cut several long slender lengths which I carried back to the cave and placed on the floor not too close to the fire.
Always, on the range, I carried with me a bundle of rawhide strips, most of them 'piggin strings' for tying the legs of cattle when branding. Every cowhand carried some for emergencies on the range. And I was going to have a use for them now. 1 The horses showed no tendency to wander, but remained close to the cave. All through the morning and into the afternoon I kept busy reducing the rest of the quartz to gold I could pack out.
When the willow strips were pliable again, I took each of them and bent them into an oval and tied them, selecting the two best ovals to keep. Then with the rawhide strips tied across them, I made rough snowshoes.
Before nightfall I took the rifle, strapped on the snowshoes, and went out to give them a test run. They were not the first pair I had made, and they worked well. Trailing down the valley toward the chute, I saw it was rapidly choking with snow over the ice. Escape by that route was completely out of the question.
I circled around, and ventured toward the valley of Ange's cave. When almost to the bare shoulder where the bristle-cone pines grew, I turned back to reach my cave before dark. It was at that moment that I heard the shot.
Stunned with the shock, I stood stock-still listening to the echo of it racketing against the solemn hills.
The echo lost itself against the snow-clad hillsides and I remained still, shivering a little in the cold, alone in a vast world of sky and snow, scarcely willing to accept what my ears had heard.
A shot... here!
It had come from the canyon below. Someone was down there! Someone was at or near Ange's cave.
Here? In this place?
Chapter XIII
A sudden crack of ice . . . the breaking of a tree laden with snow? . . . No. This had been a , clear, sharp, unmistakable.
said, you ain't... aren't... alone. Who knew of the cave below? Or of the valley? Ange, so far as I knew. Cap knew what I'd told him, but Cap couldn't have made it up there if I'd given exact directions, which I hadn't. His hold on life was still too weak.
-Ange . . . ? That was mighty foolish to consider. She had no reason for coming up. Whoever had been following me down below? Could they have found some way into that valley? that seemed the most likely.
If I started for the canyon now it would be full dark before I got there, and I'd see nothing anyway. The thing to do would be to go back to the mine and hole up there until daybreak. One thing was a copper-riveted cinch. If those were in the canyon they were snowed in like I was, and, unless I was much mistaken, they were a lot less able to cope with it.
