er weather upon the high-piled
serrations of white, at last to cease. The sun had faded on the
afternoon of the second day. The thaw stopped. The snowshoes soon
carried a new crunching sound that gradually became softer, more
muffled. For the clouds had come again, the wind had risen with a
fiercer bite than ever in it; again the snow was falling. But the grim
little army of rescuers, plodding from one ranchhouse to another, had
less of worriment in their features now,--even though the situation was
no less tense, no less dangerous. At least the meager stores of the
small merchandise establishment in Tabernacle could be distributed with
more ease; a two-inch crust of snow had formed over the main snowfall,
permitting small sleds to be pulled behind struggling men; the world
beneath had been frozen in, to give place to a new one above. And with
that:

"It's open! It's open!" The shout came from the lips of the
telegrapher, waving his arms as he ran from the tunnel that led to the
stationhouse. "It's open! I've had Rawlins on the wire!"

Men crowded about him and thumped into the little box car to listen,
like children, to the rattling of the telegraph key,--as though they
never had heard one before. So soon does civilization feel the need of
its inventions, once they are taken away; so soon does the mind become
primitive, once the rest of the world has been shut away from it.
Eagerly they clustered there, staring with anxious eyes toward the
operator as he hammered at the key, talking in whispers lest they
disturb him, waiting for his interpretation of the message, like
worshippers waiting for the word of an oracle.

"I'm putting it all on the wire!" he announced at last, with feverish
intensity. "I'm telling 'em just how it is over here. Maybe they can
do something--from Rawlins."

"Rawlins?" Houston had edged forward. "There's not a chance. It's
hundreds of miles away; they can't use horses, and they certainly can't
walk. Wait--will you give me a chance at something?"

A gleam had come into his eyes. His hands twisted nervously. Voices
mumbled about him; suddenly the great hands of Ba'tiste grasped him by
the shoulders and literally tossed him toward the telegrapher.

"Ah, _oui_! If eet is the idea--then speak it."

"Go on--" the telegrapher had stopped his key for a moment--"I'll put
it through, if it'll help."

"All right. Get Denver on the wire. Then take this message to every
newspa