t, shivering in the bitter northwest wind that
assailed their bare, unprotected bodies.

Bill himself drew back from the fire, and stared at it fixedly. He
kept silence until Hazel timidly put her hand on his arm.

"You watched that fire all right, didn't you?" he said then.

"Bill, Bill!" she cried. But he merely shrugged his shoulders, and
kept his gaze fixed on the burning stable.

To Hazel, shivering with the cold, even close as she was to the intense
heat, it seemed an incredibly short time till a glowing mound below the
snow level was all that remained; a black-edged pit that belched smoke
and sparks. That and five horses humped tail to the driving wind,
stolidly enduring. She shuddered with something besides the cold. And
then Bill spoke absently, his eyes still on the smoldering heap.

"Five feet of caked snow on top of every blade of grass," she heard him
mutter. "They can't browse on trees, like deer. Aw, hell!"

He had stuck his rifle butt first in the snow. He walked over to it;
Hazel followed. When he stood, with the rifle slung in the crook of
his arm, she tried again to break through this silent aloofness which
cut her more deeply than any harshness of speech could have done.

"Bill, I'm so sorry!" she pleaded. "It's terrible, I know. What can
we do?"

"Do? Huh!" he snorted. "If I ever have to die before my time, I hope
it will be with a full belly and my head in the air--and mercifully
swift."

Even then she had no clear idea of his intention. She looked up at him
pleadingly, but he was staring at the horses, his teeth biting
nervously at his under lip. Suddenly he blinked, and she saw his eyes
moisten. In the same instant he threw up the rifle. At the thin,
vicious crack of it, Silk collapsed.

She understood then. With her hand pressed hard over her mouth to keep
back the hysterical scream that threatened, she fled to the house.
Behind her the rifle spat forth its staccato message of death. For a
few seconds the mountains flung whiplike echoes back and forth in a
volley. Then the sibilant voice of the wind alone broke the stillness.

Numbed with the cold, terrified at the elemental ruthlessness of it
all, she threw herself on the bed, denied even the relief of tears.
Dry-eyed and heavy-hearted, she waited her husband's coming, and
dreading it--for the first time she had seen her Bill look on her with
cold, critical anger. For an interminable time she lay listening for