nly the chill wind of
the north, and rode forward across the desolate snow fields. It was no
boys' play! The tough, half-broken Indian ponies kept steady stride,
leaping the drifts, skimming rapidly along the bare hillsides. From
dawn to dark scarcely a word was uttered. By turns they slept in the
saddle, the one awake gripping the others' rein. Once, in a strip of
cottonwood, beside a frozen creek, they paused to light a fire and make
a hasty meal. Then they were off again, facing the frosty air, riding
straight into the north. Before them stretched the barren snow-clad
steppes, forlorn and shelterless, with scarcely a mark of guidance
anywhere, a dismal wilderness, intersected by gloomy ravines and frozen
creeks. Here and there a river, the water icy cold and covered with
floating ice, barred their passage; down in the valleys the drifted
snow turned them aside. Again and again the struggling ponies
floundered to their ears, or slid head-long down some steep declivity.
Twice Hamlin was thrown, and once the Osage was crushed between
floating cakes and submerged in the icy stream. Across the open
barrens swept the wind into their faces, a ceaseless buffeting,
chilling to the marrow; their eyes burned in the snow-glare. Yet they
rode on and on, voiceless, suffering in the grim silence of despair,
fit denizens of that scene of utter desolation.

At the Cimarron the half-frozen Indian collapsed, falling from his
saddle into the snow utterly exhausted. Staggering himself like a
drunken man, the Sergeant dragged the nerveless body into a crevice of
the bluff out of the wild sweep of the wind, trampled aside the snow
into a wall of shelter, built a hasty fire, and poured hot coffee
between the shivering lips. With the earliest gray of another dawn,
the white man caught the strongest pony, and rode on alone. He never
knew the story of those hours--only that his trail led straight into
the north. He rode erect at first, then leaning forward clinging to
the mane; now and then he staggered along on foot dragging his pony by
the rein. Once he stopped to eat, breaking the ice in a creek for
water. It began to snow, the thick fall of flakes blotting out the
horizon, leaving him to stumble blindly through the murk. Then
darkness came, wrapping him in a cloak of silence in the midst of that
unspeakable desert. His limbs stiffened, his brain reeled from intense
fatigue. He dragged himself back into the saddle, press