storm
could last, how appalling the cold could become. What should he do? He
must think and act swiftly. That gleaming water near which his camp
lay was, at the very best going, two hours distant. The blizzard might
strike at any moment and once it struck all hope of advance would be
cut off. He resolved to seek the best cover available and wait till the
storm should pass. He had his deer meat with him and matches. Could he
but make shelter he doubted not but he could weather the storm. Swiftly
he swept the landscape for a spot to camp. Half a mile away he spied a
little coulee where several valleys appeared to lose themselves in thick
underbrush. He resolved to make for that spot. Hurriedly he slipped down
the tree, donned belt and jacket and, picking up gun and venison, set
off at a run for the spot he had selected. A puff of wind touched his
cheek. He glanced up and about him. The flakes of snow were no longer
floating gently down, but were slanting in long straight lines across
the landscape. His heart took a quicker beat.

"It is coming, sure enough," he said to himself between his teeth, "and
a bad one too at that." He quickened his pace to racing speed. Down the
hill, across the valley and up the next slope he ran without pause,
but as he reached the top of the slope a sound arrested him, a deep,
muffled, hissing roar, and mingled with it the beating of a thousand
wings. Beyond the top of the next hill there hung from sky to earth
the curtain, thick, black, portentous, and swiftly making approach,
devouring the landscape as it came and filling his ears with its
muffled, hissing roar.

In the coulee beyond that hill was the spot he had marked for his
shelter. It was still some three hundred yards away. Could he beat that
roaring, hissing, portentous cloud mass? It was extremely doubtful. Down
the hill he ran, slipping, skating, pitching, till he struck the bottom,
then up the opposite slope he struggled, straining every nerve and
muscle. He glanced upward towards the top of the hill. Merciful heaven!
There it was, that portentous cloud mass, roaring down upon him. Could
he ever make that top? He ran a few steps further, then, dropping his
gun, he clutched a small poplar and hung fast. A driving, blinding,
choking, whirling mass of whiteness hurled itself at him, buffeting him
heavily, filling eyes, ears, nose, and mouth, clutching at his arms and
legs and body with a thousand impalpable insistent claws. For a mo