getting them to their posts again. They had been there two
hours, and the cold was almost insupportable.

"I guess it's no use," said Allonby. "As soon as we have gone on every boy
will be back behind his tree, and I don't know that anybody could blame
them. Any way I'm 'most too cold for talking."

They went back together, and, while the cow-boys, who did as Allonby had
predicted, slowly froze among the trees, rolled themselves in the
sleigh-robes and huddled together. It was blowing strongly now, and a
numbing drowsiness had to be grappled with as the warmth died out of them.
At last when a few feathery flakes came floating down, the Sheriff shook
himself with a sleepy groan.

"There is not a man living who could keep me here more than another
quarter of an hour," he said. "Are the boys on the look-out by the trail,
Allonby?"

"They were," said the lad drowsily. "I don't know if they're there now,
and it isn't likely. Clavering can go and make sure if he likes to, but if
anyone wants me to get up, he will have to lift me."

Neither Clavering nor the Sheriff appeared disposed to move, and it was
evident that both had abandoned all hope of seeing Larry Grant that night.
Ten minutes that seemed interminable passed, and the white flakes that
whirled about them grew thicker between the gusts and came down in a
bewildering rush. The Sheriff shook the furs off him and stood up with a
groan.

"Tell them to bring the horses. I have had quite enough," he said.

Allonby staggered to his feet, and reeled into the wood. There was a
hoarse shouting, and a trampling of hoofs that was drowned in a roar of
wind, and when that slackened a moment a faint cry went up.

"Hallo!" said the Sheriff; "he's coming."

Then, nobody quite remembered what he did. Here and there a man struggled
with a plunging horse in the darkness of the wood, and one or two
blundered into each other and fell against the trunks as they ran on foot.
They were dazed with cold, and the snow, that seemed to cut their cheeks,
was in their eyes.

Allonby, however, saw that Clavering was mounted, and the horse he rode
apparently going round and round with him, while by and by he found
himself in the saddle. He was leaning low over the horse's neck, with one
moccasined foot in the stirrup and the other hanging loose, while the
branches lashed at him, when something dark and shapeless came flying down
the trail.

He heard a hoarse shout and a rifle flashed, b