Realizing from the fact that he lacked the breath to curse how desperately near a collapse the fellow must be, I whipped up my own flagging energies with the idea of pushing on ahead to the cabin and getting a fire started and a pot of coffee boiling. Shouting to Carr to stand by to bring in the remains, I spurted on as fast as I could over the crust which was still far from rotted by the rain. I was a good three hundred yards ahead of my companions when I turned from the road to cross Obsidian Creek to the cabin. A glance back before I entered the trees revealed Wade reeling drunkenly from side to side, with Carr hovering near to catch him when he fell. A large fir log spanned the deep half-frozen pool beyond which stood the half-snow-buried cabin. The near bank was several feet higher than the far, so that the log sloped downward at a sharp angle. Since, on our outward trip, we had crossed successfully by coasting down the snow-covered top of the log, I assumed that the feat might be performed again, especially as I was far more adept of the ski now than then. But I failed to reckon on the softening the snow had undergone in the elapsed fortnight. Half-way over the whole right side of the slushy cap sliced off and let me flounder down into the waist-deep pool. Wade, so Carr says, seemed to sense instantly the meaning of the wild yell that surged up from the creek, and the realization of the glad fact that his tormentor had come a cropper at the log acted like a galvanic shock to revive his all-but-spent energies. I had just got my head above the slushy ice and started cutting loose my ski thongs when he appeared on the bank above. There was triumph in his fatigue-drawn visage, but no mirth. Such was the intensity of his eagerness to speak that for a few moments the gush of words jammed in his throat and throttled coherence. Then out it came, short, sharp and to the point. "Now, gol dern ye--what d'ye think o' God now?" was all he said. Then he kicked out of one of his ski and reached it down for me to climb out by. We did not, nor shall, resume the argument. The man is too terribly in earnest. He has the same spirit--with the reverse English on it, of course--that I had taken for granted had died with the early martyrs. Mammoth Hot Springs, April 25.