Perhaps thirty men rode in the Lost Chief crowd. The work was more or less solitary by day, but at night over the camp-fires, there was society enough. Douglas enjoyed it all to the very tips of his being. He was coming now into the great strength that belonged to his height and could do his full share of the heavy work. He had thought that, rolled in his blankets, under the stars, he would find inspiration that would help him solve the problem of life. But long before the camp-fire was low, he would drop into slumber that ended only when his father shook him at dawn. When the round-up reached the plains, the women set up a camp kitchen and served hot meals. The weather this year held clear to the last day, when a blizzard swept down from Dead Line Peak and the last of the cutting out was finished in blinding snow. Douglas and John, after putting the last of their yearlings into the cut over fields, staggered into the warm ranch kitchen half-perished with the cold. CHAPTER X WILD HORSES "If I could believe in God and a heaven I'd ask nothing more of life except a good-saddle-horse." _--Charleton's Wife_. And so another long winter was upon Lost Chief. It was much like other winters for Douglas except for the fact that he began systematically to trap for pelts. It was a heavy winter and game was plentiful, with pelts of exceptionally fine quality for which there was a good market in St. Louis. Douglas worked hard and began the accumulation of a sum of money which he planned to use eventually to start his own ranch on the old Douglas section, which was to be his when he came of age. But although to the young rider the money earned seemed the main aspect of the winter's work, the important result really lay in the deepening it gave to his appreciation of the beauty and mystery of this mountain valley. Lost Chief was lovely in the summer with its crystal glory of color on hill and plain. But Lost Chief in winter was awe-inspiring in its naked splendor. Dead Line Peak and Falkner's Peak, barren save for the great blue snows and for the black shadows that crept up and down their tremendous flanks, were separated from each other by a long, narrow, slowly rising valley. Down this valley rushed a tiny brook whose murmur the bitterest weather could not quite still. Along this brook grew quivering aspens, and beside it coyotes kept open a little trail. Along this trail, Doug set his traps, as well as up on the wall of the mountains where lynx-cats and wolverine were hid.