From such as these sprang this boy, deaf and dumb from his birth. His father and his uncle were among the best herders in the state, and from a child he had been used to the rough life of a sheep camp. Deficient as he was in two vital senses, the remaining ones had been developed until his ability to grasp and understand things about him seemed almost uncanny. It was this knowledge of the boy's breeding and peculiarities that made Stanley feel he would take the best possible care of the sheep left in his charge. When Dummy opened his eyes the next morning, the air was so full of snow driving before a fifty-mile gale that he could not see a hundred feet from camp. He cooked his breakfast, fed Slippers the last of the grain, and waited for the storm to break, realizing that until it did it would be folly to leave the shelter of the cliffs. The sheep were getting restless and hungry and occasionally small bunches drifted out into the storm in search of feed, but after buffeting with the wind for a few moments were glad to come back. About noon there came a lull in the gale and the snow came straight down almost in clouds. The sheep were uneasy over the change, and even Slippers seemed to sense some new danger. Suddenly with a roar the wind swept upon them from a new direction so that they were now exposed to its full fury, whereas, before, they had been sheltered by the cliffs. The sheep tried to face it, but the fierce wind was too much for them, and they slowly drifted before the gale across the snow-covered range. All that day Dummy struggled along behind the herd tired, cold, hungry, and almost blinded by the frozen tears, leading the pack horse lest he lose him. As for controlling the movements of the sheep, he did nothing for they could travel in but one direction, and that was away from the arctic blast which grew in strength as the day wore on. Wherever there was a sign of anything eatable upon which the hungry animals could feed, they ate even the woody stems of the sage or the dry yellow fibre-like leaves of the Yuccas that here and there showed above the snow. The short winter day began to wane, and darkness was slowly creeping across the white cover that lay over the land. All sense of direction and time had long since left the lad, but he struggled on, the dog limping along at his side. Just as the last signs of daylight faded away the sheep stopped moving, and he was unable to start them again. He wrapped the lead rope of his horse about a sage bush as best he could, then worked his way through the herd looking for the cause of their stopping. Stumbling and falling over snow-hidden rocks and bushes, he found himself almost stepping off into empty space over a cliff, where the snow had built out from its edge in such a manner as to conceal its presence, and, even as he threw himself back from the step he was about to take, he saw several sheep walk blindly out into the semi-darkness and disappear into the depth below.