Clavering laughed. "If you want to be unpleasant, Chris, can't you try a different line? That one's played out. It's too cold to quarrel." "I don't feel pleasant," said Allonby. "In fact, I don't like this thing, any way. Before Larry got stuck with his notions he was a friend of mine." "If the boys don't get too cold to shoot it's quite likely he will be nobody's friend to-morrow," said Clavering cruelly. "We'll go round and look at them." They went back into the trail once more, and the icy gusts struck through them as they plodded up it; but they found no man keeping watch beside it, as there should have been. The cow-boys had drawn back for shelter among the trees, and Clavering, who found them stamping and shivering, had some difficulty in 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.