"He’s drivin’ across our range, an’ when th’ wind dies out sudden an’ th’ snow sifts down, he ’s just smart enough to get out his beddin’ an’ wrap it around him till he looks like a bale of cotton. An’ even at that he ’s near froze an’ lookin’ for a place to make a stand when he feels a bump. It’s me, fallin’ off my cayuse, against his front wheel. He emerges from his beddin’, lifts me into th’ waggin, puts most of his blankets around me, an’ stops. Knowin’ he can’t save th’ cayuses, he shoots ’em. That means grub for us, anyhow, if we run short of th’ good stuff. Nobody but Pete could ’a’ got th’ canvas off that waggin in such a gale, but he did it. He busts th’ arches an’ slats off th’ top of th’ waggin an’ uses ’em for firewood. Th’ canvas he drapes over th’ box, lettin’ it hang down on both sides to th’ ground. An’ in about five minutes th’ whole thing was covered over with snow. Pete ’s the strongest man we ever saw, an’ we ’ve seen some good ones. Wrastlin’ that canvas with stiff hands was a whole lot more than what he done to Big Sandy up there on Thunder Mesa. "Pete says I was dead when he grabbed me, an’ smellin’ disgraceful of liquor. But th’ first thing I know is lookin’ up in th’ gloom at a ceilin’ that’s right close to my head, an’ at a sorta rafter. That rafter gives me a shock. It don’t even touch th’ ceilin’, but runs along ’most a foot below it. I close my eyes an’ do a lot of thinkin’. I remember freezin’ to death, but that’s all. An’ just then I hears a faint voice say: ’He shore was dead.’ I don’t know Pete then, or that he talked to hisself sometimes. An’ I reckon I was a li’l off in my head, at that. I begin to wonder if he means me, an’ purty soon I ’m shore of it. An’ don’t I sympathize with myself? I ’m dead an’ gone somewhere; but no preacher I ever heard ever described no place like this. Then I smell smoke an’ burnin’ meat—which gives me a clew to th’ range I ’m on. Mebby I ’m shelved in th’ ice box, waitin’ my turn, or somethin’. I knew I ’d led a sinful life. But there wasn’t no use of rubbin’ it in—it’s awful to be dead an’ know it. "Th’ next time I opens my eyes I can’t see nothin’; but I can feel somethin’ layin’ alongside of me. It’s breathin’ slow an’ regular, an it bothers me till I get th’ idea all of a sudden. It’s another dead one, cut out of th’ herd an’ shoved in my corral to wait for subsequent events. I felt sorry for him, an’ lay there tryin’ to figger it out, an’ I ’m still figgerin’ when it starts to get light. Th’ other feller grunts an’ sits up, bumpin’ his head solid against that fool rafter. No dead man that was shoved in a herd consigned to heaven ever used such language, which makes me all the shorer of where I am. But if hell’s hot we ’ve still got a long way to go.