He struggled helplessly. Something seemed pressing him down, down--at last he was _home_. He had won out against the terrible odds, and the boy was safe. He had brought him back to her, and now he must sleep. How warm and comfortable it was in the bunk. He did not know a man could be so sleepy. What was it the girl was singing as he passed her window only a few nights ago--when he paused in the darkness of the clearing to listen? Dreamily the words floated through his brain: "And the women are weeping and wringing their hands For those who will never come back to the town." But he had come back. He smiled vaguely; they needn't wring their hands and weep--and the rest of it: "For men must work, and women must weep, And the sooner it's over the sooner to sleep, And good-by to the bar and its moaning." Sleep! That's what he needed--sleep. He could sleep forever and ever, here in his warm, warm bunk. And the moaning of the bar--he liked that; he could hear it moaning now--roaring and moaning. Bill Carmody closed his eyes. The fine, sifting snow came and covered his body and the smaller body of the boy who was lashed firmly to his broad back--and all about him the blizzard howled and roared and moaned. And it was night! CHAPTER XLIII IN CAMP AGAIN The violence of the storm precluded the use of horses about the camp, and the trail that slanted from the clearing to the water-hole was soon drifted high with snow, rendering useless the heavy tank-sled. Fallon, who had been placed in temporary charge of the camp, told the men into water-shifts; barrels were lashed to strong sleds and man-hauled to the top of the bank, where the guide-rope had been run to the water-hole. The men of the shift formed a long line reaching from the sled to the river, and the water dipped from the hole cut in the ice was passed from man to man in buckets to be dumped into the barrels and distributed between the stables, cook-shack, bunk-house, and "house." Darkness had fallen when the men of the afternoon shift wallowed toward the river upon the last trip of the second day of the great blizzard. The roar of the wind as it hurled the frozen particles against their cold-benumbed faces drowned their muttered curses as, thirty strong, they pushed and hauled the cumbersome sled to the top of the bank. Seizing the buckets, they strung out, making their way down the steep slope with one hand on the guide-rope. Suddenly the foremost man stumbled and fell. He scrambled profanely to his knees and began feeling about in the thick darkness for his bucket. His mittened hand came into contact with the object which, protruding from the snow, had tripped him, and with a vicious wrench he endeavored to remove it from the trail. It yielded a little, but remained firmly imbedded.