The gulches and ridges which descended the slope at right angles to my course gave me a rough sea which kept me stirred up. I advanced in tottering installments; a slow, short advance would be made on wobbly legs, then a heave-to, as pay for the advance gained. Now and then there was smoothness, and I took an occasional look at severe Sierra Blanca now looming big before me. It was mostly bare and brown with a number of icy plates and ornaments shining in the sun. At last in the evening light, from the top of a gigantic moraine, I looked down upon the river and a log ranch-house nestling in a grassy open bordered with clumps of spruces. An old lady and gentleman with real sympathy in their faces stood in the doorway and for a moment watched me, then hastened to help me from the pole fence to the door. [Illustration: SIERRA BLANCA IN WINTER] While giving them an incoherent account of my experience, I fell into a stupor, and although I had evidently much to say concerning drinking and apparently showed symptoms of too much drink, these old people did not think me drunk. Waking from a fantastic dream I heard, "Does he need any more sage tea?" The Western pioneers have faith in sage tea and many ascribe to it all the life-saving, life-extending qualities usually claimed for patent medicines. The following morning I was able to walk about, while my slightly bloated, bronzed face did not appear so badly. Altogether, I looked much better than I felt. These good old people declared that they had not seen better days, but that they were living the simple life from choice. They loved the peace of this isolated mountain home and the companionship of the grand old peak. In the Central States the wife had been a professor in a State school, while the husband had been a State's Attorney. The nearest neighbor was four miles downstream, and no one lived farther up the mountain. The nearest railroad station was seventy rough mountain-road miles away. It appeared best to hasten to Denver, but two days in a jarring wagon to reach the railroad seemed more than I could endure. I had not planned even to try for the top of Colorado's highest peak in midwinter, but the way across Sierra Blanca was shorter and probably much easier than the way around. Across the range, directly over the shoulder of Sierra Blanca, lay historic Fort Garland. It was only thirty miles away, and I determined to cross the range and reach it in time for the midnight train. On hearing this resolution the old people were at first astonished, but after a moment they felt that they at last knew who I was. "You must be the Snow Man! Surely no one but he would try to do this in winter." They, with scores of other upland-dwellers, had heard numerous and wild accounts of my lone, unarmed camping-trips and winter adventures in the mountain snows.