Five minutes later the winners of the great Alaska Sweepstakes were flying down the street in the teeth of the storm. Armed with a rifle and a revolver, their owner was mushing into the hills to bring back the men who had robbed his bank and killed the cashier. He traveled alone because he could go faster without a companion. It never occurred to him that he was not a match for any two men he might face. CHAPTER XXV IN THE BLIZZARD "Swiftwater" Pete, the driver of the stage between Kusiak and Katma, did not like the look of the sky as his ponies breasted the long uphill climb that ended at the pass. It was his habit to grumble. He had been complaining ever since they had started. But as he studied the heavy billows of cloud banked above the peaks and in the saddle between, there was real anxiety in his red, apoplectic face. "Gittin' her back up for a blizzard, looks like. Doggone it, if that wouldn't jest be my luck," he murmured fretfully. Sheba hoped there would be one, not, of course, a really, truly blizzard such as Macdonald had told her about, but the tail of a make-believe one, enough to send her glowing with exhilaration into the roadhouse with the happy sense of an adventure achieved. The girl had got out to relieve the horses, and as her young, lissom body took the hill scattering flakes of snow were already flying. To-day she was buoyed up by a sense of freedom. For a time, at least, she was escaping Macdonald's driving energy, the appeal of Gordon Elliot's warm friendliness, and the unvoiced urging of Diane. Good old Peter and the kiddies were the only ones that let her alone. She looked back at the horses laboring up the hill. Swiftwater had got down and was urging them forward, his long whip crackling about the ears of the leaders. He waddled as he walked. His fat legs were too short for the round barrel body. A big roll of fat bulged out over the collar of his shirt. Whenever he was excited--and he always was on the least excuse--he puffed and snorted and grew alarmingly purple. "Fat chance," he exploded as soon as he got within hearing. "Snow in those clouds--tons of it. H'm! And wind. Wow! We're in for an honest-to-God blizzard, sure as you're a foot high." Swiftwater was worried. He would have liked to turn and run for it. But the last roadhouse was twenty-seven miles back. If the blizzard came howling down the slope they would have a sweet time of it reaching safety. Smith's Crossing was on the other side of the divide, only nine miles away. They would have to worry through somehow. Probably those angry clouds were half a bluff. The temperature was dropping rapidly. Already snow fell fast in big thick flakes. To make it worse, the wind was beginning to rise. It came in shrill gusts momentarily increasing in force.