Page:Peak and Prairie (1894).pdf/158

 On and on they pounded through the snow; colder and colder it grew. There was a shiver in the stars themselves, and only the snow looked warm.

"If I wasn't so all-fired mad, Pincher, I believe 't would seem kind o' cold."

At these words Pincher took a spurt and had to be held in, lest they should overtake the wagon.

They had crossed the railroad, leaving Wolverton with its handful of twinkling lights to the eastward, and now a line of the Peak was gleaming, a narrow white crescent, above the long, low rise of ground to the west. Once they passed a depression through which the great dome of snow towered in all its grandeur; but that was only for a moment. Rankin's heart beat high at sight of it.

"There's a way out of 'most every place," he muttered, below his breath.

The last three miles of the way the cold had got such a grip on him that he desisted from further social amenities. Pincher quite understood his silence, though she, with her furry coat and hard exercise, was not as near freezing as he.

At length they perceived, close to the road, a dim light shining from a single point in a hud-