Out at the end of the “circle,” Chip divided the remainder of his men into two groups for the homeward drive.  One group he himself led.  The other owned Weary as temporary commander and galloped off to the left, skirting close to the foothills of the Bear Paws.  In that group rode Pink and Happy Jack, Slim, Andy Green and Blink the silent.

“I betche we get a blizzard out uh this,” gloomed Happy Jack, pulling his coat collar up another fraction of an inch.  “And the way Chip’s headed us, we got to cross that big flat going back in the thick of it; chances is, we’ll git lost.”

No one made reply to this; it seemed scarcely worth while.  Every man of them rode humped away from the wind, his head drawn down as close to his shoulders as might be.  Conversation under those conditions was not likely to become brisk.

“A fellow that’ll punch cows for a living,” Happy Jack asserted venomously after a minute, “had ought to be shut up somewheres.  He sure ain’t responsible.  I betche next summer don’t see me at it.”

“Aw, shut up.  We know you’re feeble-minded, without you blatting it by the hour,” snapped Pink, showing never a dimple.

Happy Jack tugged again at his collar and made remarks, to which no one paid the slightest attention.  They rode in amongst the hills and narrow ridges dividing “draws” as narrow, where range cattle would seek shelter from the cutting blast that raked the open.  Then, just as they began to realize that the wind was not quite such a raging torment, came a new phase of nature’s unpleasant humor.

It was not a blizzard that descended upon them, though when it came rolling down from the hilltops it much resembled one.  The wind had changed and brought fog, cold, suffocating, impenetrable.  Yet such was the mood of them that no one said anything about it.  Weary had been about to turn off a couple of men, but did not.  What was the use, since they could not see twenty yards?

For a time they rode aimlessly, Weary in the lead.  Then, when it grew no better but worse, he pulled up, just where a high bank shut off the wind and a tangle of brush barred the way in front.

“We may as well camp right here till things loosen up a little,” he said.  “There’s no use playing blind-man’s-buff any longer.  We’ll have some fire, for a change.  Mama! this is sure beautiful weather!”

At that, they brightened a bit and hurriedly dismounted and hunted dry wood.  Since they were to have a fire, the general tendency was to have a big one; so that when they squatted before it and held out cold, ungloved fingers to the warmth, the flames were leaping high into the fog and crackling right cheerily.  It needed only a few puffs at their cigarettes to chase the gloom from their faces and put them in the mood for talk.  Only Blink sat apart and stared moodily into the fire, his hands clasped listlessly around his knees, and to him they gave no attention.  He was an alien, and a taciturn one at that.  The Happy Family were accustomed to living clannishly, even on roundup, and only when they tacitly adopted a man, as they had adopted Pink and Irish and, last but not least important, Andy Green, did they take note of that man’s mood and demand reasons for any surliness.