Douglas mounted and slowly and carefully followed the trail around the mountain.  He found the spot where Judith had made a fire.  He paused over a drift where one of her horses had floundered.  He urged his tired horses to a trot where Judith had followed a beaten coyote trail along a hidden brook.  Hours of this, and then—­a thickening cloud across the moon and a sudden thickening blast of snow in his face.  He had been fearing this all day, yet the moon had risen so clearly that his fears had been lulled.  He pushed on as long as he could distinguish the trail.  Then, with a groan, he pulled up beside a clump of bushes.  The horses sighed gratefully.  Justus’ shoulders were quivering with fatigue.

Douglas unsaddled the horses and hobbled them; then he shoveled snow away from beneath some of the bushes and made a rough shelter over the open space with a blanket.  He built a fire, crept under his rude canopy, and rolled himself in many blankets.  He was very, very tired, and after a time he dropped miles deep into slumber.

It was gray dawn when he awoke and he was snug beneath a foot of snow that had blown over his bed-covering.  He crawled out stiffly and made a fire.  Then he fed the horses and ate his breakfast, examining the landscape as he did so.

Lost Chief Range rose to the left.  To the right lay a broad mesa cut by impassable canyons.  Far to the south and to the right lifted Black Devil Range, forming, with Lost Chief, a deep valley, the valley in which Elijah Nelson had settled.  From Douglas’ camp, the valley was almost inaccessible:  almost, but not quite.  Just under the crest of Black Devil Peak lay a pass.  If this could be crossed one dropped southward into a cup-shaped valley called Johnson’s Basin.  Beyond the basin a lesser pass into sheep country, and thence still south to the railroad and the whole wide world.

Black Devil Pass was used in summer but only by seasoned hunters and cattle-men.  In winter, it was closed by snow and ice.  Yet now, Douglas was convinced that, unless big snows had stopped her, Judith was attempting that perilous passage.  She was by now cooled down; she would not turn back.  Pride, resentment, restlessness, and that virile love of adventure which only increased as she grew older, would urge her on and on.  And to cross Black Devil Pass in winter was a feat which even Charleton would refuse to undertake.  Yet, he did not believe that Judith would attempt such a journey without carefully outfitting.  And where could she have done this?  Had she foreseen her flight and cached food and fodder?  Douglas shrugged this suggestion aside as highly improbable.  But she could have gone into Mormon Valley for supplies.  It was possible to reach Black Devil Pass from the upper end of Mormon Valley, possible in summer at least.  Possible also to reach the Pass by swinging around to the right of the Black Devil Range.

Douglas, with a grim tightening of his lips, looked over his supplies.  Bacon, coffee, flour, matches; enough for a week if eked out by cottontails and porcupines.  But the horses had only a day’s fodder.  He remade the pack, mounted and pushed on through the snows, which grew deeper as the elevation increased.