This was blown clear of snow and he mounted and rode well up on the second shoulder before the horses again balked.  Lost Chief Range now had dropped so that dimly beyond he could glimpse the Indian peaks.  The strange peaks to the right were subsiding to be dwarfed by still other peaks against which the stars floated, pendulous and brilliant.  And still Black Devil’s top was invisible beyond the terraced ridge that opposed the little cavalcade.

When, after infinite effort, Douglas surmounted the third shoulder, he paused, appalled by the loneliness and danger of the position.  The ridge had narrowed until its top offered barely a foothold, with sides dropping to unthinkable depths.  The snow had blown clear and the wind was almost insupportable.  A cedar stood before them like a sentinal guarding the eternal loneliness beyond.  Tom made for this as if it were his last hope.  As the horses brought up in the shelter of the tree, Douglas gave a hoarse cry of relief and dismounted.  Some charred sticks and the remains of a cottontail had not yet blown away.  Douglas examined the traces of the hasty camp, then chuckled.

“Safe so far!  Some girl, my Judith!”

Then his jaw stiffened and he set the horses to the last shoulder below the Pass.  Groaning, trembling, bloody flanks heaving, fighting constantly to turn, Tom, when Douglas sought to force him through the drift that topped the shoulder, deliberately lay down.  Douglas freed himself from the stirrups and jerked the horse to his feet.

“I wouldn’t own an ornery, unwilling brute like you, for a ranch!” he panted.  “Do you think I’m enjoying this, that we are a bunch of dudes on a summer outing?  I’ll get angry at you in a moment, fellow!”

The pack-horse had embraced the opportunity to fall asleep.  Tom, violently affronted by Doug’s tirade, did his not inconsiderable best to kick his mate.  Then he snapped at Douglas, who promptly cuffed him on the nose.  Tom reared, fell, and began to roll down the terrible slope.  The pack-horse did not waken nor stir.  Doug flung himself after Tom.  Slipping, falling, rolling, he finally caught the reins, and though Tom dragged him fifty yards on downward, he at last braced his spurs against a boulder, the reins held and Tom brought up, trembling and coughing.  And now horse and man could only stand for a long time struggling for breath.  When his numbing hands gave warning that his rest period must cease, Douglas, with the reins caught over his elbow, began a fight back to the crest of the ridge, a fight to which the previous portion of the trip had been as nothing.  When they reached the led horse, still sleeping with his nose between his fore legs, there was no more fight left in Tom, and Douglas dropped into the snow to rest.

The moon was setting when he led his little train through the gigantic drift to the long slope which lifted to the Pass.  There was no snow here.  The slope, as far as Doug could discern in the failing light, was a glare of rough ice.  Over this he dared not urge the horses until daylight.  He looked at his watch.  It was nearly five o’clock.  He fastened the horses to the only cedar in sight, then stood in the wind debating with himself.