So we put the horses into as much of a trot as the deep snow would allow, and before long it was evident that we were gaining on our predecessors, for the tracks grew more distinct.  We hurried along, and at the end of an hour the tracks looked still newer and fresher—­but what surprised us was, that the number of travelers in advance of us seemed to steadily increase.  We wondered how so large a party came to be traveling at such a time and in such a solitude.  Somebody suggested that it must be a company of soldiers from the fort, and so we accepted that solution and jogged along a little faster still, for they could not be far off now.  But the tracks still multiplied, and we began to think the platoon of soldiers was miraculously expanding into a regiment—­Ballou said they had already increased to five hundred!  Presently he stopped his horse and said: 

“Boys, these are our own tracks, and we’ve actually been circussing round and round in a circle for more than two hours, out here in this blind desert!  By George this is perfectly hydraulic!”

Then the old man waxed wroth and abusive.  He called Ollendorff all manner of hard names—­said he never saw such a lurid fool as he was, and ended with the peculiarly venomous opinion that he “did not know as much as a logarythm!”

We certainly had been following our own tracks.  Ollendorff and his “mental compass” were in disgrace from that moment.

After all our hard travel, here we were on the bank of the stream again, with the inn beyond dimly outlined through the driving snow-fall.  While we were considering what to do, the young Swede landed from the canoe and took his pedestrian way Carson-wards, singing his same tiresome song about his “sister and his brother” and “the child in the grave with its mother,” and in a short minute faded and disappeared in the white oblivion.  He was never heard of again.  He no doubt got bewildered and lost, and Fatigue delivered him over to Sleep and Sleep betrayed him to Death.  Possibly he followed our treacherous tracks till he became exhausted and dropped.

Presently the Overland stage forded the now fast receding stream and started toward Carson on its first trip since the flood came.  We hesitated no longer, now, but took up our march in its wake, and trotted merrily along, for we had good confidence in the driver’s bump of locality.  But our horses were no match for the fresh stage team.  We were soon left out of sight; but it was no matter, for we had the deep ruts the wheels made for a guide.  By this time it was three in the afternoon, and consequently it was not very long before night came—­and not with a lingering twilight, but with a sudden shutting down like a cellar door, as is its habit in that country.  The snowfall was still as thick as ever, and of course we could not see fifteen steps before us; but all about us the white glare of the snow-bed enabled us to discern the smooth sugar-loaf mounds made by the covered sage-bushes, and just in front of us the two faint grooves which we knew were the steadily filling and slowly disappearing wheel-tracks.