My own remarks were of the same tenor as those of my comrades, and I know that the feelings that prompted them were heartfelt and sincere.  We were all sincere, and all deeply moved and earnest, for we were in the presence of death and without hope.  I threw away my pipe, and in doing it felt that at last I was free of a hated vice and one that had ridden me like a tyrant all my days.  While I yet talked, the thought of the good I might have done in the world and the still greater good I might now do, with these new incentives and higher and better aims to guide me if I could only be spared a few years longer, overcame me and the tears came again.  We put our arms about each other’s necks and awaited the warning drowsiness that precedes death by freezing.

It came stealing over us presently, and then we bade each other a last farewell.  A delicious dreaminess wrought its web about my yielding senses, while the snow-flakes wove a winding sheet about my conquered body.  Oblivion came.  The battle of life was done.

CHAPTER XXXIII.

I do not know how long I was in a state of forgetfulness, but it seemed an age.  A vague consciousness grew upon me by degrees, and then came a gathering anguish of pain in my limbs and through all my body.  I shuddered.  The thought flitted through my brain, “this is death—­this is the hereafter.”

Then came a white upheaval at my side, and a voice said, with bitterness: 

“Will some gentleman be so good as to kick me behind?”

It was Ballou—­at least it was a towzled snow image in a sitting posture, with Ballou’s voice.

I rose up, and there in the gray dawn, not fifteen steps from us, were the frame buildings of a stage station, and under a shed stood our still saddled and bridled horses!

An arched snow-drift broke up, now, and Ollendorff emerged from it, and the three of us sat and stared at the houses without speaking a word.  We really had nothing to say.  We were like the profane man who could not “do the subject justice,” the whole situation was so painfully ridiculous and humiliating that words were tame and we did not know where to commence anyhow.

The joy in our hearts at our deliverance was poisoned; well-nigh dissipated, indeed.  We presently began to grow pettish by degrees, and sullen; and then, angry at each other, angry at ourselves, angry at everything in general, we moodily dusted the snow from our clothing and in unsociable single file plowed our way to the horses, unsaddled them, and sought shelter in the station.

I have scarcely exaggerated a detail of this curious and absurd adventure.  It occurred almost exactly as I have stated it.  We actually went into camp in a snow-drift in a desert, at midnight in a storm, forlorn and hopeless, within fifteen steps of a comfortable inn.

For two hours we sat apart in the station and ruminated in disgust.  The mystery was gone, now, and it was plain enough why the horses had deserted us.  Without a doubt they were under that shed a quarter of a minute after they had left us, and they must have overheard and enjoyed all our confessions and lamentations.