Gradually the flakes hardened and the zigzag patterns resolved themselves into long, threadlike lines which slanted earthward with a soft, hissing sound.
Fast it fell, and faster, until the background disappeared, and all the world was a swift-moving riot of white.
It was a real snow now—a snow of value which buried the soft blanket of the feathery flakes under a stable covering which would pack hard under the heavy runners of the wide log sleds.
It lodged in thick masses in the trees whose limbs bent under the weight, and the woods rang to the cries of the sawyers when the tottering of a mighty pine sent a small avalanche hurtling through the lower branches, half-burying them in its white smother.
As the early darkness of the North country settled about them the men plowed heavily to the bunk-house through a foot and a half of fresh-fallen snow—and still it snowed.
CHAPTER XI
BILL HITS THE TRAIL
In a long-abandoned shack midway between Moncrossen's Blood River camp and Hilarity, Bill Carmody hugged close the rusty, broken stove.
All day he had tramped northward, guided through the maze of abandoned roads by the frozen ruts of Moncrossen's tote wagons, and it was long after dark when he camped in the northernmost of the old shacks with civilization, as represented by Hilarity's deserted buildings and the jug-tilting, barrel-head conclave of Hod Burrage's store, forty miles to the southward.