The third night of its falling Jerry waked out of a doze to hear his name shouted, muffled and feebly, through the drift. So it seemed to him, and he made haste to answer it. There was no wind; on the very steep slope where the cabin stood was a knee-deep level, soft and clogging; in the hollows it piled halfway up the pines. Jerry's lantern threw a faint and stifled gleam. There was no further cry, but something struggled on the trail below him; dim, unhuman shapes wrestled in the smother of the snow. Jerry sent them a hail of assurance cut off short by the white wall of the storm.
There was a little sag in the hill-front where the trail turned off to the cabin, and here the moist snow fell in a lake, into which the trail ran like a spit, and was lost. Down this trail at the last fierce end of the storm came the great wild sheep, the bighorn, the heaviest-headed, lightest-footed, winter-proof sheep of the mountains that God shepherds on the high battlements of the hills. Down they came when there was no meadow, nor thicket, nor any smallest twig of heather left uncovered on the highlands, and took the lake of soggy snow by Jerry's cabin in the dark. They had come far under the weight of the great curved horns through the clogging drifts. Here where the trail failed in the white smudge they found no footing, floundered at large, sinking belly-deep where they stood, and not daring to stand lest they sink deeper. If any cry of theirs, hoarse and broken, had reached old Jerry's dreaming, they spent no further breath on it. By something the same sense that made him aware of their need, Jerry understood rather than saw them strain through the falling veil of snow. It was a sharp struggle without sound as they won out of the wet drift to the firmer ground. They went on like shadows pursued by the ghost of a light that wavered with the old man's wavering feet. It was no night for a man to be abroad in, but Jerry plowed on in the drift till he found the work that was cut out for him. There where the snow was deepest, yielding like wool, he found the oldest wether of the flock, sunk to the shoulders, too feeble for the struggle, and still too noble for complaining. How many years had Jerry waited to do a good turn on the trail where he had done his worst: and in all these years he had lost the sense of distinction which should be between man and beast. He put his shoulder under the fore shoulder of the sheep, where he could feel the heart pound with certain fear.
Jerry knew the trail, as he knew the floor of his mine, by the feel of the ground under him, so as he heaved and guided with his shoulder, the great ram grew quieter and lent himself to the effort till they came clear of the swale, and the sweat ran down from Jerry's forehead. But the bighorn could do no more. In the soft fleece of the snow he stood cowed and trembling. The snow came on faster, and wiped out the trail of the flock; he made no motion to go after. Such a death comes to the wild sheep of the mountains often enough: to fail from old age in some sudden storm, to sink in the loose snow and await the quest of the wolf, or the colder mercy of the drift. He turned his back to the storm which began to slant a little with the rising wind, and looked not once at Jerry nor at the hills where he had been bred. But Jerry cast his eye upon the sheep, which was full heavier then than he, and then up at the steep where his cabin stood, remembering that he had nothing there that might serve a sheep for food. Then he bent down again, and by dint of pulling and pushing, and by a dim sense that began to filter through the man's brain to the beast, they made some progress on the trail. They went over broken boulders and floundered in the drifts, where Jerry half carried the sheep and was half borne up and supported by the spread of the great horns. They crossed Pine Creek, which ran dumbly under the snow, housed over by the stream tangle. The flakes hissed softly on Jerry's lantern and struck blindingly on his eyes, but ever as they went the sheep was eased of his labor, grew assured, and carried himself courageously. Finally they came where the storm thinned out, and whole hill-slopes covered with buckthorn and cherry warded off the snow by springy arches, and Jerry drew up to rest under a long-leaved pine while the sheep went on alone, nodding his great horns under the branches of the scrub. He neither lingered nor looked back, and met the new chance of life with as much quietness as the chance of death. Jerry was worn and weary, and there was a singing in his brain. The pine trees broke the wind and shed off the snow in curling wreaths. It seemed to the old man most good to rest, and he drowsed upon his feet.
"If I sleep I shall freeze," he said; and it seemed on the whole a pleasant thing to do. So it went on for a little space; then there came a shape out of the dark, a hand shook him by the shoulder, and a voice called him by name. Then he started out of dreaming as he had started at that other call an hour ago, and it seemed not strange to him, the night, nor the storm, nor the face of the blue-eyed man that shone out of the dark, but whether by the light of his lantern he could not tell. He shook the snow from his shoulders.
"I have expected you long," he said.
"And now I have come," said the stranger and smiled.
"Have you brought the luck again?"
"Come and see," said the man.
Then Jerry took his hand and leaned upon him, and together they went up the trail between the drifts.
"You bear me no ill-will for what I did?" said Jerry.