Even under snow the course of Spruce Coulee was sharply outlined. The snow-laden limbs of conifers sagged heavily for miles along its banks. So, too, with the lower scrub, and the rime-decked branches of leafless trees. Otherwise it would have been indistinguishable from the rest of the world.
The woods on its far bank were tight-packed against the sheer of the cliffs. In places they even hid the rocky wall entirely. Doubtless in summer they were gracious enough. But just now their only service seemed to be to lend the gleaming white of their burden to hide up the careless roughnesses of Nature’s quarrying.
At one point along the course of the coulee the woods broke on either bank. One break was natural. But that was where an irresistible freshet had driven a way for itself through the rocky barrier of the hills in a boisterous effort to reach and swell the waters of the superior stream. Its achievement was doubtless the work of ages. But it was complete. A deep rift split the face of the gray stone cliffs to a breadth of something over twenty feet.
On the prairie bank the break was a narrow enough opening, barely sufficient for the passage of a horse-drawn vehicle. It had nothing of the naturalness which had split the face of the opposite cliff. But so cunning was its design, so insignificantly winding its course through the trees, and with so much care had obstructing tree-boles been removed, that its presence betrayed not the smallest indication of the human handiwork that had fashioned it.
Directly between these openings a figure on foot was floundering through the bed of snow which obscured the coulee. It stood out sharply in the moonlight in its dark furs. Nor was there the smallest indication of any means, other than afoot, by which it could have arrived there. Neither horse, nor vehicle were in evidence anywhere.
Half-way across the coulee Sinclair paused to consider his surroundings, and to clear the icicles from about his lips, and even the lashes of his eyes. Eyes and ears were equally well trained to the haunting silence of the world about him, and, after a prolonged survey, he knew there was nothing to disturb. It was just the shadowy white world he knew and hated. And the sights and sounds that came to him were of the things he could interpret beyond any question.
So his whole attention became concentrated upon the gap in the rough wall of the cliffs ahead. Again he knew it all by heart. He had seen and ignored it so frequently. It was just one of those spring watercourses feeding the coulee. But now it had assumed an importance in his mind that demanded for it his closest attention.
That which he beheld filled him with a certain admiration for the astuteness which had seen in the rift a safe hiding place for a secret traffic. The bed of the spring watercourse was hidden up by trees, and scrub, and was choked with drift snow. From a distance it was only high up where the opening was at its narrowest that the place could be detected at all.
He moved on. With the coulee well behind him there came a battle with the snow-buried undergrowth. But after a while the trees hid him up, and forthwith the world he left behind him forgot the intrusion upon its frigid solitude.