“Rotten weather for movin’, fellows!” was his chilling comment.
Jim looked up lugubriously, but without verbal response.
Phil well understood the mood, and did not worry.
Langford might have been pondering on the comfortable bed he had left at Mrs. Clunie’s and on the advisability of turning back, or he might have been figuring how much they were going to make on the next year’s fruit crop. As he did not turn back, his thoughts, despite his monosyllables, were evidently bravely optimistic.
On they jogged through the enveloping mists of the vanguard of a snow-storm, huddling themselves gradually into smaller and smaller compass as the sleety snow warmed––or rather, cooled––to its task of discouragement and settled down in ghostly earnest, pushing back the already delayed dawn and casting a cheerless gloom over the countryside.
Before the budding ranchers had gone half a mile, the watery snow was running off their clothes. When a mile was completed they were soaked through, sitting like two scare-crows, their hats almost to their chins and their chins buried in their buttoned mackinaws.
They were nearing their journey’s end––too miserable for words––when a horse clip-clopped on the muddy road behind them. The rider drew up alongside them.
“Gee, boys, but you started early. I thought I’d never catch up on you.”
The speaker was Eileen Pederstone, snug in her riding habit and enveloped in an oilskin coat.