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Curlie had once read a book written by a man whose daring exploits in the north he had greatly admired. This writer had said that the notion that falling asleep when out in a blizzard might cause one’s death by freezing was a great mistake.
“Should you find yourself lost in a blizzard,” he remembered the words as well as he might had he read them but an hour before, “seek out a sheltered spot and compose yourself as best you can. Save your strength. If you can fall asleep, so much the better. You will awake refreshed. You will not freeze. If you become chilled, the cold will waken you.”
“I wonder if that is true?” he thought to himself as he huddled against the cut bank between his two walls of snow to watch the snow sifting down the hillside like sand down a dune.
He did not attempt to decide whether or not he would put the thing to a test. He merely sat there until the white, sifting snow became brown and gold, until the gale became a gentle breeze, until all about him was the warmth of a tropical clime.
Before him a palm tree spread its inviting shade. Across the horizon a slow procession moved, camels and horses. “A caravan,” he murmured. Then silently the scene shifted. Before him instead of palms were cacti. Instead of camels a great herd of cattle urged on by men on horseback, who swung sombreros and lariats. A cloud of dust followed the herd lazily. But ever just before him the brown sand sifted, sifted, sifted eternally.
Into this scene there moved a beautiful girl. She was dressed in the gay costume of a Mexican; her cheeks were brown with the sun, but she was good to look at. Moving with a strange grace, she came close to him and whispered in his ear. What she said was:
“Curlie! Curlie Carson, are you there?”
The question seemed so strange that he started, and, starting, he suddenly awoke. The girl and her desert vanished like magic. Before him the sifting still went on, but now again it was sifting snow. Drowsy with fatigue, benumbed but not chilled by the cold, he had fallen asleep and had been dreaming. The two deserts were but dreams.
As he sat there staring at the snow he suddenly realized that part of his dream was reality; the whisper continued: