“Some of the best brandy, Señor Hunt,” he said. “It is for the seekness only that comes with the cold. Ah thees ice in the lungs is death, señor—death!”
The parson took it without hesitation and slipped it into his pocket. He ran out to see Joe Hurley coming out of Colorado Brown’s place with Jib Collins and Cale Mack behind him. In another few seconds, so rapidly did the driving ice thicken the air, Hunt lost sight of the trio and they fairly bumped into him when they reached the spot where he stood.
“That you, Willie?” shouted Hurley. “We’ll get a rope and tie ourselves together. Tie mufflers over our faces. Say, there may be some more fellers in the Grub Stake who will help.”
He turned that way, finding his direction more by sense than by sight. They stumbled up the steps and in at the door of the Grub Stake.
At that very moment a half-frozen man, leading a storm-battered horse, had fallen at Tolley’s rear door. The dive keeper was dragging him into the place like a log as Hurley, Hunt, and their companions strode into the barroom.
CHAPTER XXIV—THE BARRIER DOWN—FOR A MOMENT
“Hey, you fellers!” shouted Tolley to the several men in the barroom of the Grub Stake. “Come give me a hand. Here’s a feller that’s taken pretty near his last pill, I reckon.”
The parson, as well as Hurley and the others, responded to the dive keeper’s call. Tolley kicked shut the back door with savage insistence against the driving wind.
“I reckon his hoss is done for,” he panted. “But the feller himself—Hi, Nobbs! get him a jolt of something hot.”
Hunt and Joe Hurley helped raise the senseless man, and, with Tolley carrying the feet, they moved him close to one of the glowing stoves. His hat fell off. It was Joe who voiced a surprise that was not his alone.