“This whole valley was a howling hell of wind and snow, June. I don’t suppose our cattle lasted one night. You couldn’t see a man at your elbow. A man couldn’t live in it. Twenty below and a fifty-mile gale. I swore I’d go home, but they stopped me. It lasted five days.
“And when the wind died down the temperature died with it, until the thermometer at the post froze. Then we started for my place, the doctor and me, traveling on snowshoes. The valley was a place of the dead. There was not even a rabbit-track. Our cattle were under the drifts.
“There was some one at Buck’s cabin. We could see a thread of smoke from his chimney; the rest of the cabin was buried in the snow. But there was no smoke from my chimney.”
Park Reber shut his eyes, and for a while June thought he had fallen asleep. Then:
“No, there was no smoke, June; the cabin was empty. We dug our way down to the door and went in. There was John Sneed, lying face down in the middle of the room—dead. His head had been cut open—his scalp taken. The Cheyennes had been there. The doctor said he had been dead quite a while. I think they had been there ahead of the blizzard.
“I don’t remember just what I did, June. They told me that I went hunting for the Cheyenne camp; I don’t remember. Later I went back to the post and spent the winter. In the spring I went to the Cheyennes and tried to find some trace of my wife, but it was useless. They treated me like a crazy man—and I reckon I was. Later on I went further north and opened a saloon in a new mining camp. It was a money-maker, and in two years I came back here and went into cattle again.
“Buck was still here; still hatin’ me. We met one day and he taunted me with my loss. I tried to kill him with my hands and almost succeeded. It didn’t help any. Buck Priest ain’t the kind you can whip into friendship.
“And I think he hates me for being successful. I own practically all of the Valley. They call it Reber’s Valley. That must hurt Buck Priest. I tried to buy him out, but he wouldn’t sell. He shot my cattle when they came on his range, and I—I shot his cattle on my range.
“Oh, it’s been a battle for years. Finally I gave my men orders to let him and his cattle alone. It seemed to be a mutual truce. But my cattle have disappeared. I don’t think Buck Priest took them.”
“Who is Jack Silver?” asked June.