They scrambled back to the trail, he and the little horse, and they were going forward. Oregon's command was working out—"Let the buckskin have his own way."
If they had been out on the prairie undoubtedly they would have gone around in a circle—in fact, Carney once had done so—and the cold would have been more intense, the sweep of the wind more life-sapping; but here in the valleys in places the snow piled deeper; it was like surf rolling up in billows; it took the life force out of man and horse.
Carney was so wearied by the sustained struggle that was like a man battling the waves, half the time beneath the waters, that his flagged senses became atrophied, numbed, scarce tabulating anything but the fact that they still held on toward the cave.
Then he heard a bell. Curious that. Was it all a dream—or was this the real thing: that he was in a merry party, a sleighing party—that they were going to a ball in a stone palace? He could hear a sleigh bell.
Then he was nice and warm. He stretched himself lazily. It was a dream—he was waking.
When he opened his eyes he saw a fire, and the flickering firelight played on stone walls. Beside the fire was sitting a man; behind him something stamped on the stone floor.
He turned his head and saw the buckskin asleep on his feet with low-hung head.
"How d'you feel, Stranger?" the man at the fire asked, rising up, and coming to his side.
Carney stared; he was supposed to be back there fighting a blizzard. And now, remembrance, coursing with langourous speed through his mind, he was in the cave where he had held Jack the Wolf a prisoner.
He sat up and pondered this with groggy slowness.