Ridgway led the party across the gulch, following the trail that had been swept by the slide. The cowboys followed him, next came Harley, his wife, and in the rear the cattleman. They descended the draw, and presently dipped over rolling ground to the plain beyond. The procession plowed steadily forward mile after mile, the pomes floundering through drifts after the man ahead.
Chinn, who had watched him breasting the soft heavy blanket that lay on the ground so deep and hemmed them in, turned to his companion.
“On the way coming I told you, Husky, we had the best man in Montana at our head. We got that beat now to a fare-you-well. We got the two best in this party, by crickey.”
“He’s got the guts, all right, but there ain’t nothing on two legs can keep it up much longer,” replied the other. “If you want to know, I’m about all in myself.”
“Here, too,” grunted the other. “And so’s the bronc.”
It was not, however, until dusk was beginning to fall that the leader stopped. Yesler’s voice brought him up short in his tracks.
“Hold on, Waring. The lady’s down.”
Ridgway strode back past the exhausted cowboys and Harley, the latter so beaten with fatigue that he could scarce cling to the pommel of his saddle.
“I saw it coming. She’s been done for a long time, but she hung on like a thoroughbred,” explained Yesler from the snow-bank where Aline had fallen.
He had her in his arms and was trying to get at a flask of whisky in his hip-pocket.