Adventure Magazine, April 10, 1924 — page 158: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

156 shelter of some kind. He wanted a high bluff bank behind which he would be out of the wind, where he could roll up in the goat-hair blanket. He might under the snow come through. He knew his chances were doubtful. The storm was a bad one, screaming, howling, moaning, and the cold stung through his sheepskin jacket, through his woolens and into his flesh. He wrapped the heavy blanket around his head and body, stalking down wind like an Indian, hurried by the gale. . How far he had gone, how long he had been on the way he could not tell. The sun had vanished, and now daylight seemed to be departing, as if night was falling. Then he saw passing him a shadow, a steer also drifting before the driving crystal flakes, with head down, stepping fast. Other cattle came by. Horses, too, appeared, and one of these drew alongside Tierail, stumbling dejectedly as if afraid, alone. Tierail shied from the animal. He felt his old fear of a horse. But he drew back to the animal on the instant, a stronger impulse than his nervous reaction conquer- ing. The horse was company in the common peril. The old rider reached out his hand, stroking the dangling mane. The horse jerked back at the touch, but immediately crowded in again. Outlaw horse and Tierail went walking on together. The horse cringed to the bitterness of that storm. He felt the horror of that raw cold. He had long run wild on the range, but he harked back to the times when humans had sheltered him, cared for-him, fed him when the snow was deep over the grazing-ground. He had come upon a man out there in the wind-swept sage, to walk with him as the wind raged stinging through rough hair and scantily fleshed bones. They were trudging along when night fell, when the blackness came, while the storm blew worse than ever, and the temperature went lower. Two or three times, Tierail nearly lost his hold on the horse. He was afraid to lose the animal. He dreaded to walk alone in that terrific blast. The snow was already clogging his feet. He felt him- self growing numb. He did not really know what he was doing, but with a leap he went up astride the horse, and the familiar position, the warmth, gave him sudden joy—new hope, confidence. The horse, too, seemed to take heart in the fact of unity with that human Adventure burden. They kept plodding on steadily ahead. What the horse or man knew that night is a problem, for at the supreme crises of life who can tell what it is that inspires? That blizzard made history along the north side of the Red Desert, and at Garden Gate, the gale swept between the two high range-ends that made the opening from the north, through the mountains into the vast plain beyond. Here the shacks, the bunga- lows, the old stone houses, and the new con- crete buildings gave evidence of the city’s growth—and here the storm howled, while it threw great May snowdrifts high in the lees down the streets, choking alleys and covering the earth. All night the wintery blasts howled while the storm raged. All night the gale’s voices rumbled and screamed in the pass through the mountains. At dawn the sun’s rays swarmed suddenly up out of the east, and shot through the crystal snow-dust that still flew, the tail of the sixteen-hour storm. The sparkling of the brilliant flying gems was radiant with all the colors of rubies, sap- phires, yellow topaz and diamonds—and emerald was the glory of the shadow against the sheathing of crystalline royal purple. On the instant people looked out, fearing the sting of the cold. They felt, instead, a warm Chinook breeze! And they sprang out into it, unbelieving, preparing to shiver, but crinkling comfortably, instead, feeling like purring cats. The storm had gone by in its blizzard, zero wrath, leaving a sweet scent like roses and sharp colors of the. bitter cold, changing and softening as the day waxed clear and warm. ““Hi-i!’’ somebody yelled. ‘Look’t!”’ “Injun!”’ some one else grunted, dis- gustedly. So it seemed as the peaked blanket wrap- ping was observed, but on second look, they saw the rider reeling as the blanket unfolded from about him. They saw a pale face, a ghostly white man’s countenance, and as he fell baglike, they saw the horse step care- fully clear. Immediately ready hands dragged the prostrate figure to the Garden Gate hospital. This was Mr. Roland Hawthorn, the local meat-market man, sure enough. He was badly frosted. Once more the hospital had a chance to show what it could do for a man, in the person of Tierail. They even saved his fingers and toes, his nose and his ears, which were all frozen white. He came COMmMICLOOokkS.CGO