conscience. Being a downeaster,
he liked to keep on good terms with that monitor. But conscience had no
fault to find as he presently answered, "Yes, at the ranch."

He strode out of the court-house with a tread very different from his
usual slouching gait. Out in the shed he found his bronco sniffing
ruefully at an empty dinner-bag. But she whinnied pleasantly at his
approach. Five minutes later horse and rider were off at a swinging
pace, headed, not for their own ranch, which lay twelve miles to the
northward. Straight in the teeth of the wind they travelled; in the
teeth of the south wind, that stung their faces like a whiplash.

Before very long they sighted the Rumpety wagon showing plainly against
the snow in the starlight. The road went most of the way down-hill, and
wagon and bronco made good speed. The air grew colder every minute.

"About ten below, shouldn't you say, Pincher?"

Pincher tossed her tousled mane affirmatively.

They kept about forty yards behind the team, which went at a steady
rate.

"I say, Pincher, the old beast must be laying it onto them horses, to
make 'em go like that."

This time Pincher merely laid an ear back in token of sympathy.

"We'll give him a worse trouncing than that, though. Eh, Pincher?"

And Rankin fumbled with cold fingers at the whip-handle in his pocket.
The reins lay across Pincher's neck. Rankin did not want his hands to
get too cold "for business."

On and on they pounded through the snow; colder and colder it grew.
There was a shiver in the stars themselves, and only the snow looked
warm.

"If I wasn't so all-fired mad, Pincher, I believe 't would seem kind o'
cold."

At these words Pincher took a spurt and had to be held in, lest they
should overtake the wagon.

They had crossed the railroad, leaving Wolverton with its handful of
twinkling lights to the eastward, and now a line of the Peak was
gleaming, a narrow white crescent, above the long, low rise of ground to
the west. Once they passed a depression through which the great dome of
snow towered in all its grandeur; but that was only for a moment.
Rankin's heart beat high at sight of it.

"There's a way out of 'most every place," he muttered, below his breath.

The last three miles of the way the cold had got such a grip on him that
he desisted from further social amenities. Pincher quite understood his
silence, though she, with her furry coat and hard exercise, was not as
near freezing as he.