[Illustration: "THE GREAT DOME OF SNOW TOWERED IN ALL ITS GRANDEUR."]

At length they perceived, close to the road, a dim light shining from a
single point in a huddled group of buildings. The wagon turned into a
corral, close to a tumble-down shanty, and as Rankin rode up to the
opening the children were just disappearing in at the door, while the
woman slowly and painfully climbed down over the wheel. Rumpety stood
by, jeering at her slow progress.

"Come, horry a little, me foine lady," Rankin heard him say. "Horry, or
I'll come and give ye a lift ye'll not thank me for!"

The poor creature's dress had caught in something, and she stood an
instant on the hub.

With a sudden movement the brute raised the long whip he held in his
hand and gave her a stinging blow across the shoulders. There was a
faint moan, a sound of tearing cotton, and the woman fell in a heap to
the ground. In another instant she had scrambled to her feet and fled
limping into the house.

Ed Rankin felt the blood rush to his heart and then go tingling down
into his finger-tips; but he made no sound nor sudden movement. With his
teeth set hard, his hand clutching his cowhide whip, he got off his
horse and stood on the ground.

"I guess I'll wait till he's given the critters their supper," he
muttered in Pincher's ear. "He might forget to do it after I'm done
with him."

He stood looking into the enclosure while Rumpety unharnessed "the
critters" and put them up in an open shed.

The corral was a comfortless, tumble-down place. The outlines of the
crazy huts and sheds which enclosed it on three sides showed clear in
the starlight. A gaunt plough-horse stood motionless in the cold shelter
of a skeleton haywagon; in one corner a drinking-trough gleamed, one
solid mass of ice. And now across this dreary, God-forsaken stage passed
the warmly clad, stalwart figure that Fate was waiting for. Rankin noted
that he held the whip still in his hand as he made for the door of the
cabin.

Suddenly Rankin blocked his path.

"_You cur!_"

The words were flung like a missile into the face of the brute.

With a cry of inarticulate rage Rumpety raised his long whip, and then,
coward that he was, let it fall.

Rankin never had a very clear idea of what happened next. Somehow or
other he had torn the coat off the man's back, had bound him with the
lasso to a corner of the haywagon, and was standing over him, cowhide
in hand, panting with rage and the